Podcasts about einsteinian

In this illuminating conversation, Keith Martin-Smith is joined by Terri O'Fallon—co-founder of STAGES International and one of the most insightful developmental theorists alive today—to explore the hidden cycles shaping both personal growth and global history. As the world faces a convergence of meta-crises—from late-stage capitalism to climate collapse and runaway technology—Terri reveals how these upheavals mirror a deeper, evolutionary recursion within human consciousness itself. Together, they trace the arc from timelessness (at birth) to the construction of linear and relative time, culminating in the boundless timelessness required at higher developmental stages. Alongside this journey, they chart the rapid acceleration of cultural evolution—from 50,000-year transitions to changes now unfolding within decades—and discuss the critical role of shadow, leadership, parenting, narcissism, and spiritual practice in navigating this evolutionary quickening. Is capitalism the end of the story, or just another stage? Can AI ever touch the depths of timeless awareness? And what kind of leaders are needed to shepherd us into a post-crisis future? This wide-ranging dialogue blends rigor and heart, offering both a sobering look at our civilizational crossroads and a grounded faith in our capacity to grow through it. PERSPECTIVE SHIFT: - Time isn't just measured; it's grown into. Time isn't a fixed backdrop. It's a developmental achievement. Infants begin in timelessness, then construct cyclical time (day/night), linear time (goals/futures), and eventually relative time (Einsteinian). Ultimately, advanced stages re-integrate timelessness — not by regressing, but by transcending and including earlier temporal modes. - Civilizational collapse isn't random; it's cyclical, and developmental. History isn't a chaotic series of events. It's patterned. Generational “blowups” (wars, revolutions, meta-crises) happen in ~100-year cycles and correspond to developmental limits in cultural structures (e.g., when capitalism outgrows its third-person frame). - We're not just evolving — we're accelerating. It once took 50,000 years to move from archaic to magic. Now, new developmental stages are emerging in decades. This compression disrupts traditional generational analysis and creates a world where vastly different levels coexist simultaneously. - You can be advanced and still dangerous. Late-stage development doesn't automatically mean healthier behavior. A person can be construct-aware (5.0+) and still deeply narcissistic if early-stage wounds weren't healed. Shadow travels up the spiral unless integrated.

*Top 10 List: Fred Williams and co-host Doug McBurney review their list of the top 10 things people still believe, that science has proven wrong. #10: Vestigial Organs -  The most popular one growing up was the appendix, remember? Until this (from PubMed in 2016). And don't forget tonsils!  #9: GPS won't work without Einsteinian relativity. It will, and does. #8: Junk DNA - There's no such thing! We're only beginning to comprehend DNA. And to have ever assumed any of it was junk was foolishness! #7: Lucy is a Human Ancestor - Poppycock! #6: Plate Tectonics - The fourth-biggest-dumbest theory going, (after Darwinian Evolution, the Big Bang, and Einsteinian Relativity). #5: Dangerous Anthropogenic Climate Change - Fifth biggest-dumbest... #4: Darwin's Tree of Life - That dog don't hunt, and lies like a rug! #3: The Big Bang: See #'s 4 & 5, the James Webb Space Telescope, and our favorite! Genesis One. #2: Evolution: Ha! Yeah.... right! (Also, see Genesis One again). Neo-Darwinism is so laughably preposterous even foolish atheists like Jimmy Shapiro are beginning to re-evaluate the emperor's outfit.  #1: Dinosaurs lived and went extinct millions of years ago. We've long had solid evidence that man and dinosaurs lived together, from cliff and cave drawings to the tomb of Richard Bell, to Chinese calendars... and of course all that dinosaur soft tissue in all those fossils!

*Top 10 List: Fred Williams and co-host Doug McBurney review their list of the top 10 things people still believe, that science has proven wrong. #10: Vestigial Organs -  The most popular one growing up was the appendix, remember? Until this (from PubMed in 2016). And don't forget tonsils!  #9: GPS won't work without Einsteinian relativity. It will, and does. #8: Junk DNA - There's no such thing! We're only beginning to comprehend DNA. And to have ever assumed any of it was junk was foolishness! #7: Lucy is a Human Ancestor - Poppycock! #6: Plate Tectonics - The fourth-biggest-dumbest theory going, (after Darwinian Evolution, the Big Bang, and Einsteinian Relativity). #5: Dangerous Anthropogenic Climate Change - Fifth biggest-dumbest... #4: Darwin's Tree of Life - That dog don't hunt, and lies like a rug! #3: The Big Bang: See #'s 4 & 5, the James Webb Space Telescope, and our favorite! Genesis One. #2: Evolution: Ha! Yeah.... right! (Also, see Genesis One again). Neo-Darwinism is so laughably preposterous even foolish atheists like Jimmy Shapiro are beginning to re-evaluate the emperor's outfit.  #1: Dinosaurs lived and went extinct millions of years ago. We've long had solid evidence that man and dinosaurs lived together, from cliff and cave drawings to the tomb of Richard Bell, to Chinese calendars... and of course all that dinosaur soft tissue in all those fossils!

Kip Thorne is an Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, and someone who's had a huge impact on our understanding of Einsteinian gravity. Over the course of his career Kip has broken new ground in the study of black holes, and been an integral parts of the team that recorded gravitational waves for the very first time – earning him a share in the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics.He went on to promote physics in films: developing the original idea behind Christopher Nolan's time-travel epic Interstellar and, since then, advising on scientific elements of various big-screen projects; including, most recently, the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer.In a special edition of The Life Scientific recorded in front of an audience of London's Royal Institution, Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to Kip about his life and career, from his Mormon upbringing in Utah to Hollywood collaborations – all through the lens of his unwavering passion for science.

In today's episode, Tom sits down with Stephen Bonnell, also known as Destiny, for a deep dive into the current political landscape and the challenges we face as a society. Bonnell tackles the rampant misinformation in media and its impact on public perception, the political divide exacerbated by social media, and the controversial actions of big political figures such as Donald Trump. Together, they discuss Trump's presidency, exploring his beliefs, policies, and the economic consequences of his decisions. Bonnell also highlights the importance of American values—liberalism, capitalism, and free enterprise—and how they shape our nation. Tom and Stephen don't shy away from the tough topics. They debate the efficacy of economic strategies like tariffs and government subsidies, the role of leadership in fostering or hindering progress, and the complex nature of truth in a highly polarized media environment. From the need for onshoring in defense manufacturing to the feasibility of taxing unrealized gains, this episode covers a wide array of crucial issues. SHOWNOTES 00:00 Focus on strengths, delegate weaknesses for success. 07:09 Good intuition doesn't equal effective advice. 10:25 Foundational moral beliefs guide political applications. 18:34 Autocracies ignore disinformation; democracies require truth. 21:07 Misinformation fuels unfounded beliefs and actions. 29:55 Fear of censorship outweighs misinformation's potential harm. 34:54 Einsteinian physics isn't objective truth; approximations dominate. 38:44 Proving Trump's deceit would change my perspective. 42:21 Mind reading Trump reveals legitimate coup attempt. 49:24 Human mind's architecture limits problem escape. 58:02 Protectionism criticism; strategic unpredictability as tactic. CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at  https://landroverUSA.com Huel: Try Huel with 15% OFF today using code IMPACT at https://huel.com/impact. Netsuite: Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at https://netsuite.com/theory Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Design.com: Ready to transform your brand? Head to https://design.com/impacttheory and get up to 88% off. Betterhelp: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://betterhelp.com/impacttheory and get 10% off your first month. FOLLOW TOM: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here. If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast, Tom Bilyeu's Mindset Playbook —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. LISTEN AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS: apple.co/impacttheory Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Award-winning film director and producer Caroline Cory  @OMniumUniverse beams in to talk about ESP, UFO phenomena, and making movies that capture unexplained alien activity and extraterrestrial portals on episode 168 of the Far Out with Faust podcast.Caroline Cory is an award-winning filmmaker, executive producer and founder of Omnium Media. As a child and throughout her life, Cory has had numerous E.S.P (extra-sensory) and pre-cognition experiences, which led her to become deeply connected to existential topics, the study of consciousness and the mechanics of the universe. In 2010, Cory founded Omnium Media, an entertainment and media platform, which tackles thought provoking topics on the human condition and the nature of reality. In addition to writing and producing, Cory continues to lecture and coach internationally on various mind over matter subjects and appears regularly as a guest expert on supernatural phenomena at major conferences and television shows such as A&E's popular series The UnXplained with William Shatner and History Channel's Ancient Aliens.In this episode, Cory shares her childhood experiences with supernatural phenomena and how it led her to pursue energy and consciousness studies. She discusses the importance of meditation and expanding our perception beyond the five senses. Cory also talks about the creation of Omnium Media, an entertainment media platform that explores thought-provoking topics on the human condition and the nature of reality. She highlights the incredible process of making her films, including 'Superhuman' and 'A Tear in the Sky,' which document the science behind abilities like ESP and UFO sightings. In this conversation, Faust and Caroline discuss topics including:•How childhood experiences with supernatural phenomena can lead to a deeper connection to spirituality and the study of consciousness•How meditation is a powerful tool for expanding perception and accessing information beyond the five senses•The numerous UFO sightings and strange objects that have been captured on film, including objects that appeared and disappeared in the sky and a portal-like phenomenon•The limitations of human knowledge, and how we need to be open to new possibilities and expand our understanding of the universe•How intention and focused attention have the power to affect DNA and physical objects•The need to move beyond the limitations of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics and explore new possibilities….and so much more!

The final episode in this series of The Life Scientific is a journey through space and time, via black holes and wormholes, taking in Nobel-prize-winning research and Hollywood blockbusters!Kip Thorne is an Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, and someone who's had a huge impact on our understanding of Einsteinian gravity. Over the course of his career Kip has broken new ground in the study of black holes, and been an integral parts of the team that recorded gravitational waves for the very first time – earning him a share in the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics.He went on to promote physics in films: developing the original idea behind Christopher Nolan's time-travel epic Interstellar and, since then, advising on scientific elements of various big-screen projects; including, most recently, the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer.In a special edition of The Life Scientific recorded in front of an audience of London's Royal Institution, Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to Kip about his life and career, from his Mormon upbringing in Utah to Hollywood collaborations – all through the lens of his unwavering passion for science. Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor

Today's episode features Jason Padgett, a physicist and artist whose path to a mathematical conception of reality began with a violent attack in his early 30s. We discuss this transformation after brain injury. How with zero mathematical background he found himself reinventing calculus. We discuss his attempts to bring himself into line with peers who had a very different formal training. Then we discuss his particular theoretical projects in physics. In particular he has developed a theory of informational constants of nature, which he calls holographic quantum information theory in an effort to unify quantum mechanics and Einsteinian relativity. To make sense of that we unpack concepts like cubits, hidden information, and quantum vector spin models. We close with a discussion of probabilistic reality and the nature of material reality versus mathematical models. Sign up for our Patreon and get episodes early + join our weekly Patron Chat https://bit.ly/3lcAasB AND rock some Demystify Gear to spread the word! https://demystifysci.myspreadshop.com/ Jason's latest AI conversation about his model: https://chatgpt.com/share/a32bc04b-b811-408f-9ea1-6489c23c55eb Jason's artwork: https://jason-padgett.pixels.com/ 00:00 Go! 00:05:59 Ideas in different languages 00:10:58 Before the attack 00:14:25 The attack 00:27:00 My mind starts changing overnight 00:35:52 Reinventing calculus with no formal training 00:49:05 Savantism 00:57:56 Informational constant of nature 01:02:33 Cubits? 01:06:56 Hidden information between Planck times 01:14:03 Reconciling probabilistic reality 01:21:32 Everything is light, QS vectors 01:26:15 Quantum Vector Spin models Einstein's time dilation 01:37:37 Material reality v. math 01:59:58 Hawking radiation 02:08:48 Translation through free education 02:17:36 Using AI to translate your math into words 02:25:51 Eternal recurrence #sciencepodcast #longformpodcast #PhysicsInjuryRecovery, #MathematicalSavant, #QuantumTheory, #BrainInjurySurvivor, #MathematicalGenius, #ArtisticTransformation, #NeuroscienceDiscovery, #SavantSyndrome, #BrainInjuryRecovery, #MathematicalInsights, #QuantumPhysics, #GeniusAfterInjury, #PhysicistStory, #NeuroscienceResearch, #MathematicalIntuition, #QuantumMechanics, #BrainDamageRecovery, #SavantAbilities, #MathematicalDiscovery, #QuantumMind. Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialAtomics Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

With Jonah still MIA, Chris Stirewalt returns as Remnant guest host extraordinaire, joined by Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss Steil's latest book and determine if the bizarreHenry Wallace was a noble man of the soil, an unsophisticated victim, or vindictive villain. To determine how Wallace changed the course of history, Stirewalt and Steil discuss the Soviet Union's duping of an Einsteinian genius, the cult of Nicholas Roerich, and why you should never slaughter 6 million pigs. Show Notes: — Chris' American Enterprise Institute page — Benn Steil's The World that Wasn't — Benn Steil's The Marshall Plan — Oliver Stone's The Untold History of the United States — Benn Steil and Elisabeth Harding's “The Farm Legacy of Henry Wallace: Regressive Subsidies” The Remnant is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including Jonah's G-File newsletter, weekly livestreams, and other members-only content—click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bob Wright is an Illinois guy through and through. He grew up just outside of Chicago. Interestingly enough, he decided much of Psychology was balderdash until he spent time in France. He will tell you this fascinating story.   After returning to the states, he took up the subject for some of his Master's Degree work and then beyond. Although he didn't say it in so many words, once he began truly delving into Psychology, he was quite hooked and made aspects of it his career.   He has been coaching for more than 40 years. He also understands sales and led his first sales course in 1981 for a part of Prudential Insurance where he vastly improved the performance of the group.   Bob and I have quite the conversation as you will see. He even analyzes me a bit. We agreed that we will have a second episode later, but first, I will have the opportunity to talk with his wife, Judith, who is deeply involved with Bob's work at all levels. Stay tuned.   About the Guest:   Bob Wright is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and educator. He's a cutting-edge thinker, called upon by top leaders across the country. He coaches Fortune-level CEOS from coast to coast, as well as entrepreneurs. Part of what Bob loves is hitting every level, people that want to make a difference, people who are movers and shakers in the world, that's where his sweet spot is. In fact, he was called one of the top executive coaches by Crain's Chicago business. He led his first sales course in 1981 for Prudential Insurance, for a division of the organization that was ranked 200th out of 2000 nationally—within a month, they shot up to #16.   He is also a dynamic entrepreneur who has founded several successful businesses His first venture, Human Effectiveness, was ranked tops in the country by the Mercer, as well as Arthur Andersen. He sold that business in 1994 to focus on consciousness, maximizing human performance, and the fulfillment of human potential.   He has sold to Fortune level companies from coast to coast, has managed his own sales force, and was one of the first people in the country to develop a Neurolinguistic Programming Training for sales professionals. Likewise, he is the developer of The Wright Model of Human Growth and Development that we will work with this evening. This is a distinct opportunity to learn some concepts from a master who actually developed this and has helped numerous worked with it over time.   Highly respected by major business figures – he has coached and trained leaders who have risen to national prominence in the areas of finance, technology, retirement, economics, compensation, governance, and the list goes on and on. Bob has trained and supported hundreds of sale professionals to higher levels of performance and satisfaction.  It is common for people he supports to triple and even quintuple income while learning to have greater satisfaction and fulfillment in all areas of their lives. His cutting edge approach to selling is empowered by his revolutionary integrative model of human growth and development. Sales people he coaches find themselves enjoying life more, and succeed even in down markets. The people that he has coached and trained over these years are movers and shakers making a major difference in the world today.   Ways to connect with Bob: drbobwright@judithandbob.com https://drbobwright.com/   About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hi, welcome once again to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here I am your host, Mike hingson. And today we get to talk with Dr. Bob Wright. Bob is by any standard and entrepreneur and I would say very much an unstoppable one. He has started and, and sold many businesses in his life. He actually conducted his first sales course with a division of Prudential insurance in 1981. Now we're starting to pin down his age. And he he made that division go and sales from number 200 In a few weeks to number 16. I liked that. Having been in sales, a lot of my adult life. He loves to coach CEOs and entrepreneurs. And we'll find out what else So Bob, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 02:13 Thank you so much, Michael, I'm looking forward to talking with you.   Michael Hingson ** 02:18 Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. And as I said, we got to have fun doing it. So I think we'll we'll do that. Tell us a bit about tell us a little bit about the early Bob, you know, growing up and all that sort of stuff that sort of shaped where you went and where you have gone in life?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 02:37 Well, yeah, I was the almost the ultimate good boy. Everything My mom wanted me to be going through high school and then college begin throwing some monkey wrenches in the story. And it wasn't until my sophomore year of college when I went to Germany. And I discovered that the narrow world of wooddale, Illinois was far from all that was the world and that the values I learned there were the only values were not the only values in the world. And it was like this. Consciousness shock.   Michael Hingson ** 03:17 What a concept, right? Yeah.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 03:19 Now where's wooddale? West of O'Hare. Back in the days when Midway was the busiest airport in the world. Yeah, we're about 15 miles west of O'Hare.   Michael Hingson ** 03:30 I have relatives in Genoa and DeKalb. So, and I was born in Chicago, so I'm a little bit familiar with the area, but I don't think I've been to wooddale   Dr. Bob Wright ** 03:41 Oh, you've probably been through it if you know, Park Road. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 03:45 I might have very well been through it. Well, I live for my first five years on the south side of Chicago 5017 Union, and it's changed a lot since we moved in 1955. So that's okay, though. Things do need to change. It makes it makes for an interesting world otherwise, so where did you go to college?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 04:06 Oh, well, I started at Lawrence in Appleton, Wisconsin. Ah, I went to school in Germany. Left Lawrence came back to the quarter at the College of DuPage. west of Chicago, graduated with my bachelor's from the University of Illinois, Chicago in sociology, because that was the subject that gave me the most credits and everything else I had done in my life. And so then I went to school, in in, in France after that, and that blew my mind even further. I mean, just horrendously drew mind blew my mind even further. Because I was always looking for what I thought of as ultimate truth. And the French experience just was the mind blowing, launch in some ways of my, my my life   Michael Hingson ** 05:04 a lot different than even Germany, right? Well, it was different   Dr. Bob Wright ** 05:08 than Germany and I had a database. The irony is that I'm in something that people think of as psychology, positive psychology, performance psychology, I think of it as my research in my life work as optimizing adult development. And going into high school, there was this really, you know, good counselor, we thought that my friends went to see. And I was already kind of against counselors because the the social worker and the grade school my mom's friend, and she would be sitting in our kitchen crying in our coffee about boyfriends every Saturday morning. And so I was going already these people are pretty darn weird. But my friends start seeing this woman, and and she starts telling these best, brightest kids in high school that they're latent ly suicidal. And they go, Whoa, this is really sick. Oh, stuff. And so then I was rapidly against psychology. Now, the rest of that story that is public domain, is there a husband was this guidance counselor down the road, Irving Park Road, another 20 some odd miles at Lake Park High School, they were a murder suicide. He boy, so that's nailed down my assumption. This is all inland as sickos know, I'm in school in France, and I'm going to study phenomenology. But my in six months, my French wasn't good enough to understand philosophy classes. So I ended up taking psychology classes, I could understand them. They were an English, that got me into group dynamics, which led to the rest of the story that I have discovered, there are well Valid Elements of psychology. And it is really the people not the discipline. That was the problem back then. So   Michael Hingson ** 07:07 they weren't all just sickos after all? I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 07:11 don't think so. Either that or you joined the ranks? No, no, no, not at all. But the profession in search of validity for a long time, right, so profoundly insecure? Well, it's   Michael Hingson ** 07:23 a it's a tough subject, because a lot of it is is so I'm not quite sure how to describe it. It's so nebulous, it's so much that you can't really just pin it down and define it. You're dealing with emotions, you're dealing with people's attitudes, and so on. And that's really pretty nebulous, it's really kind of hard to just define it in so many words. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 07:51 if we don't go to human experience, then we'd have nothing. But you've got to figure back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, the humanistic psychology movement was transforming businesses, or Life magazine had an issue that said, sooner or later, everybody's going to be an encounter group at their church or somewhere else. And so what what happened was, they still never tied that up to performance. And so you fast forward, and you get a guy named Goldman who bring in Oh, psychology, so wanted to be as science. And he starts out with positive psychology. He denies everything before, which is just absolutely not true. He and I are similar ages, and we grew up breathing those things. But positive psychology now has a deep research base that is becoming less and less nebulous, whether it's the emotional part with Frederick SENS Research, or his his part with other positive psychology research. So it's kind of cool, what's happening. And it just, unfortunately, doesn't include what happened before because it was so thoroughly attacked.   Michael Hingson ** 08:58 Well, and it's, it's an evolutionary process, right. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. Which is, which is exactly the issue. And that's, that's true of a lot of sciences. I mean, we can go back and look at physics and look at any any of the sciences and they've evolved over the years for a long time, classical mechanics, was it everything fit Newtonian law, but then we discovered that well, it's not quite that way, especially when you get closer to the speed of light. A lot of things change, but also, attitudes and philosophies of of sciences have have changed. So what you're saying certainly is no surprise, psychology as a science, social science or whatever, is still a pretty new science by comparison. So you're   Dr. Bob Wright ** 09:47 obviously a science guy more than I knew. And so, did you read Boones structures of Scientific Revolutions a long time ago. So that is where the term is. Trent was a sap perspective transformation, a new paradigm. That's yeah, he coined the term paradigm as we use it today. And he's in particular talking about the disconnect between Newtonian physics and einsteinium physics. And that gets us down to all the different paradigms, because a paradigm is a shift in knowledge. And the paradigm that psychology is wrestling with, is the shift from pathology and problems to potential and realizing making real our potential. Right.   Michael Hingson ** 10:35 And again, still, that is a harder thing to quantify them what you can do with a lot of physics, we also know that Einsteinian physics doesn't go far enough, but it's what we know, or what we have known. And again, we're evolving, but in the case of what you're talking about, it's a lot harder to pin down and put an exact number two, which is what also makes it a little bit more of a challenge. And we need to learn better how to define that, and communicate it as we move forward.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 11:03 Well, you know, that's the bind of pure research, but I've got a slightly different perspective on this. So what we measure our success against is the total quality of somebody's life, their relationships, their work, their personal concept, and their spiritual and their service to our world. And so in our work, now, our foundation is closing down in December, sadly, because we didn't survive COVID. But we had more than 90% of our students felt that they were living with a higher sense of purpose and spiritual integration. They tended to make more money by 30% or more in the first year of working with us. And and the divorce rate in our advanced couples was under 4%. And in the entire school, was under 9%. The last time we took a survey on that. So when if you've got the elements that typical markers of a quality of life, looking there, and they their self esteem was higher, people gave them comments that they looked better, and even commented to a lot of them that they look younger. So if you take those variables, we're now starting to find something for which everyone is reaching, whether it's better relationship, more money, more career fulfillment, or more contribution to the world, we help you be more you. And our core assumption is, then you will automatically grow in all those areas, the mistake so many disciplines make is they forget that the core element of that entire formula is the individual. And if we can help the individual optimize their self them themselves, then they are going to automatically begin shifting how they operate in those areas and get stronger and stronger in directions that are more satisfying, fulfilling, fulfilling and contributory to our world. By   Michael Hingson ** 12:52 definition. Yeah.   12:54 Isn't that cool?   Michael Hingson ** 12:55 Which makes a lot of sense. Well, some for you. You went on and got a doctorate and so on. But when you when you started coaching, I guess really the question is what got you into the whole environment of applied integrative psychology and coaching? What what really got you there? Okay,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 13:16 so, remember, we have a totally anti psychology, right? I have a taste of what we called existential psychology and group dynamics in France. So when I came back from France, I looked for the strongest program to get more training. And it was training in, in all the existential application of Gestalt transactional analysis. And the various body works and things of the time. And I studied those, I became a trainer in those. And it was wonderful to watch people learn and grow. But you still couldn't make a lot of money that way. So I went back to school and got an MSW and I, my goal was to be a therapist, therapist, and my partner Bob Kaufman was my supervisor and my MSW. And we built a business called human effectiveness. And by the mid 80s, we were doing 300 services a week, a third of whom were psychology types. And, and so that was my retirement goal. And in addition to that, we were leading in a lot of ways in what was called employee assistance and manage psychiatric care. And we were doing consulting and training, which is where you heard the story about Prudential. And so that was kind of the way to make money doing it and get licensed because I knew I was good at helping people and I just wanted the easiest and quickest license to get and that was an MSW   Michael Hingson ** 14:49 said then you got that and what did you do?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 14:51 So human effectiveness was our was our business from the 1979 To 1994.   Michael Hingson ** 15:02 And that was a business you started human effectiveness. Yeah. And   Dr. Bob Wright ** 15:05 so we had a very unique model of therapy using individual and group off of what Bob postle called contemporary Adlerian. Therapy. And we developed that more and more and more. And we started getting higher and higher functioning clients. And our clients were moving way beyond the therapy ideal. Their lives were taking off in all the areas we've discussed. And we started that we're doing well, in 82, we hired a PhD, you have to be dissertation approved, PhD from Yale, they had him start doing consumer research, found out that people loved what they were getting one time, near the mid 80s, I had a two year waiting list. And so when we asked our clients what was going on, and they said, We love it, but you're not telling us everything they wanted to know. And my first master's, which was in communications, was helping people in a psychiatric hospital, oriented to that psychiatric hospital. And so, what what, I've always been a consumer guy, and so we started putting together seminars to help our clients understand what was going on. So that changed our model, from individual group to seminars to training them, we did more and more research and they kept telling us more and more of what they wanted. So the model eventually, included Alfred Adler, existential developmental Albert Adler's areas of life, existential principles, and developmental levels, all in an axis of consciousness, helping people grow their consciousness, awareness and responsibility in life. And so those seminars were training people, many of whom could analyze their own life situation and strategize better than licensed psychologist. So we begin, we begin going, why why aren't people getting credit for this. So that's why we started graduate school on the road. And I left the therapy metaphor in 91. We started working towards developing our model in our seminars to be more and more effective with Judith in 9495, which led to the right foundation for the realization of human potential, and the right graduate university for the realization of human potential, offering master's and doctoral degrees in transformational leadership and coaching. We even got an MBA credited. Now that is, now that the foundation is closing down at Maharishi University in Iowa. So the program goes on. But the foundation is no longer running   Michael Hingson ** 17:40 it. And Judith is   Dr. Bob Wright ** 17:43 Judith and I are stepping into what we think is our ultimate mission is couples, couples, and helping people come become more conscious, responsible, satisfied in service filled couples. And so we're kicking that off in January.   Michael Hingson ** 17:58 And how long have you guys been together?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 18:02 We got married in 81. So it's 42 years or two years? Yeah. Wow.   Michael Hingson ** 18:08 Well, you have beat Karen and me by a year. But as I think I told you, she passed away last year. So we were married for two years and loved it and lots of memories. But I can appreciate the fact that you guys have made it work. And you've also worked together, which is as good as it gets. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 18:28 so so the last two books we've written together, and to understand so the last book is called battling to Bliss. The couple's Guide to 15 Common fights, what they really mean how they can bring you closer. So our previous book called transformed. We had one paragraph as we were driving back from Texas to Illinois, that we fought over for probably an hour. And Judith has this wonderful mind. And I just, I'm the one that pushes things to get done. So I said that that sentence is good enough. She says, No, that sentence doesn't work with this. I'm going to come on down it. So she wins that sentence. And she wins. She ended up winning all four sentences. But I ended up winning and moving on. So movement is more my specialty and accuracy and depth is well we both do depth is Judith. So battling to Bliss is really about people people think fights are a problem. They don't understand fights are a symptom that you're dealing in, that you're working on becoming a better stronger couple together.   Michael Hingson ** 19:36 Yeah, and so there's nothing wrong with disagreeing as long as you eventually work together and recognize what you're doing and need to do. So. You're both one which is what it's really all about.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 19:50 Amen. You got it. So you develop   Michael Hingson ** 19:54 this thing you call the right model of human growth and development. And that's I guess what you're basically alluding to in the early 1990s? Well, I actually   Dr. Bob Wright ** 20:05 had Scott started with that research in 1982. And it developed. So the first thing we did was help people vision. Now, the work from Dr. Boyd says that Case Western is that vision is way more important than goals. So we'd have people write a vision in seven areas of life and measure their progress against that every four months. And they go, Wow, man, we're growing twice as fast. But you're still not telling us everything. We said? Well, the truth of the matter is, we think of you developmentally and we're seeking to help you develop in ways that you didn't get developed are all like plants that never got perfect nourishment. And we're helping you fill in those things. And so that led to a developmental axis of consciousness for them. And then we did another round of research. And they said, we're still not telling you said anything. We said, Well, the truth of the matter is, we're existentialists. And we, we just think if you're fully present in here, now you'll learn you'll grow, and you'll become the best you you can become. And so that brought in an existential aspect about the here and now, people engaging. And it's all driven by what we call the assignment way of living, which was started by Bob postal, who was part of the Alfred Adler Institute in Chicago back in the 1970s.   Michael Hingson ** 21:24 Okay, so but you developed it, and is that what you use in the the coaching that you did? And that you do?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 21:33 That? Absolutely. I'm working with. I'm working with an attorney who's shifting professions now, from law to coaching. And so what I do periodically is help her understand when she has a win. How did that win, take her on a step forward in her development, and then I help her understand how that win actually can be leveraged if she will have the discipline to keep doing it. Most. There's a thing called neuroplasticity. And most of the world is a little bit over in love with it. Because thinking oh, yeah, we can automatically change No, it takes 1000s of repetitions. So help her understand a vision of what it's going to mean to consistently redo that way of doing things. She challenges unconscious limiting beliefs, because our program was pretty much done by age seven, we are living out a self fulfilling prophecy off of our early programming. If we don't do things to transform, we can learn and grow. But transforming is the challenge.   Michael Hingson ** 22:39 Yeah, so what's the difference between growth and transforming?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 22:45 We're working on that for the founder of an incredible Japanese coaching group called coach a and his name is Ito son. And, and so learning is knowing something I didn't know before. Growing is doing something I've never done before. But in Judas research, the people who are in touch with their deeper yearning, engage more, and they learn more, it reveals to them regulating their limiting beliefs and their skill deficits. And it also causes them to share with other people that causes them to begin challenging their limiting beliefs. And so learning and growing can be yearning, it can be learned, knowing things and doing things who would have never done we call that liberating. When you're doing things you never would have done. Transforming requires that you pray that you that you strategically do new things in the direction that will consistently challenge some of your unconscious limiting patterns. If you think about what we have our neural pathways imagine we have a neural highway. And everything we do runs along that neural highway. But we want to cut a take a shorter road from Highway A to highway B. So we go into the jungle. Well, we get into the jungle halfway and we look back, we can't even see where we've gone. To get to highway B, we may get to highway B, but we will find out how to get back to Highway A. So we're still going to be doing the same thing. So we the first level of of as we think about it of transformation, neuro transformation is going back and forth along that path enough that we can see where we've been and we can repeat it. Then we have to widen that path. And we have to turn it into a well trodden path. And eventually if it becomes a superhighway, we have transformed and we are doing things that we never could have done before.   Michael Hingson ** 24:49 How do you get people to really overcome their limiting beliefs what what is it that you do as a coach that brings people maybe To that aha moment, and maybe it isn't quite so dramatic, maybe it isn't that at all, but it's more subtle, but how do you get people to the point where they recognize, oh, maybe it's not really quite what we thought, because not everybody's gonna go to France. Okay,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 25:16 so first of all, none of us has ever done. So I'm still dealing with my own limiting beliefs, and, and building new neural pathways the same way. But there's a way we start is what we call an Adlerian Lifestyle Analysis, Alfred Adler helped people understand there are perceptions, the unconscious beliefs that guide us, we have empowering our perceptions, limiting beliefs, empowering beliefs, that we we have limiting beliefs is our language for the limiting perceptions in Adlerian terms. And so when we understand that most of those were installed, by the time we were seven, we can do a lifetime and Adlerian lifestyle analysis that will help you understand your early programming in a way that can empower your growth the rest of your life or inform your growth the rest of your life and your learning and ultimate transformation.   Michael Hingson ** 26:15 Okay, and how do people perceive that?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 26:21 Well, the first time I experienced it was in front of a room of maybe 50 therapists. And it was a demonstration by Bob postal, the Adlerian, I mentioned. And I went up front. And in about 1510 minutes, I'm bawling my eyes out, as he's basically telling me my life story in ways that were profoundly true that I had never imagined. And most, most people except the most defensive, are blown away, that it can be that easily accessed.   Michael Hingson ** 26:54 So, alright, so he, he demonstrated that he knew you better than you thought he knew you and perhaps better than you knew yourself, then what?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 27:05 Well, first of all, he called it like mind reading. And it's what it feels like it feels like he's talking to somebody who's doing mind reading, and Bob postal it, boiled it down to like seven questions. Your birth order is super important in how you look for affection and affirmation in life. If you're the firstborn, did you win? Did you maintain what Adler called a position of primacy? Or were you overrun by a second, third or fourth born? In which case, that's a terrible blow to your self esteem? And so, how we negotiate birth order is probably the most important element of that. And then there are other elements, like who was mom's favorite? Who was dad's favorite? And we get everybody you know, most 90 90% of people say, Oh, no, my mom and dad, they were equal. That's absolute horse manure. And so what we get to that by is who is most like dad, who was most like, mom? And if you were in the zoo, walking and looking at things who would mom who would be holding Mom's hand and who would be holding Dad's hand? And then once we get to larger families, it gets even more complex?   Michael Hingson ** 28:15 How do you deal with that? And I asked that, knowing that in my family, of course, I was blind, I was the second child. And I think my brother always felt like he wasn't quite as well received, even though he was two years older. But in reality, when I look back on it, what my parents did was really worked, not to show favoritism, but they did have to do things differently with me than they did with him because he could see, and I didn't, but I think they really worked at it. But I think his perception always was that he wasn't the favorite, even though that I don't think that really was the case as I sit and analyze it even now.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 29:03 Well, you know, he may not have been wrong. He might not have been got more attention. So the primary indicator of a favorite is attention. It doesn't necessarily mean for what, because you get seen more, you get more interest more, you develop a sense that you matter. And he's developing a sense that he doesn't matter. So in Adlerian terms, you may have overrun him, and that was a terrible blow to his self esteem.   Michael Hingson ** 29:33 Yeah. Yeah. Even though this Oh, sure. If you want   Dr. Bob Wright ** 29:38 go ahead. So how's he doing today?   Michael Hingson ** 29:40 He passed away in 2015. So he died of of cancer.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 29:45 How did he do in life? Well,   Michael Hingson ** 29:47 fair question. He ended up working for the Customs Organization, the US customs in communications. He was married for, gosh, probably close to 40 years as well. I'm not sure that he was as happy as he would like, just in looking at it. He tended to want to be very controlling. And his wife didn't have a problem with that. But I think that I think there were some issues, but I think he did. Okay, but not great.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 30:28 So you've been happier in life than he has, even though you have a profound challenge. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 30:35 I think the challenge is more perceptual than in reality, but Yeah, probably. That's it.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 30:41 Thanks very much.   Michael Hingson ** 30:44 That's probably so.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 30:47 But I also so your dad overran him. Yeah, I   Michael Hingson ** 30:51 hear you. You did. Even though we even though later in life, he was in Florida, and I was in California, or in New Jersey. I think I appreciate what you're saying. Yeah.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 31:05 Yeah, it's it's hard for us to accept when we start looking at these unconscious elements of what's called the family system. And and the system is there's no blame. There's no blaming. Yeah. But But who is your mom's favorite?   Michael Hingson ** 31:21 Well, I'm sure that that there are those that would say it was me. I'm not, I'm not really so sure. Because the way my mom interacted with us, was was different with each of us. She had to help me learn braille again, when I was going from third to fourth grade. And she took the time to do that. But she also did take the time with my brother, but I'm sure that he would tell you that I was,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 31:48 well, what was your dad's favorite? Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 31:53 I'm sure that, that my dad and I spent more time together because I was interested in things that he was much more than my brother like electronics and science. So I'm sure I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 32:02 was, who was murdered?   Michael Hingson ** 32:06 Gee, that depends, I guess, on everything, but probably I was. Nobody ever wants to answer this, by the way, probably. But probably for a lot of reasons. I would say I was. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 32:15 pretty obviously. So we don't know what his potential would have been. Right, who got developed? And so my guess is he was actually your mom's favorite. He might very well have been. But But I think it was your mom's favorite because your mom counted on him to keep things working in the family while he was hungry, but didn't didn't know how to do anything. But please her as she was ministering to you. And as your dad was enjoying playing with you? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's   Michael Hingson ** 32:50 a lot of there's a lot of truth to that.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 32:52 Yeah, I know. I just, it's so much fun to get out of this. Michael. Yeah. It   Michael Hingson ** 32:59 makes a lot of sense to, to really look at it in the in the way that you're doing. But I think there's there's another aspect of it, and it's part of human nature, that gets to be a challenge. Because he was probably a person who felt not as happy, not as loved and didn't know how to deal with that, and maybe address it in his own life. And I learned how to do some of that, and learn how to deal with a lot of the challenges that I faced socially, and, and economically. But I think that one of the things that he never did learn was how to go back and look at himself and look at his life and grow in the same way. Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 33:50 amen. Probably wasn't as inquisitive as you know,   Michael Hingson ** 33:54 I'm sure he was not. That I'm very sure of. And it's it is a it's an issue because one of the things that I maintain today is that all of us can do so much more to grow. If we would spend more time even just in the evening before we go to sleep, being introspective, looking at whatever happened on a given day. And why it happened the way it did, what could we improve? What went great, what could we even have done to make what went great greater? And I know that he didn't do a lot of that,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 34:28 you know, there's actually a spiritual discipline with the max handle Rosicrucians that, that goes into that. I'm not a follower of theirs, but this they call it a retro flexion or retrospect, I forget what they call it. Exactly. Because when I was in school in France, the game was the minute your head hit the pillow. You were to rewind your day in reverse to when you first woke up. Yeah, and it's incredibly challenging. It is our emotions get I get sparked off, we get to see where we had unfinished business during the day. And it took me all of pretty close to a year before I got back to a morning, and that was pretty diligence, did diligent application. And so I think you're absolutely right.   Michael Hingson ** 35:23 There's a lot of value in in doing it. Because no one can teach us anything people can give us information. But we have to teach ourselves. And I've learned, even just this year, I now hate calling myself my own worst critic. When I listen to speeches and other things I always have said, I'm my own worst critic, and when in reality is the case is I'm my own best teacher, because I'm the one that can teach me. And it's always good to take a much more positive approach. And recognizing that actually helps when I go back and analyze the day and analyze the things that have gone on. Because I look for the lessons. And the lessons aren't just in the things that went wrong or the difficult things. The lessons can come from anywhere, but we have to look for them.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 36:08 So you just defined the transformation of a perfectionist, perfectionist, criticized because it's the work outcome that matters. And people that are learning and growing and stepping beyond perfection. Look for the lessons. So you just described you growing, from avoiding mistakes, to feeling more and more success and satisfaction in learning and growing. Congratulations. Well, thank   Michael Hingson ** 36:37 you. And even the so called Mistakes You know, there aren't they're not a mistake until it ended up being one. And again, the lesson is, what do you learn and do about it? Yeah,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 36:46 but you're unusual, Michael, because you've actually taken a philosophy and applied it. A lot of people would say the same things you just said. But they don't practice it. I believe you practice it.   Michael Hingson ** 36:58 And you know what? It's fun.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 37:01 It says pretty clear. Yeah. You have fun way before now. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 37:05 Well, I like to look for the for fun. Personally, I think life is an adventure. For years, I've called the Internet, a treasure trove an adventure. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff. And there's a dark side. And there are all sorts of different things that go on. But there's also so much information that's out there if we bought look for it and use it. Amen. So it really, it really helps a great deal. And you know, so it's, it's worth doing well, in your case. So, you you have been so what business do you own? Now? What What's your business called? Or do you have one right now? Well,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 37:47 we write business Inc has been our flowthrough business forever. But we are reemerging to the world as live right? Li ve WRI ght with Judith and Bob. That is our new go to market identity. Pool.   Michael Hingson ** 38:07 That's a great name. And certainly, from a marketing standpoint, one that somebody can remember.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 38:14 Well, right now we only exist online is D r B o b.com. And Dr. Judith, Bob Wright, dot com or Judith wright.com I think or at any rate, we don't have a joint website yet. We'll be launching that in December, God Willing and the creek don't rise   Michael Hingson ** 38:35 well and make it accessible. And if you want help with that, I can help   Dr. Bob Wright ** 38:41 you. So so cool. Cool. I'm gonna have to find out more about what you can do them. Because I really don't know,   Michael Hingson ** 38:48 we can talk about that. And we can talk about ways to do it. And it's and it's something that that you should do. Because the reality is what most people don't realize is that the cost of doing business should really make sure that inclusion is part of it. You know, I when looking for jobs and talking to many, I'll just use blind people as an example. We've had companies say but I can't buy a screen reader for you. That's not in our budget. Well, you know, sure it is you buy computer monitors for everyone. I don't need a monitor. But I do need a screen reader. Inclusion ought to be part of the cost of doing business.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 39:26 Well, which is why you're going to be our consultants. So we our desire is to have our work available in all languages. We're going to be putting out our couples book the heart of the fight in Spanish. The heart of the fight reached number one nonfiction best seller in China, Judas soft addictions solution is, as of our last knowledge, number 10 self help in China. And so the languages aren't just words and spoken are they but there's I mean, there's there's what do you call blind accessibility? Michael?   Michael Hingson ** 40:06 Well, there are a couple of ways to do something like that. A lot of it is just doing the right things on on your website, or when you produce a book, if you have graphs, they should and pictures, they should be defined. You can do an electronic version, you can do an audio version. And there are ways also to put the book in Braille. And again, we can we can certainly talk about that. Well,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 40:28 I'm zipping myself an email to circle back with you on that. So let's keep going with what you've got today.   Michael Hingson ** 40:36 Well, definitely one thing I need to say, because I was looking for when I was getting ready for now, is I would like to have pictures of your book covers that we can put in the cover notes so that people can go off and find them later.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 40:51 We'll get it. Perfect.   Michael Hingson ** 40:53 Well, tell me a little bit more about you and coaching. What ultimately do people get out of what you do? After a question,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 41:07 you know, I'm gonna go back a little further, we get everybody knows we get what we put into things. Yeah. And so to get   Michael Hingson ** 41:16 the most out of coke, good psychological answer, go ahead.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 41:19 Well, I'm actually going to answer it. I appreciate the work up to I'm gonna work up to it. So the investment is time, money and personal upset. The price most people are not willing to pay is the person will upset we have to do to stretch beyond our own serious limit deeper mental limitations. And when we do that, for me, I had a lot of limiting beliefs about money. I could give you stories, we talked about the mythology rules, myths and beliefs about money when I looked growing up, my dad's brothers, who had way more money than we had, didn't have a marriage as good as my dad's marriage. And one of my dad's brothers was a particular jerk. And he was the wealthiest of them. And so I draw this conclusion from early on in life, because we all grew up within miles of each other, or blocks, actually, that it's either money or relationship. So a limiting belief I've had to challenge forever, is money and relationship. And fortunately, I'm making some progress on that and intend to make even more before I'm done. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 42:37 it's interesting. People think that if they have a lot of money, they're successful, and they're happy. And what pops into my mind? And I'm not going to try to get political here. But what pops into my mind is Donald Trump, I wonder how happy he really is.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 42:54 You know, we can actually dive right into the happiness things. First of all, there's a lot of research on it that would show that he doesn't have the characteristics. But that's another story. But right, I hear you. But I think everybody has a formula for happiness, most of them are wrong. Yeah. And I think the good fortune in my relationship foundation is relationship. You know that happiness research says, the biggest variable is learning and growing. The happiest people are engaged in learning and growing. There, they have New Horizons coming up, that they can learn and grow together and a couple or whatever they're doing, but they learn and grow. That's happiest.   Michael Hingson ** 43:33 That's the most successful thing that one can do. And it is all about learning and growing, and wanting to learn and grow. And I think he pointed out very well, a lot of people will provide lip service to a lot of this. But the reality is, they're not really growing. It's just a lot of talk. Habits are hard to break it. I've heard all sorts of different numbers about how many times you need to do something to change a habit. But still, ultimately, it doesn't happen until you can, not only intellectually but emotionally recognize that the change needs to happen and then do it.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 44:15 So that's that's the end the cost. So Judas seminal work on soft addictions was looking at the cost that turned out causes a lot of people to take on the habits. However, a habit is a behavior to order to change the deeper level behind that habit. Because they have, it's always doing something for us in service of a limiting belief. And so a limiting habits because we remember two kinds of beliefs, two kinds of habits, empowering and disempowering. And so it's really important to understand, if I really want to learn and grow to the max, I have to go through the discomfort of not just changing the habit, but changing by myself my thoughts, feelings and actions at the foundational level   Michael Hingson ** 44:59 and that's The cost. Yes, sir. And it's it's not as expensive as one might think, if you really apply it and do it. But the problem is, so many of us don't want to do that, because we're just, I hate hearing while I'm, you know, people are in their comfort zone, they don't want to change. We talk about change all the time. But I think people don't want to change I think we we are brought up to just like our comfort zones and not wanting to change, we don't do what we talked about before retrospection or introspection, that's too much work. And so we we don't get taught by others nearly as much as we should. The real value of change, but change is all around us. And change is going to be everywhere. I after September 11, I kept hearing, we got to get back to normal, we got to get back to doing things the normal way. And I bristled at that. And it took me a little while to understand why I was so upset with it. But I finally realized, normal will never be the same. Again, we can't get back to normal because if we do, we're going to have the same thing. And we will have learned absolutely nothing. Even with a pandemic, I hear about getting back to normal, but normal will never be the same again, the   Dr. Bob Wright ** 46:17 problem that you're getting it from me that I think about with that usually is that normal is is average, and none of us really want to be average, we want to be better than normal. So why would we want to get back to normal when we still haven't hit our potential? Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 46:36 But we're not thinking about that. And we haven't learned to think in that way. Until we   Dr. Bob Wright ** 46:41 understand Judith research. So there's yearning, engaging, and regulating seeing where my limitations come in. Then liberating challenging those limitations. It's so challenging those limitations, and then re matrixing. And then I have to keep stretching myself towards the new, further goals. That forced me to look beyond my limiting beliefs, because they're always there. And they're always are rising beyond them.   Michael Hingson ** 47:07 How do we get people to be able to do that?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 47:10 I don't, we don't get people to do anything. It's all about investment. Will they pay the price? Spend the time reading the money, what they need to do? I was talking to a guy today who's ultra ultra wealthy, who started out with my former partner. And he would never have been able to pay my partner's rates today. And I said, You mean, you wouldn't have charged it on your credit card at least to find out? You know, what he could do for you? And so the people that I see that really want it, some people just charge it on the credit card, but they don't do it. Others? Do, they charge it on the credit card, and they've got that credit card paid off and are able to really fly with the overtime? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 48:00 so and I was delivered and asking the question the way I did, but it isn't how do we get people to do things? What is it that will make people understand that they need to change? I mean, you've been coaching a long time. And I know there's not one key but what, what, more often than not is the trigger that make people go, Ah, I gotta really think more about this.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 48:27 You know, there are a lot of things in life traumas, car accidents, deaths, losses, that move people into that. There's a thing called a sociopath is sociopaths, not wanting to get divorced, will sometimes start looking at themselves for the first time. And so but but I think that, that Adlerian analysis, when people understand that there is an objective way to look at who they are today, it's your strengths and your weaknesses, as revealed by that lifestyle analysis we started playing with with you, then as you understand that there really is a way to do it, and it is systematic and reproducible, then the game starts really shifting, but most of the world doesn't believe it's possible because so many people are selling so much horse manure. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 49:21 And we haven't learned to separate all the negative negativity in as you said, the horsemen or from from the positive stuff, we, we just haven't really learned how to do that and the people who have can really start to deal with it. One of the things that I have experienced over the past several years, especially with the pandemic is that for years I would travel and speak and tell people about my story and people said, well, you're blind. Of course you didn't know what happened. I point out well, the airplane had 18 floors above us on the other side of the building I got to tell you, nobody knew Superman and X ray vision are fictitious. Right? Well, but then the the other part about it is that what I realized over time was that the reason I wasn't afraid was that I prepared. I learned all about the World Trade Center, I learned what the emergency evacuation procedures were, I learned why they were as they were. And so when something actually happened, I was prepared for it. I didn't need to worry about reading signs. And if I had been in the building alone, I would have just been able to evacuate. But I wasn't alone. And we got some guests out. And then a colleague who was in from our corporate office, David Frank, and I went to the stairs, and we started down. But the reality is that what I learned was that for me, I, in fact, was not talking about why I wasn't afraid. And I didn't teach people how to learn to control here. So we're writing a book about that. And, and so I'm, I'm realizing that what I can help people do is recognize that you can learn to control fear, it's not that it's going to go away. And if you tell me, you're never afraid, I won't buy it. But you can learn to use fear in a powerful way, rather than letting it as I put it, blind you or overwhelm you,   Dr. Bob Wright ** 51:27 by preparing as you prepared the primary formula. First of all, we don't control it. But by preparing it doesn't grip us at the same level. We have pathways that we've already created. So you had created those pathways inside of yourself. And so sure you were afraid, but you had the fear motivating you along pathways for which you had prepared.   Michael Hingson ** 51:51 That's right. Help others. That's right. And we did and at one point going down the stairs, David panicked and said, Mike, we're going to die. We're not going to make it out of here and then and I just snapped at him. I'd love to joke about it and say, since I have a secondary teaching credential, I took that secret course voice 101 How to yell at students but you know, the the reality is that that what I did it I just snapped at David. I said, stop it, David, if Rosella and I can go down the stairs, so can you. And after that, he said, I'm going to I got to take my mind off of what's going on. And he walked the floor below me, went all the way down the stairs, he shouted up to me what he was seeing on the stairs. Now, did I need David to do that? No. But I knew that it would help David be more comfortable. But it had another effect, which again, was something that I figured out later. And that is that, as David was shouting up, hey, I'm at the 44th floor. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is, we're not going to stop we're going on down. People above us. And below us. Many, many floors hurt him. And he gave them something to focus on. And I think that he did so much, not even thinking about it or realizing it to help people not panic as we went down the stairs, which was so cool. Oh, I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 53:07 just love it. So let's but let's go back. So, So fear is the primary the most basic emotion if you stay alive, sure. So you were afraid for him, not for you, but for him. And so you slapped him out of it. So you harvest your anger. So fear, fear, hurt, anger, sadness, and joy are the critical emotions that are fully foundational emotions. And so you have a relationship with your fear as few of us but in some ways, maybe. And you actually were able to harness anger as the crossover emotion between fear and joy. So you kept him alive, harnessing your anger to slap him out of it. And he became the leader he could become. Yeah. And needed.   Michael Hingson ** 53:56 Right. Well, and that's it's part of the story that that I think is he's such an unsung hero and what happened on September 11, because I know he had to keep so many people focused because they had someone to focus on. And someone who they could hear who was all right, no matter where they were on the stairs. Somebody else was okay, somewhere.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 54:21 So first of all, he was a leader right in relationship to you,   Michael Hingson ** 54:25 by definition. Well, in some ways, yeah.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 54:29 So you slapped him back into his leadership mode. And even though you didn't need it, he started leaving you in his own mind, but he was actually leaving everybody down those   Michael Hingson ** 54:40 steps. He was, you know, that was one of the things that he did his he was only in for the day from our corporate office. But but he but you know, the two of us, between us there were a lot of ways people also said to me later, we followed you down the stairs because we heard you praising your dog and We heard you staying calm. So we were calm. We followed you. Yeah. So we, in a in a very well, unpredictable isn't the right word but a very subtle way we the two of us really helped a lot of people. Oh   Dr. Bob Wright ** 55:15 my god, you guys formed the most amazing impromptu leadership team.   Michael Hingson ** 55:19 Right. Holy cow. I   Dr. Bob Wright ** 55:21 love it. Yeah. Well, isn't that cool? Oh, it's beyond cool. That is way beyond Cool.   Michael Hingson ** 55:27 Well, this has been fun. We need to do it again. And we need to get Judith involved. So we got to do   Dr. Bob Wright ** 55:33 another one of these. Absolutely looking forward to it. But   Michael Hingson ** 55:37 I really appreciate you being here. And I want to thank you and I want to thank you all for listening to us today. I hope that you enjoyed it. And and you heard Bob analyze me a little bit and it was a lot of fun and No, no problem at all. So we'll have to do more of it and and have another time together which I think would be fun. But I want to thank you for listening to us. Love to hear your comments. Please reach out. You can reach me Mike hingson at and my email address is Michael h i m i c h a e l h i at accessiBe A c c e s s i b e.com. Michael h i at accessibe.com Or go to our podcast page www dot Michael Hingson m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com/podcast love to get your thoughts please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to us. We value that and really appreciate all that you have to say. Bob if people want to reach out to you how do they do that?   Dr. Bob Wright ** 56:37 Well my website for now until we put them all together is Bob Wrightdot com or D r. B o b W r i  g h t dot com My email, which is easier right now we're in transition. The new company, as you heard will be live right with Judith and Bob. But right now D r. B, o b at Judith and bob.com D R B O B at J U D I T  A N D B .com. Cool.   Michael Hingson ** 57:04 Well, thanks again for doing this. It has been fun. And let us definitely set up another time and do another one of these.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 57:13 We've got more to talk about in so many ways, sooner than later while we're still putting together the web universe.   Michael Hingson ** 57:20 Perfect. Glad to do it. Well, thanks again for being here.   Dr. Bob Wright ** 57:23 Thank you so much.   **Michael Hingson ** 57:28 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Putting Julian Jaynes's Theory to the Test Jaynes's Theorizings, Like All Great Systems of Thought, Require Hypotheses-testing and Experimentation to Be Substantiated By Brian J. McVeigh Read by Michael R. Jacobs (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.theungoogleable.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.youtube.com/@VoidDenizen⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). It is easy to forget that the Newtonian, Darwinian, and Einsteinian intellectual edifices were built over many years, painstakingly solidified brick by brick through batteries of well-designed experiments and careful analyses. Science is the sturdy house that such patient construction continually erects. Consider the work of Julian Jaynes. Over the years I have heard many dismissively say “it's an interesting theory but it can't be proven.” Such remarks demonstrate a misunderstanding of the nature of scientific progress as well as what is needed to come to terms with Jaynesian theorizing. The contributions of Jaynes constitute an entire paradigm that reaches far beyond psychology. It is a constellation of bold, innovative ideas with far-ranging implications and great breadth that sheds new light on neurology, history, religious studies, psychotherapeutics, archaeology, linguistics, philosophy, literature, and other arts. So what is needed, then, is a breaking down of Jaynes's core theories into numerous propositions, postulations, and hypotheses appropriate to different disciplines and fields of expertise. That way his claims can be systematically tested. That is a tall order and demands the contributions of a legion of specialists. Read the complete text from this episode here: https://www.julianjaynes.org/blog/julian-jaynes-theory/putting-julian-jaynes-theory-to-the-test/ Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory or become a member by visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.julianjaynes.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Another talk from our recent April conference in Austin, TX, with Thad Roberts from The Physics Monastery. Thad speaks about his institute's recent progress in an ongoing struggle to comprehend the secrets of the constants of nature. These are the steady quantities that scale all the behaviors of the natural world, from electricity and magnetism, to gravity, or even elasticity. It seems strange that there are these fixed numbers inside of all our scientific formulas, but the physical significance is often forsaken. Even worse, we often have no idea why the constant is fixed as it is. Why is the speed of light limited? Why does the electron orbit at that speed? Why are they related just so? These questions and more get aired out in depth. Tell us your thoughts in the comments!!! Sign up for our Patreon and get episodes early + join our weekly Patron Chat https://bit.ly/3lcAasB (00:00( Go! (00:00:27) Visualizing the atom (00:04:50) Learning to see in the dark (00:08:14) Grandfather of science (00:15:22) Tools & science (00:17:56) Empires of the mind (00:18:52) Flatland (00:22:34) Perspective and relativism (00:32:23) Newtonian revelations (00:40:50) Einsteinian revelations (00:54:33) Gravity as density field (00:57:08) Remember the atom, Feynmann (01:07:34) NIST & constants of nature (01:12:00) Fine structure constant (01:38:12) Q&A #sciencepodcast, #Physics, #Science, #ConstantsOfNature, #Research, #ThePhysicsMonastery, #ScientificInquiry, #QuantumPhysics, #NaturalLaw, #TheoryOfEverything, #Astronomy, #Cosmology, #Einstein, #ThadRoberts, #ConferenceTalk, #AustinTX, #ScientificProgress, #Electromagnetism, #Gravity, #Elasticity, #SpeedOfLight Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialAtomics Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

Time out for Einsteinian physics.  Episode 1183 Greg's new book: Inspired Imperfection Dan's new book: Confident Humility Send Questions To: Dan: @thatdankentTwitter: @reKnewOrg Facebook: ReKnew Email: askgregboyd@gmail.com Links: Greg's book:"Crucifixion of the Warrior God" Website: ReKnew.org  

Episode 4 in our series on the great essays is about Virginia Woolf's masterpiece ‘A Room of One's Own' (1929). David discusses how an essay on the conditions for women writing fiction ends up being about so much else besides: anger, power, sex, modernity, independence and transcendence. And how, despite all that, it still manages to be as fresh and funny as anything written since.Read more on Virginia Woolf in the LRB:Jacqueline Rose on Woolf and madness‘It is, one might say, a central paradox of modern family life that its members are required to mould themselves in each other's image and yet to know, as separate individuals or egos, exactly who they are.'Gillian Beer on Woolf and reality‘The “real world” for Virginia Woolf was not solely the liberal humanist world of personal and social relationships: it was the hauntingly difficult world of Einsteinian physics and Wittgenstein's private languages.'Rosemary Hill on Woolf and domesticity‘Woolf, who had once found it humiliating to do her own shopping, spent the last morning of her life dusting with Louie, before she put her duster down and went to drown herself.'John Bayley on Woolf and writing‘For Virginia Woolf wish-fulfilment was in words themselves, that protected her from herself and from society.'Listen to David's History of Ideas episode about Max Weber's ‘The Profession and Vocation of Politics'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week our history of the great essays and great essayists reaches the twentieth century and Virginia Woolf's masterpiece ‘A Room of One's Own' (1929). David discusses how an essay on the conditions for women writing fiction ends up being about so much else besides: anger, power, sex, modernity, independence and transcendence. And how, despite all that, it still manages to be as fresh and funny as anything written since.Read more on Virginia Woolf in the LRB:Jacqueline Rose on Woolf and madness‘It is, one might say, a central paradox of modern family life that its members are required to mould themselves in each other's image and yet to know, as separate individuals or egos, exactly who they are.'Gillian Beer on Woolf and reality‘The “real world” for Virginia Woolf was not solely the liberal humanist world of personal and social relationships: it was the hauntingly difficult world of Einsteinian physics and Wittgenstein's private languages.'Rosemary Hill on Woolf and domesticity‘Woolf, who had once found it humiliating to do her own shopping, spent the last morning of her life dusting with Louie, before she put her duster down and went to drown herself.'John Bayley on Woolf and writing‘For Virginia Woolf wish-fulfilment was in words themselves, that protected her from herself and from society.'Listen to David's History of Ideas episode about Max Weber's ‘The Profession and Vocation of Politics'.Sign up to LRB Close Readings:Directly in Apple: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.supportingcast.fm Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are back with a double-bill decoding! That's right like moths to the flame, or aliens to a Unified Geometric Field drive, we are back in Weinstein world.This time we are looking at a conversation between the irrepressible (ex?) podcaster & mathematician, Eric Weinstein, and skeptical investigator, author, and recent guest on the show, Mick West.The conversation here concerns the evidence for UAP/UFOs and the reaction of skeptics and advocates. It had the potential to be something forensic and transcendent but sadly it gets mired in the messy 'interpersonal drama' that Eric just hates so much and tries to avoid at all costs.Nonetheless, there is much that can be learnt here, including: the linguistic complexities of the word 'flex', the precise levels of passive aggressiveness that a human mind can tolerate, if there is already secret anti-gravity tech, and whether our obsession with Einsteinian physics is what is stopping us from really understanding what is going on with UAPs.We don't have answers. We are just asking questions... honest!Also featured: a recent kerfuffle in the online psychology world over DEI statements, the numerology spectrum, the potential harms of green drinks, and much much more!So join us, won't you, as we boldly venture through the outermost reaches of the gurusphere.LinksTheories of Everything- Eric Weinstein & Mick West: UAPs, Evidence, SkepticismJonathan Pageau: The Surprising Symbolism of 666QAnon Anonymous- Episode 168: The Mutant QAnon Numerology Cult in Dallas.Very Bad Wizards- Episode 263: Free YoelReason article on the Yoel Inbar incident2020 Paper on the potential liver impacts of Green Tea ExtractMick West's Book- Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect

Life is too short not to make time for what/who matters Life in the meatsuits we each occupy is finite. My point is this – knowing time is finite and limited, are you doing what you love? Are you spending time with those you love? If not now – why not now? Why are we all so hell-bent on unimportant minutia over living here and now, and doing what we love/being with who we love? Time is an illusion - but fleeting nonetheless I recently read something that explained two notions of the function of time. Newtonian (based on the science of Sir Isaac Newton) and Einsteinian (based on the science of Albert Einstein). The former is linear – the latter is non-linear and fluid. Either way – time as we perceive it comes with limits. How much you get in this conscious awareness and current life experience is wickedly variable. But no matter how you examine this – what you do with your time is wholly on you. What you love/who you love isn't about romance The word love is too often romanticized. Sure, some obligations are not what you love or with who you love. But you have a choice to let those dominate your life – or to prioritize your time to make the most of it. Love is too easily relegated to family and romantic partners. But love is so, so, so much more than that. Mindfulness is active conscious awareness for choice When you are actively consciously aware – mindful – you empower yourself. This is how you take control of the one thing you have absolute control over. What you're thinking, what and how you're feeling, what you intend, and actions you do or don't take. When you practice being aware – mindful in the here and now – you can make choices to actively work to be with the people you love and do what you love. No, it won't be all the time – there are obligations and necessary things you must do to earn money and care for others. This week's Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool: This is a very simple tool. Get a pen and paper or type this out. Write down who and what you love. Everything, no matter how seemingly insignificant. It should include tangible/material and intangible/immaterial. Nothing is too big or too small. For example – part of my list: Storytelling. Writing blogs. Recording my podcast. Reading books. Time with my wife. Time with friends and family. Taking walks and going on hikes. Medieval fencing. Sunlight. Starry nights. A steady rain. My cats. Dogs. Chocolate. Coffee. Birdsong. Drives in my car. Look at your list. How much of it have you done today? Repeat as often as you need to do what/be with who you love more regularly and frequently. See how that makes you feel overall.   Author Website Email Instagram Facebook LinkedIn TikTok Blogs: titaniumdon.com and mjblehart.medium.com Cover artist Fe Mahoney: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaliasInspirations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode Matt and Matt discuss their Einsteinian origins, Tobin Bell's Trap House, Matt's become a man of a certain age and Matt's most recent show recaps.Weird News including Slithery walls, A poo pile up, A new fuel, Bumble fury, and why you don't mess with a man's livelihood.Run for your lives. Tobin's about to drop the beat.

We have a Substack page at inklingsvarietyhour.substack.com. Head there if you have comments to make about this or any episode!  It may be desolate at first (I've not bothered to invite anyone as of this posting) but make a comment and subscribe--it shouldn't be too long before you hear back from someone else who wants to talk about Out of the Silent Planet. Also, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts! And do feel more than free to drop us a line at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com.   Sophie Burkhardt joins the show today to discuss the final third of C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet. Among other things, we discuss: Why it doesn't snow in Malacandra The many ways in which humans are humbled in this book Renaissance, Scholastic and...Einsteinian ideas about angels' bodies Lewis and Resurrection Bodies Three types of humans and three types of Malacandrians Were the birds hnau? Organization of labor (or if you like, organisation of labour) on Malacandra H.G. Wells' The First Men In the Moon and The Door in the Wall J.B.S. Haldane's (actually pretty well-informed) critique of the Ransom Trilogy Are the Malacandrians living in a communist utopia? The inherent absurdity and dignity of all creatures Goofy questions include: Are you a sorn, a pfiffltriggi, or a hross? Take our personality quiz and find out! (Not really) Prompt: Rewrite a myth or Bible story, but set it against the backdrop of Lewis' cosmology. Next Tuesday, I'll be talking to Dr. David C. Downing, who wrote the first seriously scholarly work on Lewis' Ransom Trilogy (which is quite readable). Thanks to Sophie for joining me!  Please check out her podcast, Beneath the Willow Tree! In a few days, join us for a bonus episode, where I will interview Kay Ben-Avraham, who has written (and is writing) a book about dryads called The Flower of the Cedar. This is the first of a few interviews I'll be having with authors publishing through Signum University Press.  

A challenging Thursday crossword, with a great EINSTEINIAN theme, all revolving around that famous equation, EEQUALSMCSQUARED. Deets are inside, so download, have a listen, and let us know what you think.Contact Info:We love listener mail! Drop us a line, crosswordpodcast@icloud.com.Also, we're on FaceBook, so feel free to drop by there and strike up a conversation!

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Advice for newly busy people, published by Severin T. Seehrich on May 11, 2023 on LessWrong. After writing "Advice for interacting with busy people", I was asked to write a follow-up on advice for newly busy people. So, here's a quick list of tools and mental models that help me prioritize. This list is by no means comprehensive. It's just the tools I know and have loved. Take what's useful, and drop what doesn't fit your brain and life. 1. Prioritizing between projects a. Apply the Tomorrow Rule. When someone asks you to join an exciting project that's due half a year from now, it is very, very tempting to say "yes". You'll immediately have a vivid imagination of the shiny outcome, while the workload is far enough in the future to not cross your mind. To mitigate this tendency, it makes sense to apply the Tomorrow Rule. It goes as such: "Am I committed enough to this that I'd clear up time in my schedule tomorrow to make it happen?" b. If things get too much, do a Productivity Purge. If you already have too many projects on your plate and can't make reasonable progress on any of them, you might want to go through a round of Cal Newport's productivity purge algorithm. The steps: "When it feels like your schedule is becoming too overwhelmed, take out a sheet of paper and label it with three columns: professional, extracurricular, and personal. Under “professional” list all the major projects you are currently working on in your professional life (if you're a student, then this means classes and research, if you have a job, then this means your job, etc). Under “extracurricular” do the same for your side projects (your band, your blog, your plan to write a book). And under “personal” do the same for personal self-improvement projects (from fitness to reading more books). Under each list try to select one or two projects which, at this point in your life, are the most important and seem like they would yield the greatest returns. Put a star by these projects. Next, identify the projects that you could stop working on right away with no serious consequences. Cross these out. Finally, for the projects that are left unmarked, come up with a 1-3 week plan for finalizing and dispatching them. Many of these will be projects for which you owe someone something before you can stop working on them. Come up with a crunch plan for the near future for shutting these down as quickly as possible. Once you completed your crunch plan you'll be left with only a small number of important projects. In essence, you have purged your schedule of all but a few contenders to be your next Theory of Relativity. Here's the important part: Try to go at least one month without starting any new projects. Resist, at all costs, committing to anything during this month. Instead, just focus, with an Einsteinian intensity, on your select list." 2. Prioritizing between people At some point in January/February, I felt pretty lonely and decided to make a list of all the lovely people I know and spend too little time with. After writing down the names of 40 people in Berlin alone and more in other cities, I realized what was the problem: I fully optimized for creating loose ties, for getting the spark of novelty and knowing what's going on in my various communities. In the meantime, I didn't commit enough to anyone as that I'd know who to call when I'm feeling low. So - you might want to create two networks simultaneously, which work by different rules: A large network of loose ties. These people are there for uncommitted play, for exchanging knowledge and occasional favors, for having as many people as possible in your life who know somebody who knows somebody who happens to be really skilled at that particular thing. Treat them with kindness and integrity, but don't hesitate to say "no" if your heart isn't...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Advice for newly busy people, published by Severin T. Seehrich on May 11, 2023 on LessWrong. After writing "Advice for interacting with busy people", I was asked to write a follow-up on advice for newly busy people. So, here's a quick list of tools and mental models that help me prioritize. This list is by no means comprehensive. It's just the tools I know and have loved. Take what's useful, and drop what doesn't fit your brain and life. 1. Prioritizing between projects a. Apply the Tomorrow Rule. When someone asks you to join an exciting project that's due half a year from now, it is very, very tempting to say "yes". You'll immediately have a vivid imagination of the shiny outcome, while the workload is far enough in the future to not cross your mind. To mitigate this tendency, it makes sense to apply the Tomorrow Rule. It goes as such: "Am I committed enough to this that I'd clear up time in my schedule tomorrow to make it happen?" b. If things get too much, do a Productivity Purge. If you already have too many projects on your plate and can't make reasonable progress on any of them, you might want to go through a round of Cal Newport's productivity purge algorithm. The steps: "When it feels like your schedule is becoming too overwhelmed, take out a sheet of paper and label it with three columns: professional, extracurricular, and personal. Under “professional” list all the major projects you are currently working on in your professional life (if you're a student, then this means classes and research, if you have a job, then this means your job, etc). Under “extracurricular” do the same for your side projects (your band, your blog, your plan to write a book). And under “personal” do the same for personal self-improvement projects (from fitness to reading more books). Under each list try to select one or two projects which, at this point in your life, are the most important and seem like they would yield the greatest returns. Put a star by these projects. Next, identify the projects that you could stop working on right away with no serious consequences. Cross these out. Finally, for the projects that are left unmarked, come up with a 1-3 week plan for finalizing and dispatching them. Many of these will be projects for which you owe someone something before you can stop working on them. Come up with a crunch plan for the near future for shutting these down as quickly as possible. Once you completed your crunch plan you'll be left with only a small number of important projects. In essence, you have purged your schedule of all but a few contenders to be your next Theory of Relativity. Here's the important part: Try to go at least one month without starting any new projects. Resist, at all costs, committing to anything during this month. Instead, just focus, with an Einsteinian intensity, on your select list." 2. Prioritizing between people At some point in January/February, I felt pretty lonely and decided to make a list of all the lovely people I know and spend too little time with. After writing down the names of 40 people in Berlin alone and more in other cities, I realized what was the problem: I fully optimized for creating loose ties, for getting the spark of novelty and knowing what's going on in my various communities. In the meantime, I didn't commit enough to anyone as that I'd know who to call when I'm feeling low. So - you might want to create two networks simultaneously, which work by different rules: A large network of loose ties. These people are there for uncommitted play, for exchanging knowledge and occasional favors, for having as many people as possible in your life who know somebody who knows somebody who happens to be really skilled at that particular thing. Treat them with kindness and integrity, but don't hesitate to say "no" if your heart isn't...

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp18_L_y_30 Wolfgang Smith graduated from Cornell University at age 18 with degrees in physics, mathematics, and philosophy. In his life he's published extensively on mathematics, pioneered crucial advances in aerodynamics, rallied against the metaphysical assumptions of scientism, and met with Vedic masters. This episode has been released early in an ad-free audio version for TOE members at http://theoriesofeverything.org. Sponsors: - Brilliant: https://brilliant.org/TOE for 20% off, - Yesoul Fitness: https://yesoulfitness.com, - HensonShaving - https://hensonshaving.com/everything and enter code EVERYTHING at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. - *New* TOE Website (early access to episodes): https://theoriesofeverything.org/ - Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal - Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE - PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs - iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast... - Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9... - Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeveryt... LINKS MENTIONED: - PART ONE https://youtu.be/9M_uFQNDlvI - Matt Segall's “Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead”: https://amzn.to/3owraU9 - Philo Sophia Imitative: https://philos-sophia.org TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:05:12 What is the Omega point and Perennialism? 00:16:36 Can Satan tell the truth? 00:19:16 The infinity of Satan 00:24:18 God requires a negative force 00:25:59 This is what God cannot do 00:29:07 How to transcend the fear of death 00:37:02 Only God has Being, and we are stranded 00:49:20 The fall of Adam & The transcendent unity of religions 00:53:47 The Vedic escarton 01:01:30 The Christian escarton 01:09:42 What exists in eternity? 01:15:00 [Matt Segall] Does God evolve? The realness of real 01:22:30 The path to God is not without danger 01:27:00 Free will in the timeless realms 01:29:10 Why read the apocrypha? 01:37:00 Gnostic levels & Satanic gurus 01:40:00 Praising a disproven Einsteinian reality 01:45:00 The second coming of Christ separates eternity and "abeternity" 01:54:00 Excommunicating heretics 01:58:00 The cosmos is tripartite 02:01:00 Modern scientists are blind and ignorant 02:15:00 There are two ways of doing physics 02:25:00 Understanding religion from contemporary thought is failure a priori 02:40:30 How Wolfgang is preparing for death Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How long is it? Every single kid knows exactly how many days are left until Christmas, every harried mom and dad knows how few shopping days are left until the 25th, yet Adam Duritz and The Counting Crows are out here acting like Einsteinian physics applies to the Gregorian Calendar. Can our intrepid and unabashedly festive hosts take the most heartbreaking song in the advent oeuvre and turn it into something that will go on your family's Christmas Eve playlist? Seems impossible! Guest: Pat Cassels You can now watch the video version of this episode HERE! Walk-in music: ‘Atlantic City' by The Band; ‘Latest Record Project' by Van Morrison; ‘Islands In The Stream' by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. Follow Punch Up The Jam on Twitter and Instagram Get the punch-ups for yourself and support the show on Patreon Like the show? Rate Punch Up The Jam 5 stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review for Andrew and Evan. Advertise on Punch Up The Jam via Gumball.fmSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Time travel is a sticky concept. While the IDEA of trekking through the timeline is totally feasible (especially given commonly accepted Einsteinian theory), the PRACTICE of traipsing across the ages can be complicated, indeed. What happens if you encounter yourself? Are you risking disrupting the timeline? Can you give yourself stock tips?  How do quantum physics factor in? In this edition of Fuel Your Fandom, Saint and Jim are joined by time travel expert and filmmaker John Lampson, who breaks down the three types of temporal travel, his favorite on-screen examples of the concept, and why so many of the paradoxes that could theoretically arise for active chrononauts shouldn't be a real worry in reality.

Grace and Nik join us to discuss Anita Goel's epic dialogue on Einsteinian notions that elegantly interweave science, consciousness, spirituality and man's relentless pursuit for dominion in this material world. Paramahansa Yogananda had many emphatic literary contributions to these complex subject matters, not least to “Stand unshaken midst the crash of breaking worlds”. A wonderful minute that opens many vistas for our intellectual faculties to explore. 0:00 Meet Grace; 10:28 Summary of Minute; 17:14 Einsteinian thought and "The Law of Miracles; 26:55 Energy, Matter and (Cosmic / Christ) Consciousness; 46:26 Oh to "stand unshaken midst the crash of breaking worlds". Readings on Energy and Prana: http://yogananda.com.au/g/g_prana.html Readings on Consciousness: http://yogananda.com.au/gurus/yogananda_quotes36consciousness.html Health and Healing: A Spiritual Perspective https://youtu.be/bDdla-7Qqkk

Qi is not pronounceable in English. Its whistled aspiration is not a sound found in our language. And much as we can approximate it with the “chee”, as in the beginning of “cheese”, it will forever be a curious transplant; like an exotic ornamental tree from abroad. Qi. In English we don't have anything close to the idea of an overall enlivening force in nature. A connective force that blows clouds across the sky, surges currents through the ocean, directs the growth, blooming and decline of the myriad forms we recognize as Life. We don't perceive a unified field that directs the beating of your heart and calls the tune on next week's weather forecast. We don't really have a word in our language that connects the dots between your wife's personality, the pungent taste of cinnamon, the character of the oak tree outside your breakfast window and the way thaty snowy grey-white days gentle and calm the spirit. Q-i, c-h-e-e, c-h-i, however you wish to represent it in Latinized characters, it basically translates as “vital” or “essential” energy. Which is terribly unsatisfactory to our Western minds, as we tend to prefer Einsteinian equations of abstract proof that all Life is inextricably connected. Let's take a look through the Chinese dictionary and glimpse a few of the various manifestations of Qi as it is expressed in some common two character combinations. This will give a sense of the expression of vitality as it unfolds within various aspects of life. 力氣 li qi- strength 天氣 tian qi- weather 生氣 sheng qi- angry 氣色 qi se- complexion 志氣 zhi qi- ambition 不經氣 bu jing qi- economic turndown, recession 淘氣 tao qi- mischievousness 運氣 yun qi- fortune, luck 小氣 xiao qi- miserly and mean spirited 氣短 qi duan- disappointment 語氣 yu qi- verbal attitude 氣死 qi si- infuriate 喘氣 chuan qi- asthmatic breathing 氣骨 qi gu- moral character 客氣 ke qi- politeness 勇氣 yong qi- courage 味氣 wei qi- taste, flavor Surprising isn't it, that 氣 shows up in so many places and is wrapped into so many aspects of life? So when your acupuncturist is working to “regulate your 氣” do not be too surprised if your sleep improves, and you find yourself being kinder to people you don't like, even though she is treating your back pain. 氣 is a profoundly connective force Try Eco-Cha Tea! Here is your link. https://eco-cha.com/pages/eap (https://eco-cha.com/pages/eap) Be sure to use the CODE: Teaforme to get 15% off! Mentioned in this episode: ECO-CHA AD FINAL https://everyday-acupuncture.captivate.fm/teaforme (ECO-CHA )

As we all know, Emily has recently been busy preparing for and celebrating the confirmation of her ordination, so we thought today was a perfect opportunity to entangle Ravel with our guest co-host, Cori Di Biase of the A Freedom of Ideas Podcast. Cori visits the show to ask questions about philosophical Absolutes and how a vision of process theology might be moving us to a whole new mode of thinking in the same way the field of physics shifted from Newtonian to Einsteinian ideas.Connect with Cori: afreedomofideas.com A Freedom of Ideas Podcast @afreedomofideas Twitter Cori Di Biase on Know Normal People Mentioned in the episode: Piper Ramsey-Sumner on Know Normal People Epiphenomena: Quantum Entrancelment on A Freedom of Ideas Join our Patreon community at patreon.com/ravelpod for as little as $3/mo! You can also connect with Ravel on Twitter and Instagram at @ravelpod. We would greatly appreciate the one minute it would take you to leave us a 5-star rating and a 1-2 sentence review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify! Follow the hosts on Twitter:  Josh: @joshlieuallen Emily: @RevRettinghouse Stephen: @stephenghenning Thank you to Louie Zong for use of his song In Full Color, off his album, Here. Find his work on Spotify and Bandcamp!Ravel is a proud founding member of the Highline Media Network, a collective of artist owned podcasts by normal people in normal places. Learn more at www.highline.network.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E24 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science Based Paganism. I'm your host Mark. Yucca: And I'm the other one Yucca. Mark: Today, we are going to talk about something that is very central to pagan practice of all kinds. And that is trance. Yucca: Right. And this is something that we see in paganism. We see it in a lot of other religions as well. It seems to be a very like, a very important experience for. being in that space, having those transformations, when really important things are happening, there's often a trance state. Mark: Right. The attainment of altered states of consciousness is often something that is viewed as holy. In various religions or is viewed certainly as transformative or divinely inspired or or divinely provoked. There are a lot of different frameworks for understanding what this is, but there are so many examples all over the world of people using various different kinds of techniques in order to enter a trans state. Yucca: Right. And since we are non theist, we're not coming at it from a, from the divine perspective. So we're looking at it, we'll look at it from a more neuroscience perspective and the usefulness of it as well, because it really is very useful. Mark: right, right. The, and I guess the, where we need to start with that then is to talk about what it is. Yucca: Right, Mark: trance is kind of a. It's a general term that isn't used by many other religions, other than paganism to describe a particular neurological state. And you can get to that neurological state through a lot of different approaches. Repetitive motion is one of them listening to very dreamy kinds of music with beautiful harmonies in it can take you into that state. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Um, and it's the state that's characterized by being very much in the present. So you're not thinking about. Your list of things to do or about worrying about the future or any of that? You're very much in the present moment. Also with a very kind of emotional openness and a sense of focus, a sense of of experience that you're having. Yucca: Right. And, and I, a word that does get used in, in the common cultures, often in the zone, right. When someone talks about being in the Mark: That's exactly right. Another term that is used by people like sports, psychologists is flow. Yucca: zone, that's actually a trance state, right? Mark: When you, when you are in a flow state, you're very creative, you have access to your subconscious You're not distracted by thoughts of other times or other obligations. You're really in a, kind of a peak optimal state for for working with your own creativity and your own psychology. Right. Yucca: right. Mark: So there are other, oh, Yucca: Oh, I was gonna say, this is something that I see. Young children do very, very naturally. They get into a state like that. And it's something that later on, we don't tend to practice as much. We kind of train ourselves out of it, but I think that there's, there's something very instinctual about it, that humans. That we, we gravitate towards that. We really do that when given the opportunity to Mark: There's something about trans that is play. Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: Because it's creative. In, in many cases now, in, in the case of some religious traditions, trans states are very narrowly defined as only being allowed to be particular kinds of experiences. And so there isn't as much creativity associated with them. But we'll be talking later on about how to induce these trans states. But when you think about, Hildegard Von, BGAN having her, Amazing sort of visions of the Virgin, Mary and all these angels and saints and all that kind of stuff. That's very much a trans state. Now the odds are good that in her case she was probably epileptic and One of the, one of the characteristics of epilepsy is that people can go into a, kind of a phasic trans state, which can lead them into a very altered reality. Right? Oh disconnected from the current present physical circumstances and often unable to. Yucca: Hm. Mark: There are there are often when people go into a trans state, they, they, they are often in kind of a pre-verbal state and they really aren't able to summon language to address what they're experiencing or to communicate that with others. That can be a problem sometimes. I've, I've. There have been people that I've worked with at pagan festivals who have gone kind of way, way out there and are having a hard time taking care of themselves. They're kind of stumbling around the fire, not cuz they're drunk, but because they're really, really entranced. And there's a certain amount of danger associated with that. And so when I've tried to sort of steer them a little further away from the fire and. Check in with them and see how they're doing. In some cases, they simply can't summon words because those parts of their brain aren't what is Yucca: that's not the active part at the moment. Mark: That's right. It's not at the forefront. So let's, let's think for a minute about some examples of trans states that are used in various sorts of religious contexts throughout the world. And I should say that it's not just religious contexts that have trance or flow or the zone artists know this space really well. Yucca: yeah. Artists and writers Mark: As a writer. I know when I'm writing good stuff, I can feel that it's, it's just pouring out of me and I'm just typing as fast as I can to try to capture it. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Um, and it's, it should be said, this is a pleasurable experience. Trans feels good. It's associated with high levels of serotonin in the brain, and it's a, so it's a state that people tend to want to gravitate towards many people who are deeply religious, do their religious practices in order to reach that pleasurable trans state, which they may interpret as communing. Deities or with the entirety of the universe? All of those kinds of feelings. Yucca: So one of the religions that immediately pops into my mind when we talk about that is the SoFi, Mark: Mm-hmm Yucca: right? That's a that's probably the, the picture most people think of when they think of the SoFi is the whirling Dees. Right. And that they're doing that and getting into this shared trance state. Mark: Sure exactly. It's this very slow, steady, repetitive movement, which of course also kind of spins their their middle ear. So that there's this. This potential for dizziness, but it's sort of a managed dizziness. It's a learned technique that they use to take themselves into this very out there kind of space of communing with, with what they believe is their God. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And what's interesting to me is that this is such a beautiful and impactful kind of experience that people will actually pay money to go and watch Sufi spinning in place. Right? Yucca: Oh, I hadn't heard about that. There's a pretty big community in, in my area, but I hadn't heard of people go paying to watch that happen. Mark: there's at least one touring troop. Of of dervishes. Yeah, I I've seen them advertised. I haven't gone to actually see them do it, but I've, I've seen them advertised. In other cases we can think about the sort of intense altered states that come with. And of course, once again, in a pre-verbal kind of sense with people who fall into speaking in tongues or who who ki kind of lose control of their bodies and fall down through this incredibly intense trans like, experience happening in their brain. And. I mean, I'm, I'm not telling any secrets out of school here. We, we here don't believe in divinity. We don't believe in, in gods. And so when we look at that phenomenon, we don't see it as the Christian God reaching down and touching these people. And they're having this, sort of Transy spasmodic experience. We're seeing it as a, a psychological and neurological phenomenon. Yucca: Yeah. Which does not make it less valuable, just because we might have some understanding on what, how it's happening, why it's happening. It that's not less. To use the word magical, right. It's not magic in a Harry Potter sense, but it's magical in a, in a, in a meaningful wow, amazing kind of way. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. Because just because we understand how something works does not, as you say, make anything less wonderful about it. So we can understand, for example, that, that. The experience of love is very high levels of serotonin and oxytocin, right? Your body is like singing with these neurotransmitters, that connote connection and affect and focus and a bunch of other things too, like not being hungry and having a hard time sleeping and a lot of other things that go with that. Now does that mean that love isn't real? Well, of course not, of course not, but that's what, when you're, when you're experiencing being in love, that is what is happening in your brain. Yucca: Right. Or if we're watching the sunrise. Mark: Mm-hmm Yucca: Understanding in fact that in some ways to me makes it even more inspiring is to start to see those deeper connections to wow. Right. And when we start thinking about the neurotransmitters, thinking about, how many generations. How many millions of generations of mammals were there for using those same neurotransmitters. And then we were using them before we were even mammals for different purposes and all of that. Mark: Right. And, asking the big questions, like why did we evolve to have these states? I mean, we can understand why we have love because it draws us together for reproduction for caring in, in survival and caring for our offspring. Right. But. Why a sunrise, why a sunset, why the beauty of leaves blowing in wind? Why the Aurora Balis, why the shapes of clouds moving in the sky? All of these are things that can really inspire us and move us with the sheer beauty of the universe. And you have to ask the question, why did we evolve the capacity to feel that. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: It's a great question. I don't have any idea of the answer, but it's a super question, Yucca: right. Yeah. That's, that's a question to work on. Mark: But the good news is we do have this built into ourselves. We have this capacity for trance, this capacity to be transported by the moment and brought into a state of focus and clarity and a feeling of belonging and connection, all of those things. And one of the things that we as pagans are about is crafting the skills. Learning the skills to be able to create that state at will. And, and that is something that's kind of unique about the, the broad pagan umbrella. There are, there are other religious traditions which teach you to go into deep trans states. Zen Buddhism, for example, sitting Zen, looking at a blank wall. But they're very constrained in how they use that experience and how, the rituals around it are very, very strict, right? Whereas as pagans, we create a lot of our own rituals and so we can use this trans state for a lot of different purposes. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So why don't we talk a little bit about why then you would want to go into this, this trance state. Yucca: Yeah. the first thing is, at least from my perspective is you have a lot less in the way. When you're going into a state like this, you're setting aside the, the worrying about the rent for next week and the, this and the, that. And you're, you're kind of going to this, this deeper level where you're dealing with the, with the, your raw emotions and beliefs and feelings. Mark: Mm-hmm. mm-hmm . Yeah. And what's cool about that in my experience is that trans is an opportunity to kind of get in under the hood and tinker with those things. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: We know now from research that our memories are not recordings. They are retellings of stories and they get edited and embellished and pieces get dropped all the time in the stories that we tell ourselves about our lives. So we have the capacity when in this very open emotionally malleable state to get in there and actually change some core assumptions that we have change our story or our, our uh, Yucca: or Mark: Conclusion our beliefs about an event that happened to us in our lives, right. That can help to bring us closure. It can help to bring us healing. It can help to instill greater self-esteem. It can help to bring us more confidence as we pursue our goals. It can do lots of really cool things like that. All in this kind of glowing present. Very pleasurable. Experience. So it's, it's, it's a way of doing it. It's an opportunity to do things that are good for you while also having an experience that isn't an ordeal that instead is something powerful and moving and and happy. Yucca: And it can be the real heart of a ritual. Right? A lot of times when we're setting up a ritual, a lot of the things that we're doing are to help get us to that state. Mark: yes. Yes. In the, in the atheopagan. Recommended ritual structure that I put in my Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: for example, the whole point of that is induction into a trans state doing stuff while in that trans state and then transitioning back out of it and back into a normal sense of reality. Right. So the arrival phase, you have things like grounding and you have things like sensory stimulation that brings you into the present moment in your body. And you have things like invocation of safety and security, so that you feel okay about opening yourself to the experience stuff like that. And then In the qualities phase, you invoke the, the various characteristics and emotions that you would like to be with you during these things, so that you feel like you have allies and ingredients to work with. And then in the main body of the ritual, which is the, the working or the deep play, that's when you're in the trance and now you can do this transformative work, right. Yucca: yeah, Mark: And then the other two phases are coming out the other side. So that, that it really is about a technology of trance ritual is, is in my experience, a technology of trance. Yucca: right. So why don't we talk a little bit about some of the hows, right? We've been talking a lot about the why. Mark: Okay. Okay. That sounds great.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: there are so many ways to get there and the, there can vary a lot depending on which one you use. I don't want to, in any way, imply to people that all trans states are the same. They, they aren't, they aren't The kind of trans state that you have from dancing to incredibly rhythmic drumming, for example, or, electronic dance music, stuff like that is not the same thing as the kind of meditative trans state that you can enter while sitting quietly, smelling the scent of a little incense, calming yourself and opening yourself in that more gentle kind of way. But they're both trans states and they both present opportunities for growth and learning and, and joy. Yucca: Yeah. Well, Mark: So, oh, go Yucca: To share a technique for going into that kind of quiet sort of meditative trance state. One thing that, if you've never played with this before, that you can do is find whatever the situation is. You, you it could be quietly inside or sitting out, looking at the stars or the sunset or whatever, but sitting down, creating your space. And then, calm your breath, do your grounding and stare at something. Stare very, very intently at it. And then start to relax your eyes. And if you can blur your vision a little bit, just go ahead and blur that and bring it back. And just bring, feel like you're bringing that blurred relaxation back into your, back through your eyes, into your head and down through your body as you're staring and letting that focus shift, right. Just playing with that focus in your eyes and that seeing that as your body. And for me practicing that, that's something that can get me into a trance state very, very quickly. Is that staring. Relaxation. Mark: great. Yeah, that's, that's a very effective way. One thing to be aware of when you do that kind of a practice, is that the thing that you're looking at may appear to disappear? Because of the holes in your retina, where your optic nerve is detached. When you really calm down your eyes, stop vibrating, back and forth, which is what they do in order to adjust for that hole in your retinas so that they can collect data about what would otherwise be in the hole. Yucca: right. And all of that, you're getting your depth perception. You're getting all kinds of information from those tiny, tiny little movements. Yeah. Mark: Right. So, if you are calming yourself and staring at something and it disappears, don't worry about it. That's there's there, there are reasons for that. And it's okay. Yucca: And if there's a little bit of color difference that happens too. Like you see some spots where like the color is a little bit like pink or, or blue or things like that. That's again, that's totally normal. Yeah. Mark: Right. We mentioned drumming drumming is either, either doing the drumming yourself or being in a place where there is, powerful drumming or very, very simple, steady heartbeat, kind of drumming, which can also be very transi in its own way. Those are, those are technologies that are as old as humanity. They probably go back to pre-human, predecessors.  Yucca: And the rush of water. That's another one too, that, that either the trickling for a fountain or the rush of the, the stream or the filling of the, the tub. Mark: mm-hmm, the sound of waves crashing on the ocean. Yucca: Yeah. Right. Mark: Or of wind in trees, all of those kind of white noise, Yucca: I, Mark: somewhat varying, not, not entirely the same all the time. They just, they kind of low you into this very nice sort of dazed, calm, Transy space. Yucca: suspect that they remind us on a very primal level of hearing our mother's blood inside the womb. Mark: That sounds very reasonable to me. Yucca: Right that rushing. Mark: Right. Yeah, that that's cous. The another way is to contemplate something that leaps and dances like fire staring into a fire is a very Transy activity. And it's a way to you can do that with a candle flame. You can do it with a campfire. Don't do it with a wildfire.  Yucca: Well, I, I mean, Mark: I mean, you Yucca: a safe distance yeah. Right. If, if you're, if you're in a safe situation and you're not being called upon to, be part of the effort in that moment yeah. Mark: So that's another and I, I go back to this a lot because I find this very Transy when, when wind is blowing through trees and leaves are kind of shaking and dancing as the bows move in the wind. To me, that's a very Transy experience. I, I just. I, I, I, I start to enter the trans experience, reflecting on Yucca: thinking about it. Mark: just, just thinking about all the math that goes into. All those motions, all those calculations, the, with the pressure and the, the friction coefficients and the angle of the leaves and all the different things, theoretically, you could actually calculate how this tree is going to move based on the wind that comes up against it. But in practical terms, it's impossible, Yucca: Yeah. You'd have to have all those initial conditions. Yeah. Mark: Right. So, I don't know. I wrote a poem once where I talked about wind and trees and mathematics as the language of God, it's, it's this, this in a Einsteinian sense, right? The, the language of the way the universe manifests. Yucca: Yeah. Right. Mark: So that's another, kind of way that we can end. Dancing lights. I mean, there, there are reasons why dance clubs have low light conditions with lots of, dancing around colored lights, Because it puts people into a trans state and in a trans state, they feel less inhibited, more comfortable, more safe and more able to express themselves. So, and it's very pleasurable and that's why they go, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: yeah. Yucca: Also the full moon, right. That's one hanging out and just watching that full moon. Mark: yeah. Watching the line of the Moonlight move across the floor is one that I really enjoy. Yeah. So, dancing, drumming, singing, singing in harmony with other people is a very trans activity, especially if you're doing kinds of music and harmonies Yucca: some of those chance can really get you, get you Mark: Really take you out there. There's a, there's a, a church in Southern France called in a, in a town called where they have a, a specific practice of doing these Catholic chant. Very simple Catholic chance. And people come to sing and have this experience at TA. And there are songbooks that you can buy with these Chan in them, and the chance are simply beautiful wonderful stuff to sing. So you know what your fun, what, what you may be realizing as we talk about this stuff, is that a lot of the things that people. To enjoy themselves or because it puts them in a trans state, Yucca: Right. Mark: right. An awful lot of things that we just like are things that we enjoy because they tend to lead us in that direction. And as pagans, we can then take advantage of that, not just to have a good time, which we are all in favor of. We are in favor of people having a good time. But you can also make some use of that in a ritual context. Yucca: Yeah. And like so many things that we talk about, there's this very. Intuitive instinctual component of it, but the practice can, can really help you to build in making it easier to slip into it, making it more effective. The practice element really is important. Mark: It is and using a focus or an alter, Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: um, is one way to kind of, what's the word I want to use? Kind of fast track that Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Process, because if, if there's a particular place that you go in your house and a thing that you look at where you are accustomed to going into a trans state before it, whether it's to read to road cards or light candles and incense, and. Meditate or, or to place things for that are seasonal symbols to represent the time of the year or to put pictures of your ancestors so that they'll be remembered, whatever that is. The, the speed with which you will drop into that trans state. Really increases the more you practice in front of that focus. I, I find that when I first started my pagan practice, especially because I have ADHD and so focus and concentration are not exactly my strongest suit. And so my brain would be going all over the place and it was kind of hard to get into that trans state. But now all I have to do is step in front of my focus and light the candles and close my eyes and then open them to this rich display of symbols and items that, that are meaningful to me and tell me stories. Right. Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: I'm there. I'm I'm in the trance state and I'm ready to do some kind of inner work. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So this varies from person to person, there are people for whom like modern dance is the way that they get there, and that's great. It's good to know that about yourself. If you're just starting your practice. And you're just learning about how to work with trance, with yourself, try some different modalities. Think about what has been, what has been enjoyable for you in the past. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: And maybe for you, it's sitting down with some art supplies and a blank canvas and, going into that zone of creativity you, you can do. Paintings or sculptures or whatever it is that have a symbolic quality that can then help to work with your psychological nature as well. That's another, way that you can approach this. So, for those that are new to the practice, I really encourage people to experiment, try different kinds of stuff. Yucca: Right. And in that ex experimentation, trying different kinds of things and trying the same thing multiple times too, because the very first time we do things, sometimes they're re it's, it's really awkward. Right. Mark: Yes, that critic voice that we talk about erects itself in the back of your head and says, this is stupid and you're making a fool of yourself and yada yada, yada, yada. And after you have some practice with this. That voice doesn't have the kind of power that it used to. It just doesn't, it doesn't impact you the way that it used to. Which is good for you on all kinds of levels, because the self critic is a cruel voice. It's not good for us. And an ability to set that aside and say, no, I'm doing this now. Cuz it's good for me is one opportunity that we have to heal as people. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So what else do we have to talk about on trance? Yucca: It's like so many of the things in paganism that it's, it really is a about experiencing it. We, we find things to talk about on a weekly podcast, but really what we're doing is about. experience, how we feel our relationship and interaction with the world with ourselves. And it's just, it's a, we're a doing religion, right? We're an experience religion. Mark: That's right. That's right. And. Our, our experiences are our life, right? And so enriching those experiences and making them as powerful and as positive for ourselves as possible is central to what our paganism is about. Because we're not. Worshiping gods or making offerings to them, or, spirits or demons or any of that kind of stuff. What we're doing is we're working with our own psychology. And with that, of those that we share rituals with for the betterment of all. Yucca: Right. Mark: And so yes, practice try out different modalities, even little as, as you were saying, Yucca even little kids do this. Little kids will spin and spin and spin and spin and spin until they get dizzy and fall down because they want to be in an altered state. Yucca: Listen to them on their own. They'll they'll we didn't talk about this mantras, right? They'll come up with their own mantras and they'll repeat that over and over and over, I was watching my daughter play just was absolutely fascinated by a tree that had some SAP. And she was out there for, it had to be 30, 40 minutes just in just watching that SAP, looking at that SAP and just, I couldn't quite hear what she was saying, but she. Singing something to herself over and over, just in just super engrossed entranced. Right. And we just, we, when given the opportunity we do that, right. And of course there's different types of personalities. Some peop some personalities will do that more than others. Some personalities are, hyper-focusing like my personality, you were talking about, focus, being something you've cha that. is a little bit more challenging for you. For me, it's kind of the other way. It's hard to get myself to get out of whatever I'm focusing on. There's different personalities, but it's something that is kind of still in all of us to a certain degree. Mark: Yes. Yeah. And when you look at cultures all over the world, you see that the attainment of altered states of consciousness is something that humans just gravitate to everywhere. And whether it means that they have to build these soaring cathedrals with stained glass, windows, and burn incense and candles, and have, flickering low levels of light and, and Gregorian chant. Yucca: and out. Mark: Right. And, have Gregorian Chan singing and leaders telling people what they're supposed to do to get their trans experience, or whether it's as simple as, spinning on one foot, like the Sufi.  Yucca: Or wake up for Dawn Mark: mm-hmm Yucca: and just hang out with the Dawn. Mark: yeah, yeah. Especially at this time of year when the sunsets and sunrises are so long. Yeah. It's really, really a good time. Well, so as with so many things that we talk about here on the podcast, really encourage you to do this stuff. It's a, it's a kind of a strange thing to me. One of the things that I heard a lot when I first entered the pagan community is you have to read these 70 books. Some, some huge stack of you have to read this and this and this and this and this and this and this. And a lot of what I found was in those books was stuff that I don't really subscribe to now. To me, what really made the difference was having the experience, going to the rituals, sharing in those experiences, getting to know the people and then. Yucca: practice. Mark: Daily practice. Absolutely. And then starting to craft the rituals myself and starting to invite others, to join me in doing, rituals that, that felt meaningful and, and impactful. So, that is a very joyous joy. It's a, it's a really enjoyable path to travel. And if you're just getting started, I really encourage you to set forth, find out how you best fall into trance. And maybe you wanna learn to be a really good drummer, it'll, you'll, you'll be a, a super asset to the other pagans around you because you can help them to go into trance. And you will always have a means available of going into trance as long as you have something that you can tap on. Yucca: just be your. Right. If, if you have nothing else, it could be your, your belly or your thighs or or that beautiful drum that you hand painted and whatever it is. Yeah. Mark: I'm, I'm actually buying a drum this week. I'm excited about it. My, my frame drum, big round kind of flat frame drum disappeared at an event the event where I broke my arm back in 2017 and my friend whose truck it flew off the back of apparently has always said that he. Wanted to wanted to buy me another one, but he has never gotten around to it. So now I'm going to go buy it and he's going to pay me back for it. So I'm excited about having a frame drum again. That'll be really cool. Yucca: nice. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Hmm. Well, thank you, mark. This was a lovely and inspiring conversation. We're supposed to get some rain this afternoon and I think maybe I'll sneak away and see if I can trance out with the rain. Mark: Yeah, that sounds wonderful. Especially that wonderful blood warm rain that you get in the Southwest. It's so nice. Yucca: Yeah. yeah, Mark: Yeah. All right. All right. Thanks again so much Yucca. And we'll see you all next week    .

How often do we hear something and then say, “that simply can't be”. Why are we always so certain? Why do we tend to be so locked into a position that we close our minds to exploring alternatives? Meet our podcast guest David Zimbeck. David grew up with an incredible imagination, a thirst for knowledge and the drive to learn. He is mostly a self-taught person whose desire to learn, think and grow are unstoppable. Among other things, he has been a major force in software developments that help shape our emerging crypto currency world. However, David goes much further than software development. Listen to this episode to learn all about this fascinating man. What David has to say is well worth your time and may cause you to open your own curious mind and mindset. Thanks for listening and I hope you will let me know your thoughts about our episode and the Unstoppable Mindset podcast by emailing me at michaelhi@accessibe.com.   About the Guest:  David Zimbeck, our lead developer, is unlike most people you will ever meet. His resilient work ethic, diverse project experience, and deep knowledge of cryptography has led to the creation of BitHalo, the world's first unbreakable smart contracting system. These decentralized contracts are the fundamental backbone of BitBay. Born in Ohio and having lived all over the world, he has acquired the vast perspective needed to create truly disruptive software. David is completely self-taught, and intimately knows a hard-day's work. He developed BitHalo's first 50,000 lines of Python code single-handedly from scratch... all while working long, grueling shifts on the oil rigs of North Dakota. It was here that he executed his idea of double deposit escrow, bringing unbreakable peer-to-peer contracts into real-life agreements. As a former world chess master, he also possesses a truly analytical mind. David has a keen understanding of cause and effect, and sees the importance of early decisions in any situation. This mentality, in addition to his innate honesty, perseverance, and self-discipline has driven him to position BitBay well beyond most other blockchain projects in terms of both development and security. “Chess has helped me visualize code. It has helped me plan, memorize and problem solve. It has helped me anticipate problems well in advance.” David now resides in Mexico, and continues to work round-the-clock to help keep BitBay on the forefront of blockchain development. About the Host:  Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/  https://twitter.com/mhingson  https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson  https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links  https://accessibe.com/  https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe  https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!  Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast  If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review  Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson  01:21 Well, Hi, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, How's that for an opening? I want to thank you for joining us today, wherever you are, hope you're having a good day and hope that we can add a little bit to your your life and give you some things to think about today. And we have a person as our guest today, Davidson Beck, who has given me a lot to think about, and I hope that he will contribute to your thought processes as well. David, welcome to unstoppable mindset. David Zimbeck  01:56 Thank you. Thank you, sir. pleasure, sir. Honor, honor Me and on here and nice meeting you and everything. Looking forward to it? Well, let's start like I tend to do a lot. Michael Hingson  02:08 You You obviously grew up tell me a little bit about you as a as a as a child, and kind of what what you had going on growing up and where that led to, because it's you, you have quite a an interesting life. And you've done some very remarkable things. And let's talk about it. So just kind of wondering, what was it like being a kid for you? And where did it go? David Zimbeck  02:32 Well, I'm actually I've had a, I guess, cuz I know, we talked earlier, and I've had a pretty diverse background. So people kind of get surprised when they see that I've done various various things with moderate moderate levels of success. And, and mostly, you know, I was always encouraged to be creative growing up. So you know, my parents never really, you know, inhibited me I'd gone to different schools, public, private schools, as well as homeschooling, I was a little disobedient. So I didn't really, I can't say I was like, the model student or anything. But it's possible that that worked in my advantage, because what it also taught me was to think outside the box, you know, and to try to understand exactly what it is that we're being taught and why. And, you know, I also had a drive ever since I was younger, to make the world a better place that was even, even since I was like, 10 years old. And my attitude was just, well, nobody's else do it, nobody else is doing it, somebody's gonna gotta clean all this shit up. So you know, I just decided, I just decided that I would try to do it. And so that that's also something kind of kept me somewhat diverse in my careers. But at the same time, whenever I do something, I like to benchmark myself and do a really good job at it. So So with that, with that in mind, you know, I when I was in, when I when I left high school, I went straight into working, because I didn't want to waste any time. And I worked in the real estate sector as well as acting. And that was like my early. My early work. Oh, yeah. And I was also a chess player. So that was one thing that probably really helped me a lot as a kid because I was considered. Well, I was I was one of the top chess players, or at least one of the top chess puzzle makers in the world. So what I did was I first learned how to play chess when I was like 11, or 12. And then after that, I knew I didn't want to play too competitively. Even though I had gotten my master title and master rank. And I could have played competitively, but I preferred the idea to express my, my work as an art form. So because an art form kind of is a lasting thing, if you paint a picture, you know, and you put it on the wall, it's a lasting thing, but if you're competing all the time, they always say you're only as good as your last when, you know, and I didn't want to be like a dog chasing my tail like chasing my own ego. Yeah. So essentially, I just wanted to benchmark my myself, which I did, and I did I did really good work. And that's what he did as a teenager. And then as I got older, that helped me, and a lot of my work because I was able to apply it to things. And I know, I know, you'll be able to appreciate this because it helps you visualize things. So I was able to visualize things in my head, you know, because when you're playing a game of chess, you're seeing it on the board, and you're essentially moving, you're moving the pieces with your mind, before you even place your hand on a piece, you have to figure out where they're gonna go, and what the possible things could happen in the future. So you calculate all that in your head. So it's, it's very similar to what you do. And it's almost kind of like, once you crack open your mind, you know, it's it never ends. So. So yeah, actually, I gotten Michael Hingson  05:39 sorry, go ahead. You tell me how to how do you get the ranking of chess master? How does that work? I mean, I understand it, but how do you get that. David Zimbeck  05:50 So what happens is you just play, you just play enough. I mean, when you play in tournaments, or whatever, you end up playing against other players. And if you win, you gain points on your rating. And if you lose, you know, you lose points on your rating. So once you get a rating of over a certain numbers, and while in America, we have like, unfortunately, we have a different rating system. So we're like one of the only countries that does that. There's two, there's basically the US C, F and D Day. So for the United States Chess Federation, I'm like, maybe 23 2400, somewhere around there. So that's, you know, that's my, my rating. And so that's well, that's well above Master, I could have gotten Grandmaster international master titles, but for that I would have had to travel because there's more because they play under the system of the day. So so to get that, you know, I would have had to actually go to Europe, which actually I did for a little while, but I wasn't as focused on chess when I went there. Michael Hingson  06:43 Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. So David Zimbeck  06:45 no, no, it's it's a good question. Because a lot of people think it's not like something you can just pull out of a hat and say, oh, yeah, I'm a master at this. No, you actually have to earn it. And Michael Hingson  06:57 I figured that was the case. But I was always just sort of curious as to how the ranking actually was achieved. And, and clearly, you did a lot of it. And then as you as you pointed out, you have to really use your mind because it's chess is really only as an end result on the board. David Zimbeck  07:14 Well, there's something else too, which is, unlike other game, like, if you look at games like poker, or other games, which granted do do have a good amount of skill involved. It's there's also a great deal of luck. Whereas chess, there's no luck at all whatsoever. You know, you play a game of cards, you know, you need to get good cards, you play game of Scrabble, you need to get good tiles, you play a game of chess, you just need to make good moves. And you don't even play the opponent, you play the board. Because the better you move is on the board. There's nothing your opponent can do. So it's really a game of pure skill. I mean, even even you could even argue, argue some sports that Well, I'd say sports are almost pure skill pretty much for the most part, but there's still a little luck involved with you know, you could miss a shot a breeze, a breeze in the wind could knock your golf ball off course, you know, you know, something can happen. But in chess, there's, there's, there's no forces of nature that would interfere with with your performance. So so that's that's what makes it a good game to learn, especially, you know, for kids. But, but yeah, that there was that. And then when I was in, I travelled a little bit. And I was in Los Angeles, actually, with my sister who was pursuing acting, which wasn't really my interest or at at the time, but since I had my family all had like a theater background, I was I was pretty much familiar with with it. And she helped me get like an agent and stuff like that. So actually, I was doing pretty good with that, too. And I was booking like commercials. And in some movies, I booked Pirates of the Caribbean too, which is what I'm the most known for. Where they flew me out to Bahamas and you know, I was on a boat with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. And so. So yeah, I mean, I guess it's, I mean, I happen to work in that as well. I was. Michael Hingson  08:58 Actually you're one of the pirates. Did you have a speaking part? David Zimbeck  09:02 Um, no, but it was probably because of my audition, because when when we did the audition, it was a little bit of improv. And so all the pirates who auditioned were older, that was one of the biggest auditions in LA. Or, I think that at the time, because there's maybe like, 10,000 people that went out for it. And they only picked like, 20 of us, you know, so when when we auditioned, there was all these older gentlemen who were, you know, look like pirates. And I'm probably 30 years younger than anybody auditioning. So I said, oh, there's no way I'm gonna get this. And so, I just, I just didn't take it seriously, you know, but I did. I did a little bit, you know, I mean, I walked but I was when I went for the audition. I was like, you know, yar, I'm a pirate already barred Do you have a pretty doctor and I just kind of was just having fun. And I guess that they responded to that exuberance and thought it was funny. And and that's what got me the role actually, interestingly enough for other catalysts. No, unfortunately, There is a possibility I might have ended up having a speaking role thrown at me. It happened to a couple of the core pirates. But what happened is there was a hurricane that hit we were in Freeport, Bahamas. So there was a hurricane that hit. I think it was Hurricane Wilma at the time. And we ended up getting called home and flown home charters. So we only got about like, I would say, like a month, then change maybe out in the Bahamas before you're flown home. But it was still it was still an amazing experience. Unfortunately, I got I got snow from the credits. I don't know if it was because of that. Or because we never properly manage our contract or whatever. But that's okay. That's that's part of life. It was still a great experience. And and and yeah, I mean, it was it was really fun. So yeah, I mean, I think that those things definitely helped give me some some experience out in the field of succeeding and various different professions. But like I said, because my focus was on making, making the world a better place. I never, I never quite could, I guess you could say put like my full passion or, or my heart and into some of those ordeals actually, was one of the reasons I left chess behind as well, which eventually will get to, you know, where I were actually ended up making a name for myself, which was in Bitcoin. But that didn't that didn't come till later. I mean, I'd still work some odd jobs, I'd worked on the oil rigs for a while. And I was doing about like, 100 hour week, you know, it was just crazy. We'd sleep like four hours a night and stuff like that. And and then after that is when I got involved in in Bitcoin, but I'll turn the floor over to you for a moment that you Michael Hingson  11:36 know, that's that's, that's fine, actually. Well, even blackjack Sparrow had ethics. So just Just saying. David Zimbeck  11:46 Oh, pirates do. Yeah, they go by a different code. It's yeah. Well, I've always seen it as the the most important code of ethics to go by as a moral compass, you know, as if you have if you have a true moral compass, and one that's objective, because nowadays, our modern society is a little bit there. They believe the morals are relativistic. Well, if I believe it's okay. It's okay. But that's just not how that's not how the world works. It's not how things truly are because nothing is truly subjective. When you really boil it down to like the truth. The truth is, in fact, objective, it doesn't really matter. If 100% of the society agrees that, you know, killing people is a good thing. If they agree on it doesn't make it a good thing. It's still it's still more moral, morally reprehensible. So I think that the key the key is having a good moral compass. And then from there, and I don't know, maybe, maybe I just always had it. Maybe my parents just just raised me. Well, I don't I don't I don't really know. I mean, I mean, I feel like a lot of it, I kind of carved out on my own, because I saw so many things that bothered me. And I just said, I don't you know, I don't want a world like that would make the world a better somehow. Well, Michael Hingson  13:01 well, here's a question out of curiosity, when you, when you live your life, do you like at night or at some time during the day you you've done things and so on? Do you go back and do self analysis? Did I do that the best I can? What could I have improved on that? Was that a mistake? Do you do you do much analysis of what you do and think about that? David Zimbeck  13:21 Yeah, constantly actually, one of the one I think one of the most important qualities a person can have is introspection. You know, very few people look inside and right. One of the most, one of the most critical things for me is I sit there and I say to myself, actually, to be honest, I don't know how some people can even manage their own lives when they if they've done awful things to others in their life. It's like, how can you wake up in the morning and look in front of the mirror and be really proud, you know, of that person? You know, it's like, it just doesn't make any sense. To me. It's like as if they have no sense of self, you know, and I don't know how that works. I don't know, maybe they're proud of what they do. I have no idea. But to me, it just seems like if you're introspective and you really look inside yourself, you're gonna start caring a lot about, you know, your soul and, and how, you know, how pure how pure and innocent how you can maintain your own innocence and stuff like that. I would think that those things would be very important. Michael Hingson  14:20 That gets back to the moral compass concept again, of course. David Zimbeck  14:24 Yeah, exactly. So I do I do believe that. And you know, introspection also has has to do with casting away pride. Like if, if you make a mistake, you have to be completely honest. With your with yourself about about your mistake. Actually, again, the thing about chess is like, if you're playing chess, you know, it's ironic, you would think that strong players would have an ego, but actually they don't. Some some do. Okay, yeah, some, some are pretty bad. But for the most part to get to a certain point, you have to kind of humiliate yourself quite a lot because you're going to lose a lot, you know, or you're going to sacrifice a lot. You're going to sacrifice a lot of time, you're going to change your ideas about what you think is strong and what you think is weak, there's going to be a great deal of humility that's going to be introduced to you. And if it hasn't been introduced to you, then clearly you're not working hard enough, you know, because once you get to the higher levels, you're going to start realizing all the fantastic and beautiful possible things that could happen. And then even then, and that's only applying to chess, which is like, an eight by eight little board. I mean, imagine life, which is like, you know, it's infinitely times, well, not infinite, it's almost, it's almost endlessly more complicated. And while you could argue a person's potential is literally limitless. I mean, there's nothing. There's nothing really that we can't, that we can't do. But it's it can tends to be like, pride, which would get in the way. So one of the obvious advantages of being introspective, is, is not being afraid of admitting a mistake, not being afraid of, you know, having, you know, being a little upset with yourself over something, but But of course, working towards making yourself better. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I Michael Hingson  16:09 do, one of the things about one of the things about chess is, of course, that, in one sense, it's very unforgiving, you play, and if you make a mistake, you very well could lose. But the other side of that is, and that's why in part, I asked the question about introspection, you can then go back and look at it and say, Why, why did I lose? Or what was the mistake? Or why did I make that mistake? And what can I learn from that for the next time, and I think that's a really good subset of life. And it's something that I advocate, we've talked about it on this podcast before. And something that I think is extremely relevant is that it's important for us to look at what we do, it works better if we do it from the standpoint of a moral compass. But it is important for us individually to go back and look at what we do and what do we know? And how can we best use our knowledge? And where do we go from here? David Zimbeck  17:09 It basically like it'll, it'll help you get better get along better with other people as well, you know what I mean? Because if you're if you're introspective, you know, and somebody points something out to you, you're not really going to be afraid of criticism. And sometimes I have, I have, you know, issues with with friends, if, you know, if they have a hard time accepting criticism, which usually happens when they carry a lot of guilt, by the way, yeah, you know, maybe they've come back for more, they're just traumatized. And, you know, maybe they can even take the slightest shred of critique. And you can almost see it unfolding. It's, it's not that it's personal. It's not like that they're upset with you. It's that they can't take more responsibility, because they've had a hard time accepting the responsibility they've already had to take, you know what I mean? Which is all the more reason why you shouldn't give yourself any, any any, right? Oh, absolutely. Dragging that baggage around. And Michael Hingson  17:58 I agree. And, you know, personally, I believe I'm my own worst critic. And I want to be because I should be able to analyze and look at things, but at the same time, I never mind input from other people. Because if I have such an ego, that I can't listen to what other people say that I don't ever really connect with them. Whereas if somebody is willing to be strong enough to say to me something about what I do a podcast or whatever, and for me to then look at it and decide whether I agree with that or not, then I have a real problem with me. David Zimbeck  18:45 Yeah, totally makes perfect sense. Michael Hingson  18:48 So how did you go into programming and so on? You You obviously did that. And of course, chess certainly gives you a mindset for that. But how did you then go into the whole world of programming and doing software stuff? David Zimbeck  19:04 So so the thing is, is that I learned when I was a little kid, I think my uncle taught me to make like mazes or something in queue basic, and I was like, maybe 1011 years old, but that's about as far as my programming experience had, you know, I was just, you know, just just playing around mostly. And I remember making some cool stuff. But for the most part, you know, I didn't really do much I know in high school I did. I learned C and I think C Plus Plus you know, nothing serious. It wasn't until later when I was working on the on the oil rigs and then I had some downtime actually switched jobs and was doing easements. And then I I've always I was always good with computers because I was around computers because I was doing things like editing and web design because I did some commercial production for a while and stuff like that. So I saw I was familiar with, you know, very familiar with computers. Plus I did a lot Got a research. So from that, you know, I worked with them. And so I automated my job when I was there doing the easements. And because we were having the type of hundreds of legal contracts, which all essentially look the same. So after I audit, after I automated my job, I was able to do like a job, which maybe it would have taken weeks, and I did it in a matter of a day or two, and actually got fired for it for working too efficiently. And and then it was at that exact time where I'd already known about Bitcoin since it started, essentially, around maybe 2011. Yeah, I think it was when I knew about it, maybe like a year after so. And so I always knew about it. And I known about some of the stuff on on on the on the deep web, because I knew that, you know, it was it was interesting, because it was on Deep Web that weren't on the main web. But for the most part, it took me a while to actually have it click, because then when I'd first known about it, I didn't think of it as an investment vehicle, I just thought of it as, like a very cool kind of decentralized banking system. But I always I never really saw how it would gain the traction or the so when it when I saw it later, when I was out in North Dakota, it like it had clicked, I was like, oh my god, I can't believe it, this thing that used to be worth worth, nothing is now actually quite quite valuable at the time, it was maybe 100 bucks or something like that. But you know, it's pretty good. And so I said, Well, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna miss out on any further. And I'd made an investment. And I remember making an investment in Litecoin, or something, and I turned like $1,000 into like, $50,000 within, I don't know, a week or two is crazy. So I was and then I held on to it a little too long. And then some of that, like went back down. But I started to learn, you know, and I started to get involved in in altcoins. And in them just, you know, for fun. And but it wasn't, it wasn't my primary motive to see it is more just like an investment vehicle, which maybe I should have, because I would probably would have made a lot more money. But I was also kind of interested in what you could do with that coin. See, because the thing was is you understand the concepts of it, you kind of understand that? Well, first of all, it's decentralized, because there's many, many different people who have a copy of the ledger, kind of like if everybody has a copy of the same movie, you know, you can't change a line in the movie without everybody disagreeing. Yeah, oh, hey, that's not what he really said. So if everybody has a copy of the Bank Ledger, it's basically immune to fraud, which is Mungus ly important. And furthermore, it makes it so that nobody can just take money out of thin air and produce it, which is way more than we can say, for the Federal Reserve, because they're just printing money like crazy at their own will. So having something that's kind of like ownerless, that's immune to fraud, and can theoretically replace modern banking is and is safe, and that nobody can freeze your account is awesome. That's, that's amazing. But at the same time, I knew that politically, the government's are always going to be able to kind of plant in the eye, people's minds, beliefs and ideas and quite possibly subvert such a thing. So I wasn't completely convinced that Bitcoin is going to, you know, save the world or make it that much, it'll make it better. But just like the internet, which has allowed us to communicate, it's allowed allowing us to have this call, the internet can also be used as a tool for, for bad, you know, because nowadays, the internet's use for censorship and it's used for, there's so much censorship of information if the information that you're getting from the internet is incorrect. And also, if it makes if they make it very hard to find the correct information, then you can kind of fall into this trap of dogma. And it becomes like a whole brand new religion all over again. So that the pitfalls of technology, including including Bitcoin, by the way, of course, Michael Hingson  23:48 we have a situation right now, for example, where we've got Ukraine going on, and Russia has denied people access to Facebook, and essentially most of the tools of the internet. And so they're subverting fair free flow and relevant information, which is, David Zimbeck  24:08 you know, always a problem. Well, but actually, I would say that Facebook is not a free flow of information. And I would say that neither Michael Hingson  24:17 No, and I just use that as an example. But I'm thinking more of just David Zimbeck  24:21 I know what you mean. I know what you mean, though, but essentially, essentially, what a lot of people don't actually know is that Google controls about something like 90 some percent of all of the internet searches through through like mobile, and then fact that there's only two search engines. I know we're segwaying a little bit but I will get back into what really got me into programming. But this is kind of an important segue to give some context. Essentially, that yeah, they control all the information so so there's only two search engines. A lot of people don't realize this. There's just Google and Bing which is just Microsoft, all your other search engines like DuckDuckGo or Whatever they actually pull from DuckDuckGo, I think pulls from Bing start page. I'm not sure I think Yahoo and Yahoo and start page probably pull from Bing. And so, so a lot of a lot of these search engines actually, they're they're not actually indexing anything, okay? They're just utilizing the results from the other search engines, and which is just all Google, Google and Microsoft, which means that, essentially, a couple companies have control over all the information, and they do censor a lot. And they censor very aggressively and they censor for political reasons all the time. And it's outrageous. It's so bad, like these companies, the world would be better off. They were just shut down, honestly. So in that in that case, yeah. I understand why Russia did that. But they're no better. Okay. Russia has their own search engine, which is Yandex. Okay. And I think China has Baidu. And there might be there's one other there's Gigablast, which is a tiny little company that's been indexing the internet for a long time. And they're one of the very few independent ones. There's a decentralized crawler as well called PAC, but not enough people use it to give it to give it the information that it needs. And then there's the dark web, but they have all their indexes are just private lists of sites. So there's no, there's no way of easily navigating that at all. So yeah, there's there's very little access to free information. Like it was back in the day when Google was uncensored, because when it was uncensored, you could just find everything, which I would argue is a bad thing, because you can find things that are bad. But no, it's more important to for it to be uncensored, because that's exactly why the freedom of speech was protected by the First Amendment. Right. And in fact, even Kennedy, right before he got killed, I think is less less speech that had something to do with that. And that's exactly what he said, he says, This is why the freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment because if you have censorship of the news, by organizations, then you you essentially lose all access to, to knowledge, you know, which is horrible. And so what we have is a modern day burning down of the Library of Alexandria, essentially, because we, you know, we have companies that are controlling the information and completely destroying it. So with that said, and, you know, I mean, when it comes to situations like Ukraine, and United States and Russia and all that stuff, I have to under you have to understand that these are just large, powerful people who target citizens, whether or not it's United States, the United States started wars for no reason. Okay. Like, and they never got sanctioned. You know, NATO joined in on the war. And in fact, I think, even certain countries like France actually had had sanctions against them for not going to war. What a joke is that in then, so you have, you have these countries that essentially have a carte blanche to like, bomb, whoever they feel like. And then when Russia starts doing it, they turn around and they have this international condemnation, which is fine. I mean, Russia shouldn't be going to war that much. I totally, totally agree, I think was disgusting. But, but at the same time, it just strikes me slightly hypocritical, because United States is engaged in so many wars, I think, I don't even think people have an accurate count of how many countries even bombed at this point. So so I don't know what why isn't everybody sanctioning and boycotting American products, and they should really based on their based on their track record. But it's true across all politicians, essentially, the victims of war are always citizens. They're not pilots. They're not, you know, they're not other politicians. They're not heads of the military. Those people stay happily in their multimillion dollar mansions, while other people go and fight their battles, which is essentially how it's always been. And it's sad, you know, but people should learn to lay down their guns, all of them that every single military member, every single cop, they should do, they should just cut the shit and stop taking orders from from tyrants. But since since we can't guarantee that that'll happen, that's why we've tried to strike at the root of things. So one of the things that I've always identified as the root of the problem is deception. And that's this is what got me excited about Bitcoin, specifically. Okay, so when I realized that because Bitcoin is electronic, an electronic account, which you can do pretty much anything with, unlike a bank, would they have their own rules? I was like, Oh, wow, with Bitcoin, you know, you could make a joint account. And with that, you can make a contract which can't be broken. So what I realized is, is that both parties essentially, make a promise. Like, I promise you, I'm going to do something because these pay you for goods or services, you promised you're going to deliver the goods or services. What happens if both of us put our money in a joint account, and we time that joint account to blow itself up? Nice. That might sound crazy, like why would you blow up money, but it's the equivalent of mean you putting our money in a safe locking the safe I have a key and you have a key and in order to get in? We have to unlock it at the same time. Okay. And then we strap you know, dynamite to it. We walk away and we say okay, we'll be back in a week. You do your part, I do mine and you do your part I pay you. And if either of us are dissatisfied with the deal, we both lose. But I said oh my god, this is the first time in history we've ever had a chance to make a deal an agreement They can be enforced without law. And that was astonishing to me. I was like, oh my, this is so important because now there's a non violent resolution to a contract, you see them saying, All modern contracts are essentially resolved violently. And what I mean by that is, behind every law, whether or not it be a parking ticket, or a walking doesn't matter, or whatever, it's actually enforced violently. Because if you don't pay that ticket, well, maybe they'll put a lien on something, or whatever. And then that lien leads to, if you don't get off your property, then they will actually attempt to take it by force. And if you don't accept the fact that they're going to take it by force, they will shoot you. It's the same thing. If you're, if you're caught, you know, not stopping at a stop sign cop pulls you over, you can't just drive away, okay, because he'll shoot you, you know, so, so actually, all laws are enforced through violence. And we need to be in a society that doesn't enforce law through violence. So essentially, this was a way to have it enforced by the money itself, which allows two people to barter and most importantly, that it's not enforced by an escrow agent. Because most deals in society are enforced by escrow agents, for example, judges lawyers, or just you know, real estate escrow agent doesn't matter, essentially, what they call a non a non biased third party, but there's no such there's literally no such thing. Non biased. Third party doesn't exist, unless it's the heavens or something. Okay, like humans don't have. Most humans do not have the moral capacity to properly judge a situation. And this is seen by our our legal system, which is completely corrupt and wicked, okay, like we see people getting thrown into jail without any evidence whatsoever for things that shouldn't even be crimes, victimless crimes. And it's, it's sad, it's, it's awful. It's the worst thing. So So essentially, the point is, and I guess I give another analogy for this, if you had, if you are accused of something you didn't do, okay, let's say you're accused of murder, but she didn't do it. Okay. Would you trust 100? Judges? Would you trust 1000? How big does the jury have to be? Would you trust a jury of 10? When you trust a jury of 20? If you presented your evidence? Probably the answer would be no. Because why would you trust somebody else? If they weren't there? You know, what, if you were framed? What if the evidence actually doesn't look good for you? But it's actually false? You know, so? Or what if the juries just a bunch of fools? I mean, why would you? Why would you put your fate in the hands of others, especially when the common person that they put on on a jury typically is supposed to be uneducated of the law, actually, and they'll handpick them to be so. So, you know, it's, it's outrageous. And I found the solution, essentially, to a big, big problem in society that had never been proposed before. So that's what caused me to develop bit Halo, which is what I am known for. And probably one of the main reasons people would recognize me on this podcast. Essentially, that was the first contracting platform ever made for Bitcoin. So to answer your question, I got involved into programming because of that. And from there I was. From there, I was all self taught. So from when I was in North Dakota, it took me about, I was very motivated, because I was already doing long hours. So I did about, I would say, the same thing was working almost 100 hour weeks, I was probably working 16 to 18 hours a day, I'd roll out of bed, I try to figure out how to code because I really didn't know how to code well enough yet. So I had to go learn Python. And instead of doing any practice programs, I just went straight and tried to make this program, you know, so at the same time as learning Python, I had to learn cryptography, I had to learn Bitcoin, I had to learn how to work with the transactions, and Bitcoins, very much like old school accounting, working with dollars, it's not like you just add 10 to your account, and then magically, you get 10. Bitcoins not like that, you got to work with each transaction as if it was, you know, digital cash, and work with digital signatures and stuff like that. So it was a lot, it was a lot of learning. And I had to figure out how to do that all on my own, and there wasn't much support material at the time, because the early days of Bitcoin. So that was about maybe 2013. So there wasn't that many resources online and just with enough effort, you know, after about three, four months actually banged up the whole prototype myself. Interestingly enough, the reason why I actually had to do the coding myself and I couldn't pay anybody but aside from the fact that would be expensive. Was I always found to have trouble with outsourcers, specifically programmers. I mean, they they pad their hours, they they lag on their schedules, you know, the you have to kind of trust them almost blindly. I mean, if you think it's hard to find a good mechanic, or a good or a good doctor, good luck finding a good programmer, it's even worse. Okay. So so so to find really good and skilled people for that that'll work, especially within your you know, budget was impossible and that's why My mom told me she said I was asking about I said, I don't know who I could find for this. She says, Well, why don't you just do it yourself? And I sat there and I thought about it. And I said, Okay. Interestingly enough, when I did the work, I was actually in North Dakota, negative 50. Below, you know, with the windchill, I was living in a trailer at the time to save money. And so imagine I'm living in a trailer in that in that weather. And I didn't just pick up and go, I had like, maybe nine space heaters, I had one space heater for my waterline because I didn't park right over it, which was a mistake. And then I had three under the skirting, I had three inside I had and I had one small space heater to keep the ammonia on my fridge from freezing, which I didn't even know that was a thing, which was hilarious, because that actually happened like my fridge froze. But that can happen because they put those on the outside of the trailer. So I actually needed a tiny little space heater for that. And and that's in addition to propane. Now granted, I was living quite comfortably with all that, but I just siphon the electricity off of the lot next to me, luckily, they were giving they were comping us on electricity, which they stopped doing later. But yeah, so I mean, it was brutal. And I had to do all that work was actually so hard, that end up losing some weight, and I had neglected my health. And I realized, oh, I have to I have to, I have to nurse myself back to health. And so I I called my parents and went out and visited them. And I said, Hey, you know, you got to cook for me for like a month and, and I just did whatever I had to put weight on at that point. I just grabbed some ensure whatever and had a bunch of Michael Hingson  36:33 them. So put on my way. So one of the things that comes one of the things that comes to mind is what motivated you to do so much self teaching of yourself. What? What was that that instilled that in you? Because clearly, you're a very curious person. I think you've alluded to some of it, but you're a very curious person. And you are not at all afraid to teach yourself and try things. How did you really get that way? Exactly? Was that from the chess? Or where is that from? David Zimbeck  37:01 Um, yes, it's a good question. I guess it was it. I mean, some of that has to obviously come directly from somebody's soul. They just have to be somebody who, who seeks, you know, who seeks who seeks knowledge who seeks who seeks truth, obviously, that's part of it, then the second part is going to be like, when you seek truth, you're going to question some of the things that you're taught, like, if the school is telling you something, you don't necessarily want to accept it blindly. You know, a student, a student would be in a class, I really can't stand how modern schools are run, for example, kids will just sit in a chair for eight hours a day listening to his teacher just literally lecture to them. And they essentially accept everything at face value, including including the sciences, which is a huge mistake. Because technically, science, the root of science is actually in replication. See, science isn't supposed to be a dictate or a mandate. Science isn't support. We're currently living under a scientific dictatorship, actually, it's totally autocratic and bad. It's no better than that, you know, people are always getting angry about old religious fanaticism when when we lived under religious fanatics, but actually, ironically, Science, Science, Science can become a fanatical cult as well, because especially because people don't actually check it. So we are under this illusion that people check all of our science properly. And in my research, because I wanted to make the world better, I ended up realizing that a lot of that's actually not the case. Most of our sciences is is horribly flawed, in fact, kind of crazy, to be honest. When people believe in you know, relativity, which is essentially time travel, they believe in you no matter bending space, how do you bend space? It's like nothing, there's nothing there. How do you bend it? So I mean, there's people don't even ask, like, fundamental questions. And so when I started to do that I started ended up really cherishing the ability to do research. And, and that's kind of how I got in, I got involved into self teaching, which is I realized, that was actually old adages to this even, even in, you know, for example, in the Bible, they'll say, you know, Prove all things, but it wasn't all it was on all the religions, people understood that in order to properly understand a concept, you have to be able to repeat it. And science is not really effective, unless I can sit down with tools, you know, and check the information, you know what I mean? So, so I think when you have that amount of rigor in your approach to anything, anything, let it be business, you know, of course, a scientific field, could even be programming. Essentially, you have to learn to do it yourself. And if you don't learn to do it yourself, you're gonna rely on somebody else to do it for you. And that's even more dangerous in programming where you're working with other people's money. Like, do I really want to be responsible for other people losing money because somebody that I hired didn't do the job properly? I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's a nightmare. If I don't have the ability to audit my own code, then it's good for nothing. I mean, how How am I gonna be able to put so much of other people's money on the line when you're dealing with financial systems? And that's a huge difference from when you're working in Bitcoin versus any other field. Because, yeah, granted, you're working in another field, like you're, you're flipping burgers, you screw up, okay, nobody's life's on the line, okay, you just, you know, you fix it and you move on. But that's not the case with financial systems with financial systems, if you screw up, you could be looking at people losing millions, if not hundreds of millions, in fact, billions, which has happened many times in the Bitcoin industry, because of absolute negligence, has to do with lack of auditing, lack of self teaching, lack of rigor, lack of discipline to a field, which is actually scientific, people don't see the cryptography industry as a scientific field, because they assume that programs just work, they just assume apps just work you get in the car, and it just goes, but that's not the case, the amount of work that goes into making the cargo that making the app work, in fact, is that requires quite a bit of ingenuity. And there's no end to which a person can self teach, which also would bring us back to humility. Because if you, if you want to be able to actually excel in anything, you have to you have to have that because a lot of the times you're gonna have to take all the notions that you have, tear them down, throw them out, and try to replace them with something better, regardless of what the modern dogma is, you could like I said, you could have the whole world believing things one way, but it but if they don't properly question it, that's their problem. And if one person comes in and starts to question it, true, they might not get the media attention, they might not get the traction, but they still might be right. And that's the thing. Truth is objective, thank God, because Because Because of that, we have the ability to check for ourselves. And so self teaching is absolutely critical. And I think that if anything was to be taught in schools, that should be the first thing, which is teaching children how to research, teaching them how to question teaching them how to be skeptics, and, and, you know, teaching, of course, I think some some some strong spiritual concepts about about how to how to truly care about truth and how to pursue it. Michael Hingson  41:59 So that gets back to something that we have a couple of things that you talked about in comments that you made that I want to want to go back to one, let's talk about science a little bit, you're right, about being able to replicate. So Einstein created the theory of relativity, general and, and specific relativity. But again, I think that with people like him with people who've created scientific theories, they're trying to create explanations for what they see. And they have created theories that explain observations that they've seen, you said, relativity is about time travel well, relativity is more about the speed of light, if it is a constant, which the theory currently says that it is. But it's also about what information you get as you are traveling less than the speed of light, and what happens to you when you travel faster than the speed of light. We also know physicists also will tell you that the expectation is at some time, there will be a theory that will come along that will explain more of what we understand today. It's like classical mechanics moved into quantum mechanics and relativity, which will go into something else. But I think that people are trying to find explanations for the observations that they make. Well, and unfortunately, some of it they can't replicate, you know, because they can only see what they can see. But anyway, go ahead. Well, so. David Zimbeck  43:33 So yeah, this is, if you don't know, I mean, this is a real can of worms. It is a subject and it may be outside of the scope of this podcast, but I'd be happy, I'd be happy to talk about it. Essentially, it's amazing how many assumptions are made in terms of of our scientific rigor in regards to these fields are purely theoretical. Relatively, relativity is not, relativity is not a proven concept at all. Neither is quantum mechanics. They're they're very theoretical. And in fact, I would argue that there are three even potentially lies even malicious ones. And I can explain a little bit as to why. So first of all, quantum mechanics was developed in response to things like the double slit experiment, which essentially debunked the idea of, for example, the electron molecule, because previous beliefs about physics, especially with chemistry, was to consider that like things like light was actually the behavior of a gas or a fluid, which they called the ether. So they felt that how do you have a wave without resistance, you know, you can't you can't have a wave without resistance waves happen because there's, there's there's pressure and pressures trying to equalize. Essentially, if you have a glass of water, you stir it, you get a wave, but how do you have a wave or an oscillating wave of light without it moving through any medium and they constantly abstract these things and they create these Really bizarre abstractions of the mind as if, as if light and gravity are just all in this other world that doesn't exist in our main physical world, but I hate to break it to them. stuff is stuff, you can't have energy without it being something, it's got to be something. So there, Michael Hingson  45:15 which is back to the comment, aspect, right, which gets back to the comment that. And I'm appreciate what you say. But which gets back to the whole point of they're, they're not explaining everything yet. And there is there's a lot more that we don't understand. David Zimbeck  45:36 I'm arguing that it actually is explainable. It's very explainable, and it's actually something can be properly physically modeled. And in fact, we had scientists before a current scientists that already had very good models for this. Not Not perfect, but good. For example, okay, so Tesla Heaviside, Maxwell, doesn't matter who you bring up any of these major scientists, pre you know, Einsteinian stuff, they actually all believed in the ether. So they believe that light was the movement of fluid, which would mean that they did not believe in atomic theory. Okay, so the major flaw in atomic theory is not so much with the proton, the model of a proton, which is fine, you know, you could argue protons, a shell that could fill and release fluid or something along these lines. But an electron, you see, the issue was having one electron for each protons. So they essentially say that the atom is essentially empty, it's completely empty space. And then there's just a single electron that that model should have gone, gone away. Tesla couldn't stand it. He thought it was crazy. He thought it was like, what you call it, you know, the emperor has no clothes. You ever heard that story? Yeah, so there. Yeah. So I mean, kind of like the emperor has no clothes. Essentially, there's all these people believing in these strange theories is actually completely complete nonsense. The idea is, is that how could it how can how can an atom be truly empty, you have the movement of matter, okay. And so you have to have the most subtle matter. So essentially, when you have the movement of electrons, you know, that should be cool. You know, atoms shouldn't be empty, they should be mostly full. And that would better describe like, for example, light behaves like a wave, it doesn't behave like a particle, okay? It never did. And in fact, when you had things like the double slit experiment, it proved that light was a wave, unequivocally completely proved that light is a wave, this debate should have been over. But what happened was, and this has to do with introspection, our modern scientists had so much arrogance, that they couldn't admit that perhaps the model of the electric of the electron and the Taunton, atomic theory was wrong. Because they couldn't admit it, they decided to create whatever math they could, it didn't matter if the electron had to travel through time, like Fineman proposed, it didn't matter if the electrons bumping into possible versions of itself and creating wave like patterns through different timelines. I mean, these people are crazy, they'll do anything to justify the theory of the electron to make it seem like a wave without it being a wave. But if you want it to be a wave, I have a better idea. Next, the idea of the electron and just say that the atom is full, it's filled, it's filled with fluid of subtle, subtle, subtle fluids moving in and out of it, it's just the changing of pressure and stuff like that. And you essentially you get, get a much a much better model for for our modern physics than then what we what we used to have, are what we have currently, sorry, I'm saying what we had prior to this was actually a better model. And in fact, if we had applied it, even today to modern computer models, I think we would find it to be much, much better. I think it explained our physics better, I think it explained our chemistry better. And, yeah, and so so essentially, it's just a misunderstanding of the behavior of solids, liquids and gases, and to the dismissal of the fact that they can be much, much more subtle. And, you know, then the hard then the hard matter, like, you know, the protons, new elements and stuff like that. And essentially, underestimating the fact that, you know, that we have we had it, we had a model, we had an answer for it, we believe that these things will wave because they remember the movement of mediums, they were the movement of fluids, you know, that when you see light, you're essentially looking at the movement of a gaseous kind of fluid almost, because when the when the flu is disturbed, just like, you know, the waves in the ocean, you know, a wave pattern is generated, because there's collision, and there's competing for pore space and pressure. And so then when you have collision, then you have, you know, a wave pattern. And when you have a wave pattern, you know, you can interpret it and all this other stuff. So it makes perfect sense. It fits within our physics, but the modern physics actually, they they literally say that, like light will come from nowhere, the electron produces the light, and then it just vanishes like, like, they just make things up the quantum theories, and I don't and I'll probably get some flack for saying all this. But essentially, the quantum theories rely on things like time travel, but you got to also have to look at it like this, like time travel or adding any type of you know, as you're, for example, as your speed increases, you, you approach the speed of light, you know, then all of a sudden time slows down which is which is just a real sad theory, in my opinion, because what it's basically essentially saying As mathematically, it's saying something mathematically, it's saying, If my experiments don't match the results, then I will travel backwards in time, and I will fix them. Essentially, it's, it's the equivalent of wanting to travel back in time and go ahead and fix errors in your in your results. But you see, science is not about taking theories and trying to force everything into your theory. Science is about measurement. And that's it. You look out, you measure, you report, you measure, you report, you don't start inventing ideas about time travel, just because you know, a certain a certain experiment doesn't quite fit quite fit your model, there's always a very logical explanation as to why these things are the way they are. One easy one would just be that light's not a constant. David Zimbeck  50:45 In light isn't really a constant anyway, because the medium in which in which you see light, if it was dependent upon the movement of a gas, or a fluid, in like the ether than in the in the medium in which you would see it, you know, that would make sense that it would change depending on what it passes through. For example, when you have light passing through water, okay, it slows down because there's increased refraction, when you have light passing through a gas, it may be different, actually, light light doesn't factor very in speed quite a bit based on the medium that is passing through, because it's a misunderstanding, when you look at light that they think light is the movement of photons, when actually lights just simply could be just the medium of a of a gaseous kind of, you know, body kind of like the ether, there was a belief that the ether was actually debunked, but actually, that was false, because there's like I think was a, there was a Mickelson Morley experiment. And there was also the segment, Segment experiment, I believe that the one one of them caused a lot more problems for them than the other, because one of them was just looking for ether drag. But the other one was looking for actually, just in general, this the idea that the ether was there, and I think they had more, don't quote me on this, you might have to double check, but I think it was the sag neck experiments caused them as so many problems. So you can see, even when you look it up all the patch work that they had to do. And then of course, they had to invoke relativity, again, I think in order to deal with these problems, because they couldn't they couldn't fit it into their model, because their model is that week. But ironically, the simpler model is, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go so far down this, but it's such an interesting topic. Because no, no about it. But But this model essentially is the movement is basically the behavior of fluid dynamics, which is something we already understand. It makes sense. We can apply it, we can model it, we can use it in computers, we don't have to go with all these fantastical quantum mechanics, you know, type theories. And this is just an example of kind of some of the stuff. You Michael Hingson  52:38 know, let me ask you another question that really, let me ask you another question that I'm really curious about, you made the comment earlier. And I think that there's probably some some merit to it that a lot of people don't grow up or are very moral, and we don't have the moralities, and so on that we really ought to have. If I understood your right, my question is, how do we teach that? How do we get people back into a moral or more ethical and a moral compass kind of a track? David Zimbeck  53:09 Well, you know, they always say a good teacher is a good student. Right. And I mean, I think that once one's parents, and schools and institutions, and people start to understand how far they fallen, I think that'll be a very important moment of redemption, because then they'll realize that things are getting out of hand, which they are already. I mean, we can see all over the world, things are really out of hand, and they've been so for a while, but seems that each generation, it seems to get worse. We've mentioned earlier, you know, about laws, you know, I told you were how we have, you know, millions of potentially millions of laws. But that can't possibly be right, because that can't follow a moral compass. How can you expect somebody to be to be beholden to a million laws? You know, how does even a person know what all the laws actually are? In fact, quite frequently, the judge doesn't even know what the law is. The lawyers have to go to school for 10 years or higher, five, 510 years to just figure out what the law is, heck, even my real estate, when I had to study for my real estate license, I had like 10 books, you know, which were super thick, like four or 500 pages each just to teach me the law. I mean, this is this is crazy, in my opinion, because the truth of the matter is, is actually morality is quite simple. And, you know, you know, you don't kill you don't cheat, right? You don't, you don't lie to people. You don't, you don't do so you don't force anybody to do anything. You know, you don't force them to do your do your bidding. I mean, how hard is it? I mean, there's not that I mean, there's not that many things. Interestingly enough, lying is one of the least criminalized laws. What concepts excuse me, it's criminalized when there's financial loss sometimes, but tends to be a slap on the wrist. When you have large scale fraud in the banking system and stuff that costs people billions of dollars, you don't see the heads of case or Goldman Sachs going to jail, they pay a fine and they move on. If you see pharmaceutical companies, knowingly giving people things that are going to kill them, like drugs that should have been recalled or whatever, you don't see them going to jail, they get a slap on the wrist and then move on. And in fact, they lobby for legal immunity. So this just goes to show you how nonsensical the law is and how immoral the law actually is. And actually, I find that each year, the law moves further and further away from morality becoming completely immoral to where morality ends up being. Breaking the law actually, there's there's a there's a thing that says, when freedom is outlawed, when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free. So it's it's interesting to look at it from that perspective. And of course, I'm what I'm arguing is not to do anything bad. Actually, ironically, I'm arguing to do things that are good. But that's the thing, like just because something is legal. In fact, it could mean that it's actually a bad thing. You know, like there's a lot of legalized forms of atrocities, for example, like I told you the immunities that some of the drug companies get for things that for things that they do to people, knowingly, by the way, so, you know, so yeah, so I mean, I think when you look at it from that perspective, personally, I'm a minimalist, I think that the amount of laws that a government society should have should fit on a few sheets of paper, you know, like, if I can read the law in a single evening, then I, it's probably acceptable. But if it takes me 10 years of schooling, to figure out what the law is, then I think there's a big problem with the law. And I think it has a big problem with the way in which children are taught and raised. And I think that they should be taught to understand basically, the root concepts of what morality actually is all about. Michael Hingson

Paul here is predating Newtonian and Einsteinian thinking. Newtonian: I'm hard pressed, suffering, and agonizing for you because I want you to realize just how important this message is. Einsteinian: This message is important because only in Christ is true hope, life, salvation, knowledge, and wisdom. OK...I realize this may not be the best analogy for understanding this passage. But it is good to know both: the message of Jesus is of vital importance because he is the only source of life, hope, wisdom, knowledge, and salvation.

Why We Make Music, Part 3: Peter and Susannah speak with Esther Maria Magnis about her recent Plough release With or Without Me, a memoir of her father's death from cancer and her own loss and gain of Christian faith. How can a shattered faith be rebuilt after tragedy? Then, they have a wide-ranging conversation with Sperello di Serego Alighieri, Dante's descendant, about his book on his ancestor's cosmology, The Sun and the Other Stars of Dante Alighieri: A Cosmographic Journey through the Divina Commedia. They also discuss the various dramas of Dr. Alighieri's Dantean year, the 700th anniversary of his ancestor's death, including a playful relitigation of his ancestor's banishment trial. Then, they go full galaxy brain: How did Dante's ideas look forward to contemporary post-Einsteinian concepts about the shape of the universe? Read the transcript. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 98 This episode was originally recorded in early November and was set to be released at the end of December, but here we are at the end of January instead because time is a funny thing, isn't it? The moment you think you have a firm grasp on "now", it slips through your fingers. That's true both in terms of scheduling podcasts during the holidays and also understanding time from a relativistic perspective. Time might feel like it is moving at the same rate for everyone, but Einstein's theories (and later experimentation) prove otherwise. So without a universally agreed upon "now", how can we say anything true about a God who interacts within time? What good is repentance when the past and future are equally real? What about prophecy? Jesus' birth? Are we all destined for deism? Well, let's take some time to understand how relativity works first, and then we'll get to those (and many more) questions.  Spoiler alert, we're going to talk about this one again in a special episode next time too because it's too much fun!    Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast   More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/   produced by Zack Jackson music by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis    Transcript  This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors. Zack Jackson 00:05 You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are   Kendra Holt-Moore 00:14 Kendra Holt-Moore, assistant professor of religion at Bethany college. And the thing I'm looking forward to in the next year is not being a first time first year Professor anymore, because the first year of teaching is really hard.   Rachael Jackson 00:34 Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina. And the thing I am looking forward to in this coming year, is first a nine week sabbatical and the ability to travel because of vaccines.   Ian Binns 00:56 Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte, the first thing that popped my mind when thinking about what I'm looking forward to is going to see Rob Bell speak in Dallas, with my good buddy mark. February in February,   Zack Jackson 01:14 Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Redding, Pennsylvania, and I am super excited for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which I don't want to, I don't want to say that it's going to happen in a couple of days, because this episode is supposed to launch like three days before it's supposed to launch. Because I don't know, it was originally supposed to launch in 2007. So it's had a couple of delays. But it's going to make the Hubble look like a like a pair of binoculars, it is going to be able to show all kinds of super exciting things from the very beginning of the universe. And I cannot wait to see that. So I mentioned James Webb as well, because I think satellites are super cool, in general. And so I want to I want to start today with a story about a satellite, a very famous satellite, you may have heard of it. Its name was Sputnik. It was the very first human satellite we ever put up there. And back way back in 1957, the Soviets kind of surprised everyone and was like, hey, look, we've got the technology. And we did it. And everyone in the world kind of freaked out because they weren't sure if there was going to be nukes or anything like that, and alien technology or whatever. And because they it had never been done before. They had to prove to people that it actually was happening. And not that they were just making the whole thing up. And so they equipped Sputnik with a radio pulse. So it would go around the earth and be like me, beep, beep, beep, beep, so anyone on Earth could listen in and be like, Oh, look at that. It is up there. It's beeping at me. That's really neat. And so at the at Johns Hopkins, couple days later, October 7 1957, a couple of junior physicists were sitting around at lunch talking. And these two guys, these buddies, William Guyer, and George weissenbach, they were just talking with their friends. And we're really surprised to learn that no one at Johns Hopkins had bothered to listen for it, using their radio technology. Like, honestly, that seems like something that divino fancy scientists people should do. So wife and Bach was working on microwave radiation for his Ph. D. Program at the time. And so he had a decent radio in his office. And so the two of them went upstairs and just start messing around with it, waiting for Sputnik to crossover. And there was Beep, beep, beep, beep. And they had the clarity of mind to be like, hey, this seems like it might be a historical event, we should grab a cassette tape. And we should take this thing, just, you know, so we can show our kids, this is what Sputnik sounded like. And so they did, and they recorded it. And then the next day, they were like, I wonder if we can we can get this a little clearer. And so they they messed with the frequencies and got it so they could hear it really clearly. And one of the things that they noticed was that just like, you know, when you're when you're standing on the side of the street and a car is coming, and it goes and it kind of like the sound goes up and then it goes down. That's called the Doppler effect. That has to do with things that are emitting sound or light that is also moving in relationship to you. And so like if it's moving towards you, the sound waves or the the waves of light, they get compressed, because it's moving towards you. If it's moving away from you, they get spread out. So the sound would sound higher or lower as it's going. Same is true with like radio waves. So the sound coming from the radio waves, if you looked at it from like, the, the wave perspective was kind of doing b, b be, though wouldn't made that sound. And so they were like, Oh, this is really interesting, hey, Johns Hopkins, can we use your supercomputer for a minute, which I say supercomputer, it probably has had the computing power of like a ti 83. Now, it was one of the very first digital computers in the world. And so they used it to do some really complicated math. And were able to calculate Sputnik's orbit, and their look at its location, and where it was going. And were able to predict when and where it would come back, using just the what we call the Doppler shift of the the width of the radio waves. And that was kind of a novel thing to do. When they released their information. The Russians were like, what, come on, guys, we have this one thing, and you had to go and top US that was so rude. I think that's what the Soviet said, I don't speak Russian. So that was fun. And then Sputnik burned out. And that was no more. But then the next May, their boss came to them, and called called them into his office, which is always a good thing and said, Hey, remember that thing you did was Sputnik? Do you think it's possible to do that backwards? Could you do that in reverse? Like, if we had satellites, where we knew where they were, at the time in orbit, sending a pulse down to earth? Would you be able to calculate where the receiver is, if we knew where the satellites were? And they were like, well, I guess the math is kind of the same, it's just backwards. And thus, the transit system was born, the very first satellite navigation system, because the Navy had this problem where they had these nuclear submarines that had the nuke nuclear missiles on them in the Arctic, which is waiting to blow up Russia. But the, they were supposed to be secret. And so they couldn't use the traditional means of navigation because they didn't want to give away their location. And so they kind of were getting lost up there in the Arctic. And so the, the Air Force sent up an array of five satellites orbiting the Arctic, and every couple of hours, it would pass overhead. And then they could get a ping on their location. And they could correct their maps, and they would know where they were. And that was great. And that was wonderful. And then we thought, I wonder what else we can use this technology for? And so the global positioning satellite system started to get dreamed up together, like, what if we took that, and we made a whole array of satellites, up in orbit, all sending pings down to earth, and we could triangulate, given the pings and the locations of a couple of them, and be able to tell where all kinds of things are airplanes. And, and, and, and like troops. And this is the military, they're always thinking about war stuff. And so what they would need to have a real time local navigation system was that the clocks on Earth would need to be synced with the clocks in the satellite. That would be real important if we're going to do real time navigation. So they have these really, really accurate atomic clocks, that one is in on Earth, and one is in orbit. And that was great. Except for one problem. There was this guy, you may have heard of him. He's kind of a big deal name is Albert Einstein. And about 60 years beforehand, he had proposed this crazy thing called general relativity, after his theory of special relativity, which suggested that Isaac Newton's laws, which had worked very well, by the way for the past, like 300 years, which were the laws, which helped them to get the satellites in orbit in the first place, it didn't work so well, when you were talking about the effects of gravity. So in a larger level, Newton's Laws kind of stop working, in particular, his theory of time, and the way that time moves, see a part of relativity stated that one's relationship to gravity affected the passage of time, which was a very counterintuitive thing, and at the time in 70s When this was getting put up, there were still testing. It seemed like it was passing all the tests general relativity was, was passing all of these tests. But they still weren't entirely convinced. And some of the scientists on this GPS project thought that we were going to disprove Einstein. And so we should just put the clocks up there, up there in the satellites, and the other scientists were like, no, if we put the clocks up there as they are, and not adjust them in any way for relativity, then they're going to be out of sync. And so they couldn't agree internally. And these satellites are very expensive. And back in the 70s, it was very, very expensive to send the satellite into space, it's still very expensive, but it was much more back then. And so they had, they kind of did this interesting trick. A sort of cheat, if you will, to appease both sides, and to be able to tell once and for all, if time actually does move differently, the further you get from Earth, in that they sent it up with just normal atomic clock. But they also had a sort of switch, where they could flip that switch, and then there was a little computer inside that would then adjust the time on the clock to then send back the corrected time to Earth. So they sent it up. And they let it be up there for about 20 days going around and discovered that yeah, it shifted the time in orbit past differently than the time on Earth. Seven microseconds per day, which I don't know, a microsecond doesn't seem like a whole lot of time. So seven microseconds per day of drift. But in terms of GPS, that's a drift of 10 kilometers per day, if not corrected. So one day of the satellites being up there, and they're useless. Because time travels, passes differently in orbit than it does on Earth. Yeah,   Rachael Jackson 12:14 so incredible. Like, yeah, that's subjective,   Zack Jackson 12:17 like you said, not just a fun theory,   Ian Binns 12:20 the seven microseconds thing, when you first say that, I'm just gonna like, oh, wow, what did he do? But the ramifications for those of us on the ground? That's just wow, like, I did not know that. That's crazy.   Zack Jackson 12:36 Yeah, the, the closer you are, so that, it's because there's less gravity less of Earth's gravity, the farther you get from the center of Earth. And so time, time will pass faster. On in orbit, the closer you get to the gravitational well, the slower time will pass. But because these things are relative to where they're being observed, I always get that backwards as to if you were on the earth, looking at the satellite, versus if you were on the satellite looking at the Earth, actually, relative to the Earth's age, you know, a couple billion years old, Earth's core is actually two and a half years younger than its surface. For what it's worth, you go. So now every single satellite that's in orbit, every single computer every single time, a piece that is up in orbit, and every all of the robots on Mars and the satellites flying out into deep space, all of that has to compensate for the fact that gravity affects time. That time passes differently for different people, for different observers in different places in different gravity wells. Depending on one's mass on one's gravity on one's velocity, time will pass differently. So GPS only works because time is weird. So in a manner of speaking, Albert Einstein is the father of Pokemon GO and so for that we give thanks   Kendra Holt-Moore 14:27 what a storyteller you are Zack to be able to craft to craft a narrative that leads to a conclusion.   Ian Binns 14:35 And to me, I love it, you know, so that we all roads   Zack Jackson 14:38 lead to Pokemon, right? That's but that's a lot to take in. And there's a lot of moving pieces to that and there's a lot of confusing counter intuitive things about how relativity bends space and time and what are the implications of the fact that there is not a solid steady passage of time. Which means there is no preferred present moment that the past and the future in the present are all on a spectrum instead of one, instead of us always being in the present and the past in the future being always somewhere else, the implications of that, and even understanding how that happens and why that happens. And all of that is a lot to unpack. So let's take a 15 second break, and take a breath. And be thankful that we can time 15 seconds unless you're on a spaceship, going half the speed of light, and then this could take a lot more than 50. All right, I want to tell you a quick thought experiment, that I'm adapting from one of Einstein's thought experiments, because I find any time we talk about things happening on trains, and lasers and things like that, in thought experiments to be hard to, to wrap my mind around. So I want to imagine for a second that we have a basketball robot. And basketball bot is an awesome robot, and he's predictable. And the things he does happen very predictably, he's got a hand that reaches out, it's one meter above the ground, it can bounce a basketball in one second. And it's steady and repeatable. You know, bum, bum, bum, bum, he's basketball bot, he's a robot, it's, it's easy to do. So you're watching basketball bot, as he's bouncing the ball in the airport. And, you know, one second, one second, one second, one meter, one meter, one meter, one meter, one meter, one meter, and then you and a basketball bot, because you're going to baggage claim, you walk on to the, to the moving sidewalk. And so you're standing there next to basketball bot, who is still bouncing the basketball because he's programmed to bounce the basketball. And he's still going one meter down, one meter up, one meter down one meter up in one second. And that hasn't changed for you. But the person standing on the side watching this strange basketball bot, bounce a basketball in the airport, on the people walk thing is not seeing the basketball goes straight down and straight up. Because we've added a velocity in another direction. So if that is moving sufficiently fast, while he's bouncing straight up and down, with a person on the side is seeing is really it bouncing in an angle, and then bouncing up in an angle, because of the way that they're seeing. And so in classic physics, that's not a problem, the old heads of physics, they were talking about the same thing, that just means you have now added velocity in a separate direction. And so now there's more speed to be had. Right? Speed is just distance divided by time. So you know, we're just adding a bit more distance if you're moving sideways, as well. So it's speeding up. According to the person on the outside, which is fine. Basketball can go faster, because it can write, there's no limit to the speed of basketballs. So basketball bot is not a problem. He's a great guy, now, laser basketball man, robot guy who is doing the same thing, except instead of bouncing a basketball, he is bouncing a photon, up and down, up and down, one meter up and down, up and down. You're standing next to him, that photon is moving at the speed of light, because that's what they do, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, bouncing off a mirror coming back up to his hand. And that's fine. So then he goes on the people walk, moving sidewalk thing, and a person on the outside now sees if it's moving sufficiently fast, it not going straight up and down, but following the same vector that bounces sideways and up, which means that it would have to have accelerated in one direction. But we know that the speed of light is a constant, and you can't go faster than the speed of light. So how is it then that to the person on the outside, it appears that it has moved faster than the speed of light, magic. Speed is just distance divided by time. And the speed has to be constant. That means that time then has to change. If all the mathematics are going to work out, fine. Then if distance changes, so does time. And so when we're talking about things that obey the speed of light, like a photon that can't go faster than time then starts to get wibbly wobbly. So that's the that's the insight that comes from special relativity is that Newtonian physics works really well, from the perspective of your everyday life. Right? Bouncing a basketball, Newtonian physics works great. But when you break it down to things that either are massive, like planets, or that move incredibly fast, like light, then it starts to break down and relativity takes over. And so we start to extrapolate outward from that, and finding out that time doesn't move the same for everyone, time is dependent on your frame of reference on your velocity on your mass on your, on your gravitational pull. And so for most of us, that's not going to matter. Most of us are going to live our whole lives in roughly the same gravity, well, at roughly the same velocity, we're not going to be traveling near the speed of light, we're not going to have to worry about this. Right? So why even talk about it?   Kendra Holt-Moore 21:10 Why even talk about it?   Ian Binns 21:13 Because it's really fun. I mean, there's more reasons than that, obviously, but I've always found this stuff just quite fascinating. Blows my brain just   Zack Jackson 21:23 gonna end the episode right there. Just no reason to talk about it's not gonna affect us show.   Rachael Jackson 21:32 Let's move on with our day.   Zack Jackson 21:34 But it does kind of bust the whole way we think about past present future, doesn't it that, that there is this constant flow of time from past to future, that past is gone. It's just a memory. The present is where we live, and the future is what's coming, hasn't happened yet. And like, that way of thinking, permeates all of our religious tradition, the way we think about God, the way we think about God's interaction with humanity is all based in this there was the past, it calls the present. And now the present will influence the future, especially in Christianity, because we are an eschatological religion, which is fancy theological ways of saying we are a religion of the end, we have people who are looking forward to the end to the redemption of all to the sort of an end goal of things being made, right? That only works if there is a progression of time. How do you save something if the end and the beginning and the middle are all the same? How does God interact in time? Do we believe that God is time less? And if God is outside of the flow of time, as we experience it, then which one is God's preferred time God's preferred now? Like there's some beautiful theologies like process theology, which believes with which teaches that God and creation are intrinsically intertwined, and that God is growing and changing and moving with creation. And I love that, and that God doesn't know the future, and God is moving along with us. But it doesn't work. When you realize that there is no preferred present moment, and everything breaks down on the macro level. You don't for example, if you and your friend were in in twin spaceships, and you were hanging out near a black hole, and your buddy got a little bit too close, and then got sucked into the event horizon, from your perspective, you could stay there for the rest of your life and watch them slowly fall into the black hole. They would just be falling and falling and falling forever. But from their perspective, in an instant, they would be instantly spaghettified which is the actual technical term for when you get sucked into a black hole and get pulled down atom by atom into single strand of be of existence spaghettified we get a five spaghettified you can quote me on that. That's, that's the science word. Well, so   Ian Binns 24:26 I've always felt like in, you know, when you come to the notion of God, that just seemed limiting to me that we could only think of God as a being that is limited to our notion of time, to the human notion of time, right. Like, I would like to think that there is a God that God is more powerful than that, right? There's not there's not a limiting factor there. If that makes any sense. Yeah. No, like one man literally interpret, you know, the story of great the creation story, or stories and, and Genesis, when they see that, you know, on the first day this happened second day Ebola seventh day God rested. And people like See, look, it happened in one week. I'm kinda like you, like really like you can't you struggle with the notion that it's bigger than that like that God is limited to our personal understanding our own individual understanding of what a week is, and what a day is like that just to me that that kind of puts God into a into a bubble. Right? That's like, the only way I can understand God is by God is in a life like mine. And I would like to think that if God does exist, that God is outside of that mentality, that there's God's not limited in that situation. That's just how I view it.   Zack Jackson 26:01 So then how would a being outside of the flow of time interact within the flow of time?   Ian Binns 26:07 I don't know. You know, when I die, and if there is a God, and I get a chance to meet God, that may be one of my questions. How do you do that? Can you teach me that trick? I mean, I know. But I just I don't know. Yeah, I feel like that's another good thought experiment.   Rachael Jackson 26:28 Man, please. Yeah. One of the ways that we've sort of wrestled with this idea, I shouldn't say we, that I have wrestled with this idea of time, and God. I've heard the idea that is, God is all good, all knowing, all powerful, and all time. That doesn't work for my theology, when I look at the world around me. So it's like, Okay, which of these variables Am I comfortable eliminating? And I was not comfortable with eliminating that God is all good. That that that feels really terrible to think that God is not good. So and I'll spare you all the details of going through that that journey, where I end up for this conversation is that if God is all time, perhaps God is the present, as we know it, that it's, it is in our time, that God is of all times, but we experience time in a linear fashion. And so that's where God exists with us is in our times. And so God has the ability to move through time space continuum. Great. I don't and so I can experience God in this time. And I employ that in one of the prayers that I say where we, we ask for healing. And at the end, I always say, made those in need find healing in a time near to us. I don't if we're praying to God, I want God to know that I don't want this on a god time scale. I would like this on our time scale. So I, I agree with you and that there it seems confining to have God exists in a singular time frame. But I myself do exist in that time frame going back to Zach's point of like, no Newtonian physics, pretty much my life not gonna break out in Newtonian physics, I don't really need to think too much on this. So from a theological standpoint, I say, Okay, God experiences or relativity in a way that I don't. So it's my question then have to wrestle with myself of how do I then have God in my timeline? In my time, so I don't know if that makes any sense. But that's, that's sort of how I answer that question.   Kendra Holt-Moore 29:02 So the way that I think about alternative, like, forms of guard, like the kinds of theologies that I think are really compatible with this, you know, revolution in the understanding of time, it I think that mystical theologies become so much more kind of intriguing, and it you know, it's like, it does. Accepting, like, Einsteinian mechanics of time and you know, mystical theologies. It requires an acceptance of, well, I think most of the time it requires an acceptance of a non theistic version of God, or like a non anthropomorphic version of God. And so what I mean when I say those things is, you know, A version of God that that's not like, made in the image of like human beings are human ish versions of God, you know the God with arms and legs and a face. And that's really hard I think for a lot of people to kind of let go of, especially if, if we're talking about like the monotheism 's of like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I mean, and really like the most of the major world religions that talk about God, there is something that tends to become very like humanoid about God, but that's never like there's always mystical strains of theology in, in religions. And so the, the ones that kind of come to mind that I think are are like some of the first ones that I thought of, and I know if Adam was here, this is probably something that he would bring up too is like Paul Tilex. Image of God as the ground of being. And Tillich kind of uses this phrase ground of being to, to be the stand in for God. And it kind of replaces this very anthropomorphic version of God with a vision of God that is, like a more like a foundation. And it's more like this stable, like, stable yet creative. floor at the bottom of all, all that is. And you know, there's, there's a lot in Tillich in theology and talking just about the ground of being if Adam listens to this and is like, Well, Adam, should have been here   Zack Jackson 32:01 wasn't the Paul Tillich society? At one point?   Kendra Holt-Moore 32:05 Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's true. But you know, that's like, that's your kind of letting go. It's a very, it's a more like, abstract kind of way of thinking about, like, what God is, but I actually, I think my personal favorite, like mystical kind of vision of God actually comes from a mystic named Nicholas of Cusa. And whenever I was, in my master's degree, I took a class called Nicolas of Cuza about this, like mystic theologian, and I remember Reading some of his primary works. And there was a chapter that was all about his, his, like, you know, his, kind of like systematic theology. And but there was a few pages in this one chapter that just had like math in it was like, what is happening? What, why I like circled all the math and wrote in the margins of my textbook, like, Excuse me, like, No, I think I even like wrote out a very dramatic like, no, with multiple exploits, XSplit exclamation, and was just like, This is not what I want to be, like thinking about when I'm trying to like foster a spiritual experience. And, and I have a, you know, a couple years later, after that class, I took a class called science literacy with my doctoral advisor. And in that class, it was like, one of the most fascinating and also difficult classes that I've taken, because it's like a crash course in physics. And like, you know, we talk about special theory of relativity, general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, like all of that, and what are the philosophical and like theological implications of those things. And it was during that class that I had to kind of go back to the theology of Nicholas of Cusa. And look at my margins, in the notes on the pages where there is mass and the universe and God, and then I just like, it made sense to me. I was like, I still, I'm just like, not someone who naturally thinks in a very mathy way, and so I always find that challenging. But there's also like, the only times that I have been able to have been able to, like have an experience of all thinking about math is when I'm thinking about the implication of, like, math on like, I don't know, like, like metaphysics or like the structure of the universe. And so, the point being that Nicolas of Cusa talks about the enfolding and unfolding of, of God or of of the universe, there's, there's this breath metaphor Almost of this enfolding everything kind of collapsing into one unit, one like period, one point. And in that enfolding every, like you and I, and all that is, we are one, it's like a oneness. And then the unfolding is this like, you know, it's the, the exhale or like the other side of the breath it unfolds. And again, we all kind of diverge into particularities and we have our, you know, our specific to kind of tie it back to our conversation wells of gravity, where we exist. But we also keep in folding and unfolding. So there's like this dual experience of like, oneness, and specificity and like divergence. That is just like, I think such a beautiful image of like wholeness, and like, it's like both the duality and oneness that I just think is like such a perfect, like, non theistic kind of theological representation of these like time dynamics that force us to think beyond, you know, Newtonian mechanics. So that's kind of what comes to mind for me.   Zack Jackson 36:42 Well, if you're into sacred mathematics, and mysticism, you would love by Sagaris. They were all about that life, almost worshipping numbers and mathematics, thinking of it as this ticket in small doses. You also if you're a pipe factory, and you can't eat beans, that was that was against their religion to   Kendra Holt-Moore 37:03 work for me. Yeah.   Zack Jackson 37:05 I think he thought that the beans in humans came from the same source. And so it was a bit of cannibalism. Who knows you're that part about   Ian Binns 37:16 Sagaris when I was studying that, but   Zack Jackson 37:18 you mostly just hear about the whole triangle thing, right? You don't hear about the toggery worship numbers.   Ian Binns 37:23 It's been a long time since I took that really cool history science class.   Zack Jackson 37:27 So yeah, it's been a couple 1000 years since the Python, Koreans. But we're at   Ian Binns 37:34 that times all relative, right?   Zack Jackson 37:36 Well, yeah. I mean, how do we think of time typically, we think of it like, like those moving sidewalks at the airport, right? That we're all standing on it. And we're all moving at the same rate, or like a flow of a river, that we're all moving together along the same rate. But we found out that you can kind of move on that river, you can paddle one way or the other, and you can slow down or speed up your position in time in that river. And so it time kind of then acts more like a frozen river with kids ice skating all over it, rather than a group of people on a lazy river in their tubes, all moving at the same speed. So it does, I think this has been my problem to Kandra is that I'm fine with almost all of these weird things in about relativity and time. But it hurts my conception of a real time theistic God like the God that is in the moment with me right now. It makes that harder to stomach harder to conceptualize. You know, if if, if God doesn't have a preferred present moment, then like, Oh, okay. Then.   Kendra Holt-Moore 39:03 Yeah, yeah, implications of that are really like they are really far reaching for for Christianity and, and Judaism in Islam, I think in particular. And it's, you know, I think there are also people who maybe, and I don't know if this like kind of resonates with your experience, maybe not Zack, but people who kind of like if you kind of asked them or forced them to explain their theology, they might they might actually say something that sounds more non theistic. But in their day to day lives, they kind of like re impose a theistic like face on there, like non theistic theology, like it's, it's, it's, you know, again, that's not that's, it's almost like Like, I don't know that this is like the appropriate way to frame it but like a second naivete   Zack Jackson 40:06 almost of like, yes. What we're doing physics   Kendra Holt-Moore 40:09 come to Yeah, like if you're if your theology if it's important to you for the theology and the physics to kind of fit together then maybe that's like what you do. But for like, you know, religious and spiritual community and talking day to day, you still use language that has like familiarity and like personhood, and I don't like this is something that people will argue about, because some people think that's like a disingenuous, and I get that. But I also, I think it's just important for the way that people relate to each other and to other things in the world and to relationships. So I actually find that completely, like understandable and normal.   Zack Jackson 40:57 It's like my day to day theology is Newtonian. But my, if I'm thinking about it, my actual theology is Einsteinian. Right? That right? It makes sense in the day to day to have an eminent theistic God. But it makes sense in the quiet moments where I'm thinking, to think about a, a more universal presence than a theistic imminent God. And I think we do that all the time. With our theologies, we've got, we've got different types of theologies that apply to different situations, the theology that you have when you're suffering is different than the theology you have when you're not. And we just, we all do, and that's fine. Like I don't at like funerals and stuff, people always talk about how that person has gone on. And now they're watching over me and blah, blah, blah. But like, there's no part in the New Testament that talks about that, there that the New Testament teaches that you die, you die, and you go on the ground, and your soul, your spirit, all of that is over. And it's done, until the Second Coming, and the resurrection of the dead. And then everyone comes back together, there is no, like waiting up in heaven, and playing a harp and watching you as you live your life. There is none of that in the New Testament, but we all just pretend like it's there. Because it is comforting to us in the moment, even if we don't really believe that so and so was watching us from afar, we like to believe that it's true. You know, I think we do that practically. And it's okay to admit that as a way of contextualizing our theology in the moment.   Rachael Jackson 42:27 And it's and it can be used as a coping mechanism. Yeah, theology has coping.   Zack Jackson 42:33 So when this episode airs, it's going to be like, I don't know, two weeks from Christmas or so. Which is, I don't know, sort of one of the important parts of of the Christian year. It's like, this moment in Christian theology where just a little, a little bit, a little bit. It's this moment in Christian theology, where it's like, God has been working through people for eons, and moving through the cycles of time, and nations and empires and kings and prophets and priests and individuals. And then, at some point, God says, Alright, kids, you sit down, I'm gonna take care of this for a minute, and comes in and breaks through, and there's this. Countless theologies that have tried to explain how God becomes human. How do we break this barrier between the infinite in the finite this, this this, we call it kenosis, this emptying of divinity in order to become humanity. I mean, there's none of them actually make a whole lot of sense. Logically, there are, which you sort of have to have to get all mystical and non dualistic before anything makes any sense? If you really think about it for too long, in terms of the Incarnation. But it's this breaking through a moment that we celebrate, in which something that is entirely other breaks into time and into history, that which is universal becomes particular, that God has to become a single person in a single time with a single genetic makeup who lives a single life. And there's some, I mean, that's helpful to some extent, to imagine that in our day to day lives, I also wonder then, if we were to draw that outward, if we were to say that time and space are connected, are one in the same. And just like, I believe that San Diego still exists, even though I'm not there. I also believe that three BC exists, even though I'm not there. And so in that way of thinking about time, that the past is not something that is gone, but it's just something that I'm not experienced. In saying that the incarnation the breaking in of God into the world is something that is happening in an infinite present moment in what we would consider 1000s of years ago. And so in all of these places in which God is breaking into time, those are places that are infinitely being broken into time. And you can think then of the final redemption of the world less as something to look forward to, and something that as opposed to something that we're living into something that we're experiencing the ripples of redemption, the way that you would experience gravitational waves of a black hole collisions. But these just musings of ways that I like to try to think about things that I have no real theological grounding, and I'm trying to be careful not to draw those conclusions too far as just rereading a paper I wrote in seminary, I posted it to y'all, it's fine. No one reads, that's 20 pages. And the the, the final conclusion I made was just drawn way too broadly outward, because I got excited about the implications of a God that breaks into time infinitely. And the ripples of redemption that can get flow through time through single redemptive acts, which I don't know if I would draw those points anymore, but they were fun to dwell on back then. So I should say, to wrap things up, we don't actually know why we experienced the flow of time. All of these revelations that come out of relativity are counterintuitive. It doesn't feel like the past and the future are real, it feels like they are ideas. And the present is the only moment we've ever experienced, that's our lived reality. That's the way our brains have formed. And for some reason, the way that we experience the dimension of time, whether that's just a way that our consciousness adapted to be able to function well, or if there is some divine reason that we experience a single moment instead of an entirety of moments. Nobody really has a good explanation. So a lot of this sort of thinking is theoretical, and a lot of it is hard to wrap your head around. And I think it's probably okay to have a an eminent theology that works on the Newtonian level of day to day life, as well as having a sort of what if kind of theology in which you are imagining the implications of something that has implications but are hard to fathom in our everyday life? If that makes sense. Do you think that's okay? Or is that disingenuous? No, I think that's good. If Adam were here, he would argue with me that it would be disingenuous, but again, Adam is not here to defend himself   Ian Binns 48:23 that since so vault.   Zack Jackson 48:27 So I would just like to end this segment by saying that I am right and Adam is wrong, and there is nothing that he can do or say, to correct me. And if he would like to correct me, he will have to do so in a future episode when he leads. So there   Rachael Jackson 48:51 so today's today's day down the wormhole, minute story from the Talmud. This comes from the Babylonian Talmud in Tractate to a neat around page 23. That's in case anyone wants to check my citation or read the entire story. There's a character a person however, you want to understand the people in these texts, whose name is Honi. And there's quite a few stories about him. And so one of the stories that I want to tell you about is the day that Honi slept. And as a tired parent, it just sounds amazing. Story. One day, Connie, the circle maker was traveling along a road and he saw an old man planting a care of tree when he stops and asks him, how long will it take for this Tree to fully bear fruit. And the man replies 70 years. Astonished Honi asks, Do you think you will live another 70 years? There, the man replies calmly. I found care of trees growing when I was born, because my forefathers planted them for me, so I to plant them for my children. Thereupon, Connie sat down to have a meal, and sleep overcame him. As he slept, a rock formation grew around him hiding him from sight, and he slept and he slept. And he slept. He continued to sleep for 70 years. When he woke up, he saw what it look like to be this same man gathering beautiful fruit fully bloomed a fully mature fruit from a Carib tree. Astonished Honi then asks, Are You the man who planted this tree? No. The man replies, I am his grandson. That's when Connie realizes that he has slept for 70 years. Connie goes home and finds that his son has died, but his grandson was still alive. And so he says to the members of his household, I am Honi the circle maker, but they didn't believe him, because it had been 70 years since when he had passed and vise been seen. Since then he left the house and he went to the Beit Midrash the study hall, and he announces, I am Honi the circle maker, but no one believed him and they didn't give him any respect. So Honee an utter despairs, praise for Divine Mercy. And he dies. To this Raava another person of the time says, For this reason people say give me companionship, or give me death. And it is for this reason that we gravitate towards others. That though time might pass we experience it in a linear fashion that it is the people with whom we have connections with it is a way of thinking about the past providing for the future but really living in these moments that make it worthwhile. That is what Honi the circle maker can teach us from his sleep of 70 years.   Zack Jackson 52:52 May we all sleep for 70 years.

L'Oréal and UNESCO For Women in Science award for lithium battery research L'Oréal and UNESCO For Women in Science award for research into nutrient value of reef fish Children's book considers the origin of life Primary students see the big picture with Einsteinian physics New approach for treating strep A throat infection without antibiotics Understanding Machiavellian personalities A Complete Guide to Native Orchids of Australia

L'Oréal and UNESCO For Women in Science award for lithium battery research L'Oréal and UNESCO For Women in Science award for research into nutrient value of reef fish Children's book considers the origin of life Primary students see the big picture with Einsteinian physics New approach for treating strep A throat infection without antibiotics Understanding Machiavellian personalities A Complete Guide to Native Orchids of Australia

Parshat Beha'alotcha - (Numbers 9: 2-13) Join Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz recorded on Clubhouse Friday May 28th 2021 as we uncover the relationship between the Biblical Pesach Sheni (2nd Passover) and the later instituted Shana M'Uberet (Leap year). We hypothesize regarding the theological and social ramifications of correcting an irregular calendar based on a seemingly imperfect planetary system. Source Sheet on Sefaria: www.sefaria.org/sheets/326069 Transcript below: Welcome to Madlik.  My name is Geoffrey Stern and at Madlik we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish Text or Tradition.  We also host a clubhouse every Friday at 4:00pm Eastern time and this week, along with Rabbi Adam Mintz We uncover a relationship between the Biblical Pesach Sheni (2nd Passover) and the shana meuberet, the leap year. We hypothesize regarding the theological and social ramifications of tweaking a calendar created by a seemingly imperfect planetary system.  So join us on a date as we explore the Jewish Calendar and hacking the universe. G Stern [00:00:00] Welcome to Madlik, where every week Friday at four o'clock Eastern, Rabbi Adam Mintz and I, Geoffrey Stern, do a little disruptive Torah learning. And by that I mean we look at subject matters either in a an unorthodox manner, certainly not with a capital O, but in a different manner to get our hearts and minds thinking about Judaism a little bit differently. This week's parsha B'eha'lotcha is in the book of numbers. And the subject that we're going to discuss today is one that those who have listened to the podcast know I love and value so much. And that's the idea of the second Passover "Pesach Sheni". And for the first few minutes, we'll discuss it in very traditional ways. But then we're going to dig a little bit deeper. So let me set the stage. It's literally the Jews are in the desert and it is, I believe, the first time that they will be celebrating the Passover. It's the first or the second anniversary. And the people are instructed to keep the Passover. "b'moado" in it's set time and the verse goes on to say, you shall do it on the 14th day of this month at twilight, "b'moado" in its time and of course, those of us who know Passover is in the month of Nisan. And believe it or not, the very first commandment that the Jewish people were given was not to keep Shabbat and it was not not to steal, it was to make sure that "Hahodesh ha'ze l'chem", that the month of Nisan should be the beginning of the months. So it was a commandment to do with the calendar. In any case, that we understand why whenever it talks about Passover and today's section is no exception, it makes sure that everyone understands it has to be in the spring, it has to be in the month of Nisan. Which leads us to great surprise when Moses is confronted by a bunch of people who come and they say that we are impure and we cannot keep the Passover in its associated time, we don't want to be left out of this iconic annual celebration and what can we do? So Moses said to them, "Stand by and let me hear what instructions the Lord gives about you." It almost sounds like you're talking to an operator at a service bureau and she goes, hold on, I got to talk to my manager. So Moses escalates the call and then he says, speak to the Israeli people, saying, when any of you or your posterity who are defiled by a corpse or on a long journey, would offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord. They shall offer it in the second month. And he goes on to say that for now and forever, that if for whatever reason and there are a few caveats, but for most reasons that are beyond your control, if you could not observe the Passover ceremony in all of its details in the month of Nisan, you can do it exactly a month later. And so what I would like to Adam is to ask you, what do you think this message tells us about both Passover, but more importantly about Judaism? A Mintz [00:04:03] I think the idea of giving a second chance is an unbelievable idea. And it's amazing that the Torah teaches it in such a strange way. But it's really about getting a second chance and it's about the fact that people don't want to be left out. They felt that they lost out, that they were able to give up the first Passover. So they got a second chance wiyh the second Passover. And what an amazing lesson about giving back, getting second chances. G Stern [00:04:31] You know, I totally agree. And that's I think one of the reasons it's so fascinates me. But again, I want to emphasize that, you know, you could say you got a second chance if you forgot to put on tefillin in the morning, you can put it on in the afternoon, or if you forgot to give to tzedaka, you can do it later. But the lesson here is so emphatic because it picks the one holiday that in numerouse places in the tTorah, in the Bible that says you got to do it on time, you got to do it, "b'moado", in its fixed time, and it's precisely that one that it gives that wonderful message that you make reference to, which is you have another chance. You never miss the boat. Don't you think that's remarkable? A Mintz [00:05:20] It is more I think yes, it is remarkable. G Stern [00:05:25] So it seems to me though that it's remarkable. But it also raises a question because clearly the message could have been given on another holiday on Sukkoth and it could have been given for another mitzvah. It's almost like there's a conflict, a contradiction in terms that it's speaking from both sides of its mouth. It's saying you've got to do it in its right season. All these guys need to have it at another time. You can do it at another time. And I think that's one of the things that really intrigued me about this and made me starting to think about the Jewish calendar. And the way I want to introduce my thoughts on the Jewish calendar is with a joke. The joke goes as follows. There's a Hasidic rabbi and he's getting on to the flight and he sees that he's sitting next to a nun. And, you know, everybody is traveling home for the holidays. It's in December. And he says, you know, I don't want her to think that we are so insulated that we can't carry on a conversation. So he says, what should I talk to her about? And finally, it dawns on him and he turns to her and he says, So, Miss, are the holidays early or late this year? And of course, that's a joke for Jews who every year before either the high holidays at the end of the summer or before Passover, we ask, are the holidays early or late this year? And the concept of the holidays being early or late, I think is something that is essential and that only Jews who follow what is a combination of the solar calendar and the lunar calendar can understand because we have a calendar that literally follows the moon. So if you follow the stars or the Zodiac, you know that every main Jewish holiday occurs when the moon is full and the 14th of the month and we are very tied into the tides, the warp, the ebb and flow of the of the lunar year. But on the other hand, we follow the seasons or the temps of the the calendar of the year. So it's adjusted. And every year, every so often, every three or four years, we have what's called a leap year in Hebrew. It's an iber shana or shana m'uberet, a pregnant year, so to speak. And that's why Jews have this question of is it early or late? And I would say no obvious biblical source for this. I'm going to argue that maybe "Pesach Sheni" , the second Passover can shed some light on the lunasol leap year. Maybe it has something to say about this hybrid lunar and solar calendar. But, Rabbi, have you ever given that thought in terms of 1) how unique our calendar is and 2) whether there is any biblical source for this very complex fixing of the calendar? A Mintz [00:08:45] Well, so let's talk about the calendar. We have a calendar baced on the moon, and that's the way our calendar works every month is either twenty nine or thirty days because the lunar month, the month based on the moon is twenty nine and a half. Whereas the year based on the moon is two hundred and fifty four days. The year based on the sun is three hundred and sixty five days. Every single year we lose 11 days. What does that mean loose 11 days? Means that the holidays as your joke has it Geoffrey, the holidays fall out 11 days earlier than they fall out the year before. That happens every single year. That happens to the Moslems, too. That's why Ramadan is never fixed. Ramadan, there's no corrective. Each year. Ramadan falls out eleven days earlier than the year before. So sometimes Ramadan is in the summer. Sometimes Ramadan is in the winter. Just depends. In the Jewish calendar. We have a corrective because we lose eleven days. The problem, with losing 11 is that the Towra describes Passover as taking place during the spring, every three years we lose Passover because 11 days every year, thirty three days, it's a month early, it ends up before the beginning of spring. So therefore, seven times in 19 years, we add a leap month as the corrective. Next year, 5782 is going to be a leap year. Rosh Hashanah. Actually, again, your joke is the night of Labor Day can't be earlier, but Passover is going to be the end of April. It's going to be a very long winter next year because of the correction of the calendar. So that's why we have a unique calendar, because it's not like the  Gregorian calendar, which is based on the sun, but it's not like the Moslem calendar that's based only on the moon. It's a combination of the two. G Stern [00:11:19] That was an amazingly good explanation. I do think that this concept of early or late and we can joke about it is intimately involved with what is unique about the Jewish calendar. As you said, the Christian calendar follows the Roman calendar and was totally solar based. So that Christmas and Easter they occur pretty much based on the Solar calendar and whether the moon is in ascent or not, whether the stars are in a particular alignment, it has no bearing. It doesn't have that connection to that aspect of nature. And the Muslim calendar is intimately connected with the lunar phases, but loses the sense of the trapos of the tropical change of the seasons and is not connected to agriculture. And then obviously it's not connected to times in history happened at a particular period. So I think we can truly say that the Jewish calendar is unique among the Abrahamic religions. And as usual, it's a little bit harder to defend something that is not here or not there. But I think at the most basic level, the idea of being early or late is not a scientific term. You'll never hear in math or in science early or late. If a phenomenon needs to happen, it happens when it needs to happen. And I think getting back to the message that we started with about Pesach Sheni, the second Passover, the make-up Passover, I think baked into our calendar is in fact this concept of it's never too late. But I would add to that and say maybe it's never too early. In other words, not trying to be Einsteinian, but time is relative and there are openings on either side. But in any case, what I have never realized before I started preparing for this week, I had always felt that PesachSheni. the second Passover was for individuals, but it was not for the whole nation. And as a result, I felt that there was no connection between the Second Passover and where literally you are taking Passover and you're saying it's not this month, it's next month, which is what you do in a leap year. And I thought there was no connection to this corrective nature of the Jewish calendar. But I discovered in the Book of Chronicles a story about Hezekiah, who at the time when the Jewish people had been conquered and had fallen into idolatry, there was a religious revival. And he summoned everyone over the Land of Israel for Passover. And it says that the king and his officers and the congregation in Jerusalm had agreed to keep the Passover in the second month. So here is a leader, a king who takes the whole nation of Israel and decides, and he gives an explanation that there wasn't enough time, they didn't have enough time to get purified. They didn't have enough time to come from the suburbs, so to speak. But for whatever reason, he decided that the whole nation should celebrate Passover not this month, but next month, that this month was not going to be the Nisan of the Passover. It was going to be next month. And so a bell rang in my head and I said to myself, well, maybe this is a biblical source for the correction that we do in the Jewish year and maybe some of the lessons that we take away from Pesach Sheni, the second Passover and the leap year are one in the same. And as I said before, it's not only never too late, but never too early either. And what intrigued me further was that there was a sense of sin involved with this. In other words, the the priests who went ahead with the king's decree and celebrated Passover the second month. It says about them that they they they felt bad, they felt ashamed. And the commentaries say they felt the shame because they had caused a leap year. And the king himself brought a sacrifice for atonement, so the rabbis of the Talmud take this and they say that, in fact, he did make a Pesach Sheni slash a leap year for the whole nation. And so, in a sense, from this story, there is a direct connection between the two. And that, to me was exciting. Plus the fact that we kind of have this sense that making this change, after all, it's human beings, we make the change. We decide when there should be a leap year. And there's a sense of kind of, I wouldn't say sinning, but there's a sense of admitting the imperfection of the moment. Rabbi, your thoughts? A Mintz [00:17:16] The idea of imperfection is such a fascinating idea, the idea that the system isn't perfect the way it is, but the system needs a correction and that is something that really resonates with me. Again, the Moslem calendar doesn't have that. The Moslem calendar believes that it's just the calendar based on the moon and however, it falls it falls. But Judaism is willing to accept the fact that it needs a correction. And I think the idea of looking to make things perfect is really a very important lesson from this whole discussion of the calendar. G Stern [00:18:06] So I'm a big believer in comparative religion. We've talked a little bit about Christianity, but I'd like to pick up on something that you just said about the Muslim religion doing what I would call it the pure path. They only follow the moon. And there are a lot of studies that Muhammad studied and heard both Christian and Jewish preachers before he wrote the Koran. And I want to read you one part of the Koran that literally talks about this element of sin in terms of correcting God's calendar, correcting or what I call in terms of the subject, hacking the calendar or hacking the universe. And he writes in the Koran, he says, and by the way, in the Koran, the the word for leap year is NASI. And we're going to get to that in a second. But he says, indeed, the Nasi, postponing our sacred month is an increase in disbelief by which those who have disbelieved are led further away. They make it lawful one year, an unlawful another year to correspond to the number made unlawful by Allah and thus make lawful what Allah has made unlawful. Made pleasing to them is the evil of their deeds, and Allah does not guide the disbelieving people. And in their commentaries they talk about those who use this nasi, this adjustment of the calendar to wage wars when a month doesn't permit them to wage war. So they just push it off to the next month, to do business, to build roads, to do all of these things. And I think this gives you a wonderful perspective in terms of what was, in fact radical, both about Islam, which rejected this hybrid calendar. But I would argue also radical about what the Jews did in terms of having a calendar that was understood to be imperfect and needed man to perfect it. And the key word is that he uses the word Nasi. And if you know about the Jewish doctrine, it says, who can decide when the leap year should be? And it says only the Nasi, only the prince, only the leader of the Jewish people. So clearly, Mohammed was aware of what the Jews had done, understood what its implications were, and rejected it. And I would say, by contrast, there was at that time the Jews understood what they were doing and the power of their adjustable calendar. And this, again, brings up this element of sin that we saw with Hezkiahu who felt that, yes, he had to make a change in the calendar, man had to be involved with this corrective action. But nonetheless, we did it with regret because the world was not perfect. A Mintz [00:21:27] I mean, I think that says at all that idea of the calendar reflecting the fact that the world is not perfect. And number 2) the fact that we have the ability to help make the world perfect, we're not helpless standing by and watching. We're actually part of the process. I think that's an important, extremely important element also. G Stern [00:21:53] And I think it gives us insight into a very strange story that some of us might be aware of, but maybe not. And that was the rabbis in the Talmud were having a discussion about what witnesses to accept in terms of when the new year was to begin. And in beautiful Talmudic fashion, witnesses came, procedurally, everything that they said was correct, the new moon was announced, which meant based on this new moon, Yom Kippur would be at a designated day. And then the next day, the evidence showed that those witnesses were incorrect. And one of the rabbis, Yehoshua, made the obvious argument. He says, if you claim that a woman is not pregnant and the next day she shows up and her belly is is swollen, you know, you're wrong. But the rabbis didn't accept his argument and they objected to the fact that he was arguing from scientific empirical evidence and they were using the God-given ability to determine what the calendar was. And this is what they did. And it's a remarkable story. The Nasi, Rabbi Gamliel, sent a message to this Rabbi Yehoshua, and he says, I decree against you that you appear before me with your staff and with your money on the day on which Yom Kippur occurs, according to your calculation. So he said to the guy, I need you not only to let us continue, you need to show publicly that the day that you want to be Yom Kippur, is not Yom Kippur. So it just shows you how important this sense of man communally can decide when is holiness.  You know, Heschel used to say that Shabbat, which comes every seven days without exception, is a cathedral in time. You know, I would argue that what this is saying about holiness of man made time is it's a pop up in time that it's when we determine it. And this you couldn't get a more powerful allegory story to portray that. A Mintz [00:24:20] I think that's an amazing story. I mean, what does that story say to you, Geoffrey? G Stern [00:24:27] It says a number of things. It shows me that the rabbis were talking in a realm that goes beyond empiricism, like I said before, that there is an early and that there is a late and that there are shades of gray. It talks about Rabbini authority that has to be accepted because it's the basis of the social structure. I feel sad for Rabbi Yhoshua who had to show up on his Yom Kippur. A Mintz [00:25:00] Well that's the worst part, right? Yeah. I mean, that's the problematic part. Why did he force them to show up like that? That's the problem. G Stern [00:25:12] It gets back to my question about sin. You feel like they had to do it in order to to cement and to support this notion of what a Jewish holiday is and Holiness is. But on the other hand, they had to sin against Rabbi Joshua because what he said was probably right. And it really goes to the heart of what I'm talking about in terms of agreeing that maybe perfection is imperfection, agreeing that although we always talk about you have to be there at the right time, at the right moment, that there is no right time, that we by convention, not by design, make those magical moments. Maybe that's the lesson. But I definitely feel for Rabbi Joshua A Mintz [00:26:06] Right , we make the right time. it's about human initiative in the process. G Stern [00:26:14] Yes, yes, and it also raises, again, this issue of of sin, how much in religion, how much in the Torah has baked into it, these kinds of situations.  Here, we believe in an infinite, infallible, all knowing God who created this amazing world and here we are and we're fixing it. And here we are, God created it, maybe "as if to say"  to teach us this lesson but nonetheless, a world was created that was not perfect. And you know, you can't but not think about the excommunication of Galileo and Copernicus and getting back to Christianity, how the whole world was tied to this, this sense of the sun rotating around the earth and all of the theological implications.  Today we don't think in those terms about the theological implications of the stars, of the calendar. But in those days, this was serious, serious stuff. You know, there was one of Copernicus's co-scientists, and he wrote a famous quote. It says, "Had God had consulted me before embarking on creation, I would have suggested something simpler." It's so amazing, but this is what they were doing, what the humility that it teaches us in terms of men of God, women of God, theologians, to have to go into the back room and tweak the system a little bit to get it to work. Copernicus himself said, "the theories of my predecessors were like a human figure in which the arms, legs and head were put together in the form of a disorderly monster." I mean, these guys were excommunicated for their observations and for them kind of reconstituting the whole metaphysics of the day. And I think from that perspective, at the end of the day, that's what Pesach Sheni is about. It's a holiday in time. It talks about the sanctification of time, the first commandment that we have deals with the calendar. And yet and yet we have to tweak it. And that humbles both us, but it also humbles us in terms of understanding any divine reason and divine obviousness of any plan. A Mintz [00:29:03] So the calendar actually reflects the integration of God's world and human initiative, God's plan and human initiative. It can't work one without the other. God's plan doesn't work on its own, but we can't have human initiative without God's plan. G Stern [00:29:25] Absolutely. And I think there were scholars who are looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls and you know, there were different groups there. They all kind of rejected the religion of the day. They were out there for purity reasons. And some of them had 60 day cycles in their calendar. But they literally talked about the heavenly calendar and the earthly calendar. And I think that really we're talking about heavenly and earthly and the fact thatit is not a a simple puzzle that fits so nicely together and that it needs tweaking and that our measly senses and brain power are not enough to understand the design. And maybe that's the most basic lesson. And the lesson of  "HaHodesh ha'zeh l'chem" that "this should be your month". And of course, we can't ignore the fact that Hodesh, which is month, also means "Hidush" "renewal", it means "invention". And maybe that's ultimately at the source of of what we need to do in our calendar on a daily basis. We need to try to adjust to the forces that we can control and meet and bring together heaven and earth in some fashion. A Mintz [00:30:59] I really love that, I love the way we put this all together. I think that's great. G Stern [00:31:04] Thanks. Are there any questions or any comments among our faithful that I can entertain or should we finish early? As the saying goes, we're twenty nine minutes into the half hour, so we're not going to finish too early. But maybe that's the takeaway, that sometimes we can finish early and that because everything has been said that needs to be said. Alice Meyer is invited to come up. E Meyer [00:31:38] I just wanted to say thank you. That was fabulous. G Stern [00:31:42] Well, thanks for joining us. It was fabulous to have you. I know you know how much I love "Pesach Sheni". E Meyer [00:31:48] Yes, we do. Yes, we do. G Stern [00:31:51] But this week and this week and this week, I went a little deeper. E Meyer [00:31:56] Was it was I just really I love I love the way you started it. And this was a great session. Thank you so much. G Stern [00:32:04] Thank you, Elise. Michael, how are you today? M Stern[00:32:07] I'm great. And another great session. And you go God's will, man's will, Geoffrey Stern, say, shall we end it a minute early? And here we are at four thirty. And just an example of that happening in real time right now. G Stern [00:32:26] Love it. Love it. M Stern [00:32:29] Thank you. Thank you, Rabbi. It's great listening to you both. Thank you so much. Shabbat shalom to everybody. G Stern [00:32:36] Shabbat Shalom. One and all.

From the BEL archieves, * Real Science Radio has a Far Ranging Conversation with Krauss: Co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams present Bob's interview of theoretical physicist (emphasis on the theoretical), atheist Lawrence Krauss. Fred says, "It's David vs. Goliath, but without the slingshot." As the discussion ranges from astronomy and anatomy to cosmology and physics, most folks would presume that Dr. Krauss would take apart Enyart's arguments, especially when the Bible believer got the wrong value for the electron-to-proton mass ratio. But the conversation reveals fascinating dynamics from the creation/evolution debate. (The planned 25-minute interview ran 40 minutes, so there's also a Krauss Part II and once in each half we say, "Stop the tape, stop the tape," to comment.) * "All Evidence Overwhelmingly Supports the Big Bang": Contradicting Dr. Krauss'

From the BEL archieves, * Real Science Radio has a Far Ranging Conversation with Krauss: Co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams present Bob's interview of theoretical physicist (emphasis on the theoretical), atheist Lawrence Krauss. Fred says, "It's David vs. Goliath, but without the slingshot." As the discussion ranges from astronomy and anatomy to cosmology and physics, most folks would presume that Dr. Krauss would take apart Enyart's arguments, especially when the Bible believer got the wrong value for the electron-to-proton mass ratio. But the conversation reveals fascinating dynamics from the creation/evolution debate. (The planned 25-minute interview ran 40 minutes, so there's also a Krauss Part II and once in each half we say, "Stop the tape, stop the tape," to comment.) * "All Evidence Overwhelmingly Supports the Big Bang": Contradicting Dr. Krauss'

"We are all in desperate need of an emotional education, the very thing capable of helping us nurture and strengthen the relational aspects of life, and let’s face it, more often than not it isn’t our failure to understand the philosophy of Nietzsche or Einsteinian principles of physics which sink our lives. What sinks us most often is our failure to navigate relationships, the emotional aspects of life, and yet we continue to neglect and diminish the need for an emotional education." The Lost Art of Friendship is a podcast series based on the article of the same name which can be found here. Part 1, the introduction, called The Pursuit of Love can be found here. The Concept of Emotional Education was borrowed from Alain de Botton and his book The School of Life, An Emotional Education My beginning with Emotional Education began long ago after reading the book Emotional Intelligence The best biography I have read about Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Education is Team of Rivals Thanks for taking the time to read and listen to my content and journey. I hope it helps you with yours.

A conversation with Adam Marblestone about his new project - Focused Research Organizations. Focused Research Organizations (FROs) are a new initiative that Adam is working on to address gaps in current institutional structures. You can read more about them in this white paper that Adam released with Sam Rodriques. Links FRO Whitepaper Adam on Twitter Adam's Website Transcript [00:00:00]   In this conversation, I talked to Adam marble stone about focused research organizations. What are focused research organizations you may ask. It's a good question. Because as of this recording, they don't exist yet. There are new initiatives that Adam is working on to address gaps. In current institutional structures, you can read more about them in the white paper that Adam released recently with San Brad regens. I'll put them in the show notes. Uh, [00:01:00] just a housekeeping note. We talk about F borrows a lot, and that's just the abbreviation for focus, research organizations. just to start off, in case listeners have created a grave error and not yet read the white paper to explain what an fro is. Sure. so an fro is stands for focus research organization. the idea is, is really fundamentally, very simple and maybe we'll get into it. On this chat of why, why it sounds so trivial. And yet isn't completely trivial in our current, system of research structures, but an fro is simply a special purpose organization to pursue a problem defined problem over us over a finite period of time. Irrespective of, any financial gain, like in a startup and, and separate from any existing, academic structure or existing national lab or things [00:02:00] like that. It's just a special purpose organization to solve, a research and development problem. Got it. And so the, you go much more depth in the paper, so I encourage everybody to go read that. I'm actually also really interested in what's what's sort of the backstory that led to this initiative. Yeah. it's kind of, there's kind of a long story, I think for each of us. And I would be curious your, a backstory of how, how you got involved in, in thinking about this as well. And, but I can tell you in my personal experience, I had been spending a number of years, working on neuroscience and technologies related to neuroscience. And the brain is sort of a particularly hard a technology problem in a number of ways. where I think I ran up against our existing research structures. in addition to just my own abilities and [00:03:00] everything, but, but I think, I think I ran up against some structural issues too, in, in dealing with, the brain. So, so basically one thing we want to do, is to map is make a map of the brain. and to do that in a, in a scalable high-speed. Way w what does it mean to have a map of the brain? Like what, what would, what would I see if I was looking at this map? Yeah, well, we could, we could take this example of a mouse brain, for example. just, just, just for instance, so that there's a few things you want to know. You want to know how the individual neurons are connected to each other often through synopsis, but also through some other types of connections called gap junctions. And there are many different kinds of synopsis. and there are many different kinds of neurons and, There's also this incredibly multi-scale nature of this problem where a neuron, you know, it's, it's axon, it's wire that it sends out can shrink down to like a hundred nanometers in [00:04:00] thickness or less. but it can also go over maybe centimeter long, or, you know, if you're talking about, you know, the neurons that go down your spinal cord could be meter long, neurons. so this incredibly multi-scale it poses. Even if irrespective of other problems like brain, computer interfacing or real time communication or so on, it just poses really severe technological challenges, to be able to make the neurons visible and distinguishable. and to do it in a way where, you can use microscopy, two image at a high speed while still preserving all of that information that you need, like which molecules are aware in which neuron are we even looking at right now? So I think, there's a few different ways to approach that technologically one, one is with. The more mature technology is called the electron microscope, electromicroscopy approach, where basically you look at just the membranes of the neurons at any given pixel sort of black or white [00:05:00] or gray scale, you know, is there a membrane present here or not? and then you have to stitch together images. Across this very large volume. but you have to, because you're just able to see which, which, which pixels have membrane or not. you have to image it very fine resolution to be able to then stitch that together later into a three D reconstruction and you're potentially missing some information about where the molecules are. And then there's some other more, less mature technologies that use optical microscopes and they use other technologies like DNA based barcoding or protein based barcoding to label the neurons. Lots of fancy, but no matter how you do this, This is not about the problem that I think can be addressed by a small group of students and postdocs, let's say working in an academic lab, we can go a little bit into why. Yeah, why not? They can certainly make big contributions and have to, to being able to do this. But I think ultimately if we're talking about something like mapping a mouse brain, it's not [00:06:00] going to be, just a, a single investigator science, Well, so it depends on how you think about it. One, one, one way to think about it is if you're just talking about scaling up, quote, unquote, just talking about scaling up the existing, technologies, which in itself entails a lot of challenges. there's a lot of work that isn't academically novel necessarily. It's things like, you know, making sure that, Improving the reliability with which you can make slices of the brain, into, into tiny slices are making sure that they can be loaded, onto, onto the microscope in an automated fast way. those are sort of more engineering problems and technology or process optimization problems. That's one issue. And just like, so Y Y Can't like, why, why couldn't you just sort of have like, isn't that what grad students are for like, you know, it's like pipetting things and, doing, doing graduate work. So like why, why couldn't that be done in the lab? That's not why [00:07:00] they're ultimately there. Although I, you know, I was, I was a grad student, did a lot of pipetting also, but, But ultimately they're grad student. So are there in order to distinguish themselves as, as scientists and publish their own papers and, and really generate a unique academic sort of brand really for their work. Got it. So there's, there's both problems that are lower hanging fruit in order to. in order to generate that type of academic brand, but don't necessarily fit into a systems engineering problem of, of putting together a ConnectTo mapping, system. There's also the fact that grad students in, you know, in neuroscience, you know, may not be professional grade engineers, that, for example, know how to deal with the data handling or computation here, where you would need to be, be paying people much higher salaries, to actually do, you know, the kind of industrial grade, data, data piping, and, and, and many other [00:08:00] aspects. But I think the fundamental thing that I sort of realized that I think San Rodriquez, my coauthor on this white paper also realized it through particularly working on problems that are as hard as, as clinic Comix and as multifaceted as a system building problem. I th I think that's, that's the key is that there's, there's certain classes of problems that are hard to address in academia because they're system building problems in the sense that maybe you need five or six different. activities to be happening simultaneously. And if any, one of them. Doesn't follow through completely. you're sort of, you don't have something that's novel and exciting unless you have all the pieces putting, you know, put together. So I don't have something individually. That's that exciting on my own as a paper, Unless you, and also three other people, separately do very expert level, work, which is itself not academically that interesting. Now having the connectome is academically [00:09:00] interesting to say the least. but yes, not only my incentives. but also everybody else's incentives are to, to maybe spend say 60% of their time doing some academically novel things for their thesis and only spend 40% of their time on, on building the connectome system. Then it's sort of, the probability of the whole thing fitting together. And then. We see everyone can perceive that. And so, you know, they basically, the incentives don't align well, for, for what you would think of as sort of team science or team engineering or systems engineering. yeah. And so I'm like, I think, I think everybody knows that I'm actually like very much in favor of this thing. So, I'm going to play devil's advocate to sort of like tease out. what I think are. Important things to think about. so, so one sort of counter argument would be like, well, what about projects? Like cert, right? Like that [00:10:00] is a government yeah. Led, you should, if you do requires a lot of systems engineering, there's probably a lot of work that is not academic interesting. And yet, it, it, it happens. So like there's clearly like proof of concepts. So like what what's like. W why, why don't we just have more things like, like certain for, the brain. Yeah. And I think this gets very much into why we want to talk about a category of focused research organizations and also a certain scale, which we can get into. So, so I think certain is actually in many ways, a great example of, of this, obviously this kind of team science and team engineering is incredible. And there are many others, like LIGO or, or CBO observatory or the human genome project. These are great examples. I think the, the problem there is simply that these, these are multibillion dollar initiatives that really take decades of sustained. government involvement, to make it happen. And so once they get going, and [00:11:00] once that flywheel sort of start spinning, then you have you have it. And so, and so that, that is a nonacademic research project and also the physics and astronomy communities, I think have more of a track record and pipeline overall. perhaps because it's easier, I think in physical sciences, then in some of these sort of emerging areas of, of, you know, biology or sort of next gen fabrication or other areas where it's, it's, there's less of a, a grounded set of principles. So, so for CERN, everybody in the physics basically can agree. You need to get to a certain energy scale. Right. And so none of the theoretical physicists who work on higher energy systems are going to be able to really experimentally validate what they're doing without a particle accelerator of a certain level. None of the astronomers are gonna be able to really do deep space astronomy without a space telescope. and so you can agree, you know, community-wide that, This is something that's worth doing. And I think there's a lot of incredible innovation that happens in those with focus, research organizations. We're thinking about a scale that, [00:12:00] that sort of medium science, as opposed to small science, which is like a, you know, academic or one or a few labs working together, Or big science, which is like the human genome project was $3 billion. For example, a scope to be about $1 per base pair. I don't know what actually came out, but the human genome has 3 billion basis. So that was a good number. these are supposed to be medium scale. So maybe similar to the size of a DARPA project, which is like maybe between say 25 and. A hundred or $150 million for a project over a finite period of time. And they're there. The idea is also that they can be catalytic. So there's a goal that you could deliver over a, some time period. It doesn't have to be five years. It could be seven years, but there's some, some definable goal over definable time period, which is then also catalytic. so in some ways it will be more equivalent to. For the genome project example, what happened after the genome project where, the [00:13:00] cost of genome sequencing through, through new technologies was brought down, basically by a million fold or so is, is, is, how George Church likes to say it, inventing new technologies, bringing them to a level of, of readiness where they can then be, be used catalytically. whereas CERN, you know, It's just a big experiment that really has to keep going. Right. And it's also sort of a research facility. there's also permanent institutes. I think there's a, is a, is a, certainly a model that can do team science and, and many of the best in the brain mapping space, many of the sort of largest scale. connectomes in particular have come either from Janelia or from the Allen Institute for brain science, which are both sort of permanent institutes, that are, that are sort of, nonacademic or semi academic. but that's also a different thing in the sense that it's, it takes a lot of activation energy to create an Institute. And then that becomes now, a permanent career path rather than sort of focusing solely on what's the shortest path to. To some [00:14:00] innovation, the, the, the permanence. So, so the, the flip side of the permanence is that, I guess, how are you going to convince people to do this, this, like this temporary thing, where. I think, someone asked on Twitter about like, you know, if it's being run by the government, these people are probably going to get, government salaries. So you're, you're getting a government salary, without the like one upside of a government job, which is the security. so like what, what is the incentive for, for people to, to come do this? Yeah. And I think, I think it depends on whether it's government or philanthropic, philanthropic fro Faros are also definitely. An option and maybe in many ways more flexible, because the, you know, the government sort of has to, has to contract in a certain way and compete out, you know, contracts in a certain way. They can't just decide, the exact set of people to do something, for example. So, so the government side has. Both a huge [00:15:00] opportunity in the sense that I think this is a very good match for a number of things that the government really would care about. and the government has, has, has the money, and resources to do this, but philanthropic is also one we should consider. but in any case, there are questions about who and who will do Froy and, and why. and I think the basic answer though, it, it comes down to, it's not a matter of, of cushiness of the career certainty. it's, it's really, these are for problems that are not doable any other way. this is actually in many ways, the definition is that you're only going to do this. if this is the only way to do it, and if it's incredibly important. So it really is a, it's a medium scale moonshots. you would have to be extremely passionate about it. That being said, there are reasons I think in approximate sense why one might want to do it both in terms of initiating one and in terms of sort of B being part of them. [00:16:00] so one is simply that you can do science. that is for a fundamental purpose or, or, or, pure, purely driven toward your passion to solve a problem. and yet can have potentially a number of the affordances of, of industry such as, industry competitive salaries, potentially. I think the government, we have to ask about what the government can do, but, but in a certain philanthropic setting, you could do it another aspect that I think a lot of scientists find. Frustrating in the academic system is precisely that they have to. spend so much work to differentiate themselves and do something that's completely separate from what their friends are doing, in order to pay the bills basically. So, so if, if you don't eventually go and get your own appealing, you know, Tenure track job or, or so on and so forth. the career paths available in academia are much, much fewer, and often not, not super well compensated. And, and [00:17:00] so there are a number of groups of people that I've seen in sort of, if you want critical mass labs or environments where they're working together, actually, despite perhaps the. Incentive to, to, differentiate where they're working, does a group of three or four together. and they would like to stay that way, but they can't stay that way forever. And so it's also an opportunity if you, if you have a group of people that wants to solve a problem, to create something a little bit like, like a seal team. so like when, when I was, I'm not very generally militaristic person, but, when I was a kid, I was very obsessed with the Navy seals. But, but anyway, I think the seal team was sort of very tight knit. kind of a special forces operation that works together on one project is something that a lot of scientists and engineers I think want. and the problem is just that they don't have a structure in which they can do that. Yeah. So then finally, I think that, although in many cases maybe essentially built into the structure fro is make sense. We can [00:18:00] talk about this as, as nonprofit organizations. these are the kinds of projects where, you would be getting a relatively small team together to basically create a new industry. and if you're in the right place at the right time, then after an fro is over, you would be in the ideal place to start. The next startup in an area where it previously, it's not been possible to do startups because the horizons for a venture investment would have been too long to make it happen from the beginning. Well, that's actually a great transition to a place that  I'm still not certain about, which is  what happens. After it fro, cause you, you said that it, that it's a explicitly temporary organization. And then, how do you make sure that it sort of achieves its goal, right? Like, because you can see so many of these, these projects that actually sound really great and they like go in and possibly could do good work and then somehow it all just sort of diffuses. [00:19:00] so, so have you thought about how to sort of make sure that that lives on. Well, this is a tricky thing as we've discussed, in a number of settings. So, in a, like to maybe throw that question back to you after I answer it. Cause I think you have interesting thoughts about that too, but, but in short, it's, it's a tricky thing. So, so the fro. Is entirely legal focused there isn't, there's no expectation that it would continue, by default and simply because it's a great group of people, or because it's been doing interesting work, it's sort of, it is designed to fulfill a certain goal and it should be designed also from the beginning to have a, a plan of the transition. Like it could be a nonprofit organization where it is explicitly intended that at the end, assuming success, One or more startups could be created. One or more datasets could be released and then a, you know, a much less expensive and intensive, nonprofits, structure could be be there to [00:20:00] host the data and provide it to the world. it could be something where. the government would be using it as a sort of prototyping phase for something that could then become a larger project or be incorporated into a larger moonshot project. So I think you explicitly want a, a goal of a finite tune to it, and then also a explicit, upfront, deployment or transition plan, being central to it much more so than any publication or anything. Of course. At the same time. there is the pitfall that when you have a milestone driven or goal focused organization, that the funder would try to micromanage that and say, well, actually, not only do I care about you meeting this goal, but also I really care that by month six, you've actually got exactly this with this instrument and this throughput, and I'm not going to let you buy this other piece of equipment. Unless, you know, you show me that, you know, [00:21:00] and that's a problem that I think, we sometimes see with, externalized research models, like DARPA ARPA models, that try to. achieve more coordination and, and, and goal driven among otherwise, somewhat uncoordinated entities like contractors and, and universities that, that are working on programs, but then they, they, they, they achieve that coordination by then, managing the process and, with an fro, I think it will be closer to. You know, if you have a series, a investment in the startup, you know, you are reporting back to your investors and, and they, they, at some level care, you know, about the process and maybe they're on your board. but ultimately the CEO gets to decide, how am I going to spend the money? And it's extremely flexible to get to the goal. Yeah. Yeah. The, the micromanage, like [00:22:00] figuring out how to avoid, Micromanagement seems like it's going to be really tricky because it's sort of like once you get to that amount of money, I like, have you, have you thought about, like how, like, if you could do some kind of like actually, well, I'll, I'll give her the, the, the, the, the, the thing that the cruxy thing is like this, I think there's a huge amount of trust that needs to happen in it. And what I'm. like I constantly wonder about is like, is there this like fundamental tension between the fact that, especially with like government money, we really do want it to be transparent and well-spent, but at the same time, in order to sort of do these like knowledge frontier projects, sometimes you need to do things that. Are a little weird or like seem like a waste of money at the time, if you're not like intimately connected. and so there's, there's this sort of tension [00:23:00] between accountability and, Sort of like doing the things that need to get done. I agree with that and Efros, we're going to navigate that. Yeah. I agree with that. And I think it relates to a number of themes that you've touched on and that we've discussed with, which has sort of, has to do with the changing overall research landscape of, in what situations can that trust actually occur, you know, in bell labs, I think there was a lot of trust. throughout, throughout that system. And as you have more externalized research, conflicting incentives and so on it, it's, it's hard. It's hard to obtain that trust. startups of course, can align that financially, to a large degree. I think there are things that we want to avoid. so one of the reasons I think that these need to be scoped as. Deliverables driven and roadmaps, systematic projects over finite periods of time, is to avoid, individual [00:24:00] personalities, interests, and sort of conflicting politics, ending up. Fragmenting that resource into a million pieces. So, so I think this is a problem that you see a lot with billion dollar scale projects, major international and national initiatives. Everybody has a different, if you say, I want this to be, to solve neuroscience, you know, and here's $10 billion. Everybody has a different opinion about what solved neuroscience is. And there's also lots of different conflicting personalities and, and leadership there. So I think for an fro, there needs to be an initial phase, where there's a sort of objective process of technology roadmapping. And people figure people understand and transparently understand what are the competing technologies? What are the approaches? What, what are the risks? And you understand it. and you also closely understand the people involved. but importantly, the people doing that roadmapping and sort of catalyzing the initial formation of that [00:25:00] fro need to have a somewhat objective perspective. It's not just funding my lab. It's actually, you, you want to have vision, but you, you need to. Subjected to a relatively objective process, which, which is hard because you also don't want it to be a committee driven consensus process. You want it to be active, in, in a, in a systematic, analysis sense, but, but not in a, everyone agrees and likes it, you know, emotionally sense. and so that, that's a hard thing. but you need to establish it's that trust upfront, with, with the funder, And that's a hard process and it gets a hard process to do as a large government program. I think DARPA does it pretty well with their program managers where a program manager will come in and they will pitch DARPA on the idea of the program. there'll be a lot of analysis behind it and, but then once, once they're going, that program manager has tremendous discretion, and trust. To how they actually run that [00:26:00] project. And so I think you need something like a program manager driven process to initiate the fro and figure out is there appropriate leadership and goals and our livable as reasonable, Yeah, that seems the way, at least the way that it's presented in the paper, it, it feels a little bit chicken and egg in that. so with DARPA, DARPA is a sort of permanent organization that brings in program managers. And then those programmers program managers then go, start programs, whereas, The look at fro it seems like there's this chicken and egg between like, you sort of, you need someone spearheading it. It seems like, but then it, you sort of like, it, it seems like it will be very hard to get someone who's qualified to, to spearhead it, to do that before you have funding, but then you need someone spearheading it in order to get that [00:27:00] funding. yeah. Like, yeah. How, how are you thinking about. Cracking that that's, that's sort of the motivation for me behavior over the next year or two, is that I'm trying to go out and search for them. And, a little bit of it is from my own creativity, but a lot of it is going out and talking to people and try and understand what the best ideas. Here would be, and who are the networks of, of human beings behind those ideas, and trying to make kind of a prioritized set of borrows. Now, this kind of thing would have to be done again, I think to some degree, if there was a, larger umbrella program that someone else wanted to do, but, I'm both trying to get a set of, of exemplary. And representative ideas and people together, and try to help those people get funding. You know, I think there can be a stage process. I agree that, in the absence of a funder showing [00:28:00] really strong interest, people committing, to really be involved is difficult, because it is a big change to people's normal. Progression through life to do something like that. but just like with startups, to the extent that you can identify, someone who's. We spiritually just really wants to do this and we'll kind of do anything to do it, the sort of founder type, and also teams that want to behave like that. that's obviously powerful, and also ideas where there's a kind of inevitability, where based on scientific roadmapping, it, it just has to happen. There's no way, you know, for neuroscience to progress unless we get better. Connectomics and I think we can go through many other fields where, because of. The structures we've had available and just the difficulty of problems now, where arguably Faros are needed in order to make progress in fields that people really care about. So, so I think you can get engagement at the level of, of discussion, and, and, and starting to nucleate [00:29:00] people. But, but there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. In the sense that it's, it's not so much as here's an fro, would you please fund to me it's we need to go and figure out where there might be Faros to be had, and then who is interested in those problems as well to, to fund and support those things. So, yeah. So I guess to recap what I see your process that is, is that you're going out, you're sort of really trying to. Identify possible people possible ideas, then go to funders and say, here, like sort of get some, some tentative interest of like, okay, what, which of these things might you be interested in if I could get it to go further and then you'll circle back to. the, the people who might be interested in sort of say like, okay, I have someone, a funder who's potentially interested. Can we [00:30:00] sort of like refine the idea? and then sort of like, like you will drive that loop hopefully to, Getting a, an fro funded that's right. And there's, there's further chicken and egg to it. that has to be solved in the sense that, when you go to funders and you say, why, you know, I have an idea for an fro. We also need to explain what an fro is, right? in a way that both, engages people in creating these futuristic models, which many people want to do, While also having some specificity of, of what we're looking for and what, what, what we think is as possible. So, and then the same on, on the, on the side of, of scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs all over the world, who, you know, have the ideas certainly, but most of those ideas have been optimized to hit, the needs of existing structures. So, so we are, we are trying to, I think, broker between those, And [00:31:00] then start prototyping a few. but the, you know, the immediate thing I think is to make, w Tom Coolio has referred to a catalog, a Sears catalog of moonshots. and so we're trying to make a catalog of, of moonshots that fit the fro category. but that sounds like the perfect name for this podcast, by the way. the cataloging mood child, like, you're kind of kind of cataloging moonshots and ways to get moonshots and yeah, absolutely. Yeah. and so I guess another sort of, thing that I've seen, and I'm not sure, it's almost like for people like a lot of people who like really want. Who like sees something as inevitable and they really want to get it done. In sort of like the current environment we're recording in October, 2020. there's. There's sort of this perception that capital is really cheap. [00:32:00] you know, there's a lot of venture capitalists there. They're pretty aggressive about funding and one could make an argument that, if it's, if it, it really is going to be inevitable and it really is going to start a new industry. Then that is exactly where venture capital funding should come in. And I do see this a lot where people, you know, it's like they have this thing that they really want to see exist and they, you know, come out of the lab and it started a company that's sort of extremely common. so. I guess, like, what almost would you say to someone who you see doing this that you think maybe should do an fro instead? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think it's a complicated question and obviously, you know, we got to see VC also, you know, obviously VC backed, you know, innovation is, is, is one of, if not sort of the key, [00:33:00] Things that is driving technology right now. So, so I'm in no way saying that fro is, are somehow superior to two startups, in any generalized way. So I think that things that can be startups and are good as startups should be startups and people, if you have an idea that could be good for a startup, I think you should go do it. Generally speaking. But, there, there are a few considerations, so yeah. So I think you can divide it into categories where VCs, no, it's not a good idea for startups. And therefore won't talk to you, in cases where VCs don't always know whether or not it's good for a startup or whether there's a way that you could do it as a startup, but it would involve some compromise that is actually better not to make, even potentially for the longterm. economic prospects of, of an area. So things that can happen, would be, if you have something that's basically meant to be a kind of platform technology or which you [00:34:00] need to develop a tool or a platform in order to explore a whole very wide space of potential applications. maybe you have something like a new method of microscopy or something, or a new way to measure proteins in the cell or things like that, that, you know, you could target it to a very particular, if you want product market fit application, where you would be able to make the most money on that and get the most traction, the soonest. Yeah. Sometimes people call this, you know, the, the, the, the sort of Tesla Roadster, equivalent. You want to guys as quickly as you can to the Tesla Roadster. And I think generally, what people are doing with, with that kind of model, where you take people that have science, to offer, and you say what's the closest fastest you can get, to a Tesla Roadster that lets you it lets you build, get, get revenue and start, start being financially sustainable and start building a team, to go further. generally that's really good. and generally we need more scientists to learn how to do that. it'd be supported to do that, but, [00:35:00] sometimes you have things that really are meant to be. either generalized platforms or public goods, public data, or knowledge to underlie an entire field. And if you work to try to take the path, the shortest path to the Roadster, you would end up not producing that platform. You would end up, producing something that is specialized to compete in that lowest hanging fruit regime, but then in the, in, in doing so you would forego the more general larger. Larger thing. And, you know, Alan Kay has, has the set of quotes, that Brett Victor took is linked on his website. and I think Alan K meant something very different actually, when he said this, but he's, he refers to the dynamics of the trillions rather than the billions. Right. and this is something where in, and we can talk about this more. I'd be curious about your thoughts on that, but something like the transistor. You know, you, you could try to do the transistor as a startup. and maybe at the time, you know, the best application for transistors would have been [00:36:00] radios. I don't think like that. I think it was, it was guiding a rockets. Yeah. So you could have, you could have sort of had had a transistors for rockets company and then tried to branch out into, becoming Intel. You know, but really, given the structures we had, then the transistor was allowed to be more of a, a broadly, broadly explored platform. yeah, that, that progressed in a way where we got the trillions version. And I worry sometimes that even some startups that have been funded at least for a seed round kind of stage, and that are claiming that they want to develop a general platform are going to actually struggle a little bit later. when investors, you know, see that, see that they would need to spend way more money to build that thing. then the natural shortest path to a Roadster, or another words the Roadster is, is, somehow illusory. yeah. Yeah, this [00:37:00] is, this is a. Sort of like a regime that I'm really interested in and a, just on the transistor example, I've, I've looked at it. So just the, the history is that it was developed at bell labs, in order to prevent a T and T from being broken up, bell labs had to, under strictly licensed a bunch of their innovations, including the transistor William Shockley went off and, Started, chocolate semiconductor, the traders eight then left and started, Fairchild and then Intel. And, believe that that's roughly the right history. but the, the really interesting thing about that is to ask the question of like, one, what would have happened if, bell labs had exclusive license to the transistor and then to what would have happened if they had like exclusively licensed it to, Shockley semiconductor. And I think I would argue in both of those situations, you don't [00:38:00] end up. Having the world we have today because I fell labs. It probably goes down this path where it's not part of the core product. and so they just sort of like do some vaguely interesting things with it, but are never incentivized to like, you know, invent, like the, the planner processing method or anything. Interesting. yeah. Yeah. And so I guess where I'm. Go. And then like at the same time, the interesting thing is like, so Shockley is more, akin to like doing a startup. Right. And so it's like, what if they had exclusive license to it? And the, what I would argue is actually like that also would've killed it because, you have like, they had notoriously bad management. And so if you have this, this company with. And like the only reason that, the trader could go and start a Fairchild was because they, that was, that was [00:39:00] an open license. So this is actually a very long way of asking the question of, if F borrows are going to have a huge impact, it seems like they should default to. Really being open about what they create from like IP to data. but at the same time, that sort of raises this incentive problem where, people who think that they are working on something incredibly valuable, should want to do a startup. And then. And so there, and then similarly, even if they'd be like that sort of couldn't be a thing, they would want to privatize as much of the output of an fro. and so which. Maybe necessary in order to, to get the funding to make it happen. So I guess like, how are you thinking about that tension? That was a very long winded. Yeah. [00:40:00] Yeah. Well, there's, there's a lot, a lot there, I think, to loop back to you. So, so I think, right, so, so this idea that we've talked a bit about as sort of default openness, so, so things that can be open for maximum impact should be open. there are some exceptions to that. So, so if, And it's also has to do partly with how you're scoping the problem. Right? So, so rather than having an SRO that develops drugs, let's say, because drugs really need to be patentable, right. In order to get through clinical trials, we're talking about much more money than the fro funding, you know, to do the initial discovery of a target or something. Right. So to actually bring that to humans, you know, you need to have the ability to get exclusive IP. for downstream investors and pharma companies that that would get involved in that. so there are some things that need to be patented in order to have to have their impact. but in general, you, you want, I think fro problems to steer themselves to things where indeed. it can be maximally open and maybe, maybe you, you provide [00:41:00] a system that can be used to, to, or underlie the discovery of a whole new sets of classes of drugs and so on. But you're not so much focused on the drugs themselves. Now, that being said, right. if I invest in an SRO, and I've enabled this thing, right. It kind of would make sense for the effort, you know, maybe three of the people of, of, of, of 15 in the fro will then go and start a company afterwards that then capitalizes on this and actually develops those drugs or what have you, or it takes it to the next stage. And gosh, it would really make sense if I had funded in fro. that's, those people would like to take me as a sort of first, first, first refusal to get a good deal on, on investing in this startup, for example. Right. so I think there are indirect network-based, or potentially even legal based, structure, structure based ways to both incentivize the investors and, But it's, it's a weaker, admittedly weaker, incentive financially than, [00:42:00] than, than the full capture of, of, of something. But then, but then there's, I think this gets back to the previous discussion. So which is sort of the trillions rather than the billions. So if you have something where maybe there are 10 different applications of it, Right in 10 different fields. you know, maybe, maybe we have a better way to measure proteins and based on this better way to measure proteins, we can do things in oncology and we can do things in Alzheimer's and we can do things in a bunch of different directions. We can do things in diagnostics and pandemic surveillance, and so many fields that one startup, It would be hard even to design, to start, if that could capture all of that value just as it would have been hard to design sort of transistor incorporated. Right. Right. given that, I think there's, there's a lot of reason to. To do an fro and then explore the space of applications. Use it as a means to explore a full space in which you'll then get [00:43:00] 10 startups. so if I'm the investor, I might like to be involved in all 10 of the new industry, right. And the way to do that would be to create a platform with which I can explore, but then I have a longer time horizon. Cause I have to first build the thing. Then I have to explore the application space and only then. do I get to invest in a specific verticals, right? Yeah. I think the, the two sort of tricky questions that I, I wonder about what that is one. So you mentioned like, Oh, there's 15 people in an fro, three of them go off to start a startup. What about those other 12 people? Like, I, I assume that they might be a little bit frustrated if, if that happens, Yeah, because like, like they, they did, they did help generate that value in it. It sort of gets into two questions of like capturing, like sort of kicking back, value generated by research in general, but like, yeah, it could, it could, it could be all 15 people, you know, we saw something [00:44:00] similar with open AI, you know, in a way, for example, converting, you know, into, into a, for profit or at least a big arm of it being, being the for-profit, and keeping all the people. Right. So you, you, you, you can imagine, just blanket converting. but yeah, I think, I think it's sort of, In the nature of it, that these are supposed to be things that open up such wide spaces that there's, there's sort of enough for everyone, but no, no, no one person necessarily one startup would completely capture. And I think that's true for clinic Comix too, for example. Right. So if you had really high throughput clinical, connectomics just, just to keep going on this example, that's a great example of perfect. It's a good thing as a good example. It's not. Depending on the details, whether this is exactly the first fro or not. I think it's totally, totally other issue, but, but. Connectomics there's potentially applications for AI and you know, how, how the neurocircuits work, and sort of fundamental, funding. Mental is a brain architecture and intelligence. although there's a bunch of ranges of the sort of uncertainty of exactly what that's going to be. So it's hard to sort of [00:45:00] know it until you see the data. There's also potentially applications for something like drug screening, where you could put a bunch of different, Kind of some CRISPR molecules or drug perturbations on, on a, on a brain and then look at what each one does to their, the synopsis or, and look at that in a, in a brain region specific way and sort of have ultra high, but connect to them based drug screening. Neither of those are things you can start a start up until you have connected. Right. working. but so anyway, so maybe three people would start an AI company and maybe those would be the very risk tolerant ones. and then three would start at, you know, a crisper drug company and, and, and, three would just do, do fundamental neuroscience with it and, take those capabilities and, and, and go, go back into the university system or so on and yeah. And start using that. Yeah. And the, the sort of the other related to. like creating value with it. there's, there's a little like uncut discomfort that like even I have [00:46:00] with, say like philanthropic or government funding, then going to fund a thing that proceeds to make a couple of people very wealthy. Which like, and like, there's very much arguments on both sides, right. Where it's like, it'll generate a lot of good for the world. and, and all and, and such. so, so like, I guess what would you say? I guess like, as a, as a, like, if I were a very wealthy philanthropist and I'm like, do it, like, you know, it's like, I'm just giving away money so that these people can. Yeah, the company is a complicated thing. Right? How much, how many further rich people, you know, did the Rockefeller foundation, you know, investing in the basics of molecular biology or things like that ended up generating? I mean, I think that, I think you, I think in some way the government does want to end up is they want the widely distributed benefit. And I think everything that should be an SRO should have widely distributed benefits. It shouldn't just [00:47:00] be a kind of, A startup that just, just enhances one, one person. It should be something that really contributes very broadly to economic growth and understanding of the universe and all that. But it's almost inevitable. I think that, if you create a new industry, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna feel it going to be some more written about rich successful people in that industry. And they're probably going to be some of the people that were involved. Early and thinking about it for the longest and waiting for the right time to really enter it. And so, yeah, that's a really good point. I guess the, then the question would be like, how do you know, like, like what are, what are sort of a, the sniff test you use to think about whether something would have broadly distributed benefits? That's a great question. Cause it's like connect to them. It seems like fairly clear cut or, or generating sort of like a massive data set that you then open up. Feels very [00:48:00] clear. Cut. it's. We we've talked before about that, like fro is, could like scale up a process or build a proof of concept of, of a technology. and it, it seems like that it's less clear cut how you can be sure that those are going to, like if they succeed. Yeah. I mean, there are a few different frames on it, but I mean, I think one is, FRS could develop technologies that allow you to really reduce the cost of having some. Downstream set of capabilities. so, you know, if, just to give you an example, right? If, if we had, much lower costs, gene therapies available, right? So, so sometimes when drug prices are high, you know, this is basically it's recouping these very large R and D costs and then there's competition and, and, and profit and everything involved. you know, there was the marching squarely situation and, you know, there's a bunch of, sort of. What was that? there was, remember the details, but there [00:49:00] was some instance within which, a financially controlling entity to sort of arbitrarily bumped drug prices way high, right. A particular drug. and then w was, you know, was regarded as an evil person then, and maybe that's right. but anyway, there are some places I think, within the biomedical system where you can genuinely reduce costs for everyone. Right. and it's not simply that I, you know, I make this drug and I captured a bunch of value on this drug, but you know, it's really, it should be available to everyone and I'm just copying there. There's genuine possibility to reduce costs. So if I could reduce the cost of, of the actual manufacturing of. The viruses that you use for gene therapy, that's a, that's a process innovation. that would be, you could order as a magnitude drop the cost of gene therapy. If you could figure out what's going on, in the aging process and what are the real levers on a single, you know, biological interventions that would prevent multiple age related diseases that [00:50:00] would massively drop the cost. Right? So those, those are things where, Maybe even in some ways it would be threatening, to some of, some of the pharma companies, you know, that, that work on specific age related diseases, right? Because you're going to have something that, that replaced, but this is, this is what, you know, things that are broad productivity improvements. And I think economists and people very broadly agree that, that the science and technology innovations, For the most part. although sometimes they can be used to in a way that sort of, only benefits, a very small number of people that generally speaking there's a lot you can do, with technology that will be extremely broadly shared in terms of benefit, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I do actually, like I agree with that. I'm, I'm just, I'm trying to represent as much skepticism as, as possible. Definitely. I know you agree with that. And actually, another thing that I have no idea about which I'm really interested in is as you're going and sort of creating this, [00:51:00] this moonshot catalog. how do you tell the difference between people who have these really big ideas who are like hardcore legit? but like maybe a little bit crazy. And then people who are just crackpots. Yeah, well, I don't claim to be able to do it in every field. and, and I think there's a reason why I've, I'm not trying to do a quantum gravity, fro you know, both, both, because I don't know that that's, you know, I think that's maybe better matched for just individual. Totally. Open-ended Sunday, you know, fun, brilliant people for 30 or 40 year long period to just do whatever they want. Right. Yeah. For quantum gravity, rather than directed, you know, research, but, But also because there's a class of problem that I think requires a sort of Einsteinian type breakthrough in fr fro is, are not, not perfect for that in terms of finding people. I mean, I, I find that, there's a lot of pent up need for, this is that's my preliminary feeling. and you can see there's a [00:52:00] question of prioritizing, which are the most important, but there's a huge number of. Process innovations or system building innovations that are needed across many, many fields. And you don't need to necessarily have things that even sound that crazy. There are some that just kind of just make sense, you know, are, are very simple. You know, we here, here in our lab, we have this measurement technology, but we, you know, we can only have the throughput of one cell, you know, every, every few weeks. And if we could build the system, we could get a throughput of, you know, A hundred thousand cells, you know, every month or something. Right. there are some, there's some sort of ones that are pretty obvious, or where there's an obvious inefficiency. In kind of, how things are structured. Like every, every company and lab that's that's modeling fusion reactors, and then also within the fusion reactor, each individual component of it, like the neutrons in the wall versus the Plaza and the core, those are basically modeled with different. Codes many of which are many [00:53:00] decades old. So there's sort of an obvious opportunity to sort of make like a CAD software for fusion, for example, you know, that the, the, it doesn't, it's not actually crazy. It's actually just really basic stuff. In some cases, I think they're ones where we'll need more roadmapping and more bringing people together to really workshop the idea, to really have people that are more expert than me say, critique each other and see what's. Really going on in the fields. and I also rely on a lot of outside experts. if I have someone comes with an idea, you know, for, for energy, you know, and I'm talking to people that are like former RPE program managers or things like that, that, that know more of the questions. so I think we can, we can, we can do a certain amount of, of due diligence on ideas and. and then there are some that are, that are really far out. you know, we both have an interest in atomically precise manufacturing, and that that's when, where we don't know the path I think, forward. and so that's maybe a pre fro that's something where you [00:54:00] need a roadmapping approach, but it's maybe not quite ready to, to just immediately do an fro. Yeah, no, that's, you sort of hit on a really interesting point, which is that. when we think of moonshots, it's generally like this big, exciting thing, but perhaps some of the most valuable is will actually sound incredibly boring, but the things that they'll unlock will be. Extremely exciting. yeah, I think that's true. And, and you have to distinguish there's there's boring. Right? So, so I think there's, there's some decoupling of exactly how much innovation is required and exactly how important something is. And also just how much brute force is required. So I think in general, our system might under weight, the importance of brute force. And somewhat overweight the importance of sort of creative, individual breakthrough thinking. at the same time, there are problems where I think we are bottlenecked by thinking I'm like really how to do something, not just to [00:55:00] connect them of brain, but how do you actually do activity map of entire brain? You actually need to get a bunch of physicists together and stuff to really figure out what's, you know, there's a level of thinking that is not very non-obvious similarly for like truly next gen fabrication. You really, really, really need to do the technology roadmapping approach. And that's a little different than the fro. And in some cases there may be a, as we discussed, I think in the past, there was sort of a, a continuum potentially between DARPA type programs or programs that would start within the existing systems and try to catalyze the emergence of ideas and discoveries. And then fro is, which are a bit, a bit more cut and dry. And in some cases, even you could think of it as boring. but just very important.  how do we prevent Faros from becoming a political football? because you see this all the time where, you know, a Senator will say, well, like I'll sponsor this bill, as long as we mandate that. 50% of the work has to happen in my particular state or [00:56:00] district. and, and I imagine that that would be counterproductive towards the goals of . so do you, do you have any sense of like how to, how to get around that probably much easier in philanthropic setting than governments? Although I think I'm overall, I'm, I'm sort of optimistic that, if. If the goals are made very clear, the goal is disruptive, you know, multiplicative improvements in scientific fields. that's the primary goal. It needs to be managed well. so it's not either about the individual peoples, if you want academic politics and also that it doesn't, doesn't become about sort of, you know, districts, congressional districts, or all sorts of other things. I think there's a certain amount of complexity, but the other, the other thing is. I think there's really amazing things to be done in all sorts of places and by all sorts of people that are not necessarily identified as, as the biggest egos or the largest cities also, although certainly there are hubs that [00:57:00] matter. yeah. Cool. I think so. I think those are all like the actual questions I have. Is there anything you want to talk about that we have not touched on? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, how does this fit into two things that you're thinking about, in terms of your overall analysis of the research system, then, do you think this, what is this leave unsolved as well? if, even if we can get some big philanthropic and government, donors. Yeah. So, so there are sort of two things that I. see it not covering. And so the, the first that you you've sort of touched on is that there are, some problems that still like don't fit into academia, but are not quite at the point where they're ready to be at fro. And so, they need, the, the like mindset of the fro without. Having this sort of, cut and dryness [00:58:00] that you need to sort of plunk down, like have the confidence to plunk down $50 million. so, so we need sort of a, a, what I would see as a sustainable, way of. Getting to the point of fro type projects. And as you know, I'm spending a lot of time with that. and then sort of a, the other thing that I've realized is that when, when people, we sort of have these discussions that are like research is broken, I think what we're actually talking about is, is sort of two really separate phenomenon. So, what we've been talking about, like Efros, Are really sort of sitting in like the Valley of death where it's like helping bridge that. but I think that at the same time, there there's like what I would call like the, the Einstein wouldn't get in any funding problem, which is, as you alluded to there, there are some of these things, like some of the [00:59:00] problems with research that we talk about are just about, The sort of conformity and specialization of really idea based exploratory, like completely uncertain research. And that's also really important, but I, I think it's what we don't do is, is, is sort of like separate those two things out and say like, these are both fall under the category of research, but are in fact. Extremely different processes. They require very different solutions. Yeah. Actually let me, let me, since you mentioned that, and since we are here together on the podcast, I agree with that and I, I have some things to say about that as well. So, so I think that the fro is indeed only address, or are designed to address this issue of sort of system building. problems that have a sort of catalytic nature and are a particular kind of pre-commercial stage. Right? So in some ways, [01:00:00] even though I'm so excited about borrows and how much they can unlock, because I think that this is one of two or three categories that has been, you know, under emphasized by current systems or has systems currently have struggled with it. there are these others. So, so I think that. The, the supporting the next Einstein and people that may have also have just be cognitively socially in any other number of ways, just different and weird and not good at writing grants. You know, not good at competing. Maybe not even good at graduating undergrad. Yeah. You know, I'm running a lab who are, are brilliant and because the system now. Has proliferate in terms of the number of scientists. it's very competitive and, and there is a, there's a lot of need to sort of filter people based on credentials. So there's this sort of credential there's people that don't fit with perfectly with credentials or with a sort of monoculture of who is able to get NSF grants and go through the university system and [01:01:00] get the PhD and all those different Alexey goosey has this nice blog post is oriented toward biomedical, but saying basically that in order to get through the system, you need to do 10 or 15 things simultaneously. Well, and also be lucky. And maybe we want to be looking for some people that are only able to do three of those things about, but are orders of magnitude better than others, then there's people even who have done well with those things, but still don't have the funding or sort of sustained ability, to, to pursue their own individual ideas over decades. even if they do get tenure or something, because the grant system is based on peer review and is, is sort of filtering out really new ideas, for whatever reason, There's kind of the broader issue that Michael Nielsen has talked about, which is sort of the idea that too much funding is centralized in a single organizational model. So particularly the NIH, the NIH grant is kind of hegemonic as, as, as a structure and as a peer review mechanism. then I think we need more [01:02:00] DARPA stuff. We probably need more darker agencies for other problems. Even though I've, I've sort of said that I think Rose can solve some problems that DARPA DARPA will struggle with. Likewise, DARPA walls solve problems that fro may struggle with. particularly if there's a very widely distributed expertise across the world that you need to bring together in a, some transient, interesting way, for a little bit more discovery oriented, perhaps in Faros and less deliverable oriented or team oriented. And then there's even bigger things we need, you know, like we need to be able to create, you know, a bell labs for energy, you know, or sort of something even bigger than fro. so yeah, I think the thing that you're, you're getting at that I is, is sort of simple, but under done is actually analyzing like what the activity is and what. How to best support it. Yep. Which is instead of just saying [01:03:00] like, ah, there's some research let's give some money to the research and then magical things will happen actually saying like, okay, like, like how does this work? Like what, and then what can we do for these, these specific situation? Yes. I think as you've identified. Like there's both on the one hand, there's the tendency to micromanage research and say, research has to do this, this with this equipment and this timescale it's entirely, this is sort of subject to milestone. And on the other hand is research is this magical thing. We have no idea. but just. Let other scientists, peer review each other, and just sort of give as much money to it as we can. and then we see what happens. Right. And I think neither of those, is a, is a good design philosophy, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think it involves people like thinking it's it's uncomfortable, but like, like thinking and learning about. How, how did you think then understanding how it could, how it could be different? [01:04:00] How it's not a it's it's a system. Kevin has felt set, said it said it well. And so in some ways it's been designed, but really our scientific systems are something that has evolved into large degree. No one has designed it. It's not. Something that's designed to be optimal is it's a, it's a emergent property of many different people's incentives. And, if we actually try to apply more design thinking, I think, I think that can be good as long as we're not over overconfident in saying that there's one model for everyone. Yeah. I think that the trick to, sort of fixing. Emergent systems is to like, basically like do little experiments, poking at them. And that's, that's very much what I see getting fro is going okay. It's like, you're not saying, Oh, we should like dismantle the NSF and have it all be . Okay. Let's do a couple of these. See what happens. That's right. It's I think it's inherently a small perturbation and it it's. And I [01:05:00] think DARPA, by the way is a similar thing. It's sort of dark. You wouldn't need DARPA. If everything else was already sort of efficient, right. Given that things are not perfectly efficient, Darko has all these, all these sort of this niche that it fills. I think similarly Faros, they can only exist. if you also have a huge university system and you also have companies that that doesn't make sense, otherwise it's, it's a perturbation, but as we, I think it's a perturbation in which you unlock a pretty big pressure stream sort of behind it when you open it up. So. Excellent. Well, I think that's, that's actually a great place to close. I guess the last question would be, Like, if people are interested in, in Faros, especially like funding or running one, what is the best way for them to reach you? Well, they can, they can talk to me or they can talk to you. my email has, is prominently listed on my website. Twitter is great. and that, yeah, I really interested in, people that have a kind of specificity [01:06:00] of, of, of what they want of, you know, here here's, here's what I would do, very specifically, but I'm also interested in talking to people that, See problems with the current systems and want to do something and want to learn about, other highly specific fro ideas that others might have, and how to enable those.  

Welcome to this special podcast series, In Conversation with K2 Intelligence FIN: Jeremy Kroll on GRC Risks, Strategies, and the Future, sponsored by K2 Intelligence FIN. This week am visiting with K2 Intelligence FIN, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jeremy Kroll on GRC Risks, Strategies, and the Future. Over the week, we have reviewed the current Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) landscape, looked at GRC at work, considered GRC and the investment community. In Part 4, we consider GRC and K2 Intelligence FIN and will conclude tomorrow with a look at GRC then and now.  Jeremy Kroll counseled that you must “start with an investigative mindset and understanding what the core risks are. Where is that inflection point? Sometimes you might find out a little bit late, but so long as you are quick to react and pivot, you can change the calculus. That means you have to be ready with enough resources internally. You need to make sure that you have a couple of key crisis response or organizations on speed dial because you can’t do everything yourself and your team is usually focused on doing business as usual.” He ended with “how do you be prepared and be in a position to make sure it is a normalized environment when you are dealing with a significant risk to your organization?” Jeremy Kroll went on to note that it begins with asking some interesting questions such as (1) Do you have the internal resources to address this? (2) Do you need to look externally for support? Looking down the road (in an Einsteinian sort of way); (3) Can you see around the corner? And perhaps most importantly, (4) Do you know what trends or crises may impact you in 6 months, a year from now or 5 years from now? Jeremy Kroll cautioned that complacency is the foe of preparedness. As he said, “I think the minute someone gets sort of comfortable and says, oh, we got this or we’ve gained this whole thing out. We figured it all out. That’s the beginning of the end.” To prevent this a business executive, senior management and the Board of Directors have to be great listeners and ask questions, such as what’s the next issue that’s going to become a trend? and what should I be looking out for in my business and also the businesses of my clients? K2 Intelligence FIN has many services which act in concert and parallel. In the area of third-party risk management, it begins with enhanced due diligence platforms. K2 FIN is often called in by companies to conduct third party vetting; reverse or self-due diligence, typically in the case of preparing for a sale; social media due diligence – a proprietary platform we actually developed that helps analyze large volumes of associated content to show a bigger picture. This demonstrates that due diligence is not something you do once and walk away from – it’s something that should be conducted on an ongoing basis to make sure you have the lay of the land, you understand the risk environment, you know what has changed and evolved. This is particularly important in GRC frameworks. Next is Portfolio Risk Management, where K2 FIN works closely with clients to develop a risk assessment methodology based on a systematic approach to risk which applies objective assessment criteria consistent with regulatory guidance and global standards. The methodology will utilize both qualitative data and key quantitative metrics to embed a given entity’s risk appetite into investment decisions and ongoing business operations and provide appropriate risk assessment and management of both portfolio and target investments. Adopting a consistent risk scoring methodology across risk areas will allow for more clear comparisons of risk across domains and investment targets and enable more effective ongoing risk monitoring, reporting, and mitigation. Please join us for our final episode of this podcast series where we examine GRC: then and now. Check out the LinkedIn page for K2 Intelligence FIN here. Check out the K2 Intelligence FIN website here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

exodus13 Campaign: Exodus | System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed | GM: Stu | Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork | Info: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them? |   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. |   Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction |  

exodus12 Campaign: Exodus | System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed | GM: Stu | Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork | Info: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them? |   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. | Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction

exodus11 Campaign: Exodus | System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed | GM: Stu | Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork | Info: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them? |   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. | Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction

exodus10 Campaign: Exodus | System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed | GM: Stu | Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork | Info: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them? |   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. |   Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction 

The speed of light has fundamental significance. This talk will explain how the speed of light was first measured, and how an obscure but brilliant patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland by the name of Albert Einstein deduced that the speed of light is the upper speed limit for everything in the Universe. Interesting effects occur when particles are accelerated and achieve speeds close to that of light; these unusual phenomena take place not only in particle accelerators here on Earth but out in space that we can observe using our telescopes. It is even possible for things to be measured as travelling faster than the speed of light and the lecture will explain how that is permissible and understandable in an Einsteinian worldview.A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE, Gresham Professor of Astronomy 2 October 2019The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/faster-than-lightGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

exodus09 Campaign: Exodus | System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed | GM: Stu | Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork | Info: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them? |   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. |   Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction |

exodus08 Campaign: Exodus | System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed | GM: Stu | Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork | Info: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them? |   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. | Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction |

exodus07 Campaign: Exodus | System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed | GM: Stu | Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork | Info: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them? |   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. |   Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction |

The voice of Apollo - how ABC science broadcast the Moon landing Open source data the basis of research, democracy and scientifically-based decision making Australia back of the pack in digital innovation University of Tasmania focussed on local challenges, opportunities and community University of Otago celebrates 150 years Primary students lap up Einsteinian physics

The voice of Apollo - how ABC science broadcast the Moon landing Open source data the basis of research, democracy and scientifically-based decision making Australia back of the pack in digital innovation University of Tasmania focussed on local challenges, opportunities and community University of Otago celebrates 150 years Primary students lap up Einsteinian physics

eoxdus06 Note: this is the mid-season finale. Exodus will resume in June of 2019. Game: Exodus System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed GM: Stu Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork Summary: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them?   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction

exodus05 Game: Exodus System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed GM: Stu Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork Summary: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them?   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction

exodus04 Game: Exodus System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed GM: Stu Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork Summary: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them?   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction

exodus03 Game: Exodus System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed GM: Stu Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork Summary: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them?   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction

exodus02 Game: Exodus System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed GM: Stu Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork Summary: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them?   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts. Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction

exodus01 Game: Exodus System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed GM: Stu Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork Summary: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten.  They are troubleshooters, humanitarians and over-all bad asses but will they be able to survive what awaits them?   Visit happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts.   Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction

Game: Exodus System: Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed GM: Stu Players: Kimi, Joey, Pooja, Stork Summary: The Exodus Foundation: a beacon of light in the dark, cold vacuum of space. They are troubleshooter, humanitarians and over-all bad asses.  As humankind broke from the bonds of Einsteinian laws to conquer space, someone has to protect the downtrodden and forgotten. Visit http://www.happyjacks.org/exodus for a full list of this game’s videos and podcasts.Tags: podcast, podcasts, rpg, actual play, rpg ap, mongoose traveller, Exodus, science fiction

Host: Roy Masters Roy discussed Albert Einstein and physics. Calls - Emilys' husband demands sex from her Donate - https://www.fhu.com/donate/ Order a Copy - http://fhu2.org/K180410.html Order a CD - http://fhu2.org/k9188.html Cure Stress - http://curestressproducts.info Seek your answers here - Website – http://www.fhu.com Complimentary – http://antidoteforall.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/radio.roy.masters/ Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/FHUDOTCOM/videos "Free to everyone in the world. Go to, http://fhu.com  and Start with the seven minute meditation. After two weeks twice or three times a day go to "be still and know" also free of charge to everyone on earth." Watch the exorcism on Facebook from eating a piece of bread. "Eat this remembering Me".

Irresistible Fiction 5: Club Neutron It’s a full moon Irresistible Fiction special, coming from a special place where the moonlight doesn’t shine. Getch makes some friends, and tries out the nightlife at Club Neutron.   Club Neutron, the last, best hope for some final chunk of matter, somewhere in the atom, turns out to be mostly illusions. Illusions, and maybe bad business decisions. While Getch talks quantum mechanics with Inga the bartender, the Incredible Quarks are on stage making things appear and disappear. With their magic act, the concept of anything solid in the universe survives on an Einsteinian technicality. As Inga says: “It’s not a bad trick though. Everywhere you look isn’t there until you look there. You look somewhere else, and what was once there, stops being there anymore. It’s the Incredible Quarks. Always one step ahead of you.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANightclub_20170423.jpg   You might want to read up on quarks. Quarks are randomly, appearing somethings way deep down inside the nucleus of the atom. Einstein says we can call their magic act "mass."   I like Physics Girl. She spells things out easily for people like me.  What Are Quarks? Sugar Edition! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LraNu_78sCw&t=1s What Are Quarks? The Fuse School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlv06lSAC7c&t=4s What Are Quarks: Nuclear Physics and Science: https://quatr.us/physics/quarks-nuclear-physics-science.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark Thanks to Kyle Schweighauser for being a bouncer; Jebediah Wilson for looking after Club Neutron's best interests, and Inga Wilson for being an inspirational bartender at the core of reality. Dan Marks, from News Sausage, and formerly of Chaos Theory Radio, was the Great Nad. There were Sounds! Warning Alarm - Beeps Sound Effects All sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuwgJxYqft0&t=17s Busy Bar Ambiance - Talk and Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObpA84ddL0 12 Epic Explosion Sound Effects [High Quality]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIijFSN35x8 BIG EXPLOSION SOUND EFFECTS (Mp3 Pack Download):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gB369NYFA collapse sound effects (dźwięki zawalenia/zniszczenia): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZr9jLDVDH0&index=2&list=RDQMtHbsTJiFer4 Explosion Sound Effects (Mp3 Download Link): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yh-f_i9BTo Hit/Boom/Impact/Thud (Movie Trailer Cinematic) - Sound Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKugLSWL3bM Machine Gun Sound Effects | Bullet Machine Guns Firing Sound Effect | Royalty Free Sound Effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pbpzdwlM90 Metal door - Sound effects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PkhwTRHWKI Mixing Drinks - Ice / Glass / Pouring / Shaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wELCiljHEs Objects falling and crashing Sound Effect:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5bzqGyGj5s RESTAURANT sound effects ambience, 8 HOURS of restaurant background noise busy fancy diner #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYpJDOn1myo Pounding on Metal Door Sound Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NTO6P_u7Po Space Door Air Lock Release Sound Effect 2017 - Free Download: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7im7exXYa6s Space Ship Cruising Sound Effects Library Collection:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGYMjmGgsQ8 Spaceship Fast Takeoff Sound Effect:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCVv8_zdQrE Star Wars Spaceship take off sound effect 1:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOhca-UMnp4 Thud Sound Effects All Sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWy3WQzeoa8 Sakebeats Club Beat » Clubbeat_03.wav: https://freesound.org/people/sakebeats/sounds/176357/ Gun sound effects heard in movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At8kg0lQwDE Bar Glass Clinks & Slides Sound Effect  Hi - Resolution Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQtv875c5D4  

Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from creative and curious minds. The Think Again podcast takes us out of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and Jason Gots, your host, with unexpected conversation starters from Big Think’s interview archives. Dean Buonomano is a professor of neurobiology and psychology at UCLA and a leading theorist on (and researcher into) the neuroscience of time. His latest book, Your Brain is a Time Machine, the Neuroscience and Physics of Time convinced Jason that time is far weirder than he knew it to be (and he already knew it was mind-bogglingly weird). In this episode: Does time exist at all, or is it an illusion of consciousness? If the latter, what's the evolutionary advantage of seeing time as linear and one-directional? Which is right: the Einsteinian view that the universe is a four dimensional box in which all time is already present, or the "common-sense" view that time is uni-directional? How does comic timing work? What's the evolutionary advantage of comedy? And oh so much more.  Surprise conversation starter interview clips: Scott Aukerman on comedy as a survival skill, Kevin Kelly on optimism as an engine of progress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the D2D podcast, you'll find ample joy, laughter, anecdote...and beer.  Pay close attention for all of the mentions of delicious food and drink (links provided below), and please support all of the amazing people and places mentioned in this podcast.  Really, it's all incredibly good stuff. In preparation for judging the "Battle of the Brewz" at The Commons at Franklin, Greg purchased several bottles of disparate brew types, nuzzled in next to Jen and the recorder with clean beer goblets and several printed tutorials on beer tasting (...check out ratebeer.com, craftbeer.com, and beeradvocate.com...), and let the  not-entirely-perfect pours commence. (Note: The competing breweries were North Country and Timber Creek.  The other judges were from Lavery Brewing.  (These fine establishments and people will be featured in next week's D2D pod!) First up was Southern Tier 2XPRESSO (...yinz guys gawt expresso?  How baht a mawkeeawdoh? It was ruhl good!...).  Actually, I'll let the folks at Southern Tier do the talking, "Our 2XSTOUT is considered by many to be a perfect milk stout. We started with that in mind, and added espresso beans and lemon peels for a true Italian style pick-me-up. The result is a stout so black, so rich, so creamy, it’d be at home in a café along a cobblestone street in some neighborhood in Rome. Yet, it’s beer."   Greg's assessment: I love this. It's ruhl good!  Jen's assessment: [contemplative pause] I don't dislike it. (Note: This is high praise from Jen for a stout.) Next was Belgian Coast IPA by Green Flash (California, USA) and St. Frau Blucher...uh, Feuillie (Le Roeulx, Belgium), which was an entirely different beast than the dark, bitter, minimally bubbly beer with which we began.  Bottle conditioned, amber, with a stiff head that did not dissipate (...that's what she said...), and incredibly lively in the glass.  As with most Belgian style IPAs we've tried, this one leaned heavily Belgian rather than finding the balance for which we're consistently searching in this sort of fermented mash-up.  Jen loves big hops with big fragrances (e.g. grapefruit, flowers) and big alcohol.  Greg loves...well shit, Greg would drink anything...but Greg does love a good Belgian, and ultimately that is what this looked, smelled, and tasted like.   So again, Greg's assessment: I love this.  It's ruhl good!  Jen's assessment: I like it. [contemplative pause] It's definitely sweeter than the previous beer.  (Note: Jen plucked out the distinct sour cherry flavor which was entirely welcome by both of us.  She also shares, in the podcast, that our tour and tasting at Brewery Ommegang, last year, opened her mind and palate to the complexity, variety, and joy of Belgians.  Plus, she has an Einsteinian palate.  It makes Greg extremely jealous.) We then dove into the topic of barbeque, and the fact that the chefs at Union Pig and Chicken are making smoked meats that would convert a vegan Buddhist and cause PETAs entire executive board to literally dive into a vat of his barbeque. (Additionally, you'll find exceptional fried chicken, southern-style sides with a Sousa-the-sorcerer twist, craft beer, cocktails, and an extensive whiskey selection...as if one couldn't love this man any more.) Greg's Assessment: I mean, holy shit.  Really.  And not just the brisket and pork, but also the chicken.  I've never experienced a piece of chicken quite like the breast I encountered there, and I'm not sure that I'll ever feel so amazed and satisfied.  Just go there.  Like fucking now.  Go. Jen's Assessment: Yeah, ditto that. And for a little levity, we discuss a young Italian boy's disdain of uncomfortable mittens and a well-meaning Grandmother's ability to condition children with Autism to utterly fear the words, "I love you."  Oh, and Kate plays the role of Foley artist, providing a background of shaking spray paint cans (...listen for it, it makes me smile every time I hear it...), intrusive squeaks, and jingle bells. How can you resist? We present to you, "mmm...Beer Tasting."

With ongoing discussions between neuroscientists and philosophers on the existence, or not, of free will, and with so many people in the so-called ‘enlightened’ West still believing that their fate is somehow linked to the movements of the stars and planets, what does modern physics have to say on the matter of determinism and chance? Indeed, is our future preordained? This lecture will be a whistle-stop tour of Einsteinian relativity, quantum indeterminacy and whether, according to our current understanding of the nature of time, the future is knowable.

Uncertainty and quality should be integrated into the quantitative sciences of complex systems; this talk offers some practical techniques that illustrate how this could be accomplished. The faith that truth lies in numbers goes back to the Pythagorean attempt to unify both practical and theoretical sciences. Its current manifestation is the idolisation of pre-Einsteinian physics in the quantification of social, economic, and behavioural sciences. The talk will explain how this "crisp number" mode of thinking has promoted the use of over-simplistic models and masking of uncertainties that can in turn lead to incomplete understanding of problems and bad decisions. The quality of a model in terms of its fitness for purpose can be ignored when convenience, especially computerised convenience, offers more easily calculated crisp numbers. Yet these inadequacies matter when computerised models generate pseudo-realities of their own through structures such as financial derivatives and processes such as algorithmic trading. Like Frankenstein's monster, we have already seen financial market pseudo-reality take on an uncontrolled, unstable and dangerous life of its own, all the more beguiling when it generated income for all parties in the merry-go-round. Despite its manifest failings, it is still going on.

You were amused to find you too could fear “The eternal silence of the infinite spaces.” The astronomy love poems of William Empson, from which the preceding quote was taken, were just some of the many media through which people explored the ramifications of Einstein's ideas about the cosmos in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Masterfully incorporating a contextual sensibility of the historian of science with a sensitivity to textual texture of the literary scholar, Katy Price guides us through the ways that readers and writers of newspapers, popular fiction, poems, magazines, and essays translated and incorporated Einsteinian relativity. Loving Faster Than Light: Romance and Readers in Einstein's Universe (University of Chicago Press, 2012) situates this popular engagement with the physical sciences within the political transformations of early twentieth-century Britain, looking at how the scientific and publishing communities attempted (with different levels of success) to use media coverage of relativity to rally the support of a wider reading public. It is a rich study that has much to offer to those interested in the history of science, of literature, and of popular culture, while helpfully complicating all of those categories. “Fly with me then to all's and the world's end And plumb for safety down the gaps of stars Let the last gulf or topless cliff befriend, What tyrant there our variance debars?” *Both quotes above are from William Empson's poems, and can be found on pages 167 and 162 of Price's book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You were amused to find you too could fear “The eternal silence of the infinite spaces.” The astronomy love poems of William Empson, from which the preceding quote was taken, were just some of the many media through which people explored the ramifications of Einstein's ideas about the cosmos in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Masterfully incorporating a contextual sensibility of the historian of science with a sensitivity to textual texture of the literary scholar, Katy Price guides us through the ways that readers and writers of newspapers, popular fiction, poems, magazines, and essays translated and incorporated Einsteinian relativity. Loving Faster Than Light: Romance and Readers in Einstein's Universe (University of Chicago Press, 2012) situates this popular engagement with the physical sciences within the political transformations of early twentieth-century Britain, looking at how the scientific and publishing communities attempted (with different levels of success) to use media coverage of relativity to rally the support of a wider reading public. It is a rich study that has much to offer to those interested in the history of science, of literature, and of popular culture, while helpfully complicating all of those categories. “Fly with me then to all's and the world's end And plumb for safety down the gaps of stars Let the last gulf or topless cliff befriend, What tyrant there our variance debars?” *Both quotes above are from William Empson's poems, and can be found on pages 167 and 162 of Price's book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You were amused to find you too could fear “The eternal silence of the infinite spaces.” The astronomy love poems of William Empson, from which the preceding quote was taken, were just some of the many media through which people explored the ramifications of Einstein’s ideas about the cosmos in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Masterfully incorporating a contextual sensibility of the historian of science with a sensitivity to textual texture of the literary scholar, Katy Price guides us through the ways that readers and writers of newspapers, popular fiction, poems, magazines, and essays translated and incorporated Einsteinian relativity. Loving Faster Than Light: Romance and Readers in Einstein’s Universe (University of Chicago Press, 2012) situates this popular engagement with the physical sciences within the political transformations of early twentieth-century Britain, looking at how the scientific and publishing communities attempted (with different levels of success) to use media coverage of relativity to rally the support of a wider reading public. It is a rich study that has much to offer to those interested in the history of science, of literature, and of popular culture, while helpfully complicating all of those categories. “Fly with me then to all’s and the world’s end And plumb for safety down the gaps of stars Let the last gulf or topless cliff befriend, What tyrant there our variance debars?” *Both quotes above are from William Empson’s poems, and can be found on pages 167 and 162 of Price’s book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You were amused to find you too could fear “The eternal silence of the infinite spaces.” The astronomy love poems of William Empson, from which the preceding quote was taken, were just some of the many media through which people explored the ramifications of Einstein’s ideas about the cosmos in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Masterfully incorporating a contextual sensibility of the historian of science with a sensitivity to textual texture of the literary scholar, Katy Price guides us through the ways that readers and writers of newspapers, popular fiction, poems, magazines, and essays translated and incorporated Einsteinian relativity. Loving Faster Than Light: Romance and Readers in Einstein’s Universe (University of Chicago Press, 2012) situates this popular engagement with the physical sciences within the political transformations of early twentieth-century Britain, looking at how the scientific and publishing communities attempted (with different levels of success) to use media coverage of relativity to rally the support of a wider reading public. It is a rich study that has much to offer to those interested in the history of science, of literature, and of popular culture, while helpfully complicating all of those categories. “Fly with me then to all’s and the world’s end And plumb for safety down the gaps of stars Let the last gulf or topless cliff befriend, What tyrant there our variance debars?” *Both quotes above are from William Empson’s poems, and can be found on pages 167 and 162 of Price’s book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You were amused to find you too could fear “The eternal silence of the infinite spaces.” The astronomy love poems of William Empson, from which the preceding quote was taken, were just some of the many media through which people explored the ramifications of Einstein’s ideas about the cosmos in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Masterfully incorporating a contextual sensibility of the historian of science with a sensitivity to textual texture of the literary scholar, Katy Price guides us through the ways that readers and writers of newspapers, popular fiction, poems, magazines, and essays translated and incorporated Einsteinian relativity. Loving Faster Than Light: Romance and Readers in Einstein’s Universe (University of Chicago Press, 2012) situates this popular engagement with the physical sciences within the political transformations of early twentieth-century Britain, looking at how the scientific and publishing communities attempted (with different levels of success) to use media coverage of relativity to rally the support of a wider reading public. It is a rich study that has much to offer to those interested in the history of science, of literature, and of popular culture, while helpfully complicating all of those categories. “Fly with me then to all’s and the world’s end And plumb for safety down the gaps of stars Let the last gulf or topless cliff befriend, What tyrant there our variance debars?” *Both quotes above are from William Empson’s poems, and can be found on pages 167 and 162 of Price’s book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next Step #190: When the Church turns relevant in the lives of the people it gives concrete means and ways of overcoming difficulties and tragedies. "Peace be with You" in light of terrorism - answers from the monastery. The act of love and care in the Early Church, as expressed in the book of Act. How the Einsteinian equation affects the USC-ASA. The Lost In Space Robot and imagination. Respecting the simple and rejecting the obscene. Introduction to the Presentation of the Lord (Luke 2:22) and the Rally against Domestic Violence. Peace be with You by David Carlson Robot Voice diesAni's Bubble: On Hope and Pediatric NursingSong: Datevik's "Ari Intz"Produced by Suzie Shatarevyan for epostle.netLook for The Next Step on blubrry.com

Guest speakers: Dr. Timothy Leary and Eldridge Cleaver PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: The following quotes are by Dr. Timothy Leary.] "We know that typically the real changes in human nature, the changes in human politics and economics and society, are brought about by two things: By people who have a map or a vision or a model of where we're going to go, these are the philosophers. And then the technicians, the people who get together the printing presses, or the compasses, or the high technology that can take us where we want to go." "Viewed in the 1930s, when Einstein came to America, he was considered as far out as a crack dealer." "Heisenberg taught us to take the universe very personally … in both senses of the word." "So who? Who's gonna prepare a civilization of factory workers and farmers and people who haven't even got the Model T Ford yet? Who's gonna prepare them for an Einsteinian, relativistic, quantum physical, ever-changing, probabilistic universe? Who? Well you know who you can count on at every time in human history when we had to make a big philosophic lurch forward. Who always came to the front and saved the day and made us feel happy and comfortable with a new future? I'm talking about those friends of ours who have always been around when we needed them, the musicians, and the artists, and the poets, and the writers, and the bards, and the performers, and the storytellers, and, OK, the minstrels, the rock n' rollers. Right! The actors, the script writers." "The whole 20th Century, to me, is the story of how artists and writers prepared us to be comfortable in a quantum-physical world." "We're talking about a generation of people who, since the time they were born, have been inundate by data, electronic data. To the Baby Boomers and subsequent generations electronic data is the ocean they swim in." "Of course, everybody got down on the poor doctor [Benjamin Spock]. He was blamed for the excesses of the sixties, ha ha. I was glad to have him get blamed otherwise I would have gotten blamed." "The psychedelic pudding hit the fan in the sixties when the Spock kids hit high school and college, and they wanted a gourmet education, and they wanted connoisseur sex. … Gee, we said you're the best, but we didn't realize that you guys would take us seriously." "The Cyber Society is a society made up of individuals who think for themselves, linked up with other individuals who think for themselves." "The Sixties were the adolescence of the Baby Boom." Following the talk by Dr. Leary I play a short personal message from Eldrige Cleaver to Timothy Leary that was recorded on January 7, 1995. The message Cleaver was so intensely trying to convey to his friend, Tim Leary, was that he believed it was imperative that the U.S. elect a woman president in the year 2000. Unfortunately, neither of these two important historical figures are alive today, and thus we can only speculate as to what they would think about the state of affairs in 2008. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option KMO'S C-Realm Podcasts KMO'S Personal Blog The 4th International Amazonian Shamanism Conference "Flashbacks: An Autobiography"by Timothy Leary "The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time" by Hunter S. Thompson And by William Gibson: Neuromancer Mona Lisa Overdrive Count Zero

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of thought about space, and examines whether cyberspace has introduced a new concept of space in our world or if its roots are in Einsteinian physics. It would have seemed extraordinary to Dante or Newton, from their different perspectives, that at the end of the 20th century there would be learned scholars who would find no place for religion in the great schemes of thought and belief. In the 20th century our notions of physical space have been revolutionised. Einstein said that space was not a separate entity; we've probed and explored the outer reaches of our physical space with space flight, powerful telescopes and theoretical physics. But in the last 20 years, with the birth of the Internet, a virtual form of space has been introduced to us - cyberspace - where people can meet and communicate ideas; you sit at home, punch the keys and you can rove all over the world - the keyboard becomes a magic carpet. But does cyberspace introduce a new concept of space in our world? Or does it really have its roots in Einsteinian physics and even in Medieval theologyAccording to the science writer Margaret Wertheim, cyberspace - life on the surfing internet - gives us not only virtual reality, but a soul. Dr John Polkinghorne, the distinguished physicist and ordained priest in the C of E, is not happy with this news, but he does believe that religion is not destroyed by the new technology, and that latest theories in physics reinforce it. With The Reverend Dr John Polkinghorne, Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge and Canon Theologian of Liverpool; Margaret Wertheim, science writer and author of The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of thought about space, and examines whether cyberspace has introduced a new concept of space in our world or if its roots are in Einsteinian physics. It would have seemed extraordinary to Dante or Newton, from their different perspectives, that at the end of the 20th century there would be learned scholars who would find no place for religion in the great schemes of thought and belief. In the 20th century our notions of physical space have been revolutionised. Einstein said that space was not a separate entity; we’ve probed and explored the outer reaches of our physical space with space flight, powerful telescopes and theoretical physics. But in the last 20 years, with the birth of the Internet, a virtual form of space has been introduced to us - cyberspace - where people can meet and communicate ideas; you sit at home, punch the keys and you can rove all over the world - the keyboard becomes a magic carpet. But does cyberspace introduce a new concept of space in our world? Or does it really have its roots in Einsteinian physics and even in Medieval theologyAccording to the science writer Margaret Wertheim, cyberspace - life on the surfing internet - gives us not only virtual reality, but a soul. Dr John Polkinghorne, the distinguished physicist and ordained priest in the C of E, is not happy with this news, but he does believe that religion is not destroyed by the new technology, and that latest theories in physics reinforce it. With The Reverend Dr John Polkinghorne, Fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge and Canon Theologian of Liverpool; Margaret Wertheim, science writer and author of The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of thought about space, and examines whether cyberspace has introduced a new concept of space in our world or if its roots are in Einsteinian physics. It would have seemed extraordinary to Dante or Newton, from their different perspectives, that at the end of the 20th century there would be learned scholars who would find no place for religion in the great schemes of thought and belief. In the 20th century our notions of physical space have been revolutionised. Einstein said that space was not a separate entity; we’ve probed and explored the outer reaches of our physical space with space flight, powerful telescopes and theoretical physics. But in the last 20 years, with the birth of the Internet, a virtual form of space has been introduced to us - cyberspace - where people can meet and communicate ideas; you sit at home, punch the keys and you can rove all over the world - the keyboard becomes a magic carpet. But does cyberspace introduce a new concept of space in our world? Or does it really have its roots in Einsteinian physics and even in Medieval theologyAccording to the science writer Margaret Wertheim, cyberspace - life on the surfing internet - gives us not only virtual reality, but a soul. Dr John Polkinghorne, the distinguished physicist and ordained priest in the C of E, is not happy with this news, but he does believe that religion is not destroyed by the new technology, and that latest theories in physics reinforce it. With The Reverend Dr John Polkinghorne, Fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge and Canon Theologian of Liverpool; Margaret Wertheim, science writer and author of The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet.