Podcasts about explain

The crew are joined by the Play by Play guy for the Boston Bruins Judd Sirott. What the key has been on this hot stretch for the Bruins and more!

The Athletic's Mike Silver joins the Gregs to explain the Eagles' positivity rabbit fiasco, and whether or not he'd expect the Raiders to pursue Robert Saleh once again this offseasonSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this solo episode, I walk through 10 concrete rules to get way more out of Claude Code and Claude Opus 4.5, based directly on tips Anthropic has shared in their docs and blog posts. I show how to move from vague prompts to architected briefs that use tone, constraints, structure, and power phrases to avoid “AI slop.” I demo examples across writing, research, teaching, and planning so you can see exactly how to apply each rule. By the end, you have a practical playbook for prompting Claude like a teammate and using it as a true thinking partner in your work. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 00:56 – Rule #1: Tone of collaboration 02:16 – Rule #2: Principle of explicitness (action verbs, quantity, audience) 03:20 – Rule #3: Define the boundaries with clear constraints 04:26 – Rule #4: Draft, plan, then act (outline → refine → execute) 06:39 – Rule #5: Demand structured output (tables, formats, schemas) 08:00 – Rule #6: Explain the “why” behind your request 09:05 – Rule #7: Control brevity vs. verbosity (expert, brief, simplifier) 10:21 – Rule #8: Provide a scaffold and templates 11:21 – Rule #9: Use “power phrases” and expert personas 12:28 – Rule #10: Divide and conquer complex projects 14:09 – Putting it all together with an example For founders doing $50k+ MRR+: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/offline-mode Key Points I share 10 specific prompting rules that come directly from how Anthropic suggests people use Claude. I show how friendly, clear, and firm prompts beat either vague or overly polite requests. I demonstrate how explicit constraints (length, style, audience, banned words) create more creative and focused outputs. I use outlines, scaffolds, and structured formats to turn Claude into a planning and synthesis engine instead of a random text generator. I introduce “power phrases” like “think step by step” and “critique your own response” to unlock more advanced reasoning. I wrap everything into a final Stoicism lecture prompt that combines persona, context, constraints, structure, and tone. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: thevibemarketer.com Startup Empire - get your free builders toolkit to build cashflowing business - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire-toolkit Become a member - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

Lance Roberts & Danny Ratliff review the growth outlook for the AI sector, the power-cost assumptions built into datacenter models, the economic effects of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and the $125 billion in tariff revenue collected this year—along with what tariffs really contribute to inflation. Additional topics include how to read 2x–3x standard deviations using Bollinger Band concepts, which data streams matter most (and where to find them), the link between inflation and economic growth, and practical insights on silver, ETF buy-and-hold strategies, NUA planning, valuation challenges when stocks trade at 25x earnings, and the realities of the “dollar debasement” narrative. As always, we approach these discussions pragmatically: no magic bullets, and market cycles end when they end. Use the chapter markers below to jump to any topic. 0:00 - INTRO 0:18 - Fed Day Anticipation 4:28 - More Market Volatility Possible Following Fed Meeting 9:14 - Getting ready for Santa 10:02 - Has the Fed given up on their inflation mandate? 13:31 - What's the impact on Long bonds? 15:35 - What is the outlook for AI sector growth? 18:30 -Do Datacenter owners use models assuming power subsidization? 19:06 - What is the impact on the economy from the One Big Beautiful Bill? 22:45 - How much in tariffs have been collected this year? $125-B 25:23 - Explain 2x, 3x standard deviations from average (Bollinger Band articles) 28:43 - What data to watch (and where can you find it)? 31:15 - Inflation: true impact of tariffs? True sources of Inflation: No inflation, no economic growth 35:37 - Silver: Advisors' Kryptonite? (Don't forget to take profits.) 39:29 - Is buy-and-hold with ETF's a good passive investing policy? 43:56 - Does it worry you that the treasury refi uses all T-bills? 45:18 - Is Dollar Debasement real? No--it's a narrative. 46:09 - Using NUA Tax Strategies 46:55 - Buying stocks at 25x 48-48 - Treasury Yields supply & demand dynamics 49:44 - Buying stocks at multiples and valuations 51:10 - Measuring risk in portfolio (60/40 allocation) 53:33 - Our pragmatism 54:36 - No magic bullet - bubbles pop when they pop (Chart: running trend line) 58:05 - Coming Attractions Hosted by RIA Advisors Chief Investment Strategist, Lance Roberts, CIO, w Senior Investment Advisor, Danny Ratliff, CFP Produced by Brent Clanton, Executive Producer ------- Watch Today's Full Video on our YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3KQlkIK ------- The latest installment of our new feature, Before the Bell, "Market Pause Before the Fed: Time to Trim Risk?," is here: https://youtu.be/watJ1Jqsf-4 ------- Articles Mentioned in Today's Show: "Bullish Case Or Bearish Backdrop" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/bullish-case-or-bearish-backdrop/ -------- REGISTER for our 2026 Economic Summit, "The Future of Digital Assets, Artificial Intelligence, and Investing:" https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2026-ria-economic-summit-tickets-1765951641899?aff=oddtdtcreator ------- Watch our previous show, "Dealing with Debt & Smart Money Moves" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iPM7ef0BKg&list=PLVT8LcWPeAugpcGzM8hHyEP11lE87RYPe&index=1 -------- Get more info & commentary: https://realinvestm entadvice.com/newsletter/ -------- SUBSCRIBE to The Real Investment Show here: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheRealInvestmentShow -------- Visit our Site: https://www.realinvestmentadvice.com Contact Us: 1-855-RIA-PLAN -------- Subscribe to SimpleVisor: https://www.simplevisor.com/register-new -------- Connect with us on social: https://twitter.com/RealInvAdvice https://twitter.com/LanceRoberts https://www.facebook.com/RealInvestmentAdvice/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/realinvestmentadvice/ #StockMarket #FedDecision #MarketVolatility #TechnicalAnalysis #BitcoinUpdate #MarketOutlook #BitcoinUpdate #FedMeeting #YearEndRally #InvestingQandA

The "Variable Geometry" of the Muslim Brotherhood and Its Global Affiliates: Colleagues Edmund Fitton-Brown and Bill Roggio explain that the Muslim Brotherhood operates as a "mothership" for various Islamist movements, utilizing a strategy of "variable geometry" to adapt to local political environments while aiming for a global caliphate; Hamas functions as the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood and despite being severely damaged by the war with Israel remains the dominant force in Gaza, with the Brotherhood finding state sponsorship primarily in Qatar, which provides funding and media support via Al Jazeera, and Turkey, where President Erdogan acts as a leader for the organization. 1934 TURKEY

Good morning! Start your day with Go Birds! Daily, a daily Eagles podcast giving you everything you need to know for December 9th. In today's episode Eliot Shorr-Parks dives into the Eagles loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, with Nick Sirianni, AJ Brown and Saquon Barkley explaining what happened. Then, what the team's mentality needs to be the rest of the way. NOTE: Please excuse the audio issues in the pod. Sorry! Help us raise money for TreeHouse Books and win a Zack Baun signed football by clicking ⁠HERE⁠! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Day 6 of the Brian Walshe murder trial gave jurors something they won't forget — surveillance footage of a masked man in blue latex gloves pushing a cart through a Lowe's on New Year's Day 2023. Inside that cart: a hacksaw, a hatchet, a utility knife, a Tyvek suit, mops, buckets, and cleaning supplies. The total was $463.23. He paid cash. Hours later, prosecutors say Walshe drove to a liquor store in Swampscott — a place where he was a regular, a place that was closed for the holiday — and tossed a trash bag into the dumpster behind the building. Police recovered that bag. Inside they found carpet fragments with blood clots, human hair, and a piece of Gucci jewelry with the brand name engraved on it. Ana Walshe owned Gucci jewelry. Crime lab specialist Matthew Sheehan walked the jury through the blood evidence. The hacksaw tested positive. The hatchet tested positive — and carried a greasy residue consistent with cutting into human tissue. The hammer, the tin snips, towels, slippers, carpet pieces — all positive. A kitchen knife hidden above the refrigerator in the Walshe home came back positive for blood. But here's where the defense runs into trouble. The bedroom — where Brian Walshe's lawyers claim Ana died suddenly of natural causes — was forensically clean. No biological evidence on the floor, even after investigators dug up a section of it. No blood in the bathrooms. No blood on the stairs. But the basement floor? Covered in blood stains, right next to a pile of black trash bags. The state medical examiner testified that sudden unexpected death in a healthy 39-year-old woman is "pretty rare" and put sudden arrhythmia "at the very bottom of the list" of explanations. He couldn't determine cause of death because there's no body. Brian Walshe already pleaded guilty to disposing of his wife's remains. The prosecution is a third of the way through their case, and the picture is getting clearer by the day. #BrianWalshe #AnaWalshe #WalsheTrial #TrueCrime #MurderTrial #CohassetMurder #ForensicEvidence #TrueCrimeCommunity #JusticeForAna #CrimeLab Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod Listen Ad-Free On Apple Podcasts Here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-today-premium-plus-ad-free-advance-episode/id1705422872

Day 6 of the Brian Walshe murder trial gave jurors something they won't forget — surveillance footage of a masked man in blue latex gloves pushing a cart through a Lowe's on New Year's Day 2023. Inside that cart: a hacksaw, a hatchet, a utility knife, a Tyvek suit, mops, buckets, and cleaning supplies. The total was $463.23. He paid cash. Hours later, prosecutors say Walshe drove to a liquor store in Swampscott — a place where he was a regular, a place that was closed for the holiday — and tossed a trash bag into the dumpster behind the building. Police recovered that bag. Inside they found carpet fragments with blood clots, human hair, and a piece of Gucci jewelry with the brand name engraved on it. Ana Walshe owned Gucci jewelry. Crime lab specialist Matthew Sheehan walked the jury through the blood evidence. The hacksaw tested positive. The hatchet tested positive — and carried a greasy residue consistent with cutting into human tissue. The hammer, the tin snips, towels, slippers, carpet pieces — all positive. A kitchen knife hidden above the refrigerator in the Walshe home came back positive for blood. But here's where the defense runs into trouble. The bedroom — where Brian Walshe's lawyers claim Ana died suddenly of natural causes — was forensically clean. No biological evidence on the floor, even after investigators dug up a section of it. No blood in the bathrooms. No blood on the stairs. But the basement floor? Covered in blood stains, right next to a pile of black trash bags. The state medical examiner testified that sudden unexpected death in a healthy 39-year-old woman is "pretty rare" and put sudden arrhythmia "at the very bottom of the list" of explanations. He couldn't determine cause of death because there's no body. Brian Walshe already pleaded guilty to disposing of his wife's remains. The prosecution is a third of the way through their case, and the picture is getting clearer by the day. #BrianWalshe #AnaWalshe #WalsheTrial #TrueCrime #MurderTrial #CohassetMurder #ForensicEvidence #TrueCrimeCommunity #JusticeForAna #CrimeLab Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod Listen Ad-Free On Apple Podcasts Here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-today-premium-plus-ad-free-advance-episode/id1705422872

Former president of the Baseball Hall of Fame (2008-2019) Jeff Idelson joins Papa & Silver to explain how the Baseball Hall of Fame weighs the numerous factors that compile a player's resume, why ballot eligibility dropped from 15 to 10 years, and whether or not he believes that Barry Bonds will eventually end up in the Hall of FameSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever wondered how to talk to children about autism in a way that feels natural, positive, and empowering? In this replay episode, I'm bringing back my incredibly insightful conversation with Andi Putt (Mrs. Speechie P) — an Autistic SLP who specializes in autism evaluations and neuro-affirming support. Andi shares compassionate, practical ways to talk to autistic children about their identity, how to approach conversations with peers and siblings, and why starting these discussions early can make a profound impact on a child's confidence, self-understanding, and mental health. We also dive into how to use everyday moments to normalize autism, reduce stigma, and help all children grow in empathy and acceptance. This is one of those episodes that educators and families continuously return to… and for good reason. Takeaways  Why conversations about autism should start early — and continue over time How explaining autism positively can support a child's self-concept and emotional well-being Simple, child-friendly ways to describe autism using strengths-based language Strategies for helping peers understand behaviors through empathy (including Andi's amazing "bear in the classroom" analogy) How open discussions reduce stigma, prevent bullying, and foster more inclusive classrooms Why kids are often more accepting and adaptable than adults assume How to avoid common mistakes adults make when talking about autism — and what to say instead The power of validating children's needs, identities, and differences without shame The importance of individualized support and asking children what they prefer or need How to talk about stimming, sensory overload, fight-or-flight responses, and regulation in ways young kids can understand Tips for sharing information with classmates (and when parent/child permission is needed)  Bio: Andi Putt, also known as Mrs. Speechie P, is an Autistic Speech Language Pathologist specializing in team-based Autism evaluations and neuro-affirming support. She is dedicated to empowering families and helping Autistic children understand and embrace their authentic selves while also advocating for each individual's unique needs. When she's not advocating for others, you can find her indulging in a good book, planning her next travel adventure, procrastinating literally anything, or enjoying time with her family. Links:  Andi's website: https://www.mrsspeechiep.com/ Andi's resources for talking to children about autism: https://www.mrsspeechiep.com/shop-all Andi's IG account (@mrsspeechiep): https://www.instagram.com/mrsspeechiep/?hl=en Watch the YouTube version of this podcast episode here: https://youtu.be/8YA5QELKAnc?si=CcMulQitmKXs-Yfi You may also be interested in these supports: Visual Support Starter Set  Visual Supports Facebook Group Autism Little Learners on Instagram Autism Little Learners on Facebook  

If you liked this and want to learn more go to my new website www.DrAnthonyChaffee.com

Jason and Nick are joined first by Dave B to discuss if the College Football Playoff committee got it right before jumping into some (as usual) contentious Personal Beefs. Then the guys are joined by Noah Kreitz of ESPN radio to breakdown Texas missing the playoff and their upcoming matchup vs Michigan in the Citrus Bowl. The show wraps with a new sports movie trivia game. We think we like it.Bonus episodes available at patreon.com/jasondick or https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/jason-dick/subscribe FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY! (this is the last week) subscriptions are only $1 to make up for our extended absence.

Today on Beating Cancer Daily, Saranne brings a lighthearted and informative perspective to cancer detection. After a listener praises her for making cancer more approachable, Saranne realizes the impact humor can have in the fight against this illness. She recounts her own journey with Stage IV breast cancer and emphasizes the importance of regular cancer screenings, especially for skin cancer. Infusing humor into serious topics, she utilizes a Dr. Seuss-inspired rhyme to remember critical signs of skin anomalies and introduces the ABCDEF mnemonic from the Princeton Longevity Center as a practical self-checking method. "Catchy rhymes can save lives; check for brownish spots, dark black dots, and odd-shaped moles." ~ Saranne Today on Beating Cancer Daily: ·     Emphasize the importance of regular skin checks for early detection of cancer·     Use humor to make self-checking for skin cancer more approachable·     Explain a helpful mnemonic (ABCDEF) for remembering key signs of skin anomalies·     Share personal experience to illustrate that even those focused on one type of cancer should remain vigilant about others·     Encourage taking photos of any suspicious skin changes for comparison over time·     Highlight the importance of knowing your family history related to skin cancer·     Recommend consulting with healthcare providers when any changes are noticed·     Remind listeners to help each other with skin checks, especially in hard-to-see areas Resources Mentioned: Princeton Longevity Centerhttps://princetonlongevitycenter.com/ EWG Sunscreen Guidehttps://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/2025 People's Choice Podcast Awards Finalist Ranked the Top 5 Best Cancer Podcasts by CancerCare News in 2024 & 2025, and #1 Rated Cancer Survivor Podcast by FeedSpot in 2024 Beating Cancer Daily is listened to in over 130 countries across 7 continents and features over 390 original daily episodes hosted by Stage IV survivor  Saranne Rothberg.   To learn more about Host Saranne Rothberg and The ComedyCures Foundation:https://www.comedycures.org/ To write to Saranne or a guest:https://www.comedycures.org/contact-8 To record a message to Saranne or a guest:https://www.speakpipe.com/BCD_Comments_Suggestions To sign up for the free Health Builder Series live on Zoom with Saranne and Jacqui, go to The ComedyCures Foundation's homepage:https://www.comedycures.org/ Please support the creation of more original episodes of Beating Cancer Daily and other free ComedyCures Foundation programs with a tax-deductible contribution:http://bit.ly/ComedyCuresDonate THANK YOU! Please tell a friend whom we may help, and please support us with a beautiful review. Have a blessed day! Saranne 

The perfect way to teach a young kid football

On this week's Special Sauce the Washington Post's Tim Carman and Warren Rojas explain how ICE Raids and the National Guard deployment in the nation's capital have terrified immigrant restaurant workers and owners.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In their recent live stream Jazzman and Rachel explain why the recent Family Guy Hallmark parody was lame Listen to the whole live stream https://youtube.com/live/tzN0mXDU9Os To get 15% off your next gift, go to https://www.uncommongoods.com/podcast/hallmarkies for 15% off! Uncommon Goods. We're all out of the ordinary. Our Christmas podcasts are at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4f2KtBPzUE&list=PLXv4sBF3mPUDo41tHqhkjHCvedmZwLzHx For all of our interviews https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXv4sBF3mPUA_0JZ2r5fxhTRE_-RChCj Send us your feedback at feedback@hallmarkiespodcast.com or the twitter call +1 (801) 855-6407 Check out the merch store and get our #hashtag shirts! https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hallmarkies?utm_campaign=Hallmarkies&utm_medium=8581&utm_source=affiliate Please support the podcast on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/hallmarkies Follow us on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hallmarkies-podcast/id1296728288?mt=2 https://twitter.com/HallmarkiesPod on twitter @HallmarkiesPodcast on Instagram Check out our website HallmarkiesPodcast.com Follow Rachel's blog at http://rachelsreviews.net Follow Rachel on twitter twitter.com/rachel_reviews Follow Rachel's Reviews on youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/rachelsreviews Follow Rachel on facebook www.facebook.com/smilingldsgirlreviews

Stepping down a level on the career ladder can feel strangely just as intimidating as aiming higher. How do you explain why you want a less senior role without sounding like you're burnt out, unmotivated, or trying to “quit” responsibility?Whether you're shifting from director to individual contributor, prioritising family life, or simply craving work that's meaningful without the extra leadership load, there is a way to tell this story so employers get it, without making the wrong assumptions about you.In this weeks episode, Sarah and Emma explain how to strike the right tone of vulnerability and intention, and how to balance your examples so you don't accidentally signal that you're still operating at a senior level. You'll also hear how to frame what you loved about being an individual contributor, so this move sounds thoughtful, not like you're stepping backwards.

Here's your local news for Thursday, December 4, 2025:We find out which Madison intersections are in the running for new traffic signals,Hear why advocates recommend "walk audits" as a first step to reducing your neighborhood's carbon footprint,Learn some of the most common ways commercial buildings in Madison waste energy,Explain your right to access government records on data center projects,Share some ice fishing safety tips,Attend Forward Madison's postseason town hall,And much more.

Shanda didn't believe her boyfriend's little mid-century Austin house held anything darker than outdated wiring or a few creaky floors. Built in the 1950s, remodeled to death, colorful, quirky—nothing about it screamed haunted. And yet the moment she stepped inside, she felt something beneath the bright paint and modern upgrades. Not evil. Not angry. But aware. Then she saw her. A tall, thin woman in a pale pink gown, standing perfectly still in the living room, watching from the shadows as if she belonged there. By the time her boyfriend turned around, the apparition was gone—but the house wasn't finished with her. Objects moved on their own. Items vanished only to reappear across the room in impossible places. Footsteps whispered through the walls at night. A man's voice. A boy's voice. Arguing. Always arguing. Years later, she still wonders what truly lived in that house—because some hauntings warn you. Others protect you. And some blur the line between both. #ghoststory #paranormal #hauntedhouse #truespiritstory #realghoststories #ghostencounter #shadowfigure #haunting #supernatural #ghosts #theunexplained Love real ghost stories? Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

If you're running a startup, chances are you're the bottleneck. Brittany Rastsmith joins Product Driven to talk through why founders constantly end up in this trap and how to escape it. She works with early-stage companies through her consulting firm, Bloom Remote, and she's seen it all. We get into how to create clarity, visibility, and accountability across your team so you're not stuck answering every question, solving every problem, or staying up all night wondering if anything is getting done. If you want your team to take ownership and drive outcomes—not just check boxes—this episode is for you.[01:00] - Why being the bottleneck it's a stage [02:30] - Choose your hard: micromanage or build trust [07:30] - How to measure what matters[10:30] - Delegating doesn't work if you dump chaos [14:30] - Explain your thinking if you want your team to carry it out [16:00] - The power of decision logs and written rationale [19:45] - Why psychological safety is key to team ownership [21:30] - Rubber-stamping is the death of progress [24:00] - Why most managers are untrained (and why that matters) [28:00] - Productivity vs. busyness: where your team might be stuck [29:15] - Inputs vs. outcomes: how to tell what's actually broken [31:05] - Where to find Brittany and learn more about Bloom RemoteLinks & Resources:Brittany Rastsmith on LinkedIn: Bloom RemoteGet the Book: https://mybook.to/productdrivenNewsletter: productdriven.comConnect with Matt: https://linkedin.com/in/mattwatsonGet the Offshore Hiring Guide: https://hirefullscale.com/offshore-hiring-guide

Eric (Analytical Iowan) is back to help explain everything that's happening. Another great show. Let's get into it.

Eric (Analytical Iowan) is back to help explain everything that's happening. Another great show. Let's get into it.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We're talking with Aaron Stanski, founder and CEO of Risepointe, a firm that partners with churches across the country to design and build facilities that amplify ministry impact. With more than 15 years of experience in church architecture, project management, and ministry leadership, Aaron and his team help churches navigate complex building challenges while staying focused on mission. Is your church facing growing pains—crowded lobbies, full parking lots, or overwhelmed kids' spaces—but unsure how to move forward? Aaron shares practical insights on how to approach facility planning strategically, align vision with budget, and avoid the costly mistakes that can slow down momentum. Overcoming the overwhelm. // When churches consider expansion or renovation, leaders often feel paralyzed by the process. Questions about cost, zoning, design, and disruption quickly pile up. Too often, churches jump straight to hiring an architect before defining their real needs. Instead, churches should first clarify what's working, what's broken, and what's next before anyone draws plans. Start with scope and budget. // The two guardrails of every successful project are scope (what you're building) and budget (what you can spend). Aaron warns that skipping this step often leads to beautiful drawings that churches can't afford. Risepointe begins with a Needs Analysis, an on-site deep dive into the church's DNA, culture, and challenges. The team listens to staff, studies how people use the building, and identifies bottlenecks—whether it's the children's hallway, lobby congestion, or limited parking. Only then do they define the right-size project and realistic cost range. The power of early engagement. // Most churches wait too long to start planning. Zoning approvals, fundraising, and construction all take longer than expected, especially in urban areas. Waiting too long forces rushed design work, unclear budgets, and lost ministry opportunities. You don't have to build everything at once. Start with a plan that captures the next few wins—like improving your lobby or kids' check-in—while preparing for long-term growth. Knowing when it's time. // Aaron says early warning signs include maxing out your primary service, overflowing kids' spaces, and parking lots at capacity. Many pastors misjudge space needs because they see the auditorium every Sunday but rarely experience the parking or early childhood chaos firsthand. Evaluating your entire Sunday experience—entry to exit—reveals where capacity problems really begin. Aligning buildings with ministry models. // Every church facility reflects a ministry philosophy—but those philosophies evolve. Where there used to be 40-year ministry cycles, now they are closer to 10 to 20. Churches shaped by the seeker-sensitive movement, for example, are now adapting to relational, community-driven models. Spaces that once emphasized rows and stages now need more environments for conversations, mentoring, and connection. A free resource for leaders. // To help churches begin the conversation, Aaron's team created a free guide called “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build.” The resource walks through key questions every church should answer before launching a building project—from clarifying vision and budget to preparing for change. You can download it and schedule a free consultation at risepointe.com/unseminary. To learn more about Risepointe's work helping churches align facilities with mission, visit risepointe.com/unseminary or follow Risepointe on Instagram for inspiration and project stories. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it's time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it! Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, across the country, we keep hearing about churches that are growing and we’re seeing swelling attendance and that’s good. Some of that is like a platinum problem though. It generates other issues that we have to think about. And so what what I did was pull on a friend of mine, Aaron Stanski, he’s the founder and CEO of Risepointe. He’s got 15 plus years of church design, leadership and project management and experience. Rich Birch — If you don’t know Risepointe, where have you been? You’re living under a rock. They’re church architects and designers. They have years of experience working with churches like yours, schools and nonprofits, and they offer a wide range wide variety of services, including architecture, interior design, graphic design, branding, and so much more. Aaron is, I like Aaron not just because he actually has got incredible skills. His team’s got incredible skills, but he really actually wants to help churches like you. And so Aaron, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I’m glad to be here, Rich. Rich Birch — It’s going to be good. Give give people, you’ve been on a couple of times… Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and but give us again, for folks that haven’t heard, the Aaron Stanski, you know, a couple bullet points. Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — What did I miss? What do you want to fill in the picture? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, ah you know the quick story is grew up in ministry. My dad was a pastor growing up, planted a we planted a church in Boston when I was a kid. Went to school for engineering, worked for Harley Davidson Motorcycles, did big projects, project management and stuff for them for a while. And then felt called to ministry. Aaron Stanski — So left Harley Davidson, was on staff with Cru for a couple years doing college ministry before I jumped on staff at a fast growing multi-site church here in Chicago. So loved that, loved being part of that ministry team. And then, of course, we went through a big building project. So got to roll up my sleeves on the on the church staff side of things and hire architects and engineers and AV consultants and really kind of combine my my engineering mind and my ministry heart. And so absolutely love that process. And so, yeah, I’ve been helping churches now for the last 15, 16 years. It’s been an absolute blast. Rich Birch — So good. Well, the the kind of person I want to have in mind today, and so friends, if if you’re listening in, if this sounds a little bit like you, you’re going to want to pay close attention. So I’m thinking about that church, you know, the leader that looks around, they maybe have got, maybe they got two services. Rich Birch — They’re looking around and they’re seeing, ooh, they feel like maybe their growth ah is starting to create some pinch points. Maybe it’s in kids. Maybe it’s in adults. Maybe it’s their lobby. It’s they look around and they’re like, man, I just I feel like our facility might be holding us back a little bit. um And because I do bump into this in churches all the time. Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — And there’s like, there can be like a certain amount of anxiety and fear around, gosh, when do I, what do I do? So when you talk to pastors, what do you know notice as one of the kind of most common point of confusion when it comes to starting or pulling the trigger, moving on with a building project, expansion project, try to improve things. Where are we getting this wrong? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think ah like one, the whole process itself can just be completely overwhelming. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — Like immediately you’re confronted with, ah oh my goodness, like what’s the right solution? What is the, ah what is the town or the, you know, the jurisdiction going to allow us to do? What is this all going to cost? Where are we going to do church in the meantime if we’re having to fix this building or add on to it? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Aaron Stanski — I mean, immediately all of these questions start to kind of well up and it can become ah really overwhelming for a lot of churches. Rich Birch — So good. So when when we step back, is there any one of those that you think in particular is like a piece of the puzzle that is the most kind of mysterious or is the most um confusing as as you that you bump into regularly with leaders? Aaron Stanski — I mean, I think the most confusing is probably like, what’s the right solution? Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Aaron Stanski — A lot of times it’s a combination of like, you know, we feel like we’re out of space, so we have to add on. But if we do that, we’re going to have to modify what we already have. And what we have is old, or there’s some maintenance on it that we haven’t gotten around to. And like, what can we do in this space? And so actually the the right solution is is probably one of the most difficult things to kind of imagine for a lot of pastors. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — And, you know, then right behind that is like. What’s it going to cost? Right. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — I mean, you know, for the last four or five years, we’ve seen a lot of inflation. We’ve seen a lot of different things happening, like with pricing and stuff. And so what used to be a pretty easy calculation for us as churches now, it feels like it’s a lot foggier as far as like what what things are just going to cost. Rich Birch — Yeah. So I’ve heard church leaders at this this juncture, they start thinking like, okay, like we got to get an architect. Get me the architect, the the person that designed this building 25 years ago. Where are they? Are they still in business? And, you know, we start going down that road. I’m not even really sure what an architect does. Like, I obviously, you you draw things. But, like, help us understand what what is the piece of the puzzle that, like, an architect brings to the table. Aaron Stanski — Right. Rich Birch — And I know that’s, like, a subset of what you guys do. Pretend that I’m, like, super dumb because it’s probably not actually worry about pretending too much there. Explain what that is. What is that service? And is that actually what we need at this juncture? Is that the first question? Like, get the architect. Come in here. Explain that whole thing. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, well, I think we have to be careful. Sometimes hiring an architect is like picking up a hammer, right? And for a lot of architects who were, you know, traditionally trained and might have like one sort of, you know, viewpoint of the world. Like their job is to come in and draw something new um that’s going to sort of solve your problem. The challenge with that is a lot of times that architect is just looking for ah one type of solution, ah which is build you something new, add something on. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — And they’re looking at it very narrowly through the lens of what the solution is going to be. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Aaron Stanski — And a lot of times they’re not, you know, kind of able to kind of step back and take a look at strategically and say, okay, before we start drawing plans and blueprints and some of those sorts of things, let’s really talk about like what’s going really well at your church and how are we going to amplify what you’re already doing well? How are we going to add some, you know, some pieces around it? And then of course, how are we going to fix some of the big, you know, some of the bigger problems? Aaron Stanski — So an architect technically, right? I mean, it’s a licensed professional. Their job is to lead your organization through the process from the very beginning all the way through the stages of design. Their job is to make sure that the solution is aligned with your with who you are as an organization and your budget. And they’re supposed to help all the way through construction, making sure that it gets built the way that it was designed and and that it gets you know all the questions get answered and that it’s ultimately safe. Aaron Stanski — So that’s what an architect does. I think the I think the thing that we miss a little bit on the front end is in order for the architect to start, we really need kind of need to know what the scope of the work is and the budget first. Rich Birch — So good. Okay. Okay. Good. Aaron Stanski — If we don’t put those two guardrails on the left and the right-hand side, we’re really missing out. The left-hand side should be scope. The right-hand side should be budget. And we should nail those down before we get going into designing. Rich Birch — Okay. I want to unpack that because I know, I actually texted you recently. Friends, getting you behind the scenes a little bit. I had a friend of mine, they had done exactly what we talked about here. They were like, we went and hired an architect to help with this thing. And they came back with a ginormous number um that was like, I would say a factor, you know, three or four times what I thought. And what do I know? I don’t know anything. Rich Birch — And I actually think it was these guardrails where they went off off on it. They didn’t start with scope and budget. They started with, hey, here’s a problem, architect – solve it for us. And they came back with this, you know, very incredible initial drawing and all that. Rich Birch — Talk us through how do we nail down scope and budget from the beginning? Talk us through what does that look like? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, so I would say, ah you know, you want to find a ministry partner who’s going to come in and really kind of help ah flesh out some of those pieces, really understand what’s working well, what’s not working well, what’s missing, where do we have to clarify what it is that we’re doing in order so to sort of establish that. And and there’s ah there’s a lot of great partners out there who can help you do that. But you’re really looking for someone in the building/design/construction space who has experience who has a lot of experience, honestly, with churches and understands what it means to, you know, serve people who’ve been part of your church for 20, 30 years and keep them on mission and disciple them up, as well as welcoming people who are walking into your doors for the very first time. Aaron Stanski — So at Risepointe, we walk through a process called The Needs Analysis, where we get on site with, you know, a church for an entire day and understand their DNA and really understand what’s working and not working and stuff. And we start with that so that we can sketch out some ideas and some concepts and stuff around what is the what is the scope of work that’s going to solve the problem or fix the lid or add the seats that we need? And what’s the budget that we feel like God’s calling us to spend as a church in order to go do that? And we want to start with that before we jump into full architecture. Rich Birch — Okay, so sidebar question. Is it possible for someone to help us at this early kind of scoping phase without doing some sort of on-site? Like, can I just call an architect and say, hey, here’s the problem. I need to add a thousand seats. How much is that going to cost? And then they go away and come back with a number. Or, or you know, are is there, yeah, can they do that? Talk us through that. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, you can. I mean, you can call up Risepointe and I’ll get on the phone with you. The, and, but there’s going to be a range, right? Rich Birch — Okay. Aaron Stanski — And I can say like, Hey, here’s the last 10 churches that we’ve done a thousand seat auditoriums at… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — …and here’s kind of the range and stuff. The problem with shortcutting to that is you miss a lot of things, right? Each jurisdiction is different, like how the civil engineering works, the parking requirements and stuff. Rich Birch — Right. Good. Yep. Aaron Stanski — And those really affect the budget. And so we want to understand those first. And the second thing is, I mean, every church that we work with is and incredibly unique in the people that they’re reaching, and the values that those people have and whether they’re de-churched or unchurched and and who they’re running into and and stuff. And so really kind of understanding that context is so important um before we jump into, you know, sort of solution. Aaron Stanski — But yeah, I mean, since we work with churches all over the country, I mean, if someone called me up, I could probably, I could probably put my thumb in the air and give them a ah swag on what that might cost. Rich Birch — Yeah. And I would, you know, it’s funny because I’ve, I’ve recommended people have asked me those kinds of questions and I always actually say exactly what, you know, where you led, which is like, you should call my friend Aaron and, but, but what you should do, get on the, do the like free call or whatever, get on the book a time. But I said, you really should do this Needs Analysis thing. Cause the project that you’re facing is always much larger than you think. Rich Birch — And I would rather people take time, invest the resources upfront and time, frankly, to slow down and say let’s actually understand the question we’re asking before we jump to answers, right? Like what because because we could get this thing wrong and actually that gets to this whole idea of how early is too early. My experience has been people wait too long before they engage with someone like you. They they get into like their third service, fourth service. They’re like, oh gosh, people aren’t going to the fifth service. Maybe we have to figure out how to get more space. Talk us about, you know, what mistakes do we make when we wait too long without engaging with someone like you? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I’d say, you know, the thing to keep in mind is that you’re, if you’re the average church that reaches out to Risepointe, you’re somewhere between two and a half and three years away from having any sort of new space. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Okay. Aaron Stanski — And that’s on the short end. We have churches who are bringing new space online five years after they’ve reached out to us because they’re, they live in downtown areas… Rich Birch — Wow. Aaron Stanski — …very challenging jurisdictions and some things like that. Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Stanski — And so when we’re thinking about when is the right time, I think, yeah, earlier is definitely better. But we have to be careful ah that we’re strategically spending dollars even on the front end, you know, so that we, you know, we’re getting out of it what we need. Aaron Stanski — As leaders, what questions are we asking that we need answers for in order to determine is it the right time to move forward with a building project? Is it a right time to launch a campus or go multi-site or some things like that? Aaron Stanski — If you wait too long, typically what happens is either we’re we’re rushing through the design process to kind of hit the capital campaign stuff and there’s budget misalignment. All of a sudden we thought it might be this, but now this is the actual budget for what it’s going to work. Aaron Stanski — And I think when that happens, there starts to be some vision confusion. You know, we’re looking at solutions that we kind of rushed through and it doesn’t feel like we really thought all of those things through. And so I think that’s another one. Aaron Stanski — And then I just think, you know, there’s there’s some missed ministry opportunities if if we kind of wait too long. I think a lot of times when we’re planning out, here’s the multiple phases of how we develop this campus and expand it. You know, we miss out on opportunities to go get some smaller things done sooner… Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — …capture momentum, you you know, fix the welcome center, like invest some dollars in something we know we’re not going to tear down, make it better for guests in a couple months. And we miss out on those things if we don’t have a bigger, more strategic plan. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yeah, kind of a step back and say, hey, how does this fit into where everything that’s going on? Rich Birch — What would be kind of double clicking on that? What would be some indicators internally that would say, hey, um you know, these things are happening. I should really reach out to Risepointe. What would be some of the things that you would see as telltale signs that it’s now a time to to kind of take this step? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think if we’re, you know, if we’re really pushing towards our, those max numbers at our primary service, I think that’s a, that’s definitely an early indicator. Aaron Stanski — A lot of churches just kind of reach out and say, Hey, okay, here’s, here’s kind of where we’re at. Here’s where the math is at. Like, can you look at this like from a, like how much kids area should we have? How much lobby space should we have? And we can run some quick math for them and say, Hey, you don’t have any other lids. You’re looking good. You, you probably have a few more years of growth in you. Aaron Stanski — So that would be one. You know i think if ah you know we’re starting to talk about ah adding a third or fourth service, it’s probably a little bit too late, but we should probably get on it sooner than later. Aaron Stanski — And then, you know, one of the, one of the other things too, is just kind of paying attention. It’s easy for us on Sundays to stand on the stage and look out and get a pretty good sense of, are there enough seats? Is there space for me here? And like, we look out and we see some empty chairs. Aaron Stanski — Keep in mind that when you’re coming in from the back of the auditorium, it’s a lot harder to see some of those empty chairs. Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And so what is the percentage? But the other thing is the things that we’re not seeing when more when we’re on stage on Sunday is we’re not seeing the parking lot. We’re not seeing the early childhood wing that’s basically a it’s a it’s a disaster back there. There’s kids running around like crazy. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Aaron Stanski — And so even if we’re ah even if we have enough seats, like or we’re not at the 80 or 90 percent capacity to our primary service. We need to be looking out at some of these other areas and making sure that there’s not a lid somewhere else. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. In fact, I literally just last weekend said that to a church. I was, you know, I was doing a weekend visit where I was on site and all that stuff. And, and it, to me, it felt like the building, the parking, and the kids, and the main auditorium, they, or the adult auditorium, they just didn’t match. It was like they, the three were out of alignment. And I think they had enough kids, but you know, I don’t know. There was, it’s interesting how that can happen. And you know the lead pastor typically is seeing um only the adult room and not you know not anything else. Rich Birch — Early on, you know there’s my experience has been and projects that have been a part of that I would rather spend money as personally as a leader. I’m not saying, friends, if you’re listening in, that you need to necessarily do this. Rich Birch — I would rather spend money on the front end with a designer like you. Because because the joke I’ve made is it’s a lot cheaper to move walls on drawings than it is in in the real world. And I’ve that comes from pain of building stuff… Aaron Stanski — It’s true. Yeah. Rich Birch — …of building stuff, and then being literally I opened up a new facility and then stood there with a kids ministry person. And the kids ministry person was like, oh, I didn’t think it was going to look like this. I was like, oh my goodness, what what are you talking about? Aaron Stanski — Shoot. Rich Birch — Like, we just opened this new facility. Talk us through, like, what’s an investment on the front end to reach out to someone like you? Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — How do you help churches see that hiring someone like you can actually save us resources in the long haul? Talk us through that. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, starting out at the beginning and getting really clear about where we’re going and how we’re going to get there, it really helps us, you know, cart and like make sure we don’t overbuild or underbuild. Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — It makes sure that like compared to all the other churches that we’re working with all over the country, that we’re in alignment with where the square footage is at and it’s aligned with how you do ministry locally, how you use these spaces seven days a week. Aaron Stanski — And so it’s it’s really making sure that we’re not overbuilding or underbuilding anywhere because that’s ah you know that’s a huge that’s a huge miss if we do that. And that’s probably one of the biggest cost savings. Aaron Stanski — The other thing is you know during you know during sort of that season of vision and master planning and when we’re talking to our folks about what God’s doing at the church and we’re telling stories of life change, like we’re really kind of laying out a vision for what God is calling us to do as a ministry. And people just naturally have questions around like, like, how is this going to help? And and how is this actually going to help us reach my lost coworker, my lost neighbor? Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And, and so I think, you know, spending the time to do that, really translating sort of the mission and vision into physical space needs and producing some of those renderings that accompany that story. I mean, that’s just a really critical part. Rich Birch — Okay, so let’s double click on that. That’s that I feel like I have been caught in this situation where I get I get like, it’s the hammer and nail thing you you say. Like, I’m I’m pretty sure I know what the solution is. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like, let’s go do this. And I like that what you’re saying is like, hey, we need to take a step back and like actually think through how does this fit in our vision and how’s that all? How do you actually do that? How do you help a leadership team discern what the problem is that they’re really needing to solve, or should be solving, rather than just let’s build a bigger box. Or, I know! We just need 25 new parking spots. Like how do we not jump too quickly to that? What’s that look like? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, it looks like, you know, spending time. Rich Birch — Good. And and, really getting to know them and what makes them unique. Like we have a fantastic set of tools that we use at Risepointe to like really talk about, you know, let’s talk about, uh, outside the walls, right? Like who, who are we called to reach? And, and what does it mean to do ministry in this place that God has uniquely put your church in the geographic area? Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And let’s talk about the tension between this side of town and that side of town. And let’s, you know, let’s wrestle with, you know, some of those issues. And then let’s, and then let’s talk about like, like, man, who are we as a church on our best day? And what does it feel like when we’re like living up to our full potential? Aaron Stanski — And then we even get into some of the things around like, man, what are what are some of the strategic drivers? What’s driving more people hearing about Jesus? What’s working really well? What do you see as opportunities or things that where if you had the right leader or finances that you’d be able to you know, accomplish even more of your mission. Aaron Stanski — And so by starting there and then starting to work down towards, okay, where is your facility aligned with that with that exercise and where is it misaligned? Okay, let’s unpack that a little bit. And then without getting into ah the solution yet, I want to meet like individually with each you know ministry leader… Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — …talk about what how check-in works and all of those things. Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And so it’s really sort of this almost like a 360 review of what’s happening between the mission and vision God’s given us, and how are our facilities helping or hindering that mission and vision. Aaron Stanski — And then it just comes down to budget. And so, okay, here are the possible solutions. Here’s what roughly what some of those things are going to cost. And then it’s going to the, going to God in prayer and saying, okay, what are you calling us to do? What are based on these options and trying to figure it out? Rich Birch — I want I want to come back to the budget question in a second. But I’ve I think I probably have stole this off you. I have said to multiple church leaders that like our buildings were built, there was like a philosophical underpinning of the the buildings that we were built with. There was a ministry model that they were built on. Aaron Stanski — Sure. Yeah. Rich Birch — And then there’s been a lag between when we made those decisions, we’ve we built them. Now we’ve been using them for X number of years. And our ministry model may no longer be the same as the building, or probably isn’t actually the same as when the building was built. Rich Birch — What’s your sense on how long that lag time is kind of between the, they they you know, we built something. If we built something more than 10 years ago, you know we probably want to readdress or look at our facilities afresh and say does this actually meet the needs of… Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — Because I feel like so many of us are in like the the cramped shoes that just don’t quite fit they work but they don’t quite fitWhat do you think that lag time is? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, the lag time is getting shorter and shorter. Rich Birch — Okay. Aaron Stanski — It used to be, you know, it probably used to be 40 or 50 years… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — …you know, without major ministry model shifts and stuff. Obviously, you know, Willow Creek, North Point, you know, coming onto of the scene in the in the late 90s and stuff really shifted. We have churches all the way up into the 2000s, even into the 2010s that sort of copied the model of the Willow Creeks and some of those things. And I think we’re seeing, you know, we’re seeing the model shifting a lot faster now. Rich Birch — Interesting. Aaron Stanski — I’d say, you know, you know, we’re probably in a faster 10 to 20 year cycle, something like that. But I think we’re coming out of the, you know, the, you know, that model of Willow Creek and North Point and stuff. And we’re, we’re moving into a new season. And it’s kind of exciting for us. Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — I mean, we get to, we get to sit on the front edge of all of that. Churches like in fantastic places, being creative, reaching, you know, people for Christ. And so it’s just interesting to kind of observe some of those things and, um and observe what’s working really well and, and where it we can improve, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah. You’re baiting me. What are those things that you’ve seen that have shifted? There’s got to be, or is that the magic? We got to call Aaron to find out. Aaron Stanski — No, you don’t have to call Aaron. No, I mean, the thing, I mean, like, you know, I heard someone share this with me recently, right? I mean, every Netflix account homepage is different for every person, all billion subscribers or whatever that they have. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — They’re individually tailored to to those individuals. And I know that because when I had a bunch of seventh grade boys spend the night at my house, like my algorithm got so messed up on my Netflix account last weekend. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Aaron Stanski — But I think there is a shift away from you know some of the bigger, more institutional types of look and feel and trying to get down to, okay, how are we engaging one-on-one with people who are walking in and where they’re at. Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — How do we, you know, instead of preach a sermon at them, how do we hear their story? And what does it look like for us to hear their story in in various places, whether that’s a welcome center, whether that’s, ah you know, side by side in the pew, whether that’s in sort of a first steps class. And so there’s a shift on that side of things… Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s interesting. Aaron Stanski — …just like as we look at the next generation and how we engage and reach the next generation. Rich Birch — Okay, I want to loop back on the money question. So for folks that don’t know, a part of what I do is actually help churches with that. And don’t really talk about it publicly, but I do. And, you know, there is this interesting tension that churches often come to this. It’s like we think we’re different than our ourselves. Rich Birch — And that if I was going to go build a new house, I would have to start with, well, how much income do I have? And like, what can the, you know, what can the, you know, what what would the what would the bank give me from a mortgage point of view? Like I start with reality around my finances. But so many churches start with, let’s build this giant thing. And it’s totally disconnected from the from what we could actually afford to either raise or carry long-term. Rich Birch — How much variance can a church bring to a design? Like if they upfront are defining, Hey, like we can afford probably 5 million. I know I’ve got $35 million dollars in dreams or maybe not. That’s, that’s too crazy. I got $15 million dollars in dreams. Is it possible for me to, to actually get that into a tighter box? Help us understand how do we do that? How do we on the front end be realistic with our finances as we’re doing this design thing? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I think we have to with open hands, we have to hold out the, you know, the dreams, the vision, you know, the stuff that God’s given us. And we have to prayerfully sort of go through that exercise and say, okay, ah but how much risk do I want to introduce into the organization, like via debt? Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — What what is God actually calling us to do with those things? And we have to be creative in how we and and how we get across the finish line. I think when I when I hear sometimes a senior pastor sharing with me his $35 million dollars vision, Rich… Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Aaron Stanski — …what I immediately try to do is say, okay, talk to me about what it is about that $35 million dollar thing that’s resonating with you. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And so even though he’s describing something that’s $35 million, dollars and as an architect, I might get really excited about drawing $35 million dollars worth of stuff. Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Stanski — If he actually can’t afford it and can’t raise it, he’s actually not going to go do it. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — So I need to go back to that vision and say, okay, what are the pieces in there that are from God, that are ah that are aligned with the mission that his church has and stuff? And I need to contextualize that. And then as an architect, as a designer, I have to turn around and say, okay, with my guardrails in place of budget and scope, how do I express those things… Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — …in the $5 million dollars that God has entrusted our church with? And so there’s going to be a lot of difficult decisions along the way. We’re going to have to prioritize some things. And some other things might have to go on the back burner. But that’s the process that we want to help churches walk through um to to get them to that point where they’re walking into a space for the first time and going, oh, man, this feels like us. Like this is this is who God wants us to be in our community. And I’m so excited about doing ministry in this new space. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So it’s it’s not, from what I hear you saying, it’s not unreasonable on the front end to be like, hey, we should actually bring, like, be clear on this is this is what we think we can actually raise. This is that what we think we can carry. We think we could do a project of X, whatever. And that needs to be early on in the discussion rather than we’re disappointed on the back end. Oh my goodness, we got this this big number and we don’t know what to do with it. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I like to be doing it simultaneously. I like to be doing the Needs Analysis and working through, okay, here’s the eight different project options. You can relocate and spend $35 million. You can add on. You can you can do this. All right, here’s your here’s your four options, $10, $8, $6, $4 million dollars And at the same time, I like to encourage churches to like, okay, go talk to someone like yourself… Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Stanski — …and say, okay, what do we think we could raise if we did a capital campaign? How much debt do we currently have? How do our elders feel about us you know borrowing some money if it if it makes a bigger impact on the project? Because if we can bring those two things together and pray through it and get clarity from God about what he’s asking us to do, then I can go ah help draw buildings and blueprints and things like that. Rich, you can help them raise some money and they and we can you know we can go through that process. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Yeah, it’s great. And you know, my experience has been every one of those steps, friends, is, it’s a lot of work. It’s, it’s like a, it’s a faith ah stretching experience. There are late, late nights staring at the ceiling, but every one of those I’ve been a part of, literally 100% of them have been transformative in the life of the church. You know, when they, when you look back, you’re like, wow, that was an inflection point. I am so glad we went through that. It wasn’t this like we did that and I was like, man, that wasn’t such so good in the end. It was really was amazing. Rich Birch — Well, there’s a resource that you’ve provided. It’s called 10 Things to Get ah Right Before You Build. Talk to us about this resource and then and then where can where can we want to make sure people get this. Tell us tell us a little bit about this. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, like with, you know, church, hundreds of churches calling us, you know, every year, asking a lot of the questions that we’ve talked about today. Like we tried to distill down what are the most common things the churches are like, okay, pause real quick. I got to go do something real fast before we decide that we can sort of move forward. And so some of these things are what happens like while you’re talking to Risepointe and some of these things might be before. But I think it’s just kind of a helpful reminder and ah a thoughtful list to kind of work through. Aaron Stanski — And so if that’s helpful at all, or if that’s interesting at all, um you can just go to risepointe.com/unseminary. And a little ah little landing page will pop up there. There’s two things you can do on that page. The first one is to just give us your name and your email there and sign up and get that 10 things to download. Aaron Stanski — I also threw another button on there this morning in case you’re like, hey, that sounds great, but I’ve got I’ve got a specific question I have about our building. Or like, I actually really need to talk to you guys about what our options are. And so I put another button down there at the bottom. If you want to schedule a call with myself or one of our architects, we’d love to hop on the phone with you. No charge for that. 30 minutes. Just kind of talk through where you’re at, what some of your questions are and see if we might be able to help. So ah once again, that’s risepointe.com/unseminary. And you can get all that, all that stuff right there. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s risepointe.com/unseminary. And friends, I’ve had multiple friends in ministry who have engaged with with Aaron across the entire spectrum. The like free 30 minute thing all the way up through, you know, the kind of full deal, help get a whole project out the door. And and just so happy with the work that Risepointe does. And just has been transformative for their churches. So you get a hearty endorsement from me. You really should do that. Again, that’s just risepointe.com/unseminary. You can pick this up. It is a helpful little PDF, and the schedule call is a great thing. Rich Birch — Well, Aaron, I appreciate you being here today. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — If people want to track with you guys or if they’re anywhere else online, obviously risepointe.com. We want to send them to anywhere else online. We want to we want to send them to. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, you can always, uh, you know, follow us on the Insta or whatever you want to do there. Rich Birch — Nice. Love it. Aaron Stanski — If you’re into like, you know, cool pictures of like steel being erected, ah or, uh, kids ministry stuff or pictures and stuff, we’re trying to share a little bit more info there. But yeah, I mean, or just our website and, uh, yeah, stay connected. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Thanks for being here and have a good day, buddy. Aaron Stanski — All right, you too. Bye.

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 If you're a scientist, and you apply for federal research funding, you'll ask for a specific dollar amount. Let's say you're asking for a million-dollar grant. Your grant covers the direct costs, things like the salaries of the researchers that you're paying. If you get that grant, your university might get an extra $500,000. That money is called “indirect costs,” but think of it as overhead: that money goes to lab space, to shared equipment, and so on.This is the system we've used to fund American research infrastructure for more than 60 years. But earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed capping these payments at just 15% of direct costs, way lower than current indirect cost rates. There are legal questions about whether the admin can do that. But if it does, it would force universities to fundamentally rethink how they do science.The indirect costs system is pretty opaque from the outside. Is the admin right to try and slash these indirect costs? Where does all that money go? And if we want to change how we fund research overhead, what are the alternatives? How do you design a research system to incentivize the research you actually wanna see in the world?I'm joined today by Pierre Azoulay from MIT Sloan and Dan Gross from Duke's Fuqua School of Business. Together with Bhaven Sampat at Johns Hopkins, they conducted the first comprehensive empirical study of how indirect costs actually work. Earlier this year, I worked with them to write up that study as a more accessible policy brief for IFP. They've assembled data on over 350 research institutions, and they found some striking results. While negotiated rates often exceed 50-60%, universities actually receive much less, due to built-in caps and exclusions.Moreover, the institutions that would be hit hardest by proposed cuts are those whose research most often leads to new drugs and commercial breakthroughs.Thanks to Katerina Barton, Harry Fletcher-Wood, and Inder Lohla for their help with this episode, and to Beez for her help on the charts.Let's say I'm a researcher at a university and I apply for a federal grant. I'm looking at cancer cells in mice. It will cost me $1 million to do that research — to pay grad students, to buy mice and test tubes. I apply for a grant from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. Where do indirect costs come in?Dan Gross: Research generally incurs two categories of costs, much as business operations do.* Direct or variable costs are typically project-specific; they include salaries and consumable supplies.* Indirect or fixed costs are not as easily assigned to any particular project. [They include] things like lab space, data and computing resources, biosecurity, keeping the lights on and the buildings cooled and heated — even complying with the regulatory requirements the federal government imposes on researchers. They are the overhead costs of doing research.Pierre Azoulay: You will use those grad students, mice, and test tubes, the direct costs. But you're also using the lab space. You may be using a shared facility where the mice are kept and fed. Pieces of large equipment are shared by many other people to conduct experiments. So those are fixed costs from the standpoint of your research project.Dan: Indirect Cost Recovery (ICR) is how the federal government has been paying for the fixed cost of research for the past 60 years. This has been done by paying universities institution-specific fixed percentages on top of the direct cost of the research. That's the indirect cost rate. That rate is negotiated by institutions, typically every two to four years, supported by several hundred pages of documentation around its incurred costs over the recent funding cycle.The idea is to compensate federally funded researchers for the investments, infrastructure, and overhead expenses related to the research they perform for the government. Without that funding, universities would have to pay those costs out of pocket and, frankly, many would not be interested or able to do the science the government is funding them to do.Imagine I'm doing my mouse cancer science at MIT, Pierre's parent institution. Some time in the last four years, MIT had this negotiation with the National Institutes of Health to figure out what the MIT reimbursable rate is. But as a researcher, I don't have to worry about what indirect costs are reimbursable. I'm all mouse research, all day.Dan: These rates are as much of a mystery to the researchers as it is to the public. When I was junior faculty, I applied for an external grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) — you can look up awards folks have won in the award search portal. It doesn't break down indirect and direct cost shares of each grant. You see the total and say, “Wow, this person got $300,000.” Then you go to write your own grant and realize you can only budget about 60% of what you thought, because the rest goes to overhead. It comes as a bit of a shock the first time you apply for grant funding.What goes into the overhead rates? Most researchers and institutions don't have clear visibility into that. The process is so complicated that it's hard even for those who are experts to keep track of all the pieces.Pierre: As an individual researcher applying for a project, you think about the direct costs of your research projects. You're not thinking about the indirect rate. When the research administration of your institution sends the application, it's going to apply the right rates.So I've got this $1 million experiment I want to run on mouse cancer. If I get the grant, the total is $1.5 million. The university takes that .5 million for the indirect costs: the building, the massive microscope we bought last year, and a tiny bit for the janitor. Then I get my $1 million. Is that right?Dan: Duke University has a 61% indirect cost rate. If I propose a grant to the NSF for $100,000 of direct costs — it might be for data, OpenAI API credits, research staff salaries — I would need to budget an extra $61,000 on top for ICR, bringing the total grant to $161,000.My impression is that most federal support for research happens through project-specific grants. It's not these massive institutional block grants. Is that right?Pierre: By and large, there aren't infrastructure grants in the science funding system. There are other things, such as center grants that fund groups of investigators. Sometimes those can get pretty large — the NIH grant for a major cancer center like Dana-Farber could be tens of millions of dollars per year.Dan: In the past, US science funding agencies did provide more funding for infrastructure and the instrumentation that you need to perform research through block grants. In the 1960s, the NSF and the Department of Defense were kicking up major programs to establish new data collection efforts — observatories, radio astronomy, or the Deep Sea Drilling project the NSF ran, collecting core samples from the ocean floor around the world. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — back then the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) — was investing in nuclear test detection to monitor adherence to nuclear test ban treaties. Some of these were satellite observation methods for atmospheric testing. Some were seismic measurement methods for underground testing. ARPA supported the installation of a network of seismic monitors around the world. Those monitors are responsible for validating tectonic plate theory. Over the next decade, their readings mapped the tectonic plates of the earth. That large-scale investment in research infrastructure is not as common in the US research policy enterprise today.That's fascinating. I learned last year how modern that validation of tectonic plate theory was. Until well into my grandparents' lifetime, we didn't know if tectonic plates existed.Dan: Santi, when were you born?1997.Dan: So I'm a good decade older than you — I was born in 1985. When we were learning tectonic plate theory in the 1990s, it seemed like something everybody had always known. It turns out that it had only been known for maybe 25 years.So there's this idea of federal funding for science as these massive pieces of infrastructure, like the Hubble Telescope. But although projects like that do happen, the median dollar the Feds spend on science today is for an individual grant, not installing seismic monitors all over the globe.Dan: You applied for a grant to fund a specific project, whose contours you've outlined in advance, and we provided the funding to execute that project.Pierre: You want to do some observations at the observatory in Chile, and you are going to need to buy a plane ticket — not first class, not business class, very much economy.Let's move to current events. In February of this year, the NIH announced it was capping indirect cost reimbursement at 15% on all grants.What's the administration's argument here?Pierre: The argument is there are cases where foundations only charge 15% overhead rate on grants — and universities acquiesce to such low rates — and the federal government is entitled to some sort of “most-favored nation” clause where no one pays less in overhead than they pay. That's the argument in this half-a-page notice. It's not much more elaborate than that.The idea is, the Gates Foundation says, “We will give you a grant to do health research and we're only going to pay 15% indirect costs.” Some universities say, “Thank you. We'll do that.” So clearly the universities don't need the extra indirect cost reimbursement?Pierre: I think so.Dan: Whether you can extrapolate from that to federal research funding is a different question, let alone if federal research was funding less research and including even less overhead. Would foundations make up some of the difference, or even continue funding as much research, if the resources provided by the federal government were lower? Those are open questions. Foundations complement federal funding, as opposed to substitute for it, and may be less interested in funding research if it's less productive.What are some reasons that argument might be misguided?Pierre: First, universities don't always say, “Yes” [to a researcher wishing to accept a grant]. At MIT, getting a grant means getting special authorization from the provost. That special authorization is not always forthcoming. The provost has a special fund, presumably funded out of the endowment, that under certain conditions they will dip into to make up for the missing overhead.So you've got some research that, for whatever reason, the federal government won't fund, and the Gates Foundation is only willing to fund it at this low rate, and the university has budgeted a little bit extra for those grants that it still wants.Pierre: That's my understanding. I know that if you're going to get a grant, you're going to have to sit in many meetings and cajole any number of administrators, and you don't always get your way.Second, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison [between federal and foundation grants] because there are ways to budget an item as a direct cost in a foundation grant that the government would consider an indirect cost. So you might budget some fractional access to a facility…Like the mouse microscope I have to use?Pierre: Yes, or some sort of Cryo-EM machine. You end up getting more overhead through the back door.The more fundamental way in which that approach is misguided is that the government wants its infrastructure — that it has contributed to through [past] indirect costs — to be leveraged by other funders. It's already there, it's been paid for, it's sitting idle, and we can get more bang for our buck if we get those additional funders to piggyback on that investment.Dan: That [other funders] might not be interested in funding otherwise.Why wouldn't they be interested in funding it otherwise? What shouldn't the federal government say, “We're going to pay less. If it's important research, somebody else will pay for it.”Dan: We're talking about an economies-of-scale problem. These are fixed costs. The more they're utilized, the more the costs get spread over individual research projects.For the past several decades, the federal government has funded an order of magnitude more university research than private firms or foundations. If you look at NSF survey data, 55% of university R&D is federally funded; 6% is funded by foundations. That is an order of magnitude difference. The federal government has the scale to support and extract value for whatever its goals are for American science.We haven't even started to get into the administrative costs of research. That is part of the public and political discomfort with indirect-cost recovery. The idea that this is money that's going to fund university bloat.I should lay my cards on the table here for readers. There are a ton of problems with the American scientific enterprise as it currently exists. But when you look at studies from a wide range of folks, it's obvious that R&D in American universities is hugely valuable. Federal R&D dollars more than pay for themselves. I want to leave room for all critiques of the scientific ecosystem, of the universities, of individual research ideas. But at this 30,000-foot level, federal R&D dollars are well spent.Dan: The evidence may suggest that, but that's not where the political and public dialogue around science policy is. Again, I'm going to bring in a long arc here. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was, “We're in a race with the Soviet Union. If we want to win this race, we're going to have to take some risky bets.” And the US did. It was more flexible with its investments in university and industrial science, especially related to defense aims. But over time, with the waning of these political pressures and with new budgetary pressures, the tenor shifted from, “Let's take chances” to “Let's make science and other parts of government more accountable.” The undercurrent of Indirect Cost Recovery policy debates has more of this accountability framing.This comes up in this comparison to foundation rates: “Is the government overpaying?” Clearly universities are willing to accept less from foundations. It comes up in this perception that ICR is funding administrative growth that may not be productive or socially efficient. Accountability seems to be a priority in the current day.Where are we right now [August 2025] on that 15% cap on indirect costs?Dan: Recent changes first kicked off on February 7th, when NIH posted its supplemental guidance, that introduced a policy that the direct cost rates that it paid on its grants would be 15% to institutions of higher education. That policy was then adopted by the NSF, the DOD, and the Department of Energy. All of these have gotten held up in court by litigation from universities. Things are stuck in legal limbo. Congress has presented its point of view that, “At least for now, I'd like to keep things as they are.” But this has been an object of controversy long before the current administration even took office in January. I don't think it's going away.Pierre: If I had to guess, the proposal as it first took shape is not what is going to end up being adopted. But the idea that overhead rates are an object of controversy — are too high, and need to be reformed — is going to stay relevant.Dan: Partly that's because it's a complicated issue. Partly there's not a real benchmark of what an appropriate Indirect Cost Recovery policy should be. Any way you try to fund the cost of research, you're going to run into trade-offs. Those are complicated.ICR does draw criticism. People think it's bloated or lacks transparency. We would agree some of these critiques are well-founded. Yet it's also important to remember that ICR pays for facilities and administration. It doesn't just fund administrative costs, which is what people usually associate it with. The share of ICR that goes to administrative costs is legally capped at 26% of direct costs. That cap has been in place since 1991. Many universities have been at that cap for many years — you can see this in public records. So the idea that indirect costs are going up over time, and that that's because of bloat at US universities, has to be incorrect, because the administrative rate has been capped for three decades.Many of those costs are incurred in service of complying with regulations that govern research, including the cost of administering ICR to begin with. Compiling great proposals every two to four years and a new round of negotiations — all of that takes resources. Those are among the things that indirect cost funding reimburses.Even then, universities appear to under-recover their true indirect costs of federally-sponsored research. We have examples from specific universities which have reported detailed numbers. That under-recovery means less incentive to invest in infrastructure, less capacity for innovation, fewer clinical trials. So there's a case to be made that indirect cost funding is too low.Pierre: The bottom line is we don't know if there is under- or over-recovery of indirect costs. There's an incentive for university administrators to claim there's under-recovery. So I take that with a huge grain of salt.Dan: It's ambiguous what a best policy would look like, but this is all to say that, first, public understanding of this complex issue is sometimes a bit murky. Second, a path forward has to embrace the trade-offs that any particular approach to ICR presents.From reading your paper, I got a much better sense that a ton of the administrative bloat of the modern university is responding to federal regulations on research. The average researcher reports spending almost half of their time on paperwork. Some of that is a consequence of the research or grant process; some is regulatory compliance.The other thing, which I want to hear more on, is that research tools seem to be becoming more expensive and complex. So the microscope I'm using today is an order of magnitude more expensive than the microscope I was using in 1950. And you've got to recoup those costs somehow.Pierre: Everything costs more than it used to. Research is subject to Baumol's cost disease. There are areas where there's been productivity gains — software has had an impact.The stakes are high because, if we get this wrong, we're telling researchers that they should bias the type of research they're going to pursue and training that they're going to undergo, with an eye to what is cheaper. If we reduce the overhead rate, we should expect research that has less fixed cost and more variable costs to gain in favor — and research that is more scale-intensive to lose favor. There's no reason for a benevolent social planner to find that a good development. The government should be neutral with respect to the cost structure of research activities. We don't know in advance what's going to be more productive.Wouldn't a critic respond, “We're going to fund a little bit of indirect costs, but we're not going to subsidize stuff that takes huge amounts of overhead. If universities want to build that fancy new telescope because it's valuable, they'll do it.” Why is that wrong when it comes to science funding?Pierre: There's a grain of truth to it.Dan: With what resources though? Who's incentivized to invest in this infrastructure? There's not a paid market for science. Universities can generate some licensing fees from patents that result from science. But those are meager revenue streams, realistically. There are reasons to believe that commercial firms are under-incentivized to invest in basic scientific research. Prior to 1940, the scientific enterprise was dramatically smaller because there wasn't funding the way that there is today. The exigencies of war drew the federal government into funding research in order to win. Then it was productive enough that folks decided we should keep doing it. History and economic logic tells us that you're not going to see as much science — especially in these fixed-cost heavy endeavors — when those resources aren't provided by the public.Pierre: My one possible answer to the question is, “The endowment is going to pay for it.” MIT has an endowment, but many other universities do not. What does that mean for them? The administration also wants to tax the heck out of the endowment.This is a good opportunity to look at the empirical work you guys did in this great paper. As far as I can tell, this was one of the first real looks at what indirect costs rates look like in real life. What did you guys find?Dan: Two decades ago, Pierre and Bhaven began collecting information on universities' historical indirect cost rates. This is a resource that was quietly sitting on the shelf waiting for its day. That day came this past February. Bhaven and Pierre collected information on negotiated ICR rates for the past 60 years. During this project, we also collected the most recent versions of those agreements from university websites to bring the numbers up to the current day.We pulled together data for around 350 universities and other research institutions. Together, they account for around 85% of all NIH research funding over the last 20 years.We looked at their:* Negotiated indirect cost rates, from institutional indirect cost agreements with the government, and their;* Effective rates [how much they actually get when you look at grant payments], using NIH grant funding data.Negotiated cost rates have gone up. That has led to concerns that the overhead cost of research is going up — these claims that it's funding administrative bloat. But our most important finding is that there's a large gap between the sticker rates — the negotiated ICR rates that are visible to the public, and get floated on Twitter as examples of university exorbitance — and the rates that universities are paid in practice, at least on NIH grants; we think it's likely the case for NSF and other agency grants too.An institution's effective ICR funding rates are much, much lower than their negotiated rates and they haven't changed much for 40 years. If you look at NIH's annual budget, the share of grant funding that goes to indirect costs has been roughly constant at 27-28% for a long time. That implies an effective rate of around 40% over direct costs. Even though many institutions have negotiated rates of 50-70%, they usually receive 30-50%.The difference between those negotiated rates and the effective rates seems to be due to limits and exceptions built into NIH grant rules. Those rules exclude some grants, such as training grants, from full indirect cost funding. They also exclude some direct costs from the figure used to calculate ICR rates. The implication is that institutions receive ICR payments based on a smaller portion of their incurred direct costs than typically assumed. As the negotiated direct cost falls, you see a university being paid a higher indirect cost rate off a smaller — modified — direct cost base, to recover the same amount of overhead.Is it that the federal government is saying for more parts of the grant, “We're not going to reimburse that as an indirect cost.”?Dan: This is where we shift a little bit from assessment to speculation. What's excluded from total direct costs? One thing is researcher salaries above a certain level.What is that level? Can you give me a dollar amount?Dan: It's a $225,700 annual salary. There aren't enough people being paid that on these grants for that to explain the difference, especially when you consider that research salaries are being paid to postdocs and grad students.You're looking around the scientists in your institution and thinking, “That's not where the money is”?Dan: It's not, even if you consider Principal Investigators. If you consider postdocs and grad students, it certainly isn't.Dan: My best hunch is that research projects have become more capital-intensive, and only a certain level of expenditure on equipment can be included in the modified total direct cost base. I don't have smoking gun evidence, it's my intuition.In the paper, there's this fascinating chart where you show the institutions that would get hit hardest by a 15% cap tend to be those that do the most valuable medical research. Explain that on this framework. Is it that doing high-quality medical research is capital-intensive?Pierre: We look at all the private-sector patents that build on NIH research. The more a university stands to lose under the administration policy, the more it has contributed over the past 25 years — in research the private sector found relevant in terms of pharmaceutical patents.This is counterintuitive if your whole model of funding for science is, “Let's cut subsidies for the stuff the private sector doesn't care about — all this big equipment.” When you cut those subsidies, what suffers most is the stuff that the private sector likes.Pierre: To me it makes perfect sense. This is the stuff that the private sector would not be willing to invest in on its own. But that research, having come into being, is now a very valuable input into activities that profit-minded investors find interesting and worth taking a risk on.This is the argument for the government to fund basic research?Pierre: That argument has been made at the macro-level forever, but the bibliometric revolution of the past 15 years allows you to look at this at the nano-level. Recently I've been able to look at the history of Ozempic. The main patent cites zero publicly-funded research, but it cites a bunch of patents, including patents taken up by academics. Those cite the foundational research performed by Joel Habener and his team at Massachusetts General Hospital in the early 1980s that elucidated the role of GLP-1 as a potential target. This grant was first awarded to Habener in 1979, was renewed every four or five years, and finally died in 2008, when he moved on to other things. Those chains are complex, but we can now validate the macro picture at this more granular level.Dan: I do want to add one qualification which also suggests some directions for the future. There are things we still can't see — despite Pierre's zeal. Our projections of the consequence of a 15% rate cap are still pretty coarse. We don't know what research might not take place. We don't know what indirect cost categories are exposed, or how universities would reallocate. All those things are going to be difficult to project without a proper experiment.One thing that I would've loved to have more visibility into is, “What is the structure of indirect costs at universities across the country? What share of paid indirect costs are going to administrative expenses? What direct cost categories are being excluded?” We would need a more transparency into the system to know the answers.Does that information have to be proprietary? It's part of negotiations with the federal government about how much the taxpayer will pay for overhead on these grants. Which piece is so special that it can't be shared?Pierre: You are talking to the wrong people here because we're meta-scientists, so our answer is none of it should be private.Dan: But now you have to ask the university lawyers.What would the case from the universities be? “We can't tell the public what we spend subsidy on”?Pierre: My sense is that there are institutions of academia that strike most lay people as completely bizarre.Hard to explain without context?Pierre: People haven't thought about it. They will find it so bizarre that they will typically jump from the odd aspect to, “That must be corruption.” University administrators are hugely attuned to that. So the natural defensive approach is to shroud it in secrecy. This way we don't see how the sausage is made.Dan: Transparency can be a blessing and a curse. More information supports more considered decision-making. It also opens the door to misrepresentation by critics who have their own agendas. Pierre's right: there are some practices that to the public might look unusual — or might be familiar, but one might say, “How is that useful expense?” Even a simple thing like having an administrator who manages a faculty's calendar might seem excessive. Many people manage their own calendars. At the same time, when you think about how someone's time is best used, given their expertise, and heavy investment in specialized human capital, are emails, calendaring, and note-taking the right things for scientists [to be doing]? Scientists spend a large chunk of their time now administering grants. Does it make sense to outsource that and preserve the scientist's time for more science?When you put forward data that shows some share of federal research funding is going to fund administrative costs, at first glance it might look wasteful, yet it might still be productive. But I would be able to make a more considered judgment on a path forward if I had access to more facts, including what indirect costs look like under the hood.One last question: in a world where you guys have the ear of the Senate, political leadership at the NIH, and maybe the universities, what would you be pushing for on indirect costs?Pierre: I've come to think that this indirect cost rate is a second-best institution: terrible and yet superior to many of the alternatives. My favorite alternative would be one where there would be a flat rate applied to direct costs. That would be the average effective rate currently observed — on the order of 40%.You're swapping out this complicated system to — in the end — reimburse universities the same 40%.Pierre: We know there are fixed costs. Those fixed costs need to be paid. We could have an elaborate bureaucratic apparatus to try to get it exactly right, but it's mission impossible. So why don't we give up on that and set a rate that's unlikely to lead to large errors in under- or over-recovery. I'm not particularly attached to 40%. But the 15% that was contemplated seems absurdly low.Dan: In the work we've done, we do lay out different approaches. The 15% rate wouldn't fully cut out the negotiation process: to receive that, you have to document your overhead costs and demonstrate that they reached that level. In any case, it's simplifying. It forces more cost-sharing and maybe more judicious investments by universities. But it's also so low that it's likely to make a significant amount of high-value, life-improving research economically unattractive.The current system is complicated and burdensome. It might encourage investment in less productive things, particularly because universities can get it paid back through future ICR. At the same time, it provides pretty good incentives to take on expensive, high-value research on behalf of the public.I would land on one of two alternatives. One of those is close to what Pierre said, with fixed rates, but varied by institution types: one for universities, one for medical schools, one for independent research institutions — because we do see some variation in their cost structures. We might set those rates around their historical average effective rates, since those haven't changed for quite a long time. If you set different rates for different categories of institution, the more finely you slice the pie, the closer you end up to the current system. So that's why I said maybe, at a very high level, four categories.The other I could imagine is to shift more of these costs “above the line” — to adapt the system to enable more of these indirect costs to be budgeted as direct costs in grants. This isn't always easy, but presumably some things we currently call indirect costs could be accounted for in a direct cost manner. Foundations do it a bit more than the federal government does, so that could be another path forward.There's no silver bullet. Our goal was to try to bring some understanding to this long-running policy debate over how to fund the indirect cost of research and what appropriate rates should be. It's been a recurring question for several decades and now is in the hot seat again. Hopefully through this work, we've been able to help push that dialogue along. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

The government of Israel has been criticized for building fences in Gaza and the West Bank, but now it's geofencing American churches. Will its plan reverse the decline of evangelical support for the Jewish state? Donald Trump says he's making the country more Christian, but data shows his immigration policy favors secular immigrants and rejects Christians. Rich Villodas is back to talk about his new book for Advent, "Waiting for Jesus." He says we should use this season to resist consumerism, commercialism, and Christian culturalism. Also this week, a giant flightless parrot has issues Down Under. Holy Post Plus: Ad-Free Version of this Episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/144923335/   Advice-ish: https://www.patreon.com/posts/advice-ish-im-in-144823944   66 Verses to Explain the Bible:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/144916622/   0:00 - Show Starts   4:43- Theme Song   5:06 - Sponsor - BetterHelp - This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/HOLYPOST and get 10% off your first month!   6:05 - Sponsor - AG1 - Heavily researched, thoroughly purity-tested, and filled with stuff you need. Get the AG1 welcome pack when you order from https://www.drinkag1.com/HOLYPOST   7:35 - Toucan Butt Disease!   14:35 - Israel Geofencing Ads Around Churches   29:00 - Deportations Making America More Secular?   48:42 - Sponsor - World Relief - Start a monthly partnership with World Relief to help families in crisis at https://www.worldrelief.org/holypost   49:51 - Sponsor - Aura Frames - Need a Great Christmas Gift? Use code HOLYPOST at checkout to save $45-off the Carver Mat Aura Frame at https://www.AuraFrames.com   51:00 - Sponsor - Blueland - Just for this holiday season, Blueland has a special 30% off deal to help you keep your home clean this Christmas! Go to https://www.blueland.com/holypost   52:10 - Interview   54:06 - Church Calendar Explained   1:03:50 - Spirit of Herod   1:17:37 - End Credits   1:18:09 - Sponsor - The Pour Over - Stay informed while remaining focused on Christ with The Pour Over Today. Check it out at https://links.thepourover.org/holy-post   Links Mentioned in News Segment: Kakapo Crusty Butt Disease! https://www.popsci.com/environment/kakapo-antibiotics-crusty-bum/   Immigration Crackdown Making Us Less Christian? https://religionnews.com/2025/11/18/why-trumps-immigration-crackdown-may-make-america-less-christian/?utm_source=RNS+Updates&utm_campaign=506d68c8ac-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_11_19_01_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c5356cb657-506d68c8ac-387424458   Other Resources: Waiting for Jesus: An Advent Invitation to Prayer and Renewal: An Advent Christmas Devotional by Rich Villodas: https://amzn.to/3Me8e8v   Holy Post website: https://www.holypost.com/   Holy Post Plus: www.holypost.com/plus   Holy Post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/holypost   Holy Post Merch Store: https://www.holypost.com/shop   The Holy Post is supported by our listeners. We may earn affiliate commissions through links listed here. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.  

Ancient legends describe the Djinn as beings made of smokeless fire — but modern researchers believe these shapeshifting entities from parallel dimensions may be responsible for UFO sightings, shadow people encounters, and alien abductions happening right now.IN THIS EPISODE: Could the ancient legends of the Djinn hold the key to understanding shadow people, UFOs, and other paranormal phenomena, or are they simply the unseen architects of myths and mysteries beyond our grasp?SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…BOOK: “The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agenda of Genies” by Rosemary Ellen Guiley:https://amzn.to/3P4ouY5“Djinn – Terrors of the Universe” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/6drnts74The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agenda of Genies, Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Philip Imbrogno, ISBN 9780738 721712=====(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.=====Originally aired: December 06, 2024EPISODE PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/djinnABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: Weird Darkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all thing strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold case murders, conspiracy theories, and more. On Thursdays, this scary stories podcast features horror fiction along with the occasional creepypasta. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “Best 20 Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a cross between “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, “The Twilight Zone” with Rod Serling, “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack, and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy.DISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.#Djinn #ShadowPeople #AlienAbductions #UFOs #Paranormal #Supernatural #AncientMysteries #Unexplained #InterdimensionalBeings #WeirdDarkness

The rumors are true: our world is a dumpster fire, and it feels like it's growing hotter and stinkier by the day. If it feels hopeless, like it's useless for one person to even try, perhaps it's a change in perspective. This week, Adam sits with two philosophers to explain why change is ALWAYS possible. Alex Madva is a professor of philosophy at Cal Poly Pomona, and Michael Brownstein is a professor of philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. Together with Daniel Kelly, they wrote the new book Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Create Social Change. Find their book at factuallypod.com/books--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

(00:00) We have more calls from the Paul Finebaum show reacting to the Lane Kiffin(21:43.53) MARK DANIELS covers the New England Patriots for MassLive.com and joins Toucher & Hardy to share his thoughts on the team as they're heading to their bye week.(34:51.42) Nick tries to explain something.Please note: Timecodes may shift by a few minutes due to inserted ads. Because of copyright restrictions, portions—or entire segments—may not be included in the podcast.CONNECT WITH TOUCHER & HARDY: linktr.ee/ToucherandHardyFor the latest updates, visit the show page on 985thesportshub.com. Follow 98.5 The Sports Hub on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Watch the show every morning on YouTube, and subscribe to stay up-to-date with all the best moments from Boston's home for sports!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Name a consistent throughline in the Trump administration's foreign policy. The answer could very well be the global scramble for critical minerals. What are they and why are they so important? Why is China so far ahead and how can the United States catch up? Mining expert Gracelin Baskaran sits down with host Ravi Agrawal to discuss. Plus Ravi's One Thing on Trump's attacks on boats off the coast of Venezuela. Ravi Agrawal: The Minerals That Drive Trump's Global Agenda Christina Lu: Trump's Chaotic Agenda Has a Critical Through Line Rishi Iyengar: The Countries Courting Trump With Critical Minerals Alasdair Phillips-Robins: Xi May Have Miscalculated on Rare Earths Patrick Schröder: Why Rare Earths Are About to Cost a Lot More Rachel Oswald: Republicans Criticize Hegseth for Deadly Caribbean Double Strike Emma Ashford and Evan Cooper: Trump Should Stick to His Guns on Venezuela Ellen Knickmeyer: U.S.-Led Regime Change Is Usually Disastrous Keith Johnson: Trump's Venezuela Fixation Is Not About the Oil Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President of the San Francisco 49ers Al Guido joins Papa & Silver to promote the Ninth Annual KNBR Holiday Sports Auction and explain why he believes the 49ers are the globe's teamSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Unearth the Biblical destiny of Iran on this complete, chronological timeline about the truth about Persia written in the Bible. Off the Kirb Ministries explores Iran's Bible prophecy using archaeology, historical maps, and stunning 4K Ultra HD visuals. Whilst introducing an unheard of Bible prophecy about Iran that no one is mentioning.This full Bible documentary-style journey explores the real-life Bible lore behind Iran's ancient empires: from Cyrus the Great and the Cyrus Cylinder, to Daniel, Darius, Nehemiah, and Esther and leading to God's future plan for Iran as prophesied in the book of Revelation.

Hosted by Pastor Jeff FiggsOriginating from GRACE FM in Aurora, Colorado, Calvary Live is a one hour program that answers questions about issues surrounding life, godliness, and living for Jesus Christ in our ever-changing culture.

President of the San Francisco 49ers Al Guido joins Papa & Silver to promote the Ninth Annual KNBR Holiday Sports Auction and explain why he believes the 49ers are the globe's teamSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Dr. Beth sits down with her friends Amanda (a business owner) and Stephanie (a therapist) to tackle a tough, real-world question: How do you talk about a diagnosis with someone who doesn't want one—especially when daily weed, anger outbursts, or past substance use are in the mix? Through the story of a 30-something creative with possible bipolar disorder, they unpack self-medication (the classic “upper, downer, mood-stabilizer” pattern), why partners and employers draw hard lines (“it's legal” ≠ “it's okay at work”), and how shame keeps talented people from becoming their best selves. You'll hear practical, compassionate ways to: Frame diagnosis as information, not identity Explain the bipolar spectrum (including agitated/hypomanic presentations) Explore roots vs. band-aids: trauma, lifestyle, and biology Talk with spouses about the real costs of daily use and rage cycles Use simple next steps (e.g., the MDQ screen, treatment options, boundaries) Honest, stigma-cutting, and immediately useful—for therapists, leaders managing teams, partners who are worried, and anyone wondering whether a label might actually unlock a path forward. Note: This conversation is educational and not medical advice. If you have concerns about mood or substance use, please consult a licensed professional.

In this episode, Brian and Josh discuss attribution theory and its impact on tennis performance. The co-hosts talk about how the interpretation of results makes a significant difference in how tennis players move on and grow from matches that they play. They reviewed the various factors that are included within attribution theory - whether a person attributes their results as internal/external, stable/unstable, and controllable/uncontrollable.To learn more about Josh and Brian's backgrounds and sport psychology businesses, go to TiebreakerPsych.com and PerformanceXtra.com. If you have feedback about the show or questions on the mental game in tennis you can email us at tennisiqpodcast@gmail.com. If you're enjoying the show please rate us on your favorite podcast platform including Apple Podcasts and Spotify and write a review. Don't forget to subscribe on YouTube or your podcast platform of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.) to stay up to date on future episodes.

You’re doing a routine exam when you spot it – a stained hairline crack snaking across the marginal ridge of a molar. Your patient hasn’t mentioned any symptoms… Yet. Should you sound the alarm? Monitor and wait? Jump straight to treatment? Cracked teeth are one of dentistry’s most misunderstood diagnoses. Colleagues debate whether to crown or monitor. And that crack you’re staring at? It could stay dormant for years—or spiral into an extraction by next month. So what separates the teeth that crack catastrophically from those that quietly hold together? In this episode, I am joined by final-year dental student Emma to crack the code (pun intended) on cracked tooth syndrome.  We break down the easy-to-remember “position, force, time” framework to help you spot risk factors before disaster strikes, and share a real-world case of a 19-year-old bruxist whose molar was saved by smart occlusal thinking. If you’ve ever felt uncertain about diagnosing, explaining, or managing cracked teeth, this episode will change how you think about every suspicious line you see. https://youtu.be/mU8mM8ZNIVU Watch PS019 on YouTube Key Takeaways Risk factors include large restorations and bruxism. Occlusion plays a significant role in tooth health. Diet can impact the integrity of teeth. Every patient presents unique challenges in treatment. Communication about dental issues is key for patient care. Certain teeth are more prone to fractures due to their anatomy. The weakest link theory explains why some patients experience more dental issues. Patient history is crucial in predicting future dental problems. The age and dental history of a patient influence treatment decisions. Understanding occlusion is essential for diagnosing and treating cracked teeth. The location of a tooth affects the force it experiences during chewing. Bruxism increases the risk of tooth fractures. Tooth contacts and forces play a critical role in diagnosing issues. Opposing teeth can provide valuable insights into tooth health. Effective communication is essential in managing cracked teeth. Stains on teeth can indicate deeper issues with cracks. Monitoring and documenting cracks over time is crucial for patient care. Highlights of this episode: 00:00 Teaser 00:49 Intro 03:25 Emma's Dental School Updates 07:18 What is Cracked Tooth Syndrome (CTS)? 10:02 Crack Progression and Severity 12:45 Risk Factors 14:54 Position–Force–Time Framework 21:53 Which Teeth Fracture Most Often? 25:32 Midroll 28:53 Which Teeth Fracture Most Often? 30:37 The Weakest Link Theory 34:05 Diagnostic Tools 37:56 Treatment Planning 39:42 Case Study – High Force Patient 47:27 Communication and Patient Management 51:03 Key Clinician Takeaways 53:03 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview 53:42 Outro Check out the AAE cracked teeth and root fracture guide for excellent visuals and classification details. Literature review on cracked teeth – examines evidence around risk factors, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cracked teeth. Want to learn more about cracked teeth? Have a listen to PDP028 and PDP098 – both packed with practical tips and case-based insights. #BreadAndButterDentistry #PDPMainEpisodes #OcclusionTMDandSplints This episode is eligible for 0.75 CE credits via the quiz on Protrusive Guidance. This episode contributes to the following GDC development outcomes: Outcome C AGD Subject Code: 250 – Operative (Restorative) Dentistry Aim: To help dental professionals understand the causes, diagnosis, and management of cracked teeth through a practical, evidence-based approach. It focuses on identifying risk factors using the Position–Force–Time framework and improving patient outcomes through informed communication and tailored treatment planning. Dentists will be able to: Explain the aetiology and progression of cracked tooth syndrome Identify high-risk teeth and patient factors—such as restoration design, occlusal contacts, and parafunctional habits—that predispose to cracks Communicate effectively with patients about the significance of cracks, prognosis, and monitoring options, improving patient understanding and consent

Imagine ancient civilizations that straight-up vanished, leaving behind nothing but mysteries and unanswered questions. We're talking about places like the lost city of Atlantis or the enigmatic Nazca lines in Peru. These places have got archaeologists scratching their heads and diving deep into the history books, trying to piece together what went down. And let's not forget about the Mayans and their mind-blowing temples hidden deep in the jungle—how did they build those things without modern tech? It's like stepping into a real-life adventure movie, and we're all just along for the ride! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen as Bleu reacts to the latest Sister Wives Clip and makes sense of Kody Browns Forever Rambling.

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Award-winning author Howard Yaruss offers insight into the mysterious world of economics and the importance of why we all need to understand it.

Today is another meta discussion. On how to get new players into the hobby, or more exactly, what you need to do to explain TTRPGs to someone, and how the best way is not to try and explain them, but actually just to show them!With this episode, we want to talk about the difference between actually playing and talking about playing as well as what it means to be ready to play. Everyone has different expectations, and some don't even have any. So what do you do to get them all playing?Check here for all further information:You can find us on the Web under these Links: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.doubledm.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bsky.app/profile/doubledm.bsky.socialhttps://www.instagram.com/doubledmpod/?hl=de⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/doubledm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠If you want to reach out to us via E-Mail use: doubledmpod@gmail.comOur Midroll Music is "Midnight Tale" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Our Outro Music is "Ascending the Vale" Kevin MacLeod (imcompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hollywood has made horror movies about transplant recipients inheriting the personalities of their donors for decades — but real transplant patients are reporting the same thing, and scientists can't explain why.SERMON TRANSCRIPT… https://weirddarkness.com/cotu-organtransplantmemoriesWeird Darkness® and Church Of The Undead™ are trademarked. Copyright © 2025.#WeirdDarkness, #HeartTransplant, #CellularMemory, #MedicalMystery, #UnexplainedPhenomena, #TrueStories, #Paranormal, #ScienceCantExplain, #OrganTransplant, #CreepyButTrue

How Close Is Your Jesus? Closer Than You've Ever Been Told. Discussion Questions: Read Romans 6:1-4. What three events were you baptized into? Is this about water baptism? If not, please explain. Read Galatians 2:20. Explain "it is no longer I who live" versus "the life I now live." Read Galatians 6:14. React to this statement: "The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Read Colossians 3:3-4, Ephesians 2:5-6, John 14:20, and 1 Corinthians 6:17. Focus on these four words: hidden, seated, in, and joins. What do these communicate about your closeness to God? Read Galatians 5:24. Notice that you did the crucifying this time. When did you crucify the flesh with its passions and desires? How? Read Romans 6:17, 1 Timothy 1:5, and 2 Corinthians 9:7. What do these passages have to say about your heart? Read John 1:16 and Colossians 2:9-10. React to this statement: You have received of His fullness, and in Him you have been made complete in Him.

If you're a man who's ever looked at your life and thought, “How did I get here?” , then this episode is the reset you've needed. In this REBUILT episode, Michael-David goes deep into the real reason so many men silently lose themselves, in marriage, careers, fatherhood, identity, and purpose, and why you can feel completely disconnected without knowing how to explain it. Through personal story, neuroscience, and the psychology behind men's emotional shutdown, MD breaks down how the male nervous system handles overwhelm, why men numb out, and why losing a job, a relationship, or a sense of direction often cracks open the deeper wounds from childhood. You'll learn how identity collapses when the structures around you collapse, and how to reclaim clarity, self-worth, purpose, and emotional strength one decision at a time. This episode blends men's mental health, trauma recovery, emotional intelligence, faith, and neuroscience in a way men can finally understand and take action on. Share this with a man who needs it. Keywords: men's mental health, identity crisis, purpose, fatherhood, relationships, emotional shutdown, anxiety, trauma, rebuilding life, 35KaDay, REBUILT podcast.

Andrew Visnovsky formerly with MLS Player Relations joins Jeremiah to help break down some of the challenges of the upcoming CBA negotiations for this next era of Major League Soccer.Andrew Visnovsky is Senior Counsel at Vela Wood. His practice is focused on the sports business, advising players, agents, clubs, and governing bodies on matters related to strategic regulatory advice, player and business transactions, and disputes.Sponsor

James Wood joins Jen Wilkin, JT English, and Kyle Worley to discuss the influence of Constantine on Christianity.Questions Covered in This Episode:Who was Constantine? What was his relationship to Christianity in the ancient world?Did he really convert?What are the Christians of this time thinking about Constantine?How does Monasticism replace martyrdom?Is there a protestant approach to living in the tension?What are the goods of Christendom?How does this history shape our understanding of the competing perspectives on church and state today?What are faithful Christian perspectives of church and state?How would you contrast pagan Christianity from the kind of public Christian witness you advocate for?Explain the subordination of the secular.Guest Bio:James Wood is Associate Professor of Religion and Theology at Redeemer University, a teaching elder in the PCA, a cohost of Mere Fidelity Podcast and the Civitas Podcast, and has written and writes for a number of publications, including Plough, Comment, First Things, World, and Theopolis, among others. He holds a PhD in Theology from the University of Toronto, a Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary, an M.Div. from Reformed Theological Seminary. He is married to Clare, and they have five daughters.Helpful Definitions:Gelasian Dyarchy: The "two swords" doctrine.Resources Mentioned in this Episode:Romans 13, 1 Peter 2, Revelation 13“Defending Constantine” by Peter Leithart“Christ & Culture Revisited” by D.A. Carson“The Desire of the Nations” by Oliver O'Donovan“Institutes of the Christian Religion” by John Calvin“The Politics of Pagan Christianity” by James Wood Follow Us:Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | WebsiteOur Sister Podcast:Tiny TheologiansSupport Training the Church and Become a Patron:patreon.com/trainingthechurchYou can now receive your first seminary class for FREE from Midwestern Seminary after completing Lifeway's Deep Discipleship curriculum, featuring JT, Jen and Kyle. Learn more at mbts.edu/deepdiscipleship.To learn more about our sponsors please visit our sponsor page.Editing and support by The Good Podcast Co. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Questions about how to explain modesty to a nine-year-old in a way that won't cause shame about her body, and when and how to tell a child about a previous marriage and divorce.   How can I explain modesty to my nine-year-old daughter without causing shame about her body? When and how should I tell my son about my previous marriage and divorce?

The treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer has undergone numerous changes and is now used routinely in clinical practice. Please join us in a thorough discussion of current evidence and ongoing research of total neoadjuvant therapy in locally advanced rectal cancer with leaders in the field including Drs J. Joshua Smith, Julio Garcia-Aguilar, Emmanouil Fokas, and Benjamin Schlechter Hosts:  ·      Dr. Janet Alvarez - General Surgery Resident at New York Medical College/Metropolitan Hospital Center ·      Dr. Wini Zambare – General Surgery Resident at Weill Cornell Medical Center/New York Presbyterian ·      Dr. Phil Bauer, Graduating Colorectal Surgical Oncology Fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center  ·      Dr. J. Joshua Smith MD, PhD, Chair, Department of Colon and Rectal Surgery at MD Anderson Cancer Center Guests: 1.     Julio Garcia-Aguilar, MD, PhD Benno C. Schmidt Chair in Surgical Oncology Chief, Colorectal Service, Department of Surgery Director, Colorectal Cancer Research Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Professor of Surgery, Weill Cornell Medical College 2.     Benjamin Schlechter, MD Senior Physician in the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Assistant Professor of Medicine, Medicine, Harvard Medical School 3.     Emmanouil Fokas, MD, DPhil Professor and Chairman | Department of Radiation Oncology, Cyberknife and Radiotherapy | Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Cologne Learning objectives:  ·      Define locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) and describe the clinical staging that qualifies patients for total neoadjuvant therapy (TNT). ·      Explain the rationale for transitioning from traditional chemoradiotherapy (CRT) plus surgery to total neoadjuvant therapy in rectal cancer management. ·      Compare the designs, treatment regimens, and long-term outcomes of major TNT trials including RAPIDO, PRODIGE-23, OPRA, and CAO/ARO/AIO-12/16. ·      Evaluate organ preservation strategies—such as the watch-and-wait approach—after TNT and identify which patients are appropriate candidates based on clinical or near-complete response. ·       Summarize emerging research directions including: ·      Integration of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in surveillance and response prediction. ·      The role of immunotherapy in mismatch repair proficient (MSS) and deficient (dMMR) tumors. References:  1.     Garcia-Aguilar, J. et al. Organ Preservation in Patients With Rectal Adenocarcinoma Treated With Total Neoadjuvant Therapy. JCO 40, 2546–2556 (2022). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35483010/ 2.     Verheij, F. S. et al.Long-Term Results of Organ Preservation in Patients With Rectal Adenocarcinoma Treated With Total Neoadjuvant Therapy: The Randomized Phase II OPRA Trial. JCO 42, 500–506 (2024). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37883738/ 3.     Fokas, E. et al. Randomized Phase II Trial of Chemoradiotherapy Plus Induction or Consolidation Chemotherapy as Total Neoadjuvant Therapy for Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer: CAO/ARO/AIO-12. JCO 37, 3212–3222 (2019). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31150315/ 4.     Fokas, E. et al. Chemoradiotherapy Plus Induction or Consolidation Chemotherapy as Total Neoadjuvant Therapy for Patients With Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer: Long-term Results of the CAO/ARO/AIO-12 Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Oncol 8, e215445–e215445 (2022). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34792531/ 5.     Williams H*, Fokas E*, et al. Survival among patients treated with total mesorectal excision or selective watch-and-wait after total neoadjuvant therapy: a pooled analysis of the CAO/ARO/AIO-12 and OPRA randomized phase II trials. Ann Oncol 2025 May;36(5):543-547. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39848335/ 6.     Gani, C. et al. Organ preservation after total neoadjuvant therapy for locally advanced rectal cancer (CAO/ARO/AIO-16): an open-label, multicentre, single-arm, phase 2 trial. The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology 10, 562–572 (2025). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40347958/  Please visit https://behindtheknife.org to access other high-yield surgical education podcasts, videos and more.   If you liked this episode, check out our recent episodes here: https://behindtheknife.org/listen Behind the Knife Premium: General Surgery Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/general-surgery-oral-board-review Trauma Surgery Video Atlas: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/trauma-surgery-video-atlas Dominate Surgery: A High-Yield Guide to Your Surgery Clerkship: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/dominate-surgery-a-high-yield-guide-to-your-surgery-clerkship Dominate Surgery for APPs: A High-Yield Guide to Your Surgery Rotation: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/dominate-surgery-for-apps-a-high-yield-guide-to-your-surgery-rotation Vascular Surgery Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/vascular-surgery-oral-board-audio-review Colorectal Surgery Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/colorectal-surgery-oral-board-audio-review Surgical Oncology Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/surgical-oncology-oral-board-audio-review Cardiothoracic Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/cardiothoracic-surgery-oral-board-audio-review Download our App: Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/behind-the-knife/id1672420049 Android/Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.btk.app&hl=en_US