Podcasts about Fahrenheit

There are 32 days left until the summer solstice which will mark the longest time this year that the rays of our star will soak our area of the planet with light and other forms of radiation. However, this is the first day of the year when temperature gauges on the Fahrenheit scale will come very close to triple digits. What will Charlottesville Community Engagement say about the matter in this May 20, 2022 edition of the program? Very little, but the host, Sean Tubbs, is sincere in wishing everyone well in the heat to come. On today’s program:A historical marker is unveiled at the Central Library in downtown Charlottesville to honor the legal battle to admit a Black man to the University of Virginia Law School Charlottesville City Council is briefed on efforts to get a handle on what property the city leases out and whether all of the tenants are paying their fair shareFifth District Republicans will meet tomorrow to select a nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives And work on a Regional Transit Vision will culminate next week in a long presentation to regional officials about what could happen if the area found a new mechanism for more funding for expanded transit Shout-out for an ACHS program on the Fields of Honor This year, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society has been working with a group called the Fields of Honor to identify soldiers who were killed in action in the Second World War. Since February, ACHS researchers have helped locate several photographs of the fallen, including that of Private Clarence Edward McCauley who was tracked down through high school records. There are 18 remaining photographs to be found, and on Thursday, May 26 at 7 p.m. the ACHS will host Debbie Holloman and Sebastian Vonk of the Fields of Honor Foundation to talk about how you can take part in their volunteer efforts honoring the service and sacrifice of US WWII service members buried or memorialized at US war cemeteries in Europe. That’s Thursday, May 26, at 7 p.m. via Zoom or Facebook Live.Historical Marker unveiled at Central Library for crucial desegregation caseA crowd assembled yesterday afternoon at the intersection of East Market Street and 3rd Street NW in downtown Charlottesville to watch the unveiling of a historic marker to commemorate an important moment in the desegregation of education in Virginia. In 1950, Gregory Swanson applied to attend the University of Virginia School of Law, but he was denied a space because he was Black. He sued in federal court citing 14th Amendment rights to equal protection, and a three-panel judge heard arguments on September 5 that year. David Plunkett is the director of the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, and he noted the historic nature of the building that is the library system’s headquarters.“This building is formerly a federal building and home to the courtroom where Gregory Swanson won his legal petition for entry into the University of Virginia law school,” Plunkett said.     Plunkett said Swanson’s case was part of the NAACP’s legal strategy to challenge the system of desegregation. “While the law school had admitted Mr. Swanson on his merit, with the support of staff including Mortimer Caplin, the Board of University Board of Visitors subsequently denied his admittance based on his skin color,” Plunkett said. “The case tried here overturned that ruling and helped lead to the desegregation of higher education in the South.”Risa Goluboff is the current Dean of the UVA Law School, and she said the marker celebrates Swanson’s bravery and persistence. “He did all this for a belief, for a legal and constitutional principle, for his own growth as a lawyer and a person, for his race, and for the nation as a whole,” Goluboff said. Swanson was represented by the law firm of Hill, Martin, & Robinson, with future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall serving as his legal counsel. Goluboff said the denial back in 1950 must be remembered, as well as the University’s condoning of slavery and the continuance of Jim Crow era laws. She said Swanson’s case should be celebrated.“And when he succeeded, he became the first Black student not only at the University of Virginia Law School, not only at the University of Virginia writ large, but at any state in the former Confederacy,” Goluboff said. “Telling his story both forces and enables us to remember those aspects of our history of exclusion and segregation that we must know in order to repudiate them.” Also on hand at the ceremony was M. Rick Turner, a former president of the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP. He said Black students at UVA have always challenged the status quo of an institution founded to perpetuate racial and class inequalities. “It is worth remembering that the [admittance] of Black students at UVA years ago was not a benevolent gesture on the part of the UVA administrators and state officials, but rather the presence of Gregory Swanson paved the way,” Turner said. To hear the event in full, visit the Charlottesville Podcasting Network where the full audio is posted and is available.Fifth District Republican convention tomorrowRepublicans across Virginia’s new Fifth Congressional District will gather tomorrow at Hampden-Sydney College in Prince Edward County to select a candidate for the November 8 election. Over 2,000 attendees are pre-filed for the event, according to the draft program. Incumbent Bob Good of Campbell County faces challenger Dan Moy in the race, and the program states that each will give a speech before the votes are taken. There will also be remarks from outgoing Chair William Pace and incoming Chair Rick Buchannan. The program contains multiple endorsements for Good from Republican leaders across the United States, as well as several Delegates and Senators of the General Assembly. Moy’s sole endorsement is from the group Chasing Freedom Virginia.There are a total of 24 Republican committees in the fifth District. The convention will be called to order at 10 a.m. and will use a weighted voting system. The winner will face Democrat Joshua Throneburg in the November election. Regional Transit Vision updateConsultants hired by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to craft a vision for how public transportation might work better in the Charlottesville area will present more details next Thursday. The firm AECOM is the lead consultant with Jarrett Walker and Associates serving as a subcontractor. The study may recommend the eventualtransition to a unified regional transit authority. (meeting info)“There will be a 90 minute presentation from the consultants to go over what we’ve done so far, survey the results of the first round of public engagement, and then also what they found for the vision for the community,” said Lucinda Shannon, a transportation planner for the TJPDC. Shannon told a technical committee of the Metropolitan Planning Organization that a three-day workshop was held with the transit providers to imagine new bus routes under a new scenario where there is $30 million in annual funding from a new transportation authority. The consultants modeled that scenario after a new authority in the Richmond area that was created in 2020. “We looked at the Central Virginia [Transportation] Authority’s model of how they collect revenue to kind of calculate how much we could collect if we formed an authority to pay for the vision,” Shannon said.Shannon said that for now, the JWA’s work is more about what the vision will be.  A second round of public engagement will take place soon after next week’s partnership meeting. Shannon said the firm AECOM may also be hired to conduct a governance study to recommend how to actually come up with that hypothetical $30 million. That work is contingent on approval by the Commonwealth Transportation Board at their meeting in June. Shannon said this study will be more about the funding than changing the structure of area transit. “So it’s not going to be looking at how [Charlottesville Area Transit] or any of the service providers are governed or run or anything like that,” Shannon said. “It’s just bringing in money and putting it out for transit.” Funding for these studies come from Albemarle County, Charlottesville, and the Department of Rail and Public Transportation. The budget for the vision plan is $350,000 and the budget for the governance plan is $150,000. See also: Regional Transit Partnership briefed on Regional Transit Vision, looming Charlottesville Area Transit route changes, April 1, 2021Regional Transit Vision may suggest resumption of Regional Transit Authority foundation, December 14, 2021Shout-out to Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards In today’s subscriber-supported Public Service Announcement, the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards continues to offer classes this spring and summer to increase your awareness of our wooden neighbors and to prepare for the future. Coming up on June 7 is a tree identification course taught on Zoom by tree steward Elizabeth Ferguson followed by a separate hike on June 11 at the Department of Forestry’s headquarters near the Fontaine Research Park. That’s followed by a tree identification walk at the University of Virginia on June 12 for the public. On June 14, Rachel Keen will give a lecture on Zoom on the Social Life of Trees. Do trees really communicate with one another? What is a 'mother tree'? Can a tree do anything to repel a pest? Learn more at charlottesvilleareatreestewards.org.City seeking to know more about what property it rents The City of Charlottesville could be pulling in more revenue from tenants who may be leasing city property at rates well below the market rate. That’s one of the takeaways from a report given to Council at their meeting on May 16. As the City of Charlottesville government seeks to rebuild after a recent era of frequent leadership transitions, the current management is looking at aspects of the city administration that have gone unnoticed or unchecked. Until now, there has not been one central source in city government that controls all of the various leases the city has for its properties as well as service agreements. That makes it hard to track who is responsible or where the public can get information.“So what we’re trying to do at this moment is compile that but one of the first things we had to do was identify an individual who would have that as their job,” said Sam Sanders, the Deputy City Manager for operations. That person will be Brenda Kelley, who has been the redevelopment manager for the city for the past several years. Her position has been elevated to the Office of Community Solutions, and she’ll be presenting a full report to Council this summer. In the meantime, she prepared a briefing for Council for their May 16 meeting which began with a basic definition of what she’ll cover. “Leases or agreement-type leases where either the city is a party,” Kelley said. “This is where the city owns the property or the city is a tenant of a property owned by someone else.” The city has about 155,000 square feet of building spaces that bring in about $580,000 a year in revenue for the city. That doesn’t include about 50 acres under ground lease. The oldest lease dates back to 1922 and allows the city’s utilities office to use space at a pump station at the University of Virginia. One of the biggest amounts of space the city leases is at the Water Street Parking Garage. “The city doesn’t own the Water Street Parking Garage but we lease parking spaces,” Kelley said. The city does own the Market Street Parking Garage, as well as the buildings on East Market Street that are currently occupied by the Lucky 7 and a Guadalajara restaurant. The City Council of January 2017 paid $2.85 million for an eventual parking garage at the location, but the City Council of March 2021 opted to go in a different direction. For now, the city gets rent from those businesses. “The Lucky 7 and the Guadalajara and all of the Market Street Parking Garage retail spaces, those rent funds go into the Parking Enterprise Fund,” Kelley said. Revenues from the Charlottesville Pavilion and the building where S&P Global operates go into the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority fund. Kelley said further research needs to be done into intergovernmental leases with the courts, libraries, and other entities. She said that systems need to be in place to track the leases and make sure that any rent increases due to the city are at least known about for Council’s consideration. Councilor Sena Magill said she appreciated being able to see a more complete picture of the city’s property portfolio, and the potential to get more out of its investment. “When we look at a lot of these rents on a lot of these buildings, they are at about half of market rate,” Magill said. Magill said if the city is charging below market, it should be as a way of helping small businesses who are just getting started. She wanted to see a presentation from the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority on the leases they currently manage. Mayor Lloyd Snook said he wanted any lessees to know that the preliminary report is not intended to raise rates, but just to provide information. “Until this report and this information is gathered, we on Council had no idea who we were subsidizing and we have no idea why we’re subsidizing them in some cases and we may want to make some conscious decisions to continue to subsidize in the form of the rent or we may not but at least we will be doing so from the basis of actual knowledge,” Snook said. More to come as the summer heats up. Help Ting help support Town Crier productions!For one year now, Town Crier Productions has had a promotional offering through Ting!Are you interested in fast internet? Visit this site and enter your address to see if you can get service through Ting. If you decide to proceed to make the switch, you’ll get:Free installationSecond month of Ting service for freeA $75 gift card to the Downtown MallAdditionally, Ting will match your Substack subscription to support Town Crier Productions, the company that produces this newsletter and other community offerings. So, your $5 a month subscription yields $5 for TCP. Your $50 a year subscription yields $50 for TCP! The same goes for a $200 a year subscription! All goes to cover the costs of getting this newsletter out as often as possible. Learn more here! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

durée : 00:54:58 - Affaires sensibles - par : Fabrice Drouelle, Christophe Barreyre - Aujourd'hui dans Affaires sensibles, l'histoire d'un film documentaire choc au succès planétaire : Fahrenheit 9/11 de Michael Moore. - réalisé par : Flora BERNARD

The Concordia Research station atop Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau is generally considered to be the coldest place on earth.  In mid-March, the normal high temperature for the day is around -56 degrees Fahrenheit.  But on March 18, the high for the day was 11.3 degrees, nearly 70 degrees warmer than normal. The World […]

On the podcast today: ·       Germany's Plugin EV Share Up To 24.3% ·       Toyota Says BZ4X Won't Fast Charge When Cold ·       Spain: Plug-In Car Sales Maintain 10% Share ·       12.5% of New Light-Duty Vehicle Registrations in California were Plug-in Vehicles ·       China set to remain world's largest NEV market, says BMW CFO ·       Toyota to Invest $624 Million to Make EV Parts in India ·       Ford is selling 8 million Rivian shares ·       Ford Might Have Very Bad News for Rivian ·       BMW's Neue Klasse Platform Will Debut On 3 Series-Sized EV In 2025 ·       CarGurus Study Finds Rising Consumer Interest in Electric Vehicles as Gas Prices Spike ·       Bentley Continental GT PHEV spied, shows new step in brand's electrification ·       Cords cut at Tesla charging station in Cincinnati, second time in a week ·       Which New Electric Vehicles Come With Free Charging? Show #1460 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily, you trusted source of EV information. It's Monday 9th May, it's Martyn Lee here and I go through every EV story so you don't have to. GERMANY'S PLUGIN EV SHARE UP TO 24.3% Germany, Europe's largest auto market, saw plugin electric vehicles take 24.3% share in April 2022, up from 22.1% YoY. Overall auto volume was down, by over 21% YoY, and over 40% compared to pre-pandemic seasonal norms. April's combined plugin result comprised 12.3% battery electrics (BEVs), and 12.0% plugin hybrids (PHEVs).  Combustion-only powertrains faired worst in terms of volume drop, with diesel sales down almost 30% YoY, and petrol down almost 28%. With current BEV market leader Tesla not having any large scheduled deliveries in April, other marques and models had a chance to shine, with the Fiat 500e coming out on top. The Mercedes EQB stepped up in registered volume by some 5× over the period, seeing a healthy 1,405 units over the February to April period, from 295 previously. The BMW i4 increased 2.7× to 755 units. April BEVs: Fiat 500e, BMW i3, Hyundai Kona, Enyaq, E-Tron, Smart Fortwo, Opel Corsa, ID.4, Zoe, E-208, Merc EQB, Kia Niro EV, Dacia Spring, VW e-Up!, Polestar 2, ID.3, Renault Twingo, Audi Q4 e-tron, IONIQ5 and Kia EV6 Original Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/05/06/germanys-plugin-ev-share-up-to-24-3-economic-pressures-mounting/ TOYOTA SAYS BZ4X WON'T FAST CHARGE WHEN COLD From Kyle Conner @ Out of Spec:  "Charging times are estimated based on ideal charging conditions. As temperatures decrease below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, charging time will increase significantly. Drive battery level and condition, charger specifications and DC charging more than twice per day also can negatively affect charging time. DC charging may not work on AWD bz4x when the temperature is below 32 degrees Fahrenheit." That's 5 degrees celsius. Original Source: https://pressroom.toyota.com/five-things-to-know-about-the-all-electric-toyota-bz4x/ SPAIN: PLUG-IN CAR SALES MAINTAIN 10% SHARE - plug-in electric car sales in Spain continue to expand at a fast rate. In April, some 6,365 new plug-in cars were registered (up 41% year-over-year), which is 9% of the total. - The average market share of plug-ins in the recent six months stays above 10%, which is a good foundation for the future. With outstanding conditions for solar electricity generation and unleashed production of BEVs (supported by new battery gigafactory investments in the pipeline), Spain has very high potential for electrification. - Stats for the month:  BEVs: 1,991 (up 36%, at 2.8% market share) PHEVs: 4,374 (up 43%, at 6.2% market share) Total: 6,365 (up 41%, at 9.0% market share) Original Source : https://insideevs.com/news/584466/spain-plugin-car-sales-april-2022/ 12.5% OF NEW LIGHT-DUTY VEHICLE REGISTRATIONS IN CALIFORNIA WERE PLUG-IN VEHICLES - In California, 12.5% of new light-duty vehicle registrations were plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) in 2021, according to the data released by the Department of Energy (DOE) - Next highest were the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Washington, and Oregon, which each had PEV registrations accounting for more than 7% of new registrations. - Additionally, Californians bought roughly 15,000 more EVs during this quarter than last quarter and Q1 of 2022 EV sales are up by 37%, relative to EV sales at this time last year.The market share of electric vehicles in California jumped to 16.32%. Original Source : https://electriccarsreport.com/2022/05/in-2021-12-5-of-new-light-duty-vehicle-registrations-in-california-were-plug-in-vehicles/ CHINA SET TO REMAIN WORLD'S LARGEST NEV MARKET, SAYS BMW CFO - China will continue to be the world's largest new energy vehicle (NEV) market for years to come, said Nicolas Peter, chief financial officer (CFO) and member of the Board of Management of BMW AG, in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua. - In 2021, NEV sales in China increased by about 170 percent year-on-year. This momentum continued in the first quarter of 2022, when -- despite all the challenges -- the Chinese NEV market posted a 140 percent year-on-year growth. - On Thursday, the company launched the production of BMW i3, tailormade for the Chinese market, at its new plant, dubbed Lydia, in Shenyang, northeast China. Last month, the company also held the world premiere for its all-electric BMW i7 luxury sedan. Original Source : http://www.china.org.cn/business/2022-05/07/content_78204925.htm FORD IS SELLING 8 MILLION RIVIAN SHARES - Ford Motor is selling 8 million of its Rivian Automotive shares, with the insider lockup for the stock of the once high-flying electric vehicle maker set to expire on Sunday, sources told CNBC's David Faber. - The automaker currently owns 102 million shares of Rivian. Ford will be selling the shares through Goldman Sachs, sources said. - Shares of the EV manufacturer have plummeted by more than 50% in the first three months of 2022, reversing course from the fourth quarter, when the company held its stock market debut and saw its value skyrocket. Original Source : https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/08/ford-is-selling-8-million-rivian-shares-sources-say.html FORD MIGHT HAVE VERY BAD NEWS FOR RIVIAN - Amazon owned 17.74% of Rivian as of Dec. 31 and Ford owned 11.42%, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. - Ford, for its part, posted a net loss of $3.1 billion from January to March. "A net loss of $3.1 billion was primarily attributable to a mark-to-market loss of $5.4 billion on the company's investment in Rivian. Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes were $2.3 billion," Ford said. - Rivian shares have slumped 72.2% this year. The market capitalization at Rivian has shrunk by $66.1 billion, to $25.43 billion from Dec. 31 to May 6. - The R1T is one of the main rivals of the F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the F-150 pickup. Original Source : https://www.thestreet.com/technology/ford-might-have-very-bad-news-for-rivian BMW'S NEUE KLASSE PLATFORM WILL DEBUT ON 3 SERIES-SIZED EV IN 2025 Original Source : https://insideevs.com/news/584413/bmw-neue-klasse-platform-will-debut-3-series-sized-ev-2025/ CARGURUS STUDY FINDS RISING CONSUMER INTEREST IN ELECTRIC VEHICLES AS GAS PRICES SPIKE Original Source : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cargurus-study-finds-rising-consumer-130000267.html BENTLEY CONTINENTAL GT PHEV SPIED, SHOWS NEW STEP IN BRAND'S ELECTRIFICATION Original Source : https://uk.motor1.com/news/584356/bentley-continental-phev-spy-photos/ CORDS CUT AT TESLA CHARGING STATION IN CINCINNATI, SECOND TIME IN A WEEK Original Source : https://www.fox19.com/2022/05/07/cords-cut-tesla-charging-station-cincinnati-second-time-week/ WHICH NEW ELECTRIC VEHICLES COME WITH FREE CHARGING? 2022 Audi E-Tron GT 2022 Audi E-Tron and Q4 E-Tron 2022 BMW i4 Gran Coupe and iX 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV 2021-22 Ford Mustang Mach-E and 2022 F-150 Lightning 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 2022 Hyundai Kona Electric and 2021 Ioniq Electric 2022 Kia EV6 2022 Lucid Air 2022 Mazda MX-30 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS, 2022 EQB and 2023 EQE   2023 Nissan Ariya 2022 Nissan Leaf 2021-22 Polestar 2 2022 Porsche Taycan and Taycan Cross Turismo 2022 Rivian R1T and R1S 2023 Toyota bZ4X 2022 Volkswagen ID.4         2022 Volvo C40 Recharge and XC40 Recharge · Original Source : https://www.cars.com/articles/which-new-electric-vehicles-come-with-free-charging-449786/ QUESTION OF THE WEEK WITH EMOBILITYNORWAY.COM What would you like to see improved in EV charge station design? Email me any feedback to: hello@evnewsdaily.com It would mean a lot if you could take 2mins to leave a quick review on whichever platform you download the podcast. PREMIUM PARTNERS PHIL ROBERTS / ELECTRIC FUTURE BRAD CROSBY PORSCHE OF THE VILLAGE CINCINNATI AUDI CINCINNATI EAST VOLVO CARS CINCINNATI EAST NATIONAL CAR CHARGING ON THE US MAINLAND AND ALOHA CHARGE IN HAWAII DEREK REILLY FROM THE EV REVIEW IRELAND YOUTUBE CHANNEL RICHARD AT RSEV.CO.UK – FOR BUYING AND SELLING EVS IN THE UK EMOBILITYNORWAY.COM/ OCTOPUS ELECTRIC JUICE - MAKING PUBLIC CHARGING SIMPLE WITH ONE CARD, ONE MAP AND ONE APP MILLBROOKCOTTAGES.CO.UK – 5* LUXURY COTTAGES IN DEVON, JUMP IN THE HOT TUB WHILST YOUR EV CHARGES

It is unbearably hot in India right now as a brutal heat wave scorches the region. While temperatures in some areas have surpassed 120 degrees Fahrenheit every year, the recent wave started early, leading to school closures, landfill fires and a crop crisis. Somini Sengupta, climate reporter for The New York Times and anchor of the Climate Forward newsletter, joins Geoff Bennett to discuss. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

It is unbearably hot in India right now as a brutal heat wave scorches the region. While temperatures in some areas have surpassed 120 degrees Fahrenheit every year, the recent wave started early, leading to school closures, landfill fires and a crop crisis. Somini Sengupta, climate reporter for The New York Times and anchor of the Climate Forward newsletter, joins Geoff Bennett to discuss. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

It is unbearably hot in India right now as a brutal heat wave scorches the region. While temperatures in some areas have surpassed 120 degrees Fahrenheit every year, the recent wave started early, leading to school closures, landfill fires and a crop crisis. Somini Sengupta, climate reporter for The New York Times and anchor of the Climate Forward newsletter, joins Geoff Bennett to discuss. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Package season is about over for 2022. Perhaps thankfully too, depending on where in the country you live. Installing packages does not always go well or as depicted in bee books or Internet videos. Sometimes, the weather just does not cooperate. In this week's episode, Jim talks with Jeff Ott from Beekeeping Today Podcast about installing packages in bad weather. When you order and pay your deposit in January and February for your packages later in the spring, you envision they will show up on a sunny, warm Saturday. The birds will be singing and the flowers all in bloom. The reality can be way different when the call or email arrives saying the bees are “arriving two weeks early,” and to, “please come pick them up between 6-8:00a this Saturday…” A quick glance at the weather app calls for rain, sleet, and a high of 38-degrees (Fahrenheit) on Package Day!  What do you do?! Jim and Jeff discuss two different ways of approaching the issue of installing packages in bad, in climate weather… and then… following up -  releasing the queen. How do you install packages when it is not a Chamber of Commerce weather day? Do you dump and run? Do you do a gentle release? Do you let the workers release the queen? Do you keep her confined until you are certain they're ready to accept her? Or… do you quick release her with the new package? Let us know! If you like the episode, share it with a fellow beekeepers and/or let us know by leaving a comment in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you! ___________________ Thanks to Betterbee for sponsoring today's episode. Betterbee's mission is to support every beekeeper with excellent customer service, continued education and quality equipment. From their colorful and informative catalog to their support of beekeeper educational activities, including this podcast series, Betterbee truly is Beekeepers Serving Beekeepers. See for yourself at www.betterbee.com ______________________ Honey Bee Obscura is brought to you by Growing Planet Media, LLC, the home of Beekeeping Today Podcast. Music: Heart & Soul by Gyom, Walking in Paris by Studio Le Bus, original guitar music by Jeffrey Ott Photos copyright © One Tew Bee, LLC Copyright © 2022 by Growing Planet Media, LLC

Carlos F. Gaitan Ospina is the Founder and CEO of Benchmark Labs, which provides IoT-based weather forecasting solutions for the agriculture, energy, and insurance sectors worldwide using proprietary machine-learning software. Chad talks with Carlos about creating the company, the hardware they're producing and what it is doing, and where the machine learning comes into play. Benchmark Labs (https://www.benchmarklabs.com/) Follow Benchmark Labs on Twitter (https://twitter.com/labsbenchmark), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/benchmarklabs/), or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/benchmark-labs-inc/). Follow Carlos on Twitter (https://twitter.com/cfgaitan) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-felipe-gaitan-ospina-3765808/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Carlos Gaitan, the Founder and CEO of Benchmark Labs, which provides IoT-based weather forecasting solutions for the agriculture, energy, and insurance sectors worldwide using proprietary machine-learning software. Carlos, thank you very much for joining me. CARLOS: Thank you for the invitation, Chad. It's a pleasure to join you here. CHAD: You work in a variety of different industries with weather forecasting solutions using machine learning. I'm really curious, at a high level, how did you get to where you created Benchmark Labs today? CARLOS: Oh, thank you, Chad. That's a great question. I think that in many ways, it's a combination of life experiences and lots of user feedback. As a background, my mum worked for 28 years in the National Federation of Coffee Growers in my native Columbia. And we experience basically the effects of weather, La Niña, El Niño, local conditions, pests on the coffee growers. I remember growing up looking at the price in The New York Stock Exchange if the pound of coffee was going to be more than $1 or not [laughs] and so on. So, you know, we had a very severe drought in Colombia, and Colombia was heavily dependent in hydropower at that time. And I remember that we even had to study with candlelight and move to a spring savings time for the first time in the country. The country is in the equator, so you can imagine moving the clock was unheard of. So since then, I was always passionate about hydrology, the water cycle, why this happened, how weather can affect the economy at that level that people have to change their working habits. I did civil engineering hydrology, then studied these new applications of machine learning technologies, hydroinformatics, did my studies there in Columbia, my bachelor's, my master's. Then I was fortunate to go to The University of British Columbia to study my Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences. And then, after I finished, I moved to The United States to work at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton with close collaboration with the NOAA, the USGS. And that gave that perspective also of understanding how weather climate models were done at the Department of Commerce level but also to understand the users on how they interact with weather data or climate data and what were the needs that they were expecting from the National Weather Service and the Department of Commerce and NOAA that not necessarily were fulfilled with the current information. So then I moved to the private sector, joined a hardware company, and met my co-founder of Benchmark Labs there then moved to California to work on consultancy of climate change assessments. But since the time at the Department of Commerce, it became very clear that what farmers and what users wanted was weather information that was more actionable, that was tailored to their specific location, especially for specialty crops. Think about wineries, or coffee growers, orchids, stone fruits; they depend heavily on weather, and the information from the National Weather Services was just too coarse for them. And sometimes, there are huge errors in terms of temperatures that were recorded from their farm versus what the National Weather Service was doing. And that's why we decided to create Benchmark Labs to basically solve that problem, correct those errors, and give the information that the users needed when they needed it. CHAD: Did you ever just consider becoming a TV weather person? CARLOS: [laughs] CHAD: It seems it may be easier. CARLOS: [laughs] Nah. That's a very good point. CHAD: [laughs] CARLOS: And I have great respect with my colleagues that went into forecast meteorology and TV persons. I remember some of my lab mates practicing in front of a green screen when we were doing the Ph.D. CHAD: [laughs] CARLOS: That was an interesting scenario. [laughs] However, growing up in Colombia, the weather forecasts were not very, let's say, accurate to a certain extent, and we did the opposite than the weatherman suggested. CHAD: [laughs] CARLOS: So I guess that steered me towards following that path. [laughs] CHAD: So it totally resonates with me this idea that, you know, especially for...I've been on the West Coast before where you go over a hill and the weather it's like 20 degrees hotter and sunny and on one side of the hill, it was cold and foggy. We went on a great company trip many years ago to visit some Napa vineyards, and I was surprised by that. So I can imagine how that local information just doesn't match the global information that farmers might be getting. So what is the hardware that you're actually producing, and what is it doing? What does it look like? CARLOS: [laughs] Great question. So I will go back to your story about Napa and Sonoma, and the reality is that's exactly a problem that growers face; national weather agencies give averages over a big region. They divide the world in boxes, and everybody inside of a box receives exactly the same forecast. And if you are especially in the coast or you're in specialty agriculture, you understand that weather changes with elevation. Depending on which side of the mountain you are, you could receive all the rain or no rain at all. If you are near the shores, you could also get more wind, different types of clouds, all of those situations affect the conditions at the farm. And going back to the situation of Napa and Sonoma, Burgundy or the Mediterranean Basin, they all believe in the value of what they call the terroir, that is what makes also unique their products. They're indigenous, and they understand at a very fundamental point how the local conditions from the soil, from the vegetation, makes their farm unique. So what we do is we use IoT sensors, basically hardware sensors that monitor environmental variables. We refer to them in the atmospheric science world as weather stations. I had a talk with some users when I said the term weather station. They imagined a big construction or a building with a TV station on a radar or something. But in this case, there are IoT devices that are totally portable, the size of a Wi-Fi modem in some cases. And we use those sensors as ground truth that will basically tell us the local conditions. We use the information from the National Weather Services and the information from those IoT sensors and correct the forecast as they come. CHAD: And is that where the machine learning comes in because it's actually correcting the forecast being received? CARLOS: Exactly, our machine learning aspect of it is fully operational, non-linear correction of weather data as it comes in from the National Weather Services to correct it to the conditions that are experienced at the farm level, at the sensor level. And a farm could be also an agricultural farm, or it could be a solar farm, a wind farm. Or, as we talk with some users in ski resorts that actually they consider as snow farmers, it's also affected by microclimates. So at the end, it is about providing value to all these areas affected by microclimates that are not being resolved correctly by the current generation of forecast from the National Weather Services. CHAD: Are most customers able to get the coverage that they need with one weather station, or are they deploying multiple ones? CARLOS: So that's a great question, and the answer probably is it depends. Our customers, original customers, have thousands of stations over multiple fields under management. For specialty crops, it's common to have multiple IoT sensors in one acre. For other scenarios, they might have only one station or one sensor every 10 acres or so on, so it depends on the condition. It depends on how technologically inclined are the users if they already invested in these IoT sensors or if they are looking into buying IoT sensors and then scaling up the number of sensors in their farms. CHAD: How do all the sensors report their data back? CARLOS: That is a very interesting question because they are, let's say, tens of hardware manufacturers globally. We also created kind of a Rosetta Stone that puts all the sensors to communicate to our back-end systems. We integrate different languages of each hardware manufacturer. It has its own ways of naming the variables. So we do the translation in our end. We receive the data via an API. These IoT devices are Internet of Things in many ways because they transmit data via Wi-Fi, satellite internet, you know, cellular. CHAD: Cell, yeah. So different manufacturers might have different ways of actual communication, not just the protocol, but one box might be using Wi-Fi, and another one might be using a satellite. CARLOS: Exactly. And sometimes, many manufacturers give you the options of connecting even using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for IoT sensors that are near, let's say, a farm that has internet connectivity. If they are on the field farther away, they might need to get access to a data plan from a cellular carrier, 3G usually or 5G. In some areas, there is limited coverage so far. And if it's a very remote area, there are options to get satellite coverage. CHAD: Now, I'm asking somewhat naive questions based on my understanding. And so if I start butting up against proprietary information, just tell me, "No." That's totally fine. CARLOS: [laughs] CHAD: So when we're thinking about the amount of data coming in from all of these different weather stations that your customers have, is it a lot of data? Is it a lot of data points? CARLOS: [laughs] It's a great question. So in many ways, yeah, each weather station communicates at different frequency. Sometimes what we are offering now is hourly transmission rates, but we also have access to government stations that sometimes only refresh once per day. So yes, it's a lot of data coming in, most of the data from the weather stations. Fortunately, it can be transmitted as a txt file, or it's only for one location. So the files are not big, but they are many per day. And so, we have probably done millions of operations already to assimilate data and provide the forecast. While on the other hand, The National Weather Service provides one forecast for the globe, let's say every...some models are every hour, other models are every six hours, and so on. So that is more, let's say, a bigger data set because it's a global data set that then you have to query to extract the information locally that is relevant for your servers, for your users. CHAD: Yeah. And I think it's neat how this is all happening centrally from all the data coming in, right? CARLOS: Yeah, exactly. We get data coming in for each specific location. We do the corrections, and we provide the forecasts. So there are lots of operations involved in the data handling activities, pre-processing, post-processing, but it's very rewarding at the end to provide the forecasts that are tailored to specific locations. And we had seen users that they basically told us, "Okay, we are using provider B or C; can you beat them? Show us that you can beat them, and the contract will be yours." So we showed them, and then they are like, "Yeah, that's fantastic. This is exactly what we have been looking for, information that is more accurate for our farms," so yeah. CHAD: Now, does your system correct itself based on what actually happened in an area after the modified forecast goes out? CARLOS: That's not a very relevant question because some of the models are static. I used my experience when I did an internship in Environment Canada, and I found that they were adjusting their models, let's say four times per, at least the operational models they had, four times per year. They kind of tweaked them to the local, let's say, spring, summer, fall, winter conditions. In our case, we make our models to correct themselves as more data comes in so they can adjust to weather events and have short-term memory, let's say, of what they will wait heavily on and forget the distant past. CHAD: I mean, it seems obvious, not necessarily easy but obvious, that you've made a prediction about what the weather is going to be, and you have all the data coming in from the stations to confirm whether your prediction was correct or not. So I'm sure it's not easy to adjust the model based on that. CARLOS: [laughs] CHAD: That seems obvious to me. CARLOS: Yeah, it's just a different approach in many ways. As you said, it's obvious because the users usually care about a specific location, at least our users. We understand that for national security or aviation, they require a model that provides coverage over a wider area, like sometimes continents. But for agricultural users, they care about their farms, and the farms will not move in space. So -- CHAD: Well, technically, they are moving in space; it's just the weather goes along with it. CARLOS: [laughs] So yeah, I guess that it's just a different way of tackling the problem. We focus on doing these forecasts to each specific location instead of having a forecast done for the whole globe that could be used in many different locations or for many different industries, but it's not necessarily tailored to any industry-specific or location-specific. CHAD: Yeah, that's great. Mid-Roll Ad I wanted to tell you all about something I've been working on quietly for the past year or so, and that's AgencyU. AgencyU is a membership-based program where I work one-on-one with a small group of agency founders and leaders toward their business goals. We do one-on-one coaching sessions and also monthly group meetings. We start with goal setting, advice, and problem-solving based on my experiences over the last 18 years of running thoughtbot. As we progress as a group, we all get to know each other more. And many of the AgencyU members are now working on client projects together and even referring work to each other. Whether you're struggling to grow an agency, taking it to the next level and having growing pains, or a solo founder who just needs someone to talk to, in my 18 years of leading and growing thoughtbot, I've seen and learned from a lot of different situations, and I'd be happy to work with you. Learn more and sign up today at thoughtbot.com/agencyu. That's A-G-E-N-C-Y, the letter U. CHAD: So have you managed to bring it full circle now, and are there coffee growers in Colombia that are using your solution? CARLOS: [laughs] I hope so. We have talked with coffee growers for sure. They care about temperature gradients. And I really think that going to Colombia as we scale will make the whole platform easier to use. I think that we can go full circle soon, sooner rather than later, into Colombia. We got support from the World Trade Center here in San Diego to do commercialization assistance to translate our solution from English to other languages. So we will be tackling Spanish, French, Italian in the very near future because it's important to offer the forecast also in a way that they could interact natively without having to have the limitation of using an English language platform into their day-to-day life. But yeah, full circle probably we'll be going full circle soon. CHAD: So language is one barrier to scaling and to adoption. Are there other ones that are typical barriers of adoption for your customers? CARLOS: We are very competitive here in the North American market, the European markets. Our prices are in dollars. But that by itself is a problem for emerging economies; for example, you know, $100 here is not the same thing as $100 in other countries. We have to take into consideration exchange rates or the amount of disposable income that they will have for their operations. CHAD: And I'm not super educated about it, but I know that there are certain industries in agriculture where the growers are particularly pressed for margins, and coffee is one of them, right? CARLOS: Exactly. So, fortunately, in many ways, for the bigger crops, specialty crops they are traded, and the prices are linked to U.S. dollars so that can be translated, our services can be absorbed, let's say. For the smaller crops that are not traded or that just stay locally, the price is not linked to the U.S. exchange; then it's definitely a bigger barrier for them. But hopefully, we will get to a point if we have a sufficiently large adoption in North America and the developed world; these technologies could be subsidized or made more accessible in other economies. CHAD: What are some of the concerns that growers have? Take the specialty crops, for example, is it a matter of are they doing this because they want to make the best product possible, or is it because they want to prevent crop loss? CARLOS: It is both, actually. The uses of weather information in agriculture varies, as you said. There are many different applications; one is to get more actionable alerts. For example, we saw what happened in Burgundy last year where a substantial part of their region lost their crops, close to 80% maybe. I don't remember the number, but it was definitely substantial. And so, having more accurate forecasts and alerts gives them an opportunity to adapt better, to get cover, protect their fields to a certain extent. Weather information affects also pests and disease models, so application of fertilizer with spraying is also affected by local conditions. In many ways, for the operations that are very, let's say, sophisticated, some of them even link the sugar content on the fruit to weather conditions. And understanding how these weather conditions affect sugars could tell them when is the optimal time for them to, let's say, harvest? And the difference in the sugar content might determine the difference between higher margins or so-so margins [laughs] for their yield. So yeah, it's a combination of quality of the product. It's a combination of preventing loss of the product. And it's also labor scheduling and activities, for example, that are regulated by OSHA that prevent farm operations to maybe don't, let's say if they are like temperatures above 95 Fahrenheit or 100 Fahrenheit. So having that extra information in alerts will also help them with farm management operations. CHAD: So can you give me a sense of the stage you're at or the scale you're at now with the business and where you see your next stages of growth being? CARLOS: Thank you. Yeah, great. So we are fortunate to have scaled this solution beyond California. We are now a global platform. We are providing forecast to Spain. Recently, we got contacted by some growers in South America, so we are testing for avocado growers in Brazil and Colombia, for example. So I'm not serving yet coffee growers in Colombia, but the avocado growers in Colombia, it seems that they got a hold on what we do, [laughs] so it is getting there. And now we have the resources, the ability to go global and offer this anywhere in the world that is connected with an IoT device. So it's fully operational. And we are now in the midst of fundraising to scale the team, provide the customer success operations, and to support growers in different geographies, to support growers of different crops. And I think that if we are going to be successful globally, it starts with customer support, customer success, and understanding your users' needs, so they don't feel that, again, they will receive a one size fits all vanilla-like solution and that we really care about why specialty crops are special. CHAD: So when you were just starting out, who was the first team member that you added to the team? CARLOS: Oh, it was great. So in many ways, I thank the Economic Development Council of San Diego for funding a set of interns in data science, weather analytics, and business development. So our first hires, in many ways, were supported thanks to the Economic Development Council. We were the two founders, and then we got support in business development to understand which, for example, specialty crops really care about weather. Then some data science interns, data scientists that helped us with grants that we did for the National Science Foundation, and NASA that we got...we supported one of the grants. During COVID times, we participated in a very interesting opportunity to know the effect of COVID on forest fires, for example, and that was in collaboration with NASA. So first hires were interns, entry-level positions in data science, in back-end engineering, and then front-end business development. Now we are very excited to be expanding the team. We recently hired a Chief Product Officer with ten years of experience in Bloomberg, experience with visualizations, and talking to customers and users. So I think that for us, it's very important to, again, I reiterate, to have the ability to provide a great user experience, to provide meaningful information for specialty crops so they feel that they are special. CHAD: You mentioned that you got some business development help using those grants. But right now, is the actual sales work being done by the founding team? CARLOS: Yeah, at the beginning, as a founding team in a small startup, you have to wear multiple hats. So yeah, it's very common, and in many ways, I appreciate that we didn't rush to hire in terms of sales too early because it's important that the founding team understands the user perspectives, their needs, what they call the pain points to understand how to steer product into that direction. And then sales will follow once you have a solution that is highly needed, that users really like and that it can be shown that it can be scaled globally. So we are working on scaling, on accuracy of the forecasts. And yeah, next hires will be to get somebody that will help us in sales and can bring us to the next level. CHAD: What does the sales cycle look like for the kinds of customers you have now? Do they tend to be smaller, or do they tend to be larger enterprise customers? CARLOS: So, in the beginning, we worked with smaller enterprises to understand how to use the data, for example, connect the data from one or five sensors transmitted online. So dealing with smaller enterprises, farmers was optimal at that point as a company. And now, we are focusing more on businesses, farm managers, or management companies that have hundreds, sometimes thousands of sensors on their management. So we deal with more like business to business instead of going direct to grower at this stage because, as we were mentioning earlier, we're a small company, and going direct to grower requires lots of support and dedication in terms of dedicated agents and sales teams. CHAD: Do those companies tend to have long sales cycles? CARLOS: The bigger ones, yes. If you are talking about publicly traded companies, they will want to start with pilots then validate them. And you can move at different timescales with them that are not necessarily aligned with the startups at this stage. But there are some farm managers that have a way higher frequency of decision making. So their sale cycle could be one month, two months instead of having to build a relationship for years. CHAD: You mentioned the pilots, and you mentioned earlier telling the story about a customer that said, you know, "If you can provide us with better data," but I think companies as they scale or as they talk to potential customers, you also don't want to take on too much work that you should be charging for to be able to do that pilot. How do you strike that balance? CARLOS: It's a fascinating question. And I think that from a founding member perspective, let's say, it goes as a function of the stage of the company and what other, not necessarily monetary, benefits you can get from these pilots. We have been even recommended to not have unpaid pilots anymore, for example. I think that it's important at the beginning to get access to the information that you need to validate the technology with users that really care about what you're building. And sometimes, there are different ways that these pilots can be structured in a way that the final user might give you a reference or might spend time with you doing the quality control, quality check, saying what kind of features they like, so that's also very important as a young startup. As you grow, probably once you have that validation, there is no need necessarily to take into endeavors that will lead to unpaid pilots that you don't know if there's a clear end to that. And you can move to a more structured pilot program that has clear deliverables, and at the end of window, a decision will be made depending on the set of topics that were agreed between the companies. CHAD: You might even be able to get away without pilots if you can make a strong case by showing other case studies that are relevant to that potential customer or where you explain, oh, you know, these people had a similar situation to you and here's how it's solved, and here's the success that they had. CARLOS: Totally. You nailed it. It's in many ways to sometimes build credibility, find analogues in the sector, or a use case that can be comparable to the pain point that another user might have. And it could be, let's start with the avocado growers in Brazil, and they have probably the same pain points that they have with avocado growers in Colombia. Once we have that sorted out, then we probably can go and talk with avocado growers here in California or Mexico, Central America and tell them, "Hey, this is the value that we've unlocked in Brazil. Do you have a similar problem?" CHAD: What I have found is that this is one of the important reasons why you have to have a good product which is part of what you've been saying all along, you know, you really wanted to focus on making sure the product was working and that it was good. Because when you do, then you can also use referrals, you know, not referrals, but like, hey, you want to talk to this avocado grower, and they'll be happy to talk with another potential customer because they're excited about what you've done for them and been able to do with them. CARLOS: Totally, totally. And agriculture is always open to new technologies, but they are traditional in many ways. And it's a small circle, and I think that it is very important to build products right and really care about what you're doing and your end-users. Build together. Don't come necessarily with assumptions saying, "Hey, here agricultural grower A, I have a solution that will change your life," without knowing necessarily where are they coming from and their life experiences, and how they interact with products before. So yeah, I totally see the benefit of referrals. Word of mouth is very big, going to conferences with agricultural growers. There are big networking events that could help us more than just going and doing a Google ad campaign, for example, at this stage. CHAD: I think that's probably an important lesson that not only applies in agriculture but in a lot of industries. And I really appreciate you stopping by to share with us. And I really wish you the best of luck as you progress in your journey at Benchmark. CARLOS: Oh, thank you very much. I really appreciate it, and I hope that we can continue the conversation here. Just count with us anytime that you need to talk about weather, agriculture, IoT sensors. Happy to help the audience too, and always discuss what's out there to help the Giant Robots community. [laughs] CHAD: Carlos, if people want to get in touch with you or find out more about the company, where are the best places for them to do that? CARLOS: Go to benchmarklabs.com and then fill out a form there. And we will definitely be in touch with all of you. I will personally answer all the queries. I'm very, very happy to share our technology, share what we are building. And we are so excited because by having this technology, you can help save water, energy, and even pesticide use, and that's a huge contribution to the environment as we move forward. So yeah, thank you very much again for the invitation, and I'm here; count with me as a future resource. CHAD: Wonderful. And you can subscribe to the show and find notes and links along with an entire transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter at @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening, and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Carlos F. Gaitan Ospina.

The minibus service operates even when temperatures drop to minus 35 degrees Celsius (-31 degrees Fahrenheit). Despite the treacherous roads, regular passengers journey to the nearest town, Senkaya. This trip allows a tight-knit group of friends to banter, bond and discuss their challenging lives. This remote bus service also reveals local environmental change. There has been a reduction in snowfall which used to help keep the soil fertile, but now the frozen-solid ground has become harder to farm, threatening livelihoods here. In Turkey's Senkaya Bus, we get an insight into communities, cultures and environmental change in eastern Turkey.

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This week's episode of Brook Reading reviews a novel that I have been waiting to do since I started the podcast. I am reviewing “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, which is not only such a well-written novel, one of the best, in my opinion, but also a novel that has introduced society to so many concepts. Bradbury's classic novel takes the idea of censorship and flips it on its head, creating a universe where not only book burning is normal, but expected, and reading, intellect, debate, and independent thinking are against the law. A small, hidden population, however, still fights for the right to think freely, and will sacrifice anything, even their lives, to do so. The promo tonight is for Livestream for the Cure, and you can also find all the information about that upcoming event at https://allmylinks.com/livestreamforthecure Happy Reading!Intro Music: Sean FaustOutro Music: Victoria Timpanaro

A cast of high school students will be performing the stage production of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 in the Madison High Performing Arts Center this weekend and on Monday.

Fri-YAY!!! Another strong style wrestling podcast chopped straight to your chest by the boys of Wrestleocalypse. We have a SPECIAL INSIDE THE RING at 1:18:38 featuring an awesome interview with Scott from Cornerstone Fitness - @cornerstonefitness1 - where we talk about the journey of fitness and why The Viper looks as good as ever. Cool Shit fires off at 41:40. Wanna get at us? Xander @Xander_Hobbes on the IG or @HobbesXander on the Twitter or Bobby - @Wresleocalypse on both and once again all the tracks we feature in this episode are on our yearly hard-hitting playlist, and this year is called Ballads of the Wrestleocalypse and links to this episode's music below: Cold Open: https://youtu.be/WHKsPoRcP-E Theme: https://open.spotify.com/track/0pLS9mButO9qmqcNgoFthv?si=a11f642697df4785 Interlude: https://open.spotify.com/track/5M7oyXhGtTPA4TuCimV47C?si=e4601e2abc804158 Bobby Walkout: https://open.spotify.com/track/2xSzRDX9zsJOr62mFgNU7u?si=69b39625b9424fe2 Xander Walkout: https://open.spotify.com/track/7kww7WSGoTy2Nkvl2tKpIJ?si=2cc60a88f14542bc Outro: https://open.spotify.com/track/39wNY5DO7Sd7Ag6oreshlj?si=8dd4581a7a864b26

Do you seek balance in your life, or do you go all-in on things you like?I used to think everyone wanted balance, and had a moderate approach to all things in order to maintain that balance across their varied interests. Given that there are only so many hours in a day, it's hard to do all the things we love to do - or even the things we don't want to do!But I have known folks who follow the, 'if it feels good, do it!' mantra and argue that moderation and/or balance is outright silly.But if you look at biological systems, many of the biochemical processes necessary for life occur in very narrow bands or zones. For example, our blood pH (the measure of Hydrogen and Hydroxide ions in our blood) needs to be maintained between about 7.35 and 7.45 pH units. It's confusing, but the pH range is from 0-14, so 0.1 units is a VERY NARROW band within.A more somatic example is temperature. Humans are really comfortable between like 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, but Earth temperatures range between -126 and 136 degrees F. That's a 10 degree band across a range of over 250 degrees. There are even coarser examples like, if you don't eat enough your hungry but if you eat too much you're stuffed.It's sort of 'Goldiloxian', where many biological things fall into a 'just right' zone, outside of which bad things can happen.Here I go beyond those examples to discuss things like climate change and personal growth through the lens of homeostasis.Spoiler alert, I still believe in balance.Please note, I apologize to the video fans, I was unsuccessful at getting the video from this episode, so the YouTube video is audio-only. 

Madison High performs Fahrenheit 451. Battelle Energy Alliance donates one million dollars. A man faces more and more charges as police review footage of hundreds of people recorded in a grocery store bathroom.

Um grupo de pessoas passa a viver sob um regime de monitoramento constante, passando 24 horas sob o escrutínio, as decisões e as orientações de um Big Brother. Esse Big Brother tem forte controle e decide sobre a vida pessoal, a renda e o futuro das pessoas. Esta é a premissa do programa de TV mais popular do país. Mas é, também, a sinopse do livro que inspirou esse programa. Só que no clássico “1984”, de George Orwell, ninguém ficava milionário no final. O Braincast 451, homenageia o clássico livro de Ray Bradbury. “Fahrenheit 451” é um grande sucesso literário, mas será que as pessoas entendem mesmo o que ele tem a dizer? E por que estamos cada vez mais obcecados com as distopias, gênero literário que prevê grandes catástrofes para o futuro? Ainda, será que nosso mundo já não tá um tanto distópico demais? A partir dos grandes clássicos da distopia na Literatura, no Cinema e até nos games, Carlos Merigo, Alexandre Maron, Ana Freitas e Cris Dias encaram o tema nessa edição. _____ Este episódio usou trechos de vídeos disponíveis no YouTube. O que é distopia?, por Ana Paula Rodrigues - Canal Mundos Possíveis. Por que a distopia tem tudo a ver com o que estamos vivendo?, por Livia Piccolo - Canal Antofágica. Distopia: por que a sociedade do século XXI faz de um futuro opressor um sucesso comercial? - Canal UOL TAB. Roda Viva | Lázaro Ramos | 11/04/2022 - Canal Roda Viva. _____ PMI - PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE BRASIL Neste programa, você ouviu o terceiro episódio do especial "Profissão Gerente... de Projetos", uma coluna do Braincast em parceria com o PMI. Nessa semana, Merigo conversa com Lud Pimenta (Fundadora e CPO da RHLab). Cada "novo dia" exige uma nova forma de estar no mercado. E, com as ferramentas, certas, é o gerente de projetos que vai guiar sua equipe e sua empresa pelos desafios desses tempos. Esse profissional reúne ideias e as torna realidade, entregando um projeto de sucesso. Ele agiliza processos, reduz custos e age de maneira estratégica em cada segmento que atua. E há mais de 50 anos, o PMI trabalha para preparar e especializar esses profissionais. O Project Management Institute Brasil é a associação profissional líder em gerenciamento de projetos e oferece certificações e ferramentas para preparar organizações e indivíduos em todas as fases de sua jornada de carreira para trabalhar de forma mais inteligente para que possam ter sucesso em um mundo de mudanças. Mas também para quem quer entrar no mercado, e precisa se preparar. A empresa do futuro já nasceu. E ela com certeza vai precisar de um gerente de projetos. Acesse o site do PMI e saiba tudo sobre as atividades do Instituto: https://bit.ly/3L4P3bX. PMI: Potencializando a Economia de Projetos. _____ NUVEMSHOP Em pleno 2022, quem é que nunca teve uma ideia de negócio online? Em um mundo conectado, a possibilidade de fazer comércio com pessoas de todo o Brasil, sem sair de casa, é tentadora. Mas muita gente acaba desistindo quando começa a pensar nos detalhes: logística, controle de estoque, nota fiscal, envio, divulgação... Isso sem falar em montar a loja virtual! Mas deixa que a Nuvemshop resolve toda a parte do e-commerce pra você. Com mais de 10 anos de atuação, a Nuvemshop é a maior plataforma de e-commerce da América Latina, com mais de 90 mil clientes ativos em sua plataforma. E com negócios de todos os tipos e tamanhos! Se você já tem uma loja física e quer começar a vender pela internet. Ou, se você já vende nas redes sociais, mas ainda não tem uma loja virtual, ou se você quer começar seu negócio do zero, a Nuvemshop é sua porta de entrada para um mercado que cresceu 75% só no ano passado. São mais de 30 layouts, gratuitos e customizáveis, pra sua loja ficar com a sua cara. É só você cadastrar, montar e vender. Mostre ao mundo do que você é capaz e crie sua loja online na Nuvemshop: https://nuvems.co/vacacast e siga a Nuvemshop no Instagram. _____ ASSINE O BRAINCAST E FAÇA PARTE DO NOSSO GRUPO FECHADO Assinando o Braincast você pode interagir com a gente em grupos fechados no Facebook e Telegram, além de receber conteúdo exclusivo. Faça download do PicPay para iOS ou Android, clique em “Pagar”e procure pelo Braincast, ou então acesse a URL: picpay.me/braincast _____ SAIBA MAIS 3 boas indicações para fechar o programa com chave de ouro. E para abrir novas reflexões da nossa conversa! Série | The Midnight Gospel, Netflix. Podcast | Mamilos #227 - Afrofuturismo. Artigo | "The Fake Nerd Boys of Silicon Valley" | Revista Current Affairs. _____ SIGA O BRAINCAST Seu podcast de sinapses sonoras no infinito das ideias está em todas as plataformas e redes. Inclusive, na mais próxima de você. Encontre o @braincastpod: No Instagram; no Twitter; no TikTok e na Twitch. Entre em contato através do braincast@b9.com.br. Perdeu o Qual É A Boa? Encontre todas as dicas da bancada nos destaques do nosso Instagram. _____ O Braincast é uma produção B9 Apresentação: Carlos Merigo Coordenação Geral: Ju Wallauer, Cris Bartis e Carlos Merigo Direção criativa: Alexandre Potascheff Apoio à pauta e produção: Hiago Vinicius Edição: Gabriel Pimentel Identidade Sonora: Nave, com Direção Artística de Oga Mendonça Identidade Visual: Johnny Brito Coordenação Digital: Agê Barros, Débora Stevaux e Gabriel Castilho Atendimento e Comercialização: Rachel Casmala, Camila Mazza, Greyce Lidiane e Telma Zennaro

On this week's episode, we're talking about one of the most urgent issues facing humanity today, and how we can reframe our mindset around it to better encourage and allow ourselves to take action. That issue, of course, is climate change. Technology has created a lot of the problems we face, but is also coming up with some of the most innovative and inventive solutions. Solving this is going to take creativity, collaboration, and a willingness to change, but that's what we're all about here at the Tech Humanist Show! What is our individual responsibility to tackling these problems? What are the most exciting solutions on the horizon? Who should we be holding to account, and how? Those answers and more on this week's episode. Guests this week include Sarah T. Roberts, AR Siders, Tan Copsey, Anne Therese Gennari, Christopher Mims, Art Chang, Dorothea Baur, Abhishek Gupta, and Caleb Gardner. The Tech Humanist Show is a multi-media-format program exploring how data and technology shape the human experience. Hosted by Kate O'Neill. To watch full interviews with past and future guests, or for updates on what Kate O'Neill is doing next, subscribe to The Tech Humanist Show hosted by Kate O'Neill channel on YouTube. Full Transcript: Hello, humans! Today we're talking about a problem that technology is both a major cause of and perhaps one of our best potential solutions for: climate change. By almost any reckoning, the climate emergency is the most urgent and existential challenge facing humanity for the foreseeable future. All of the other issues we face pale in comparison to the need to arrest and reverse carbon emissions, reduce global average temperatures, and begin the work of rebuilding sustainable models for all of us to be able to live and work on this planet. By late 2020, melting ice in the Arctic began to release previously-trapped methane gas deposits. The warming effects of methane are 80 times stronger than carbon over 20 years, which has climate scientists deeply worried. Meanwhile, the Amazon rainforest has been devastated by burning. The plastic-filled oceans are warming. Coral reefs are dying. Experts are constantly adjusting their predictions on warming trends. And climate issues contribute to other socio-political issues as well, usually causing a big loop: Climate disasters create uninhabitable environments, leading to increased migration and refugee populations, which can overwhelm nearby areas and stoke the conditions for nationalistic and jingoistic political power grabs. This puts authoritarians and fascists into power—who usually aren't too keen on spending money to fix problems like climate change that don't affect them personally—exacerbating all of the previous problems. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson showcased exactly this type of position before a recent UN climate conference, claiming the fall of the Roman empire was due to uncontrolled immigration as a way of refocusing people's fear and attention away from climate change. Marine Le Pen of France went so far as to say that those without a homeland don't care about the environment. Similarly out-of-touch and out-of-context things have been said recently by right-wing leaders in Spain, Germany, Switzerland… the list goes on and on. Perhaps the most psychologically challenging aspect of all this is that even as we begin to tackle these issues one by one, we will continue to see worsening environmental effects for the next few decades. As David Wallace-Wells writes in The Uninhabitable Earth: “Some amount of further warming is already baked in, thanks to the protracted processes by which the planet adapts to greenhouse gas…But all of those paths projected from the present…to two degrees, to three, to four or even five—will be carved overwhelmingly by what we choose to do now.” The message is: It's up to us. We know what's coming, and are thus empowered to chart the course for the future. What we need are bold visions and determined action, and we need it now. At this point you may be thinking, “I could really use some of that Kate O'Neill optimism right about now…” Not only do I have hope, but many of the climate experts I have read and spoken with are hopeful as well. But the first step in Strategic Optimism is acknowledging the full and unvarnished reality, and the hard truth about the climate crisis is that things do look bleak right now. Which just means our optimistic strategy in response has to be that much more ambitious, collaborative, and comprehensive. As Christiana Figuere and Tom Rivett-Carnac wrote in The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, “[To feel] a lack of agency can easily transform into anger. Anger that sinks into despair is powerless to make change. Anger that evolves into conviction is unstoppable.” One of the things slowing progress on the climate front is the people on the extreme ends of the belief spectrum—especially those in positions of power—who believe it's either too late to do anything, or that climate change isn't happening at all. Technology exacerbates this problem through the spread of false information. Thankfully by this point most people—around 90% of Americans and a higher percentage of scientists—are in agreement that it's happening, although we're still divided on the cause. The same poll conducted in October 2021 by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, found that only 54% of Americans believe humans contribute to climate change. A separate study conducted that same month looked at 88,125 peer-reviewed climate studies published between 2012 and 2020, and determined that 99.9% of those studies found human activity to be directly responsible for our warming planet. It's important, however, not to write off the people who aren't yet fully convinced. Technology, as much as it has given us near-infinite access to information, is also a tremendous propagator of mis- and disinformation, which is fed to people by algorithms as immutable fact, and is often indistinguishable from the truth. Sarah T Roberts, who is Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she also serves as the co-founder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, explains further. Sarah T Roberts: “When I think about people who fall victim to conspiracy theories, what I see is a human impulse to make sense of a world that increasingly doesn't. And they're doing it in the absence of information that is way more complex and hard to parse out and might actually point criticism at places that are very uncomfortable. They sense a wrongness about the world but they don't have the right information, or access to it, or even the ability to parse it, because we've destroyed public schools. And then the auxiliary institutions that help people, such as libraries, and that leaves them chasing their own tail through conspiracy theories instead of unpacking things like the consequences of western imperialism, or understanding human migration as economic and environmental injustice issues. Y'know, you combine all that, and people, what do they do? They reach for the pablum of Social Media, which is instantaneous, always on, easy to digest, and worth about as much as, y'know, those things might be worth. I guess what I'm trying to do is draw some connections around phenomena that seem like they have come from nowhere. It would behoove us to connect those dots both in this moment, but also draw back on history, at least the last 40 years of sort of like neoliberal policies that have eroded the public sphere in favor of private industry. What it didn't do was erode the public's desire to know, but what has popped up in that vacuum are these really questionable information sources that really don't respond to any greater norms, other than partisanship, advertising dollars, etc. And that's on a good day!” The fact is, there are a number of industries and people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Not all of them engage in disinformation schemes, but some corporations—and people—who are interested in fighting climate change aren't willing to look at solutions that might change their business or way of life. Too much change is scary, so they look for solutions that keep things as they are. AR Siders: “Too much of our climate change adaptation is focused on trying to maintain the status quo. We're trying to say, ‘hey, the climate is changing, what can we do to make sure that everything stays the same in the face of climate change?' And I think that's the wrong way to think about this.” That's AR Siders, assistant professor in the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and the Department of Geography and a Core Faculty Member of the Disaster Research Center. Siders' research focuses on climate change adaptation governance, decision-making, and evaluation. ARSiders: “I think we need to think about the idea that we're not trying to maintain the status quo, we're trying to choose how we want our societies to change. I often start talks by showing historic photos, and trying to point out, in 1900, those photos don't look like they do today. So, 100 years in the future, things are going to look different. And that's true even if you don't accept climate change. Even if we stop climate change tomorrow, we might have another pandemic. We'll have new technology. And so our goal shouldn't be to try to lock society into the way it works today, it should be to think about, what are the things we really care about preserving, and then what things do we actively want to choose to change? Climate adaptation can be a really exciting field if we think about it that way.” And it is! But as more people have opened their eyes to the real threat looming in the near-horizon, disinformation entities and bad actors have changed their tactics, shifting responsibility to individuals, and away from the corporations causing the majority of the harm. So let's talk about our personal responsibility to healing the climate. Tan Copsey: “We always should be careful of this trap of individual action, because in the past the fossil fuel industry has emphasized individual action.” That's Tan Copsey, who is Senior Director, Projects and Partnerships at Climate Nexus, a strategic communications organization. His work focuses on communicating the impacts of climate change and the benefits of acting to reduce climate risks. You'll be hearing from him a lot this episode. We spoke recently about climate change solutions and responsibilities across countries and industries. He continued: Tan Copsey: “I don't know if it's true but apparently BP invented the carbon footprint as a way of kind of getting people to focus on themselves and feel a sense of guilt, and project out a sense of blame, but that's not really what it's about. Dealing with climate change should ultimately be a story about hope, and that's what I kind of try and tell myself and other people.” Speaking of, Shell had a minor PR awakening in November 2020 when they tweeted a poll asking: “What are you willing to change to help reduce carbon emissions?” The tweet prompted many high-profile figures like climate activist Greta Thunberg and US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to call out the hypocrisy of a fossil fuel company asking the public for personal change. In truth, research has found that the richest 1% of the world's population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, with people in the US causing the most emissions per capita in the world. Now, this doesn't mean to abandon personal responsibility. We should all make what efforts we can to lower our carbon footprint where feasible—whether by reviewing consumption habits, eating less meat, driving less, or anything from a wide variety of options. There's interesting psychological research around how making sustainable choices keeps us grounded in the mindset of what needs to change. I spoke with Anne Therese Gennari, a speaker, educator, and environmental activist known as The Climate Optimist, about the psychology behind individual action, and how the simple act of being more climate conscious in our daily lives can make the world a better place in ways beyond reducing our carbon footprints. Anne Therese Gennari: “Do our individual actions matter… and I think it matters so much, for 4 reasons. The first one is that it mends anxiety. A lot of people are starting to experience climate anxiety, and the first step out of that is actually to put yourself back in power. Choosing optimism is not enough. Telling ourselves, ‘I want to be optimistic,' is gonna fall short very quickly, but if we keep showing up for that work and that change, we're actually fueling the optimism from within. And that's how we keep going. The second one is that it builds character. So, the things that you do every day start to build up your habits, and that builds your character. Recognizing that the things we do becomes the identity that we hold onto, and that actually plays a huge part on what I'll say next, which is, start shifting the culture. We are social creatures, and we always look to our surroundings to see what's acceptable and okay and not cool and all these things, so the more of us that do something, it starts to shift norms and create a new culture, and we have a lot of power when we start to shift the culture. And then lastly, I'll just say, we always plant seeds. So whatever you do, someone else might see and pick up on, you never know what's gonna ripple effect from your actions.” No one person can make every change needed, but we can all do something. Every small action has the potential to create positive effects you'll never know. One surprising piece of information is that some of the things we're doing that we know are bad for the environment—like online delivery—may have more of a positive environmental impact than we thought. While the sheer amount of product that we order—especially non-essential items—is definitely exacerbating climate change, there are some positive takeaways. Christopher Mims, tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal and author of Arriving Today, on how everything gets from the factory to our front door, explains how, especially once our transportation and delivery vehicles have been electrified, ordering online may be a significantly greener alternative to shopping in stores. Christopher Mims: “The good news—you would think all of this ordering stuff online is terrible for the environment—look, it's bad for the environment in as much as it makes us consume more. We're all over-consuming, on average. But it's good for the environment in that, people forget, hopping into a 2 or 3 thousand pound car and driving to the grocery store—or a store—to get 5 to 15 pounds of goods and driving it home is horribly inefficient compared to putting the same amount of goods onto a giant box truck that can make 150 stops (if you're talking about a UPS or an Amazon delivery van), or a few dozen if you're talking about groceries. The funny thing is that delivery has the potential to be way more sustainable, and involve way less waste than our current system of going to stores. Frankly, physical retail is kind of a nightmare environmentally.” That's only a small piece of the puzzle, and there are still social and economic issues involved in the direct-to-home delivery industry. More important in regards to our personal responsibility is to stay engaged in the conversation. A both/and mindset is best: embrace our own individual responsibilities, one of which is holding companies and entities with more direct impact on the climate accountable for making infrastructural and operational change that can give individuals more freedom to make responsible choices. Tan Copsey again. Tan Copsey: “It is about political action and engagement for me. Not just voting, but it's about everything that happens in between. It's about community engagement, and the tangible things you feel when there are solar panels on a rooftop, or New York begins to move away from gas. I mean, that's a huge thing! In a more existential sense, the news has been bad. The world is warming, and our approach to dealing with it distributes the benefits to too few people. There are definitely things you can do, and so when I talk about political pressure, I'm not just talking about political pressure for ‘climate action,' I'm talking about political pressure for climate action that benefits as many people as possible.” So, if part of our responsibility is to hold our leaders to account… what changes do we need? What should we be encouraging our leaders to do? Since we're talking about political engagement, let's start with government. Tan spoke to me about government response to another global disaster—the COVID-19 Pandemic—and some of the takeaways that might be applied to battling climate change as well. Tan Copsey: “What's really interesting to me about the pandemic is how much money governments made available, particularly the Fed in the US, and how they just pumped that money into the economy as it exists. Now, you can pump that money into the economy and change it, too, and you can change it quite dramatically. And that's what we're beginning to see in Europe as they attempt to get off Russian gas. You're seeing not just the installation of heat pumps at astonishing scale, but you're also seeing real acceleration of a push toward green energy, particularly in Germany. You're also seeing some ideas being revisited. In Germany it's changing people's minds about nuclear power, and they're keeping nukes back on.” Revisiting debates we previously felt decided on is unsettling. Making the future a better place is going to require a great deal of examination and change, which can be scary. It's also something federal governments are designed not to be able to do too quickly. But that change doesn't have to work against the existing economy; it can build with it. It might be notable to people looking at this from a monetary perspective—the world's seven most industrialized countries will lose a combined nearly $5 trillion in GDP over the next several decades if global temperatures rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius. So it behooves everyone to work on these solutions. And what are those solutions? AR Siders spoke to me about the four types of solutions to climate issues. A lot of her work involves coastal cities, so her answer uses “flooding” as an example, but the strategies apply to other problems as well. AR Siders: “So the main categories are, Resistance, so this is things like building a flood wall, putting in dunes, anything that tries to stop the water from reaching your home. Then there's Accommodation, the classic example here is elevating homes, so the water comes, and the water goes, but it does less damage because you're sort of out of the way. Then there's Avoidance, which is ‘don't build there in the first place,' (America, we're not very good at that one). And then Retreat is, once you've built there, if you can't resist or accommodate, or if those have too many costs, financial or otherwise, then maybe it's time to relocate.” We'll need to apply all four strategies to different problems as they crop up, but it's important that we're proactive and remain open to which solution works best for a given issue. City governments have tremendous opportunities to emerge as leaders in this space. Studies project that by the end of the century, US cities could be up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the afternoon and 14 degrees warmer at night, meaning cities need to start taking action now. Phoenix, Arizona—a city that experiences the “heat island effect” year round—is actively making efforts to minimize these effects. In 2020, they began testing “cool pavement,” a chemical coating that reflects sunlight and minimizes the absorption of heat to curb the heat island effect. Additionally, measures to offer better transit options are on the table, with cities like Austin and New York emerging as leaders in the space. The Citi Bike app in New York City now shows transit information alongside rental and docking updates as acknowledgement that for many trips biking isn't enough, but in combination with buses or trains, biking can simplify and speed a commute as part of a greener lifestyle. Austin's recognition of the synergies between bikeshare and public transit has been praised as a model for other cities, as city transit agencies move away from seeing themselves as managers of assets (like busses), and towards being managers of mobility. I spoke with Art Chang, who has been a longtime entrepreneur and innovator in New York City—and who was, at the time of our discussion, running for mayor—about the need for resilience in preparing cities for the future. Art Chang: “There was a future—a digital future—for New York, but also being open to this idea that seas were rising, that global temperatures were going up, that we're going to have more violent storms, that things like the 100-year flood line may not be drawn to incorporate the future of these rising seas and storms. So we planned, deliberately and consciously, for a hundred-fifty year storm. We softened the edge of the water, because it creates such an exorbitant buffer for the rising seas and storms. We created trenches that are mostly hidden so that overflow water had a place to go. We surrounded the foundations of the building with what we call ‘bathtubs,' which are concrete enclosures that would prevent water from going into these places where so much of the infrastructure of these buildings were, and then we located as much of the mechanicals on top of the building, so they would be protected from any water. Those are some of the most major things. All technologies, they're all interconnected, they're all systems.” Making any of the changes suggested thus far requires collective action. And one of the ways in which we need to begin to collaborate better is simply to agree on the terms we're using and how we're measuring our progress. Some countries, like the United States, have an advantage when it comes to reporting on climate progress due to the amount of forests that naturally occur within their borders. That means the US can underreport emissions by factoring in the forests as “carbon sinks,” while other countries that may have lower emissions, but also fewer naturally-occurring forests, look worse on paper. This isn't factually wrong, but it obscures the work that's needed to be done in order to curb the damage. I asked Tan about these issues, and he elaborated on what he believes needs to be done. Tan Copsey: “Again, I'd say we resolve the ambiguity through government regulation. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at ESG. So this big trend among investors and companies, the idea that you take account of environmental, social, and governance factors in your investments, in what your company does. Realistically, there hasn't been consistent measure of this. I could buy an exchange-traded fund, and it could be ‘ESG,' and I wouldn't really know what's in it. And it could be that what's in it isn't particularly good. And so regulators are really trying to look at that now and to try and standardize it, because that matters. Likewise, you have carbon markets which are sort of within European Union, and then you have voluntary carbon markets, which are often very reliant on forest credits sourced from somewhere else, where you're not quite sure if the carbon reduction is permanent or not. And yeah, there is a need for better standards there.” To do this holistically we will need to get creative with economic incentives, whether that involves offsets, green energy credits, or new programs at local, state, or national levels. One of the more aggressive and comprehensive plans for rethinking energy policy came from the EU in summer 2021, just as Germany and Belgium reeled from killer floods that were likely exacerbated by the climate crisis. The EU announced its ”Fit for 55” plans, ”a set of inter-connected proposals, which all drive toward the same goal of ensuring a fair, competitive and green transition by 2030 and beyond.” It's an approach that is systemic, recognizing the interconnectedness of a wide variety of policy areas and economic sectors: energy, transportation, buildings, land use, and forestry. And we need more programs and regulations like this. But until we have those better regulations we need, there are still things business leaders can do to make their businesses better for the environment today, so let's move away from government and talk about businesses. A lot of businesses these days pay an enormous amount of lip service (and money) to showing that they care about the environment, but the actual work being done to lower their carbon footprint or invest in cleaner business practices is a lot less significant. Tan spoke to me about this as well. Tan Copsey: “They need to move from a model which was a little bit more about PR to something that's real. In the past when a business issued a sustainability report, it was beautiful! It was glossily designed… And then when it came to like, filings with the SEC, they said ‘climate change is a serious issue and we are taking it seriously,' because their lawyers read it very, very closely. And so, if dealing with climate risk is embedded in everything you do as a business (as it probably should be), because almost every business, well, every business probably, interacts with the energy system—every business is a climate change business. They should be thinking about it, they should be reporting on it, y'know, when it comes to CEOs, it should be part of the way we assess their performance.” Nowadays, lots of companies are talking about “offsetting” their carbon emissions, or attempting to counter-act their emissions by planting trees or recapturing some of the carbon. But is this the right way to think about things? Dorothea Baur: “Offsetting is a really good thing, but the first question to ask should not be, ‘can I offset it?' or ‘how can I offset it?', but, ‘is what I'm doing, is it even necessary?'” That's Dorothea Baur, a leading expert & advisor in Europe on ethics, responsibility, and sustainability across industries such as finance, technology, and beyond. Her PhD is in NGO-business partnerships, and she's been active in research and projects around sustainable investment, corporate social responsibility, and increasingly, emerging technology such as AI. Dorothea Baur: “So, I mean, let's say my favorite passion is to fly to Barcelona every other weekend just for fun, for partying. So, instead of offsetting it, maybe I should stop doing it. And the same for tech companies saying, you know, ‘we're going to be carbon negative!' but then make the most money from totally unsustainable industries. That's kind of a double-edged sword.” It is notable that one of the key ways businesses and governments attempt to offset their emissions is “planting trees,” which has more problems than you may think. Yes, trees are an incredibly important part of a carbon sink approach, and we definitely need to plant more of them—but there's a catch to how we say we're going to do it. The promise of tree-planting has been such an easy add-on for companies' marketing campaigns to make over the years that there's a backlog of trees to be planted and not enough tree seedlings to keep up with the promises. It's not uncommon for companies to make the commitment to their customers to plant trees first, only for them to struggle to find partners to plant the promised trees. Dorothea Baur lamented this fact in her interview. Dorothea Baur: “It's also controversial, what I always joke about—the amount of trees that have been promised to be planted? I'm waiting for the day when I look out of my window in the middle of the city and they start planting trees! Because so much—I mean, the whole planet must be covered with trees! The thing is, it takes decades until the tree you plant really turns into a carbon sink. So, all that planting trees—it sounds nice, but also I think there's some double-counting going on. It's easy to get the credit for planting a tree, but it's hard to verify the reduction you achieve because it takes such a long time.” It's going to take more than lip service about tree-planting; we have to actually expand our infrastructural capability to grow and plant them, commit land to that use, and compensate for trees lost in wildfires and other natural disasters. Beyond that, we have to make sure the trees we're planting will actually have the effect we want. The New York Times published an article in March, arguing that “Reforestation can fight climate change, uplift communities and restore biodiversity. When done badly, though, it can speed extinctions and make nature less resilient…companies and countries are increasingly investing in tree planting that carpets large areas with commercial, nonnative species in the name of fighting climate change. These trees sock away carbon but provide little support to the webs of life that once thrived in those areas.” And that can mean the trees take resources away from existing plant life, killing it and eliminating the native carbon-sink—leading to a situation where net carbon emissions were reduced by nearly zero. These are problems that require collaboration and communication between industries, governments, activists, and individuals. Beyond those initiatives, companies can also improve their climate impact by investing in improvements to transportation for employees and customers, perhaps offering public transit or electric vehicle incentives to employees, or investing in a partnership with their municipality to provide electric vehicle charging stations at offices and storefronts. Additionally, business responsibility may include strategic adjustments to the supply chain or to materials used in products, packaging, or delivery. Another issue when it comes to offsetting emissions is the leeway the tech industry gives itself when it comes to measuring their own global climate impact, when the materials they need to build technology is one of the chief contributors to carbon emissions. Dorothea Baur again. Dorothea Baur: “The whole supply chain of the IT industry is also heavily based on minerals. There are actually, there are really interesting initiatives also by tech companies, or like commodity companies that specifically focus on the minerals or the metals that are in our computers. Like cobalt, there's a new transparency initiative, a fair cobalt initiative. So they are aware of this, but if you look at where is the main focus, it's more on the output than on the input. And even though the tech companies say, ‘oh, we're going to be carbon neutral or carbon negative,' as long as they sell their cloud services to the fossil industry, that's basically irrelevant.” Currently, AI tech is an “energy glutton”—training just one machine learning algorithm can produce CO2 emissions that are 5 times more than the lifetime emissions of a car. But there is still hope for AI as a tool to help with climate change, namely using it to learn how to more efficiently run energy grids and predict energy usage, especially as energy grids become more complicated with combined use of solar, wind, and water power in addition to traditional fossil fuels. AI can also make the global supply chain more efficient, reducing emissions and speeding up the process of developing new, cleaner materials. One small-scale use-case is “Trashbot,” which sorts waste materials into categories using sensors and cameras, eliminating the need for people to try to sort out their own recyclables. What's clear from every emerging report is that net zero emissions are no longer enough. We need governments and companies and every entity possible to commit to net negative emissions. Cities need ambitious plans for incentivizing buildings that sequester carbon. Companies need logistics overhauls to ensure their supply chains are as compliant as possible, and then some. Tan Copsey: ““What's interesting is when they talk about Net Zero—particularly companies, but also a lot of governments—they talk about Net Zero by 2050. What is that, 28 years. 28 years is still a long time away, and if you're a government, the current president certainly won't be president in 2050. If you're a company CEO, you may not be CEO next quarter, let alone in 28 years, and so we have to have nearer-term targets. You want to be Net Zero by 2050? Tell me how you're gonna get there. Tell me what you're gonna do by 2030, tell me what you're gonna do by next quarter. One of the things that encourages me is things like change in financial regulation, which sounds arcane and slightly off-topic, but it's not. It's about what companies report when, and how investors hold those companies to account to nearer-term action, because that's how we get there.” One of the reasons that corporations do so little to minimize their carbon footprint is that they don't accurately measure their own carbon emissions. Using AI to track emissions can show problem areas, and what can be done to address those issues. Abhishek Gupta, machine learning engineer, founder of the Montreal AI Ethics Institute, and board member of Microsoft's CSE Responsible AI board, spoke to me about an initiative he's working on to help ease this burden by making it easier for developers to track the effect they're having on the environment by incorporating data collection into their existing workflow. Abhishek Gupta: “One of the projects that we're working on is to help developers assess the environmental impacts of the work that they do. Not to say that there aren't initiative already, there are—the problem with a lot of these are, they ignore the developer's workflow. So the problem then is, if you're asking me to go to an external website and put in all of this information, chances are I might do it the first couple of times, but I start to drop the ball later on. But if you were to integrate this in a manner that is similar to ML Flow, now that's something that's a little more natural to the developer workflow; data science workflow. If you were to integrate the environmental impacts in a way that follows this precedent that's set by something like ML Flow, there is a lot higher of a possibility for people taking you up on that, and subsequently reporting those outcomes back to you, rather than me having to go to an external website, fill out a form, take that PDF report of whatever… that's just too much effort. So that's really what we're trying to do, is to make it easy for you to do the right thing.” And Abhishek isn't the only one who sees potential in AI. Dorothea Baur also spoke to me about her belief in AI, although she sees us using it for a different purpose. Dorothea Baur: “AI has huge potential to cause good, especially when it comes to environmental sustainability. For example, the whole problem of pattern recognition in machine learning, where if it's applied to humans, it is full of biases, and it kind of confuses correlation and causation, and it's violating privacy, etc. There are a lot of issues that you don't have when you use the same kind of technology in a natural science context, you know? Where you just observe patterns of oceans and clouds and whatever, or when you try to control the extinction of species. I mean, animals don't have a need for or a right to privacy, so why not use AI in contexts where it doesn't violate anyone's moral rights? And where you, at the same time, resolve a real problem.” Turning AI and algorithms away from people and towards nature is a wise decision in many respects. A lot of our efforts to curb the effects of climate change thus far have overlooked the same people that are overlooked in our data, and in almost every measurable respect, negative impacts of the climate crisis are felt most by marginalized populations and poorer communities. Tan Copsey: “I think that when it comes to climate tech, you need to think about who it's supposed to benefit. There's more than 7B people on earth, it can't just be for the US market, it has to be for everyone.” “The best futures for the most people” really comes into play here—communities of color are often more at risk from air pollution, due to decades of redlining forcing them into more dangerous areas. Seniors, people with disabilities, and people with chronic illnesses may have a harder time surviving extreme heat or quickly evacuating from natural disasters. Subsidized housing is often located in a flood plain, causing mold, and frequently lacks adequate insulation or air conditioning. People with a low-income may also be hard-pressed to afford insurance or be able to come back from an extreme loss after catastrophe strikes. Some indigenous communities have already lost their homelands to rising sea levels and drought. Indigenous communities, speaking of, often have traditional approaches—empowered by millennia of historical experience—to living gently on the planet and a mindset for cooperating with nature that are well worth learning. Seeking leadership on climate issues from Indigenous people should be a priority. An article published by Mongabay on December 21, 2021 gives an example of an initiative in Mexico that is using the knowledge of indigenous communities, and is working. Essentially, the Ejido Verde company grants interest-free loans to local communities to plant and tend pine trees for the tapping of resin, a multibillion-dollar global industry. Younger generations are eager to participate, and fewer people feel the need to migrate away from their homes. According to a paper by the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, the only way that recovery can work is if it is based on sound science, supported by fair governance, incentivized by long-term funding mechanisms, and guided by indigenous knowledge and local communities. Speaking of long-term funding mechanisms, let's talk about another group of leaders who have the potential to make a drastic positive impact today: private investors. Activist investors may seem unwelcome, but when they're making priorities known on behalf of humanity, they're ultimately doing us all a service. These people have the ability to help shape company and government policy by letting their dollars speak for us, by investing in solutions and burgeoning industries that we drastically need. That's been happening, such as when the shareholders of both ExxonMobil and Chevron sent strong messages about getting serious with respect to climate responsibility. In Europe, shareholder votes and a Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its emissions faster than they'd already been planning. And social and financial pressure is a good way to nudge executives in the right direction, especially leaders who don't make climate-friendly decisions out of fear of pushback from their boards and investors. Tan Copsey: “Investors increasingly should be thinking about the companies they invest in on the basis of their climate performance. And that isn't just, ‘oh, they reduced some greenhouse gas emissions,' because, y'know, you look at a lot of tech companies and they have reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but really they have to do more than that. For businesses in other sectors, it may not be that simple. Certainly there are harder to abate sectors, and so it could be that you are the CEO of a steel company, and your emissions are still gigantic, but the change you can make by introducing, say, hydrogen, and getting rid of coal, or introducing renewable energy plus hydrogen to your—the way in which you do steel, is transformative for the global economy and transformative for the climate system, and in a way investing in that company is more climate-friendly than investing in a tech company; but chances are you have an ETF and you're doing both.” Despite everything I've talked about today, it's important for all of us to remain optimistic. I asked Anne Therese Gennari why optimism is important, and her answer didn't disappoint. Anne Therese Gennari: “Optimism, for scientific reasons, is actually very important. If you look to neuroscience, we need optimism to believe something better is possible, and then find the motivation and the courage to take action right now to get us closer to that goal. And I think there is a huge difference between optimism and toxic positivity, and I think a lot of people who don't agree with optimism associate it with always trying to be happy, thinking good thoughts and hoping things will turn out to the better. And that's why I love to come back to this understanding that ‘awareness hurts, and that's okay.' Because when we tell ourselves that not everything is beautiful, and sometimes things will be painful, we can actually handle that, and we can take that. But from that place of awareness, we can start to grow a seed of hope and tell ourselves, ‘well, what if? What if we did take action, and this happened? What if we can create a more beautiful world in the future? And so, we can paint a picture that's all doomsday, or we can paint one that's beautiful. So which one do we want to start working towards?” And if you find yourself saying, “I really want to be optimistic, but it's too hard! There's just so much bad news out there…” don't fret! You aren't alone. You might even say that's a quite human response. Anne Therese Gennari: “We're human beings, and as a species, we respond to certain kinds of information in different ways. Information that's negative or fear based has a very limiting response in our brains. When we hear something that's overwhelming, like climate change, and we know it's urgent, we might understand that it's urgent, but the action isn't there. Because how our brains respond to something that we don't want to happen is actually to not take action. And it goes back to way back in time, where like, you're facing this dangerous animal, and you're like ‘there's no way I can fight this animal, I can't outrun it, so what am I gonna do? I'm gonna stand here super still and hope that it doesn't see me.' That's literally what our brains think about when something's that overwhelming. And so I think the more urgent the matter is, the more important it is that we actually fuel ourselves with an optimistic future or goal to work towards, because that is the only way that we can actually trigger action.” So let's fuel our minds with an optimistic future to work towards. Despite all the bad news you've heard—even on this episode—there are a lot of hopeful developments happening! The most recent U.N. Climate Conference, COP26, established the Glasgow Climate Pact, which recognizes that the situation is at an emergency level, asking countries to accelerate their plans by calling for provable action by next year. Policy changes, government regulations, and people becoming motivated are all on the rise. Caleb Gardner, who was lead digital strategist for President Obama's political advocacy group, OFA and is now founding partner of 18 Coffees, a strategy firm working at the intersection of digital innovation, social change, and the future of work, spoke to me about what he's most optimistic about, which is right in line with this show's values. Caleb Gardner: “I'm probably most optimistic about technology's ability to tackle global problems like climate change. I'm actually pretty bullish on technology's ability to solve and actually innovate around the reduction of carbon in our atmosphere, electric vehicles, electric grid… and what's great is a lot of that's already being driven by the private sector around the world, so it's not as dependent on government as we think that it is.” So let's talk about some of the emerging technologies that show a lot of promise in mitigating the effects of climate change—and that might make sense to invest in, if you have the means to do so. A team of UCLA scientists led by Aaswath Raman has developed a thin, mirror-like film that reflects heat to outer space through radiative cooling, and can lower the temperatures of objects it's applied to by more than 10 degrees. The idea comes from generations of knowledge from people living in desert climates who learned to cool water by letting the heat radiate out of it overnight. If this film were added to paint and/or applied to pipes and refrigeration units, it could help cool buildings and make refrigeration systems more efficient, reducing the need for air conditioning, which accounts for as much as 70% of residential energy demand in the United States and Middle East. One of the strongest selling points of innovations like this film is that it doesn't need electricity; it only needs a clear day to do its job. Another innovation in reflecting energy back into space comes in the form of ‘cloud brightening,' a technique where salt drops are sprayed into the sky so that clouds reflect more radiation, allowing us to refreeze the polar ice caps. Then there's the new trend of green roofs, in particular the California Academy of Sciences' Living Roof, which spans 2.5 acres and runs six inches deep, with an estimated 1.7 million plants, collecting 100 percent of storm water runoff and offering insulation to the building below. The whole endeavor is brilliantly hopeful and strategic. A massive green roof is completely on brand for a science museum, but that doesn't mean other buildings and businesses wouldn't benefit from them as well. The National Park Service even estimates that over a forty year building lifespan, a green roof could save a typical structure about $200,000, nearly two-thirds of which would come from reduced energy costs. Other building technologies move beyond solar panels and green roofs, with automated building management systems detecting usage patterns of lighting, heating, and air conditioning. There have also been innovations in window insulation, trapping heat during the winter and blocking it out in the summer. ‘Green cement' can be heated to lower temperatures and cuts emissions by a third compared to regular cement. There are new Hydrogen-powered ships whose emissions are water. Electric planes have been developed for short-distance flights. Large floating solar power installations have the potential to generate terawatts of energy on a global scale, and when built near hydropower, can generate electricity even in the dark. Lithium batteries continue to get smaller and more efficient, and can be charged faster and more often than other batteries, making electric vehicles cheaper. And speaking of electric vehicles, they can help with our energy storage problems, with owners buying electricity at night to charge their cars and selling it to the grid when demand is high and cars are unused during the day. Feeding cows seaweed and replacing beef with insects such as mealworms can drastically reduce methane emissions. Scientists in Argentina are working on backpacks for cows that collect their methane, which have shown to collect enough methane from a single cow every day to fuel a refrigerator for 24 hours. To help curb other types of emissions, carbon capture and storage technologies like NZT allow us to capture CO2 in offshore storage sites several kilometres beneath the North Sea. But it's not just about new technologies, or technologies that only work for the richest people. Here's Tan again to elaborate on this idea. Tan Copsey: “This is a really tricky moment, y'know, this is a really bad time to be inefficiently using the resources we have. As we think about climate tech, think about optimizing mobility, as well as copying the existing model. There's a lot of existing tech out there that would make people's lives better—very simple irrigation systems—and so, we shouldn't just think of this in terms of big new exciting things, we should think about it in terms of deploying existing things.” All of this is part of embracing the mindset that says things can change. We need a can-do mindset, but we also need clarity and collaboration. Basically all options need to be implemented if we want to curb the damage that has already been done. Our solutions need to work in conjunction with one another, and support the greatest number of people. To close out, here's Christopher Mims with the last word on putting away the doom and gloom, and remaining optimistic in the face of overwhelming adversity. Christopher Mims: “If you really think about the whole sweep of human history, we live in a time where the pace of especially technological, and therefore in some ways cultural change, is so much faster than ever. We keep inventing new ways to kind of trip ourselves up, and then we have to just adapt so quickly to them. We're constantly playing catch-up with our own technological and social developments. So there's a lot of beating ourselves up over like, ‘woah, how come we didn't do it this way, or we didn't do this right?' or whatever. Sometimes I'm just like, ahh, just chill! We're going as fast as we can. It's very easy to get caught up in the moment to moment, but I think there is this kind of overall arc where, if we don't cook ourselves to death, or blow ourselves up, or distract ourselves to death, we're moving in directions that, once we have fully understood how to live in harmony with the technology that we've created, we'll probably be okay.” Thanks for joining me on The Tech Humanist Show today. I hope you've learned something, and at the very least, that you're going into the future with more hope than you had before.

Unknown 0:00Okay good morning everyone. It is very early Wednesday morning here in the Midwest and we have really such active weather and especially if you're in North Dakota places like North Dakota it's really amazing what the state has just gone through it considering last week that three they Blizzard, which was a historic Blizzard have broke many records across the state. For snowfall accumulations. We had one area that got 36 inches of snow. That town didn't break a record Believe it or not because the official amount was only 20 inches of snow it was but the 36 inches of snow was considered valid. And we had many places which were anywhere between 24 and 36 inches. Some areas got several feet of snow drifts. The pictures are just unbelievable. There's pictures of doors which you open up the door the whole thing is snow you can't even get out. Now, that area so they got a massive blizzard last week with 60 mile per hour wind gusts. Another major snowstorm moved through Sunday night Sunday Sunday night in some areas got about eight inches of snow in North Dakota again places like Leeds North Dakota they got eight inches of snow this place kavaler North Dakota, eight inches of snow. Grand Morales Minnesota, 7.3 inches of snow Devils Lake North Dakota, six inches of snow Duluth, Minnesota, 5.8 inches of snow we're holding in April, they already broke a record. Bismarck North Dakota broke a record for the snowiest April on record. I think it's the previous record was 21.8 inches. Currently they're holding a 21.9 inches, with still 13 days left to go for April at the time this record was broke. Now, there is a major major snowstormUnknown 2:02a major storm system and impactful storm system, which will be pushing up the Dakotas this weekend. This will have major impacts for all over the country really. But for North Dakota, another winter weather event is possible in North Dakota in the northern half of North Dakota. The European computer model has just brought the strong track further north than what it was saying earlier tells us the National Weather Service for Bismarck. And you know the rain, it's gonna be a tricky call for at least the first half probably rain snow, probably mostly rain really. But when you get into Sunday, so when you're already on the backside of the storm, that's really when there's very high potential for death. Certainly the western parts in the Northwest parts of North Dakota to be seeing snow, perhaps even all snow. Now before we get in, that's going to be a significant storm as well. It's a solid at least six inches. There might be a lot more than that. We already have a winter storm warning which goes into effect this morning at 7am. For places in Minnesota, not Duluth, Minnesota but very close to Duluth, Minnesota, six to 10 inches of snow expected in areas over there. That's a low pressure system which is pushing off to the northeast. You know the Northeast also. They got also areas got 18 inches of snow. That was on Tuesday between Monday. That was on Monday actually, by Tuesday morning already. There are places which were getting a foot even more of snow there were places which have there's videos of Thundersnow just very beautiful stuff going on. You have places this is a rarity to see places with the flowers blooming. But the snows coming down hard also there was lots of power outages some of the counties up there report that they've never seen so many trees down ever. So there's really a lot going on up there. The cold air Believe it or not, it's not we're not done with it. We're really not done with it. And it's I can't believe it. The National Weather Service here in Chicago says that there's a chance for snow a little bit beyond the seven day forecast cycle. This is really something phenomenal sub we have another record breaking cold air aloft coming in to the Dakotas for the weekend. That's on top of an unprecedented snowpack, which not only is it very deep snow, but also the moisture content is very high. And regardless of what type of precipitation falls this weekend, there's a risk of flooding. You know areas which are getting rain two inches of rain is expected to fall over in North Dakota. Two inches of water equivalent. Some of that falling as snow some of it falling is rain. You know temperatures Believe it or not you know you go into South Dakota, Nebraska on Friday highs going into the mid 90s. In Nebraska and North Platte Nebraska is expecting a record high the previous records 92 degrees, forecasts high Friday 93 degrees.Unknown 5:13This is a strong storm system. It's bringing in summer heat summer heat ahead of the system on Friday and you know those 90s Go up South Dakota, South Dakota areas in the 80s. If temperatures in the 80s for South Dakota, it wouldn't be so surprising to get a 90 degree reading over there. When you see how far north those 80s are going. But North Platte, Nebraska it's not and it's going well into the 90s over there. You have it North Dakota Of course it's just south it's just north of South Dakota. Camera is getting pretty mild there for this in the south east parts of North Dakota and not the 80s maybe the 60s or something like that. But when you get to the northwest part of North Dakota, you have temperatures in the 30s maybe even colder than that. We're going to you know last week it's something similar to what happened last week, perhaps not quite as extreme maybe when you had a temperature in Omaha, Nebraska, 91 degrees, five o'clock pm then you had a temperatures somewhere in the Dakotas of 19 degrees in Spearfish spirit Spearfish. I think it was, I think that's the city Spearfish. 19 degrees at five o'clock pm the teens in one area that 90s in another area. You know, the Fahrenheit system allows is a much media friendly system. The Fahrenheit system is very media friendly. And you can have a headline 90s and the Braska teens in the Dakotas. Also the North Dakota South Dakota thing is very media friendly because teens in the Dakotas 90s. In Nebraska, they border each other once North Dakota once South Dakota, it's 1991. You know, it's like, but either even without those headlines, even with even if you go to the Celsius system, you're still looking 32 degrees Celsius, maybe even 33 degrees Celsius 33 degrees Celsius in Omaha, Nebraska, and then you go into that town in North Dakota. So if you're looking at a temperature of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, that's about nine eight, that's about 918.Unknown 7:17Celsius that's colder than 14 degrees Celsius, that's probably 13 or 12 degrees Celsius, no colder than 14 billows. That's probably what would it be to 1112 degrees below zero Celsius. It's really cold. That's really cold at 19 degrees over there. So even without the media friendly Fahrenheit system, and even without the jumbling up North Dakota and South Dakota into one big word, the decoders, even just looking at the facts, It's so unbelievable. It's really amazing. When you have teens and 90s coming together, in this weekend storm system, we're gonna see something pretty similar. I don't know about the blizzard. I don't know about the blizzard, the Blizzard has the first half might be falling as rain, but there still could be some very significant stuff happening in the second half. We also have to deal with this time of the year as the solar insolation solar insulation. It's i n s o l a t IO n. That's the amount of solar the amount of the sun's rays it's hitting the ground. It's It's really high this time of the year. We have an ultra violent index on Thursday here in Chicago forecast to be the seventh, you go out into the Dakotas where you have snow covered ground, that ultraviolet index is going to be higher than a seven. You have the clouds that lowers it. Even on a cloudy day. Still here in Chicago, we're getting an ultraviolet index of three that's equivalent to what it is on a sunny day in South Padre Island, Texas in December, might even get more ultraviolet rays than that. We're talking about strong sun this time of the year the National Weather Service in Bismarck, North Dakota informs us or this might be in Duluth, Minnesota informs us. It's Duluth, Minnesota for tomorrow, that even though temperatures will be below 32 in the area of the winter storm warning, and it's cloudy and it's snowing, there still could be some melting. And there could even It could even affect the precipitation type. Some of the precipitation might start to fall over. As far as rain, it might fall as rain even though the temperatures are below 32. Only just because of the solar installation. It's really an you know, when you get the heavier precipitation rates, that's when you get the dynamic cooling. That pretty much guarantees when you have temperatures that cold. You're pretty much guaranteed with the heavier precipitation make the presentation with falling as snow. That's what's been going on in the East Coast whenever it was Monday, Tuesday, Sunday night even that's what's been going on heavier precipitation rates is when the precipitation changes the snow Oh, in some areas forecasted only rain. But if the precipitation falls down heavily enough, you can start to get snow even though temperatures are well above 32. It's more common this time of the year to see stuff like that, to see temperatures well above 32 and precipitation falling and snow, I have noticed in the month of April, it is a lot more common when you go back into November and December, the precipitation falls as rain usually when temperatures are in the upper 30s, sometimes even mid 30s. But this time of the year, mid and upper 30s, when the cold enough for the precipitation to fall snow, if you're in the backside of the storm system. The area's on the major cities on the East Coast got pretty much a cold rain, there could have been some thunder and lightning, often the probably Cape Cod or so in the Massachusetts area, we have a severe weather risk........

This might come as a surprise to some of you, but SpaceX is not the only name in privatized space launching services. For example, Long Beach, CA-based Rocket Lab has had 25 successful launches since 2017, and deployed over 100 satellites into orbit for clients that include NASA, DARPA and Canon.While their scale is smaller than the aforementioned competitor, their focus on innovation is definitely amongst industry leaders. Not only is this evidenced by their Electron rocket, which is described as the only reusable orbital-class small rocket currently in use, but by a recent announcement on how they intend to recover said rocket after its next launch.The “There and Back Again” mission is scheduled to take place within a 14-day launch window that begins April 19. After launching from their Mahia Peninsula launch complex in New Zealand, the company will attempt a mid-air helicopter capture of the Electron launch vehicle for the first time.After deploying a payload comprised of satellites, as well as propulsion systems and power generators for satellites, Rocket Lab will employ a customized Sikorsky S-92 helicopter with a large twin engine to capture the returning rocket stage as it returns from space. Approximately an hour prior to lift-off, the helicopter will move into position about 150 nautical miles off New Zealand's coast. At two-and-a-half minutes after lift-off, Electron's first and second stages will separate, per the standard mission protocol. Electron's second stage will continue into orbit to deploy the payload, while the first stage will begin its descent back to Earth. As it falls, it will reach speeds of over 5,000 mph and temperatures exceeding 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.After deploying a parachute at 8.3 miles altitude, the main parachute will be extracted at around 3.7 miles in slowing the descent to 22 mph.  As the stage enters the capture zone, the helicopter, via a specially-designed hook, will look to snag the parachute and secure the rocket.According to Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck, “We've conducted many successful helicopter captures with replica stages, carried out extensive parachute tests, and successfully recovered Electron's first stage from the ocean during our 16th, 20th, and 22nd missions. Now it's time to put it all together for the first time and pluck Electron from the skies.” 

News Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy | MIT News (01:28) Approximately 15% of American adults (37.5 million) aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing. The biotechnology company Frequency Therapeutics is seeking to reverse hearing loss — not with hearing aids or implants, but with a new kind of regenerative therapy.Using small molecules to program progenitor cells – a descendant of stem cells in the inner ear — to create the tiny hair cells that allow us to hear. In more detail, progenitor cells reside in the inner ear and generate hair cells when humans are in utero, but they become dormant before birth and never again turn into more specialized cells such as the hair cells of the cochlea. Frequency's drug candidate is designed to be injected into the ear to regenerate these cells within the cochlea.already improved people's hearing as measured by tests of speech perception The company has dosed more than 200 patients to date and has seen clinically meaningful improvements in speech perception in three separate clinical studies. MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer talked on the study results: “Some of these people [in the trials] couldn't hear for 30 years, and for the first time they said they could go into a crowded restaurant and hear what their children were saying … It's so meaningful to them. Obviously more needs to be done, but just the fact that you can help a small group of people is really impressive to me.” One company founder, Jeff Karp believes Frequency's work will advance researchers' ability to manipulate progenitor cells and lead to new treatments down the line.“I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 or 15 years, because of the resources being put into this space and the incredible science being done, we can get to the point where [reversing hearing loss] would be similar to Lasik surgery, where you're in and out in an hour or two and you can completely restore your vision … I think we'll see the same thing for hearing loss.” Engineered bacteria could help protect “good” gut microbes from antibiotics | Big Think (07:01) Following antibiotic treatment, some patients are at risk of developing inflammation or opportunistic infections.Antibiotics are indiscriminate with their attacks on bacteria, so they end up harming the beneficial microbes that live in the human gut. In an effort to reduce those risks, MIT engineers have developed a new way to help protect the natural flora of the human digestive tract. Beta-lactams make up about 60 percent of the antibiotics prescribed in the United States. Took a bacteria (Lactococcus lactis) safe for humans, and engineered it to produce enzymes that break down a class of antibiotics called beta-lactams (i.e. ampicillin, amoxicillin, etc.) It protects the microbiota in the gut but allows the levels of antibiotics circulating in the bloodstream to remain high. After the bacteria's job is finished, the engineered bacteria are excreted through the digestive tract. Andres Cubillos-Ruiz PhD talks on the effects of medication and diet can have on the gut microbiome:“Throughout your life, these gut microbes assemble into a highly diverse community that accomplishes important functions in your body … The problem comes when interventions such as medications or particular kinds of diets affect the composition of the microbiota and create an altered state, called dysbiosis. Some microbial groups disappear, and the metabolic activity of others increases. This unbalance can lead to various health issues.” To test their approach, the researchers gave the mice two oral doses of the engineered bacteria for every injection of ampicillin.In those mice, the researchers found that the amount of ampicillin circulating the bloodstream was as high as that in mice who did not receive the engineered bacteria. In the gut, mice that received engineered bacteria maintained a much higher level of microbial diversity compared to mice that received only antibiotics.  The researchers now plan to begin developing a version of the treatment that could be tested in people at high risk of developing acute diseases that stem from antibiotic-induced gut dysbiosis.   Wireless camera tool could make intubation safer and easier | Futurity  (12:40) Intubation is the process of inserting a tube into the mouth or nose and then into the airway to help move air in and out of the lungs. used to support breathing during surgery or an emergency A team of Rice University bioengineering students designed a new handheld, 3D-printed device with a miniature wireless camera, which could make intubation easier and safer. Kenneth Hiller, an anesthesiologist in private practice, who initiated the project, discusses the current practice:“Current state-of-the-art devices have limitations … Placing an endotracheal tube can be challenging in a significant number of patients' airways. For years, I've mulled over what I'd like in a device that can simplify the process and improve patient safety.” Hiller, who approached the team of engineers at the university, knew what he wanted to build but didn't know how to build it himself. Had a model with popsicle sticks and metal. One of the engineering students, Victoria Kong, explains the two different scope types:“There are two main types of laryngoscopes: with straight blades and with curved blades, and all of the video laryngoscopes on the market are in the curved blade format. While that's great for compressing the tongue to get it out of the way, it has a very high displacement volume. It takes up a lot of room in the mouth …  The straight blade gives you a more direct line of sight. We wanted to combine the stabilization afforded by curved blades and a straight-blade profile, and we did that by tapering our blade.” The project is looking at a wireless camera, since current market scopes have wired cameras that makes it bulky and reduces the amount of people in the room at one time. A wireless camera will allow doctors to view it on a smaller screen (i.e. tablet) while not being in the room during the process. “Having the video accessible on a tablet means a doctor in another room can watch and give feedback about technique to the airway manager performing the actual procedure,” according to Rebecca Franklin, who was a part of the design team. The students say they anticipate future refinements to include stainless steel construction for durability. They also see uses for the device beyond the clinic.   A massive "space cannon" can shoot payloads into space at hypersonic speeds  | Interesting Engineering (16:31)  An alternative rocket launch firm called Green Launch is developing a system to send small launch vehicles into space using a massive gas cannon.  With a 54-foot (16.5-meter) launch tube, the company was able to fire a payload into the stratosphere at a velocity exceeding Mach 3. A little taller than the length of a Semi-Truck trailer.  If the company is able to scale the system, the explosive method has the potential to massively reduce the cost and carbon footprint of small satellite launches.BIG IF! The concept of an artillery gun used as a low-cost method for sending payloads into space dates back to the U.S. Army's High Altitude Research Project (HARP) of the 1960s.HARP set a record in 1966 by firing a projectile above the 100-kilometer Kármán Line —  considered by many to be the line between Earth and space. Then HARP transitioned to the SHARP program (S = super) developed the hydrogen impulse launcher, which features a long thin barrel filled with hydrogen mixed with helium and oxygen. Sounds familiar!The SHARP program's 400-foot (122-m) impulse launcher broke records in the 90s by launching payloads at speeds of up to Mach 9. Now, Green Launch wants to leverage that technology to disrupt the booming small satellite launch sector.Green Launch says its "proof of concept" impulse launch will allow it to attempt to send a projectile past the Kármán Line later this year.  The company believes its method could also eventually be scaled to reach hypersonic speeds as high as Mach 20.  Green Launch CTO Dr. John Hunter talks about the process:“The trick is using a light gas like hydrogen, which has a very low molecular weight … You can get very high velocities that aren't possible with railguns or other systems. This has zero carbon emission and will allow us to revolutionize access to space and open the solar system to manned exploration." Green Launch will eventually have to build a launch vehicle that fires a small amount of propellant for course correction and placement once in orbit.  If its upcoming launch tests prove successful, Green Launch says it first aims to deploy its system to send atmospheric sampling devices to space to collect data for climatologists.  A new heat engine with no moving parts is as efficient as a steam turbine | MIT News  (22:54) Engineers at MIT and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have designed a heat engine with no moving parts. Converts heat to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency — a performance better than that of traditional steam turbines. On average, steam turbines reliably convert about 35 percent of a heat source into electricity, with about 60 percent representing the highest efficiency of any heat engine to date.  The heat engine is a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell, similar to a solar panel's photovoltaic cells, that passively captures high-energy photons from a white-hot heat source and converts them into electricity.Generates electricity from a heat source of between 1,900 to 2,400 degrees Celsius, or up to about 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers plan to incorporate the TPV cell into a grid-scale thermal battery. Would absorb excess energy from renewable sources such as the sun and store that energy in heavily insulated banks of hot graphite. When the energy is needed, such as on overcast days, TPV cells would convert the heat into electricity, and dispatch the energy to a power grid. As of right now, the new TPV cell, the team has now successfully demonstrated the main parts of the system in separate, small-scale experiments. They are working to integrate the parts to demonstrate a fully operational system.  They have hopes to scale up the system to replace fossil-fuel-driven power plants and enable a fully decarbonized power grid, supplied entirely by renewable energy. For a grid-scale thermal battery system, The TPV cells would have to scale up to about 10,000 square feet (about a quarter of a football field). Operate in climate-controlled warehouses to draw power from huge banks of stored solar energy. Robert N. Noyce Career, professor at MIT, states: “Thermophotovoltaic cells were the last key step toward demonstrating that thermal batteries are a viable concept … This is an absolutely critical step on the path to proliferate renewable energy and get to a fully decarbonized grid.”  

In this episode, Patricia Aufderheide introduces Documentary Film, a diverse genre that encompasses films from March of the Penguins to Fahrenheit 9/11 but is always rooted in the desire to represent reality. Learn more about “Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction” here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/documentary-film-a-very-short-introduction-9780195182705 Patricia Aufderheide is a professor in the School of Communication at American … Continue reading Documentary Film – The Very Short Introductions Podcast – Episode 44 →

Neste episódio: Iniciando nossa série Distopias, neste episódio debatemos o livro Fahrenheit 451. Uma sociedade sem livros pode ser livre? Quais experiências sociais mais se aproximaram da terrível sociedade descrita por Ray Bradbury? Nosso time formado por Ricardo Herdy, Eduardo Spohr e Flávio Medeiros debate tudo isso e muito mais.. Apresentado por: Ricardo Herdy e Raphael Modena. Convidados: Eduardo Spohr e Flávio Medeiros. Links: Telegram Ghost Writer – t.me/programagw Facebook Ghost Writer – www.facebook.com/programagw Email Ghost Writer – programagw@gmail.com Twitter – @programagw 10 pras Lês

Cops pulled over a driverless car with no one inside, Rochester's batman, a lifehack to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, and more! 

According to The Burn Institute more than half of fire-related deaths result from smoke inhalation, Smoke inhalation occurs when you breathe in harmful smoke particles and gases. Inhaling harmful smoke can inflame your lungs and airway, causing them to swell and block oxygen. This can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome and respiratory failure.Smoke inhalation commonly happens when you get trapped in a contained area, such as a bedroom at home, near a fire. Most fires occur in the home, often from cooking, fireplaces and space heaters, electrical malfunctions, and smoking but occasionally, those fires are started deliberately.  Once you start to inhale the smoke, you are not getting enough oxygen to live. Depending on the density and heat of the smoke, it may take 2 to 10 minutes to pass out or die.  A standard house fire can reach temperatures of up to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (815 Celcius). It will always be hottest at the ceiling, as heat rises. However, it can still easily be a few hundred degrees or more at the floor level. What chance does a 7 year old girl stand against that? Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/crimepedia. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hear how sleep affects every aspect of your work and your life I had the pleasure of meeting Riley Jarvis and learning all about his sleep program. Sleep doesn't come easily to me—or to lots of people. And staying asleep is often a challenge. Riley struggled with his own health and well-being, then discovered that sleep was the answer to his health issues. As you listen to his story, you are going to want to know more. Definitely listen in enjoy! Watch and listen to our conversation here The way you live every day is closely connected to how you sleep every night. These two things are not separate or disconnected. How you prepare for sleep, quiet your mind and body, and move into a restful period is of critical importance to how well you will sleep. Listen to our discussion and learn more. Perhaps you too can find a solution to your well-being in Riley's approach to sleep. You can get in touch with Riley via LinkedIn, his blog and his website The Sleep Consultant, or email him at riley@thesleepconsultant.com. Need some help taking better care of yourself? Here are some suggestions  Blog: 5 Ways You Can Find Happiness And Joy In These Turbulent Times Podcast: Rebecca Morrison—Women, Are You Ready To Find Your Happiness? Is It All Around You? Podcast: Meg Nocero—Can You Feel Joy As You Rethink Your Life? Additional resources for you My award-winning second book: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business My award-winning first book: On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Simon Associates Management Consultants    Read the transcript of our podcast here Andi Simon: Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. I'm Andi Simon, I'm your host and your guide and I go looking for people who are going to help you get off the brink. Remember, our job is to help you see and feel and think about things through a fresh lens. So I'm an anthropologist. I help people change, whether it's as an executive coach or consultant in your business. I help you see what's all around you that your mind might be fighting because it doesn't quite fit into the story that's there. Today, I have Riley Jarvis with us from Ottawa. People come from across the world to be on our podcast. It's so much fun. In fact, you've taken our podcast to the top 5% of global podcasts. I'm proud of it. We've also published our 300th podcast. That means four years of doing lots of good stuff. I know Riley has his own podcast, and I was on his. But today we're going to talk about Riley. So let me tell you a little bit about him and then he will tell you his own journey. We're going to talk today about something you're not going to do today, which is sleep, which is really important. Riley is the founder and CEO of TheSleepConsultant.com. It's an organization that helps CEOs, entrepreneurs, and high performance business people transform their sleep to significantly improve their day, their life. You don't realize that the two are connected but they're actually all one and you are alone both at night and in person. He started this through his own health journey. And he discovered that sleep was the missing link that brought everything together. It's an interesting story. After hacking his own biology by learning from top doctors in the field, and furthering his own education on the subject, he developed the state of the art approach. He will tell you about his 10 tips and tricks to help you, as well as that get at the root of the issue. Now we all know that as we have matured, at times, sleep isn't easy. And at times at two in the morning, we're wandering around the house wondering, how do I get back to sleep? I'm sorry, but it is hard. Riley had a background in the finance industry. He's been seeing firsthand the consequences of sleep deprivation. And that means that you can listen today and know he's got something to get you off the brink. I want you to soar. So by the time we're done with our time together, you're going to say, oh, Riley, how do you help me sleep? And why should I? I have a hunch you know why. Riley, thank you for joining me today.  Riley Jarvis: Thank you so much, Andrea. It's a pleasure to be here.  Andi Simon: Tell the listeners your story. It's a great story. But I also know that until they hear it, they're not quite sure who is Riley and why should I listen to him. So credential yourself. Who are you?  Riley Jarvis: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate the kind intro. So a little bit about me. I'm the CEO of The Sleep Consultant. And yeah, like Andrea said, I help CEOs, entrepreneurs, high performers, really optimize your sleep, get more done in the day, by optimizing the time that they do sleep into deeper wave sleep patterns. Sleep translates into every single thing that we do. How we feel, the relationships we have, our focus, productivity, and if you're really able to get your sleep down, opposed to hustling to get more done, you can actually retain better focus, better memory, make better decisions, and you can just see it all through your personal and professional lives as I've done with many clients. But starting with my story, well we'll get back to this. It all started many many years ago when I was working in the finance industry and that's what I went to school for. I was working at private equity and kind of the investment banking world and I mean the hours as anybody knows are very arduous, waking up, getting to work at about 7am and working till 10pm until the deal was closed. It was just day in, day out, grinding sometimes 12 to 18 hours a day. And it's kind of only the top 1% survive and you have to be on your mental and physical peak in order to maintain that. But, I just couldn't do it anymore and I was in my early 20s at the time. That's usually when we think as a young healthy male, when you have the energy to do all that. But, there was something happening with me where I was making clumsy mistakes. I didn't have the energy. I just had constant brain fog and it just went on and on. Long story short, I ended up having to be let go because I didn't know what was going on. I felt like a shell of my former self. I was pretty good in school and I was a good worker and everything was going good up until that point. So I was forced to leave. I was forced to drop the classes and my health started to deteriorate pretty quickly. When I went to the doctor specialist, they really couldn't give me an answer. The general practitioner referred me to all these different doctors. Anyway, months later I went to the gastroenterologist and it turns out I had Crohn's disease, which is inflammation of the bowels and all throughout your body. It was pretty bad to me. It was causing me to lose weight, lose muscle and energy, have brain fog and all these things that were going on. And the inflammation that was inside my bowels was actually quite bad at the time and the side effects of the medication that they were giving me were actually making me feel worse. To put that in perspective, for me to write down a paragraph that actually made coherent sense, it took me about 5 to 10 minutes. And I just remember looking back and thinking I don't know how I function or operate in the world at the time. I was bedridden, essentially, collecting massive piles of debt. So I basically had to take my health into my own hands with my back against the wall. And the way I did that was studying. I didn't really know what was the answer yet, but studying health, all the systems inside of my biology, like how does it work on a deep, deep level. Then I started investing in a lot of private, natural doctors, functional medicine doctors around the world. I spent tens of thousands of dollars. And then sure enough, it was kind of month by month, year by year, I slowly started to see improvements. And everything started to get better. My brain fog lifted, my energy lifted. And then I remember getting to the topic of sleep. I'm like, let's give this a shot. So I started sleeping a little bit better. And I had a sleep tracker at the time. And sure enough, I felt amazing the next day, and I was tracking all this. I was kind of a nerd with all the data and put into my book and then on an Excel sheet. I mean, as a finance guy, I'm a numbers guy. So of course, I'm going to have to do that. And yeah, sleep was the one thing that really transformed everything. And then sure enough, so the last five years.  Andi Simon: So, did you discover that on your own or was there a physician that helped you with it, or shaman? You got a lot of self reflection on your part.  Riley Jarvis: I think it was just a lot of self reflection on my part because I grouped it. I was looking at my hormones, my brain neurotransmitters, my gut and all these different things. And eventually I knew it was like, okay, on this month, I'm going to focus on sleep. And then you track what those improvements would be. And those were higher than any other thing that I was doing before. And it turned out because my body wasn't sleeping, restoring itself. And because the inflammation that was inside of me, better sleep really helped repair and recover that. So as a result, fast forward to today, for the last five years, the Crohn's has been in 100%, complete remission. Doctors don't know why, when I go to see them, they don't know how to make sense of it. So it's kind of a joke that I have with myself. But now I mean, that's my story. And that's where I had a disease state. And I hope to inspire other people through my story. People won't be on the extreme, but I want to show them that even if they feel tired, even if they're looking to improve their performance, they can absolutely do it with their sleep. Sleep is one part that is so neglected. As a society, we're always talking about how it's a hustle culture. Why would we sleep when we can sleep less and get more done. Drink coffee, get on with it, if we feel wired at nighttime, drink alcohol or sleeping pills. It's just a lot of these things to mask a deeper problem that's going on. But in an ideal world, we wouldn't need any of this if our body was operating as it should. I mean, if you kind of go to the root of what was actually coming from it for every person, it's a little bit different. So that's where I help people now through my story. And I take people's results pretty personally because it's just so interesting to see different people from walks of life. Sleep is that one thing that everybody needs, that nobody can escape from. It's one of the things that you have to do. Like you have to pay taxes, you have to sleep. And eventually, one day, you'll be in the grave, right? Those are the three things you can guarantee within your life. So why not optimize sleep, something you can do anyway. And what's amazing with sleep, it's not a drastic change to your existing lifestyle. I mean, if you look at your diet, like changing your diet drastically to lose all these pounds, if that's your goal, that's a lot of work. Going to the gym is a lot of work. But sleep is something you're doing already anyway. And I've had people who have lost like 60 pounds just from fixing their sleep alone, without changing any other routines, just because metabolism goes up. And that's just one example of many, but it's just amazing the power of sleep.  Andi Simon: Pause for a second Riley because I'm reflecting as you're talking. I want the listeners or the audience to think about things that they have seen or heard so they can make this extremely relevant beyond themselves. We're involved in Washington University in St. Louis. We donated a room in the new athletic facility and the athletic director, Anthony, changed it from a study room to a resting room. He gave it a good name, better than I call it. What he found was that many of the athletes were proud of how little sleep they had. And so what he did was he changed the whole story, the whole narrative. So that rest was good. And sleep was good. And he didn't want to hear about how little they had because it impacted their performance. He also put in yoga, meditation, mindfulness, mind body balance, and their performances all rose as they began to sleep. So just to add a little to your story about us in very awful ways, because they were proud of it and celebrated how little they could get by with. This was stoic and wonderful. This was killing them. So your program as it evolved, did it just come aboard? How much science is there here? And how much Riley is there here?  Riley Jarvis: That's a really good question. So yes, it did evolve over time. It's kind of a work in progress over the last five years, because it started out helping people with sleep. It was just sort of local friends and then it was their parents, and then friends of friends. I kind of got a local name for myself, but then it expanded nationally. And now it's worldwide helping people virtually, in group settings, or in 1-on-1-based settings. It is a science. It's really nice that I don't do all the work myself and I can lean on science a little bit. So that's one piece of it. But a lot of it is with myself too. And on an applicable level because yes, science will tell you what you should do, but it's not always applicable to people's lives. And this is where you have to make it very easy for people to have bite sized pieces, and make it fit into their model of the way they live their day-to-day life. Maybe they're so busy in the daytime with work, and afterwards, they just don't have any hours in the day. And so it's like, okay, we'll just make the most amount of time that you have, like for any 5, 10 minute pockets during your day, but other people will have more time. And sometimes those people get fast results. And that's okay, too. It just all depends where people are at. So you have to meet them where they're at, and then guide them along the way.  Andi Simon: When you're working with them, is each person unique or are there similarities and patterns that you begin to uncover? Or is it in their story? Is it about the habits before you go to sleep that we read about: take that hot bath, don't get in front of the screen, you don't want to see all kinds of how you use it. I love to meditate before sleep. I find it really puts me into a deep sleep. And my Sleep Number bed tells me my heart rate variability goes way up and I'm healthy. I meditate before I sleep. What kinds of passive practices do you use? What kind of processes and what kind of recommendations? How do you find it? Is it unique? Are there patterns?  Riley Jarvis: Yeah, that's a really good question. So it's both actually. So there's a lot of overlap in between. So there are patterns and processes I do with everybody. But it all starts with the initial call with them telling me what they're going through and what their background is. And based on what they tell me, I'm sort of looking at everything under the hood of their biology. Seeing things like what's going on at a hormone level, what's happening inside of their brain, what's happening here, and then based on that I'm going to custom tailor their protocol. Accordingly, I would say usually, about 50% of the program, regardless when it comes to sleep, is common across the board. And then you know, the next 50%, we're going to custom tailor based on what somebody needs. How long have they been suffering for? Somebody who's in their 20s and they're looking to really improve their productivity, maybe they want to build a business so they can travel the world versus somebody who's in their 60's or 70's, their goal is longevity. And they want to live as long as they can with the goal being that that they can achieve for years to come. And that goal is a little bit different. So that's where we'll adjust things accordingly.  Andi Simon: As you and I had talked about even my own situation, you were really interesting to me in terms of the way the brain needs sleep and what it does during sleep and the ritual of what time you go to bed and when you wake up. You're going to talk to us a little bit more about what's going on in your brain during that sleep. Sleep time.  Riley Jarvis: Yeah, that's another very good question. So our brain is a very complex machine, especially when it comes to sleep. And the science really points to knowing what's going on with our diet, what's happening inside of our body and with the movement exercise. We really have that down. But, sleep,to be honest, really in the infancy stages. And it's so interesting every day there's new science coming out about it. It's a really cool domain to be within. But in layman's terms, if I could simplify for people, our brains run in 90-minute sleep cycles. And our brain will start from a light sleep. You can think of it as we go into something known as alpha, then we go into delta theta brainwave, so we go deeper and deeper. And that's kind of like where you feel that meditative state. And then we go to light sleep where somebody could wake us up, but we're still sleeping. Then we go into deep sleep and then REM sleep. And this is where we're getting the most amount of rejuvenation for our body and for our mind. Now usually the first half of our sleep is repairing. It's majority deep sleep, so that's repairing our body. The second half of sleep is repairing our mind because it's more REM sleep dominant. And during REM sleep we're doing a lot of things, our brain is consolidating memories from the day before, trying to make sense of our world and reality. That's why we dream so much. Even though it makes no sense. It's just trying to make sense of how we navigate to the next day in the best way possible. It's got a lot of evolutionary adaptations as well, and stuff like that. And what happens is, when a lot of people wake up in the middle of night, they don't get that full REM sleep. Sure their bodies repaired, but if somebody goes to bed at 10pm, they wake up at 2 or 3am and they can't get to sleep, they're not going to get that quality REM sleep that they need for the next day for their mind to fully operate. And then they're tired the next day, and they need to go for coffee to compensate for that. Well, now it's hard to get to sleep because you're stimulated and it's just the ongoing cycle for a lot of people too. The other thing to keep in mind is because our sleep cycles are 90 minutes, we usually want to wake up every 90 minutes. So we don't wake up in the middle of a deep sleep, let's say for example, 90 minutes, three hours, four and a half, six hours, seven and a half hours. A lot of people think eight hours is a sweet spot. It's very good if we can get over five hours. But the sleep usually seven and a half is better than eight for most people. But it depends. I mean, this is where self experimentation comes in. But from a simplistic point of view, that's what I'd say.  Andi Simon: What's interesting about what you're saying is what do we do to control it. It's hard enough to control a new diet, or a new exercise plan, but a new sleep pattern, where every 90 minutes, and then I want to go seven and a half hours. Is it in my control or out of my control? What's the methodology for giving us more control over it to help us?  Riley Jarvis: There's many things you can do. So what that really comes down to is all about the evening routine. A lot of the time when we wake up in the middle of the night, it's because of a few things. One is our cortisol spikes. So our stress hormones will start to come up. The root cause of this could be a nightmare that we're having, it could be something inside of us. There's a lot of inflammation, or brain neurotransmitters are just firing, we're thinking too much, could be a myriad of things. And that's where working with somebody getting to the root cause of what that might be. But just general low hanging fruit, I think it would be a good time to run through some of the top 10 things that people can start to implement to have better sleep throughout the night. So they can minimize those interruptions and get to sleep faster and we get more rejuvenated. Sound good?  Andi Simon: Tell us about the top 10 things. I'm looking forward to hearing you.  Riley Jarvis: Alright, let's go. So number one, we want to find out what our sleep animal sign is. And what that means is, we are genetically wired to either be a morning person or a night person or maybe a combination of them all. And ideally, the best way to figure this out is by doing a genetic test. This is one thing that I do with my clients. But if you go to www.thepowerofwhenquiz.com, it's actually a questionnaire that you can answer and kind of get an idea if you are a morning or nighttime person. We want to match what our Crona biology genetics are with our external environments. A lot of people stay up late, but they're actually genetically wired to be a morning person. And it's no wonder why they feel so sleepy in the morning sometimes. So it's getting that match between two. And when you do that with people, it's just amazing how much better they feel. Moving on to number two. We want to have no caffeine after 2pm and 11am if you're sensitive. I won't go into the details too much on that. But that's a big one because you know, caffeine can stay inside of us for up to 14 hours.  Andi Simon: Now let me emphasize that means no Coke, no chocolate, not just coffee and tea. Years and years ago, I was running a bank and I had a secretary who filled my cup up all day long. And so I couldn't go to sleep at night. I couldn't wake up in the morning and then I went cold turkey for a week of headaches, and I haven't had it since. You don't realize how many ways some people like caffeine as a stimulant and others don't. So that's a good number two, now number three.  Riley Jarvis: Number three. We want to reduce blue light exposure two hours before bedtime. A recent study came out of infants who were exposed to a one-hour blue light prior to bed. It reduced their melatonin by 99%. Now I could tell you adults are probably very similar to that. So melatonin is our sleep hormone that we know you need to stay asleep and everything with that so just be careful. You can also wear blue light blocking glasses. Check it out on Amazon. Swanwick glasses are also another great option to use as well.  Andi Simon: What is blue light?  Riley Jarvis: Blue light is a light frequency. So light comes in many different light frequencies. We have red light, we have blue light, as based on a different spectrum and different light wavelengths are more stimulatory than others. Blue light happens to be on the far end of the extreme that is very stimulatory for our body and our brain. So it's good in the morning, like when we go outside and we get the sun coming through from that blue light there. We feel energized and ready to go. But at nighttime, we don't want that too much. We want more red light form. That's why when you see these blue blocking glasses, they're tinted red, because it stops that blue light from coming into your eyes as much as possible.  Andi Simon: And is that from your computer screen?  Riley Jarvis: So it's from your computer screen. It could be from your phone, it could be from the lights around your house. It could also be while you're asleep as well from any cable boxes, clocks, fans. Even when our eyes are closed, we actually have light receptors around our eyes that can detect any forms of light. So in an ideal world, this is a little unrealistic for some people, but we would be so dark we couldn't see your hand in front of us. And that's what we want to aim for. But do the best that you can. All right, let's go on to number four. This one's pretty self explanatory, we want to sleep in a cool bedroom environment. That's about 67 to about 70 degrees Fahrenheit and about 18 to 20 degrees Celsius or below if we can. And the reason is our bodies sleep best at a cool temperature. In a 24 hour period, it's coolest around 3am, so we want our environment that's conducive to that.  Andi Simon: I must confess though, when it's minus one out, as it has been here, I opened my window a little bit to let that cool air and it feels wonderful for a while. I'm not quite sure how cool I want it. But I agree with you because I sleep much better when it's cool. I prefer the air to come in. So I hate hotels, you can't let any air in.  Riley Jarvis: I know that's just it. But the other thing is when it's cool like that, especially in the wintertime, where you and I are, it's hard to get out of bed in the morning, because it's warm on your sheets, but outside it's very difficult to go, especially if we have to get up to go to work. Number five. We want to just completely blackout our bedroom as much as possible. So this just goes into what I was saying before TVs, cable boxes, fans, anything that's producing light inside of your bedroom. You can put duct tape over it. Use whatever you want to come up with that can just really help you throughout the nighttime to not wake up. Number six. We do not want to eat any heavy meals about three to four hours prior to bedtime. And the reason is because we have a meal, a lot of that is our body resources will be digesting that food instead of repairing our body when we need it to. It can cause blood sugar spikes and drops and our body just wants to stay in a safe zone, it doesn't want to go too much too high or too low. And that's what's really important there. So if you can do that, that's really good. So if you're going to bed by 10pm, having your last meal maybe five, six o'clock, that would be a good sweet spot. Any longer, people may notice that they don't sleep that well. So if you are eating later close to bed, try reducing the hours or increasing the hours prior to sleep. And you should notice a difference. Number seven. Along the same lines, we don't want to do any intense exercise four to five hours prior to sleep. And this is because it increases our stimulatory hormone cortisol and everything else that goes along with increasing your body temperature. So you can go for a walk at nighttime, that's great. But any intense exercise, lifting weights, a lot of the people that I work with are high performing, high achievers, who are looking to gain a ton of muscle and working out in the evening at nighttime isn't really necessary for all of them and impacts their sleep directly. Saving it for the afternoon is a good place to do as well. Number eight. This is one of the most interesting ones because a lot of people think that good sleep is all about the evening routine. But equally, it's also about the morning routine. And it's because we need to train our body to know when naturally it is a time to wake up and when naturally it is time to go to bed. And if we can get the morning routine down, what we'll find is we'll just naturally start getting tired in the evening when the body is supposed to get tired and that causes us to wake up with an abundance of energy. It's not an overnight process. But the way we do it is when we first wake up, within the first hour I would say, we go for a walk outside and expose our eyes to the sun. Don't wear sunglasses for about 15-20 minutes. It's a great place to start. Where I am, there's not too much sun. You can buy on Amazon Lumi lights. They have 10,000 Lux, that's just the light meter that comes into your eyes and that can really help if you just do that 20-30 minutes in the morning. Number nine. This one is probably one you're familiar with, Andrea. We want to do a guided meditation 20 minutes before bed. Great resources on this actually. I mean YouTube has so many good free resources. They're called the Honest Guys on YouTube. Sam Ovens is another one that's really good as well. But yeah, those are great resources. Number ten. Have no alcohol about 4-6 hours prior to sleep. A lot of people drink alcohol to try and wind down prior to bed which would make sense and I did that in my early sleep journey too. I'm definitely guilty of that. But what it does is it directly negatively impacts your REM sleep and actually affects your sleep quality negatively.  Andi Simon: Yes, it's interesting because if we are out for dinner and we have a glass of wine or scotch, two and three in the morning I am all wound up and then I go to sleep, but I don't stay asleep. It's not good for the whole night. The other thing is, people don't fully understand that during sleep, your mind is processing and you said it at the beginning, I want to emphasize it, your mind's processing it, all the things that happened during the day before. My meditation tape says, you cannot do anything about yesterday, tomorrow hasn't happened yet, you're in the moment, stay in the moment. And let your mind go quiet, breathe deeply. You know, get into a moment where you're not thinking about anything, you are just being and feel whatever you're sitting on or sleeping on and begin to just get away from time and space. I find it very interesting because your mind is looking for that client so it can do its stuff. Because it has a whole lot of work to do all night long to make sense of everything that you put into it so that you wake up in the morning fresh with a great perspective. I find that my morning is my best thinking time, my best writing time, my best time. My complex problem solving is first thing in the morning, and I'm a wake up five o'clock in the morning, six o'clock in the morning person. And so I'm raring to go. 7:30-8:00 o'clock at night, everything's quieting down and you're ready to let the mind have a little time off from the behavior. You're physically depleted as well, as you discovered with your Crohn's disease.  Riley Jarvis: Yeah, that's just it. Yeah, the sleep is so important for repair. And what you were saying is very true. That old adage of sleep on it. I mean, it's actually true if you utilize your subconscious mind. There was a really good book, Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. And he talks about the power of the subconscious mind. It's sometimes like, do you ever get that feeling where just a brilliant idea pops into your mind when you're in the shower, you're not thinking too much? Well, that's your subconscious mind working in the background. We don't consciously always have to be thinking to do that. With our sleep, it's the same thing. If we can't figure out what a problem is, our unconscious mind, our brain will work on the problem. And we usually wake up with the answer.  Andi Simon: I want you to emphasize that because if you sleep on it, your mind isn't going away. It's actually a lot of work going on during that time to help you solve that complexity that you've got. The worst thing you could do is sit up all night trying to figure it out. That won't work at all.  Riley Jarvis: As I found out, and when I wrote my exams, trying to pull all nighters is not a good idea.  Andi Simon: This is an interesting time because I don't need to pull all nighters. But I do need to get good sleep as most of us do. And to your point, I have a friend who goes to bed at midnight and wakes up at 10 in the morning. That's a good time for her. By 10 o'clock in the morning, I've already gone through four hours of my day. And I know not to call her before 10 o'clock. I couldn't imagine wasting my morning. It's my favorite time of the day.  Riley Jarvis: Yeah, it's amazing before the world starts to wake up, I completely relate. I'm a morning person as well.  Andi Simon: My puppy and I go for early morning walks when it's warm. It's the best time. It's sort of exhilarating. So finally, this has been such fun. As you're thinking about wrapping us up, a couple of things you want our listeners or audience to remember. And I'd love you to then tell them how to get ahold of you.  Riley Jarvis: Absolutely, it's pretty simple. They can go to www.sleepconsultant.com. There you can see everything that we offer. We have a free sleep assessment questionnaire so you can see on a scale of one to 10 where you fall, and based on where you fall, I have specific training that you can utilize as well. I'll send directly to your email that you have. I just keep you in the loop of newsletters, sleep tips and all these other things. If you want to reach out to me directly, you can reach me at Riley@sleepconsultant.com.  Andi Simon: And Riley also has his podcast which I will be on. What is the name of your podcast?  Riley Jarvis: It is called Sleep for Side Hustlers. And we show people how to utilize sleep in order to improve their productivity. It could be for an entrepreneur but it really could just be for everybody because again, everybody needs better sleep. We talk about different modalities and everything to do on there too.  Andi Simon: My last question is about kids. Does your methodology work for children as well and should it?  Riley Jarvis: It does. It's just with children, you have to be a lot more careful. They're usually more sensitive to certain things. For that reason they are my specialty. That's where you have infant sleep specialists who do that. But yeah, it's a similar approach. It's just you have to be a little bit more careful with some of them as well.  Andi Simon: Because I certainly remember raising my daughters and trying to get into habits. And they abandon them, of course, when they turn into teenagers, but I think they've recovered over the years. But you know, parenting is important, but sleep is important for the parent and for the kids. And if you can get them into good habits, they can build up whatever those natural pieces, even if they just sit in bed, read until they're ready to quiet down and go to sleep. So it's important. And then the morning rituals become extremely important. So think about this intentionally. And that will give you purpose and meaning. Well, I've had Riley Jarvis from Ottawa here today. He has been talking about a really important topic: how do we get a good night's sleep. So it's been great fun. Last thought Riley and then I'll wrap this up.  Riley Jarvis: If I were to give three quick top points for people to utilize throughout their day, the first one would obviously be sleep. We don't want to think about hustling to get ahead. We want to think about improving our biology first through better sleep. And through that, we'll be able to experience life in a much more effortless way with better relationships. We can focus more and that just manifests into whatever material outcomes you want out of your life. Maybe it's more money, maybe it's a better relationship with your kids, or becoming a better leader in the workplace. So that is one we want to think about instead of pushing to get ahead, drinking more coffee to get ahead. That's one of them. The second one is, we want to be very intentional with the hours that we have to use in the day. It's all about energy management and output. So once we figure out if we're more of a morning or a nighttime person, we really want to optimize getting the best work done first thing in the morning. So we call them the morning lark. They usually get their best work done that requires the most cognitive heavy tasks between 10am and 12pm. And then as the day goes on, we want to save just general meetings or stuff like that. And number three, I would say is, if we can prioritize reducing just overall lifestyle inside of our day, and that could be have a better diet, better exercise, oh just different things. But whatever works best for us. As long as you can be better today than yesterday, then you're in the right place.  Andi Simon: I think you have to measure, monitor and give it some way of calibrating that this progress is going on. If not, the habits will take over and take you back to where you didn't want to be. And the new will have a hard time getting embedded into new habits. And this isn't casual. It's really important. So thank you for today's great conversation.  Riley Jarvis: Thanks so much, Andrea.  Andi Simon: Pleasure. Let me wrap up for all our listeners. Thank you. Remember info@AndiSimon.com is where you can send us your ideas. We get tips and tricks from across the globe, new people to speak to and I always enjoy bringing them to you. My job is to get you off the brink. Remember my books. Both of them are available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and your local booksellers. And Rethink is going gangbusters. So thank you for all of that support.Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business is all about women who smashed those myths, and they are doing extremely well. It's a year gone now and I am excited to celebrate one year's celebration. It's just cool. I'll see you next week. It's been fun. Take care. Thank you again.

On The Wake Up: The Memory Hole #OnTheWakeUp #KazeCutlass #MasonicMarine #OnTheWakeUpRadio In recognition of all of the history that has been thrown down the Memory Hole...Fahrenheit 404-style. We have to recap the abundance of disclosures that have come out, regarding the shamdemic, in the past few months. You don't wanna miss this. Yes, there is a global conflict, but it is FAR from new. This has been going on since 2013. Why are they escalating now? What are we missing? What is CHINA doing right now? Time to touch on #Geopolitics, and we'll show you how China WON Geopolitics YEARS AGO. Ever heard of the #FlyPaperStrategy? And...did you hear about an Iranian attack on an empty construction project in Iraq? Well...if THIS False Flag isn't convincing enough, they have something ELSE in store for us. These topics and so much more. Listen LIVE on the website www.OnTheWakeUpRadio.com On The Wake Up LIVE Every Sunday 11:30PM EST. Hosted By: Kaze Cutlass OTWtube.com www.otwtube.com/user/Kazecutlass Instagram: www.instagram.com/Kazcut John The "Masonic Marine" From "The Truth Booth Podcast" OTWtube.com www.otwtube.com/user/MasonicMarine Instagram: www.instagram.com/MasonicMarine Producer: Sindy Ashby Company/Website: www.otwtube.com www.onthewakeupradio.com Contact/Booking Information: Instagram: www.instagram.com/onthewakeupradio www.instagram.com/sashbyfilms OTWtube.com www.otwtube.com/user/SIndyAshby Sindy Ashby Productions All Shows Broadcast LIVE All Week On Onthewakeupradio.com Thank You Viewers And Listeners For Your Continuing Support!!! Join The Discussion Call In LIVE with Questions/Comments: (844) 818-4433 Must Be 18 To Call In If You Would Like To Donate To "On The Wake Up Radio" To Help Us Keep Free Speech Alive And Continue To Bring You Fully Uncensored Content All Donations Go Back Into Keeping The Station Running Donations Can Be Sent To: CashApp: $Onthewakeupradio PayPal: Onthewakeupradio@gmail.com

The summer of 1816 was not like any summer people could remember. The National Center for Atmospheric Research reported that, snow fell in New England and gloomy, cold rains fell throughout Europe. It was cold and stormy and dark. 1816 became known in Europe and North America as “The Year Without a Summer.” The year before on April 5, 1815, Mount Tambora, a volcano, started to rumble with activity. Over the following four months the volcano exploded - the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history. Many people close to the volcano lost their lives in the event. Tambora ejected so much ash and dust into the atmosphere that the sky darkened and the Sun was blocked from view. The large particles spewed by the volcano fell to the ground nearby, covering towns with enough ash to collapse homes. Smaller particles spewed by the volcano were light enough to spread through the atmosphere over the following months and had a worldwide effect on climate. They made their way high into the stratosphere, where they could distribute around the world more easily. Earth's average global temperature dropped more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit. The Year Without a Summer had many impacts in Europe and North America. Crops were wiped out - either by frost or a lack of sunshine. This caused food to be scarce. The lack of successful crops that summer made the food which was grown more valuable, and the price of food climbed. Because the price of oats increased, it was more expensive for people to feed their horses. Horses were the main method of transportation, so with expensive oats, the cost of travel increased. The gloomy summer weather also inspired writers. During that summer-less summer, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, a horror novel set in an often stormy environment. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Why Another Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapsed On March 15, the Conger ice shelf, a piece of ice half the size of Rome, collapsed in eastern Antarctica. It's the first time that side of the continent experienced a major loss of ice in the 40-year history of satellite observations. Previous collapses of shelves have until now occurred in western Antarctica. Meanwhile, researchers are reporting temperatures more than 70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average, while parts of the Arctic are beating averages by 50 degrees. Scientific American's Sophie Bushwick explains why warming at the poles is both more likely than other parts of the globe, and is also exacerbating the likelihood of collapses like this. Plus, new insights into strange radio circles in space, the Hubble telescope sees the most distant star yet, and a look at the statistical likelihood of basketball “hot hands.” And an April Fool's Day quiz on some new inventions that may or may not be real.   Scientists Are Working On HIV Vaccines Based On COVID Vaccine Tech Several early Phase 1 human trials of vaccines using mRNA technology are now under way. The approach—which uses mRNA to induce the body to manufacture specific parts of a viral structure that then trains the immune system—was famously successful in the COVID-19 pandemic, and the basis for both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. Now, researchers are wondering if the mRNA approach might be a solution to diseases like HIV, which have thwarted vaccine researchers for years. The NIH has supported three trials, other trials from IAVI and Moderna are also under way in Phase 1. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, joins Ira to talk about the challenges of developing vaccines against HIV, the path through the clinical trials process, and why researchers are very cautiously optimistic about the new vaccine trials. They also discuss the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need for continued vigilance and funding.   An Oregon Lithium Deposit Could Help Power Clean Energy Tech President Joe Biden and U.S. lawmakers are ramping up their efforts to mine, manufacture and process more battery materials at home — and that's drawn praise from the company exploring a large lithium deposit in southeast Oregon. Jindalee Resources Limited, the Australian company with lithium claims at a Bureau of Land Management site in Oregon's Malheur County, says the growing push for U.S. critical minerals production is a positive sign. “You've seen bipartisan support for the development of critical minerals projects growing,” said Lindsay Dudfield, Jindalee's executive director. “Jindalee is advancing a critical minerals project, and so we're very encouraged by these developments.” The Intercept reported Thursday that Biden is preparing to invoke the Defense Production Act to expedite production of batteries for electric vehicles, consumer electronics and renewable energy storage. The Defense Production Act was recently used to increase supply and hasten delivery of COVID-19 vaccines. Lawmakers in recent weeks have urged the president to use his authority under the law to do the same for batteries. “The time is now to grow, support, and encourage investment in the domestic production of graphite, manganese, cobalt, lithium, nickel, and other critical minerals to ensure we support our national security, and to fulfill our need for lithium-ion batteries — both for consumers and for the Department of Defense,” wrote Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; Joe Manchin,D-W.Va.; Jim Risch, R-Idaho; and Bill Cassidy, R-La., in a letter to the president last week. The Biden administration published a report last June that found the American battery supply chain to be extremely vulnerable as demand for batteries increases. For decades, the U.S. has relied on foreign imports of minerals needed to make those batteries, especially lithium. While the U.S. has large lithium reserves, it only produces about 1% of the world's supply. Demand for lithium and other materials is expected to skyrocket as the U.S. seeks to transition away from fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. The Biden administration's report says lithium could be a good candidate for new domestic mining and extraction, which would reduce American dependence on foreign sources like Russia and China. But as the rush for critical minerals like lithium speeds up in the U.S., environmental groups, Native American tribes and others have urged caution, especially when it comes to new mining. The extractive industry remains enormously destructive to frontline communities as well as land, water and wildlife. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.   An Unusual Fungus May Control Invasive Tawny Crazy Ants The Tawny crazy ant (sometimes called the Rasberry crazy ant) is an invasive species originally found in South America. Over the past few decades, it has found a home in U.S. Gulf states and parts of Texas. The ant, named “crazy” for its erratic movements, can outcompete native ant species when it takes hold, and can overwhelm small animals with sheer numbers. In 2013, Science Friday spoke with Edward LeBrun, a research scientist at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory of UT Austin, about the ant and its ability to outcompete fire ants in the southern U.S. Now, LeBrun returns to share news of a possible biological control for the ants, a form of fungus that can cause infected nests to collapse over a period of years. It's a good news, bad news situation—while most insecticides and baits don't work to control the ants, the fungus can produce local extinction. However, it takes years to work, and currently requires transferring hundreds of infected ants into a nest—not exactly something you can pick up off the shelf at the local hardware store.    

Welcome to episode 117 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!We have a super random episode for everyone this week. We've gone deep into the LTBz vault and found a one-off podcast that we recorded after racing our second Swimrun ever back in 2018. We're talking about SwimrunUSA's (now Ödyssey Swimrun) Casco Bay a.k.a., “Cole Classic.” This is a peek back in time to the primordial origins of LTBz and the race that caused us to fall in love with the sport of Swimrun.But first... Training UpdateSwimrun Lake James is less than a month away and we finally did our first Swimrun practice together. Short story: the water was cold AF! Like 51 degrees Fahrenheit (10.5 Celsius) cold AF! Despite that, it was great to bust some rust and start dialing in transitions and different paces as we head towards Lake James.ShoutoutsThis week we are shouting out Dan Streetman. By chance, Dan was running on the Embarcadero on Saturday morning while we were experiencing brain freeze in Aquatic Park when Dan noticed us (the only two dudes running out the water and down the street) and snapped a photo to send to his Swedish co-worker (and future guest of the show Anna) mentioning that he saw a couple of Swimrunners. Long story short, Anna recognized us and proceeded to blow Dan's mind. Small world indeed!Feats of EnduranceMajor feats of endurance this week from Marika Wagner and Ingrid Kjellström for their completion of the 2022 Cape Epic. This race is an 8-day mountain bike stage race covering 700km (435 miles) with 17,250m (56,594ft) of climbing. So yeah…a major feat!Make sure to sign up for our LTBz Strava Club and join Swimrunners from around the world as they train for stuff.This Week in SwimrunWelcome to the LTBz news desk!Hero Swimrun took place over the weekend in Rio de Janeiro and the event looked as epic as ever. Joining us to talk about how the race went is our friend and race director Fabio Iskandarian for our special segment: Race Director Reports.In other news, Envol Swimrun recently announced that they are hosting a Swimrun camp from April 1-3 in Cap Martin in Monaco. Anyone looking to train with coach Nicolas Remires and crew and/or get an F1 driver sighting should check this camp out!That is it for this week. Feel free to reach out and let us know if there's anything that you'd like for us to mention on the show.UpdatesProgramming alert: we're debuting a new show format next week called “Countdown to ÖTILLÖ" where we will be chronicling our Swimrun journey to Sweden in September. We're pretty stoked about this new monthly show and can't wait to share it with you.Casco Bay 2018 Race ReportWe've gone into the LTBz vault and found a relic of our Swimrun past. Way back in 2018 we lined up at the start of SwimrunUSA's/Ödyssey Swimrun's Casco Bay race for our second Swimrun ever. We're not sure why we decided to record a podcast of our race experience but here we are. It was fun (and a bit weird) to look back on that momentous event that was the progenitor for this show and we figured we would share it with all of you. Enjoy the hot tub time machine trip back to 2018!That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star review. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, and on YouTube. You can also follow our meme page on Instagram. Email us at lowtideboyz@gmail.com with any feedback and/or suggestions. Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon…if you feel so inclined.Thanks for listening and see you out there!-  Chip and Chris

Fahrenheit by Christian Dior (1988) + Koichi Ohata's Genocyber (1993) + Katsushiro Otomo's Akira (1988) + Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) with Kelby Losack and J David Osborne of Agitator  To hear the complete continuing story of The Perfume Nationalist please subscribe on Patreon. 03/30/22 S04.147  

What do you want to happen to your body when you die?  It's a touchy topic where tradition, religion and death denial all come into play.  But across much of the world, there are just two options: burial and cremation, which both have substantial ecological impacts. In 2019, Washington State passed SB 5001, which legalized several new options for deathcare. In this episode, host Jeff Emtman visits Return Home, a facility in Auburn, Washington that's using one of those new options, called “Natural Organic Reduction” (NOR) which is commonly called “human composting”.  Return Home has built the world's largest NOR facility to date, with 74 available individual vessels.  Their process (which they've trademarked as “Terramation”) takes about two month to complete, and involves dressing a deceased person in a pressed cotton gown and placing them a bed of organic material, and left to naturally break down using active composting techniques that bring the contents of the vessel to well above 100° Fahrenheit for much of the composting period. The techniques used by Return Home were largely inspired by Katrina Spade, a death activist and the owner of Re:Compose, another NOR facility located near Seattle.  Spade was one of the people who strongly advocated for the passage of SB 5001.There's currently one other NOR facility in Washington State: Herland Forrest in Wahkiacus.  Currently two other states, Colorado and Oregon have legalized NOR.  NOR's future isn't known.  It's new and still relatively rare. Do enough people want to be composted to have it be a viable business model? Each of these companies have different approaches to their process.  Return Home's model relies on scale.  They wouldn't disclose the exact cost of building their facility, or how many simultaneous descendants they'd need in their facility to be profitable.  As of publishing, they charge $4,950 for their process and they have 15 of their 74 slots occupied.  And in some ways, the full ecological benefits for Return Home's process also rely on scale.  In a follow up email, CEO Micah Truman stated that “We calculate our inputs as follows. Our electricity bill each month is about $1,700, and is sufficient to Terramate 74 bodies. This comes to $22 per body. In current gas terms ($5 a gallon at present) that is roughly 4 gallons of gas, which is about 1/8 the amount of gas used for cremation. The number is actually quite a bit better than that, as our electricity bill also powers our entire facility, not just the Terramation equipment.”When asked about the relative emptiness of the facility, Katey Houston (Return Home's Services Manager) said, “The funeral industry is so slow to change. When cremation became a thing, it took sixty years to become mainstream.  The fact that we've served just over thirty families now in four months, is quite amazing.  And we've continued to grow month-over-month, and that's all I can ask for.”Thank you Hannah Suzanna for help with research for this episode. Here Be Monsters is an independent, listener supported podcast.  Consider supporting the show on Patreon. Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot and SerocellSponsor: Sleep With Me PodcastSleep With Me is a podcast that helps you fall asleep.  Host Drew Ackerman tells tangential stories, reads old catalogs, makes metaphors about washing machines, and does other calming things all in pursuit of slowing your mind down and letting you drift off to sleep more peacefully.  Subscribe to Sleep With Me on any podcast app.