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Lance talks with the voice of the Miami Red Hawks Steve Baker! The two discuss the Red Hawks incredible start to the season, and what it has been like in Oxford this season.
Lance talks with the voice of the Miami Red Hawks Steve Baker! The two discuss the Red Hawks incredible start to the season, and what it has been like in Oxford this season. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What does it mean to pray without ceasing? Father Rick Ganz explores contemplative prayer drawing from John 15 and the image of the vine and branches. He introduces the ancient Jesuit practice of the Examen and offers a beautiful vision of prayer as enjoying God's presence in all of the moments of our lives.Key Scripture Passages: Luke 18v40-43; John 15v1-9This podcast and its episodes are paid for by The Circle, our community of monthly givers. Special thanks for this episode goes to: Sid from Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Josh from Oxford, Oxfordshire; Margaret from Woodland Hills, California; Ashley from Dallas, Texas; and Erin from Centralia, Washington. Thank you all so much!If you'd like to pay it forward and contribute toward future resources, you can learn more at practicingtheway.org/give.
The Ancient Greek historian and general Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE) called his history of a war between Athens and Sparta "a possession for all time." More than 2,400 years later, his work is still essential reading for anyone interested in the morality of war and the nature of political power. In this episode, Jacke talks to Robin Waterfield and historian Polly Low about Thucydides' achievement and Robin's new translation of The History of the Peloponnesian War. PLUS James West, editor of The Cambridge Centennial Edition of The Great Gatsby, stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Join Jacke on a trip through literary England! Join Jacke and fellow literature fans on an eight-day journey through literary England in partnership with John Shors Travel in May 2026! Scheduled stops include The Charles Dickens Museum, Dr. Johnson's house, Jane Austen's Bath, Tolkien's Oxford, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, and more. Learn more by emailing jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or masahiko@johnshorstravel.com, or by contacting us through our website historyofliterature.com. Act soon - there are limited spots available! The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today we have Dr. Francisco Gonzalez-Lima, a behavioral neuroscientist who was our guest in episodes 106 and 107 back in 2020. Since those 2020 interviews, Francisco and his colleagues at the Gonzalez-Lima Lab have produced dozens of more studies and papers that have advanced their work on methylene blue, transcranial lasers, memory enhancement, neuroprotection and neurocognitive disorders. Francisco and his lab at the University of Texas Austin are recognized as world leaders for their research on the relationships between brain energy metabolism, memory and neurobehavioral disorders. In today's interview, we talk to Francisco about his lab's most recent research on the beneficial neurocognitive and emotional effects of noninvasive human brain stimulation in healthy, aging and mentally ill populations. This research primarily uses transcranial infrared laser stimulation and multimodal imaging, which we will discuss in today's interview. Be sure to check out our earlier interviews with Francisco where he talked aobut his work on brain metabolic mapping and Alzheimer's, episode 106, and his research into methylene blue and near-infrared light as therapies for cognitive disorders, episode 107. Show notes: [00:04:32] Dawn and Ken open our interview with Francisco by mentioning that his lab has been very productive pursuing new research avenues since he was last on STEM-Talk. Ken mentions that Francisco has recently begun collaborating with his sister who has a PhD in computational and applied mathematics and asks Francisco to talk about the work they're doing together. [00:06:21] Dawn shifts to talk about the roadblocks that Francisco and his team have been dealing with, particularly that the review process for academic papers is unusually slow, not just for Francisco's team but at large. Dawn asks Francisco to discuss this issue. [00:10:37] Dawn recaps that in our previous interview with Francisco in 2020, the discussion focused on his research into methylene blue, which has been primarily used to treat methemoglobinemia, however, the potential for methylene blue to treat declining cognitive function is an active area of research. Despite Francisco's successful work with methylene blue, he often gets asked about its safety, largely due to various misconceptions. Dawn asks Francisco to talk about the misconceptions about methylene blue. [00:14:57] Ken asks if Francisco what some other misconceptions about methylene blue are. [00:20:43] Given the discussion of dosing, Ken asks Francisco what the safe dose range is for methylene blue in humans. [00:28:15] Ken mentions an article published a few months ago titled “Beyond plaques: How methylene blue and ketones address vascular hypometabolism in Alzheimer's disease” Ken goes on to mention that the article did a good job of summarizing Francisco's work as well as the work of Steve Cunnane, who was our guest on episode 59. Ken asks Francisco to discuss his thoughts on the article. [00:34:25] Dawn shifts focus to discuss Francisco's work on photobiomodulation, specifically transcranial infrared laser stimulation, which is a non-invasive method for neuroprotection and cognitive enhancement. Dawn explains that Francisco has written two chapters on this topic that summarizes his work in the area, one of which appeared in the Oxford handbook on transcranial stimulation, and the other is in a book on augmentation of brain function, based on a series of presentations he gave in Switzerland. Dawn asks Francisco to give a broad overview of his work on photobiomodulation and transcranial infrared laser stimulation. [00:43:52] Ken asks Francisco to talk about a paper titled “Light buckets and laser beams” that he and other researchers composed after attending a photobiomodulation workshop convened in 2023 by the director of the National Institute on Aging and several NIH lab directors. [00:51:25] Ken asks Francisco if there are any commercially available photobiomodulation devices that he thinks have substantial utility. [00:56:27] Ken asks Francisco to discuss mitochondrial disfunction in the context of neurodegeneration and his work on targeted stimulation of the mitochondria with photo biomodulation. [01:06:58] Ken asks Francisco to talk about the potential benefits of photobiomodulation on the aging process outside of neurodegenerative conditions. [01:17:16] Dawn mentions that transcranial infrared stimulation stimulates prefrontal energy metabolism and oxygenation, which produces cognitive enhancing effects. Dawn goes on to ask Francisco about his recent paper exploring this phenomenon in the context of depression titled “Augmenting internet based cognitive behavioral therapy for major depressive disorder with transcranial infrared laser stimulation.” [01:23:08] In light of the promising results of this study, Ken asks Francisco what he sees as the next research step to further this progress. [01:30:15] Ken comments on how Francisco has not only had great accomplishments in his recent research but also has a lot of fruitful opportunities ahead. [01:31:07] Ken asks Francisco if he has looked at photobiomodulation in combination with transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation. [01:34:28] Ken mentions that for listeners interested in learning more about vagal nerve stimulation they can listen to episodes 179 with JP Erico, and 172 with Kevin Tracey. Francisco discusses the difficulty in knowing whether to attribute effects of vagus nerve stimulation to stimulation of the vagus nerve itself or incidental stimulation of the carotid artery … or some combination. [01:38:33] Ken mentions that Francisco is now trying to move away from animal studies and focus more on human studies. Ken asks what human trials he is hoping to conduct. [01:42:27] Dawn closes our interview thanking Francisco for once again joining us on STEM-Talk. Links: Gonzalez-Lima Lab Learn more about IHMC STEM-Talk homepage Ken Ford bio Ken Ford Wikipedia page Dawn Kernagis bio
Eylon Levy is a former Israeli Government Spokesman and one of Israel's most recognized faces on the global stage since October 7th. A graduate of Oxford and Cambridge (which is like Harvard in the UK - ybt), he founded the Israeli Citizen Spokesperson Office, a grassroots campaign which gives citizens an opportunity to take part in the global information war. He also hosts the new show “Eylon The Record” which you should definitely check out, and you may even recognize some of the guests from previous AAJ episodes!Find Eylon on X, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.We talk to Eylon about the reasons Israel is losing the media war, why not everything is a PR problem, what messages actually work, and his relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu (never met him).MUCH MORE ON SUBSTACK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit askajew.substack.com/subscribe
Starting yesterday, 47% of Americans without Real ID now face $45 fines
Welcome to the Social-Engineer Podcast: The Doctor Is In Series – where we will discuss understandings and developments in the field of psychology. In today's episode, Chris and Dr. Abbie explore imposter syndrome, examining what it is, why it occurs, and how cultural and professional pressures can intensify it. They discuss common symptoms, personal experiences, and the psychological roots behind feeling undeserving of success. Through scientific insight and practical strategies, they share ways to recognize, reframe, and manage imposter syndrome with greater self-awareness and confidence. [Feb 2, 2026] 00:00 - Intro 00:20 - Meet the Hosts 00:54 - Upcoming Events and Announcements 02:29 - Defining Imposter Syndrome 06:42 - Cultural and Gender Influences 12:26 - Personality Traits and Imposter Syndrome 14:46 - Sponsor 16:12 - Balancing Humility and Confidence 19:34 - Strategies to Overcome Imposter Syndrome 27:02 - Billy Boatwright's Story 30:36 - Conclusion and Next Episode Preview Find us online: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dr-abbie-maroño-phd Instagram: @DoctorAbbieofficial LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christopherhadnagy References: Beck, J. S. (2011). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. Bennett-Levy, J., Butler, G., Fennell, M., Hackmann, A., Mueller, M., & Westbrook, D. (2004). The Oxford guide to behavioral experiments in cognitive therapy. Oxford University Press. Breines, J. G., & Chen, S. (2012). Self-compassion increases self-improvement motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(9), 1133–1143. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212445599 Bravata, D. M., Watts, S. A., Keefer, A. L., Madhusudhan, D. K., Taylor, K. T., Clark, D. M., Nelson, R. S., Cokley, K. O., & Hagg, H. K. (2020). Prevalence, predictors, and treatment of impostor syndrome: A systematic review. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35(4), 1252–1275. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-019-05364-1 Clance, P. R. (1985). The impostor phenomenon: Overcoming the fear that haunts your success. Peachtree Publishers. Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The impostor phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 15(3), 241–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006 Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Amidst the recently unsealed documents in the 'It Ends With Us' legal fiasco are a flurry of texts and communications from Blake Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds. This pod reviews those texts and their lengthy demands for support and action from agents and studios alike, all of whom were expected to defend Blake from the wave of negative public feedback she was getting. Thanks to Ryan's marathon text sessions with WME agent Warren Zavala and former Endeavor CEO Patrick Whitesell, we get a glimpse into the levels of anger, indignation, and love for ghost writing, that drove the infamous apology letter that Wayfarer refused to post. Whether it's the placating style of a Hollywood agent, the pitfalls of ego, the importance of honest optics and acknowledging privilege in light of American history, or the value of an Oxford comma, this debacle continues to serve as a fascinating topic of discussion. BONUS: an update on the most expensive documentary ever made, as requested by a criminal for his immigrant wife, directed by a washed up lump of a man seen in the Epstein files who also assaulted and/or drugged several women, and paid for by a billionaire famous for treating his employees terribly and not paying taxes. All opinions are personal and not representative of any outside company, person, or agenda. Information shared is sourced via published articles, legal documents, press releases, government websites, public websites, books, public videos, news reports, and/or direct quotes and statements, and all may be paraphrased for brevity and presented in layman's terms.Wanna support this independent pod? Links below:Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/BBDBBuyMeACoffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/BBDBVenmo @TYBBDB Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Oxford literary festivalhttps://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/ LGB mortality rateshttps://www.itv.com/news/2026-01-13/lesbian-gay-and-bisexual-people-have-higher-death-rates-ons-data-showshttps://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthinequalities/bulletins/allcauseandcausespecificmortalitybysexualorientationenglandandwales/march2021tonovember2024Sappho and a literary hoaxhttps://aeon.co/essays/how-a-playful-literary-hoax-illuminates-classical-queernessMondrian and Marlow Mosshttps://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jan/12/piet-mondrian-crossdressing-lesbian-artist-marlow-moss-cornish-coveRadio Norfolk programmeThat's a Queer Ol' Place - Norfolk Nightlife - BBC SoundsAre non-binary people scared of AI?https://www.advocate.com/technology/can-queer-people-trust-ai This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thelesbianprojectpod.com/subscribe
On this episode 191 of the Disruption Now podcast:What happens when an algorithm knows more about your health than your doctor ever will? When AI can process threats faster than any human operator? When China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are probing our systems 24/7?Dr. Richard Harknett has spent 30+ years answering these questions at the highest levels. As the first Scholar-in-Residence at US Cyber Command and NSA, a key architect of the US Cybersecurity Strategy 2023, and Fulbright Professor in Cyber Studies at Oxford, he's one of the few people who's seen how cyber threats actually unfold—and what we're doing (or not doing) about them.In this conversation, Richard breaks down:
What if everything we've been told about making college "affordable" is actually making it more expensive and worse? Robert Bortins sits down with Dr. Ben Merkle, President of New St. Andrews College and Oxford-educated scholar who wrote the foreword to "Woke and Weaponized." As one of fewer than a dozen colleges that refuse all federal student loan dollars, Dr. Merkle offers a rare insider perspective on how government money has corrupted higher education—and why K-12 schools should learn from their mistakes. Dr. Merkle traces the problem back to the GI Bill after World War II, explaining how federal funding changed the customer of education from students to government. Once colleges became dependent on Title IV money (Pell Grants and student loans), they became subject to Title IX mandates—leading Christian colleges to spend a year teaching students "how to receive consent for fornication" and removing backbones from administrators who now compete to be the most compliant rather than the most excellent. The financial impact is staggering. While other colleges charge $55,000-$60,000 annually (with fake "scholarships" discounting sticker prices), New St. Andrews provides superior classical education for just $18,600 per year—proving that without compliance officers and administrative bloat, quality education is affordable. Dr. Merkle exposes the Bennett hypothesis: every dollar added to federal grants causes reciprocal tuition increases within 18 months, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that makes education more expensive and worse quality simultaneously. Most provocatively, Dr. Merkle warns that classical Christian education—"the single biggest cultural victory for the American evangelical church"—is being handed over to the state through school choice programs. Charter schools aren't pulling kids from public schools; they're pulling families from Christian education into secular classrooms. He challenges administrators: stop serving mammon, define your mission clearly, and understand that funding is authority. The institutions we've sacrificed to build will be wasted if we trade them for government money. Resources: https://nsa.edu/ This episode of Refining Rhetoric is sponsored by: "Woke and Weaponized: How Karl Marx Won the Battle for American Education—And How We Can Win It Back" – A new book written by Robert Bortins and Alex Newman. Discover the shocking truth about how current education reform efforts may actually accelerate the destruction of educational freedom. Through meticulous research, Woke and Weaponized traces the philosophical roots of educational corruption from Robert Owen and John Dewey to critical race theory, while offering practical strategies for families ready to pursue genuine educational independence. Join our exclusive list to be notified the moment it becomes available — plus receive special launch updates and insider information. www.WokeAndWeaponized.com
Aging is not something Zoltan Istvan plans to accept quietly. He wants to treat death like a technical bug, rewrite the rules of biology, and turn California into the global test bed for radical human upgrades. From cyborg implants to AI driven longevity science, this episode explores what happens when a candidate for governor openly argues that humans should evolve beyond their biological limits and take control of how long and how well they live. Watch this episode on YouTube for the full video experience: https://www.youtube.com/@DaveAspreyBPR Host Dave Asprey sits down with Zoltan Istvan, a leading transhumanist, futurist, longevity advocate, and current candidate for Governor of California. Zoltan has spoken at Parliaments and Senates around the world, appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, consulted for the US Armed Forces, and served as a correspondent for The New York Times. He has addressed the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and the UK Parliament, and his work has influenced world leaders while shaping global conversations on AI, liberty, and human enhancement. Trained in philosophy and ethics at Columbia University and the University of Oxford, Zoltan brings rare depth to the intersection of technology, biology, and governance. Together, they explore whether aging should be classified as a disease, why regulation is slowing breakthroughs in longevity science, and how California could become ground zero for anti-aging innovation. They debate biology versus machine integration, open source technology versus centralized control, and what morphological freedom really means when enhancement technologies move faster than policy. The discussion spans mitochondria, neuroplasticity, brain optimization, stem cells, organ printing, implants, and the ethical risks of surveillance, algorithmic persuasion, and unchecked AI. This episode is essential listening for anyone serious about biohacking, hacking human performance, longevity, metabolism, functional medicine, anti-aging strategies, supplements, nootropics, ketosis, fasting, carnivore frameworks, sleep optimization, and living Smarter Not Harder in a world increasingly shaped by AI and technology, ideally with a cup of Danger Coffee in hand. You'll Learn: • Why aging may be a solvable problem rather than an unavoidable fate • How politics and regulation influence access to longevity and anti-aging therapies • The real tradeoffs between biological upgrades and machine integration • Why mitochondria, neuroplasticity, and brain optimization matter in human enhancement • How AI and surveillance technology threaten cognitive and biological autonomy • What morphological freedom means for the future of medicine and personal choice • Why open source approaches to biohacking could protect liberty and innovation • How Smarter Not Harder strategies support longevity in a rapidly evolving world Dave Asprey is a four time New York Times bestselling author, founder of Bulletproof Coffee, and the father of biohacking. With over 1,000 interviews and 1 million monthly listeners, The Human Upgrade is the top podcast for people who want to take control of their biology, extend their longevity, and optimize every system in the body and mind. Each episode features cutting edge insights in health, performance, neuroscience, supplements, nutrition, hacking, emotional intelligence, and conscious living. Thank you to our sponsors! BEYOND Conference 2026 | Register now with code DAVE300 for $300 off at https://beyondconference.com/ MASA Chips | Go to https://www.masachips.com/DAVEASPREY and use code DAVEASPREY for 25% off your first order. GOT MOLD? | See what's in your air and save 10% with code DAVE10 at http://gotmold.com/shop EMR-Tek | Get 40% off EMF protection with code DAVE at https://www.emr-tek.com/DAVE Dave Asprey is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, founder of Bulletproof Coffee, and the father of biohacking. With over 1,000 interviews and 1 million monthly listeners, The Human Upgrade brings you the knowledge to take control of your biology, extend your longevity, and optimize every system in your body and mind. Each episode delivers cutting-edge insights in health, performance, neuroscience, supplements, nutrition, biohacking, emotional intelligence, and conscious living. New episodes are released every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday (BONUS). Dave asks the questions no one else will and gives you real tools to become stronger, smarter, and more resilient. Keywords: transhumanism podcast, human cyborg future, biohacking transhumanism, longevity technology podcast, anti-aging technology, human enhancement podcast, cyborg implants future, AI human evolution, aging as a disease, radical longevity science, human performance future, brain optimization technology, mitochondria longevity science, neuroplasticity enhancement, biohacking longevity politics, California longevity policy, morphological freedom body, human augmentation debate, AI risk humanity, surveillance technology health, open source biohacking, stem cell longevity future, organ printing technology, functional medicine future, metabolism longevity science, ketosis fasting longevity, nootropics brain optimization, supplements longevity science, carnivore diet longevity, sleep optimization performance, Dave Asprey transhumanism, Zoltan Istvan podcast, futurist longevity interview, governor cyborg policy, technology immortality debate Resources: • Learn More About Zoltan's Work At: https://zoltanistvan.com/ • Get My 2026 Biohacking Trends Report: https://daveasprey.com/2026-biohacking-trends-report/ • Join My Low-Oxalate 30-Day Challenge: https://daveasprey.com/2026-low-ox-reset/ • Dave Asprey's Latest News | Go to https://daveasprey.com/ to join Inside Track today. • Danger Coffee: https://dangercoffee.com/discount/dave15 • My Daily Supplements: SuppGrade Labs (15% Off) • Favorite Blue Light Blocking Glasses: TrueDark (15% Off) • Dave Asprey's BEYOND Conference: https://beyondconference.com • Dave Asprey's New Book – Heavily Meditated: https://daveasprey.com/heavily-meditated • Upgrade Collective: https://www.ourupgradecollective.com • Upgrade Labs: https://upgradelabs.com Timestamps: 0:00 – Introduction 3:51 – What Is Transhumanism 8:15 – Biology vs Technology 12:53 – Government & Regulation 20:43 – Running for Governor 26:13 – Social Media & Kids 30:18 – Life Extension & Upgrades 38:59 – Defining Humanity 46:12 – Consciousness & Uploading 49:27 – Religion & Society 58:02 – AI Existential Risk 1:02:57 – Space & Future Enhancement See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Robin Lithgow spent her life immersed in the performing arts, including a childhood in the theater and decades spent as an educator and arts administrator. But it wasn't until she read a little-known work by Erasmus that she fully realized the importance that performance had on Shakespeare and his generation--which mirrored the experiences she had had as an English and drama teacher in inner-city schools in Los Angeles. In this special episode, Robin joins Jacke to talk about her life in the theater, her epiphanies regarding Shakespeare's education, and the centrality of the performing arts in a child's development. ROBIN LITHGOW was the first Theatre Adviser, and eventually the Director, of the Arts Education Branch of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the United States. Before becoming an arts administrator, she was a teacher for twenty-one years, teaching every grade level from kindergarten through senior high school and ending her classroom tenure as an English and drama teacher. And before that, she was the daughter of Arthur Lithgow, a theater impresario who developed Shakespeare festivals all over Ohio, which meant that Robin and her younger brother John Lithgow, the acclaimed actor, grew up traveling from place to place, watching rehearsals and performances, as their father mounted productions of every play in the Shakespearean canon. [This episode originally ran on September 28, 2020. It has been unavailable for several years.] Join Jacke on a trip through literary England! Join Jacke and fellow literature fans on an eight-day journey through literary England in partnership with John Shors Travel in May 2026! Scheduled stops include The Charles Dickens Museum, Dr. Johnson's house, Jane Austen's Bath, Tolkien's Oxford, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, and more. Learn more by emailing jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or masahiko@johnshorstravel.com, or by contacting us through our website historyofliterature.com. Act soon - there are limited spots available! The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hour two turns into a full-on college sports gut check: Qualkinbush joins to praise Clemson women's bounce-back grit at Notre Dame, explain why the men keep winning without a “star,” and then unload on the Luke Ferrelli/Ole Miss tampering saga — the silence from Oxford, the agent angle, and why this feels like a hinge point for Dabo and the sport. Swanny closes with the Duke–Darian Mensah settlement, arguing the system's chaos is finally spilling into courtrooms — and warning that if rules don't get enforced, the whole thing keeps sliding.
Clay Edwards hosts a lively radio discussion tackling cancel culture, local Mississippi issues, and national politics. He chats with guest Jamie Creel about the rapid growth in North Mississippi, the strong performance of DeSoto County schools, and opposition to school choice legislation that could disrupt high-performing districts. They praise Senator McClendon for representing his constituents effectively, including his Glacier Act bill, and express sympathy for ice storm victims in areas like Tate County and Oxford, where buildings have collapsed under the weight of snow and ice. The conversation shifts to political accountability, emphasizing the need for representatives to prioritize their voters over leadership agendas. They critique the removal of ballot initiatives and discuss recent backlash against lawmakers who supported school choice. Edwards and Creel differentiate between cancel culture and "consequence culture," citing examples like a University of Mississippi employee fired for inflammatory comments and nurses losing jobs over extreme political statements on social media. They delve into the Alex Prady case, debunking portrayals of him as an ideal citizen by sharing video evidence of his aggressive encounters with ICE agents, including assaults and property damage. The hosts argue that carrying a gun at protests requires responsibility and that Prady's actions led to foreseeable consequences. Broader political topics include election fraud allegations in Fulton County, Georgia, and Minnesota's laws allowing non-citizens to obtain driver's licenses that enable voting, skewing results in blue cities. Edwards touches on personal fitness and mental clarity from lifestyle changes, then pivots to insurance advice, stressing the importance of proper coverage for valuables, renters' policies, and business needs amid volatile rates and storm damage. They highlight affordable life insurance options without exams for those with clean records. The show wraps with a brief sports segment, picking the Seahawks over the Patriots in a hypothetical matchup due to strong defense, and a passionate rant on resisting Democratic narratives around immigration enforcement, election integrity, and threats to prosecute political figures like Trump. Edwards urges listeners to stay focused on core issues amid distractions.
Clay Edwards kicks off the show with a high-energy intro, declaring war on cancel culture and shining a light on overlooked issues in Jackson, Mississippi—from systemic corruption to the fight for America's soul. He challenges "positive solutions" from long-time leaders and invites listeners to strap in for unfiltered, no-sugar-added talk radio. Transitioning live from the Men's Health and Women's Wellness of Mississippi studios on 103.9 FM WYAB, Clay introduces himself and guest Jamie Creel, a Shelter Insurance agent. They dive into local topics, including the new area code in North Mississippi amid rapid growth from Memphis migrants, the excellence of DeSoto County schools, and fierce opposition to school choice legislation that could undermine high-performing districts. The segment highlights the need for representatives like Senator McClendon to prioritize constituents over leadership, while expressing prayers for ice storm victims in areas like Tate County and Oxford, where building collapses have caused significant damage.
Stationed near Oxford during the height of the 2020 lockdown, a military couple struggled with isolation, opposite work schedules, and sleepless nights. Alone in the house for long stretches, she began noticing strange activity — always centered around the same corner of the living room.When her dog growled and her cat reacted to something unseen, she spoke directly to the presence, setting rules and boundaries. The response came swiftly and unmistakably.Objects moved with purpose. Electronics reacted as if correcting behavior. And one morning, a clear letter appeared on her husband's back — a mark neither of them could explain, but everyone else immediately recognized.Years later, the activity has returned, now communicating through a flickering lamp at the same hour each night. Whatever lives there doesn't feel hostile… but it does feel aware.#RealGhostStoriesOnline #MilitaryParanormal #HauntedOverseas #LockdownHaunting #SpiritCommunication #ParanormalPets #WitchingHour #TrueGhostStory #UnexplainedMarksLove real ghost stories? Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:
Susan Lambert is joined by emeritus professor of psychology and education and the University of Oxford, Charles Hulme, D.Phil., and founder of Left Side Strong LLC, MaryKate DeSantis. They dive into the critial connection between oral language development and reading comprehension. They also explore exactly what oral language development is, how to screen children for deficits in oral language abilities, and the most effective strategies educators can use for intervention.Show notes: Join our Science of Comprehension Symposium: amplify.com/comprehensionsymposiumSubmit your comprehension questions!Access free resources on our companion professional learning page. Connect with Charles on LinkedIn.Learn more about Charles.Connect with MaryKate on LinkedIn.Learn more about Left Side Strong LLC.Listen to our episode with Wesley Hoover, Ph.D.Listen to our episode with Julie Van Dyke, Ph.D.Listen to our episode with Tiffany Hogan, Ph.D.Listen to Amplify's Beyond My Years podcast.Join our Facebook group.Read Book Language: What It Is, How Children Can “Get It”.Connect with Susan Lambert.Quotes:"Language comprehension is really what leads us to reading comprehension." —MaryKate DeSantis"We talk about learning to read, but we also need to talk about reading to learn. A lot of what we learn in our lives is through reading, and reading is certainly a powerful drive of vocabulary and language development." —Charles Hulme, D.Phil."Language skills are unconstrained, meaning the sky's the limit. As long as you continue to engage in any sort of way, your language skills can continue to develop throughout your lifetime." —Susan LambertTimestamps*:00:00 How language skills shape reading success06:00 Defining reading comprehension 08:00 Reading is language. Without language, there would be no reading.12:00 Importance of language skills for comprehension16:00 Our main purpose in life is to communicate with others21:00 Development of language skills23:00 Moving the needle on literacy achievement28:00 How students can help develop students' language capacity31:00 Screening to assess oral language skills35:00 Why early language instruction is effective and sustainable39:00 Key takeaways41:00 Focusing on language is worth the time43:00 Closing thoughts*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute
If you've ever wondered how some people build businesses that last—this episode is your blueprint. Nicole sits down with Neri Karra-Silliman (author, advisor, entrepreneur, and Oxford entrepreneurship expert) to unpack what immigrant entrepreneurs can teach all of us about confidence, courage, resilience, and creating businesses that thrive for generations—even when you're not starting with privilege, connections, or a trust fund. In this episode, we get into: Why immigrant-founded businesses often endure longer—and why nobody's been asking the right questions The difference between an entrepreneur and a pioneer (hint: pioneers build what didn't exist before) How companies like WhatsApp and Duolingo started with impact-first problems The 8 principles of business longevity inspired by immigrant entrepreneurs, including: Cross-cultural bridging (innovation happens when you live in more than one world) Community as currency (relationships are the wealth) “Frying in your own oil” (aka self-sufficiency before outside money makes you lazy) Shared values over growth-at-all-costsRejection as fuel (“no” is the beginning of negotiation) Luck as a skill (recognizing moments and playing your hand) Faith as the foundation for risk, reinvention, and resilience And the most overlooked glue of all: kindness Immigrants aren't the problem—they're the blueprint. This conversation will change how you think about risk, reinvention, and what it really takes to build something that lasts (with profit and purpose). Thank you to our sponsors! Sex is a skill. Beducated is where you learn it. Visit https://beducate.me/pd2550-womanswork and use code womanswork for 50% off the annual pass. Connect with Neri: Website: https://www.nerikarrasillaman.com/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Pioneers-Principles-Longevity-Immigrant-Entrepreneurs/dp/1394304056/ref= Related Podcast Episodes The Hard Truths Of Entrepreneurship with Dr. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon | 313 The Power Of Instinct In Business And Life with Leslie Zane | 214 From Small Business to Big Impact: Leadership, Confidence, & Community at the Goldman Sachs 10K Small Businesses Summit | 362 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!
Vanderbilt beat Kentucky by 25 without Duke Miles. Topics include: How Vanderbilt got bigger and found some strengths that perhaps it didn't know it had with increased minutes to Jayden Leaverett, Chandler Bing and Mike James. That's back-to-back games in which the Commodores have held opponents to a season low. Tyler Tanner, again, was great. Ole Miss is next, but where and when? There's been talk of moving the game to Friday in Birmingham and also playing in Nashville on Saturday, with the later game scheduled in Nashville moved to Oxford. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
In this weeks episode we launch the new 'Proust Photo Quiz'. Friend of the podcast photographer Harry Borden is the first to take the questions on... The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust. Proust answered the questionnaire in a confession album, titled An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc. The album was found in 1924 and published in the French literary journal Les Cahiers du Mois. Our 'Proust Photo Quiz' is an adaption of the original text. Harry Borden was born in New York and brought up on a farm in Devon in the South West of England. He studied photography at Plymouth College of Art and Design. Borden moved to London after graduation, where he worked as an assistant for the photographer Lester Bookbinder. He received his first commission from The Observer in 1994 and continued to work for the title until the present day photographing celebrities, musicians, creatives and politicians. Examples of Borden's work are held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London and National Portrait Gallery, Australia and appeared regularly in Harpers & Queen, Vogue and The New Yorker. In June 2005, he had his first solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London titled Harry Borden: On Business which included 30 portraits of leading business leaders. In 2017 his book Survivor, A Portrait of the Survivors of the Holocaust was published having been shortlisted for the European Publishers Award for Photography in 2014. It was later judged among the 10 best photography books of 2018 by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation. In 2021 his second book Single Dad was published by Hoxton Mini Press. He continues to work on a commissioned basis and on personal work, whilst also lecturing on the MA Professional Photography at Oxford Brookes University. Borden's YouTube channel which contains films made with his son Fred can be found at www.youtube.com/@fredandharryborden his photography at www.harryborden.com Dr.Grant Scott After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby's, art directed foto8magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018. Scott continues to work as a photographer, writer and filmmaker and is the Subject Coordinator for both undergraduate and post graduate study of photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England. Scott's book Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is now on sale. © Grant Scott 2026
Miami struck out on portal quarterbacks until they got a big fish! Now-former Duke QB Darian Mensah is going to be QB1 in the Gables and is bringing his top target, Cooper Barkate. Miami's offense has a chance to be elite. The boys are stoked! The 2026 schedule was released. While the schedule favors Miami being back in the playoffs, it includes three Friday-night games and a Thursday-night game. Why does the ACC continue to poop all over one of its star brands? Dabo Swinney went on a rant about Ole Miss tampering and convincing a Clemson portal player to pick up and move to Oxford. Despite both Cam and The Beast being far from Dabo stans, they agree with him. College football is out of control. Where's the NCAA and Charlie Baker? Also, why do major outlets have Miami in the teens in their way-too-early rankings? It's a slap in the face to a team that just played in the Natty. Go check out all of the great work that Cam and his staff do at StateOfTheU.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
While you're waiting for Season 3 of Surprising Rebirth to drop... how about listening to Justin's brand new show? He's back in the moderator's chair hosting conversations between Christians, atheists, skeptics and seekers in this new podcast and video show.'Uncommon Ground' features leading figures from the world of atheism, psychology, science, culture, literature and theology. Recorded in the beautiful setting of Yarnton Manor, Oxford, they'll be debating purpose in the universe, meaning in life, faith, atheism and the deepest questions of existence. But this isn't just another debate-fest. 'Uncommon Ground' asks each guest to spell out the other's position. Connecting before correcting. Disagreeing well by understanding each other better. Season 1 will feature:Richard, Dawkins & Rowan Williams - on God & science.Alex O Connor & Glen Scrivener - on whether Christianity gave us our morality.Jonathan Pageau & Joe Folley - on whether art and beauty points to God. Anil Seth & Iain McGilchrist - on consciousness and the brain.Paul Davies & Emily Qureshi-Hurst - on whether the universe has a purpose. Elizabeth Oldfield & James Marriott - on whether there's purpose in life.Stephen Meyer & Phil Halper - big bang cosmology and the fine tuning of the universe. Philip Pullman and Francis Spufford - on literature, meaning, imagination and religion. ...and more to be announced. Subscribe here: https://justinbrierley.com/uncommon-ground-podcast/ Get access to every episode TWO WEEKS early when you support: https://justinbrierley.com/support-me/ Watch episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3rZ-nZe04d8G6kwNOMpuI8vQ4Qx3rVEQ Stay up to date - and get free chapters from both my books - by subscribing to my newsletter: https://justinbrierley.com/get-justins-newsletter/ A production of Think Faith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ole Miss rises as a College Football Playoff contender with Trinidad Chambliss eyeing a dramatic 2026 return. Brian Smith and Steven Willis tackle the latest on Chambliss's NCAA eligibility saga, the Rebels' loaded quarterback, running back, and kicker trio, and the ongoing battles in the Transfer Portal. Can Ole Miss maintain its dominance now that every SEC rival is targeting its spot among college football's elite?Key topics include the impact of high-profile additions like Luke Ferrelli and the reshaping of Ole Miss's linebacker room, heightened security concerns for Lane Kiffin's return to Oxford with LSU, and pivotal showdowns against Texas and Oklahoma. The hosts debate whether Ole Miss's defensive upgrades and new national spotlight will propel them to unprecedented heights, while offering sharp takes on challenges facing Alabama, LSU, and more throughout a reloaded SEC. Can this be the most talented Rebels squad ever assembled?Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it's time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join the community: https://theportal.supercast.com/Help us by supporting our sponsors!GametimeToday's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase.MazdaLike our players, we're driven by the details. Because highlights make the reel. What it takes to get there makes it count.There's more to a Mazda. Because there's more to you.Turbo TaxFor a limited time, you can have your taxes done by a local TurboTax expert for just $150 — all in, if a TurboTax expert didn't file for you last year. Just file by February 28. Take taxes off your plate and get back to your life. Visit https://TurboTax.com/local to book your appointment today. Rocket MoneyLet Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at http://RocketMoney.com/LOCKEDONFanDuelIf you're a new customer, bet just $5 and get $200 in Bonus Bets if you win. Make it count — because after the Super Bowl, the season is over. Last call for football on FanDuel, an Official Sportsbook Partner of Super Bowl Sixty. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expire in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Civility can help a society overcome tribal loyalties and cooperate for the common good--and when political and religious factions threaten to break a society apart, as in Shakespeare's England, understanding the need for civility becomes more important than ever. In this episode, Jacke talks to Shakespeare scholar Indira Ghose about her book A Defence of Pretence: Civility and the Theatre in Early Modern England about the use of theatre as a laboratory where the era's conflicts played out. PLUS in response to a listener request, Jacke explores the life of Robert W. Service and his most famous work, "The Cremation of Sam McGee." Join Jacke on a trip through literary England! Join Jacke and fellow literature fans on an eight-day journey through literary England in partnership with John Shors Travel in May 2026! Scheduled stops include The Charles Dickens Museum, Dr. Johnson's house, Jane Austen's Bath, Tolkien's Oxford, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, and more. Learn more by emailing jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or masahiko@johnshorstravel.com, or by contacting us through our website historyofliterature.com. Act soon - there are limited spots available! The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hot off the press, Professor Subir Sarkar makes the case that dark energy doesn't exist (and he's not being provocative for its own sake). He's the former head of Oxford's particle theory group, serves on the Particle Data Group. Sarkar's group has found that the cosmic acceleration supposedly driving the universe's expansion is directional—not uniform as required by a cosmological constant—appearing only in the direction we're moving through space. He claims the 2011 Nobel Prize-winning discovery rests on a century-old assumption of cosmic isotropy that his data now falsifies at over 5 sigma. "We need to go back to square one." SUPPORT: - Support me on Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe - Support me on Crypto: https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkout/de803625-87d3-4300-ab6d-85d4258834a9 - Support me on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4 LINKS MENTIONED: - https://inspirehep.net/literature/52370 - https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.174.2168 - https://www.nature.com/articles/srep35596 - https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.08972 - https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993ApJ...413L.105P/abstract - https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.01229 - https://inference-review.com/article/heart-of-darkness - https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/206/2/377/1024995 - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235329300_The_NRAO_VLA_sky_survey - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.3627 - https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06483 - https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=hYPXSjkAAAAJ&citation_for_view=hYPXSjkAAAAJ:k_IJM867U9cC - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.18.533281v2.full - https://amazon.com/dp/0486472051?tag=toe08-20 - https://youtu.be/xZnafO__IZ0 - https://youtu.be/kUHOoMX4Bqw - https://youtu.be/5pOpcCT6AmY - https://youtu.be/guQIkV6yCik - https://youtu.be/6I2OhmVWLMs - https://youtu.be/dG_uKJx6Lpg - https://youtu.be/sGm505TFMbU - https://youtu.be/Ve_Mpd6dGv8 - https://youtu.be/hF4SAketEHY - https://youtu.be/X4PdPnQuwjY - https://youtu.be/zNZCa1pVE20 - https://youtu.be/ZUp9x44N3uE - https://youtu.be/fAaXk_WoQqQ - https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.01354 - https://www.nature.com/articles/366029a0 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.04597 - https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2014/08/aa23413-14.pdf - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.10838 - https://archive.org/details/generalprinciple0000paul/page/n1/mode/2up - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.3365 - https://amazon.com/dp/0471925675?tag=toe08-20 - https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3108 - https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9506283 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/037026938491565X - https://journals.aps.org/rmp/pdf/10.1103/RevModPhys.79.1349 - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjs/s11734-021-00199-6 - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-005-9042-8 - https://journals.aps.org/rmp/abstract/10.1103/9ygx-z2yq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sue Becker shares powerful listener testimonies that reveal the life-changing impact of fresh-milled, Real Bread. From restored iron levels and renewed energy, to healed warts, seizure freedom, fracture-free living, and dramatic weight loss, these stories point to the incredible connection between God's design for food and true health. LISTEN NOW and SUBSCRIBE to this podcast here or from any podcasting platform such as, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Alexa, Siri, or anywhere podcasts are played. Listen to Sue's talk with Dr Ben Edwards in episodes 135: https://breadbeckers.libsyn.com/135-sue-becker-interviews-dr-ben-edwards-veritas-wellness and 176: https://breadbeckers.libsyn.com/176-youre-the-cure-with-dr-ben-edwards Visit Dr Ben Edwards website at - https://veritaswellnessmember.com/ Find out more about this year's Knead Your Cure Conference, coming up in August, in Oxford, MS - https://www.kneadyourcure.com/ For more information on the Scientific and Biblical benefits of REAL bread - made from freshly-milled grain, visit our website, breadbeckers.com. Also, watch our video, Only Real Bread - Staff of Life, https://youtu.be/43s0MWGrlT8. Learn more about the why and how to bake with freshly-milled flour, with the very informative Essential Home-Ground Flour Book, by Sue Becker, https://bit.ly/essentialhomegroundflourbook. If you have an It's the Bread Story that you'd like to share, email us at podcast@breadbeckers.com. We'd love to hear from you! Visit our website at https://www.breadbeckers.com/ Follow us on Facebook @thebreadbeckers and Instagram @breadbeckers. *DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this podcast or on our website should be construed as medical advice. Consult your health care provider for your individual nutritional and medical needs. The information presented is based on our research and is strictly that of the author and not necessarily those of any professional group or other individuals. #warts #seizures #weightloss #irondeficiencyanemia #irondeficiency #irontransfusions #bonehealth #brokenbones #brittlebones
David Belden was born into a family of Oxford Group leaders and committed activists. The Group set out “to change the world” and throughout his early years David devoted himself wholeheartedly to this challenge. But while “carrying the message” in Africa, his life took an unexpected turn that led to his questioning some of principles and practices he had once taken uncritically for granted.David returned to Oxford University to write his doctoral dissertation on the Group's history, influence and shortcomings. He recently published a still more intimate account of his own journey toward personal and social transformation and change: The World Remakers' Child.This series affords a rare insider's view of the Group responsible for contributing no fewer than ten of A.A.'s Twelve Steps and yields fresh insights and challenges throughout. Mahatma Gandhi's grandson praised David's book for its “steady candor,” “humor about himself,” and “a thirst for a less harsh, more loving, and fairer world.”In this final episode Dave's early Oxford Group goal of “world changing” may have traveled full circle. It's reminiscent of the poet T.S Elliott's famous lines:We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.Show notes:David Belden's book: The World Remakers' ChildDave's Oxford University Doctoral Thesis:https://www.academia.edu/27545723/The_Origins_and_Development_of_the_Oxford_Group_Moral_Re_Armament_Dave's website: https://www.davidbelden.com/Dave doing a recent book reading at his Unitarian Universalist Church:https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/QgrcJHsHpqWKvMChSdmxXjJNlDCGCJGCgHL?projector=1This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Paul and Mark EnglerHow 12 Step Programs Can Help Build Healthier Movementshttps://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/10/how-12-step-programs-can-help-build-healthier-movements/
As Oxford Edition 2026 approaches, Nancy reflects on the deeper purpose behind this gathering of sons: a holy threshold of maturity, responsibility, and formation. In this pivotal episode, she invites listeners to step into the long-haul life of a load-bearing son—one who yields their rights to the Father out of love, not compulsion. From her front-row seat preparing for the Oxford hybrid discipleship school, Nancy shares personal insight on the difference between being responsible to others, not for them, and what it means to live like Christ—yielded, sent, and maturing. This is not a motivational charge for the masses. It's an intimate call to those being prepared to walk with Him, build with Him, and endure with joy. Thanks for Listening! I hope that after listening to The Tent Talk Podcast, you'll want to start discussions with your team or small group. These resources can help guide your discipleship journey to maturity and destiny with the Father: Episode Notes & Conversation Guide DOWNLOAD HERE https://nancymccready.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/EPISODE-1024-Load-Bearing-People-5.0.pdf LINKS The Devotional Podcast with Nancy McCready https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2hHjwQ_3Qrp1rhbR9nu68wnBtQY0IHzc The Producer's Way School theproducersway.com Nancy's book, From Trauma to Trust www.amazon.com/dp/B096ZML6R3/ JOIN THE CONVERSATION Every journey begins with a conversation, join us on social media to get started! Facebook: www.facebook.com/nbmccready Instagram: www.instagram.com/nbmccready/ YouTube: www.youtube.com/@nancymccreadyministries SUBSCRIBE Like what you hear? Subscribe to Tent Talk with Nancy McCready so you don't miss an episode! nancymccready.com/podcast/ ABOUT NANCY MCCREADY Nancy McCready is redefining discipleship across nations, cultures, and denominations. Through Nancy McCready Ministries, she partners with leaders to build deep, transformative discipleship cultures that provoke people to walk in freedom and live as mature sons of the Father. Her powerful message comes from her journey of overcoming abuse, addiction, and self-destruction to walk in true freedom. She now dedicates her life to helping others grow in intimacy with the Father and live unto Him. ABOUT TENT TALK PODCAST Tent Talk with Nancy McCready is a listener-funded podcast dedicated to helping Christians along their journey of a deeper walk with Christ. With the support of donors like you, we are able to help our listeners gain a deeper spiritual understanding and connection with the Father. Thank you for your support of the Tent Talk Podcast! nancymccready.com/giving/ Brought to you by Nancy McCready Ministries nancymccready.com/
Dabo Swinney lays out the full timeline on how Ole Miss, Pete Golding, and Luke Ferrelli's agent, Ryan Williams, tampered to get the sophomore linebacker out of Tiger Town and to Oxford.
Frank Michael Smith is joined by Miami University Senior Guard Eli Yofan to discuss the season, college basketball and life in Oxford, OH
Post match analysis with Matty Fryatt and reaction from Foxes boss Marti Cifuentes.
Places where strangers become friends Good morning. The pub in Oxford last week looked its usual, amazing self. I'd been doing a bit of teaching and was staying in a nearby college overnight. Outside was dark, cold and wet. But as I pushed the pub door open, I was met with a warm, candlelit cacophony of conversation. People were eating supper, playing board games, reading books. It was a glorious, uplifting sight. We know that, for decades now, pub landlords have been facing multiple challenges in order simply to keep their doors open. In 2025, the equivalent of one pub a day in England and Wales had to close its doors permanently. So it was good this week to hear Prince William talking about how much he loves everything a pub has to offer and urging us to do all we can to support our local. Pubs, he said, are the beating heart of many communities, where we can meet with friends and neighbours.2 Along with churches and other places of worship, many of which are also reimagining themselves simply to survive, pubs provide a radical alternative to the social isolation and loneliness affecting many groups in society. I observe this more and more in the course of my own work. Often unseen, people of all ages and backgrounds can unwittingly find themselves alone, without the meansor motivation to find a non-transactional space where they can simply “be” with other people. Many community cafes are also thriving like never before. Christian theology has always celebrated hospitality. The Bible stresses the importance of people being together to meet as well as sharing food and drink. This is something Jesus is also frequently found doing in the gospels as he meets with an interesting range of people. St Paul, whose feast day the Church celebrates tomorrow, wrote many letters to the early Church, stressing not only the importance of worship but also the spiritual benefits that fellowship with others brings. He regards this as an important ingredient towards spiritual renewal and happiness. For centuries pubs have been at the centre of British culture. The Catholic writer Hillaire Belloc warned - “when you have lost your Inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.” They've left their mark throughout literature, in Orwell and Dickens, Dylan Thomas and Chaucer. His pilgrims began their journey to Canterbury at the Tabard Inn! As modern-day pilgrims, navigating an ever-complex world of conundrums and challenges [wherever our final destination might be] preserving spaces for conversation and friendship, where strangers can become friends, is surely an imperative.
Joshua Clarke is the founder of Hyperkitten Tool Company, a business dedicated to sourcing and selling high-quality vintage hand tools to people who actually use them. He began collecting and restoring tools in 1999 after learning woodworking with hand tools in a small townhouse and turned that passion into a business in 2010 in Oxford, Connecticut. Over the years Joshua has shipped tools across the U.S. and internationally, carefully inspecting and restoring each item and offering unconditional guarantees on every sale. His work gained wider recognition after being featured by Christopher Schwarz and in The Anarchist's Tool Chest, helping the business grow and thrive while he balances it with family life and a full-time job. The Nordic Tradition: Woodworking & Design in Denmark & Sweden: https://store.woodsmith.com/pages/tour/woodworkingtravel-2026sep-denmark A Journey Through England's Woodworking Heritage 2026: https://store.woodsmith.com/pages/tour/woodworkingtravel-2026sep-england For more information about our eLearning courses - http://www.finewoodworking.com/elearning For more information about our Woodworking Fundamentals journey - http://www.finewoodworking.com/fundamentals Join us on our new Discord server! - https://discord.gg/8hyuwqu4JH Links from this episode can be found here - http://www.shoptalklive.com Sign up for the Fine Woodworking weekly eLetter - https://www.finewoodworking.com/newsletter Sign up for a Fine Woodworking Unlimited membership - https://www.finewoodworking.com/unlimited Every two weeks, a team of Fine Woodworking staffers answers questions from readers on Shop Talk Live, Fine Woodworking's biweekly podcast. Send your woodworking questions to shoptalk@finewoodworking.com for consideration in the regular broadcast! Our continued existence relies upon listener support. So if you enjoy the show, be sure to leave us a five-star rating and maybe even a nice comment on our iTunes page. Join us on our Discord server here.
Send us a textBarriers don't bury the church; they clarify the mission. The Book of Acts reveals a pattern in which every barrier is followed by a fresh witness to Jesus. In this episode, Bishop Wright has a conversation with Bishop Justin Holcomb using Acts as the centerpiece. From language and culture gaps to political pressure and outrage cycles, they discuss how a consecrated voice—rooted in promise, not panic—cuts through the noise and opens doors for real renewal. Their conversation points toward a practical path forward: witness over winning, promise over pressure, and trust that the Holy Spirit will write the next paragraph of the church's story. Listen in for the full conversation.The Rt. Rev. Dr. Justin S. Holcomb was ordained and consecrated as the fifth bishop of the Diocese of Central Florida on June 10, 2023. He was elected at a special Diocesan Convention on Jan. 14, 2023.A native Floridian, the bishop earned his Ph.D. in theological studies from Emory University and has both a Master of Arts in theological studies and a Master of Arts in Christian thought from Reformed Theological Seminary as well as a B.A. in biblical studies from Southeastern University. He also studied at the University of Oxford during the summer of 1996.Support the show Follow us on IG and FB at Bishop Rob Wright.
A study led by the University of Oxford shows a 20-fold rise in the proportion of women over 25 using ADHD medication in the UK. The study looked at 5 countries - Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK - showing use has more than tripled in 13 years - the UK having the highest relative increase. To unpick this, Anita Rani is joined by Amanda Kirby, former chair of the ADHD foundation and Emeritus Professor of neurodevelopmental disorders at the University of South Wales and Kat Brown, author of It's Not a Bloody Trend, who was diagnosed with ADHD aged 37 and uses medication.The Oscar nominations are out and to celebrate we revisit our recent interviews with nominees, Hamnet director Chloe Zhao and Kate Hudson, who's up for best actress for her film Song Sung Blue. Author Claire Lynch discusses her debut novel, A Family Matter, which recently won the Nero Book Award's prize for debut fiction. Having spent her career teaching literature in universities, the author of non-fiction book Small: On Motherhoods, was inspired by her discovery that 90% of lesbian mothers in 1980s' divorce cases lost legal custody of their children. The novel alternates between 1982 and the present day and explores love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care.Miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy is common. But clinical NHS practices for disposal of pregnancy tissue following an early stage miscarriage can sometimes appear to be at odds with some women's wishes and are not conducive to inclusive care. That's according to a new study published in Social Science and Medicine and reported in the British Medical Journal. Susie Kilshaw, Professor of Medical Anthropology at University College London, spent nearly two years observing miscarriage care inside one of England's NHS Foundation Trusts and interviewing women about their experiences. Susie explains how she found that the choices available often didn't match what women want.Can video games be used for good? From reducing our environmental impact to fundraising for access to education for all, Jude Ower from not-for-profit gaming platform PlanetPlay has spent the last two decades creating initiatives to do just that. Jude has now been named by the Aurora awards as one of ten women to watch, who are shifting the dial in the gaming industry. She joins Anita in the studio.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Sarah Jane Griffiths
Laura Robson and Joe Maiolo challenge histories of the League of Nations that present it as a meaningful if flawed experiment in global governance in The League of Nations (Cambridge UP, 2025). Such accounts have largely failed to admit its overriding purpose: not to work towards international cooperation among equally sovereign states, but to claim control over the globe's resources, weapons, and populations for its main showrunners (including the United States) – and not through the gentle arts of persuasion and negotiation but through the direct and indirect use of force and the monopolisation of global military and economic power. The League's advocates framed its innovations, from refugee aid to disarmament, as manifestations of its commitment to an obvious universal good and, often, as a series of technocratic, scientific solutions to the problems of global disorder. But its practices shored up the dominance of the western victors and preserved longstanding structures of international power and civilizational-racial hierarchy. Laura Robson is Elihu Professor of Global Affairs and History at Yale University. Joe Maiolo is Professor of International History at King's College London. Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Laura Robson and Joe Maiolo challenge histories of the League of Nations that present it as a meaningful if flawed experiment in global governance in The League of Nations (Cambridge UP, 2025). Such accounts have largely failed to admit its overriding purpose: not to work towards international cooperation among equally sovereign states, but to claim control over the globe's resources, weapons, and populations for its main showrunners (including the United States) – and not through the gentle arts of persuasion and negotiation but through the direct and indirect use of force and the monopolisation of global military and economic power. The League's advocates framed its innovations, from refugee aid to disarmament, as manifestations of its commitment to an obvious universal good and, often, as a series of technocratic, scientific solutions to the problems of global disorder. But its practices shored up the dominance of the western victors and preserved longstanding structures of international power and civilizational-racial hierarchy. Laura Robson is Elihu Professor of Global Affairs and History at Yale University. Joe Maiolo is Professor of International History at King's College London. Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
The Romantic poet Byron (1788-1824) was more than just the scandal-ridden celebrity who was famously dubbed "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"--he was also a restless seeker of an identity to match his personal and artistic sensibilities. In this episode, Jacke talks to Byron scholar Jonathan Gross about his book The European Byron: Mobility, Cosmopolitanism, and Chameleon Poetry, which explores Byron's literary disguises, borrowings, and transformations, inspired by wide variety of European writers. PLUS Jacke takes a look at the ancient underpinnings of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous creation, as he explores The Great Gatsby as the #3 Greatest Book of All Time. Join Jacke on a trip through literary England! Join Jacke and fellow literature fans on an eight-day journey through literary England in partnership with John Shors Travel in May 2026! Scheduled stops include The Charles Dickens Museum, Dr. Johnson's house, Jane Austen's Bath, Tolkien's Oxford, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, and more. Learn more by emailing jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or masahiko@johnshorstravel.com, or by contacting us through our website historyofliterature.com. Act soon - there are limited spots available! The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chuck starts hour 2 talking with Bryce Koon from The Bengal Tiger about what’s happening in LSU, and a new trend in college football starting in Oxford. We then look at Georgia Tech with Kelly Quinlan from Jackets Online.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We are going on an adventure! Love The Lord of the Rings? Why not read along with us as we consider the books from the writer's point of view! Taking it chapter by chapter, novelist Julia Golding will reveal new details that you might not have noticed and techniques that will only go to increase your pleasure in future re-readings of our favourite novel. Julia also brings her expert knowledge of life in Oxford and English culture to explain some points that might have passed you by.(00:05) Setting the Scene(02:19) Maritime Imagery, Storm Metaphors, and Tolkien’s Symbolism(05:01) Hobbits, Food, and the Translation of Time(07:15) Growth, Ent-Draught, and Storytelling Perspective(09:37) Casting Away Treasure(13:51) The Ents’ Assault on Isengard(19:44) Gandalf’s Return, Soundscapes, and Narrative Tempo(27:06) Wormtongue, Aftermath, and Foreshadowing the ShireFor more information on the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, our writing courses, and to check out our awesome social media content visit: Website: https://centre4fantasy.com/website Instagram: https://centre4fantasy.com/Instagram Facebook: https://centre4fantasy.com/Facebook TikTok: https://centre4fantasy.com/tiktok
The United Nations (UN) has always loomed large in international conflicts, but today accepted wisdom declares that the organization has lost its way. Liberating The United Nations: Realism with Hope (Stanford UP, 2024) is a thorough review of its founding and history that tracks critical junctures that obscured or diverted the path to a powerful and just UN that abides by international law. Based on the extensive expertise of two former UN-insiders, Richard Falk and Hans von Sponeck, the book goes beyond critique and diagnosis, proposing ways to achieve a more effective and legitimate UN. The historical sweep of the book offers a uniquely broad perspective on how the UN has evolved from the time of its establishment, and how that evolution reflects, and was defined by, world politics. The book explores these themes through the specific cases of intervention in Palestine, Iraq, and Syria. Liberating The United Nations hopes to reinvigorate the original vision of the UN by asserting its place in a world of amplifying chauvinistic nationalism. Falk and von Sponeck argue for how important the UN has become, and could be, in aiding with the transnational and global challenges of the present and future, including pandemics, environmental crises, and mass migration. Richard Falk is Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University. Hans von Sponeck is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and served as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq from 1998 to 2000. Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Making the Invisible Visible: A SEAL's Mission to Redefine Mental HealthThis week on the Team Never Quit Podcast, Marcus and Melanie sit down with Jonathan Wilson, founder and CEO of INVI MindHealth, a groundbreaking mental-health technology company built on one powerful mission: to save and improve lives by making the invisible visible.Jonathan's journey is anything but ordinary. He began his professional career serving over a decade as a United States Navy SEAL, deploying to multiple combat theaters across several SEAL Teams. After leaving active duty, he carried the mindset of service into the private sector—first as an equity trader at Goldman Sachs in New York City, and later at Capital Group.In 2012, Jonathan co-founded and led the SEAL Future Foundation (SFF), a 501(c)(3) dedicated to supporting Navy SEALs in their transition beyond service. Under his leadership, SFF has helped thousands of SEALs and returned millions of dollars to the community—providing support in education, career development, and long-term well-being so operators can continue a life of service.Now, through INVI MindHealth, Jonathan is tackling one of the most critical challenges facing both the military and civilian worlds: mental health. INVI's technology leverages objective data to provide early insight, awareness, and intervention—bridging the gap between how someone looks on the outside and what's happening on the inside.Jonathan also brings elite academic credentials to the table, holding an MBA from the University of Oxford and graduating from the Program for Leadership Development at Harvard Business School.This is a conversation about purpose, prevention, and pushing the mission forward—no matter the battlefield.In this episode you will hear:• I inevitably landed on a book that I found from Vietnam: The Frogman Book and I thought: “What is this?” I read that and I was like: “This is it. This is what I wanna be.” (24:39)• Looking back now, I think the Lord is probably teaching me a lesson. I got caught with a fake ID card. You're done. From that point I hit one of lowest points. (27:22)• [I went to SEAL] Team 4. We ended up going to Bagdad. I did back-to back. It's what team guys want. We were doing DA's, hostage rescues; we were operating damn near every night. (45:16)• After being married and with 5 kids, and we had lost a lot of friends – maybe it's time to get out and I agreed. (48:04)• In my head I was thinking, what's the next hardest thing? That's how my brain thinks. (48:40)• I didn't think I'd fit outside. I partially still feel that way. (50:32)• SEALS wasn't my purpose. I think being a father and a Christian is. But I think the Lord put me on this planet to really see this business we're creating of helping as many people as possible with their mental suicide. Empowering them to be the best version of themselves they can be. (55:13)• We created INVI Mind Health. (IInvisibleVisible) (57:12)• We created an algorhythm that pulls all the biometrics from any wearable you've got, and we help you get your mind score. (63:22)• [Marcus] When team start to spiral, they'll pull away. They don't want to detonate in front of their buddies. (66:34)• Our mission is to save lives by making the invisible visible. (72:29)
"one of the brightest intellects of the University" [3STU] Of the long-running debates about the Sherlock Holmes stories (the location of Watson's wound, the true dates of "The Red-Headed League," the location of 221B Baker Street), one of the most perennial is Sherlock Holmes's university. There are cases to be made for each of the great universities, but it was Gavin Brend who made a definitive case in a chapter of his 1951 book My Dear Holmes. This Mr. Sherlock Holmes the Theorist episode may be academic, but it's just a Trifle. If you have a question for us, please email us at trifles@ihearofsherlock.com. If you use your inquiry on the show, we'll send you a thank you gift. There's a new "Trifling Trifles" episode out — short-form content that doesn't warrant a full episode. We release these at the beginning of every month. The latest episode ponders a message we never quite see. This is a benefit exclusively for our paying subscribers. Check it out (Patreon | Substack). Our Merch Store is now open: Trifles mugs, notepads, and oval stickers can be yours (or someone else's, if you'd like to make it a gift). Start shopping today. Leave Trifles a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify; listen to this episode here or wherever you get podcasts Links My Dear Holmes (Abebooks) The Sherlock Holmes Society of London Oxfords Not Brogues (Real Style) Previous episodes mentioned: Episode 310 - The Route of the Blue Carbucle All of our social links: https://linktr.ee/ihearofsherlock Email us at trifles @ ihearofsherlock.com Music credits Performers: Uncredited violinist, US Marine Chamber Orchestra Publisher Info.: Washington, DC: United States Marine Band. Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Reading of excerpts from Dr Raghavan's essay 'Consciousness and Existence'. The full text can be found here: https://theosophytrust.org/Professor Raghavan N. Iyer (1930 -1995) was an internationally known philosopher, political theorist, and spiritual practitioner who devoted his life to the intellectual and spiritual uplift of human society. The only Rhodes Scholar from India in 1950 to Oxford, he secured First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and later earned a D. Phil. Degree in moral and political philosophy. He was professor of political philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara for 21 years.His message is that a renewed humankind is now emerging, and his writings address the causes of the global situation, the nature of this evolution, and the manner in which individuals can participate fully in this collective transformation.Dr Iyer was a practitioner and member of the Theosophical Foundation and wrote that:"Initiation into Theosophical metaphysics is more than an intellectual or moral enterprise; it is a continuous spiritual exercise in the development of intuitive and cognitive capacities that are the highest available to humans, a process that includes from the first a blending of the head and the heart through the interaction of viveka and vairagya, discrimination and detachment.
The American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin (1924-1987) spent the second half of his life as a fixture in American intellectual life. But what formed him? In this episode, Jacke talks to Nicholas Boggs, author of Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, about Baldwin's childhood and teen years, when his education and experience propelled a talented child toward literary superstardom. PLUS author Bruce Robbins (Atrocity: A Literary History) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Join Jacke on a trip through literary England! Join Jacke and fellow literature fans on an eight-day journey through literary England in partnership with John Shors Travel in May 2026! Scheduled stops include The Charles Dickens Museum, Dr. Johnson's house, Jane Austen's Bath, Tolkien's Oxford, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, and more. Learn more by emailing jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or masahiko@johnshorstravel.com, or by contacting us through our website historyofliterature.com. Act soon - there are limited spots available! The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What if the most transformative thing you can do for your writing craft and author business is to face what you fear? How can you can find gold in your Shadow in the year ahead? In this episode, I share chapters from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words. In the intro, curated book boxes from Bridgerton's Julia Quinn; Google's agentic shopping, and powering Apple's Siri; ChatGPT Ads; and Claude CoWork. Balancing Certainty and Uncertainty [MoonShots with Tony Robbins]; and three trends for authors with me and Orna Ross [Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast]; plus, Bones of the Deep, Business for Authors, and Indie Author Lab. This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, and memoir as J.F. Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. What is the Shadow? The ‘creative wound' and the Shadow in writing The Shadow in traditional publishing The Shadow in self-publishing or being an indie author The Shadow in work The Shadow in money You can find Writing the Shadow in all formats on all stores, as well as special edition, workbook and bundles at www.TheCreativePenn.com/shadowbook Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words The following chapters are excerpted from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words by Joanna Penn. Introduction. What is the Shadow? “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.” —C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul We all have a Shadow side and it is the work of a lifetime to recognise what lies within and spin that base material into gold. Think of it as a seedling in a little pot that you're given when you're young. It's a bit misshapen and weird, not something you would display in your living room, so you place it in a dark corner of the basement. You don't look at it for years. You almost forget about it. Then one day you notice tendrils of something wild poking up through the floorboards. They're ugly and don't fit with your Scandi-minimalist interior design. You chop the tendrils away and pour weedkiller on what's left, trying to hide the fact that they were ever there. But the creeping stems keep coming. At some point, you know you have to go down there and face the wild thing your seedling has become. When you eventually pluck up enough courage to go down into the basement, you discover that the plant has wound its roots deep into the foundations of your home. Its vines weave in and out of the cracks in the walls, and it has beautiful flowers and strange fruit. It holds your world together. Perhaps you don't need to destroy the wild tendrils. Perhaps you can let them wind up into the light and allow their rich beauty to weave through your home. It will change the look you have so carefully cultivated, but maybe that's just what the place needs. The Shadow in psychology Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychologist and the founder of analytical psychology. He described the Shadow as an unconscious aspect of the human personality, those parts of us that don't match up to what is expected of us by family and society, or to our own ideals. The Shadow is not necessarily evil or illegal or immoral, although of course it can be. It's also not necessarily caused by trauma, abuse, or any other severely damaging event, although again, it can be. It depends on the individual. What is in your Shadow is based on your life and your experiences, as well as your culture and society, so it will be different for everyone. Psychologist Connie Zweig, in The Inner Work of Age, explains, “The Shadow is that part of us that lies beneath or behind the light of awareness. It contains our rejected, unacceptable traits and feelings. It contains our hidden gifts and talents that have remained unexpressed or unlived. As Jung put it, the essence of the Shadow is pure gold.” To further illustrate the concept, Robert Bly, in A Little Book on the Human Shadow,uses the following metaphor: “When we are young, we carry behind us an invisible bag, into which we stuff any feelings, thoughts, or behaviours that bring disapproval or loss of love—anger, tears, neediness, laziness. By the time we go to school, our bags are already a mile long. In high school, our peer groups pressure us to stuff the bags with even more—individuality, sexuality, spontaneity, different opinions. We spend our life until we're twenty deciding which parts of ourselves to put into the bag and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.” As authors, we can use what's in the ‘bag' to enrich our writing — but only if we can access it. My intention with this book is to help you venture into your Shadow and bring some of what's hidden into the light and into your words. I'll reveal aspects of my Shadow in these pages but ultimately, this book is about you. Your Shadow is unique. There may be elements we share, but much will be different. Each chapter has questions for you to consider that may help you explore at least the edges of your Shadow, but it's not easy. As Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” But take heart, Creative. You don't need courage when things are easy. You need it when you know what you face will be difficult, but you do it anyway. We are authors. We know how to do hard things. We turn ideas into books. We manifest thoughts into ink on paper. We change lives with our writing. First, our own, then other people's. It's worth the effort to delve into Shadow, so I hope you will join me on the journey. The creative wound and the Shadow in writing “Whatever pain you can't get rid of, make it your creative offering.” —Susan Cain, Bittersweet The more we long for something, the more extreme our desire, the more likely it is to have a Shadow side. For those of us who love books, the author life may well be a long-held dream and thus, it is filled with Shadow. Books have long been objects of desire, power, and authority. They hold a mythic status in our lives. We escaped into stories as children; we studied books at school and college; we read them now for escape and entertainment, education and inspiration. We collect beautiful books to put on our shelves. We go to them for solace and answers to the deepest questions of life. Writers are similarly held in high esteem. They shape culture, win literary prizes, give important speeches, and are quoted in the mainstream media. Their books are on the shelves in libraries and bookstores. Writers are revered, held up as rare, talented creatures made separate from us by their brilliance and insight. For bibliophile children, books were everything and to write one was a cherished dream. To become an author? Well, that would mean we might be someone special, someone worthy. Perhaps when you were young, you thought the dream of being a writer was possible — then you told someone about it. That's probably when you heard the first criticism of such a ridiculous idea, the first laughter, the first dismissal. So you abandoned the dream, pushed the idea of being a writer into the Shadow, and got on with your life. Or if it wasn't then, it came later, when you actually put pen to paper and someone — a parent, teacher, partner, or friend, perhaps even a literary agent or publisher, someone whose opinion you valued — told you it was worthless. Here are some things you might have heard: Writing is a hobby. Get a real job. You're not good enough. You don't have any writing talent. You don't have enough education. You don't know what you're doing. Your writing is derivative / unoriginal / boring / useless / doesn't make sense. The genre you write in is dead / worthless / unacceptable / morally wrong / frivolous / useless. Who do you think you are? No one would want to read what you write. You can't even use proper grammar, so how could you write a whole book? You're wasting your time. You'll never make it as a writer. You shouldn't write those things (or even think about those things). Why don't you write something nice? Insert other derogatory comment here! Mark Pierce describes the effect of this experience in his book The Creative Wound, which “occurs when an event, or someone's actions or words, pierce you, causing a kind of rift in your soul. A comment—even offhand and unintentional—is enough to cause one.” He goes on to say that such words can inflict “damage to the core of who we are as creators. It is an attack on our artistic identity, resulting in us believing that whatever we make is somehow tainted or invalid, because shame has convinced us there is something intrinsically tainted or invalid about ourselves.” As adults, we might brush off such wounds, belittling them as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. We might even find ourselves saying the same words to other people. After all, it's easier to criticise than to create. But if you picture your younger self, bright eyed as you lose yourself in your favourite book, perhaps you might catch a glimpse of what you longed for before your dreams were dashed on the rocks of other people's reality. As Mark Pierce goes on to say, “A Creative Wound has the power to delay our pursuits—sometimes for years—and it can even derail our lives completely… Anything that makes us feel ashamed of ourselves or our work can render us incapable of the self-expression we yearn for.” This is certainly what happened to me, and it took decades to unwind. Your creative wounds will differ to mine but perhaps my experience will help you explore your own. To be clear, your Shadow may not reside in elements of horror as mine do, but hopefully you can use my example to consider where your creative wounds might lie. “You shouldn't write things like that.” It happened at secondary school around 1986 or 1987, so I would have been around eleven or twelve years old. English was one of my favourite subjects and the room we had our lessons in looked out onto a vibrant garden. I loved going to that class because it was all about books, and they were always my favourite things. One day, we were asked to write a story. I can't remember the specifics of what the teacher asked us to write, but I fictionalised a recurring nightmare. I stood in a dark room. On one side, my mum and my brother, Rod, were tied up next to a cauldron of boiling oil, ready to be thrown in. On the other side, my dad and my little sister, Lucy, were threatened with decapitation by men with machetes. I had to choose who would die. I always woke up, my heart pounding, before I had to choose. Looking back now, it clearly represented an internal conflict about having to pick sides between the two halves of my family. Not an unexpected issue from a child of divorce. Perhaps these days, I might have been sent to the school counsellor, but it was the eighties and I don't think we even had such a thing. Even so, the meaning of the story isn't the point. It was the reaction to it that left scars. “You shouldn't write things like that,” my teacher said, and I still remember her look of disappointment, even disgust. Certainly judgment. She said my writing was too dark. It wasn't a proper story. It wasn't appropriate for the class. As if horrible things never happened in stories — or in life. As if literature could not include dark tales. As if the only acceptable writing was the kind she approved of. We were taught The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that year, which says a lot about the type of writing considered appropriate. Or perhaps the issue stemmed from the school motto, “So hateth she derknesse,” from Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women: “For fear of night, so she hates the darkness.” I had won a scholarship to a private girls' school, and their mission was to turn us all into proper young ladies. Horror was never on the curriculum. Perhaps if my teacher had encouraged me to write my darkness back then, my nightmares would have dissolved on the page. Perhaps if we had studied Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or H.P. Lovecraft stories, or Bram Stoker's Dracula, I could have embraced the darker side of literature earlier in my life. My need to push darker thoughts into my Shadow was compounded by my (wonderful) mum's best intentions. We were brought up on the principles of The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale and she tried to shield me and my brother from anything harmful or horrible. We weren't allowed to watch TV much, and even the British school drama Grange Hill was deemed inappropriate. So much of what I've achieved is because my mum instilled in me a “can do” attitude that anything is possible. I'm so grateful to her for that. (I love you, Mum!) But all that happy positivity, my desire to please her, to be a good girl, to make my teachers proud, and to be acceptable to society, meant that I pushed my darker thoughts into Shadow. They were inappropriate. They were taboo. They must be repressed, kept secret, and I must be outwardly happy and positive at all times. You cannot hold back the darkness “The night is dark and full of terrors.” —George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords It turned out that horror was on the curriculum, much of it in the form of educational films we watched during lessons. In English Literature, we watched Romeo drink poison and Juliet stab herself in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. In Religious Studies, we watched Jesus beaten, tortured, and crucified in The Greatest Story Ever Told, and learned of the variety of gruesome ways that Christian saints were martyred. In Classical Civilisation, we watched gladiators slaughter each other in Spartacus. In Sex Education at the peak of the AIDS crisis in the mid-'80s, we were told of the many ways we could get infected and die. In History, we studied the Holocaust with images of skeletal bodies thrown into mass graves, medical experiments on humans, and grainy videos of marching soldiers giving the Nazi salute. One of my first overseas school field trips was to the World War I battlegrounds of Flanders Fields in Belgium, where we studied the inhuman conditions of the trenches, walked through mass graves, and read war poetry by candlelight. As John McCrae wrote: We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields. Did the teachers not realise how deeply a sensitive teenager might feel the darkness of that place? Or have I always been unusual in that places of blood echo deep inside me? And the horrors kept coming. We lived in Bristol, England back then and I learned at school how the city had been part of the slave trade, its wealth built on the backs of people stolen from their homes, sold, and worked to death in the colonies. I had been at school for a year in Malawi, Africa and imagined the Black people I knew drowning, being beaten, and dying on those ships. In my teenage years, the news was filled with ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and massacres during the Balkan wars, and images of bodies hacked apart during the Rwandan genocide. Evil committed by humans against other humans was not a historical aberration. I'm lucky and I certainly acknowledge my privilege. Nothing terrible or horrifying has happened to me — but bad things certainly happen to others. I wasn't bullied or abused. I wasn't raped or beaten or tortured. But you don't have to go through things to be afraid of them, and for your imagination to conjure the possibility of them. My mum doesn't read my fiction now as it gives her nightmares (Sorry, Mum!). I know she worries that somehow she's responsible for my darkness, but I've had a safe and (mostly) happy life, for which I'm truly grateful. But the world is not an entirely safe and happy place, and for a sensitive child with a vivid imagination, the world is dark and scary. It can be brutal and violent, and bad things happen, even to good people. No parent can shield their child from the reality of the world. They can only help them do their best to live in it, develop resilience, and find ways to deal with whatever comes. Story has always been a way that humans have used to learn how to live and deal with difficult times. The best authors, the ones that readers adore and can't get enough of, write their darkness into story to channel their experience, and help others who fear the same. In an interview on writing the Shadow on The Creative Penn Podcast, Michaelbrent Collings shared how he incorporated a personally devastating experience into his writing: “My wife and I lost a child years back, and that became the root of one of my most terrifying books, Apparition. It's not terrifying because it's the greatest book of all time, but just the concept that there's this thing out there… like a demon, and it consumes the blood and fear of the children, and then it withdraws and consumes the madness of the parents… I wrote that in large measure as a way of working through what I was experiencing.” I've learned much from Michaelbrent. I've read many of his (excellent) books and he's been on my podcast multiple times talking about his depression and mental health issues, as well as difficulties in his author career. Writing darkness is not in Michaelbrent's Shadow and only he can say what lies there for him. But from his example, and from that of other authors, I too learned how to write my Shadow into my books. Twenty-three years after that English lesson, in November 2009, I did NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and wrote five thousand words of what eventually became Stone of Fire, my first novel. In the initial chapter, I burned a nun alive on the ghats of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges River. I had watched the bodies burn by night on pyres from a boat bobbing in the current a few years before, and the image was still crystal clear in my mind. The only way to deal with how it made me feel about death was to write about it — and since then, I've never stopped writing. Returning to the nightmare from my school days, I've never had to choose between the two halves of my family, but the threat of losing them remains a theme in my fiction. In my ARKANE thriller series, Morgan Sierra will do anything to save her sister and her niece. Their safety drives her to continue to fight against evil. Our deepest fears emerge in our writing, and that's the safest place for them. I wish I'd been taught how to turn my nightmares into words back at school, but at least now I've learned to write my Shadow onto the page. I wish the same for you. The Shadow in traditional publishing If becoming an author is your dream, then publishing a book is deeply entwined with that. But as Mark Pierce says in The Creative Wound, “We feel pain the most where it matters the most… Desire highlights whatever we consider to be truly significant.” There is a lot of desire around publishing for those of us who love books! It can give you: Validation that your writing is good enough Status and credibility Acceptance by an industry held in esteem The potential of financial reward and critical acclaim Support from a team of professionals who know how to make fantastic books A sense of belonging to an elite community Pride in achieving a long-held goal, resulting in a confidence boost and self-esteem Although not guaranteed, traditional publishing can give you all these things and more, but as with everything, there is a potential Shadow side. Denying it risks the potential of being disillusioned, disappointed, and even damaged. But remember, forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes. Preparation can help you avoid potential issues and help you feel less alone if you encounter them. The myth of success… and the reality of experience There is a pervasive myth of success in the traditional publishing industry, perpetuated by media reporting on brand name and breakout authors, those few outliers whose experience is almost impossible to replicate. Because of such examples, many new traditionally published authors think that their first book will hit the top of the bestseller charts or win an award, as well as make them a million dollars — or at least a big chunk of cash. They will be able to leave their job, write in a beautiful house overlooking the ocean, and swan around the world attending conferences, while writing more bestselling books. It will be a charmed life. But that is not the reality. Perhaps it never was. Even so, the life of a traditionally published author represents a mythic career with the truth hidden behind a veil of obscurity. In April 2023, The Bookseller in the UK reported that “more than half of authors (54%) responding to a survey on their experiences of publishing their debut book have said the process negatively affected their mental health. Though views were mixed, just 22%… described a positive experience overall… Among the majority who said they had a negative experience of debut publication, anxiety, stress, depression and ‘lowered' self-esteem were cited, with lack of support, guidance or clear and professional communication from their publisher among the factors that contributed.” Many authors who have negative experiences around publishing will push them into the Shadow with denial or self-blame, preferring to keep the dream alive. They won't talk about things in public as this may negatively affect their careers, but private discussions are often held in the corners of writing conferences or social media groups online. Some of the issues are as follows: Repeated rejection by agents and publishers may lead to the author thinking they are not good enough as a writer, which can lead to feeling unworthy as a person. If an author gets a deal, the amount of advance and the name and status of the publisher compared to others create a hierarchy that impacts self-esteem. A deal for a book may be much lower than an author might have been expecting, with low or no advance, and the resulting experience with the publisher beneath expectations. The launch process may be disappointing, and the book may appear without fanfare, with few sales and no bestseller chart position. In The Bookseller report, one author described her launch day as “a total wasteland… You have expectations about what publication day will be like, but in reality, nothing really happens.” The book may receive negative reviews by critics or readers or more publicly on social media, which can make an author feel attacked. The book might not sell as well as expected, and the author may feel like it's their fault. Commercial success can sometimes feel tied to self-worth and an author can't help but compare their sales to others, with resulting embarrassment or shame. The communication from the publisher may be less than expected. One author in The Bookseller report said, “I was shocked by the lack of clarity and shared information and the cynicism that underlies the superficial charm of this industry.” There is often more of a focus on debut authors in publishing houses, so those who have been writing and publishing in the midlist for years can feel ignored and undervalued. In The Bookseller report, 48 percent of authors reported “their publisher supported them for less than a year,” with one saying, “I got no support and felt like a commodity, like the team had moved on completely to the next book.” If an author is not successful enough, the next deal may be lower than the last, less effort is made with marketing, and they may be let go. In The Bookseller report, “six authors—debut and otherwise—cited being dropped by their publisher, some with no explanation.” Even if everything goes well and an author is considered successful by others, they may experience imposter syndrome, feeling like a fraud when speaking at conferences or doing book signings. And the list goes on … All these things can lead to feelings of shame, inadequacy, and embarrassment; loss of status in the eyes of peers; and a sense of failure if a publishing career is not successful enough. The author feels like it's their fault, like they weren't good enough — although, of course, the reality is that the conditions were not right at the time. A failure of a book is not a failure of the person, but it can certainly feel like it! When you acknowledge the Shadow, it loses its power Despite all the potential negatives of traditional publishing, if you know what could happen, you can mitigate them. You can prepare yourself for various scenarios and protect yourself from potential fall-out. It's clear from The Bookseller report that too many authors have unrealistic expectations of the industry. But publishers are businesses, not charities. It's not their job to make you feel good as an author. It's their job to sell books and pay you. The best thing they can do is to continue to be a viable business so they can keep putting books on the shelves and keep paying authors, staff, and company shareholders. When you license your creative work to a publisher, you're giving up control of your intellectual property in exchange for money and status. Bring your fears and issues out of the Shadow, acknowledge them, and deal with them early, so they do not get pushed down and re-emerge later in blame and bitterness. Educate yourself on the business of publishing. Be clear on what you want to achieve with any deal. Empower yourself as an author, take responsibility for your career, and you will have a much better experience. The Shadow in self-publishing or being an indie author Self-publishing, or being an independent (indie) author, can be a fantastic, pro-active choice for getting your book into the world. Holding your first book in your hand and saying “I made this” is pretty exciting, and even after more than forty books, I still get excited about seeing ideas in my head turn into a physical product in the world. Self-publishing can give an author: Creative control over what to write, editorial and cover design choices, when and how often to publish, and how to market Empowerment over your author career and the ability to make choices that impact success without asking for permission Ownership and control of intellectual property assets, resulting in increased opportunity around licensing and new markets Independence and the potential for recurring income for the long term Autonomy and flexibility around timelines, publishing options, and the ability to easily pivot into new genres and business models Validation based on positive reader reviews and money earned Personal growth and learning through the acquisition of new skills, resulting in a boost in confidence and self-esteem A sense of belonging to an active and vibrant community of indie authors around the world Being an indie author can give you all this and more, but once again, there is a Shadow side and preparation can help you navigate potential issues. The myth of success… and the reality of experience As with traditional publishing, the indie author world has perpetuated a myth of success in the example of the breakout indie author like E.L. James with Fifty Shades of Grey, Hugh Howey with Wool, or Andy Weir with The Martian. The emphasis on financial success is also fuelled online by authors who share screenshots showing six-figure months or seven-figure years, without sharing marketing costs and other outgoings, or the amount of time spent on the business. Yes, these can inspire some, but it can also make others feel inadequate and potentially lead to bad choices about how to publish and market based on comparison. The indie author world is full of just as much ego and a desire for status and money as traditional publishing. This is not a surprise! Most authors, regardless of publishing choices, are a mix of massive ego and chronic self-doubt. We are human, so the same issues will re-occur. A different publishing method doesn't cure all ills. Some of the issues are as follows: You learn everything you need to know about writing and editing, only to find that you need to learn a whole new set of skills in order to self-publish and market your book. This can take a lot of time and effort you did not expect, and things change all the time so you have to keep learning. Being in control of every aspect of the publishing process, from writing to cover design to marketing, can be overwhelming, leading to indecision, perfectionism, stress, and even burnout as you try to do all the things. You try to find people to help, but building your team is a challenge, and working with others has its own difficulties. People say negative things about self-publishing that may arouse feelings of embarrassment or shame. These might be little niggles, but they needle you, nonetheless. You wonder whether you made the right choice. You struggle with self-doubt and if you go to an event with traditional published authors, you compare yourself to them and feel like an imposter. Are you good enough to be an author if a traditional publisher hasn't chosen you? Is it just vanity to self-publish? Are your books unworthy? Even though you worked with a professional editor, you still get one-star reviews and you hate criticism from readers. You wonder whether you're wasting your time. You might be ripped off by an author services company who promise the world, only to leave you with a pile of printed books in your garage and no way to sell them. When you finally publish your book, it languishes at the bottom of the charts while other authors hit the top of the list over and over, raking in the cash while you are left out of pocket. You don't admit to over-spending on marketing as it makes you ashamed. You resist book marketing and make critical comments about writers who embrace it. You believe that quality rises to the top and if a book is good enough, people will buy it anyway. This can lead to disappointment and disillusionment when you launch your book and it doesn't sell many copies because nobody knows about it. You try to do what everyone advises, but you still can't make decent money as an author. You're jealous of other authors' success and put it down to them ‘selling out' or writing things you can't or ‘using AI' or ‘using a ghostwriter' or having a specific business model you consider impossible to replicate. And the list goes on… When you acknowledge the Shadow, it loses its power Being in control of your books and your author career is a double-edged sword. Traditionally published authors can criticise their publishers or agents or the marketing team or the bookstores or the media, but indie authors have to take responsibility for it all. Sure, we can blame ‘the algorithms' or social media platforms, or criticise other authors for having more experience or more money to invest in marketing, or attribute their success to writing in a more popular genre — but we also know there are always people who do well regardless of the challenges. Once more, we're back to acknowledging and integrating the Shadow side of our choices. We are flawed humans. There will always be good times and bad, and difficulties to offset the high points. This too shall pass, as the old saying goes. I know that being an indie author has plenty of Shadow. I've been doing this since 2008 and despite the hard times, I'm still here. I'm still writing. I'm still publishing. This life is not for everyone, but it's my choice. You must make yours. The Shadow in work You work hard. You make a living. Nothing wrong with that attitude, right? It's what we're taught from an early age and, like so much of life, it's not a problem until it goes to extremes. Not achieving what you want to? Work harder. Can't get ahead? Work harder. Not making a good enough living? Work harder. People who don't work hard are lazy. They don't deserve handouts or benefits. People who don't work hard aren't useful, so they are not valued members of our culture and community. But what about the old or the sick, the mentally ill, or those with disabilities? What about children? What about the unemployed? The under-employed? What about those who are — or will be — displaced by technology, those called “the useless class” by historian Yuval Noah Harari in his book Homo Deus? What if we become one of these in the future? Who am I if I cannot work? The Shadow side of my attitude to work became clear when I caught COVID in the summer of 2021. I was the sickest I'd ever been. I spent two weeks in bed unable to even think properly, and six weeks after that, I was barely able to work more than an hour a day before lying in the dark and waiting for my energy to return. I was limited in what I could do for another six months after that. At times, I wondered if I would ever get better. Jonathan kept urging me to be patient and rest. But I don't know how to rest. I know how to work and how to sleep. I can do ‘active rest,' which usually involves walking a long way or traveling somewhere interesting, but those require a stronger mind and body than I had during those months. It struck me that even if I recovered from the virus, I had glimpsed my future self. One day, I will be weak in body and mind. If I'm lucky, that will be many years away and hopefully for a short time before I die — but it will happen. I am an animal. I will die. My body and mind will pass on and I will be no more. Before then I will be weak. Before then, I will be useless. Before then, I will be a burden. I will not be able to work… But who am I if I cannot work? What is the point of me? I can't answer these questions right now, because although I recognise them as part of my Shadow, I've not progressed far enough to have dealt with them entirely. My months of COVID gave me some much-needed empathy for those who cannot work, even if they want to. We need to reframe what work is as a society, and value humans for different things, especially as technology changes what work even means. That starts with each of us. “Illness, affliction of body and soul, can be life-altering. It has the potential to reveal the most fundamental conflict of the human condition: the tension between our infinite, glorious dreams and desires and our limited, vulnerable, decaying physicality.” —Connie Zweig, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul The Shadow in money In the Greek myth, King Midas was a wealthy ruler who loved gold above all else. His palace was adorned with golden sculptures and furniture, and he took immense pleasure in his riches. Yet, despite his vast wealth, he yearned for more. After doing a favour for Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry, Midas was granted a single wish. Intoxicated by greed, he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold — and it was so. At first, it was a lot of fun. Midas turned everything else in his palace to gold, even the trees and stones of his estate. After a morning of turning things to gold, he fancied a spot of lunch. But when he tried to eat, the food and drink turned to gold in his mouth. He became thirsty and hungry — and increasingly desperate. As he sat in despair on his golden throne, his beloved young daughter ran to comfort him. For a moment, he forgot his wish — and as she wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek, she turned into a golden statue, frozen in precious metal. King Midas cried out to the gods to forgive him, to reverse the wish. He renounced his greed and gave away all his wealth, and his daughter was returned to life. The moral of the story: Wealth and greed are bad. In Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is described as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner.” He's wealthy but does not share, considering Christmas spending to be frivolous and giving to charity to be worthless. He's saved by a confrontation with his lonely future and becomes a generous man and benefactor of the poor. Wealth is good if you share it with others. The gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: 14-30, tells the parable of the bags of gold, in which a rich man goes on a journey and entrusts his servants with varying amounts of gold. On his return, the servants who multiplied the gold through their efforts and investments are rewarded, while the one who merely returned the gold with no interest is punished: “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” Making money is good, making more money is even better. If you can't make any money, you don't deserve to have any. Within the same gospel, in Matthew 19:24, Jesus encounters a wealthy man and tells him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor, which the man is unable to do. Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Wealth is bad. Give it all away and you'll go to heaven. With all these contradictory messages, no wonder we're so conflicted about money! How do you think and feel about money? While money is mostly tied to our work, it's far more than just a transactional object for most people. It's loaded with complex symbolism and judgment handed down by family, religion, and culture. You are likely to find elements of Shadow by examining your attitudes around money. Consider which of the following statements resonate with you or write your own. Money stresses me out. I don't want to talk about it or think about it. Some people hoard money, so there is inequality. Rich people are bad and we should take away their wealth and give it to the poor. I can never make enough money to pay the bills, or to give my family what I want to provide. Money doesn't grow on trees. It's wasteful to spend money as you might need it later, so I'm frugal and don't spend money unless absolutely necessary. It is better and more ethical to be poor than to be rich. I want more money. I read books and watch TV shows about rich people because I want to live like that. Sometimes I spend too much on things for a glimpse of what that might be like. I buy lottery tickets and dream of winning all that money. I'm jealous of people who have money. I want more of it and I resent those who have it. I'm no good with money. I don't like to look at my bank statement or credit card statement. I live off my overdraft and I'm in debt. I will never earn enough to get out of debt and start saving, so I don't think too much about it. I don't know enough about money. Talking about it makes me feel stupid, so I just ignore it. People like me aren't educated about money. I need to make more money. If I can make lots of money, then people will look up to me. If I make lots of money, I will be secure, nothing can touch me, I will be safe. I never want to be poor. I would be ashamed to be poor. I will never go on benefits. My net worth is my self worth. Money is good. We have the best standard of living in history because of the increase in wealth over time. Even the richest kings of the past didn't have what many middle-class people have today in terms of access to food, water, technology, healthcare, education, and more. The richest people give the most money to the poor through taxation and charity, as well as through building companies that employ people and invent new things. The very richest give away much of their fortunes. They provide far more benefit to the world than the poor. I love money. Money loves me. Money comes easily and quickly to me. I attract money in multiple streams of income. It flows to me in so many ways. I spend money. I invest money. I give money. I'm happy and grateful for all that I receive. The Shadow around money for authors in particular Many writers and other creatives have issues around money and wealth. How often have you heard the following, and which do you agree with? You can't make money with your writing. You'll be a poor author in a garret, a starving artist. You can't write ‘good quality' books and make money. If you make money writing, you're a hack, you're selling out. You are less worthy than someone who writes only for the Muse. Your books are commercial, not artistic. If you spend money on marketing, then your books are clearly not good enough to sell on their own. My agent / publisher / accountant / partner deals with the money side. I like to focus on the creative side of things. My money story Note: This is not financial or investment advice. Please talk to a professional about your situation. I've had money issues over the years — haven't we all! But I have been through a (long) process to bring money out of my Shadow and into the light. There will always be more to discover, but hopefully my money story will help you, or at least give you an opportunity to reflect. Like most people, I didn't grow up with a lot of money. My parents started out as teachers, but later my mum — who I lived with, along with my brother — became a change management consultant, moving to the USA and earning a lot more. I'm grateful that she moved into business because her example changed the way I saw money and provided some valuable lessons. (1) You can change your circumstances by learning more and then applying that to leverage opportunity into a new job or career Mum taught English at a school in Bristol when we moved back from Malawi, Africa, in the mid '80s but I remember how stressful it was for her, and how little money she made. She wanted a better future for us all, so she took a year out to do a master's degree in management. In the same way, when I wanted to change careers and leave consulting to become an author, I spent time and money learning about the writing craft and the business of publishing. I still invest a considerable chunk on continuous learning, as this industry changes all the time. (2) You might have to downsize in order to leap forward The year my mum did her degree, we lived in the attic of another family's house; we ate a lot of one-pot casserole and our treat was having a Yorkie bar on the walk back from the museum. We wore hand-me-down clothes, and I remember one day at school when another girl said I was wearing her dress. I denied it, of course, but there in back of the dress was her name tag. I still remember her name and I can still feel that flush of shame and embarrassment. I was determined to never feel like that again. But what I didn't realize at the time was that I was also learning the power of downsizing. Mum got her degree and then a new job in management in Bristol. She bought a house, and we settled for a few years. I had lots of different jobs as a teenager. My favourite was working in the delicatessen because we got a free lunch made from delicious produce. After I finished A-levels, I went to the University of Oxford, and my mum and brother moved to the USA for further opportunities. I've downsized multiple times over the years, taking a step back in order to take a step forward. The biggest was in 2010 when I decided to leave consulting. Jonathan and I sold our three-bedroom house and investments in Brisbane, Australia, and rented a one-bedroom flat in London, so we could be debt-free and live on less while I built up a new career. It was a decade before we bought another house. (3) Comparison can be deadly: there will always be people with more money than you Oxford was an education in many ways and relevant to this chapter is how much I didn't know about things people with money took for granted. I learned about formal hall and wine pairings, and how to make a perfect gin and tonic. I ate smoked salmon for the first time. I learned how to fit in with people who had a lot more money than I did, and I definitely wanted to have money of my own to play with. (4) Income is not wealth You can earn lots but have nothing to show for it after years of working. I learned this in my first few years of IT consulting after university. I earned a great salary and then went contracting, earning even more money at a daily rate. I had a wonderful time. I traveled, ate and drank and generally made merry, but I always had to go back to the day job when the money ran out. I couldn't work out how I could ever stop this cycle. Then I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, a book I still recommend, especially if you're from a family that values academic over financial education. I learned how to escape the rat race by building and/or accumulating assets that pay even when you're not working. It was a revelation! The ‘poor dad' in the book is a university professor. He knows so much about so many things, but he ends up poor as he did not educate himself about money. The ‘rich dad' has little formal education, but he knows about money and wealth because he learned about it, as we can do at any stage in our lives. (5) Not all investments suit every person, so find the right one for you Once I discovered the world of investing, I read all the books and did courses and in-person events. I joined communities and I up-skilled big time. Of course, I made mistakes and learned lots along the way. I tried property investing and renovated a couple of houses for rental (with more practical partners and skilled contractors). But while I could see that property investing might work for some people, I did not care enough about the details to make it work for me, and it was certainly not passive income. I tried other things. My first husband was a boat skipper and scuba diving instructor, so we started a charter. With the variable costs of fuel, the vagaries of New Zealand weather — and our divorce — it didn't last long! From all these experiments, I learned I wanted to run a business, but it needed to be online and not based on a physical location, physical premises, or other people. That was 2006, around the time that blogging started taking off and it became possible to make a living online. I could see the potential and a year later, the iPhone and the Amazon Kindle launched, which became the basis of my business as an author. (6) Boring, automatic saving and investing works best Between 2007 and 2011, I contracted in Australia, where they have compulsory superannuation contributions, meaning you have to save and invest a percentage of your salary or self-employed income. I'd never done that before, because I didn't understand it. I'd ploughed all my excess income into property or the business instead. But in Australia I didn't notice the money going out because it was automatic. I chose a particular fund and it auto-invested every month. The pot grew pretty fast since I didn't touch it, and years later, it's still growing. I discovered the power of compound interest and time in the market, both of which are super boring. This type of investing is not a get rich quick scheme. It's a slow process of automatically putting money into boring investments and doing that month in, month out, year in, year out, automatically for decades while you get on with your life. I still do this. I earn money as an author entrepreneur and I put a percentage of that into boring investments automatically every month. I also have a small amount which is for fun and higher risk investments, but mostly I'm a conservative, risk-averse investor planning ahead for the future. This is not financial advice, so I'm not giving any specifics. I have a list of recommended money books at www.TheCreativePenn.com/moneybooks if you want to learn more. Learning from the Shadow When I look back, my Shadow side around money eventually drove me to learn more and resulted in a better outcome (so far!). I was ashamed of being poor when I had to wear hand-me-down clothes at school. That drove a fear of not having any money, which partially explains my workaholism. I was embarrassed at Oxford because I didn't know how to behave in certain settings, and I wanted to be like the rich people I saw there. I spent too much money in my early years as a consultant because I wanted to experience a “rich” life and didn't understand saving and investing would lead to better things in the future. I invested too much in the wrong things because I didn't know myself well enough and I was trying to get rich quick so I could leave my job and ‘be happy.' But eventually, I discovered that I could grow my net worth with boring, long-term investments while doing a job I loved as an author entrepreneur. My only regret is that I didn't discover this earlier and put a percentage of my income into investments as soon as I started work. It took several decades to get started, but at least I did (eventually) start. My money story isn't over yet, and I keep learning new things, but hopefully my experience will help you reflect on your own and avoid the issue if it's still in Shadow. These chapters are excerpted from Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words by Joanna Penn The post Writing The Shadow: The Creative Wound, Publishing, And Money, With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.
Justin and Dan look back at Auburn basketball getting a win it absolutely needed against South Carolina behind Filip Jović's breakout performance, then they talk about the work Alex Golesh and staff are doing in the transfer portal for Auburn football. Topics for this episode include:* the benefits of winning when a team needs a win* the conditions that led to Jović's massive game* is Auburn's frosty three-point shooting a concern?* how elements of Tahaad Pettiford's game reversed course after the Missouri loss* Dan's reasons to believe the team can improve between now and the end of the season* a brief preview of Ole Miss before Justin heads to Oxford* a player-by-player breakdown of Auburn's latest incoming football transfers* which positions seem to have clear-cut favorites to start and which positions seem to suggest heavy competition* Scrap joining a long line of great Auburn names* an update about Troy Women's Basketball's quest for the Sun Belt title* an ode to watching historic sports moments at bars in airports* a preview of the CFP National Championship Game* Dan takes victory laps after predicting success for Dylan Cardwell and Fernando Mendoza* several failed attempts by Dan to give Jović a nickname, including one that causes Justin audible pain If you're receiving this free podcast episode and would like to upgrade to a paid subscription that gives you access to all stories and premium podcast episodes, subscribe using the button below or clicking this link.Follow Dan (@dnpck) and Justin (@JFergusonAU) on Twitter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.auburnobserver.com/subscribe
At age 15, Dr. Maya Shankar suffered a devastating hand injury that abruptly ended her promising violin career and shattered her sense of identity. Forced to reimagine a future beyond music, she turned to cognitive and behavioral science to understand how humans navigate unexpected change. That path led her to President Obama's White House, where she applied human behavior insights to influence policy and improve decision-making at scale. In this episode, Dr. Maya reveals the power of human psychology and how small mindset shifts can help us make better decisions when life doesn't go as planned. In this episode, Hala and Dr. Maya will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:13) Dr. Maya's Early Life and Violin Journey (11:04) What Is Behavioral and Cognitive Science? (21:23) The Sunk Cost Fallacy Explained (26:55) Her Impact at the White House (37:24) Understanding the Power of Nudging (43:43) Why Changing Minds Is So Difficult (46:24) Practical Nudging Tactics for Everyday Decisions (50:12) Decision-Making Biases You Need to Know (54:32) A Slight Change of Plans Podcast Mission Dr. Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and the creator, executive producer, and host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans. She currently serves as Senior Director of Behavioral Economics at Google and previously founded the White House Behavioral Science Team under President Obama, where she served as a Senior Advisor. Dr. Maya completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at Stanford, earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and holds a B.A. from Yale. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Spectrum Business - Visit Spectrum.com/FreeForLife to learn how you can get Business Internet Free Forever. Northwest Registered Agent - Build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes at northwestregisteredagent.com/paidyap Framer - Publish beautiful and production-ready websites. Go to Framer.com/profiting and get 30% off their Framer Pro annual plan. Intuit QuickBooks - Start the new year strong and take control of your cash flow at QuickBooks.com/money Quo - Run your business communications the smart way. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting Working Genius - Take the Working Genius assessment and discover your natural gifts and thrive at work. Go to workinggenius.com and get 20% off with code PROFITING Resources Mentioned: Dr. Maya's Podcast, A Slight Change of Plans: bit.ly/ASCOP-apple Dr. Maya's Website: mayashankar.com Nudge by Cass Sunstein: bit.ly/-Nudge Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Positivity, Human Nature, Critical Thinking, Robert Greene, Chris Voss, Robert Cialdini