Podcasts about Information Age

Episode 235On this episode of the Removing Barriers Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Phil Stringer and Dr. Jim Scudder to discuss arguable the most polarizing nation in the world today: Israel. In the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, the political right in the United States has in many ways splintered (some would even argue it has fractured), and the issue underlying this change seems to be Israel and the U.S.' staunch support of it. The disagreement can even be found in the church today. Where before, Christians of every stripe would be unified on the support of Israel, today we find that a substantial and growing number of Christians no longer view Israel favorably and are opposed the our current stance of steadfast support. What has brought about this change? Is it the war Trump waged on Iran? Perhaps the events in response to the October 7th attacks? Could it be that the Information Age has made it so that many can study the events of the past surrounding Israel for themselves? Or is this a spiritual war whose roots run long and deep? Dr. Phil Stringer is no stranger to the podcast and he is joined by his friend and co-author Dr. Jim Scudder to discuss how they believe the anti-Israel stance is the result of the spiritual war against God and His people, and how Christians across the board are lured into adopting an anti-biblical stance. These men wrote a book titled The Spiritual War Against Israel, in which they lay out their reasoning for this change and what Christians can do to fight back.Listen to the Removing Barriers Podcast here:Spotify:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cutt.ly/Ega8YeI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Apple Podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cutt.ly/Vga2SVd⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Edifi: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cutt.ly/Meec7nsv⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cutt.ly/mga8A77⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podnews: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podnews.net/podcast/i4jxo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠See all our platforms: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://removingbarriers.net⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Contact us:Email us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://removingbarriers.net/contact⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Financially support the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://removingbarriers.net/donate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Affiliates:Book Shop: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bookshop.org/shop/removingbarriers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christian Books . com: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/home?event=AFF&p=1236574⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fastmail: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://join.fastmail.com/8e23c12b⁠⁠⁠⁠See all our affiliates: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://removingbarriers.net/affiliates⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Notes:Get a copy of "The Spiritual War Against Israel": https://ingrace.us/israels-spritual-war/YouTube: InGrace Israel with Jim Scudder: https://www.youtube.com/@InGraceIsraelYouTube: InGrace Adventures with Jim Scudder: https://www.youtube.com/@InGraceAdventures⁠InGrace with Jim Scudder: https://ingrace.us/

Серията Vox Nihili на Ratio Podcast и Предизвикай правото! изследва пресечните точки на науката и технологиите с етиката и правото, а също така и редица дискусионни теми от сферата на философията. Може би си спомняте, че имахме сходна серия събития на име Vox Nihili – сега ги пренасяме в аудио и видео формат. Пешо (1), Пешо (2) и Пешо (3) обсъждат: - Анонимността означава ли единствено липса на име? - Защо пръстенът на Гигес и пръстенът, който Фродо носи, си приличат? - Възможно ли е да отговаряме само пред самите себе си? - Можем ли да останем изцяло анонимни? - Как законът се отнася към анонимността? - Може ли анонимността да бъде полезна? - Има ли разлика между тайна и анонимност? - Каква е разликата между неудобния за властта и престъпника? - Какво са псевдонимът и маската за правото? - Защо за правото всички сме лица? - Има ли лице тълпата? - Имат ли мъртвородените деца история? - Какво е предупреждението на правните позитивисти? В този епизод на фокус е анонимността и връзката ѝ с понятията за име, идентифицируемост, идентичност и отговорност. Поставя се въпросът за необходимостта от името в обществото. Обсъжда се отношението на правото към възможността авторът на определени актове да остане скрит. В едни случаи виждаме анонимността като желана и защитавана от закона, а в други случаи като ограничавана от него и дори забранена. Анонимността се проявява като спектър между пълна идентифуцируемост и пълна неидентифицируемост, в който се разкриват различни морални и правни проблеми. Гледай епизода тук: https://youtu.be/Ub0gJbxTPK0 Допълнителни материали: https://knizhen-pazar.net/sold_products/books/2004502-darzhavata https://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/anon.html https://scispace.com/pdf/navigating-the-unknown-towards-a-positive-conception-of-3qkunahhlg.pdf https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/cjpp/article/download/8159/5556/22621 https://nissenbaum.tech.cornell.edu/papers/The Meaning of Anonymity in an Information Age.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com Представяне на госта: Пешо има научна титла и академична длъжност, автор е на разни неща и се изявява като редактор заедно с Пешо в електронно издание, в който публикуват редица Пешовци. Понякога ползва псевдоним, а понякога - не. Той и преди е правил подобни неща с Пешо, а също и с Пешо, а заедно с единия Пешо е правил и други неща, които не е правил все още с другия Пешо, но ако му се отдаде възможност, не би пропуснал. За поскаста: Tова е една от шестте серии на Ratio Podcast – един подкаст за любопитни хора. С негова помощ ще си сверите часовника за всичко най-ново в света на науката и културата и ще чуете неформални разговори, свързани или вдъхновени от наука.

Before AI... before the internet... before the printing press... there was a prophecy. "Knowledge will increase" in the last days, Daniel was told. And in the "Information Age," our databases have far outgrown our wisdom and discipline to use them to our benefit. Please hang on for my announcement about the future of the program after we hear Part 1 of, Signs of the End, from Jim. Listen to Right Start Radio every Monday through Friday on WCVX 1160AM (Cincinnati, OH) at 9:30am, WHKC 91.5FM (Columbus, OH) at 5:00pm, WRFD 880AM (Columbus, OH) at 9:00am. Right Start can also be heard on One Christian Radio 107.7FM & 87.6FM in New Plymouth, New Zealand. You can purchase a copy of this message, unsegmented for broadcasting and in its entirety, for $7 on a single CD by calling +1 (800) 984-2313, and of course you can always listen online or download the message for free. RS06032026_0.mp3Scripture References: Daniel 12; Matthew 24

In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop sits down with returning guest Ekue Kpodar for their third conversation together, covering a wide range of topics at the intersection of technology, geopolitics, and the evolving information age. They dig into Ekue's unconventional setup of running local AI models across roughly 15 computers, the growing case for open source models over closed ones from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, and how Chinese open source models may be positioned to outcompete Western alternatives on a global scale. The conversation also touches on vibe coding and the democratization of software development, the strategic use of small models for IoT and enterprise applications, the role of Israel and China as dominant players in the information age, and how smaller nations and even individuals may wield outsized power as AI continues to collapse the cost of knowledge work. You can find Ekue Kpodar on X @ekpodar and LinkedIn.Timestamps00:00 Stewart welcomes Ekue for their third episode, diving into vibe coding and AI-driven development changes.05:00 Ekue explains using Claude on Chrome to auto-reply on Skool, burning tokens through screenshots, and Playwright as a more efficient alternative.10:00 Stewart describes his Claude-dependent planning and coding agent system breaking after a model update, prompting him to build his own chatbot.15:00 Small models discussed as critical for IoT, defense, and privacy-focused enterprises building internal APIs instead of routing traffic to OpenAI.20:00 Open source versus closed source debated, with Chinese models gaining global traction while US foundational labs remain expensive and restrictive.25:00 SaaS apocalypse explored as AI commoditizes knowledge work, with Linux and Terraform cited as proof open source still generates wealth.30:00 OpenAI's sci-fi terminator fears explained as the reason they stayed closed source, ultimately handing China a strategic open source advantage.35:00 China's economic dumping strategy applied to AI, potentially displacing US model dominance globally the same way manufacturing was disrupted.40:00 Israel's signals intelligence dominance discussed alongside asymmetric warfare, drones defeating tanks, and information control replacing military muscle.45:00 Global information age rankings debated, Israel leading, US and China tied, France and Poland emerging as sovereign tech players.50:00 Qatar, NVIDIA, and Iran cited as proof that rare resources and technology matter more than population size in the 21st century power landscape.Key Insights1. Running local AI models on a network of affordable computers can be more cost-effective than relying entirely on third-party APIs. By using compressed or smaller open source models locally, developers can handle repetitive or lower-stakes tasks without burning through expensive tokens from providers like Anthropic or OpenAI.2. Small AI models are becoming increasingly important for IoT, defense applications, and companies that do not want to send sensitive data to external providers. Organizations can download open source models, run them on internal servers, and build proprietary APIs around them, creating something like an intranet of specialized small models.3. The value created by AI tools is being redistributed away from traditional SaaS companies toward foundational model providers and individual builders. People are canceling subscriptions to software they once paid hundreds per month for, because AI now allows a single person to build comparable tools themselves.4. Open source technology does not eliminate the ability to profit. Linux and Terraform are both open source yet made their creators wealthy. People will still pay for installation, setup, troubleshooting, and customization even when the underlying software is free.5. China is applying its longstanding manufacturing dumping strategy to artificial intelligence by releasing cheap open source models globally, which threatens to erode US dominance in AI the same way Chinese manufacturing undercut other countries for decades.6. In the information age, the size of a country or institution matters far less than its access to rare resources or advanced technology. Qatar, Israel, and NVIDIA each demonstrate that small populations or headcounts can wield enormous global negotiating power through concentrated technological or resource advantages.7. Asymmetric warfare is redefining military power, with inexpensive drones defeating tanks that cost millions to build. This shifts the advantage toward nations that excel at signals intelligence and information management rather than those with the largest conventional military forces.

In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop sits down with Joshua Bate, founder of Bonfires.ai and DeciWorld, for a wide-ranging conversation covering knowledge management, graph technology, ontologies, decentralized science, and the future of how humans organize and share information. They break down the differences between personal and enterprise knowledge management, explore why flat ontological graphs may be the key to making diverse knowledge bases interoperable, and get into why traditional RAG systems break down at scale and how graph RAG offers a more principled solution. The conversation expands into the philosophy of categorization, the slow death of basic "gentleman science" under institutional pressures, and how decentralized protocols might restore a kind of mycelial knowledge network connecting small groups of researchers, enthusiasts, and communities — much like the original spirit of the encyclopedia before it was co-opted by institutions. You can learn more about Joshua's work at bonfires.ai and deci.world or follow him on X at @Bonfiresai and @DeSciWorld.Timestamps00:00 - Stewart introduces Joshua Bate, founder of Bonfires.ai, discussing personal versus enterprise knowledge management and their fundamental differences at scale.05:00 - Joshua explains ontologies as classifiers for knowledge structures, describing their two-year search for a perfect ontology and ultimately building a flat, ontology-less graph protocol.10:00 - Stewart connects categorization to shamanic practice and intercategorical theory, noting how major companies like Netflix and Yahoo built graph-based ontologies while the discipline remains underappreciated philosophically.15:00 - Joshua traces Bonfires origins through decentralized science, explaining how NFT community excitement inspired redirecting capital toward funding unconventional researchers locked out of institutional systems.20:00 - Joshua describes building federated knowledge networks through hackathons and conferences, comparing the vision to what Wikipedia could have been with decentralized incentive structures.25:00 - Discussion shifts toward inevitable collapse of rigid scientific institutions, debating patchwork age theory, nation-state fragmentation, and rhizomatic versus arboreal knowledge structures.30:00 - Joshua articulates the mycelial network vision, enabling direct cross-cultural information access where individuals control their own narrative lens, warning against collective we thinking and authoritarianism.Key Insights1. Knowledge management exists on a spectrum from personal to enterprise, but the founder of Bonfires argues this split is artificial. He believes knowledge itself does not respect those boundaries, and that small groups, researchers, hobbyists, and large institutions all possess knowledge that can and should interoperate with each other.2. After two and a half years of searching for the perfect ontology to structure their knowledge graph, the team concluded that no perfect ontology exists. Their solution was to build the flattest possible graph structure with only events, entities, and edges, creating a base layer others can build specialized ontologies on top of.3. Graph-based knowledge systems are more efficient than traditional databases for AI traversal because once a graph is computed, it is relatively free to query. Graph RAG combines the discovery power of vector search with the structured precision of graph traversal, solving many hallucination problems associated with standard retrieval augmented generation.4. Basic scientific research, the soil from which applied discoveries grow, is deteriorating because institutional funding structures only reward commercially viable outcomes. The founder built his platform partly to redirect community-driven capital toward researchers who are doing important work without institutional support.5. The institutionalization of science has historically blocked the open exchange of ideas that drove the original scientific revolution. The human spirit for open inquiry has not changed, but people cannot pursue it without financial support, and building decentralized infrastructure could restore that possibility.6. A federated knowledge network would allow individuals to access information from any contributor and filter it through their own preferred lens, rather than receiving information pre-filtered by centralized platforms. This represents a form of information symmetry similar to how mycelial networks distribute nutrients across a forest.7. The concern is not whether current scientific and governmental institutions will change but in what direction the rebuilding goes. Those capitalizing on the transition carry the same incentives as the previous era, which risks reproducing the same problems inside new structures.

This is Keith Erekson's interview with BYU-Idaho Radio intern Abrielle Millet. Keith Erekson, the director of historical research and outreach for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, taught students how they can combat deception and misinformation in the world today.

Keith Erekson, the director of historical research and outreach for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, taught students how they can combat deception and misinformation in the world today.

Episode: 3372 Rhetoric, Objectivity, and Gaslighting.  Today, we flip the switch on “gaslight.”

“What I’m really interested in and fascinated about is that, as AI penetrates and spreads throughout the workplace and gets placed into or integrated into workflows, the first thing that happens is that people in the mix are going to have to learn how to use AI and learn why to use AI when they do.” –Jon Husband About Jon Husband Jon Husband is the Founder and Principal of Wirearchy, a creative research and experimentation laboratory exploring the crossroads of AI and networked workplaces and society. He works as a coach, consultant, speaker and writer, and has co-authored three books, including Wirearchy. Website: wirearchy.com LinkedIn Profile: Jon Husband What you will learn The origins and evolution of wirearchy as a response to traditional organizational hierarchies How AI integration is reshaping knowledge work, workflows, and tacit knowledge within organizations The persistence of Taylorist job evaluation and why traditional work design remains resistant to change The rise of the relational economy and the increasing value of human judgment, trust, and relationships beyond financial exchange New approaches and tools for surfacing and mapping intangible or non-financial value exchanges in organizations The concept of emergence and the need to foster conditions for positive outcomes in complex adaptive systems Challenges and opportunities as organizations shift from rigid, control-based management to adaptive, networked, feedback-driven models Why coaching, facilitation, and skills like listening and allowing for emergence will be critical in navigating AI-augmented workplaces Episode Resources Transcript Ross Dawson: Jon, it is wonderful to have you on the show. Jon: Thank you very much, Ross, it’s good to see you again. Ross Dawson: We’ve known of each other and each other’s work for a very, very long time now from, I suppose, the roots of—yeah, I suppose you can crudely say—the intersection of knowledge and networks. So, as I think many of us who have come from that background, we now are thinking about humans and their relative role to AI. Some people will know of your wirearchy and a lot of your work of the past; others will not. So I’d love to just start off with: what is the concept of wirearchy? And then, how is that morphing or evolving, or are you building on that in how you’re thinking now? We’ll dig in and explore that. Jon: Okay, well, I started paying attention to knowledge work and work in organizations and so on as I changed careers in my early 30s, moving from banking, where I was in management, into management consulting. I ended up working for a large global HR consulting firm that, amongst several others—all the major consulting firms that address organizational issues—have services where they do what’s called job evaluation. What job evaluation does is put a size or a measure or a weight to a job, which then basically places it on the organization chart. I spent quite a few years writing thousands of job descriptions and helping streamline workflows and so on and so forth. So, when the internet came along, I had always been an avid reader, and I suppose a wannabe futurist—a wannabe Ross Dawson, if you will. I was reading all sorts of books back then. Instead of dating, because I was single in my mid-30s, I was spending Friday nights reading books about organizations, like “The Living Company” by Arie de Geus, the Tofflers’ work, “Powershift,” certainly Peter Drucker’s work. There was one day—well, I was reading all of these books, and all of the books were about the coming Information Age. The Information Age had not arrived yet; this was roughly late ’80s, early ’90s. All of a sudden, we hit 1994. I’m sitting in London, and I was just told by my team leader in my consulting firm that I was going to be proposed as one of the next global partners. Three weeks later, I quit my job in the consulting firm because I had begun to feel very uneasy about the work I was doing. If I was made a partner, your job becomes basically selling larger projects to keep the younger consultants employed. I realized that I would be selling methods that I had come to not believe in anymore, and the reason for that is that all of the job evaluation methods sold by all the major consulting companies are all versions of generic Taylorism. They have semantic statements that you pick to figure out a level of a job on a number of different factors. This is one of the things I’ve talked and written quite a bit about in wirearchy: this generic Taylorism is still deeply at the core of most of the work of most organizations. It’s how the work is designed. There has been now, what, 15 or 20 years—how far back does Enterprise 2.0 go?—about collaboration and cooperation and better knowledge management and sharing and transfer of knowledge, and so on and so forth. If you know these semantic statements, which are burned into my brain from this method—the Hay method—you realize that no amount of talking about doing things differently is going to make much difference. It’s not going to change much. And the remuneration—the way people get paid—every single person in every single company, is tied to all of that. It’s tied to your job size, it’s tied to the compensation practice, it’s tied to your performance management, it’s tied to your career plans, if an organization is still doing career planning. Frankly, it has not been touched in 75 years now. Ross Dawson: Used to describe it as a job as a box. Jon: Well, sure, and that’s where that term “think outside the box” comes from. I wrote an article about this at one point in time—oh, I can’t remember the title, so it doesn’t matter—but about the semantic statements essentially becoming semantic straightjackets, because they put limits around what you do. They’re a graded level of permissions, basically, or amounts of influence and authority, and that’s the codified, official organizational chart. So anyway, I was working with this all the time, and I realized if I was going to be made a big-time partner, I’d have to be selling these tools all the time. The internet had come along, so I quit, and I didn’t know what to do after that. I had to move from the UK because I was on a work permit, had to go back to Canada. When I went back to Canada, all the companies I tried to approach to work as an independent consultant didn’t want to engage me, because all of the work I’d been doing in the UK was with really large multinationals, and according to them, too sophisticated for what they were doing in Vancouver. But at the same time, I was still reading all the time—reading Charles Handy’s work, reading Gerard Fairtlough’s work on heterarchy, and so on. I came to believe very strongly that the ongoing sharing of information—which we were starting even 20 years ago to build into constant, incessant flows of information carried via hyperlinks—was going to inevitably begin to affect, I’m going to use the word affect, the traditional top-down power of hierarchy. That comes from the “knowledge is power” by Francis Bacon kind of perspective. Now, that was 25 years ago. What we’ve seen since is, of course, what you know—one umbrella term I could apply to much of what’s going on outside of organizations is the “enshittification” of the web. The same thing applies in a lot of ways, I think, to people doing work, sitting behind screens in organizations. Now, a whole host of things have happened in the past 10 or 15 years: there were armies of developers sitting in office spaces, all of them with their headphones on behind screens coding. There were all sorts of people beginning to understand how to use the internet. There were many failed attempts at effective knowledge management because of the idea that it’s still just good search, find documents, retrieval, without really paying any attention to the connections between people and how they work together, and so on. Ross Dawson: So, the frame there is, I mean, obviously, moving—the wirearchy being an arche of the organization being essentially a network. Obviously, there’s more richness to that as you describe the organization as a network, as opposed to the rigid structures, which are still very much rampant. But fast-forwarding to today, what we’ve overlaid is, whilst the old rigid structure is in place, organizations are effectively a lot more loosened up by Enterprise 2.0 and other types of frames, and essentially more peer communication. Now AI is changing a fundamental role, now being, in many ways, a participant in those workflows, in the creation of value. So where does that take us today, in this humans-plus—essentially wirearchy—pulled into where AI plays a role within those networks? Jon: Well, it’s a fascinating question for which I don’t have an answer. I have some responses, I suppose. The notion of wirearchy came, as you pointed out, out of everybody being wired, everybody being networked—the organization as a network. What I’m really interested in and fascinated about is that, as AI penetrates and spreads throughout the workplace and gets placed into or integrated into workflows, the first thing that happens is that people in the mix are going to have to learn how to use AI and learn why to use AI when they do. Often, it’s very soft at the beginning because it’s reminders, or “did you want to do that,” or “do you want to say that,” and so on. Increasingly, the AI, I think, will have more and more coaching built into it. But what I’m interested in is how, as we learn from the mistakes that are made in integration, and also learn from the successes that are made from integration, is that going to decompose a knowledge worker’s work and eventually capture most of their tacit knowledge and ways of working to reduce the cost of doing that kind of work? Then, on a larger scale, what is the active decomposition of types of work through the influence and integration of AI? How is that going to change the fundamental assumptions about work design? My belief is that the work of Dave Snowden and others with respect to complex adaptive systems is what is going to become—and this is a poorly connected parallel or analogy—but I think something like the Cynefin framework, or a unified approach to complex adaptive systems, will become the Taylorism of the 21st century. In other words, there will come to be forms of patterns and models and actions that help you address certain kinds of conditions, because I think, especially with AI, work and outputs are going to become continuous flows. They are the push and the pull, or the dynamic flow of power and authority that is alluded to in the working definition of wirearchy, the working definition of wirearchy includes knowledge, trust, credibility, and a focus on results, each of which you could write a book about. But as general headings, they are what capture what’s in play, I believe. Ross Dawson: Yeah, no, I think absolutely still relevant today. Now, the point I was going to make was around, in complex adaptive systems, a really central concept is emergence— Jon: Yes. Ross Dawson: —where you are not planning or overlaying or dictating a structure; the structure and the value and how that’s created emerges. And to your point, a lot of the key aspect in that world is, how do you create the conditions for emergence of positive outcomes, as opposed to less positive outcomes? And that’s still, of course, arguably at least as much an art as a science, particularly when you’re looking at complex adaptive systems composed of not just many humans, but also AI, which are stochastic in nature. Jon: Yes, well, it’s a very, very good point. I think it relates to the paper I shared with you a couple of days ago about what the author is calling “weaving the web.” There is an enormous amount of human input and activity, combined with the AI, that doesn’t get measured and is not seen in our currently technocratic, generic Taylorist worldview. That’s not seen, not captured, and it arguably is the kind of human input, work, and knowledge that is going to make this whole new era operate fairly well. That’s this notion of exchanges of value. Once that code is cracked, in terms of how to understand it, surface it, see it, measure it, this is going to lead to more and more of what Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is doing with respect to tokenization. There are some people who say tokenization will become the replacement for money in some cases, or even many cases in another, let’s say, 10 years or so. It’s kind of hard to imagine, but if you come back to the paper that you and I first connected on—Alex Imas’s review of the structural changes to the economy—if you can see the logic of his argument, he says there’s going to be a lot more work, but it’s going to be relational economy work, which ties directly into value exchange and surfacing how that exchange of value operates, say, between two people at work, or a group and a person, or two groups, and so on. This notion of value exchange is going to ground a lot of the conceptual and abstract issues that we talk about when we talk about, you know, why is making effective collaboration so hard? Why is it hard to de-silo an organization? All of those kinds of things are going to, I believe, eventually be washed away in this continuous flow of information. So we have to look for new concepts and new ways to measure what’s being created, the value that’s being created. Ross Dawson: Well, that’s—I mean, this is really interesting. As long as you do not recall, in “Living Networks,” I was actually laying out a quite similar thesis around value creation and network structures, and I did quite a bit of work with Verna Allee on value networks. We ran some workshops together, and we’re essentially—a lot as laid out in the paper you described, and as you’re saying now—a lot of it is saying, how do you look at the non-financial or intangible exchanges of value, which sometimes are apparent and sometimes less apparent? There are all sorts of these structures where, as you say, there is an exchange of value. Sometimes it involves money, oftentimes it doesn’t. To understand the landscape, you do need to understand all of these non-financial structures. But are you suggesting that in this tokenization or other structures, there is a way then of being able to, I suppose, capture some of these non-financial values, which does imply there needs to be some kind of measurement, or at least a mutual agreement or assessment on what that value is? Jon: Yes, the paper that I sent you, and the tool that I’m interested in and think is important, is called VEMapper—Value Exchange Mapper—which has some sophisticated capabilities with respect to AI, mainly by calling the main AI engines into the conversation. There’s a process set out whereby, in a dialogue that’s captured both by recording and by typing, there’s a record of a conversation or a dialogue about value exchange. I’ve carried out a few of them. I recommend trying it, because it’s quite remarkable. You really just tell your story, but it surfaces the tacit knowledge often that you’ve put to work in the creation and exchange of the value. The tool is also quite sophisticated today in terms of its databases and other components. Please forgive me, I’m not a technologist, but it creates a data commons. You, as a participant in a value exchange using this tool, your data, your output, is yours and yours alone. You own it. There’s a notion of data ownership and privacy, and as you carry out more and more of this value exchange, the way it’s captured—and again, I don’t really know about this, but I do know about the structure of the semantic web—it captures triplets: subject, predicate, object, which then makes them readable, makes them discoverable in knowledge graphs and other ways. The tool also has a 3D knowledge graph. If you read that paper, it’s really following the logic, the reasoning, and the innovations that were introduced by Vint Cerf long ago in terms of how knowledge would work, whether there would be things like knowbots, which are agents, and so on. So it stores all of this, and then there’s a process whereby you enter into a dialogue. The AI coach helps you clarify, elaborate, and so on, and then you revisit this process. What this does is it builds and scaffolds trust between people and between groups or whomever is working on a problem. Ross Dawson: Back to a broader frame here. So, what you’re describing—this tool or other tools—has been able to, as you state, capture or make visible value exchange in various guises, with the potential to shift to where we are looking and understanding far beyond the exchanges of financial or overt products and services, and so on. But we’re also relating it to Alex Imas’s thesis that we are moving into a relational economy, where the value—what is scarce—is not AI churning away on reasoning; what is scarce is human relation and judgment. In a whole variety of exchange contexts, including in simple conversations or other knowledge exchange, they’ll be able to apply human expertise to people in situations and organizations. So perhaps, if we just marry those two, what do you see might happen if we move into both a relational economy with the potential to surface more of the nature of how value is exchanged? Jon: Wow, that’s quite a question. I think it’s one of those things where there’s likely to be a very large and durable polarity emerge. I think that the polarity is that there will be some people—probably younger, I’m guessing under 45-ish—that will take to the new environment like ducks to water. They’re already living it in many ways. Their work is much more precarious. They operate in networks that are often networks of support and help, and so on. I think the other end of the polarity is that there will be lots of people who are—I sent you another piece about a week ago called “Artificial Intelligence and Sleeping Humans,” which was about the fact that many of us are, whether we like it or not, not all that much awake when we’re walking around every day, particularly after we’ve been working for 10 or 15 or 20 years, and, you know, kids, busy life, and so on. As AI moves through the workplace, different industries, different natures of work, and brings up issues of relation and so on, I think that relational work will always be AI-aided and supported. I think there’s a significant possibility of something emerging that currently I’m calling AI psychosis. I think that it will disturb a lot of people. They’ll try to build habits or create habits, and they’ll be trained for this with organizations with respect to using AI, but I think it will feel very foreign to them. I think there’s been something—you probably have talked about this before somewhere; I seem to remember reading something from you—but there’s been about 25, 30, 40 years of what I’d call atomization and augmentation in the social fabric. I don’t think that the introduction of AI on a widespread basis throughout work and everything is going to help with that atomization very much. So I think that the longer-term, emergent impacts of AI—I don’t think they’re going to be about productivity and efficiency. They’re going to be up a level or two in terms of the discombobulation and ongoing anxiety that are created. That makes sense? Ross Dawson: Yeah, yes, it does. I think most people can relate to what you’re saying. So, you were just saying before we started the podcast, you’ve, in a way, come back to your work. You’ve been reinvigorated by seeing some interesting shifts in the world. So, what are the next years for you? What do you think we should be thinking about? What should we be focusing on? What should we be creating to enable, as much as possible, all of this to go in a positive direction? Jon: Again, a tough question. It’s so hard because these conditions are all swirling around us. But for me, 10 years—10 years, I’ll be in my early 80s. I don’t like to play golf. I like to swim, so I’ll probably still be swimming. I think we’ll see more and more evidence of the relational economy, with respect to wirearchy and my implication. I’m going, in about a week, to Cambridge to start a creative residency there that involves a number of components. I’ll meet people with the Digital Futures Institute at the University of Bristol, some people at Cambridge. What I’m going to be doing with this creative residency is paying attention to and learning about improvisational facilitation. I think what’s going to happen, what I’m seeing happen everywhere, is shifts in what will be brought to work around the integration of AI. I think the evolution of wirearchy, which implies a different kind of leadership and power, will mean there will just be more and more—how do I want to say it? What I’m noticing is that there’s an enormous amount of talk on LinkedIn and other places where people are wondering about similar things to what we’re talking about. They’re emphasizing the ability to listen, the ability to suspend judgment, the ability to allow the time and the space for emergence—a very, very different mindset than the predict, plan, execute, control, linear types of work. This will be more circular. Many of the elements are already there. We’ve already seen in the last 10 years: develop fast, push versions out fast, fail faster—sort of recursive feedback loops. We’ll all be operating in recursive feedback loops, probably forever more. Ross Dawson: That’s actually very central to my own beliefs. Jon: Yeah, and we just—we have to get used to it. There’s an example I like. It’s not specifically apt for this, but I think you’d probably relate to it. Living in Bondi and in Australia, I presume you’ve gone scuba diving more than once in your life. There’s a kind of dive called a drift dive. Do you know what a drift dive is? Ross Dawson: No. Jon: Okay, I participated in one once, and it was really fascinating. At certain places, there are coral reefs where, I guess because of the topography, the current moves past it quite quickly—more quickly than you can swim against or manage yourself in. So if you go on a drift dive, the dive masters take you out, drop you in somewhere. They know how fast the water is moving, they know how much air you have, they know where you’re going to come up, so they meet you when you come up. But while you’re in the drift dive, what you do is essentially drift along the coral reef, watching the reef vertically because you can’t really swim. I learned about that reading a book a long time ago called “The Horizontal Society” by a Yale Law professor. I can find the title and I’ll email it to you. He described that living in our media-saturated environment—and this was a long time ago—was like living in a drift dive. I think we’re all going to be living in a big drift dive for the next forever—well, certainly for the rest of my life. It’s really interesting to think about things in that way. It relates particularly poignantly to my quitting my job as a management consultant, where I learned all of the method with the generic Taylorism. Because if you go back 20 years ago, the assumption—I know you’ve done a lot of strategic planning with companies and organizations—the assumption was that the next thing, the next time, and we get the strategy right, this thing is going to be stable. This is how it’s going to operate. Ross Dawson: Yes, it’s a common fallacy. Jon: Yeah, exactly. That wasn’t the case 20 years ago, and I started realizing it, and it’s much less the case today than it was 10 years ago. So, you know, I guess it’s like, get used to it. Ross Dawson: Yeah. So where can people go to find out more about your work and what you’re doing, Jon? Jon: At the moment, just LinkedIn. I’m going to put up a new site. I keep—another interesting, fascinating little story. I’ll do it quickly. I was over in England about a month ago, and there’s a guy, a friend of mine, whose claim to fame is, I think he built the first website in the UK in 1994. His name is Felix Velarde, and he’s run a number of agencies and is on the board of directors of a number of digital agencies now, as he’s gotten older. When I visited him a couple days later, I said, “Okay, I want to build a new website. I want to develop a new website, and I have some ideas. But Felix, can you point me to—you know a lot of really talented people—to help me design my next website?” He said—we were on a Zoom like this—he said, “Hang on for a sec.” Started typing into Claude a pretty general statement of, “Give my friend Jon Husband—go scrape his website and blah, blah, blah, and give him an idea of what a good website would look like.” Enter. Wow. Wow, just wow. I started playing with it, and I can do all sorts of interesting things. I can take the wirearchy graphic, I can embed that as a semi-opaque in the back. Anyway, just astonished. I don’t have it up yet, but I will have a new website called wirearchy.com in, I don’t know, about a month or so. I’ll try to put up a couple of my key pieces, but it’s mainly just going to be a landing page. I’ve decided that I don’t have any answers for anything, but I have, you know, 40 years of knowledge about watching organizations morph and change. So I’m going to really just offer half-day and one-day master classes. I respond to all sorts of different situations with different methods, done a lot of facilitation. I think facilitators and coaches are going to be very happy in this new era. Coaching is really interesting. From what I’ve used—Claude, you know, a bit as a personal coach, haven’t tried the others—but I’m really impressed with what they’re going to be able to do, or already can do. Where coaching is going to become critical is at the higher levels, the top of the organization, because all of what we’ve been talking about—sensing, listening, allowing for emergence. The phrase I used to replace “command and control” was “champion and channel”: champion ideas, channel resources. See what happens. Does the node light up? Does the node wither? Does the node connect to other nodes, and so on. This is the world where I think we’re going to be living in, and coaches will be operating at the higher levels to help executives—who have typically been hard-charging and with mindsets they learned 20 or 30 or 40 years ago—helping them adapt, which will be critical. Ross Dawson: Absolutely. There are many people who, for a long time, have been following and applying your insights, Jon, so I’m sure they’ll all be glad to get the update from this podcast and also when your website’s back up. Thank you so much, Jon. Jon: Thank you, Ross. The post Jon Husband on wirearchy, web weaving, the relational economy, and drift diving (AC Ep41) appeared first on Humans + AI.

In the Information Age, democracy faces an emerging threat in the form of political polarization. Fortunately, it is not without a solution. Chairman of Special Olympics International and Founder of UNITE, Tim Shriver, sat down with Bret to go over his efforts to turn down the temperature of American politics through the creation of the “Dignity Barometer,” an eight-point scale that aims to help Americans of opposing views work together to solve their problems by giving them an objective way to measure the “dignity” of political rhetoric. This interview first aired on Tuesday, 04/21, on Special Report. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we're chatting to Zeno's Sarah Ogden and Thomas Bunn about its Clarity 2030 report. The report identifies a fundamental shift in the PR sector suggesting we are moving from the "Information Age" (where PR focused on distribution and volume) to the "Intelligence Age" (where PR must focus on strategic counsel and business outcomes).The report suggests PR has a Readiness Gap - in essence it is saying that currently public relations does not possess the skills required for the future this report predicts.This is a study across N America, Europe and Asia.Before we start, do check out our next PR Masterclass: AI in PR. When I put together the speaker lineup for PR Masterclass: AI in PR, I make sure we invite speakers who are actually doing it. Not just talking about it.Check out the full speaker line-up on  https://www.prmasterclasses.com/masterclass/pr-masterclasses-ai-in-prHere is a summary of what PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed with Sarah and Thomas on the PRmoment podcast:What is PR's readiness gap?What are the skills PR people have, and what are the skills the Clarity 3030 report predicts PR people will need? And what are the skills people with therefore no longer need in PR, according to this report?What are your other top 5 findings of the report?In the report it predicted 40% of current people working in PR will leave the sector. What was the justification for that prediction?What were the main geographical differences coming through in the report?How does Clarity 2030 view the evolving role of agencies in the PR ecosystem?Likewise, how does the report predict the role of the in-house team will change?The report suggests AI will automate the tactical 'heavy lifting' by 2030. If the tasks juniors traditionally use to 'cut their teeth' disappear, how does Zeno—and the wider industry—plan to train the next generation of strategic advisors who have never had to do the tactical groundwork?Top FindingsThe Strategic Pivot: By 2030, "Media Relations" will no longer be the primary KPI for top-tier PR. Instead, Strategic Counsel and Reputation Risk Management are cited as the top priorities for business leaders.The Talent Mismatch: There is a significant lag in "Business Acumen." The report finds that while PR pros are excellent at storytelling, they are often unable to speak the "language of the boardroom" (finance, operations, and data analytics).SummaryMeeting discussions analyzed the PR sector readiness gap and the necessity for strategic business advisory evolution.Industry Readiness Gap ChallengesThe PR sector faces a significant readiness gap, with 29% of professionals feeling unprepared for the shift toward strategic advisory roles. High-pressure environments and insufficient investment contribute to projected talent departures.AI Integration and SkillsCommunications teams are pivotally involved in AI adoption, yet lack necessary internal tools. Prioritizing emotional intelligence and creativity remains essential for overcoming the deprioritization of traditional tactical skills.Strategic Evolution of RolesAgencies must transition to providing deep business intelligence while in-house teams adopt strategic growth advisor positions. Training programs require fundamental restructuring to emphasize critical thinking alongside AI literacy for junior talent.

Before the Information Age we find ourselves in, most of us trusted some well-known newsmen who showed up on television each morning or night and informed us what was going on. We believed them. It isn't like that anymore. Everyone has an opinion, and it can easily be broadcast. While that is true of what is going on in the world around us, this episode looks at who we believe about what is going on inside us. Who do you say you are? Let's look together.Thank you for being here; you matter.I am offering sessions on Tuesday mornings. If you want an elder to hold space for you and reflect on your amazingness, sign up on my website. I am always happy to hear from you.You can reach me at terces@tercesengelhart.com, and I will reply. Additionally, if you would like to order my book directly from me, I am happy to send you a signed copy. Please email me, and I'll send it to you. ($15 plus shipping)If you know of anyone who might benefit from listening in, share a link to an episode with them; in other words, be an invitation to join us. Get full access to Terces's Substack at engelhart.substack.com/subscribe

I have long taken an interest in, and even done research on, this idea of “labor-saving technology.” Maybe it is because I had a front-row seat to a lot of the technological transformations that we now pretty much take for granted.  In ninth grade, I had a typing class on fully manual typewriters, the kind where the keys would jam and you had to whack the return bar. Good times. The next year, the school installed PCs for typing class. I also have lived through dot matrix printers, dial-up modems, floppy disks (the actual floppy kind), cable television arriving, cell phones becoming ubiquitous, and a whole host of other “advancements” that promised to make my life easier and better.  I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling it.  Making things more efficient doesn't mean the outputs are higher quality. Rather, they just become more frequent because the actual labor it takes to do an individual thing goes down. However, as nature abhors a vacuum, the reduced time it takes to do one thing is filled by doing other things. Sure it takes a shorter time to get an email than “snail mail.” But imagine if we got as much snail mail as we do email. Only pop culture stars would get that amount of mail, and they have assistants to help them answer we. We have to answer our own emails! What does it all mean? I'm doing more and more, but does that mean I'm more and more successful? I can be in contact with more people, but am I more connected? I can produce more, but am I more productive? I can access the most advanced health care in human history, but am I healthy? These are the contradictions of our time. We were promised one thing, but we are finding ourselves in another place. The present is not as advertised.  And I'm still waiting for the flying cars I was promised growing up.  To tackle these deeper questions, I have Dr. Camille Preston on Experience by Design podcast. Dr. Preston received her PhD in Psychology at the University of Virginia, for which her work on policing domestic violence received the APA International Best Dissertation Award. That work led to a broader interest in trauma, grief, growth, and recovery.  Today as Founder and CEO of AIM Leadership, she is an executive coach to senior leaders in major companies, a well-traveled keynote speaker, faculty member, advisor, and author. Her works include three books, “Living Real: Redefining Success, Presence, and Happiness,” “Rewired: How to Work Smarter, Live Better, and Be Purposefully Productive in an Overwired World,” and “Create More Flow: Igniting Peak Performance in an Overwired World.” We talk about how there is a tendency to avoid difficult conversation and suppress trauma, which impacts all aspects of our lives (including being effective leaders). She discusses the challenges of building authentic connections in this technological era. As a result, organizations need to create places where people can build relationships through simple conversations and shared activities.  Camille talks about moving from the “Information Age” and into the “Wisdom Age,” where individual AI will disrupt traditional sources of power and expertise. Finally we discuss her work as a “Business Doula,” helping individuals and organizations navigate transitions and giving birth to new possibilities. After all, times of uncertainty create tremendous potential for growth. All we have to do is to start embracing the “woo.”  Dr. Camille Preston: https://www.camillepreston.com/ Camille Preston LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camillepreston/ “Rewired: How to Work Smarter, Live Better, and Be Purposefully Productive in an Overwired World”: https://www.amazon.com/Rewired-Smarter-Purposefully-Productive-Overwired/dp/0984904107 “Living Real: Redefining Success, Presence, and Happiness”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F7T38495 “Create More Flow: Igniting Peak Performance in an Overwired World”:  https://www.amazon.com/Create-More-Flow-Performance-Overwired/dp/0984904115

In this episode of Targeted Oncology's Treating Together podcast, Dr Pallav Mehta sits down with Dr Sanjay Juneja, aka The Onc Doc, a medical oncologist known for his social media presence and his work in medical informatics. The duo explores how the landscape of cancer care is shifting from a "paucity of information" to a challenge of "information overload," and how technology can bridge the gap between clinical expertise and patient understanding.The Rise of the "Social" OncologistDr Juneja shares his transition from creating "theatrical" social media content to using his platform for democratizing medical information. Myth Busting: He initially focused on debunking cancer myths and explaining complex topics like vaccines and blood clots in digestible ways. Broad Reach: With millions of downloads across 110 countries, his content reaches a primary demographic of 40- to 45-year-olds who are often navigating cancer journeys for themselves or loved ones. The Power of Evergreen Content: Dr Juneja advocates for using video as a "digital smart phrase" to reinforce complex explanations (like receptor status or chemotherapy side effects) that patients may not fully absorb during a brief 15-minute clinic visit. AI and the Evolution of ExpertiseThe conversation highlights how AI is redefining what it means to be a medical expert. Pattern Recognition: Modern expertise is moving away from purely anecdotal experience toward the ability to leverage massive volumes of aggregate data and longitudinal outcomes through AI. Personalized Navigation: Large language models (LLMs) are beginning to integrate with medical records, potentially acting as "agents" that help patients filter online information to see if it specifically applies to their unique diagnosis. Digital Twins and Avatars: For physicians uncomfortable on camera, Dr Juneja discusses the potential for AI-generated avatars to deliver standardized, high-quality medical explanations to patients. Bridging the Gaps in CareBoth doctors emphasize the limitations of the current "point-to-point" interaction model and the need for continuous monitoring. Virtual Care Benefits: Remote care and wearable devices allow for the tracking of subtle, grade 1 toxicities that might otherwise be missed between monthly visits. The Emotional Quotient: While AI handles data, Dr Juneja argues that "emotion" and "quantified suffering" remain the unique domain of the human physician, helping patients navigate the regret and "gut feelings" associated with difficult treatment decisions. Trusting Intuition: Dr Juneja concludes by encouraging patients to act on their gut feelings and ask questions without fear of offending providers, noting that this is the best hedge against future regret.

In this episode of Long Blue Leadership, Joel “Thor” Neeb '99 explains this simple framework. “Yes” builds experience. “No” protects focus and time. SUMMARY In this episode of Long Blue Leadership, Joel Neeb '99 explains this simple framework. Yes builds experience. No protects focus and time. Leadership is knowing when to shift.   SHARE THIS EPISODE LINKEDIN  |  FACEBOOK   JOEL'S TOP 10 LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS 1. Time is your most finite — and most misused — resource. Facing mortality created instant clarity: Stop letting others waste your time. You must actively protect time to focus on what matters most. 2. Regret comes from inaction — not failure. Neeb didn't regret failures — he regretted not trying things that were uncomfortable. Leadership growth = bias toward action in uncertainty. 3. Imposter syndrome + growth mindset = a leadership superpower — “I don't belong here… yet” paired with effort fuels growth. Elite teams are full of people quietly thinking the same thing — and pushing forward anyway. 4. Reinvention is not optional — it's continuous. You don't “transition” to a new role — you start over from scratch. The best leaders willingly become beginners again. 5. Comfort is the enemy of growth. When things become easy, growth stops. Leaders must intentionally seek discomfort, not avoid it. 6. Elite teams + inspiring mission = peak human performance The most meaningful work comes from: Being on a team where you feel you must earn your place and pursuing a mission bigger than yourself. This combination drives purpose and performance. 7. Say yes early in life, say no later in life. Under 35: Say yes to everything → build capability through exposure. Over 35: Say no to almost everything that doesn't align with your goals → protect focus. Leadership maturity = ruthless prioritization. 8. The future belongs to those who disrupt themselves first. AI (and any disruption) rewards those who move early. “Stay slightly ahead of the rate of change” = competitive advantage. 9. AI should be a thought partner in everything; not a replacement but an accelerator. Leaders who integrate AI into daily workflows will move exponentially faster. 10. Think in five-year transformations, not three-month wins. People overestimate short-term output and underestimate long-term transformation. Leadership requires a bold long-term vision and daily actions from that vision.   CHAPTERS 00:00:00 — Introduction: From Fighter Pilot to CEO-Level Leadership 00:00:49 — Stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis: The Moment That Changed Everything 00:03:48 — Clarity on Time, Regret, and What Truly Matters 00:07:02 — Reinventing Yourself: Leaving the Military & Starting Over 00:10:04 — Growth Mindset, Imposter Syndrome & Elite Teams 00:13:38 — Learning the Language of Business 00:17:14 — AI Is Disrupting Everything: What Leaders Must Know 00:22:46 — Using AI as a Thought Partner to Move Faster 00:24:58 — Say Yes Early, Say No Later: Mastering Your Time 00:35:06 — Big Goals, Long-Term Thinking & Final Leadership Lessons 00:37:22 — Joel's Big Audacious Goal: Leading Through AI Disruption 00:42:47 — Using AI to Learn Faster (Even While Working Out) 00:48:14 — Closing Thoughts and Key Takeaways   ABOUT JOEL BIO Joel "Thor" Neeb '99 is a recognized business leader in the software-as-a-service (SAAS) industry. He most recently served as vice president of execution and transformation at VMware, where he led a cultural and operating model transformation for the 40,000-person company as well as helped launch VMware's AI roadmap and strategy. Prior to VMware, he served as chief executive officer at Afterburner Inc., where he led more than 100 elite professionals, including former fighter pilots, Navy SEALs, and Army Rangers, in helping global organizations achieve breakthrough performance. Neeb is a former United States Air Force F-15 mission commander. He was the tactical leader of 300 of the most senior combat pilots in the U.S. Air Force and oversaw the execution of a $150-million-per-year flight program.   CONNECT WITH JOEL LINKEDIN  |  8x8   CONNECT WITH THE LONG BLUE LINE PODCAST NETWORK TEAM Ted Robertson | Producer and Editor:  Ted.Robertson@USAFA.org Send your feedback or nominate a guest: socialmedia@usafa.org   Ryan Hall | Director:  Ryan.Hall@USAFA.org  Bryan Grossman | Copy Editor:  Bryan.Grossman@USAFA.org Wyatt Hornsby | Executive Producer:  Wyatt.Hornsby@USAFA.org     ALL PAST LBL EPISODES  |  ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS     FULL TRANSCRIPT SPEAKERS: Guest, Joel "Thor" Neeb '99 | Host, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz '99   Col. Naviere Walkewicz 0:11 Joel, my friend, welcome to Long Blue Leadership.   Joel Neeb 0:13 Thank you very much. So glad to chat with you.   Col. Naviere Walkewicz 0:15 Oh gosh. Well, we are excited for this. It's going to be just a filled conversation of incredible insights, and you have so much to share. And I think what's really special about this is how we're going to touch into AI, because it is relevant, and it's everywhere now, but I actually want to dial it back first to a very specific moment in time, and it's probably an area that has really transformed your life, right? So you went through stage 4 cancer. I mean, not many people can say that they have gone through that and survived it, and I think it also really impacted others in your family. Can you just share a little bit about your story? Joel Neeb 0:49 Yeah, so back in 2010 I was flying, on top of the world. I was going through the interview process for the Air Force Thunderbirds, and I found out, out of nowhere, that I had a stage 4 cancer diagnosis. So within just a couple of weeks, I went from feeling like I was at the peak of good health to now being told that I had about 18 months to live and a 15% chance to live five years. And those would be a pretty gruesome five years if I did make it that far. And so that was the new reality that I had to contend with. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 1:19 I can't even imagine that. I mean, just… Was there some kind of indication, like, you went in and you were checked up and they found this? I mean, it just wow, just boom. Joel Neeb 1:30 You know, it's funny. I actually have to credit the flying role with most likely diagnosing and solving this for me early. Because when I would fly and I'd have my G suit on my abdomen, it would inflate against me when I pulled Gs, and it was a pain that I was experienced on the right side of my abdomen that right around my appendix. On a scale of one to 10, it was like a two. So nothing big, but big enough that when I went and saw the flight surgeon for my annual physical, I mentioned it, and I said, I'm sure it's nothing, but they did the right thing, and did some quick tests and ultrasound on that area and some MRI work, and they were able to very quickly determine that a big tumor grown in that spot. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 2:09 Wow. Well, I guess right there, just a lesson off the bat is listen to your body. You know your body, and if something doesn't feel right, seem right, you know, say something and get it checked out.   Joel Neeb 2:18 That's exactly right.   Col. Naviere Walkewicz 2:19 Oh, my goodness. OK, so you got that diagnosis. You're sitting there with that information. How do you process that? What is the conversation with your wife, you know, what's the next step when you're given some kind of timeline like that? Joel Neeb 2:34 Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I would have thought having gone through like fighter pilot training and even the Air Force Academy, and, you know, all the things that build resilience in life, that I would have felt more prepared for that moment. In other words, that I would have felt more prepared than the average individual. But I did not. I felt, I felt very much like I was in a catastrophe from which I couldn't see how to get through the day to day activities. I was a zombie around the house and it really relied on my wife and my family stepping in to help me. And so for a good couple months, it's was just kind of inconsolable and, you know, I always like to say it was, I would wake up and go through my day very, very tired because I didn't sleep the night before. And then I go to bed staring at the ceiling fan spinning, trying to figure out, you know, any options that I would have to extend my life for my kids to remember me a little bit. I had a 1- and a 3-year-old and so I went through life for a couple of months just a zombie and doing very poorly. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 3:38 So what changed in that couple of months that, I guess, changed the trajectory of how you looked at things, or how you approached her, or what happened? Joel Neeb 3:48 Yeah, you know, there's a great quote that I repeat a lot, which I think makes a lot of sense, which is “the dying have the most to teach us about life.” And what it really means is that when you're faced with these types of struggles, that all of a sudden, whether you're 80 or 33 like I was, you get a certain amount of clarity right in that moment and it's good for eliminating the rest of the noise in your life and identifying what's most important and what should have been most important all along. And that comes through and is in the forefront is it was fascinating to me that the moment I got the diagnosis, immediately I was mad at myself for spending any extra time at work, like it was like a light switch in my head went off and said, like, “You shouldn't have stayed that extra hour at work just to watch the clock turn. You were done with your job there.” I had a boss at the time that I was a huge fan of and he was a clock watcher, and wanted just to be in there to fill up time. And my mind immediately went to “now my finite resource is time, and I've been wasting it.” And I remember vowing that I'll never waste my time again, and I've been very disciplined against letting anybody steal time from me from that point forward; that was one of the key things I took away. And then looking back in my life, there were things I regretted, things that I celebrated and that I was proud of, and also considered what I would do differently if I was given a second chance. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 5:05 So, you know, you wrote a book called Survivor's Obligation. I'm curious about this journey, though, because obviously you beat it 15 years later, you're here. So, you know, you beat the odds of the 18 months. What was that like when you still had to provide for your family? You know, you were still working like, what was that journey like? Joel Neeb 5:25 Yeah, first of all, I have to credit the Air Force with showing up in a huge way. At that time, I was watching other people in the civilian sector who were undergoing cancer struggles, and they had a much more difficult time than I did. The Air Force had stepped in and was making meals around the clock for my family. I didn't have to show up to work. I you know, they afforded me every opportunity to get better and I really credit the Air Force family with getting me through that period of time, in ways I just certainly would not have been able to get through on my own, and in terms of, like how I looked at my life as I was thinking about the things I was proud of and the things I regretted. The things that I was proud of I was a little surprised by, and the things I regretted I was surprised by. I didn't regret my failures, of which there were many. I didn't regret them, because what I actually regretted were those times that I didn't try, where there's times where I didn't make the effort into doing something new that was a little bit scary, that would have put me outside of my comfort zone, and maybe would have challenged my ego a little bit. And now the end of my life was here, and I'd never have a chance to do anything else. You know, my story was complete. And I said, you know, really angry at that. Had I gotten a second chance, I would do things very differently. I love being a fighter pilot, but I would have preferred it to have been a chapter in my life, not the entire book. I would have tried to go to the business world and done all these things, and when I did get that second chance, and basically, God called my bluff and said, “All right, let's see if you actually follow through with this.” Then, of course, I had to hold myself accountable to living differently in that next chapter.  Col. Naviere Walkewicz 7:02 So that's what you're doing now. You're living in this next chapter. And so, I mean, I think there's a transition out of the military. Obviously, you retired as a lieutenant colonel. And so talk us a little bit about in this moment of what you're going to do if given a second chance. Let's talk about what some of those things that you took a chance on, maybe in the business world first. Joel Neeb 7:24 Sure. So our mutual friend, Kovacic, he says, “I'm in the middle of my Texas Longhorn MBA right now. It's amazing. It's just down the street from you.” He knew — he was following my cancer struggle closely. And he said, “Look, you're two years into this journey. Who knows what the future holds?” But I talked to him about wanting to be in the business sector and trying something new. And he said, “If you're serious about that, you should join the MBA program.” And so that's what I did. I went and joined the MBA program and had a blast being the dumbest guy in the room, by far, in business school. At the same time, it almost reminded me of being a fighter pilot again, or at least the early days of being a fighter pilot, because it was a little bit of a combination of terror and exhilaration, which is really what I loved about being a fighter pilot. That first time you go upside down by yourself and in pilot training and you prove to yourself you can do it, you're a little bit terrified, but fully exhilarated, and knowing that this is exactly what you should be doing. At the same time, I had that same sentiment as I'm sitting in business school classes, as I'm trying to keep up with the conversation there, and you say, “Well, you know that's so different from flying a plane, how are you getting the same joy out of it?” And it's really because where I landed with, you know, what did I value most in life. It came down to the times when I was on an elite team with an inspiring mission, an elite team, meaning I felt like I didn't deserve that spot there. And the little secret was, everybody on the elite team didn't feel like they deserve that spot there. But boy, are they going to try to earn it. And then that inspiring mission that we're pursuing, whether it was our time at the Air Force Academy, I always felt like I didn't deserve to be there. I felt like that was an incredibly elite team with an inspiring mission. Felt the same way about being a fighter pilot. Had a healthy dose of imposter syndrome going through all of this, but I've learned to believe that that's a bit of a superpower, in a sense, because if you have imposter syndrome coupled with a growth mindset, which means I don't belong here today, but I can sure earn the right if I try hard. I think that helps us to really realize the full potential of our lives. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 9:26 Really well said. And I think that actually kind of helps us see how you're able to make that transition. I want to go back to the fact, — first off, Kope is amazing. I love that he, you know — it talks about the Long Blue Line and our networks from the Air Force Academy. They really are for life. And I think, you know, you just, kind of just showed that you applied and you participated in this MBA program when you're in your mid-30s. Then can you talk about that a little bit? I think there's an interest in, “Oh, if I didn't do this in my 20s, it's too late.” Can you talk about that transition in, you know, your mid-30s, and do you think that was the right time? Can people do it later in their life, etc? Joel Neeb 10:04 So I would say you certainly can do it at any point in life. You can recreate yourself at any point. A lot of — gonna go totally off topic, but a lot of longevity science is saying that the first person to live to be 150 is alive today, meaning we're all going to see a lot more healthy years hopefully in our lives than ever before. So that should mean that all of us should pursue multiple chapters, and there's certainly not a point in life where we're done reinventing ourselves. But the key is the word “reinventing.” And I was at a point in my career where, at 33 years old, I was very, very comfortable flying. I was very, very comfortable doing air shows and flybys and leading missions and signing autographs. And so my identity was a lot of ego and not a lot of growth, meaning it felt good to be told how great I was at doing a certain skill set, but it wasn't that hard to do anymore. It becomes rote, and I wasn't growing at this point. In order to go into the business world, I had to completely reinvent myself. And I like to tell people that are transitioning out of the military, as difficult as it was to do the first thing, whether that's be a fighter pilot or an intel officer, or how you had to reinvent yourself at 23 years old — that's just as challenging as it's going to be. You have to sign up again for the B course, as we call it, as fighter pilots. The thing that introduces you to being a fighter pilot and realize that you're devoting that much effort to reinvent yourself. And people would push back and say, “Yeah, but you've already led in these environments. You have all of these things that should carry over. Wouldn't it be easier for you just to make a transition and less of that initiation energy that's required to start this new thing?” The answer is no, you literally have to start it over, as if you're 25 years old. You got to eat a lot of humble pie and realize you're not special in this environment. But the good news is, you can become special very quickly if you're willing to reinvent yourself now — you bring perspective that nobody else can carry. Nobody else knows how to navigate high stakes, life-or-death environments like we've learned in the military. Nobody shows up with the processes that we've learned through checklists and through cultural training, all the things that maybe we didn't even aware that we're seeing. As soon as you see the opposite in the business world and you realize, well, we don't have that great of a culture here. We had a great one in the military. That's a huge resource that you can bring into that environment, but only after you've completely reinvented yourself and translated your skill set into something that's meaningful for that business setting. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 12:28 So Joel, that's fascinating, because what you're saying is you're almost stripping yourself of all these experiences to really open up your aperture for what's new. And I'm curious if this was a way you came into that? Sid you go in with your eyes wide open with that plan, or did you learn this about yourself? Joel Neeb 12:47 I came into it arrogantly. I went into these conversations thinking, “Wait till they see how much I have to offer. I've been in very complex scenarios. I've led my way out of them. I have all these awards for being a good leader and a good instructor, and so just wait until they see what I've got to offer.” And that's why business school helped me out a lot, because in a sandbox setting that really didn't have consequences, I got to participate in conversations and learn very quickly I didn't know what they were talking about and that they were — they had an understanding around business already that I didn't have. I didn't understand the language, and I needed to really reeducate myself to become ready in this moment. And so there were moments in that period where I would have done very differently in approaching that next transition, had I known how far I had to go to really having something to offer the business sector. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 13:38 Was there a moment during that time when you were getting your MBA that, in a way that cancer startled you as a life-or-death situation, and you changed your you know — “If I'm given a second chance.” Was there a moment in the business, you know, getting your MBA where you like, really, like, linked into like, this is what I'm going to be doing. It was so clear to you the next move in this, in this journey. Joel Neeb 14:04 Yeah, I say that. I mean, there's one that stands out that really showed how little I understood the business world. So they're talking about pipeline in this conversation at my MBA school, and they said, “You know, we need to improve pipeline. We're working on getting better pipeline for our needs.” And I'm listening to this thinking, “What are they talking about? Is this like an oil pipeline? Is this pipe plumbing? What do they mean?” And for those in the business sector, of course, you understand. They're talking about a sales pipeline. A sales pipeline is a sales funnel that shows that the leads that turns into the sales and the conversion rate and all the things that that, of course, I know intimately well. Now, at that point, it showed me that there's an entire language I just haven't been exposed to, because I'd been talking about missiles and G forces and airplanes for so long that it didn't matter how much experience I was bringing to the table. There was a language I didn't understand. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 14:50 I think that is really, really thoughtful in how you showed that, because then it helped you probably in navigating when you're leading, you know, other teams that have different experiences coming to the table. So when you learn that language, and I want to talk a little bit about, you know, CEO of Afterburner, let's just talk about your role in the civilian sector, your multiple roles, I'd love for you to share a couple of stories where you've grown as a leader and where you've continued to learn things about yourself in that space. Joel Neeb 15:22 Yeah, so at Afterburner, what we end up doing at Afterburner, more often than not, was leading in keynotes, doing workshops for training, and what we would show them is how you can leverage the things that we learned in the military on the elite teams that we participated in, whether that's Green Beret, fighter pilot, Navy SEAL — we hired all those backgrounds, and, of course, look for teams that had a business degree on top of that. What we ended up doing was getting on stage in front of these folks and sometimes talking to 10,000 people. So I've done presentations in front of 10,000 people in my past. And what I was surprised by — thinking about the learning opportunities and where the growth came from — is that even after having done 3,000 briefings, you know, in a fighter pilot setting, and getting in front of the red flag team in Nellis and doing a presentation there, I would be behind the scenes at some of these huge presentations, and I would get incredible stage fright, I guess is the only way to say it. Butterflies. I would feel like I was going to pass out. And the reason I share this is because I was frustrated that it didn't translate better to this new thing that I was looking to do with public speaking. Now I'm talking for an hour, and I had to be engaging and comical at times, and, you know, bringing the audience into it. I say that because, once again, I was finding that that combination of terror and exhilaration and proving to myself that I could do it, and I had a new place that I needed to grow into for that now, I've done this enough times where my heart rate doesn't go up a beat when I do this at this point, but that's after doing thousands of presentations and I think the key takeaway for me was our growth is never over with, and it's growth that really feels good, and so leaning into those areas of discomfort has been something that's been really important to me my entire life, particularly after cancer. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 17:06 So what is growing you now? What is new for you that you are pursuing in your personal growth and development? Joel Neeb 17:14 Yeah, so it was new for me now is what's new for society, this next era with AI. AI is going to disrupt every one of our lives. And just as aggressively as AI disrupted my life with cancer, or, excuse me, as cancer disrupted my life, or even becoming a fighter pilot or joining business school disrupted my life, we see the same thing take place on a personal and professional level because of just how powerful this new technology is. And if you're sitting there wondering, “It hallucinates still, and I don't really buy it, and we'll see where this ends up,” I'm here to tell you, as somebody who's at the bleeding edge of AI that's going to transform every single thing we do in very good ways, but also disrupt the way you think you add value today, and the way you think that you know we should participate on teams right now. And so that's it's going to disrupt everything. And so I'm looking to constantly reinvent myself in the context of this next era. And I'm also looking to lead our 2,400-person company at 8x8 on that same journey, so that we can disrupt ourselves before we're disrupted. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 18:14 So what does that look like right now? Share something maybe that is on the leading edge of that, you know, that forefront of being disruptive before you're disrupted in your organization. Joel Neeb 18:27 Yeah, so for us, it's making this new technology as accessible as possible so that we can break down the barriers for using it and realizing that, much like in the '90s, we went from only a small technical portion of the company that was using computers, then expanded to, of course, everyone in the company is using a computer on every desk. But that wasn't always like that in the late '80s and early '90s; that was just reserved for a very technical portion of the group. Now that expanded. Of course, everyone's on the net. You wouldn't dream of trying to get a job without being internet savvy and having computer skills. We're going to see the same thing take place with AI and so, and I don't just mean using AI. I mean using AI to code, using AI to build things, and it's not just going to be reserved for that technical component of the company anymore. And so what that looks like for us: We conduct a weekly session where we talk about the use cases from the previous week on a personal and a professional level. Why is that important? Because now we're breaking down that barrier. So last week, I'll give you an example. We had somebody whose father passed a couple months ago, and this person had he lives in the UK. He's from Africa. His father had never met his son, so this person's grandson, his father's grandson, he'd never met. And by using AI at his funeral, he was able to take their images and create a moment where they came together and hugged and picked up the grandson and played this really touching video for the rest of the people there to share in that moment that never really happened, of course, but was able to celebrate this person's life and that connection through the grandson. And it was just a really I mean, they were people that were getting emotional, talking about it, listening to the story. And then we have somebody else say, I had my basement flood, and I took pictures of it, and I used AI to imagine how we would have to renovate it and build it back better. And somebody else says I successfully used AI to combat the tax increase on my house, because I came up with good comparables around the area and a good way to beat it. By the way, it's a really good one to use, if you have…    Col. Naviere Walkewicz 20:32 A mental note right there.    Joel Neeb 20:33 Exactly. So we're lowering the barriers on a personal level. So then when I tell you on a professional level, here are my expectations for how you'll bring AI to the table to accelerate the things you're already doing, the teams are ready to do that, and that's been a really important aspect of this journey. Naviere Walkewicz 20:50 Is it important for an organization to already have a culture that is open to — I think what you know is you're going to get a bunch of different perspectives. You're going to get a, you know, maybe thinking outside the box that you wouldn't have thought of. So would you say that the organization was ready for that? Or have you had to create that culture along the way? Joel Neeb 21:11 Yeah, I'd say, you know, change is hard. Nobody likes change. We like being through change. And so one of the things that growth provides an opportunity to change for the better, but it's always start to get that activation energy to really pursue change. And so what we had to teach the culture at 8x8 is to not be change weary, but to be change ready, and to understand that in this era, our ability to stay a couple months ahead of the rate of change will be a superpower the likes of which no one can compete with us. Meaning as difficult as it is to pursue this change and to continue reinventing yourself — and when I say revenge up, I mean if you're doing the same thing today in six months, then you're gonna be passed by — literally changing that fast. And we're seeing that inside of our company. And so the new constant will be changed. The new constant will be disruption. And the faster we get comfortable with that, and the faster we realize that if we disrupt ourselves a little bit faster than the competition, that's a superpower, but we're already enjoying it internally within 8x8, but it's because we've forced ourselves to get a little bit ahead. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 22:15 that's really interesting. And I imagine, would you say that it takes, you know, when you are in this transformation mode, because this is what you're taking your organization through, you know, how are you coaching as a leader? How are you — maybe it's through the repetition of trying it in their personal life. But you know, what are you sharing from a leadership perspective that's helping them think that way constantly, right? I mean, it's different from, “OK, I'm going to do this today and…” But how are they constantly ingraining that in themselves? And how are you leading that?   Joel Neeb 22:46 Yeah, a couple of ways. One, we're saying that AI should be a thought partner in everything that we do, maybe not a thought leader, meaning, I'm not going to hand off a decision or an activity to AI, per se, but literally in everything that we do. So I'll give you a quick example in your role. So you're doing podcasts, and these are amazing. And by the way, you're poised, and I'm not surprised after knowing you at the Academy, because you were very polished then. But this is incredible. You did a phenomenal job with this. But let's say that you want to get some feedback after this session. You can take this transcript, upload it to AI, and you would say, “Give me the key themes from this session that we discussed.” You could say, “Create emails that will be enticing and send them out to the entire team based on this transcript that we have for this conversation.” You could say, “Create new episodes and new questions for the next 10 guests that will continue to weave a red thread of common questions and common themes throughout all these.” Where I'm going with this is when you consider how to use AI as a thought partner in everything that you're doing, you can go 100 times faster on the key things that we want to accomplish. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 23:52 I believe that wholeheartedly. And just a little side story, I'm coaching my son's fifth grade basketball team. Never coached basketball before, and he's going to be middle school next year, so it's the one and only year. But I used ChatGPT to build out my coaching plan, and we are — we only lost our first game and we've been undefeated since so I'm going to hand it off to my ChatGPT coaching partner.   Joel Neeb 24:13 That's amazing. That's a great story. See, that would be one we'd love to hear at our session that we do every week around how accessible AI is. Because people hear that and they say,” I can do that too. I want to bring that to my kids game.” The more we use it every single day, the better prepared we're going to be for the big changes that are coming. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 24:27 Excellent. So Joel, I want to dig into your personal life a little bit, because you have such a fascinating way of — I mean, you make everyone feel that the moment that they're spending with you is 100% theirs. But I know in the background — and your time is important, you talked about that — but I know in the background, you are doing so many things. You've got your family is a key pillar. You know, your health and fitness is a key pillar. You're traveling all the time. As a leader. You know, how are you navigating all of that and doing it so well? Joel Neeb 24:58 Well, first of all, I appreciate the sentiment. I certainly don't feel like I'm always doing it well, but I'll tell you my philosophy and how I mentor people that are that are pursuing a path to their dreams, and whatever that dream might look like, is the following. I tell them, “If you're younger than 35 years old, you need to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way.” What do I mean by that? When the boss asks you if you're able to give a big sales presentation, even though the voice in the back of your head says you're not ready for this — “I don't think you you're gonna do well,” the answer is yes. You prepare yourself, you go out there, you embarrass yourself, you do it better next time. And that's how you learn through that process. When they ask you if you're ready to go lead this mission, your answer is yes. You're gonna figure it out. You're gonna do everything behind the scenes to make sure that you're successful. And you're going to push yourself into that discomfort zone and ensure that you're leaning into all of those opportunities as aggressively as you can. Why? Because it's exposure to all of those areas of discomfort that really owns the discipline for us to perform in this positive way when you get to those areas now. When you're after 35 years old, the main advice that I give to people is that you're flipping the script. You are no longer going to say yes to everything you're asked. You're going to aggressively say no to everything you're asked unless it aligns to your key things that you want to pursue in life. So you're completely looking at it in a different direction. I've said yes to everything for the first half of my life. Now I'm saying no to everything in the second half. Why? Because it's the distractions that stop us from doing the big things in life. Once we pass about 35 years old, the better you are at saying no to things, the freer your time will be to say yes to the most important things. So while it looks like I'm juggling a lot of things, to your point, I'm aggressively saying no to everything else that doesn't align with a few things that I have really focused my time on. Naviere Walkewicz 26:52 So let's pull that thread a little bit more, because saying no is uncomfortable, and it may feel to some that they are letting others down. How do you or how might you coach them through telling someone no? Joel Neeb 27:09 Yeah, I would say that I don't have that problem. I probably did, and certainly prior to cancer, I would have. I am at the place now after I've learned how short all of our lives are, not just my life because I had a cancer battle. And the big surprise for me was not that I might die in 18 months, it was that I was going to die at all. Because for all of us, that notion of death is so far away and really something that we don't really come face to face with very often in life, that all of a sudden I had to accept the fact that I was going to die someday, and I better make good use of the time between now and then. So when people ask to have my time, I aggressively say no. I never feel bad about it. And then I also introduce gatekeepers to my time on top of that. So I don't even — most of the time you're working with my executive assistant, most of the time you're gonna be working with somebody on my team, and that's because I want to jealously guard my time at this stage so I can be as incredibly impactful on the few things that I want to do as possible. That desire dwarfs any emotional attachment I would have to say no to somebody else that long time. It doesn't even cross my mind to think twice about it. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 28:25 I think that's a great lesson right there. I mean, I think if you actually put time as the, you know, main, the thing you're protecting, right, everything else on to your point, it dwarfs behind that. And I think the way you did that, you actually made it very doable for people to say no, because now you've created gatekeepers, you put some stops in there. And I think that's a lesson that people can take away as they're looking to navigate their journey forward. So thank you for sharing that for sure. So, you know, you wrote two books, I'm sure there's probably more. Is that something you've always wanted to do, or has that been a realization of “I've experienced this, and there's a — I need to share this. Like, what was the impetus behind writing books on your experiences? Joel Neeb 29:09 Yeah, great question. Very different reason I wrote both books. So the first book was born out of this feeling that as I was going through cancer, that clarity that I experienced: The dying-have-the-most-to-teach-us-about-life piece of it, I came back to the sense that, wow, I wish I knew this before I had cancer, I would have lived my life very differently, and I had made a deal with God that, you know, if I do make it through this, I want to share these insights and share what you know, my perspective was from being on this precipice with death and what I take away from it, because I did think it was valuable enough for my life to share with others in my immediate vicinity and then to write it in a book. And I just needed to get that out of me. The second one for the insight age is much more around what is the template that I wanted to pursue within companies to help take them from the Information Age where we have universal access to information, to the Insight Age, where we now have universal access to AI-driven insights, and how you prepare for that. I wanted people to have the template for it and understanding about how I approached it before I showed up so that we could all be on the same sheet of music when I led the transformation. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 30:15 OK, that's really helpful. So as we think about AI in business, and, you know, having a template for that, can we talk a little bit? And we went to the Air Force Academy, and so I, gosh, I can't even imagine how I might have been a better student had we had AI back in the day. But how do you see AI disrupting? You know, our service academy cadets are, you know, anyone going through, you know, degree programs, you know, how do you use it where there's still original thought, but obviously it's, there's a thought partner that is helping you and maybe accelerate that. I mean, how is that working? Joel Neeb 30:49 It's the same shift that you and I both experienced with universal access to information in the Information Age. And so in other words, there was a time where you had to memorize every phone number that you would call in your network, right? I mean, I sat down — we went to a high school reunion recently and we all sat down and we're trying to rattle off the phone numbers across the table. And we got most of them out there, still lingering in our head somewhere, these memorized phone numbers for everybody. I couldn't tell you, like, my kids phone numbers at this point, like, because I'd push a button and I just get it. And where I'm going with that is we're now in an era where memorization of rote facts and phone numbers and just facts that you can find in the internet is no longer required, and we're used to that, right? And so I wouldn't say that we think less. I would say we think a lot more. At this era there's a risk right now of saying, “I'm no longer going to be required to do critical thinking, because AI is going to do some of that for me.” And the answer is, it will. But much like I got a calculator for every GR that I got to go to — I did a math minor at the Academy…    Col. Naviere Walkwicz 31:54 That's why I didn't see you in any classes.     Joel Neeb 31:59 I brought a calculator to every test, but it certainly didn't make it easier. If anything, it made it harder. I would have had an easier time like writing down calculations and just having to do the arithmetic. Because I had something that did the arithmetic for me, it elevated my thought process and made me more responsible for the critical thinking. You're going to see the same thing with AI. So as you think about it, how AI will disrupt a knowledge institution like the Air Force Academy. At first blush, we would think, well, it's just going to make it easier to cheat. It's going to make it easier to do the things that we're doing today. Yes, it does, just like if I only was doing arithmetic, a calculator makes it easier for me to do that, and I can turn my brain off. But as we all know, it's just going to elevate the threshold for what is required of us, right? So we're going to go in right, we're going to go into this next era with a thought partner on everything that we do, but you still have to guide that thought partner. You still have to point it in the right direction. You have to ask it the right questions. This era is going to be much less about having the right answers and much more about asking the right questions to find success.   Col. Naviere Walkwicz 32:59 Which is critical thinking at its finest, honestly. Fascinating. So, you know, Joel, I think about you and, you know, when I see the, like, the things that you're doing, American Ninja Warrior, your family is involved in this. How do you see, you know, how do you bring your family into the vision that you have it with the growth mindset? Do you see that that's how your family is? All the children are raised that way your wife is. I mean, is this the way that the Neeb household kind of operates? And has it always been this way, or has it really been since you kind of came to that realization that life is too precious for me to live otherwise? Joel Neeb 33:35 Yeah, I mean, I try to live the philosophy that I want my family to live as well. And it's not the Joel show, meaning this is not just for them to support me and go cheer in the crowd at American Ninja Warrior. My wife has gone on and done physique competitions like you have as well. Col. Naviere Walkwicz 33:49 She's amazing. Your whole family's amazing. Joel Neeb 33:53 And she's a regional board member for a group called YPO. So she's in charge of 3,000 CEOs and a network for that. And then she just did a presentation to Europe yesterday on AI herself, and she's going to be traveling to Europe next month to do the presentation in a live setting. And so where I'm going with this is, I feel like because of my cancer battle, because of what we've experienced as a family, and we've learned how precious our time was and how incredible it is to experience that combination of terror and exhilaration, all of us lean into those moments, and we don't do it perfectly, and we all get mad at traffic, and we all are lazy once in a while, and, you know, myself included, but more, we try to do a little bit extra step into that direction, because it has been such a fun way to live after having the scare that we had as a family. Col. Naviere Walkwicz 34:43 That makes sense, and I can really see your family embracing that. You know, I want to ask you a question about yourself and what you're doing on a daily basis to be better, and it sounds like you're already thinking about it right? Reinvention on a constant basis. But if there was anything else you would say that you're doing on a daily basis to be better and better is, you know, in quotes, like you define what better is, what would that be? Joel Neeb 35:06 Yeah, I think that there's a couple of things that I think we should all try to do if we're trying to be, quote, unquote “better.” As you said, there's a quote I like that that says that we vastly overestimate what we can do in three months and we underestimate what we can do in five years. Col. Naviere Walkwicz 35:27 OK, wait, say that one more time. If you don't mind, say it one more time. Joel Neeb 35:30 Yeah, really, we overestimate what we can do in three months. “I can't wait for February. I'm going to do X, Y and Z.” And then we disappoint ourselves because we didn't accomplish all those things. And yet we underestimate what we can do in five years. What do I mean by that? It means that if we were intentional about what we wanted to do in the long term, about what we wanted to grow into in years from now, five years from now, you can reinvent yourself to be anything. I think conceivably, any of us could say, “I could accomplish just about anything in five years, if I put my mind to it.” The problem is we think in the short term, and so a lot of us think of I need this happen fast. I need the, you know, in three months. I need this to take place. That's putting the car before the horse. We need to define what we want to be in the long term and then back into what that implies we need to do right now. That also speaks to the focus that I have and saying no to other things, because if I have this big, audacious goal for what I want to be in the long term, then I have to say no to a lot of things if I'm going to take those steps necessary to start marching down that path. And so what I say to folks is that build that long term first, build that vision of what you want to be in the future that's exciting to you, whether that's a fighter pilot or a CEO or you name it, shoot for the stars, whatever that is that you want to be, and then start backing into it and celebrate the fact that you're doing this. In other words, then people get caught up and, you know, I feel like I'm not making enough progress, and I'm mad at myself for not taking enough steps, I would challenge that and say, don't put the pressure on yourself that you have to do this. Reverse that conversation. Say, “I get to, I get to pursue this vision.” Doesn't mean it'll take place. Doesn't mean to occur. But if I have a vision in mind, and I'm taking steps towards it, even if I don't reach it, I'm still going to be in an incredible place that I wouldn't have been otherwise. And so that's, that's the approach that I would take. Col. Naviere Walkwicz 37:18 All right, Joel, so what is your big audacious goal in five years that you're working towards? Joel Neeb 37:22 Big audacious goal? Yeah, so I am super excited about the future of AI. I think that it has a lot of positive and negative implications for society in general. And so I'll give you a quick example. Right now, we've got 9.5% of our recent graduates that are unemployed, which is much higher than it's ever been from graduating college. That's unique, and what I attribute that to is that we're just starting to see the workforce disruption that's occurring because of AI. We're starting to see the workforce drawdown that's occurring because of it. At the same time, we're seeing companies that are able to do much, much more with AI. And so they're questioning, well, how do I operate as a company? How do I teach everybody to stay on board this training and be successful in this new environment and then societally, we're challenged with, well, how do I set up our young people for success? How do I tell my 19-year-old what to do to do to be successful. So when I think about the big, hairy, audacious goal that I want to go pursue in this next chapter in five years, I want to be on the forefront, helping the government, helping companies, helping everyone to continue disrupting themselves and leaving as few people behind as possible in this next era. Because that's the real threat. And the challenge is cats out of the bag. If we don't do this, China is going to do it like others are going to pass it by. Pass it by. The wrong answer would be to try to step it back in the bag and say we're not doing any I we're going to put regulations around, putting our heads in the sand. We would just get passed by, like, in a few years by our biggest competitors out there, which we know we don't want to have happen. And so the key is, how do we keep as many people up to speed with his transformation possible? So I talked to, you know, graduates like August Pfluger, who's in Congress, and we have, yeah, he's awesome. And so we talk about, what does that look like in the future he's shaping, you know, the future from a government perspective? I talked to former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, is a good friend of mine, and we go on vacations together and a conversation we have about from a corporate perspective: How do we address this as well? So that's my big goal. That's what I want to influence over the next couple of years. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 39:22 Love that. So if you could rewind the clock and, you know, tell your young Joel, and this is really for anyone who is looking for preparing myself for that long term, right? So maybe it's not the five year, the big thing in five years, but it's — this is for what can I do today that is gonna — I'm gonna help myself — future me. What would you tell yourself, Joel? Joel Neeb 39:43 If I were to go back to Academy Joel, I would say, “Take this experience more seriously.” At the time, I kind of resented the experience that I was going through at the Academy, not understanding fully that they understood how to polish the coal to try to make it into a diamond. And I didn't always see the method to the madness behind the scenes and why they were doing things. And I would tell myself to take it more seriously, to lean into the leadership opportunities, lean into the experiences. I think it's a tendency as a cadet to lean away from those and to kind of look at those with resentment. I remember I did, and I wish I would have taken those more seriously. I wish I would have taken my 20s more seriously in terms of pursuing things that were uncomfortable, and not just getting comfortable towards the latter end of my 20s and early 30s, where I was flying upside down with ease every single day and really not doing anything that was challenging me too much. I certainly didn't have it all mastered and figured out. But my discomfort was all but gone in those moments. And so I would tell myself, “Keep leaning into those areas of discomfort, because it's in those areas that we find growth.” And growth is one of the top things that we can feel as a human being. Being a part of an elite team is growing together on an inspiring mission. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 40:56 Well, I know that you are, you know, constantly in the forefront of AI, but what makes you or what causes you discomfort now that you're working through? Joel Neeb 41:05 What causes me discomfort now is compelling a 2,400-person organization to move as quickly as I think we need to. In other words: right now. The things I'm talking to you about, I'm communicating with them about on a daily basis, and we have remotely dispersed teams. I'm staring into cameras like we are right now. So I'm not sitting in the room with them and helping them to learn these things. My discomfort is around how as a leader, can I be more compelling about the burning platform that they're standing on right now, that as soon as it burns away, their role is going to be obliterated, and we're going to be disrupted by the market. And how do I really excite them around this destination that we're pursuing together, where we're going a little bit faster than the rate of change? I'm proud of the progress that we've made, but in terms of the discomfort that I'm feeling, it's almost impossible to go fast enough in this era, and so I am. The thing that keeps me up at night is, how do I make this more compelling for them? And then ultimately, I know that whatever themes I'm learning right now to make it compelling is what I'm going to have to bring to society in this next chapter, as well as we try to keep the entire American society moving ahead of the rate of change that we're experiencing. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 42:14 Well, thank you for that. I would imagine you probably phoned your friend, ChatGPT, on some  ways to do that, but I think that what you really shared today has opened, I think, eyes of how we can partner with technology at our fingertips. I mean, you and I were just chatting before this, and I asked you this, because one of the things I remember you being really big on is finding time to read as a family. I remember you had like Saturday family time, we read. As much as you're traveling and as much as you're trying to move your organization at this rate of change with AI, where do you find time to read now? Joel Neeb 42:47 Yeah, so I use AI for that too. So when I'm in the gym, I upload a chapter at a time into ChatGPT for the books that I'm reading, and I ask it to read it to me in the voice thing that it can do. And so it's reading the book to me. But the really cool part is, it's not just audible. I'm not just hearing, you know, the recording of it. And by the way, you can even tell it talk two times faster or whatever you want to do for the right speed. And I'll interrupt it. The cool part is, I'll say, “Hey, wait a second. I didn't really understand that that part of the book. Break it down for me in simpler terms.” And it'll actually pause, explain it to me and put it in terms that my fighter pilot mind can understand, or I'll even say, “Yeah, tell me about that theme in the context of the company that I'm in, 8x8, and tell me how we can apply that right now, and look at our industry. And how can I take some of this to that team?” And so it takes a book that was generically written and makes it customized for my experience by leveraging AI to do that. So once again, it's a thought partner in literally everything that I do. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 43:42 What's the last book that you read in which you were able to take some of those things to, or maybe that you'd recommend to some of our listeners to listen in via ChatGPT. Joel Neeb 43:51 I just finished reading the Teddy Roosevelt biography, which is phenomenal. What an incredible American, and it was inspiring to read. And I was able to pause it in parts and challenge some parts of the books and say, “Did that really happen?” And,  “Tell me more about this incident in history.” And it explains some historical pieces that I wasn't aware of and the book didn't delve into as much as I would have liked it to. That's a little bit of a boring historian-nerd kind of answer, but that's what I took away from it. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 44:17 Well, thank you for sharing that. So Joel, is there anything that we didn't talk about today that you would really like to make sure that we touch on? Because this has been a really exciting and fascinating conversation for me, but I want to make sure, because this has been your leadership journey, and there's so many facets to that that that we hit on the things that are important? Joel Neeb 44:33 The thing that I've learned in my time is that the foundation that we receive in the military, whether that's the cultural foundation, how we are all aligned with similar values, with a common mission that's inspiring the adherence to what we call in the business world, standard operating procedures, what you would call in the military, a checklist, effectively. That foundation that we have is easily the most valuable resource that I carried into the business world and the teams that I've been on. And I think we underestimate just how powerful that experience is, that during our 20s, we're in this incredibly disciplined environment with a really strong culture, really strong sense of value, really strong sense of mission. Pay attention to that while you have that opportunity. While you're being exposed to it, pay attention to how it was built. Pay attention to how they that accelerated our success in those teams. Because I promise you, you'll want to someday carry those concepts to every team that you're on in the future. And so I think it's an opportunity for us to leverage the incredible team that we're on in the military, and talk about that in an exciting way with whatever team that we participate on down the road. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 45:50 Thank you for sharing that. And if I could just pull on that thread a little bit more in that just in that transition, and taking those to those teams, I want to just jump to your very first transition from military to Afterburner? How did that come about for you? And I think that just our folks will be curious on that. Joel Neeb 46:10 Yeah, so Afterburner is a company that's been around since 1996 and they basically took some of those things from the military that I just spoke to, brought it into a corporate setting and helped them to adopt the same levels of positive outcomes. And when I saw this company, I said, “Wow, they really tapped into something that I that I knew as well intuitively, that if we apply some of these same themes, we could really take over anything in the business world. And so I reached out to the CEO and kept bugging him and continue to stay on his radar until he agreed to bring me into the office in Atlanta. I was living in San Antonio, and I went out there on my own dime and did an interview with them, and it went well. And of course, the rest is history after that point. But I found the thing I wanted to do and pursue, and then a very aggressively got in front of the people that could make it happen and definitely was part of the journey for me that I needed in order to be successful. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 47:04 Yes, I definitely wanted you to share that, because I knew, obviously, you had that experience. You took those things that you learned, and you wanted to hone in as you led other teams. But I think the critical piece was you pursued it, and you continue to pursue it, and you continue to pursue it until you got there, right? And so I think that's a critical part of moving forward and getting what we want. So I really am glad that you shared that, because it may seem that it's really easy just to make the transition, right? You can check all these boxes and so you're the shoe in, but it sounds like that wasn't the case, and you had to make a case for yourself. Joel Neeb 47:39 One-hundred percent. I had to be my own biggest advocate, and not in an arrogant way, in a way that I could show I could add value for that team. And that was, that was a lesson that I've taken and tried to apply since then. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 47:51 Well, I'll tell you what, it's been, gosh, 1999. How many years is that? 25 years for us? I mean, I feel like, you know, this has been a true honor to be able to sit with you. I mean, I've always watched your journey and just really been cheering you on, but I think what's incredible is how you're able to now really give back to our Long Blue Line. So Joel, thank you so much for this time today. It's been really wonderful having on Long Blue Leadership. Joel Neeb 48:14 What a privilege, Naviere. And I would say, you know, you had just asked me back in 1999 if there's a dozen people from the Academy that I thought would be very successful, your name would have been one of them. I don't think there's another person at the Academy who would have said my name. So we came from very different starting points, but I'm super excited to see the success you created, and, more importantly, the impact that you have on our graduate community, because it is noticed by everyone that I talked to. So thank you for how you lean into that our community as well. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 48:43 Thank you for saying that. And as we come to a close, I'd love to offer a few thoughts before we go. What stands out to me today from our conversation is how leadership is both timeless and adaptive. Joel's journey from commanding F-15 missions to leading global organizations and navigating AI reminds us that leadership fundamentals remain steadfast, just like you said, yet in the context in which we lead, it's always evolving, and the ability to adapt is what sets exceptional leaders apart. His story of personal resilience, overcoming stage four cancer diagnosis underscores that leadership is defined by how we respond to challenges and how we make lasting impact. From lessons in the cockpit to corporate transformation and personal discipline. Joel offers a blueprint for leading with confidence in uncertain times. Thank you for investing your time and listening in Long Blue Leadership. I encourage you to share this episode with others who are also in their personal journeys, especially because it's my classmate and he's phenomenal. Thank you for listening to Long Blue Leadership. I'm Naviere Walkewicz; until next time.   KEYWORDS Leadership, leadership development, modern leadership, leadership mindset, growth mindset, resilient leadership, adaptive leadership, transformational leadership, leadership under pressure, leading through adversity, leadership lessons, executive leadership, high performance teams, elite teams, leadership philosophy, leadership strategy, personal growth, professional development, continuous improvement, reinvention, career transition, imposter syndrome, mental toughness, discipline, time management, prioritization, decision making, strategic thinking, innovation leadership, change leadership, leading through change, disruption, self leadership, accountability, peak performance, overcoming fear, stepping outside comfort zone, leadership habits, future of leadership, AI leadership, leadership in the age of AI, digital transformation, organizational culture, team culture, mission driven leadership, purpose driven leadership, high impact leadership.   The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation    

It's episode 228 and time for us to talk about Computers and Computer Science books! We discuss technology, digital humanities, coding, and more! You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system. In this episode Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray

As technology continuously advances, it is crucial to become and remain rooted in the principles and truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Quentin L. Cook, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivered this devotional address on March 3, 2026. You can access the full talk here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Behind the scenes or front and center — where are you most effective?And more importantly… are you bold enough to take control of your future?As we close out our February Boldness theme, we zoom out to look at the bigger picture: the shift into the Digital and Data Age — and what it means for women building careers, brands, and businesses.We've moved from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age, then the Information Age — and now we're living in a world where intellectual property, data, media, and code are the new currency.The question isn't whether the world is changing. It is.The question is whether you're positioning yourself to benefit from it.In this episode, we explore:The New World Economy - How technology magnifies creativity, expands access, and gives you global distribution at your fingertips.Leaning Into Your USP - Your unique selling position is the spine of your brand — shaping your messaging, offers, confidence, and credibility. We walk you through three powerful questions to clarify what you really bring to the table.Project & Present vs. Persuade & Plead - Boldness means owning your value. Declaring who you are, what you do, and who you help — clearly and congruently.Multipreneurship in the Digital Age - Your intellectual property has value. Your frameworks, systems, ideas, and lived experience can be built, monetized, and amplified.This episode is both a mindset reset and a mini workshop.The world is changing fast.Opportunities are expanding.Technology is amplifying those who step up.The only question left is: Which building block will you choose next?Make sure you're subscribed — and don't just listen. Decide.Like this vibe? Want to learn more? Join Make It, Mind It Multiply It - my free community on Skool.Tag us @divasdiamondsdollars#MultipreneurMindset #WomenWhoLead #BuildingBlocksForBoldness

In this January 2026 Month in Review, Through a Therapist's Eyes looks at how modern life is shaping our emotional health—from social media on trial to intimacy and parenting in a digital world. We discuss the growing legal cases comparing Big Tech to Big Tobacco and what it means to prove harm and addiction. We also revisit one-night stands, shifting the focus from morality to emotional impact, attachment, and what people are really hoping to feel afterward. Finally, we explore Parenting in the Information Age, examining how constant access to adult-level information affects kids and parents alike, and why emotional guidance matters more than simply limiting screens. This episode ties it all together with one key idea: emotional health comes from slowing things down, building awareness, and choosing connection on purpose. Tune in to see the January Month in Review Through a Therapist's Eyes  

Send us a textIn this episode, I take a close look at how health misinformation spreads in modern wellness culture — and why it's so destabilizing to the nervous system, especially in the Information Age.People often ask me to review things they see on Instagram or explain whether a claim is “true.” I'm not here to fact-check the internet — but I am here to help you build discernment. Because when you don't have a filter, your nervous system becomes the filter. That's how people end up overwhelmed, confused, and disconnected from their bodies.Building on the previous episode about the shadow side of wellness culture, I walk through a real Instagram carousel as a case study. The post claims that vitamin D determines whether calories become fat or muscle, backed by PubMed citations and a personal transformation story.This episode slows that claim down.We explore:• Why single-nutrient narratives oversimplify human physiology• How PubMed studies are often misused or misunderstood• Why animal studies and unrelated research don't equal clinical truth• How transformation stories create false certainty• Why changing a lab number doesn't mean healing occurred• How nutrient chasing creates new imbalances• Why this model backfires faster in women's bodies• And how wellness content trains people to outsource discernmentThis is not an episode about vitamin D.It's about how reductionistic health advice erodes trust, fuels protocol fatigue, and keeps people chasing fixes instead of restoring stability.I also share why I work from an ecosystem-based approach using minerals and the microbiome — and why healing requires context, pacing, and nervous system safety, not more force.If you're exhausted by wellness advice and ready for a more coherent way to understand your body, this conversation will help sharpen your filter and protect your biology.Support the show Support the podcast Mineral Foundations Course HERE Minerals & Microbes package HERE Rewilded Wellness program HERE Join my newsletter HERE If you are interested in becoming a client and have questions, reach out by emailing me: lydiajoyme@gmail.com Find me on Instagram : @ Lydiajoy.me

Stewart Alsop interviews Tomas Yu, CEO and founder of Turn-On Financial Technologies, on this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast. They explore how Yu's company is revolutionizing the closed-loop payment ecosystem by creating a universal float system that allows gift card credits to be used across multiple merchants rather than being locked to a single business like Starbucks. The conversation covers the complexities of fintech regulation, the differences between open and closed loop payment systems, and Yu's unique background that combines Korean martial arts discipline with Mexican polo culture. They also dive into Yu's passion for polo, discussing the intimate relationship between rider and horse, the sport's elitist tendencies in different regions, and his efforts to build polo communities from El Paso to New Mexico. Find Tomas on LinkedIn under Tommy (TJ) Alvarez.Timestamps00:00 Introduction to TurnOn Technologies02:45 Understanding Float and Its Implications05:45 Decentralized Gift Card System08:39 Navigating the FinTech Landscape11:19 The Role of Merchants and Consumers14:15 Challenges in the Gift Card Market17:26 The Future of Payment Systems23:12 Understanding Payment Systems: Stripe and POS26:47 Regulatory Landscape: KYC and AML in Payments27:55 The Impact of Economic Conditions on Financial Systems36:39 Transitioning from Industrial to Information Age Finance38:18 Curiosity and Resourcefulness in the Information Age45:09 Social Media and the Dynamics of Attention46:26 From Restaurant to Polo: A Journey of Mentorship49:50 The Thrill of Polo: Learning and Obsession54:53 Building a Team: Breaking Elitism in Polo01:00:29 The Unique Bond: Understanding the Horse-Rider Relationship01:05:21 Polo Horses: Choosing the Right Breed for the GameKey Insights1. Turn-On Technologies is revolutionizing payment systems through behavioral finance by creating a decentralized "float" system. Unlike traditional gift cards that lock customers into single merchants like Starbucks, Turn-On allows universal credit that works across their entire merchant ecosystem. This addresses the massive gift card market where companies like Starbucks hold billions in customer funds that can only be used at their locations.2. The financial industry operates on an exclusionary "closed loop" versus "open loop" system that creates significant friction and fees. Closed loop systems keep money within specific ecosystems without conversion to cash, while open loop systems allow cash withdrawal but trigger heavy regulation. Every transaction through traditional payment processors like Stripe can cost merchants 3-8% in fees, representing a massive burden on businesses.3. Point-of-sale systems function as the financial bloodstream and credit scoring mechanism for businesses. These systems track all card transactions and serve as the primary data source for merchant lending decisions. The gap between POS records and bank deposits reveals cash transactions that businesses may not be reporting, making POS data crucial for assessing business creditworthiness and loan risk.4. Traditional FinTech professionals often miss obvious opportunities due to ego and institutional thinking. Yu encountered resistance from established FinTech experts who initially dismissed his gift card-focused approach, despite the trillion-dollar market size. The financial industry's complexity is sometimes artificially maintained to exclude outsiders rather than serve genuine regulatory purposes.5. The information age is creating a fundamental divide between curious, resourceful individuals and those stuck in credentialist systems. With AI and LLMs amplifying human capability, people who ask the right questions and maintain curiosity will become exponentially more effective. Meanwhile, those relying on traditional credentials without underlying curiosity will fall further behind, creating unprecedented economic and social divergence.6. Polo serves as a powerful business metaphor and relationship-building tool that mirrors modern entrepreneurial challenges. Like mixed martial arts evolved from testing individual disciplines, business success now requires being competent across multiple areas rather than excelling in just one specialty. The sport also creates unique networking opportunities and teaches valuable lessons about partnership between human and animal.7. International financial systems reveal how governments use complexity and capital controls to maintain power over citizens. Yu's observations about Argentina's financial restrictions and the prevalence of cash economies in Latin America illustrate how regulatory complexity often serves political rather than protective purposes, creating opportunities for alternative financial systems that provide genuine value to users.

Parenting in the Information Age Part 2 continues the conversation by shifting from why this is happening to what parents can actually do about it. In this follow-up episode of Through a Therapist's Eyes, we focus on the emotional side of parenting in a nonstop digital world - how overwhelmed parents unintentionally pass on anxiety, reactivity, and distraction, and why children learn regulation more from what we model than from the rules we set. We talk directly to parents about slowing information down, checking emotional readiness, and becoming filters rather than firewalls for what kids consume. This episode centers on practical, honest self-reflection and reminds us that the goal isn't to raise sheltered kids - but emotionally steady ones who can handle information safely because their parents are learning to do the same. Tune in to see Part 2 of Parenting in the Information Age Through a Therapist's Eyes.  

In this episode we talk about why parenting today feels harder than ever—and why it's less about discipline and more about emotional overload. Kids are exposed to adult information, conflict, fear, and stress long before they're emotionally ready, while parents are trying to keep up in the same nonstop digital world. This episode explains how too much information without emotional support can lead to anxiety and dysregulation for both children and parents. Instead of trying to block everything, we reframe parenting as helping slow things down, add context, and translate emotions so kids can safely understand what they're seeing. Through practical questions for parents, we focus on the core challenge of modern parenting: not just teaching children what to know, but helping them learn how to feel and regulate in an overwhelming world. Tune in to see Parenting in the Information Age Through a Therapist's Eyes.  

This week's topics: • Yoruba terms of endearment & romantic language • People from melting pot cities speaking English • Is it harder to learn when you're older • Working out more important than the actual answer • Speed and decent versus slow and excellent • The culture of Yemin • Wahala's joy of BBQing meat • Not socialising anymore • Dave Chappelle dismisses Bill Maher • Trump's Whitehouse ballroom • Controversy of comedians going to Saudi Arabia • The Bondi Beach shooting • Rob & Michele Reiner's murder • Trump's disrespectful presidential plaques • AJ v Jake Paul • Exhibition fights • Terence Crawford retiring • Crawford v Mayweather legacy • #StavrosSays : Errr, I'll fill in if I remember [?] Connect with us at & send your questions & comments to: #ESNpod so we can find your comments www.esnpodcast.com www.facebook.com/ESNpodcasts www.twitter.com/ESNpodcast www.instagram.com/ESNpodcast @esnpodcast on all other social media esnpodcast@gmail.com It's important to subscribe, rate and review us on your apple products. You can do that here... www.bit.ly/esnitunes

What if working LESS is the smartest business growth strategy for 2026? Michael Walsh went three years without a vacation—grinding relentlessly, believing scaling required personal sacrifice. Then his wife forced him to take time off. The result? He generated $10,000 in new sales—more than any previous week. He tested further, taking the last week of every month off. His income kept growing. After 30+ years helping $2M-$20M companies scale, Michael has proven that people-first business growth outperforms systems-first approaches every time. What You'll Discover: ✅ The $10,000 vacation discovery - Why strategic time off accelerates revenue instead of slowing it down ✅ The relationship complexity math - Why 100 people = 4,950 relationships, explaining why your systems break as you scale from $1M to $10M ✅ Survive, Thrive, Connect, Adapt framework - Practical roadmap for understanding human behavior structures that support your people to be at their best ✅ Why your people are your #1 brand story customer - How training influencers (even janitors and cafeteria workers) instead of just executives creates authentic brand ambassadors ✅ The social contract that works - Why professional growth takes pressure off top dollar, and how two-minute weekly conversations replace twice-yearly performance theater ✅ Intelligent ecosystems vs. machines - Why "I'm the boss, you do what I say" fails in service businesses, and how to build adaptive capacity ✅ AI and the Age of Creativity - How AI is eliminating junior jobs and what the shift from Information Age to Age of Creativity means for your business About Michael Walsh: Michael Walsh is founder of Walsh Business Growth Institute and author of Freedom by Design: The Established Business Owner's Guide to Grow, Make an Impact, and Find the Joy Again. His myth-busting methodologies liberate owners from operational dependency through contrarian, people-first strategies. FREE BOOK: Get Freedom by Design free (print, PDF, or MP4) at WalshBusinessGrowth.com Key Topics: business growth strategies, scaling $2M-$20M companies, employee relationship management, leadership development, burnout recovery, work-life balance, organizational culture, brand storytelling, people-first leadership, service business optimization, AI impact on business, future of work Connect with Michael:

Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press. The mass production of books and other printed texts revolutionized the world. Gutenberg created a transformation in knowledge acquisition and communication. This kicked off the first information age. The printing press had a bigger effect on the world than the computer or the internet.

Welcome back to another hour of digital cynicism. We kick things off with a FOLLOW UP on Amazon's Fallout recaps, which were apparently so hallucination-heavy they made the actual wasteland look organized; naturally, they've been nuked along with the "Video Recaps" feature. In a massive dose of IN THE NEWS, Tesla is finally getting a legal side-eye in California for its deceptive "Autopilot" branding, while TikTok is performing a corporate shell game by selling a 45% stake to Oracle and friends to keep the feds happy. Reddit is fighting Australia's under-16 ban like it's a constitutional crisis, Louisiana's age-verification law just got benched by a judge, and Merriam-Webster officially crowned "slop" as the Word of the Year—which is fitting, given that OpenAI is selectively hiding chat logs from murder-suicides while their Chief Scientist warns that recursive AI self-improvement might end the human experiment by 2030. If the "intelligence explosion" doesn't get us, the CRASH Clock says we've got roughly 2.8 days before Elon's satellite swarm turns low-earth orbit into a permanent scrapyard.In our MEDIA CANDY segment, we mourn the transition year of Star Trek, which was mostly a series of unmitigated disasters and corporate retreats, though the Oscars moving to YouTube in 2029 means we can finally ignore them in 4K. Meta is testing a "pay-to-share-links" feature because they clearly haven't alienated creators enough, and a new study suggests Amazon's "dynamic pricing" is basically just a high-tech way to gouge public school districts for pencils. Moving to APPS & DOODADS, iOS 26.2 is here with a "Liquid Glass" slider—groundbreaking stuff, really—while Microsoft's Copilot+ push is effectively killing the laptop market by making 16GB of RAM a luxury item only a data center could love. Meanwhile, iRobot has officially sucked its last bit of dust into a Chapter 11 filing, proving that even a twenty-year head start can't save you from a 46 percent tariff and better Chinese competition.AT THE LIBRARY, we find out that librarians are ready to quit because people keep demanding books that only exist in a ChatGPT hallucination, proving once again that the "Information Age" was a lie. We descend into THE DARK SIDE WITH DAVE with the tireless Dave Bittner to discuss why modern movies feel like plastic, the bizarre paradox of James Cameron's Avatar dominance, and a bittersweet farewell to Rob Reiner. We wrap it up with the return of The Muppets, a look at plug-in solar panels for the budget-conscious prepper, and the Sedaris siblings proving that even grief can be a podcast topic. It's all the tech "progress" you never asked for, delivered with the appropriate amount of Gen-X side-eye.Show notes at https://gog.show/727Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hHnGD4lIFzASponsors:MasterClass - Get up to 50% off at MASTERCLASS.com/GRUMPYOLDGEEKSPrivate Internet Access - Go to GOG.Show/vpn and sign up today. For a limited time only, you can get OUR favorite VPN for as little as $2.03 a month.SetApp - With a single monthly subscription you get 240+ apps for your Mac. Go to SetApp and get started today!!!1Password - Get a great deal on the only password manager recommended by Grumpy Old Geeks! gog.show/1passwordFOLLOW UPAmazon pulls its bad AI video recaps after Fallout falloutIN THE NEWSTesla used deceptive language to market Autopilot, California judge rulesTikTok agrees to deal to cede control of US business to American investor groupReddit sues Australia over underage social media banJudge blocks Louisiana's social media age verification lawMurder-suicide case shows OpenAI selectively hides data after users dieTrump orders creation of litigation task force to challenge state AI laws'Slop' is Merriam-Webster's word of the yearAnthropic's Chief Scientist Says We're Rapidly Approaching the Moment That Could Doom Us AllModel collapseOpenAI Is Going Into the New Year With Some Real Loser EnergyNew ‘CRASH Clock' Warns of 2.8-Day Window Before Likely Orbital CollisionA Facebook test makes link-sharing a paid feature for creatorsStudy links Amazon's algorithmic pricing with erratic, inflated costs for school districtsMEDIA CANDYA Man on the Inside S2Oh. What. Fun.The End of an EraThe West WingF1® The Movie - Apple TVThe Running ManWelcome to DerryWake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out MysteryIs it Cake?Apple TV releasing Pluribus season finale early next weekWarner Bros. Discovery rejects Paramount's hostile bid2025 Was a Turning Point for ‘Star Trek', Whether It Knew It or NotTHE ACADEMY PARTNERS WITH YOUTUBE FOR EXCLUSIVE GLOBAL RIGHTS TO THE OSCARS® AND OTHER ACADEMY CONTENT STARTING IN 2029APPS & DOODADSiOS 26.2 is here with another Liquid Glass tweak, new Podcasts features and moreOh, the Irony: Microsoft's Push for Copilot+ PCs Could Stall Laptop SalesiRobot has filed for bankruptcy and may be taken over by its primary supplierAT THE LIBRARYFlybot by Dennis E. TaylorMaking Space (The Time Traveler's Passport) by R. F. KuangFor a Limited Time Only (The Time Traveler's Passport) by Peng ShepherdLibrarians Are Tired of Being Accused of Hiding Secret Books That Were Made Up by AITHE DARK SIDE WITH DAVEDave BittnerThe CyberWireHacking HumansCaveatControl LoopOnly Malware in the BuildingWhy Movies Just Don't Feel "Real" AnymoreThe Avatar Paradox - Why Nobody Talks About These MoviesDon't F**k with James CameronEvery James Cameron Movie, Explained by James Cameron | Vanity Fair‘The Muppet Show' Returns for One Night Only Next FebruaryThe Muppet Show | Official Teaser | Disney+Small plug-in solar panels gain traction as an affordable way to cut electricity bills'You don't know what it's like till you lose a parent': Sedaris siblings share their grief storyCLOSING SHOUT-OUTS“Enshittification” YouTube“Enshittification” Spotify“Enshittification” SoundCloud (with a direct download)Len (a.k.a. Funny Name)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As mayor of Baltimore and then governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley used transparency and statistics to drive his city and state forward into the Information Age. And then he  — literally — wrote the book on the subject.  His conclusion after more than a decade in public office? "We live in a time of enormous opportunity," O'Malley said on the latest episode of How To Really Run A City to our hosts, former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt. "It's the dawning of the Third Industrial Revolution. People want to believe that tomorrow can be better than today." O'Malley, a former Social Security Administration Commissioner and Irish clan chieftain, knows the stakes of the current political moment. Yes, you have to lead with joy. But to get people back from the brink of political despair, you've got to get shit done at the local level, because if we can't deliver the goods of a republic – the services that make a republic worth having — then we can't blame people for not following us. "Over the last 20 years," O'Malley said, "trust in the federal government has fallen to an all-time low. But trust in local government – in city government – has held steady." Join us for a no-nonsense episode with a no-nonsense leader who knows how to get shit done at multiple governing levels — and whose prescription for both his Democratic party and the country write large are lessons we should learn to preserve what matters about living in America. Remember to subscribe to the podcast to keep up on all the latest episodes. Watch and follow new episodes on YouTube. As cities go, so goes the nation!

As mayor of Baltimore and then governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley used transparency and statistics to drive his city and state forward into the Information Age. And then he  — literally — wrote the book on the subject.  His conclusion after more than a decade in public office? "We live in a time of enormous opportunity," O'Malley said on the latest episode of How To Really Run A City. "It's the dawning of the Third Industrial Revolution. People want to believe that tomorrow can be better than today." O'Malley, a former Social Security Administration Commissioner and Irish clan chieftain, knows the stakes of the current political moment. Yes, you have to lead with joy. But to get people back from the brink of political despair, you've got to get shit done at the local level, because if we can't deliver the goods of a republic – the services that make a republic worth having — then we can't blame people for not following us. "Over the last 20 years," O'Malley said, "trust in the federal government has fallen to an all-time low. But trust in local government – in city government – has held steady." Join us for a no-nonsense episode with a no-nonsense leader who knows how to get shit done at multiple governing levels. As cities go, so goes the nation!

Defense Minister Yisrael Katz will bring his proposal to close Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) to the cabinet for approval on Sunday. The coalition has also set up a special Knesset committee to advance a bill that would replace Israel’s independent media regulators with political appointees. The change will give the government sweeping authority to fine and sanction news outlets – a move critics warn could permanently reshape the country’s media environment. Another bill under discussion would privatize Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan, and close down its news division. Earlier this year, Reporters Without Borders dropped Israel’s ranking to 112 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. KAN's Mark Weiss spoke about these developments with Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, and the head of the Institute’s Democracy in the Information Age program. (Photo: AP)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Quick—which is more dangerous: the thing that kills 50,000 Americans every year, or the thing that kills 50? Your brain says the first one, obviously. The data says you're dead wrong. Heart disease kills 700,000 people annually, but you're not terrified of cheeseburgers. Shark attacks kill about 10 people worldwide per year, but millions of people are genuinely afraid of the ocean. Your brain can't do the math, so you worry about the wrong things and ignore the actual threats. And here's the kicker: The people selling you fear, products, and policies? They know your brain works this way. They're counting on it. You're not bad at math. You're operating with Stone Age hardware in an Information Age world. And that gap between your intuition and reality? It's being weaponized every single day. Let me show you how to fight back. What They're Exploiting  Here's what's happening: You can instantly tell the difference between 3 apples and 30 apples. But a million and a billion? They both just feel like "really big." Research from the OECD found that numeracy skills are collapsing across developed countries. Over half of American adults can't work with numbers beyond a sixth-grade level. We've become a society that can calculate tips but can't spot when we're being lied to with statistics. And I'm going to be blunt: if you can't think proportionally in 2025, you're flying blind. Let's fix that right now. Translation: Make the Invisible Visible  Okay, stop everything. I'm going to change how you see numbers forever. One million seconds is 11 days. Take a second, feel that. Eleven days ago—that's a million seconds. One billion seconds is 31 years. A billion seconds ago, it was 1994. Bill Clinton was president. The internet was just getting started. That's how far back you have to go. Now here's where it gets wild: One trillion seconds is 31,000 years. Thirty-one THOUSAND years. A trillion seconds ago, humans hadn't invented farming yet. We were hunter-gatherers painting on cave walls. So when you hear someone say "What's the difference between a billion and a trillion?"—the difference is the entire span of human civilization. This isn't trivia. This is the key to seeing through manipulation. Because when a politician throws around billions and trillions in the same sentence like they're comparable? Now you know—they're lying to your face, banking on you not understanding scale. The "Per What?" Weapon  Here's the trick they use on you constantly, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. A supplement company advertises: "Our product reduces your risk by 50%!" Sounds incredible, right? Must buy immediately. But here's what they're not telling you: If your risk of something was 2 in 10,000, and now it's 1 in 10,000—that's technically a 50% reduction. But your actual risk only dropped by 0.01%. They just made almost nothing sound like everything. Or flip it around: "This causes a 200% increase in risk!" Terrifying! Except if your risk went from 1 in a million to 3 in a million, you're still almost certainly fine. This is how they play you. They show you percentages when absolute numbers would expose them. They show you raw numbers when rates would destroy their argument. Your defense? Three words: "Per what, exactly?" 50% of what baseline? 200% increase from what starting point? That denominator is where the truth hides. Once you start asking this, you'll see the manipulation everywhere. Let's Catch a Lie in Real Time  Okay, let's do this together right now. I'm going to show you a real manipulation pattern I see constantly. Headline: "4 out of 5 dentists recommend our toothpaste!" Sounds pretty convincing, right? Let's apply what we just learned. First—per what? Four out of five of how many dentists? If they surveyed 10 dentists and 8 said yes, that's technically 80%, but it's meaningless. Second—what was the actual question? Turns out, they asked dentists to name ALL brands they'd recommend, not which ONE was best. So 80% mentioned this brand... along with seven other brands. Third—scale: There are 200,000 dentists in the US. They surveyed 150. That's 80% of 0.075% of all dentists. See how fast that falls apart? That's the power of asking "per what? The Exponential Trap This is where your intuition doesn't just fail—it catastrophically fails. And it's costing people everything. Grab a piece of paper. Fold it in half. Twice as thick, no big deal. Fold it again. Four times. Okay. Keep going. Most people think if you could fold it 42 times, maybe it'd be as tall as a building? No. It would reach the moon. From Earth. To the moon. That's exponential growth, and your brain cannot comprehend it. Here's why this matters in your actual life: You've got a credit card with $5,000 on it at 18% interest. You think "I'll just pay the minimum, I'll catch up eventually." Your brain treats this like a linear problem. It's not. It's exponential. That $5,000 becomes $10,000 faster than you can possibly imagine, and then $20,000, and suddenly you're drowning. Or retirement: Starting to save at 25 versus 35 doesn't feel like a huge difference. Ten years, whatever. But exponential growth means that ten-year head start could be worth 2-3 times more money when you're 65. When you hear "doubles every," "grows by X percent," or "compounds"—stop. Your intuition just became your enemy. Rapid Reality Checking  You don't need a calculator to spot lies. You need a sanity check that takes ten seconds. I'm going to give you the fastest BS detector I know: Round brutally. 47 million becomes 50 million. 8.7% becomes 10%. Precision is the enemy of speed. Find the zeros. Is this thousands, millions, billions? Get the ballpark right first. Do the rough math. What's 7% of 50 million? Well, 10% is 5 million, so 7% is about 3.5 million. Done. Close enough to catch the lie. Smell test it. Someone claims a new app has a billion users after launching last month? That's one in eight humans on Earth. Really? I use this every single day now. News article, social media post, advertisement—ten seconds and I know if someone's lying to me. You're not trying to be exact. You're trying to be un-foolable. Don't Make These Mistakes Before we go further, let me save you from three traps I see people fall into. First: Don't become the conspiracy theorist who distrusts ALL numbers. Sometimes 50% really is 50%. The goal is healthy skepticism, not paranoid cynicism. Second: Don't weaponize this to win petty arguments. "Actually, you didn't do 50% of the dishes"—nobody likes that person. Third: Don't assume you're now immune to manipulation. These are tools, not shields. Stay humble. Smart people get fooled all the time—they just recover faster. Putting It All Together  Let me show you how these four techniques work as a system. A tech company announces: "We've tripled our user base to 3 million, growing 200% annually, and reduced complaints by 90%!" Watch this: Scale check: 3 million users. In social media? That's tiny. Instagram has 2 billion. Context matters. Per what? Tripled from what starting point? If they went from 50,000 to 3 million, that's actually 60x growth—why understate it? And 90% reduction from how many complaints? Ten to one? Who cares. Exponential check: 200% annual growth is explosive... and unsustainable. What happens when they hit market saturation next quarter? Quick estimate: If they have 3 million users and the market is 300 million potential users, they've captured 1%. Still lots of room to grow—or lots of room for competitors. See how these stack? Your Turn—Right Now Okay, pause this video. Seriously, pause it. Open your news app or social media feed. Look at the first three posts with numbers in them. Now run them through the test: What's the scale? Per what? Is it exponential? Does it pass the smell test? I'll give you 60 seconds. Go. Done? Did you find manipulation? I bet you found at least one. Comment below what you discovered—I genuinely want to know what you're seeing out there. The Real Stakes  Let me tell you what just happened. You learned five techniques. But you actually learned something bigger: You learned that your intuition about numbers is systematically broken, and people in power know it and exploit it. Remember the opening? The reason you're more afraid of sharks than heart disease isn't random. Media companies know fear drives clicks, and rare dramatic events trigger your brain differently than common statistical threats. So they show you the sharks, not the cheeseburgers. They're not smarter than you. They're just counting on you not checking the math. We're entering an era of AI-generated stats, algorithmic manipulation, and deepfake data. Your ability to think proportionally isn't just about making better decisions anymore. It's about knowing what's real. The people who can't tell a million from a billion will be led by people who can. And those people? They're fine with you staying confused. So what are you going to be—the one doing the math, or the one getting played? If you want to keep sharpening these skills, this is episode 7 in the Thinking 101 series. Each episode gives you another tool for thinking clearly in a world designed to confuse you. Hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And if this changed how you see numbers? Share it. Someone in your life needs this. Choose today.

We live in the Information Age and we have a duty to tell the truth. We have a duty to use factual data. This channel is to review historic events and make sure we have the information right. Email me with questions and suggestions: Encyclozedia@gmail.com Donations Welcome Cash App: $EncycloZedia"The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool" -Stephen KingBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

We live in the Information Age and we have a duty to tell the truth. We have a duty to use factual data. This channel is to review historic events and make sure we have the information right. Email me with questions and suggestions: Encyclozedia@gmail.com Donations Welcome Cash App: $EncycloZedia"The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool" -Stephen KingBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

In this episode, Alex Perny sits down with Matt Shechtman, CEO of Long Angle Management, to break down what real due diligence actually looks like in today's private markets. They explore key-person risk, incentive structures, fund transparency, track records, red flags, and why investors must ask uncomfortable questions before wiring a dollar. Whether you're investing in real estate, private equity, venture, oralternative strategies, this episode teaches you how to evaluate managers, avoid hidden risks, and make smarter decisions.00:00 The Importance of Due Diligence in Private Markets03:00 Understanding Key Person Risk05:57 Conflict Resolution and Team Dynamics09:12 Incentive Structures and Their Impact12:03 Navigating Information Sources for Due Diligence15:02 Leveraging Networks for Insight17:56 Identifying Red Flags in Investment Opportunities20:53 Common Pitfalls in Due Diligence28:48 Key Factors in Investment Diligence33:06 Understanding Market Cycles and Manager Performance39:58 The Role of Expertise in Investment Decisions43:11 Navigating the Information Age in Investing49:34 Future Trends in Real Estate and Investment StrategiesSubscribe to our YouTube channel and join our growing community for new videos every week.If you are interested in being a podcast guest speaker or have questions, contact us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podcast@AdvantaIRA.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Learn more about our guest, Matt Shechtman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/msheck/Learn more about Advanta IRA: https://www.AdvantaIRA.com/ https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/advanta-irahttps://www.linkedin.com/company/Advanta-IRA/https://twitter.com/AdvantaIRA https://www.facebook.com/AdvantaIRA/ https://www.instagram.com/AdvantaIRA/The Alternative Investing Advantage is brought to you by Advanta IRA.Advanta IRA does not offer investment, tax, or legal advice nor do we endorse any products, investments, or companies that offer such advice and/or investments. This includes any investments promoted or discussed during the podcast as neither Advanta IRA nor its employees, have reviewed or vetted any investments, persons, or companies that may discuss their services during this podcast.  All parties are strongly encouraged to perform their own due diligence and consult with the appropriate professional(s) before entering into any type of investment.#DueDiligence #PrivateEquity #AlternativeInvesting#RealEstateInvesting #PrivateMarkets #InvestSmart #FundManagement#InvestmentRisk #WealthBuilding #AdvantaIRA

This week, scholar Thomas A. Tweed discusses his new book Religion in the Lands that Became America. A sweeping retelling of American religious history, Tweed shows how religion has enhanced and hindered human flourishing from the Ice Age to the Information Age. Tweed is joined by fellow Indigenous Studies professor John N. Low. This conversation [...]

Becoming a learning organization – gaining the ability for an organization and its people to change in response to the changing world around them – is the ultimate success skill for the Information Age. Join with me in a deep dive into how to lead this ultimate strategic initiative. ****************************************************************        Dave Kahle's goal is to provide sales leaders and small businesspeople with practical actionable ideas that can make an immediate impact on your sales performance.          Dave is a B2B sales expert, and a Christian Business thought leader.  He has authored 13 books, presented in 47 states and 11 countries and worked with over 500 sales organizations.  In these ten-minute podcasts, his unique blend of out-of-the-box thinking and practical insights will challenge and enable you to sell better, lead better and live better.        Subscribe to these ten-minute helpings of out-of-the-box inspiration, education and motivation. WWW,DaveKahle.com Dave's Substack page (PW) Subscribe to Dave's Newsletters  

Therapists, helpers, and creatives — you weren't made to burn out.You were made to create from your Zone of Genius.

In this episode of Crazy Wisdom, host Stewart Alsop talks with Richard Easton, co-author of GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones, about the remarkable history behind the Global Positioning System and its ripple effects on technology, secrecy, and innovation. They trace the story from Roger Easton's early work on time navigation and atomic clocks to the 1973 approval of the GPS program, the Cold War's influence on satellite development, and how civilian and military interests shaped its evolution. The conversation also explores selective availability, the Gulf War, and how GPS paved the way for modern mapping tools like Google Maps and Waze, as well as broader questions about information, transparency, and the future of scientific innovation. Learn more about Richard Easton's work and explore early GPS documents at gpsdeclassified.com, or pick up his book GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversationTimestamps00:00 – Stewart Alsop introduces Richard Easton, who explains the origins of GPS, its 12-hour satellite orbits, and his father Roger Easton's early time navigation work.05:00 – Discussion on atomic clocks, the hydrogen maser, and how technological skepticism drove innovation toward the modern GPS system.10:00 – Miniaturization of receivers, the rise of smartphones as GPS devices, and early mapping tools like Google Maps and Waze.15:00 – The Apollo missions' computer systems and precision landings lead back to GPS development and the 1973 approval of the joint program office.20:00 – The Gulf War's use of GPS, selective availability, and how civilian receivers became vital for soldiers and surveyors.25:00 – Secrecy in satellite programs, from GRAB and POPPY to Eisenhower's caution after the U-2 incident, and the link between intelligence and innovation.30:00 – The myth of the Korean airliner sparking civilian GPS, Reagan's policy, and the importance of declassified documents.35:00 – Cold War espionage stories like Gordievsky's defection, the rise of surveillance, and early countermeasures to GPS jamming.40:00 – Selective availability ends in 2000, sparking geocaching and civilian boom, with GPS enabling agriculture and transport.45:00 – Conversation shifts to AI, deepfakes, and the reliability of digital history.50:00 – Reflections on big science, decentralization, and innovation funding from John Foster to SpaceX and Starlink.55:00 – Universities' bureaucratic bloat, the future of research education, and Richard's praise for the University of Chicago's BASIC program.Key InsightsGPS was born from competing visions within the U.S. military. Richard Easton explains that the Navy and Air Force each had different ideas for navigation satellites in the 1960s. The Navy wanted mid-Earth orbits with autonomous atomic clocks, while the Air Force preferred ground-controlled repeaters in geostationary orbit. The eventual compromise in 1973 created the modern GPS structure—24 satellites in six constellations—which balanced accuracy, independence, and resilience.Atomic clocks made global navigation possible. Roger Easton's early insight was that improving atomic clock precision would one day enable real-time positioning. The hydrogen maser, developed in 1960, became the breakthrough technology that made GPS feasible. This innovation turned a theoretical idea into a working global system and also advanced timekeeping for scientific and financial applications.Civilian access to GPS was always intended. Contrary to popular belief, GPS wasn't a military secret turned public after the Korean airliner tragedy in 1983. Civilian receivers, such as TI's 4100 model, were already available in 1981. Reagan's 1983 announcement merely reaffirmed an existing policy that GPS would serve both military and civilian users.The Gulf War proved GPS's strategic value. During the 1991 conflict, U.S. and coalition forces used mostly civilian receivers after the Pentagon lifted “selective availability,” which intentionally degraded accuracy. GPS allowed troops to coordinate movement and strikes even during sandstorms, changing modern warfare.Secrecy and innovation were deeply intertwined. Easton recounts how classified projects like GRAB and POPPY—satellites disguised as scientific missions—laid technical groundwork for navigation systems. The crossover between secret defense projects and public science fueled breakthroughs but also obscured credit and understanding.Ending selective availability unleashed global applications. When the distortion feature was turned off in May 2000, GPS accuracy improved instantly, leading to new industries—geocaching, precision agriculture, logistics, and smartphone navigation. This marked GPS's shift from a defense tool to an everyday utility.Innovation's future may rely on decentralization. Reflecting on his father's era and today's landscape, Easton argues that bureaucratic “big science” has grown sluggish. He sees promise in smaller, independent innovators—helped by AI, cheaper satellites, and private space ventures like SpaceX—continuing the cycle of technological transformation that GPS began.

Send us a textMarkets don't work without trust. Tawni Ferrarini joins Juliette Sellgren to explore how honesty and reputation make exchange possible — from medieval trade networks to blockchain and Amazon reviews — and why decentralized trust systems matter in today's economy of polarization, misinformation, and weak institutions.Support the showNever miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

With endless digital content competing for our focus, let's explore the impact of technology on church engagement, share practical strategies for creating meaningful connections online, and invite churches to become sanctuaries for attention—places where people's presence is honored rather than exploited. Whether you're a church communicator, leader, or just curious about ministry in the digital age, this episode offers thoughtful ideas and actionable tips for making your church story stand out with purpose and peace.  

In this episode, Swamiji continues his exploration of Bhagavad Gita Chapter 7, Verse 2, illuminating how Shree Krishna's teachings offer timeless clarity in today's age of digital overload. Listeners will discover how spiritual knowledge (jnana) and realized wisdom (vijnana) serve as anchors amidst the distractions of modern life, guiding us toward inner peace and divine connection.  Swamiji draws a compelling parallel between the Gita's wisdom and the need for a “digital detox,” urging seekers to turn inward and prioritize spiritual discernment over sensory stimulation. This episode offers practical insights on how to cultivate focus, deepen devotion, and experience God—not through information, but through transformation.  Building upon our previous episode about the twin keys of knowledge and devotion, this discussion deepens your understanding of how divine wisdom can be lived, not just learned. Tune in to enrich your journey through the Gita and elevate your quest for clarity, surrender, and spiritual fulfillment. 

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Every era has demanded something different from us. The Industrial Revolution required physical grit. The Information Age rewarded logic and knowledge. Each shift redefined what it meant to live, work, and lead. Now, we stand in the Fourth Industrial Revolution—where AI, robotics, biotechnology, and hyperconnectivity are changing the game faster than we can catch our breath. And while the technology is powerful, the real risk is distraction. Because the truth is, we can literally distract ourselves out of our own lives. Out of our potential. Out of our relationships. Out of the very moments that make life worth living. Every notification pulls at our attention. Every scroll numbs us just enough to forget who we are and what we're here for. Engineers are paid billions to keep us hooked—to keep us from creating, connecting, and becoming. If we don't learn how to interrupt that cycle, the cost won't just be lost time—it will be lost identity. So what can history teach us? How do we navigate this new age without losing ourselves in it? And what tools will differentiate us—not just from one another, but from the machines we've built? In this episode of The Becoming You Show, we'll look at:The lessons each past revolution left behind—and how they still shape us.Why distraction may be the defining challenge of our time.What it means to move beyond logic into consciousness.And the tools you'll need to reclaim your uniqueness, your capacity, and your humanity. The world is changing. The question is—will you?

Freedom by Design: How to Build a Profitable Business That Serves Your Life with Michael Walsh   Most entrepreneurs start their journey with the dream of freedom—yet many quickly find themselves trapped by the very businesses they built. Revenue grows, responsibilities pile up, and the joy of entrepreneurship fades into overwhelm. In this Episode of the Profit Answer Man, I sat down with Michael Walsh, founder of the Walsh Business Growth Institute and author of Freedom by Design, to unpack how business owners can create companies that support—not suffocate—their lives. Michael has spent over 30 years guiding business owners through the predictable “danger zones” of growth. His message is clear: profit and freedom come when you design your business around your life, not the other way around.   Key Insights from Michael Walsh:  Business Must Serve Life, Not Just Profit. Too many owners chase revenue milestones—$1M, $5M, $10M—only to find bigger problems waiting at each stage. Michael warns: if profit is your only motivator, satisfaction will always elude you. The companies that thrive long-term are those designed to support the owner's life and impact. Reflection: Is your business structured to fuel your life's goals—or is your life revolving around your business? Growth Brings Predictable “Danger Zones”. Michael outlined the common revenue milestones where owners hit walls: $1M–$1.2M → the “zone of hell” where you're too big for DIY systems but too small to afford enterprise solutions. $5M and $10M → structures and systems must evolve or growth stalls. $12M–$20M → the toughest chasm, where people complexity and outdated processes collide. Takeaway: Each new level requires reinventing systems, structures, and leadership—not just “working harder.” Systems Alone Don't Scale—People Do. Rocky and Michael both love spreadsheets, but Michael cautions: numbers tell the story, but people drive the result. A well-designed business empowers its people to excel rather than constraining them with rigid systems. Reflection: Are your processes freeing your team to use their strengths—or boxing them in like cogs in a machine? Freedom Comes from Teamwork, Not Control. Michael stresses that leaders must shift from command-and-control to building intelligent ecosystems. True management is about helping people think, thrive, and work together. When teams are supported—not micromanaged—2+2 can equal 6. Question: How much time do you spend training people how to work together, not just what to do? The Future Belongs to the Creative Business Owner. AI is transforming the business landscape, but Michael warns that owners who outsource thinking to machines lose their edge. The next era isn't the Information Age—it's the Age of Creativity. Those who combine human insight with AI tools will thrive. Action Step: Don't fear AI—learn to use it as a creative partner to free you up for high-value problem solving.   Key Takeaways:  Profit Alone Won't Bring Fulfillment. Chasing revenue milestones without purpose leads to burnout. Businesses built around life goals—not just profit—create more satisfaction and sustainability. Growth Has Predictable “Danger Zones”. Each revenue milestone ($1M, $5M, $10M, $20M) comes with hidden challenges. Systems, structures, and leadership must evolve at every stage, or growth will stall. Systems Must Support People—Not Control Them. Processes should free your team to use their strengths, not box them in like cogs. Businesses thrive when systems empower people to excel. Freedom Comes Through Teams, Not Micromanagement. Leaders must shift from command-and-control to cultivating intelligent ecosystems. Strong teamwork multiplies results and creates freedom for owners. The Next Age is Creativity, Powered by AI. AI won't replace entrepreneurs—but those who creatively combine human judgment with AI tools will have a massive advantage in the years ahead.   About Michael Walsh: Michael Walsh is the founder of the Walsh Business Growth Institute and author of Freedom by Design: The Business Owner's Guide to Grow, Make an Impact, and Find Joy Again. For over 30 years, he has helped business owners in Canada, the U.S., and Europe scale profitably by aligning their companies with their life goals.   Links: Website: http://www.walshbusinessgrowth.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-walsh/   Conclusion: Freedom in business isn't about hitting the next revenue milestone—it's about designing a company that grows with you, supports your lifestyle, and empowers your team. Michael Walsh reminds us that profit follows purpose, systems must evolve with scale, and people—not spreadsheets—ultimately drive success. As the business landscape shifts into the age of creativity, those who align vision, systems, and people while leveraging tools like AI will unlock both profitability and freedom. Your business should give you life, not take it away. The choice to design it that way is yours.   Richer Soul Ep 440 The AI Driven Leader with Geoff Woods: https://richersoul.com/?s=Geoff+Woods   #ProfitFirst #BusinessGrowth #FinancialFreedom #SmartScaling #EntrepreneurLife #BusinessStrategy #LeadershipMatters #CashFlowFix #PurposeDrivenBusiness #CreativeEntrepreneur   Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@profitanswerman Sign up to be notified when the next cohort of the Profit First Experience Course is available! Profit First Toolkit: https://lp.profitcomesfirst.com/landing-page-page  Relay Bank (affiliate link): https://relayfi.com/?referralcode=profitcomesfirst Profit Answer Man Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitanswerman/ My podcast about living a richer more meaningful life: http://richersoul.com/ Music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs. #profitfirst

In this episode of Crazy Wisdom, host Stewart Alsop sits down with Juan Samitier, co-founder of DAMM Capital, for a wide-ranging conversation on decentralized insurance, treasury management, and the evolution of finance on-chain. Together they explore the risks of smart contracts and hacks, the role of insurance in enabling institutional capital to enter crypto, and historical parallels from Amsterdam's spice trade to Argentina's corralito. The discussion covers stablecoins like DAI, MakerDAO's USDS, and the collapse of Luna, as well as the dynamics of yield, black swan events, and the intersection of DeFi with AI, prediction markets, and tokenized assets. You can find Juan on Twitter at @JuanSamitier and follow DAMM Capital at @DAMM_Capital.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversationTimestamps00:05 Stewart Alsop introduces Juan Samitier, who shares his background in asset management and DeFi, setting up the conversation on decentralized insurance.00:10 They discuss Safu, the insurance protocol Juan designed, and why hedging smart contract risk is key for asset managers deploying capital in DeFi.00:15 The focus shifts to hacks, audits, and why even fully audited code can still fail, bringing up historical parallels to ships, pirates, and early insurance models.00:20 Black swan events, risk models, and the limits of statistics are explored, along with reflections on Wolfram's ideas and the Ascent of Money.00:25 They examine how TradFi is entering crypto, the dominance of centralized stablecoins, and regulatory pushes like the Genius Act.00:30 DAI's design, MakerDAO's USDS, and Luna's collapse are explained, tying into the Great Depression, Argentina's corralito, and trust in money.00:35 Juan recounts his path from high school trading shitcoins to managing Kleros' treasury, while Stewart shares parallels with dot-com bubbles and Webvan.00:40 The conversation turns to tokenized assets, lending markets, and why stablecoin payments may be DeFi's Trojan horse for TradFi adoption.00:45 They explore interest rates, usury, and Ponzi dynamics, comparing Luna's 20% yields with unsustainable growth models in tech and crypto.00:50 Airdrops, VC-funded incentives, and short-term games are contrasted with building long-term financial infrastructure on-chain.00:55 Stewart brings up crypto as Venice in 1200, leading into reflections on finance as an information system, the rise of AI, and DeFi agents.01:00 Juan explains tokenized hedge funds, trusted execution environments, and prediction markets, ending with the power of conditional markets and the future of betting on beliefs.Key InsightsOne of the biggest risks in decentralized finance isn't just market volatility but the fragility of smart contracts. Juan Samitier emphasized that even with million-dollar audits, no code can ever be guaranteed safe, which is why hedging against hacks is essential for asset managers who want institutional capital to enter crypto.Insurance has always been about spreading risk, from 17th century spice ships facing pirates to DeFi protocols facing hackers. The same logic applies today: traders and treasuries are willing to sacrifice a small portion of yield to ensure that catastrophic losses won't wipe out their entire investment.Black swan events expose the limits of financial models, both in traditional finance and crypto. Juan pointed out that while risk models try to account for extreme scenarios, including every possible tail risk makes insurance math break down—a tension that shows why decentralized insurance is still early but necessary.Stablecoins emerged as crypto's attempt to recreate the dollar, but their design choices determine resilience. MakerDAO's DAI and USDS use overcollateralization for stability, while Luna's algorithmic model collapsed under pressure. These experiments mirror historical monetary crises like the Great Depression and Argentina's corralito, reminding us that trust in money is fragile.Argentina's history of inflation and government-imposed bank freezes makes its citizens uniquely receptive to crypto. Samitier explained that even people without financial training understand macroeconomic risks because they live with them daily, which helps explain why Argentina has some of the world's highest adoption of stablecoins and DeFi tools.The path to mainstream DeFi adoption may lie in the intersection of tokenized real-world assets, lending markets, and stablecoin payments. TradFi institutions are already asking how retail users access cheaper loans on-chain, showing that DeFi's efficiency could become the Trojan horse that pulls traditional finance deeper into crypto rails.Looking forward, the fusion of AI with DeFi may transform finance into an information-driven ecosystem. Trusted execution environments, prediction markets, and conditional markets could allow agents to trade on beliefs and probabilities with transparency, blending deterministic blockchains with probabilistic AI—a glimpse of what financial Venice in the information age might look like.

Love the Earth. Jesus's first parable (in Luke) is about growing food – the experience of planting grain in plowed earth, watching it grow, observing where it thrives and where it doesn't. Of course it's metaphorically about the reign of God – in whom it takes hold and in whom it doesn't. And it's meant to be at least a little bit funny; the farmer in the story isn't a very careful one. But the parable works because Jesus's audience was agrarian; they were close to the food production cycle. In the Information Age we have to be more deliberate to feel ourselves connected to the earth: go outside, “touch grass,” be stirred for a bird (Hopkins, “The Windhover”), grow something. To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Or, email us the old-fashioned way: info@galileochurch.org. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or Zelle (generosity@galileohurch.org), or just send a check to P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060

Michael Gibson and Danielle Strachman, co-founders of 1517 Fund, join the show to discuss their rebellion against higher education, why universities stifle creativity, why IQ doesn't correlate with innovation, and how betting on "misfit toys" is the way to go—plus we explore Girardian mimesis, the perishable nature of creativity, the laziness of pessimistic storytelling and MORE! I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that's interesting!”, check out our Substack. Important Links: 1517 Fund Michael's Twitter Danielle's Twitter 1517 Substack Show Notes: Why 1517 Fund Rebels Against Higher Education Giving Individuals a Shot “It's cool to be building stuff, it's not cool to be a Thiel Fellow” The ‘ATM Founder' and ‘Rich Too Early' Syndrome The Power of Predictive Character Traits Flipping Credentialist Thinking "How do we become Spielberg? How do we do something truly great?" Simple Memes and Powerful Narratives Avoiding a Monoculture of Misfits The Incestuous Universities Scene Choosing Your Own Path People Contain Multitudes Michael and Danielle as World Emperor and Empress Books & Essays Mentioned: A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age; by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions; by Todd Rose "A Gift for My Daughter"; by Harry Browne (Full text available here) Paper Belt on Fire; by Michael Gibson The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation; by Jon Gertner The Right Stuff; by Tom Wolfe The Status Game; by Will Storr The Two Cultures; by C.P. Snow What Works on Wall Street; by Jim O'Shaughnessy White Mirror: Stories; by Tinkered Thinking Zero to One; by Peter Thiel The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley; by Jimmy Soni Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar; by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World; by Harry Browne

Buckle up as Alux time-travels from the first farms and empires to global trade, industrial titans, the Information Age, and today's AI race to reveal how people got rich across 14,000 years. Cash Flow VS Net Worth: Which is More Important https://youtu.be/5W4OG3oNaZo Invest in yourself today: https://www.alux.app We put together a FREE Reading List of the 100 Books that helped us get rich: https://www.alux.com/100books

Feeling overwhelmed by parenting advice from Google, Instagram, and everyone you know? You're not alone! Learn how to cut through the noise and find answers you can actually trust about your child's health.  Dr. Wendy talks about the viral parenting hacks that fill your feed (are they genius or just hype?), the scary headlines that make you second-guess yourself, and why not all advice—online or offline—is created equal. You'll hear simple tips for spotting sketchy medical content, finding reliable resources, and getting the most out of your conversations with your pediatrician.        Send your questions to hello@pediatriciannextdoorpodcast.com or message me online here.  Find products from the show on the shop page.   *As an Amazon Associate, I earn commission from qualifying purchases.    More from The Pediatrician Next Door:    Website: Pediatrician Next Door Podcast  Instagram: @the_pediatrician_next_door  Facebook: facebook.com/wendy.l.hunter.75  TikTok: @drwendyhunter  LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drwendyhunter    This is a Redd Rock Music Podcast  IG: @reddrockmusic  www.reddrockmusic.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

- Laura Bailey Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.