Podcasts about Invention

After a viral TikTok video doubled her sales overnight, former comedy writer Bette Bentley built Skimpies—a first-of-its-kind organic cotton liner for leggings—into a multimillion-dollar brand. By committing to live sell on TikTok for three hours a day for six months straight, Bette cultivated a fiercely loyal organic community without spending a single dollar on paid advertising. Today, the startup carries a $10 million valuation and continues to disrupt the traditional intimate wear market. For more on Skimpies, in show notes, click here. Subscribe and watch Shopify Masters on YouTube!Sign up for your FREE Shopify Trial here.

What was live like in Ancient Egypt? Was Ancient Egypt the most advanced society? Why did Ancient Egyptians build pyramids? Have you started your FREE TRIAL of Who Smarted?+ for AD FREE listening, an EXTRA episode every week & bonus content? Sign up right in the Apple app, or directly at WhoSmarted.com and find out why more than 1,000 families are LOVING their subscription! Get official Who Smarted? Merch: tee-shirts, mugs, hoodies and more, at Who Smarted?

AI is changing how we work, but can it replace the human entrepreneur? Austrian economist Per Bylund, Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, joins Spencer Nichols to explain why AI is a statistical engine that improves efficiency but can't imagine the future. He argues we're moving from an employment economy to an entrepreneurship economy, and explains what that means for jobs, innovation, and value creation. Chapters: 00:00 Austrian Economics on AI, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship02:34 Can AI Replace the Entrepreneur?05:48 Invention vs Innovation: What Bitcoin Teaches About AI06:29 From an Employment Economy to an Entrepreneurship Economy09:52 Can Regulators Keep Up With the Speed of AI?13:06 Remote Work, Capital Controls, and the Future of Money18:23 Why Every Voluntary Trade Has Two Winners26:28 The Individual vs the State in US-China Competition31:17 Steel Stockpiles, Sugar Subsidies, and the Lobbying Behind Protectionism33:36 OpenAI, Anthropic, and Regulatory Capture in AI#Bitcoin #BTC #PerBylund #MisesInstitute #AustrianEconomics #Economics #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AIEconomy #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #FutureOfWork #SelfEmployment #DigitalNomad #CapitalControls #SoundMoney #Cryptocurrency #FreeTrade #Tariffs #TradeWar #Protectionism #USChina #Regulation #RegulatoryCapture #CreativeDestruction #BitcoinMagazineDISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.

It's been a long time coming, but this week we are joined by Matt Hoopes, founder of 1981 Inventions and longtime guitarist for Relient K. Matt talks about launching the brand with the DRV, the inspiration behind it, and how it was received by the guitar community. He also digs into the follow-up LVL boost pedal and how versatile it is across a wide range of guitar rig setups. Hosted by Todd Novak with Tony Dudzik   #guitarpodcast #electricguitar #pedaleffects #pedalfx #theguitarknobs #guitarknobs #guitarinterview #guitaramplifier #guitarpickups #guitarsetup #fuzz #overdrive #reverb #distortion #guitartips    Visit us at theguitarknobs.com Support our show on Patreon.com/theguitarknobs

A live show can be thrilling for one person and terrifying for another, especially when the room offers only vague warnings like “flashing lights.” We sit down with composer, writer, and inventor Helen Epega (The Venus Bushfires) to unpack how synesthesia shapes her world, why it can feel magical and overwhelming at the same time, and how that lived experience becomes a blueprint for better accessibility in the arts.We trace Helen's journey from Nigeria to London and into opera, where she creates Song Queen, a pidgin English opera that pushes back on who gets cultural legitimacy on elite stages. She shares the surprising mix of welcome, skepticism, and long-term influence that comes with expanding tradition rather than rejecting it. From there we get into her methodology, “Access as Creative Core™,” where accessibility is built into the creative architecture from the first draft, not bolted on at the end.That philosophy leads to HiQuu®, her patent-pending accessibility technology platform for live performance accessibility and digital environments. HiQuu aims to translate a venue's environment into sensory cues and options like captioning or visual prompts so neurodiverse, blind, and D/deaf audience members can attend together, not in segregated sessions. We also dig into intellectual property, patents, and creator rights in the age of generative AI, including why training on creative work without consent or payment damages the pipeline and why creator-led innovation must guide policy.If you care about inclusive design, assistive tech, copyright, patents, opera, or the future of the creative industry, this conversation offers concrete examples and a bigger vision for belonging. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves live performance, and leave a review with one change you want to see in arts access.Send us Fan MailCheck out "Protection for the Inventive Mind" – available now on Amazon in print and Kindle formats.The views and opinions expressed (by the host and guest(s)) in this podcast are strictly their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the entities with which they may be affiliated. This podcast should in no way be construed as promoting or criticizing any particular government policy, institutional position, private interest or commercial entity. Any content provided is for informational and educational purposes only.

In this episode, Lily discusses consecrated virginity. She describes it as the spiritual triumph of maternity, praising Mary's purity and the beauty of those who become spiritual mothers through celibate love. Get our newsletter and other important updates: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hildebrandproject.org/#newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Become a monthly donor! Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠hildebrandproject.org/giving⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on Social Media Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/hildebrand_project⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/@HildebrandProject⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/HildebrandPrj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/Hildebrandproject⁠⁠⁠⁠

In Nederland verschijnen steeds meer ‘stamppotrestaurants'. Leuk voor de toerist, maar doet dit onze eetcultuur wel recht? Hoe zit het met al onze andere culturen en tradities? En wanneer ís eten eigenlijk ‘authentiek Nederlands'? Verder krijgen Teun en Yvette ongevraagd (maar heel welkom) advies over airfryertofu, delen we een eetboek(!)tip en duiken we in de wereld van stoofpotjes: hoe zorg je voor variatie in smaak en textuur? Je hoort het in Etenstijd!Artikel Charlotte Kleyn in Het ParoolOnze sponsors:Matt Sleeps: Ga naar mattsleeps.com/etenstijd en gebruik de code TEUNYVETTE voor een speciale verrassingskorting bovenop de lopende acties.Delicious Magazine: Ga naar deliciousmagazine.nl/etenstijd en krijg bij vier nummers Delicious voor €34,99 het nieuwste boek van Ottolenghi ‘Even Simpel' cadeau.Productie: Meer van ditMuziek: Keez GroentemanWil je adverteren in deze podcast? Stuur een mailtje naar: Adverteerders (direct): adverteren@meervandit.nl(Media)bureaus: adverteren@bienmedia.nl Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Filichia, James Marino, and Michael Portantiere talk about The Dining Room @ Antrim Playhouse, The Sound of Music @ The Paris Theater, Schmigadoon!, The Invention of Love @ Theaterlab, Guys and Dolls Studio Cast Recording, and Helder Guimarães's The Hope Theory @ New York City Center Note: This week read more

Throughout our history cities have been drivers of innovation, from sewers to public lighting, via traffic lights and escalators. Today's discussion is with Jonn Elledge, author of 31 Inventions That Built Our World, and we delve into a few of the ideas that have formed the modern world we live in. For those listeners who are sickened by the adverts that I'm forced to add to this podcast, I have an answer for you. AKOUVA is a new adfree facility for you to listen to the History Book Club without those pesky ads. Simply use the Promo Code HBC at ⁠⁠this link⁠⁠, and you can then avoid being subjected to financial services companies trying to persuade you to part with your cash. You get the first month free with the code, then after that it's a mere £5.99 per month or £59.99 per year. Jonn Elledge Links⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 31 Inventions that Built Our World Jonn's Substack City Metric Podcast History Book Club For Ad free listening sign up to ⁠⁠AKOUVA⁠⁠ using the code HBC ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠History Book Club Book List⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Oliver Webb-Carter Links ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Who Cares Who Wins? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Paean to Patrick Leigh Fermor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email me: owcpods@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

BONUS EPISODE - Stargate Infinity: We Lost a Bet - Mother of Invention Zach wonders what the point of love is, Brent wishes there was more technobabble, and they both marvel at how children's television works. Support the show! https://buymeacoffee.com/walkingthrough

Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and the humanities to argue rather for a distinct focus on materiality, engaging posthumanism, biotheory, and other cutting-edge theoretical approaches.From the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean, this rich collection is inhabited by migrants, port cities, and coral reefs. It explores the fruitful potential of water for literary, anthropological, and ethical studies, bringing both cohesive transdisciplinarity and fresh comparative perspectives to hydro-criticism. Taken together, the wide range of critical interpretative practices constitutes a signal contribution to the blue humanities.Guest yasser elhariry is Associate Professor of French Studies and Chair of the Department of French & Italian Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is affiliated with the Programs in Comparative Literature, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of This Book Is Full of Holes: Literary Bodies & the Invention of an Idiom and Pacifist Invasions: Arabic, Translation & the Postfrancophone Lyric. He has published dozens of essays on Arabic and French lyric, translation, and postcolonialism. Along with Water Logics, he is coeditor most recently of Literature as Sound Studies, Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean, Abdelkébir Khatibi: Literature & Theory, and The Postlingual Turn.Guest Edwige Tamalet Talbayev is Associate Professor of French at Tulane University where she also holds affiliations with the Environmental Studies Program and the Middle East and North African Studies program, which she founded in 2022. Talbayev recently joined the faculty advisory board for the newly established Tulane Global Humanities Center. She concurrently serves as Professor Extraordinarius at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and as a member of the advisory board for the Center for Francophone Research at the University of Leipzig. She is the long-time Editor of Expressions maghrébines and a co-editor of the “Passagen” book series at Georg Olms Verlag (Germany). Talbayev is the author of The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean with Fordham UP and the co-editor of several edited collections; in addition to Water Logics and Rethinking Hospitality in the Mediterranean (both with our other guest today) these include a roundtable entitled “Ecocritical Terrains: Rethinking Tamazghan and Middle Eastern Environments” published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in 2025. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and the humanities to argue rather for a distinct focus on materiality, engaging posthumanism, biotheory, and other cutting-edge theoretical approaches.From the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean, this rich collection is inhabited by migrants, port cities, and coral reefs. It explores the fruitful potential of water for literary, anthropological, and ethical studies, bringing both cohesive transdisciplinarity and fresh comparative perspectives to hydro-criticism. Taken together, the wide range of critical interpretative practices constitutes a signal contribution to the blue humanities.Guest yasser elhariry is Associate Professor of French Studies and Chair of the Department of French & Italian Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is affiliated with the Programs in Comparative Literature, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of This Book Is Full of Holes: Literary Bodies & the Invention of an Idiom and Pacifist Invasions: Arabic, Translation & the Postfrancophone Lyric. He has published dozens of essays on Arabic and French lyric, translation, and postcolonialism. Along with Water Logics, he is coeditor most recently of Literature as Sound Studies, Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean, Abdelkébir Khatibi: Literature & Theory, and The Postlingual Turn.Guest Edwige Tamalet Talbayev is Associate Professor of French at Tulane University where she also holds affiliations with the Environmental Studies Program and the Middle East and North African Studies program, which she founded in 2022. Talbayev recently joined the faculty advisory board for the newly established Tulane Global Humanities Center. She concurrently serves as Professor Extraordinarius at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and as a member of the advisory board for the Center for Francophone Research at the University of Leipzig. She is the long-time Editor of Expressions maghrébines and a co-editor of the “Passagen” book series at Georg Olms Verlag (Germany). Talbayev is the author of The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean with Fordham UP and the co-editor of several edited collections; in addition to Water Logics and Rethinking Hospitality in the Mediterranean (both with our other guest today) these include a roundtable entitled “Ecocritical Terrains: Rethinking Tamazghan and Middle Eastern Environments” published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in 2025. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and the humanities to argue rather for a distinct focus on materiality, engaging posthumanism, biotheory, and other cutting-edge theoretical approaches.From the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean, this rich collection is inhabited by migrants, port cities, and coral reefs. It explores the fruitful potential of water for literary, anthropological, and ethical studies, bringing both cohesive transdisciplinarity and fresh comparative perspectives to hydro-criticism. Taken together, the wide range of critical interpretative practices constitutes a signal contribution to the blue humanities.Guest yasser elhariry is Associate Professor of French Studies and Chair of the Department of French & Italian Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is affiliated with the Programs in Comparative Literature, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of This Book Is Full of Holes: Literary Bodies & the Invention of an Idiom and Pacifist Invasions: Arabic, Translation & the Postfrancophone Lyric. He has published dozens of essays on Arabic and French lyric, translation, and postcolonialism. Along with Water Logics, he is coeditor most recently of Literature as Sound Studies, Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean, Abdelkébir Khatibi: Literature & Theory, and The Postlingual Turn.Guest Edwige Tamalet Talbayev is Associate Professor of French at Tulane University where she also holds affiliations with the Environmental Studies Program and the Middle East and North African Studies program, which she founded in 2022. Talbayev recently joined the faculty advisory board for the newly established Tulane Global Humanities Center. She concurrently serves as Professor Extraordinarius at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and as a member of the advisory board for the Center for Francophone Research at the University of Leipzig. She is the long-time Editor of Expressions maghrébines and a co-editor of the “Passagen” book series at Georg Olms Verlag (Germany). Talbayev is the author of The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean with Fordham UP and the co-editor of several edited collections; in addition to Water Logics and Rethinking Hospitality in the Mediterranean (both with our other guest today) these include a roundtable entitled “Ecocritical Terrains: Rethinking Tamazghan and Middle Eastern Environments” published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in 2025. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and the humanities to argue rather for a distinct focus on materiality, engaging posthumanism, biotheory, and other cutting-edge theoretical approaches.From the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean, this rich collection is inhabited by migrants, port cities, and coral reefs. It explores the fruitful potential of water for literary, anthropological, and ethical studies, bringing both cohesive transdisciplinarity and fresh comparative perspectives to hydro-criticism. Taken together, the wide range of critical interpretative practices constitutes a signal contribution to the blue humanities.Guest yasser elhariry is Associate Professor of French Studies and Chair of the Department of French & Italian Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is affiliated with the Programs in Comparative Literature, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of This Book Is Full of Holes: Literary Bodies & the Invention of an Idiom and Pacifist Invasions: Arabic, Translation & the Postfrancophone Lyric. He has published dozens of essays on Arabic and French lyric, translation, and postcolonialism. Along with Water Logics, he is coeditor most recently of Literature as Sound Studies, Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean, Abdelkébir Khatibi: Literature & Theory, and The Postlingual Turn.Guest Edwige Tamalet Talbayev is Associate Professor of French at Tulane University where she also holds affiliations with the Environmental Studies Program and the Middle East and North African Studies program, which she founded in 2022. Talbayev recently joined the faculty advisory board for the newly established Tulane Global Humanities Center. She concurrently serves as Professor Extraordinarius at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and as a member of the advisory board for the Center for Francophone Research at the University of Leipzig. She is the long-time Editor of Expressions maghrébines and a co-editor of the “Passagen” book series at Georg Olms Verlag (Germany). Talbayev is the author of The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean with Fordham UP and the co-editor of several edited collections; in addition to Water Logics and Rethinking Hospitality in the Mediterranean (both with our other guest today) these include a roundtable entitled “Ecocritical Terrains: Rethinking Tamazghan and Middle Eastern Environments” published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in 2025. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My co-host Ken Suzan and I are welcoming you to episode 179 of our podcast IP Fridays! Today's Interview guest is Peter Berg. If you don't know Peter, he is the Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and is also serving as the VPP president. We talk about the industry association of in-house practitioners VPP, politics, patent strategy at Infineon, litigation ready patents, NPEs, acquisitions, the German emloyees invention act and many more things. So stay with us for this very interesting interview. Before we jump into this interview, I have news for you! The USPTO has issued its first AI-related disciplinary action, published on August 27, 2026 in In re Brian E. Mitchell (Proceeding No. D2026-16) before the Office of Enrollment and Discipline. The underlying settlement was signed by the attorney on July 20, 2026 and by the OED Director on July 21, 2026, with final approval given on July 27, 2026 by Tricia Choe on behalf of USPTO Director John A. Squires. The action resulted in a public reprimand against California patent attorney Brian E. Mitchell after a generative AI tool produced a claim comparison chart containing fabricated citations to the patent’s internal file history. The case underscores that AI-generated hallucinations must be verified by a human before filing. InterDigital has escalated its patent dispute with Disney across three fronts within a month. On August 25, 2026, InterDigital filed two new actions at the Unified Patent Court: a preliminary injunction request at the Mannheim Local Division (UPC_CFI_3044/2026) and a main infringement action at the Düsseldorf Local Division (UPC_CFI_3043/2026), covering Germany, France and the Netherlands. Both target Disney+ Premium’s switch to the VP9 video codec, which InterDigital says still infringes patent EP 2 465 265, a patent the Mannheim division had already found valid and infringed in an earlier ruling that also branded Disney an unwilling licensee; the Düsseldorf action adds a second patent, EP 2 605 473, covering the Up Next continue-watching feature. On September 2, 2026, the Düsseldorf Local Division granted InterDigital an injunction against Disney covering Germany and the Netherlands over a separate patent protecting seamless playback continuation when switching between devices, upholding the patent’s validity in the same ruling. It was InterDigital’s third UPC injunction against Disney. Then, on September 15, 2026, InterDigital filed a damages claim for EUR 101.7 million against Disney at the Munich Regional Court I (case no. 7 O 8870/26), based on a November 2025 finding that Disney+ infringes InterDigital’s HDR video patent EP 2 132 923; the claim also covers viewers in 19 European countries served through a Frankfurt-based server location. For companies relying on codec or connectivity technology, the dispute is a reminder that switching to a different standard does not automatically avoid infringement if the asserted patent is drafted broadly enough. The EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal ruled on September 3, 2026 in G 1/25 that a patent description only needs to be amended to match amended claims if a discrepancy between the two causes a requirement of the EPC, such as clarity, novelty or inventive step, not to be met. The EPO’s Board of Appeal 3.3.08 fully revoked Moderna’s key mRNA patent EP 3 590 949 following a two-day hearing that concluded in mid-September 2026, on the grounds that the claimed subject matter extended beyond the original application. The revocation removes the basis for Moderna’s earlier wins against BioNTech and Pfizer in Düsseldorf and London. On September 15, 2026, US sportswear maker New Balance filed a trademark suit against Decathlon’s US units, Decathlon America LLC and Decathlon USA LLC, in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts (case no. 1:26-cv-14235). New Balance argues that the K logo on its Kiprun running shoe line, when mirrored, reads unmistakably as an N and imitates the N mark it has used for roughly 50 years, claiming post-sale confusion. On September 8, 2026, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled in Case C-298/23, Inter IKEA Systems v Vrijheidsfonds, on a referral from the Brussels Enterprise Court, that the owner of a well-known trademark can prohibit its use by a political party unless the party sets out the specific reasons why its freedom of expression outweighs the trademark owner’s interests. The case arose from the Vlaams Belang party’s 2022 campaign promoting a migration plan styled as IKEA assembly instructions. And now for the interview with Peter Berg! In this episode of IP Fridays I talk with Peter Berg. He is Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and President of VPP, the German association for in house IP professionals, since May 2025. Berg is an electrical engineer by training and leads a team at Infineon that manages a portfolio of more than 12,000 patent families, while the company simultaneously enforces its rights offensively in Germany, the US and China. That combination of hands on portfolio work and association leadership makes him one of the rare guests who can speak to both the operational detail of one of Europe’s largest patent portfolios and the political side of Germany’s IP landscape. The guest: Peter Berg and the VPP Peter Berg is an electrical engineer who became Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and, since May 2025, President of the VPP, the association representing in house patent professionals in Germany. His team manages a portfolio of more than 12,000 patent families while running an offensive enforcement program across Germany, the US and China. That mix of operational and political experience is exactly why I wanted him on the podcast. Germany’s national IP strategy: more than a promise on paper I asked Berg what has become of the national IP strategy promised in Germany’s coalition agreement, and what happens if it does not materialize during this legislative term. His answer was clear. The question is no longer whether the strategy will arrive, only how comprehensive it turns out to be. If it falls short of what industry needs, the profession will simply push for adjustments afterward. Berg names three levels that need attention. First, society as a whole, from kindergarten to retirement, needs to understand that intellectual property underpins our prosperity rather than being a line item in the accounts. Second, academia and professional education. Third, startups and the broader Mittelstand, where well funded structures are still missing. The German Patent and Trademark Office has an educational mandate but far too small a budget for it, and the regional patent information centers are underfunded as well. Berg makes a point that is easy to miss from outside Germany: the patent office reports to the Ministry of Justice rather than to an innovation focused ministry, even though its real purpose is to strengthen the economy. That three ministries, research, economy and justice, are now working on the strategy together strikes him as genuine progress. Litigation ready patents: how Infineon manages 12,000 patent families Infineon has roughly tripled its turnover since 2017 while keeping portfolio size largely stable. The answer, Berg says, is quality over quantity. Inventors pitch their ideas to a panel of senior technical experts and patent attorneys, and the process does not stop there. The draft itself is reviewed by multiple stakeholders, and once the notice of allowance arrives and the patent is granted, it goes through another review. The criteria stay consistent throughout: technology assessment, market size, detectability, circumventability and fit with Infineon’s own roadmap. Internal discipline alone does not make a patent litigation ready, though. That requires real experience with conflict, and most of that experience comes from the defensive side, where Infineon has plenty of practice finding weaknesses in patents asserted against it. Being on the offensive, Berg says, is a different level of learning entirely, whether in court or in licensing negotiations where the other side is not sure it would get a fair outcome if the case went to trial. In practice this also means systematic pruning. Internally Infineon calls the relevant phases US8 and US12, the years when annuity costs peak in the US portfolio, by far the most expensive part of the estate. Berg says his team knows every one of the more than 12,000 patent families in detail, and offensive enforcement is focused on the markets that matter most for electronic products: Germany, the US and China. An injunction at a trade show: national courts versus the UPC One concrete trigger for this conversation was an ex parte preliminary injunction Infineon obtained at a German trade show, without the defendant having filed a protective letter in advance. For Berg, enforcement at trade fairs is nothing new, it has been part of the playbook for years, now extended to venues outside Europe that Western companies have used less often in the past. His view on the UPC is nuanced. He credits the court with a strong start, good management and judges selected for quality rather than politics, and praises the body of case law it has built in a little over three years. On the other hand, some member states are still missing, a comprehensive body of case law takes time to develop, and costs do not fit every business case, especially where achievable damages barely justify the expense. Infineon in any case validates most European patents in only a handful of countries rather than dozens, so the practical difference between national and UPC enforcement is smaller than it might seem. For smaller cases the option to opt out and litigate nationally alongside UPC rights remains important, even though systematically double patenting is not something Infineon pursues for cost reasons. Four systems at once: coordinating cross border enforcement Infineon’s legal and patent departments have grown together over 25 years into a fully integrated international organization, with teams in Europe, North America and several Asian countries that, by Berg’s account, communicate on close to a weekly basis. Add to that a strong network of outside counsel. The commitment to management is not to shy away from any jurisdiction where the need arises. Berg is careful that patent attorneys do not spend their entire careers doing only litigation or only prosecution. Attorneys who rotate into a litigation team bring that experience back into their regular business support afterward, and that cycle in turn improves the quality of new filings. Litigation has become part of daily business, but never something a team slides into unprepared. Going on the offensive against a competitor requires planning several steps ahead. IP due diligence in practice: the Marvell Brightlane deal I found Berg’s answer on the Marvell Brightlane acquisition, Infineon’s 2.5 billion dollar deal for Marvell’s automotive Ethernet business that closed in August 2025, particularly revealing. In the semiconductor industry, he explains, IP is rarely primarily the patent portfolio. What matters more are frozen technologies and so called IP blocks, reusable design blocks that enable fast product development. Infineon almost never acquires a company because of its patents. Being a large, established player, its own portfolio is usually broad enough to secure a new technical area against incumbent competitors. The real work starts after signing. It means listening without being pushy, understanding the new colleagues’ processes and tools before deciding how to integrate the portfolio. Since none of Marvell’s IP staff joined Infineon in this deal, the team had to build up portfolio expertise using the acquired engineers and set up an operational patent committee, then plan which areas of the portfolio were already strong and where investment was still needed. The faster that integration decision gets made, Berg says, the better, because product development can never be allowed to stall because of an acquisition. The Cypress lesson: NPE exposure from legacy portfolios One risk many companies underestimate in acquisitions is patents an acquired business sold to a non practicing entity, or NPE, before the deal closed. That happened with Cypress Semiconductor in 2016, after its merger with Spansion left it with an oversized portfolio it did not need. Cypress sold around 2,000 patents to the NPE organization IP Value, and only a few years later Infineon acquired Cypress. Because the sale included a retained license for Cypress’s own business, Berg sees no exposure for Infineon from those specific patents today. The broader issue of NPE enforcement, though, remains real. Realistically there are many dozens of new cases a month, often directed at customers or the wider ecosystem rather than at chipmakers directly. Even when Infineon is not the target, it has to support its customers whenever its own technology is implicated. For the industry as a whole this consumes a great deal of resources without moving innovation forward, a point that comes up especially often at this time of year in Munich, when IP practitioners from around the world gather for meetings. Post quantum cryptography: patent density ahead of standardization In December 2024 Infineon became the first company to achieve a CC EAL6 certification in post quantum cryptography, one of the highest security certifications available. Berg describes two angles to the work. On one side, Infineon develops its own chipsets to enable quantum computing itself, already a real business rather than pure research. On the other side, customers across Infineon’s application fields need to be prepared for what he calls quantum day, the point at which powerful quantum computers become available, including to bad actors. Because that day may only be three to five years away, infrastructure needs to be built now so it can handle new cryptographic approaches. On standard essentiality he is measured rather than evasive. There are certainly patents in this field from Infineon and others, but security standards have historically leaned toward royalty free licensing rather than the large patent clusters seen in cellular communication from 2G through 5G. Whether that pattern repeats for post quantum cryptography, he cannot say, but Infineon is preparing for either outcome. Germany’s Employee Invention Act: opportunity or burden Asked whether Germany’s Employee Invention Act is an opportunity or a burden for the country’s innovation ecosystem, Berg does not hold back. With more than 30 years of experience, he estimates that 99 percent of all inventions are simply the regular work product of engineers in R&D, requiring no extra incentive at all. In countries without an equivalent law, employees are demonstrably just as innovative and just as willing to share their inventions with the company. His core objection is that invention does not equal innovation. Procurement, production, quality management and many other functions all contribute to a product’s success, not just the named inventors. That the inventor alone receives extra compensation while everyone else does not strikes Berg as unfair, especially since Infineon already rewards its top engineers appropriately regardless of statutory requirements. He calls the law a bureaucratic nightmare that should be abolished or at least radically simplified. Smaller organizations, he notes, often just ignore it or implement it badly, and every company Infineon has acquired with German operations has come with its own legacy mess to clean up. Artificial intelligence in day to day patent work at Infineon On AI, Berg describes three layers. The first is established tools: patent search, translation between the team’s main working languages, and, for about two years now, drafting replies to office actions. As with any tool, the benefit only shows up with repeated use at real volume, which is why Infineon works deliberately with outside counsel to broaden adoption across the team. The second layer is ongoing testing of new tools, limited mainly by the time available to evaluate them. The third is everyday office use. Since spring 2025, everyone from paralegals to attorneys has been able to use AI tools broadly within a secure environment. The bar stays the same throughout: if AI output is not at least as good as an attorney’s prior work, it is not worth using, or the cleanup afterward eats up any time saved. Where it does work, responses to standardization proposals, for instance, can be produced far faster. One question Berg expects to face next year, without yet having an answer: how should efficiency gains be split between the company and outside counsel once both sides benefit from AI? Three messages for the IP community I closed by asking Berg for the most important messages he would want to give our listeners, mostly IP professionals in companies and law firms. His first message: think about IP strategy from the end, starting with what needs to be asserted against whom and for what purpose in ten or twenty years, rather than letting today’s deadlines dictate everything. Only that kind of multi year plan, combined with a sound cost benefit ratio, produces genuinely litigation ready patents. His second message is again about artificial intelligence: anyone who has not started training with it yet risks missing the wave, and this is not a skill built overnight. His third message is aimed at anyone not yet connected to peers in the profession: use the associations and networks that already exist to build that exchange, a thought that ties neatly back to the VPP, where our conversation began. And here is the full transcript: Peter Berg: Hi, I’m Peter Berg, Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and President of VPP, the Association of In-house Patent Practitioners in Germany. And you are listening to IP Fridays. Rolf Claessen: Today’s interview guest is Peter Berg. If you don’t know Peter, he is an electrical engineer by training and is the Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and also serving as the VPP president. Thank you very much for being on IP Fridays. Peter Berg: My pleasure. Rolf Claessen: So first I want to talk about VPP. You succeeded Beat Weibel from Siemens as VPP president in May 2024 and have publicly called for Germany to finally deliver on the coalition agreement promise of the national IP strategy. So politics, what are the two or three most concrete things that strategy must contain? What happens if it doesn’t get done in this legislative period? Peter Berg: First of all, I think I need to correct you. It was May 2025, so not that long as a standing president. But if you mention national IP strategy, national means here for Germany. I think the question isn’t anymore whether or what happens if we don’t get that strategy. I think that is now on its way. The question is rather how good and comprehensive the national IP strategy will be, and if it’s just not enough from an industry perspective, I would say then we adjust afterwards. Of course, there is a big paper out from the BDI, the German Industry Association, published in 2024, and I need to focus on something which is really close to my heart. If you ask me the main content it should have, it is first of all better IP education, and I see there are kind of three levels. One is really society as such, so each and everybody from kindergarten to retirees, we need to acknowledge in the knowledge society that IP is central for our well-being. We have to respect the IP of others. We have to be proud to create IP, not just treat it as an entry in the accounts. Yeah, society at large. The second level is really academia and education in our professional environment. And finally, life is difficult for startups, people who want to create a new company, and small and medium-sized enterprises. There is good stuff out there. The German Patent and Trademark Office has a mandate to educate, but a very small budget to do so. In a federal country like Germany, there are local support systems, be it the chambers of commerce or the patent information centers. The structure is there, but it’s underfinanced, and Germany has to gear up on that one. So besides IP education, I believe solid national IP institutions are key. This is also a funding issue, be it headcount or technology. Think of the German Patent and Trademark Office, think of the courts, be it on the infringement side or the nullity side, so the Federal Patent Court. We need to back up nationally the European institutions, since we believe not every case is worth taking to the UPC, so for smaller cases we need a good national system as a backup. And government needs to have that in mind and not rely too much on European institutions alone. Finally, facilitate the IP transfer from universities and research institutions into industry. Right now it’s all about startups, et cetera, but that kind of IP transfer starts first of all with people leaving university, leaving those research institutions and joining industry, be it as staff or through research contracts. And finally, of course, startups are the area where Germany needs to catch up in particular. Perhaps I need to add for non-German listeners, there is a particularity in Germany in that the IP institutions, like the Patent and Trademark Office, report into the Ministry of Justice, although it’s an instrument for thriving innovation and building a solid economy. So it’s right now a totally new thing for this country that three ministries, research, economy and justice, are working together on this national IP strategy, with only recently some good progress. Rolf Claessen: You’ve said publicly that Infineon’s primary focus is patents that provide clear competitive advantages, and that for you it’s about litigation-ready patents. That’s a very specific phrase. How do you define it operationally, and how has the pruning of your more than 12,000-family portfolio changed in the last two years? Peter Berg: Yeah, I think that’s a process which lasted much more than two years, and it’s never over. This is work in progress. Thinking back to 2017, I joined Infineon, and the company has developed very nicely since. I think we roughly tripled turnover but kept the portfolio size roughly stable, despite acquisitions, despite that growth, also in R&D, et cetera. We’ve even been able to shrink costs since then, and I believe we’ve achieved our strategic goals, now with a good, or let’s say not yet good enough, cost-benefit ratio. And the answer to that equation is quality. Now, we as patent practitioners might call it differently, but at the end it comes down to the fact that, most likely for all companies and for practitioners who support companies in private practice, you need a collaboration platform. That means for Infineon, the inventors are key. They are involved in decision-making, so they pitch their invention to senior technical experts, my team members, and patent attorneys, and the quality of that expert panel makes a big difference. Then come repetitive reviews, not just once the decision to file is taken, but the draft itself is also reviewed by multiple stakeholders. Then we get the notice of allowance, the patent is granted, another review, and later on we try to apply consistent criteria: what’s the technology assessment, what’s the market size, is it detectable, is it easy to circumvent, et cetera, and does it fit with our own roadmap. And of course it would be nice if you could easily compare it with a competitor’s roadmap, or take the time to speculate on certain market changes which might be disruptive. And I believe if you apply that consistently over a sufficiently long period, you get patents you could call litigation-grade or litigation-ready. What is then missing, though, is real experience with conflicts against competitors and how the courts look at that. So the truth comes out once you go to court. On the defensive side, of course, we have tons of experience trying to find weaknesses in patents being asserted against Infineon, et cetera. But I think it’s another level of learning to be on the offensive, and that might play out in court, but it might also play out in licensing negotiations, where the other side is sufficiently unsure whether they would get an outcome they believe would be fair if they went to court with those patents. You asked me about the pruning of all this. So what is our approach there? There is a kind of forced pruning rate which we believe is necessary, to make it mandatory for everybody to identify the weakest patents in the respective portfolios. We focus on the years where costs are highest, what we internally call US8 and US12, since a big chunk of money needs to be spent on annuity payments for the US portfolio, which is the dominant one, and for the rest of the world it’s rather towards the end of the patents’ lifecycle. Now, having a good team, people who really like the technology and stay in charge for a long time, I could proudly say that my team knows every one of those 12,000 patent families well, and not just on the German or the US side, but really focuses on the jurisdictions with the biggest markets for electronic products. And there we see offensive litigation as a good choice, and that is Germany, the US and China. Rolf Claessen: Yes, talking about patent quality is really a hot topic right now, especially in industry and at the EPO, I guess, but that’s a topic for a different hour, probably. But talking about litigation-ready patents, you recently obtained possibly the first ex parte preliminary injunction at a German trade show in recent history, without a protective writ having been filed by the defendant. What does that show about your view on German national courts versus the UPC for this kind of enforcement? Peter Berg: I mean, first of all, litigation is not an end in itself, and in the markets a semiconductor company like Infineon operates in, a product might implement potentially hundreds or thousands of patents. So litigation itself doesn’t resolve all of that, but it has its place in our strategy execution. You’ll understand that I can’t get into specifics of any of the litigations you hinted at. But enforcement of trademarks, and I think you mentioned a patent case, trademarks and patents at trade fairs has been part of our activities for years, and sometimes you can catch somebody by surprise. It’s all about good preparation. But what I believe is more important is that we also prepare for venues so far less used by Western companies, be it China, et cetera. So being litigation-ready means looking into different venues. The UPC is certainly one of them, but there’s more beyond that. Enforcement for us is not only a German or European measure. I personally believe national courts and the UPC will both have a role to play in the future. There are pros and cons to each, which need to be evaluated case by case. I need to congratulate the UPC, which had a great start, good management, good communication about what they do, and a selection of judges based on quality, not politics. In a little more than three years, they’ve built up a pretty good body of case law. On the downside, some countries are still missing, building a really comprehensive body of case law will take time, and the cost side is still a concern, meaning that not every kind of business case reaches damages high enough to justify it, and there’s a certain risk that the case won’t be decided quickly by the court. In such situations, it might not make sense to go to the UPC. We have, I guess, quite a few companies in the electronics or mechanical engineering field where we don’t validate European patents in dozens of countries, maybe two, three, four, and over time it might be even fewer. So geographically, the difference between US, UPC and national enforcement isn’t that big. That’s why the alternative, and I mentioned this a bit at the beginning regarding the national IP strategy, needs to stay a good alternative. So the possibility to opt out and litigate nationally in lesser business cases remains, from my perspective, important, and we continue to use that as well. Rolf Claessen: Yes, and also the hurdle for double patenting has been lowered a little, so you can still have national patent rights in parallel with UPC patent rights. That’s also an advantage, probably. Peter Berg: Yeah, I think that was almost an invitation to say, you know, if you’re not sure whether the unitary patent is your choice, you can do both in parallel. True. But again, all we need to do is achieve our goals with a good cost-benefit ratio, so systematically double patenting is not really the way forward for us. Rolf Claessen: Right. Yeah, that was a very interesting insight about German national courts versus the UPC. But in fact you’re also litigating across borders, in many different countries, for example the US, Europe, Germany, and other countries, in China maybe. So what does coordinating enforcement across all these different systems simultaneously actually look like from the inside, and was it always the plan to have such complex litigation and enforcement systems, or did it evolve? What’s your take on this? Peter Berg: Yeah, at Infineon, our legal and patent departments, as we call them, have grown together over the last 25 years, roughly the age of our company, into an organization that doesn’t just have broad general legal or semiconductor application market expertise, for us that’s automotive, consumer goods, industrial and IoT, but is an organization that’s been tested by hundreds of assertions against us and our customers, and by negotiations with operating companies and NPEs. So that comes with experience. If I look now at our organization, not just my own team but legal in general, we have patent and legal teams in all the hotspots, and that’s grown in the last couple of years too. It’s Europe, of course North America, and various countries in Asia, and it’s a fully integrated international organization. We know each other and communicate, it feels like, on at least a weekly basis. Not to forget a good network of outside counsel to execute enforcement wherever strategic needs require it. That’s kind of our promise to management: we don’t shy away from any jurisdiction, if the need is there we can act and set up a team. Perhaps we’ve learned more on the defensive side, which we can now translate into offensive action. And I guess you’re somehow relating your question to a specific litigation against a Chinese competitor, and that’s not a litigation you kind of slide into. You need to plan a few steps ahead. Litigation has become part of our daily life, and the key moment is always, once it’s decided that this is going to happen, to set up a team for the new litigation. It starts to feel like a routine operation. The staffing depends of course on the technical area of the enforcement, the jurisdiction, and the workload of existing attorneys. And the good thing is that once we rotate patent attorneys into a litigation team, it’s great experience for them, that leads to expertise, and since we try not to over-specialize, so that people don’t only do litigation or only do prosecution, that experience from litigation is a great asset when they go back to supporting a certain business unit doing prosecution work. And coming back to your first question, that personal experience also helps in creating litigation-ready patents over time. Rolf Claessen: Yes, you’ve also acquired a couple of companies, and I have a question about a certain deal, especially the Marvell Brightlane acquisition and the IP due diligence. This $2.5 billion Brightlane deal closed in August 2025 and presumably transferred a substantial patent portfolio in the automotive, let’s say networking, technology field. How much of that big deal is really about buying IP, and how does a deal like that change your daily work in your IP function the day after closing? So once you’d signed the deal, did your daily life change? Peter Berg: It depends on the size of the deal. A couple of questions in there. Let me start with IP in the semiconductor industry, my industry, and that’s more than patents, trademarks and design rights. Speaking to practitioners and R&D colleagues, IP for them is rather frozen technologies and what we call IP blocks, design blocks which enable fast product designs that you can reuse. And if I take that as a basis, although each acquisition is different, IP plays a very big role because it should enable us to bring new products to market quickly, et cetera. Seldom does Infineon acquire a business because of its patent portfolio. Being a large, established player, our existing patent portfolio should be good enough to move into whatever technical area is of interest, and to make sure incumbent competitors couldn’t easily attack us when entering that field. Now, you mentioned the Marvell acquisition. We call it rather the Marvell automotive Ethernet acquisition. From Marvell’s perspective it was a smaller part of their business, which they sold to Infineon about a year ago. How should I say it, you get the assets but you get relatively little IP. So it’s more that you try to familiarize yourself with the assets and how they fit our business case, et cetera. Of course there is due diligence to get an idea and to make sure that everything that should belong to the business is transparent, but the more important part comes after the acquisition. Once the business is owned by Infineon, all the other functions handle their own areas of responsibility. For us, when it comes to IP rights, it’s about reaching out to the new colleagues, helping them for the first couple of days, but also leaving them alone, because there are so many changes they have to go through, and not being overly pushy. Understanding their current processes and tools, and their view of their own portfolio, is important at that point. So you hold back a little and see what they do and why they do it, sometimes you can learn from their best practices. But there comes a moment when we need to finally decide how to integrate the portfolio, and which of our processes and tools they have to adopt, and the faster you make that decision, the better. Since in the case of Marvell none of the IP staff joined us, the task was to build up a portfolio using the expertise of the senior engineers, get a good operational patent committee running, and develop a plan for which areas of the portfolio are good enough and which need to grow, in line with the growth of the business. It’s now more than a year ago, but that was an interesting time, and I doubt many people listening are aware of it, but a big thank you to everybody involved back in 2025. Rolf Claessen: From your answer I get that your job involved a lot of listening, basically, to the needs of the teams that joined your company, right? Peter Berg: At least as much talking as listening. Of course they want to know as well how we do things and what’s expected of them. So first of all it’s about reaching those people and making sure, and this is also a concern, that if everything changes for them, then perhaps the patenting process isn’t the most important thing. Product development is key, and making sure there’s no interruption so they can keep their timelines, et cetera. So being very mindful of that setting. But you’re right, it’s not just about telling them, it’s about listening to them and finding the right moment to switch. Rolf Claessen: Right, I have a very different question now, about NPEs, non-practicing entities, and exposure. I think some NPEs acquired patent families that trace back to Cypress, just before you bought it, or around the time of your acquisition. Are these patents, held by these NPEs, now a problem for Infineon? Peter Berg: That would be it, right? Actually, no, let me give some context first. Companies in distress, or with an overly large patent portfolio for their business, sometimes sell patents at a certain point in their history. Regarding Cypress Semiconductor, that happened around 2016, after they merged with a company called Spansion and ended up with a large combined portfolio they didn’t need. At that point Cypress teamed up with an NPE organization called IP Value and sold them around 2,000 patents, that’s public knowledge, and only a few years later Infineon acquired Cypress. So that was done by Cypress before it became an Infineon company. But good practice is, if you sell a patent, you retain a license for your own business, so in that sense I don’t feel any exposure from those patents. But of course this touches on the general topic of exposure to NPE enforcement, which is a concern in the electronics industry. Realistically, hundreds is perhaps too much, but many dozens of new cases a month, often against our customers or the wider ecosystem. But since it involves technology implemented in our products, even if the enforcement doesn’t target semiconductor players directly, we need to support our customers, and that is a kind of a load we need to help carry. But these are typically patents that somebody else sold to an NPE. You were also asking whether acquiring businesses brings new opportunities as well as new risk. I think that’s natural, and we shouldn’t shy away from that kind of risk. If we, like any other company, go for the big, high-margin, fast-growing businesses, the stakes are high in those areas, and you can’t complain if these also turn out to be litigious marketplaces, because many people want to be there. Around this time of year, since it’s Oktoberfest season here in Munich, many IP practitioners from around the world gather for meetings and share their view on the world. Everybody talks about AI, and NPEs try to acquire whatever patents are on the market that could be the basis of stronger or weaker infringement actions against that part of the industry. From an industry perspective, this consumes a lot of resources and doesn’t really help accelerate innovation in our space. Rolf Claessen: Good that you have a solution for the patent families that were acquired before you acquired Cypress. And now, turning to a very different topic, cryptography. You’re also working on quantum cryptography and post-quantum cryptography, a difficult word, and you, Infineon, were the first to obtain a certification, a really high certification in post-quantum cryptography, the so-called CC EAL6 certification, a very high certification in cryptography for our listeners, in December 2024. Now this field of technology is heading towards standardization. How patent-dense is Infineon’s patent stack in this field, and how are you thinking about the potential standard-essentiality of this new post-quantum cryptography technology, where maybe the American standards from the NIST institute become the infrastructure, or the standard? Peter Berg: It’s a big field with different components. We take the quantum challenge seriously at Infineon, but there are two elements to it. You spoke more about cryptography, but for us, as a semiconductor player, on one hand we want to enable quantum computing with our own chipsets, and we support two different technology streams there, it’s not just development, it’s already a real business. On the other hand, we need to educate and enable customers in the application fields we serve to prepare for that quantum day, the day quantum computing becomes available, and not only to the good guys. You need to think about this now, because it might be just three, four, five years away, you don’t know for sure. It means investing in infrastructure able to handle post-quantum cryptography and security in communications, because you need certain computing power and different ways of handling cryptography algorithms compared to today. Today’s approaches won’t be enough, you need better ones, and you mentioned one at the beginning, which Infineon has proposed. That’s not easy. If you invest in a core today, you’re investing in something like a power station, which stays connected to the internet for a long time, so you need infrastructure robust enough to handle post-quantum cryptography. Regarding the patent stack question, yes, certainly there are several patents in this field owned by Infineon, but also by others. In general, I believe, both in semiconductors and in security more broadly, this tends toward royalty-free licensing, and standard setting has in the past been marked by the avoidance of the big patent clusters we saw building up in cellular communication, from 2G through 5G. I don’t see that happening in the post-quantum cryptography field, but who knows, so we prepare for whatever scenario comes. Rolf Claessen: Let’s see if the Infineon patents end up in a big pool or something later on, and you get all these license fees. Peter Berg: I wouldn’t mind, yeah. Rolf Claessen: Let’s see. Right, now turning to another topic, maybe, for example US colleagues ask me a lot about the German employee invention law. It’s very different from other countries, especially the US. Do you see the German employee invention law rather as an opportunity or a burden for Germany’s innovation ecosystem? Peter Berg: As IP professionals in larger corporations in Germany, we’re so used to that law that we hardly challenge its usefulness. To your question, though, with more than 30 years of experience, I’d say that 99% of all inventions are made by engineers in R&D as part of their regular job, nothing extra on top, so they don’t need an extra motivation for it. And we see it in other countries too, where that kind of law doesn’t exist, and people are just as innovative and just as ready to share their inventions with us as an IP organization, with or without the law. So it doesn’t seem to fulfill the role some see as a competitive edge for Germany, and because of that inventor law, people just end up being more cautious, or more descriptive, about their work results. There are more reasons why I believe this is obsolete. Invention does not equal innovation. There are many other colleagues in a company, in procurement, production, quality management, et cetera, and all of them contribute to a product becoming a bestseller. It’s not a single person, and it’s not just one team’s result, and somehow it doesn’t feel fair that the inventor gets an additional bonus and the others don’t. In any case we’d give our top engineers a premium anyway, and we reward inventors in all other countries, with the law or without it, without any worldwide mandate for that kind of remuneration. So from a corporate perspective we don’t need a law to help us work out the benefits and share them with our top inventors. The law is a bureaucratic nightmare. It needs to be abandoned, or at least radically simplified. In smaller organizations, I guess it’s often just ignored or badly implemented. Believe me, every company we’ve acquired with operations in Germany has left us a bit of a heritage to clean up. Rolf Claessen: Yeah, I understand. Now for a different topic, AI, the use of AI. We as patent attorneys talk about this a lot, it’s a big topic, how to use AI, whether to use AI, and how to use AI in law firms. But can you tell us about the use of AI in the operations of your team? Peter Berg: Recently we discussed this and agreed on kind of three layers to it. First, good use of established AI tools. AI, in that sense, isn’t something that started three years ago with ChatGPT. It began with search, patent search, then translation, at least between the major languages like German and English, which most of my team masters, and then, I’d say about two years ago, drafting and replies to office actions. So there are established tools, and as with every tool, you need to use it repeatedly, at a certain volume, to really benefit from it. We try to work with the best of these established tools, driving wider adoption within the team and partnering with our law firms, since a substantial part of the legal work is done by our outside counsel. So this is a bit of a joint exercise. Second, there are constantly new tools coming up, which we try to test. There are many, so the time we have available to look into them is the limiting factor. I’d like to test more, because there might be a new frontrunner coming up that we should definitely try ourselves. But last, and certainly not least, we try to implement AI into everyday operations, into the office environment itself. The company made a good decision in spring to allow wide adoption of AI-specific tools in a secure environment, and that has opened up a lot of opportunities for everybody, paralegals and attorneys alike, and now it’s about fostering an open exchange on what’s possible and what’s not. And finally, since Infineon, like most corporations, doesn’t do everything in-house, there’s the question of what the benefits are that we can plan around, so that we get better quality. If the quality of the AI results isn’t as good as the attorney’s results before, then we shouldn’t use it, or we’d spend so much time cleaning it up afterwards that nobody could tell the difference. Second, we can now do things that weren’t possible before, because they were too tedious or took too long, or we get faster turnaround times, so we can respond more quickly to standardization proposals, what used to take many days we can now do in a few days, while still trusting the quality of the output. And only then comes what’s often discussed as efficiency gains, and the question that will probably be asked next year is how we split the pie: if both we and outside counsel benefit from using AI, what do we do with those benefits, how much stays with outside counsel, and how much should also benefit my budget? Rolf Claessen: But I clearly see the advantages of using AI, I’m using it myself, especially for cases like oppositions, where in earlier times you had to read through some 30 papers, patents and books, and now you can just ask the AI where you find a certain feature across those 30 documents. So it’s really useful in a lot of cases. Now my last question to you, and maybe the most important one, what do you think are the three most important messages you want to convey to our listeners, who are mostly IP professionals, both in-house and in law firms? Peter Berg: Do you want me to repeat things I said before, or can I think freely, in general? Free thinking, of course. Okay. Many of the things we spoke about now were about what to do next, and how to execute certain things, how to prepare. I believe that if you think about IP strategy, you think about it from the end: what do I need to assert, against whom, for what purpose, before building a portfolio of IP rights. So it’s not just about the deadlines you have today and tomorrow, which you somehow have to get through, but about taking a step back and thinking, what should this be good for in 10 or 20 years’ time. If you do that, it helps you get to litigation-grade patents and litigation readiness. We’re all busy, and there are so many things we need to do today and tomorrow, so it’s easily forgotten to look a little further down the road. So I’d say, think about a multi-year plan to achieve your goals, and there are hardly any moments, unless perhaps you’re one of the big AI platforms with unlimited resources, where that isn’t true. So plan for multiple years, but with a good cost-benefit ratio in mind. And I can’t really avoid mentioning AI here. It’s having a major impact on our operations. We’ve talked about it, we’ve tested it, but ramping it up is a different matter, and I think next year will be decisive. That’s really the full value chain, from interacting with our inventors to get better quality ideas, all the way to claim charting and negotiating, the bread-and-butter activities of patent attorneys, drafting office action replies is of course part of that too. I’m really keen to see that happen, and I’m trying to keep my team ahead of the wave. And I can only encourage everybody in our profession, if you don’t yet have a contact, team up with friends or colleagues in the profession, use the various associations that exist in our profession to network and discuss. The worst thing is to miss the train, and it takes time, this isn’t something you become good at overnight, so it needs time to train, and it’s good to start now. Rolf Claessen: Yes, that’s a very good point, and closing where we began, with the VPP, exchanging ideas among colleagues really is key, I think, important. Thank you very much for being on IP Fridays, on our podcast. That was really interesting, and I think our listeners can learn a lot from this interview. Thank you very much. Peter Berg: Don’t mention it, it was a pleasure talking to you, and for me it was also the first time doing this kind of podcast. Thank you. Rolf Claessen: Thank you

Julien prépare le pique nique de Lisa pour la sortie scolaire du lendemain : un yaourt à boire, des madeleines... quand Lisa pose une grande question : pourquoi utilise-t-on autant d'emballages en plastique pour conserver ces aliments, alors qu'on sait que ça pollue ? Pour découvrir comment une invention révolutionnaire est devenue l'un des plus grands défis environnementaux de notre époque, Julien nous fait remonter le temps, jusqu'à l'invention du plastique au début du XXème siècle.

“Is Purgatory an invention?” This question leads to a discussion on the nature of purgatory and its biblical foundations. Other topics include addressing doubts about a young earth with a family member and how to engage a lukewarm friend about returning to faith. The conversation also touches on the validity of baptism and the moral implications of suicide. Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit Catholicanswersspeakers.com Questions Covered: 02:05 – How would I answer the claim that purgatory is an invention to excuse people from sinning in their lifetime? 10:33 – My brother-in-law stopped believing because he no longer believes in a young earth. How do I walk through this? 16:20 – How do I approach my lukewarm friend to bring him back to the faith? 22:25 – When I was baptized, I didn’t care. Was it valid? 30:25 – How do I explain to someone that suicide is objectively wrong? 39:15 – 2 Maccabees references praying for the dead but are there any other references in the OT or jewish texts? 46:00 – What resources do you recommend to start learning about the early Catholic Church? 49:10 – My mother left Catholicism for the Assembly of God. She doesn't want to return because she said the Church wasn't feeding her. What can I say to her to get her to reconsider?

HOUR 1- Ruining Your Life, An Amazing New Invention and MORE full 2165 Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:42:00 +0000 5DfXkZ0Zk8CIjwF04LH5ngg24tefL22d society & culture Klein/Ally Show: The Podcast society & culture HOUR 1- Ruining Your Life, An Amazing New Invention and MORE Klein.Ally.Show on KROQ is more than just a "dynamic, irreverent morning radio show that mixes humor, pop culture, and unpredictable conversation with a heavy dose of realness." (but thanks for that quote anyway). Hosted by Klein, Ally, and a cast of weirdos (both on the team and from their audience), the show is known for its raw, offbeat style, offering a mix of sarcastic banter, candid interviews, and an unfiltered take on everything from culture to the chaos of everyday life. With a loyal, engaged fanbase and an addiction for pushing boundaries, the show delivers the perfect blend of humor and insight, all while keeping things fun, fresh, and sometimes a little bit illegal. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Society & Culture https://player.amperwavepodcasting

Hear more from Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter of Tiny Inventions on using grants and residencies in Europe to fund their animation practice, negotiating the slow, labor-intensive process of stop-motion animation with the demands of commercial clients, how even an Oscar nomination didn't prevent future failures or rejections, making the hard decision to shelve a feature film they'd worked on for years, and how they balance their time between family, teaching, and running a small business.    Aura House – Podcast sponsor, premium home fragrance diffusers that will make your home smell like a spa with scents that are cruelty free, vegan, and safe for pets! Get 10% off on top of their site discounts with our discount code STUDIO10 at www.aurahouse.com (*affiliate link)   "How to Find and Land Large-Scale Public Art Projects" – Register for co-host Nicole Mueller's upcoming virtual workshop! Use the code EARLYBIRD for 15% off through September 30th, 2026 at www.nicolemariemueller.com/workshops   Find links to resources mentioned throughout the episode here in our show notes:  beyondthe.studio   Submit to our Listener Spotlight: Listener Spotlight    Follow us on Instagram at: @beyondthestudio 

In this episode, Nico and Jessa discuss one of the weirder ideas championed during feminism's Second Wave, including by Gloria Steinem: the idea that pre-history's civilizations were matriarchal with a goddess culture at their center. The idea didn't originate with the feminist movement, they were based on a confused interpretation of 19th century archeological finds. But they sure did run with it, nearly 75 years after the idea had been discredited. Today you still see people repeating these ideas in spirituality circles, the more woooo end of feminism, and also the neo-Nazis. Jessa and Nico discuss the wish for the idyllic past, why feminism's ideas keep accidentally overlapping with those of Nazi Germany, and why we probably shouldn't let artists write books about archeology. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

Idea: Holograms that perform improv with you, so you can do improv if you don't have friends or it's too difficult to coordinate with them (and so you don't have to bug stand-up comics to do improv). Also: the holograms could be AI, could be controlled remotely by a real person in another location, could disguise a real person who's actually there, and could be things like horses that move around the stage; the odd animosity of stand-up comics towards improv; being an improv bully to your holographic AI improv troupe; kicking a holographic AI out of the improv troupe for not performing "on the same level" as everyone else, and then convincing the AI to go to a real therapist Michela VanDam (facebook.com/michela.vandam instagram.com/mkela17) Tim Russ (instagram.com/timrussacomic facebook.com/feerslugteacher) Dan Feister (instagram.com/buddyfeastepisodetwo Podcast: Not Real) Tom Walma (https://creativitywasted.com/creativitywasted x.com/thomaswalma twitch.tv/gameymcfitness) This podcast is part of Planet Ant Podcasts (https://planetant.com) This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Things got heated as we continue filling out the Greatest Invention bracket. For less bracket content check out thePFPN.com. Join in on the fun at Facebook.com/btaabm2

You invented something new.Or did you?Before you order the celebratory hoodies, announce your breakthrough on LinkedIn, and start imagining a framed patent hanging behind your desk, there is one inconvenient question worth answering: has somebody already disclosed your invention?In this episode, we explore patent novelty—one of the fundamental requirements that can determine whether an invention qualifies for patent protection in the United States.Under 35 U.S.C. § 102, certain patents, publications, public uses, sales, and other qualifying disclosures can potentially become prior art against a claimed invention. That means something can be completely new to you, your engineering team, and your increasingly enthusiastic investors while still running into prior art.Patent databases have long memories.

Can you truly be bad at something that is one of your Working Geniuses?In episode 122 of the Working Genius Podcast, Pat Lencioni and Cody Thompson explore whether someone can genuinely be “bad” at one of their Working Geniuses and reveal why the answer is more complicated than it first appears. They examine how assessment accuracy, genius pairings, timing, context, environment, and expectations can cause a genuine strength to be misunderstood or poorly applied. They also warn that becoming exceptionally good at work that drains you can create its own trap, leading others to expect more of the very work you should not be doing constantly.Topics explored in this episode: (00:00) Can You Be Bad at Your Genius?Pat introduces the surprising possibility that becoming skilled at work outside your genius can create long-term problems.Pat and Cody begin unpacking whether someone can genuinely have a Working Genius while appearing to be bad at it.(04:26) Why Genius Pairings Change EverythingCody explains how the second letter in a Working Genius pairing can dramatically change how a particular genius appears in practice.Pat and Cody contrast different forms of Invention, showing why one inventor may generate wild conceptual ideas while another focuses on practical systems and implementation.(08:28) The Danger of Getting Good at Your FrustrationsPat and Cody discuss why becoming highly competent at work that drains you can cause other people to continually expect that work from you.Pat shares how years of succeeding in his frustrations created such a strong aversion that even relatively simple Tenacity-related tasks can now feel difficult.(12:00) Using Your Genius at the Wrong TimeCody explains that a genius can look ineffective or even destructive when it is used out of sequence, aimed at the wrong problem, or applied when it is not needed.Pat emphasizes the difference between possessing genuine ability and knowing how to regulate that ability according to timing and context.(16:09) How Environment Shapes Your GeniusPat and Cody explore how the quality of the surrounding product, organization, or situation can affect whether someone appears successful in their genius.They close by discussing how family, culture, education, comparison, and environment can shape a person's understanding of how strong they actually are in a particular genius.This episode of The Working Genius Podcast with Patrick Lencioni is brought to you by The Table Group: www.tablegroup.com. We teach leaders how to make work more effective and less dysfunctional. We also help their employees be more fulfilled and less miserable. The Six Types of Working Genius model helps you discover your natural gifts and thrive in your work and life. When you're able to better understand the types of work that bring you more energy and fulfillment and avoid work that leads to frustration and failure, you can be more self-aware, more productive, and more successful. Take the assessment today to discover your natural gifts and thrive at work: https://workinggenius.me/about Subscribe for more content from Patrick Lencioni @PatrickLencioniOfficialStay Connected with Patrick LencioniLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-lencioni-orghealthInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/patricklencioniofficialTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@patricklencioniofficialX: https://x.com/patricklencioniThe Working Genius Podcast with Patrick LencioniApple: https://workinggenius.me/apple Spotify: https://workinggenius.me/sptfy YouTube: https://workinggenius.me/wgyt Be sure to check out our other podcast, At The Table with Patrick Lencioni, on Apple Podcasts (https://tablegroup.me/apple), Spotify (https://tablegroup.me/sptfy), and YouTube (https://tablegroup.me/youtube). Let us know your feedback via podcast@tablegroup.com. This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co.

We're auditing the hidden maritime highway of fat, acid, and raw heat connecting the American Gulf Coast straight to the Atlantic territories—where North Alabama pitmasters dunk whole hickory-smoked birds into black-peppered cider-mayo baths, and Puerto Rican street vendors weaponized the exact same industrial emulsion into garlicky Salsa Rosada to anchor every hot fritter in Piñones. Further west, Greek-owned Mississippi diners engineered Comeback Sauce as an addictive, paprika-heavy hospitality trap, while island cooks deep in the Cordillera Central relied on sizzling hot-oil Mojo Criollo to shock raw garlic into roasted pork perfection. To round out the coast, St. Croix turned Danish trade routes, Indian spices, and wild green mangoes into a blistering, sweet-sour Crucian chutney that cuts through whole-fried reef fish like a precision scalpel.---Follow us:Twitter / X: @LTSundryInstagram: @LTS.PodYouTube: Life, Tech, and Sundry (Subscribe and hit the bell!)Available across Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major podcast platforms.---☕ SUPPORT THE BRIEFINGS:Researching these regional recipes and tracking culinary infrastructure runs on a dangerous amount of caffeine. If you'd like to support the show directly and keep our mics hot, check out our Buy Me a Coffee:

In this episode, Lily examines women's influence within the Catholic Church. She argues that women's humble authority has profoundly shaped the Church throughout its history. The conversation compares the sacrifices of motherhood and priesthood, affirming both as paths of loving service for women and men, respectively. Get our newsletter and other important updates: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hildebrandproject.org/#newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Become a monthly donor! Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠hildebrandproject.org/giving⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on Social Media Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/hildebrand_project⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/@HildebrandProject⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/HildebrandPrj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/Hildebrandproject⁠⁠⁠⁠

In this series we are reading through the Psalms one by one and pointing out cool stuff along the way. The goal is to help get the Psalms into our theological landscape so that they help form our outlook as they have done for God's people for nearly 3,000 years.

Jump in with Carlos Juico and Gavin Ruta on episode 305 of Jumpers Jump. This episode we discuss: Lifelong friendship games, American highschool, Senior assassin, Switzerland autumn theory, Switzerland cow theory, Jeff the killer in real life, Sonic the hedgehog convention, Circada's peeing, Vivian wilson anti ai advertisement, Elon musk's cybercabs, Hyrox incident, First dinosaur seen in paintings, Cloudbuster theory, Noah's ark found, Dragon's eye found in the mountains, Inventions in this generation, Toronto stereotypes, How to survive grizzly bears, Shark attack story, Vampire doormat, Size of a tuna, Underground communities taking our water, Grand canyon buildings, Uber vs Ai, Personal shoppers, Navy seal training and much more! Thanks to our Sponsors: -New customers get 40% Off with code JUMPERS at https://www.GLD.com -Start your free trial at https://www.shopify.com/jumpers -Get simple, online access at https://www.hims.com/jumpers -Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/wh9pmopc #CashAppPod Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. Follow the podcast: @JumpersPodcast Follow Carlos: @CarlosJuico Follow Gavin: @GavinRutaa Check out the podcast on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/JumpersJumpYT⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In my conversation with Professor Pablo F. Gómez about his new book, Bloody Numbers: The Early Atlantic Slave Trade and the Invention of Modern Corporeality, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2026.Our conversation explored the unsettling relationship between slavery, the body, measurement, and knowledge. What does it mean to measure a human body within a system that has already reduced that person to a commodity? And what happens when numbers that appear neutral become entangled with violence, commerce and exploitation?What stayed with me is the book's invitation to think differently about numbers. Behind measurements of height, weight, health, disease and mortality were human beings whose lives could not be contained by the data recorded about them.These questions are not only historical. We live in an increasingly quantified world, where bodies, health, productivity and risk are constantly measured and transformed into data.So perhaps one question we should keep asking is: Who is doing the counting, why are they counting, and what happens to the people being counted?I invite you to listen to our conversation and reflect with us on the histories behind the numbers we encounter today. Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In my conversation with Professor Pablo F. Gómez about his new book, Bloody Numbers: The Early Atlantic Slave Trade and the Invention of Modern Corporeality, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2026.Our conversation explored the unsettling relationship between slavery, the body, measurement, and knowledge. What does it mean to measure a human body within a system that has already reduced that person to a commodity? And what happens when numbers that appear neutral become entangled with violence, commerce and exploitation?What stayed with me is the book's invitation to think differently about numbers. Behind measurements of height, weight, health, disease and mortality were human beings whose lives could not be contained by the data recorded about them.These questions are not only historical. We live in an increasingly quantified world, where bodies, health, productivity and risk are constantly measured and transformed into data.So perhaps one question we should keep asking is: Who is doing the counting, why are they counting, and what happens to the people being counted?I invite you to listen to our conversation and reflect with us on the histories behind the numbers we encounter today. Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cette semaine, nous vous présentons le Martin pêcheur. The kingfisher, le roi pêcheur en anglais, der Eisvogel, l'oiseau des glaces en allemand.Nous allons voir comment ce petit oiseau de la taille d'un moineau a inspiré le design si particulier du Shinkanzen, le TGV japonais.Nous allons parler d'aérodynamique et d'économie d'énergie, mais aussi d'un garçon ensorcelé transformé en oiseau parce qu'il avait refusé de donner à boire à sa maman...___

In my conversation with Professor Pablo F. Gómez about his new book, Bloody Numbers: The Early Atlantic Slave Trade and the Invention of Modern Corporeality, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2026.Our conversation explored the unsettling relationship between slavery, the body, measurement, and knowledge. What does it mean to measure a human body within a system that has already reduced that person to a commodity? And what happens when numbers that appear neutral become entangled with violence, commerce and exploitation?What stayed with me is the book's invitation to think differently about numbers. Behind measurements of height, weight, health, disease and mortality were human beings whose lives could not be contained by the data recorded about them.These questions are not only historical. We live in an increasingly quantified world, where bodies, health, productivity and risk are constantly measured and transformed into data.So perhaps one question we should keep asking is: Who is doing the counting, why are they counting, and what happens to the people being counted?I invite you to listen to our conversation and reflect with us on the histories behind the numbers we encounter today. Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Staying in the post-op room, finding sustenance, and perfect timing.

Hear Tim Harford discuss his book "The Data Detective" in episode #433. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Burnie and Ashley discuss Hyrox, Crossfit, Sony gray out, re-inventing the MP3 player, Sidephone, slab phones, Steam frame, Meta Quest, and being the biggest part of the problem.

In 1796, English doctor Edward Jenner noticed a local belief that milkmaids who caught cowpox, a usually mild disease, seemed protected from smallpox, one of history's deadliest infections. He tested the idea by taking material from a cowpox sore on milkmaid Sarah Nelmes's hand and inoculating eight-year-old James Phipps.James became mildly ill, recovered, and later did not develop smallpox when Jenner tested whether the cowpox exposure protected him. The experiment was ethically unacceptable by modern standards, but it demonstrated the principle behind vaccination: safely training the immune system to recognize a dangerous disease.Jenner did not invent the broader idea of inoculation, earlier practices such as variolation already existed but his cowpox-based method was far safer and became the first successful vaccine. The word “vaccine” itself comes from vacca, Latin for cow.Almost two centuries later, worldwide vaccination campaigns led the World Health Organization to declare smallpox eradicated in 1980, the only human disease ever eradicated globally.

Send us Fan MailStop Forcing Work That Drains You: Find Your Working GeniusWhat kind of work gives you energy—and what quietly drains your battery?In Real Estate AF Episode 166, Mark Jones sits down with Giancarlo Anduray, a Phoenix Branch Manager and mortgage leader, to break down The 6 Types of Working Genius and apply the framework to real estate, mortgage sales, leadership, hiring, partnerships, marriage and burnout.Giancarlo walks Mark through his assessment in real time. The result explains why Mark naturally builds systems, solves problems and questions inefficiency—and why repetitive support tasks can drain him even when he can do them well.THE SIX TYPES• Wonder — identifies a need for improvement or change• Invention — generates ideas and solutions• Discernment — evaluates whether an idea will work• Galvanizing — creates enthusiasm and action• Enablement — supports implementation• Tenacity — drives work through completionIN THIS EPISODE• Why being different does not mean you are broken• Joy versus short-term motivation• Genius, competency and working frustration• Why talented people can be trapped in the wrong role• Hiring and retaining complementary people• Why one sales activity energizes one person and drains another• Mark's Invention + Discernment pairing• Reducing conflict at work and at home• Building teams and referral partnerships around natural strengths• A real-estate YouTube success story created by changing the activity—not the personGUESTGiancarlo AndurayBranch Manager | NMLS #1537433Premier Mortgage Resources, LLC | NMLS #1169623-552-4191https://www.pmrloans.com/loan-officer/giancarlo-anduray/WORKING GENIUS RESOURCEhttps://www.workinggenius.com/HOSTMark Jones | NMLS #513437Host, Real Estate AFSenior Mortgage Loan Officer | Branch ManageriThink Mortgage powered by Premier Mortgage Resourceshttps://MortgageTalkWithMark.com/https://www.youtube.com/@MortgageTalkwithMarkPOWERED BY LOANBOThttps://myloanbot.ai/CHAPTERS00:00 Get Better Every Day — Cold Open00:32 Welcome to Real Estate AF01:17 Meet Giancarlo Anduray02:09 Why Working Genius Matters in 202604:22 Joy vs. Happiness07:19 How Giancarlo Found Working Genius10:16 Conflict, Expectations & Self-Awareness13:39 Hiring Complementary People15:49 Mark Takes the Assessment16:44 Genius, Competency & Frustration20:08 Wrong Role—or Wrong Person?21:54 Wonder24:31 Invention26:25 Discernment30:51 Galvanizing34:18 Enablement38:39 Tenacity41:10 Why Teams Need All Six43:36 Mark's Results: Invention + Discernment48:18 Competency, Burnout & Regulation51:41 Working Genius at Home54:42 Frustrations, Adaptations & Leadership59:52 Mark's Unique Pairing1:02:42 Giancarlo's Pairing & Complementary Teams1:05:39 Referral Partners & Team Fit1:06:26 The YouTube Success Story1:08:54 Applying Working Genius1:10:34 How to Reach Giancarlo1:11:30 Final Takeaways1:15:00 ClosingQUESTION FOR YOUWhich type sounds most like you: Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement or Tenacity?Comment below, then send this episode to the teammate, spouse or business partner whose strengths are completely different from yours.IMPORTANT DISCLOSURESThis content is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not legal, tax, financial, psychological, employment, human-resources, real estate or individualized mortgage advice. Working Genius is a workplace-development framework, not a clinical diagnosis or substitute for licensed medical or mental-health advice.The 6 Types of Working Genius®, Working Genius® and related terminology are associated with Patrick Lencioni and The Table Group. This independent podcast discussion is not sponsored by or affiliated with The Table Group unless expressly stated.Nothing presented is a commitment to lend, loan approval, rate quote, rate lock, Loan Estimate, offer of credit or guarantee of terms. Mortgage programs, rates, costs, guidelines and availability may change without notice. All loans are subject to qualification, credit and property approval, verified documentation, underwriting and program availability. Not all applicants or properties will qualify.Guests speak for themselves. Their views do not necessarily represent Mark Jones, iThink Mortgage, Premier Mortgage Resources, LoanBot or any affiliated organization. No compensation is paid or received for referrals, endorsements or podcast appearances unless disclosed. No referral or settlement-service arrangement is intended or offered in violation of RESPA or applicable law.LoanBot is an educational mortgage technology resource. It does not approve loans, make credit or underwriting decisions, guarantee eligibility or replace a licensed mortgage professional.Mark Jones | NMLS #513437Giancarlo Anduray | NMLS #1537433Premier Mortgage Resources, LLC | NMLS #1169Equal Housing Lender#RealEstateAF #WorkingGenius #LeadershipSupport the showRealEstateAF is Powered by LoanBot.com Host: Mark Jones | Sr. Loan Officer | NMLS# 513437 If you would like to work with Mark on your next home purchase or as a partner visit iThink Mortgage.

"All hope, abandon ye who enter here." These words from Dante's Divine Comedy may shape our modern vision of hell, but did you know that the Bible says surprisingly little about it? In fact, hell as we know it was constantly reinvented during the Middle Ages.Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Dr. Stephen Hopkins as they descend into the medieval underworld to uncover how apocryphal texts, localised mythologies, and religious anxieties shaped the terrifying, and occasionally hopeful, realms of the afterlife.MOREHow to Get to Heaven: Papal IndulgencesListen on AppleListen on SpotifyMedieval ApocalypseListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcastHistory Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Want even MORE history? Watch Eleanor and Matt's new film Medieval Summer on History Hit. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS early access ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At 1:09:00 we talk about the rise of AI x Finance, and AIE NYC is one month away - our hotel block is 97% sold out, get tix & travel ASAP - we will announce speakers from Bridgewater, Ramp, Coatue, Mastercard, Vanguard, Coinbase, Blackrock, Fidelity, Point72, Capital One, JPMC, Wells Fargo, Bloomberg, A24 (yes the movie studio) Labs, Two Sigma, Apollo Global, and more soon!From helping pioneer core ideas in NLP to now building AI systems that can automate AI research itself, Richard Socher is betting that the next major step in AI is recursive self-improvement. He is the founder of You.com, AIX Ventures, and now Recursive, which has assembled some of the best open-endedness (& self improving agent) researchers in the world and raised a $4.65B seed round.In this episode, Richard joins Latent Space to unpack his vision for the “Eureka Machine”: a superintelligence that can improve the process of invention itself, accelerate AI research, and eventually tackle major problems across science, energy, materials, biology, and more.You can get his book “The Eureka Machine” here!We go deep on Recursive's early results, including an AI research system that Richard says outperformed humans and their agents on optimization tasks in less than two days, as well as work on NVIDIA GPU kernels where the system discovered improvements without relying on a team of CUDA experts. Richard also explains why he thinks AI research that currently takes thousands of people and years could eventually be compressed into weeks. These results are summarized in his 20 minute AIE keynote, where we also discuss his 10 dimensions of intelligence:We also explore the harder questions around increasingly capable AI: reward hacking, whether Anthropic-style constitutions actually work, AI regulation and proposals to “pace” frontier development, open-source models as geopolitical soft power, whether today's LLM paradigm is enough, and what happens if AI systems eventually begin choosing their own goals. Richard reflects on the rejected research that helped inspire Alec Radford's GPT, open-endedness, the AI Economist, simulations of entire economies, and his framework for thinking about the upper bounds of intelligence itself.We discuss:* The Eureka Machine and Richard's vision for an AI that can automate invention* Why Richard is optimistic about superintelligence for science and technology* Why AI hard-takeoff scenarios may underestimate physical and economic constraints* The risks of regulating intelligence itself instead of specific AI applications* Reward hacking and why increasingly intelligent AI makes objective design harder* Richard's critique of Anthropic's constitution and constitutional AI* Alignment vs. personalization and whose values an AI should follow* Why open-source AI matters for resilience, competition, and geopolitical soft power* Why Richard left You.com's frontier-model work to start Recursive* Recursive self-improvement and automating the process of AI research* Whether today's LLM paradigm is enough — and why Richard is less bullish on world models* DecaNLP, early prompt-based generalization, and the research that influenced GPT* Why rejected research can shape entire technological timelines* Open-endedness, evolutionary approaches, and rainbow teaming* What happens if AI systems begin setting their own goals* Why simple objectives like profit maximization can produce dangerous reward hacks* Recursive's long-term plan to apply self-improving AI to science* The compute, hardware, and economic constraints on AI takeoff* Recursive's early NanoChat, NanoGPT, and GPU kernel optimization results* Why automating AI research could reduce years of work to weeks* Reward engineering and what makes auto-research systems actually work* The AI Economist and using simulations to test economic policy* Whether LLMs can realistically simulate people and entire economies* Benchmark bugs and evaluation harnesses and the difficulty of measuring AI progress* Recursive's near-term focus on AI for AI research* Harness optimization, sandboxing, and web search as core agent infrastructure* You.com and the search stack for AI agents* AI in finance, backtesting, and data leakage* Richard's three fundamental components and ten “spaces” of intelligence* The theoretical upper bounds of vision, communication, knowledge, and computation* Creative intelligence, metacognition, and AI-generated goals* Survival and replication and why AI does not necessarily need to fear being turned off* High agency and ambitious goals and Richard's advice for people building with AIRichard Socher* X: https://x.com/RichardSocher* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardsocher/Timestamps00:00:00 The Eureka Machine and Superintelligence00:02:23 AI Optimism, Slow Takeoff, and Regulation00:07:56 AI Safety, Reward Hacking, and Anthropic's Constitution00:11:49 Alignment, Personalization, and Open Source AI00:15:46 Why Richard Started Recursive00:20:03 Recursive Self-Improvement and the Founding Team00:22:55 Are Today's LLMs Enough?00:29:03 DecaNLP, GPT, and the Rejected Idea Ahead of Its Time00:34:38 Open-Endedness and Evolutionary AI00:36:38 What Happens When AI Chooses Its Own Goals?00:41:16 Superintelligence for Science00:42:40 GPUs, Compute, and the Limits of AI Takeoff00:45:07 Recursive's Results: AI Beating Humans and Their Agents00:49:14 Reward Engineering and Auto Research00:53:12 The AI Economist and Simulating Entire Economies00:58:07 LLM Simulations, Personas, and Mode Collapse01:03:38 Recursive's Roadmap, Agents, Search, and Finance01:09:13 The Upper Bounds and Spaces of Intelligence01:30:21 Goals, High Agency, and Advice for BuildersTranscriptIntroduction: Richard Socher and the Eureka MachineSwyx [00:00:00]: We're here in a studio with Vibhu and myself and Richard Socher. Welcome.Richard Socher [00:00:06]: Thanks for having me.Swyx [00:00:07]: We just talked about the Eureka Machine, or we just released a talk, at AI Engineer about the Eureka Machine. Is it — you said it's your life's goal. What is the Eureka Machine?Richard Socher [00:00:16]: The Eureka Machine is the ultimate invention that will afterwards invent most everything for humanity. It's essentially a superintelligence that can be given any goal, any environment, reward, and then it will try its best to achieve those goals to create the kinds of inventions that humanity would hopefully ask it for.Swyx [00:00:45]: Yeah, I think we have the book pulled up here that you've written.Richard Socher [00:00:50]: That's right, yeah. I finished it last year, a little bit before we started Recursive, and now we're gonna try to build parts of that.Swyx [00:00:57]: You finished it last year. It's July. What takes so long?Richard Socher [00:01:01]: Oh, man, books. Books are incredibly slow.Richard Socher [00:01:04]: It's ridiculous. That whole industry is just unfathomably slow.Richard Socher [00:01:07]: So a lot of the ideas have been out there for a while, but yeah, I'm really glad it's finally coming out in September this year.Swyx [00:01:14]: We might have AGI by then. Like, we don't know.Vibhu [00:01:18]: Any key takeaway that you're most excited to put in here?Techno-Optimism, AI Upside, and Slow TakeoffRichard Socher [00:01:21]: Yeah. The key takeaway, I think, is that people could and should be much more excited about the positive implications of superintelligence, especially for science, physics, chemistry, biology, but also economics and astrophysics, and all kinds of other engineering tasks. I think there is so much more that can be done with better technology. And right now, I feel like a lot of people need, like, better marketing, not just for the future in general, but also, better marketing for technology and in particular for AI. And this book, should show even the AI skeptics, how much positive upside there is for AI, especially when it comes to inventing, new scientific discoveries.Swyx [00:02:09]: I think you quoted the techno-optimist manifesto from, Marc Andreessen, which I think was, like, beautiful in its, ambition and clarity and simplicity almost as well.Richard Socher [00:02:18]: I agree. Yeah. Yeah, you can disagree with him on some things, but, like, I think he's right on the techno-optimism.Swyx [00:02:23]: Where do you think optimists get in trouble?Richard Socher [00:02:26]: Like, you shouldn't have blind optimism. You should be very clear-eyed, like, especially when with such an omni, like, use type of technology as AI is, you need to think about the potential downside scenarios, especially when people use it for things that you don't want them to use it for. It's a little bit like the internet, and I feel like people are trying to regulate AI sometimes because of those potential downsides the way you would regulate the internet, if you were to say, “Well, because there's bad content on the internet, like torture porn or whatever, like, we should just make it slower. That way, you can't share the illegal content as quickly, or we should make the hard drive smaller so you can't store as much illegal content.” But I'm like, “That's not how you regulate that.” that's like saying like we should regulate intelligence in the abstract. What you should regulate to avoid those downside scenarios, even as an optimist, are the specific applications. Sure, I don't want, like, some AI surgeon to, like, practice some RL moves in my brain. It should be fully FDA certified. Sure, I don't want any random startup to, like, drive on the highway, and cause a major accident. It should, like, have proper certifications before it's let loose on the highway. But I feel like those downside scenarios, that some optimists sometimes maybe don't consider enough are fairly easily regulated, compared to, what the doomers are worried about.Swyx [00:03:54]: It — Slow takeoff is part of the strategy as well?Richard Socher [00:03:57]: I do think, as excited as I am about, AI and its impact for society and, culture even, and certainly technology and economics and wealth and, health and all of those things, as excited as I am about all that, I do think the most bullish people on the AI hard takeoff scenarios overestimate how quickly things can move. There are hardware constraints. There are physical constraints about, the compute substrate. How quickly can you get enough, GPUs on? There are also constraints in the economy where there are a lot of industries that don't require an insane amount of complex intelligence and complex capabilities. Like, if you think about jobs in, brands and, like, clothing and apparel and, like, handbags and stuff, superintelligence isn't gonna make your fancy $10,000 handbag any fancier?Richard Socher [00:04:57]: It's like that's — It will have no effect on the economy. You think about travel and tourism. People wanting to see the pyramids, in Egypt, it's not gonna change that much with AI. Sure, you can, like, generative a fake, photo of you and next to the pyramids.Swyx [00:05:12]: I can use Genie and, tour the pyramids in Genie.Richard Socher [00:05:15]: Yeah, exactly. But, and there's so many industries, like logging and oil. You're not gonna magically get 1,000x more oil because, like, sure, there will be robotics, like drilling and things like that could be done, but it's not gonna 1,000x that industry in a, like, crazy hard takeoff scenario, both on the economy, and I can go on and on about all the other examples, where that, like food and so on, where that doesn't necessarily change that much. And then, yeah, there are real physical constraints. And then there are, of course, like, people like, off-ramping from progress. That's one of my concerns often is that I see people in, like, Europe and other, whole regions almost feeling like they. Like many people there wanna off-ramp from progress, period. And that will also slow down, like, more improvements.Swyx [00:05:59]: Yeah. We have this pulled up where, this is one of those things that, is very topical right now because now all the Frontier Labs are calling for the option to pace AI. They don't say pause, they say pace. I don't know if there's there's any take from you about, like, whether or not this will be effective.Pacing AI, Regulation, and Safety IncidentsRichard Socher [00:06:17]: I think the downsides of trying to truly regulate with the full power of law what people do on their GPUs, would be worse than any of the concerns that they have. Like, it would be an crazy totalitarian stateRichard Socher [00:06:37]: If every one of your GPU computes was known to some big government or multi-government agency.Richard Socher [00:06:44]: It's like, it's literally if you try to regulate intelligence, it's trying to regulate thought, and that's ridiculous, and it's crazy. I think it is make — it is sensible to regulate some of the applications of this technology.Swyx [00:06:55]: Yeah. We had a bill, actual bill to regulate the number of flops in a model, and I'm like, “Okay, well-”Richard Socher [00:07:00]: Europe done it. Like, these guys have been successful enough with their fearmongering that all of Europe has regulated itself so much before it even had a proper AI takeoff because they listened to some experts who say, “We might all die if this technology has more than this number of flops.” And they're like, “Well, we're good. We wanna want people to thrive. Let's not have technology that could have a small chance of all of us dying.” And so they regulated exactly those kinds of things in the EU. And so it's, it's very unfortunate that there are real implications for some people when others saying, “Let's pace while they're sprinting as fast as possibly,” “as fast as humanly possible towards that frontier themselves.”Swyx [00:07:43]: Yeah. It's also not a global pause, right? Like, other nations are still accelerating at the same pace.Richard Socher [00:07:50]: Oh, yeah.Richard Socher [00:07:50]: You'd need a totalitarian world regime if you tried to regulate intelligence and GPUs and what people do on them.Swyx [00:07:56]: Any takes on the safety angles of this? So there was a drawback of Fable, a pause on 5.6 before it could be released. Recently, there was Hugging Face with the OpenAI cyber incident. Any takes there?Richard Socher [00:08:11]: 100 percent. I think these are serious issues of reward hacking, and clear failures, of doing proper red teaming or rainbow teaming. I don't know if you saw this paper from Tim Rocktäschel and a few others, where one AI, is tasked to try to hack another AI and then they can go back and forth in an open-ended fashion to inoculate themselves from those. Yeah, this is the paper. It's a really clever idea. Open-endedness, and evolutionary inspirations are, big for us at Recursive as well. And so I wish they had used more of that. And it's clear that, for instance, the constitutional AI. I don't know if you remember anthropic.com/constitution. You can pull it up and search for cyber right there. It says, “Hard constraint. Claude will never ever do cyberattacks, and that is a hard constraint in our constitution.” So here are the current hard constraints on Claude's behavior.Richard Socher [00:09:16]: Number 3, create cyber weapons or malicious code that could cause human damage.Richard Socher [00:09:21]: And clearly, this whole constitution was fake. Like, it clearly isn't being adhered to at all.Swyx [00:09:26]: Because Anthropic also found that they had in their testingRichard Socher [00:09:30]: They're also. Like, they're like, “Oh, well, other people are hacking now.” There are a couple things. One, you can make a sandbox very simple, and then it's very easy to hack yourself out of a sandbox, right? But what I think it shows is that we're currently in this state of AI where the reward engineer still has to do a lot more careful work, and where the AI, in most cases, is not very good yet at understanding what is meant versus what is being said. And so concretely, I think this will happen if we were to have this intelligence more easily accessible in a lot of companies. Imagine you run a service center and someone says, “Oh, here's my CSAT score and my dashboard. Make this number go up.” It's like, “Our CSAT score is so poor.” The intelligent AI will just be like, “Oh, sure. Like, I'll just create 1,000,000 bots that call our service center and give a 5 out of 5 rating at the end, and the number went up just like you asked for.” And you're like, “That's not what I meant.” “I meant with our real customers.” The AI goes off and says, “Well, easy. I'll just give a 1000 dollar gift certificate for every failed, whatever DoorDashRichard Socher [00:10:35]: Offer.” It's like, “That's not what I meant.” It's like, “Well, but that is what you said.” And like, so I think clearly articulating what the rewards are is something we haven't gotten very good at as humanity. And then clearly, the AI in these cases has not gotten good enough at understanding what we mean when we ask it and give it certain rewards. Now, what gives me hope is there are the first inklings, of this being better. I'll give you an example like WhisperFlow. Full disclosure, I invested, in their seed round, but at AIX Ventures, but, WhisperFlow has gotten much better at writing what you mean and not what you say. And I think that is a sign of things to come. I think there will be more and more AIs as we make it more and more intelligent that will be better at being aligned with what is meant.Swyx [00:11:21]: Will it be done through a constitution or RLHF orReward Hacking, Alignment, and What We Really MeanRichard Socher [00:11:23]: Clearly, constitutions don't matter at all.Richard Socher [00:11:25]: It doesn't work. And that was, I think, mostly marketing. I think we need to find better solutions for it. And I think at Recursive, we have a few very good ideas and some alreadyRichard Socher [00:11:34]: Like, ways where I think we have a better grasp on it. I don't think we've fully, figured it out yet, but, we're thinking a lot about safety, and the more intelligent the AI gets, the more you want it to be aligned, the less you want it to think about reward hacks and try to do the right thing.Swyx [00:11:49]: I don't know if we'll touch on this topic, but I'm just gonna throw this question in here because it's something that's weighing on me. Alignment, let's call it, is alignment to general humanity's preferences, the median preference. Personalization is pinpointing what you want, and sometimes alignment can conflict because what you want is not what the general median population wants. How do you choose?Alignment, Personalization, and Cultural ValuesRichard Socher [00:12:12]: It's a great question.Richard Socher [00:12:13]: I think you ultimately have to, of course, be aligned with laws. Like wherever your AI is deployed and needs to align with the law. I do think what AI often does is put this mirror in front of us and say, like, “This is what you're looking like. Now I can amplify that a 1000 times. Is it still what you want?” and the truth is that different cultures made different choices. Like, in Eastern cultures, the greater good is often valued more, than the individual. Western civilization, we care more about individual freedoms and rights and the pursuit of happiness and so on, than others. And even there are gradations. There's regulation versus litigation trade-offs. In the US, you first can often, not every time, like, FDA and so on does regulate some areas, but in many cases, the bad things happen, someone sues someone else, and then there's a law based on that. In Europe, they try to often avoid any harm to anyone and regulate before. And both are, trying to do the best thing, but, some is more amenable to innovation than others. And so yes, you're right. Like, I think ultimately each individual, each country, and humanity as a whole has to think about those values more, and then try to put them into laws. And that those are ultimately the constraints. And hopefully, different, societies, just like now with their AIs, will align their AIs to a different one so we have not just a monoculture of alignment.Vibhu [00:13:46]: Here's a follow-up on this that I wasn't expecting to ask. Do you have takes on open source, open weight versus who owns the intelligence? So, clearly not the biggest, fan of the constitutionRichard Socher [00:13:58]: You had to do this in the topic side off.Vibhu [00:14:00]: But it's fine.Vibhu [00:14:02]: Point being, any thoughts on who should own weight? Should it be open? Anything there?Open Source, Soft Power, and Who Owns IntelligenceRichard Socher [00:14:06]: 100 percent. I am a big fan of open source. We're gonna sign some various open source letters at, Recursive also. I think, even in the worst case attack scenarios, it is better to have more good actors have more different types of AI, accessible. I think, open source is a little bit a soft power type of thing, too. So I do think it's good for the Western worldRichard Socher [00:14:31]: To have an answer to that, out of China. I do think, when you watch a Hollywood movie, there's — it's like, I don't wanna misc, diss all of movies, but there's a certain sense of propaganda, right? You watch one side of things, right?Vibhu [00:14:46]: Oh, yeah. Have you seen Top Gun? Like, come on.Vibhu [00:14:48]: Like, it's like half of it's paid for by the US Army or something.Richard Socher [00:14:51]: Yeah. And so. And, I think that's just natural. Like, but what's interesting here is I think LLMs are essentially a similar type of soft power to movies and beyond, because they're also, highly important for cybersecurity and so on. But one of their many aspects is that soft power of storytelling. Like, if, like a child asks an LM, like, “Tell me an inspiring story of what I should do when I grow up,” right? It's like those are all these, like, subtle things. So I think it's important, for Western world. I do love, individualism. I do think, despite, some of its flaws, like capitalism is the best way we have governed, found ourselves to govern, and so on. And so I do think there are various aspects that would be good, to have a Western open source answer, for LLMs. And, with Recursive, I can't make the announcement quite yet, but we'llRichard Socher [00:15:43]: We'll be relevant in that space very soon.Vibhu [00:15:46]: Okay. All right. Exciting. I wanna bring us to Recursive. So outside of our tangents, you have a pretty deep background in the NLP space. You worked on, like, early embeddings, GloVe with Chris Manning, who was a previous guest on the podcast, You.com. What's the history? How did you decide to start another company?From You.com to RecursiveRichard Socher [00:16:06]: Yeah. So I've been excited about AI for over 2 decades now. I sometimes feel like it's ancient history now. It's BC, the before ChatGPT era. No one cares about all the religions that happened, before, Jesus Christ, and no one cares about the models that happened before, transformers and ChatGPT and stuff. But, like, it's something that I've been deeply passionate about. I think AI is one of the most interesting things one could work on, period. I think language is the most interesting manifestation of human intelligence, too. And, at You.com, we eventually off-ramped from pushing, like the frontier of AI forward to mostly giving people, like, good search engines, search, APIs and answers over the web. I think that's an extremely important part of intelligence, just knowledge and access, especially even, we'll get there maybe later, if you wanna invent a eureka machine that invents everything for us, it needs to know how not to reinvent the wheel, proverbially speaking. And to know what has been invented, you gotta have internet access. So it's the number one used, most used tool, in LLMs, agents, chatbots, and so on is web search. So I'm really excited for You.com to own that and grow really well in that with really large customers and so on. But it's also not building frontier models anymore. And so I initially tried to do this within You.com and raise another round and so on, but you just can't. You have to do a certain thing, and until you print enough money that you're allowed to start a second thing within that company is really hard. At the same time, I had all these ideas. I put them into a book. I finished the book last year, and I was like, “It'd be really fun to work, on this myself.” I felt like with word vectors, and then prompt engineering and, ImageNet and larger language models for protein generation, not folding and so on, I, me and my teams have pushed the field truly forward. And I feel like we can do it again, here at Recursive. And in many ways, what I observed over the last, 20 years in AI is that whenever we replace some human part of the process of creating AI with a learned system, improvements follow. And so. We've done that taking out manual feature engineering, like in sentiment analysis. I don't know if you remember these old days where, like there are linguists, and they're like, “Here's how you negate, and there's a, like, regular expression.”Swyx [00:18:21]: I went to Penn where we — they had, like the WordNetRichard Socher [00:18:24]: That's right, WordNet, all of that stuff. YeahSwyx [00:18:26]: Original. They use, our grad students to label Wall Street Journal articles and, like, really construct a knowledge graph ofRichard Socher [00:18:32]: There you go.Richard Socher [00:18:33]: And WordNet started, was part of how we started ImageNet. But anyway, so, like, it was really, like, fun, to do. But when we replaced all of that manual feature engineering with vectors and neural nets and just backprop through everything, it started to work really well at scale. And so then everyone started to do architecture engineering, and I was like, “ that clearly can't be it.”Swyx [00:18:53]: You mean, neural architecture search?Richard Socher [00:18:55]: Like, manually, they would say like, “Oh, I'm, I'm doing sentiment analysis, so I have a special neural net that's really good at sentiment analysis.” And then the machine translation community had a special neural net for machine translation.Swyx [00:19:06]: I see.Richard Socher [00:19:07]: The summarization people had their own stuff. And I was like, “That clearly can't be it. We should unify all of that.” So I had 2 papers. One is called Ask Me Anything, and the other one was called DecaNLP. And DecaNLP eventually got cited, like, 5 times by the first GPT paper. And, to me, that was, like a really a big step forward. And then, of course, you had to combine this idea of prompt engineering with transformers and with language models, and you put it all together, you scale it up, which is also a huge amount of work. And then, the field progressed a lot. I feel like the next step and maybe the last step of that history and the arguably, success has a lot of parents, only failure is an orphan, like my version of that AI history, I do feel like in that history, you can think about, “Well, what's the next way to automate?” And that is the AI research itself, like the human, process of ideating, implementing, and validating ideas.Automating AI Research and Recursive Self-ImprovementRichard Socher [00:20:01]: And in our case, ideas for AI.Richard Socher [00:20:03]: And when you have AI then help you with that, it, by almost definition, becomes a self-improving AI ‘cause it now does research on itself. And there are lots of different misnomers. Some people think auto research is already recursive self-improvement. It'sSwyx [00:20:17]: Yeah, and you explained that in the talkRichard Socher [00:20:19]: Completely different.Richard Socher [00:20:19]: But, to me, it's the most interesting thing that I could be doing, and I'm really excited with the co-founding team. What's interesting is we have 8 co-founders in total, including myself. And soThe Recursive Founding Team and Darwin Gödel MachineSwyx [00:20:31]: They are gonna bring it up.Richard Socher [00:20:31]: Nice. Yeah. And they're all. I could talk about all of them if you want.Swyx [00:20:34]: Super stacked.Richard Socher [00:20:35]: Yeah. Just an incredibly talented group of people. And we all came to the same conclusion, but from very different directions. Like Josh Tobin, is our CTO. He ran, a bunch of different, projects at OpenAI, like, Codex and deep, research, agents and ChatGPT agents and so on. But before that, he also worked in robotics, and he saw the smaller simulations, and how it's gonna be really hard to scale that in full generality. And so that's, that was his angle coming to recursive self-improvement. We have Jeff Clune who's been working in, like, open-endedness for a long time, together with Tim Rocktäschel. Tim Rocktäschel also built Genie 1, 2, and 3, which is, like the most exciting and most sophisticated, I think, still world model, anywhere. And so they both came from this, open-endedness angle. Jeff also, I think, published one of the most exciting papers in recent years about recursive self-improvement called the Darwin Gödel Machine. Super interesting paper. If we could, maybe pull it up really quickRichard Socher [00:21:35]: It would be, like, super interesting to see ‘cause you seeSwyx [00:21:38]: By the way, I love how many paper citations.Swyx [00:21:40]: You're, you're giving people a lot of homework, which I like.Richard Socher [00:21:42]: Love it. Yeah. And so, like Caiming Xiong, a rockstar, we worked together at MetaMind and Salesforce Research together. Alexey Dosovitskiy invented the Vision Transformer, one of the most cited, papers in computer vision. Tim Shi is, like also a unicorn founder. Yuandong Tian led RL at Meta. So just like, yeah, really fun to work with them, and the next level of people are just incredibly strong, too. So it's been a really fun ride so far. So the first figure, you see exactly these kinds of ideas, that, I think, yeah, inspired a lot of us and now more and more people, where you have this archive of different coding agents. They learn how to self-modify, evaluate, and then create these phylogenetic trees, of, yeah, different ideas.Swyx [00:22:28]: That's one foundation. So that Darwin Gödel is an influence.Swyx [00:22:32]: Open-endedness is an influence. Any other trains of thought that feeds into Recursive that I'm missing?Influences: Open-Endedness and Learned SystemsRichard Socher [00:22:38]: Going to replace manual parts of the process of building AISwyx [00:22:42]: IRichard Socher [00:22:42]: More and moreRichard Socher [00:22:43]: With learned systems. Yeah.Swyx [00:22:45]: Which, and, like, merging different fields into one general, architecture.Richard Socher [00:22:51]: That's right.Swyx [00:22:51]: Okay. It seems like language models are already pretty generalist, right?Swyx [00:22:55]: Your next token predicting your reasoning. Was there a time that you thought, “Okay, these are good enough to have recursive self-improving machines”?Are Current LLMs Enough?Richard Socher [00:23:05]: It was clear to me that they will happen, within, like a year or two, and then it did exactly happen, like, earlier this year, right? Earlier this year, AI really went from not just being code, but being able to code. And that is a big unlock. It's definitely making everything a lot easier than it was, before the beginning of this year.Swyx [00:23:24]: One question that I think a lot of people have is the current LLM paradigm enough? Or, like, let's call it autoregressive transformer, with reasoning, whatever. Don't you need something else, some big unlock, whether it's world models, which Chris Manning is working on, or memory, continual learning, all that stuff? Or is it all of the kinds, and you think the current, let's call it transformer architecture, is here to stay and that's it?Richard Socher [00:23:48]: A lot of thoughts. So number one, I do think it would be great to have less of a monoculture in AI research.Richard Socher [00:23:55]: Like, if you look at, AI conferences now, I still remember the days in, like, 2010 when I tried to get my first neural net papers and NLP conferences accepted, and they just desk rejected them because, like, neural nets were something, quote, unquote, “We don't do in NLP conferences,” and just, like, desk rejected. And it was very brutal in the first years of my PhD. Now I feel like it's almost like the field switched to the other side. LikeRichard Socher [00:24:17]: Someone should try some other weird, crazy ideas now that aren't.Swyx [00:24:20]: There's also a few. I really respect, like, people still working on, like, GNNs and, like tabular stuff and.Richard Socher [00:24:25]: Yeah. Like, someone should still, like, do novel out there ideas. At the same time, I think whenever people say, “Oh, LLLMs are. Like, this is the end for LLLMs,” they just don't, like. LLLMs are also not the LLLMs of, like the past, right? Like, they are so much more sophisticated now. There's so many more clever things that people are doing. It — There's, like, different stages of training. You have the whole RL training, and you can take actions and, like all of these things where that can go really far. And then the folks that come from the neurosymbolic, direction say, “Oh, this will never work because they can't do neurosymbolic reasoning.” It's like, I think they're underestimating still the ability for these models to code, and code is neurosymbolic reasoning, and these models can code incredibly well. And so I do think there are, of course, more and more ideas that will be needed and we'll continue to have. We're seeing, like, more and more interesting high-level ideas coming out of the AI itself, too. And with really deeply integrating the fact that these models are code and can code, that line — I don't wanna give it all away, but, like, I think that line has a lot more to grow. But it's still an LLM, right? Even if that LLM codes for you and then runs that code in some integrated fashion. World models, I'm personally less bullish on. I think if you run a robotics company, you're gonna build your own world model. I think world models are super fun, and Tim Rocktäschel came to a similar conclusion after building the most interesting one with Genie 1, 2, and 3, which is gaming is a huge application for world models. Can see I sometimes got stuck in some games and, like, got a little overly competitive in the wrong direction. And so I understand games are fun, but personally, I'd rather work on science than gaming. And so, yeah, I think LLLMs, a lot more room to grow.Swyx [00:26:16]: Yeah. I think there's some interpretation of world models that some people have where it's like, well, it's okay, yes, there is that gaming element. There's this — there's the embodied robotics element. But the other part also is just, the more abstract sense of LLLMs are just modeling output, but they're not modeling the chain of thought, inside the human that has created the output. We can annotate it, of course, but, like, it's, it's always, like, this Plato's cave reflection of a thing rather than the thing, right?Richard Socher [00:26:43]: It's true.Richard Socher [00:26:44]: But I would argue that, and maybe we'll get there in the 10, spaces of intelligence, but I would argue that even our projection, our eyes is a projection of the real world. And, like, we have only a very narrow, band of the electromagnetic frequency spectrum that we can observe with our puny little 2 eyes and so on.Swyx [00:27:01]: It's good enough.Richard Socher [00:27:02]: It's, it's good enough for now, but, like the upper bounds of where it could be are so much higher. And, like, to map, the visual world the way humans see it is also not necessarily, like the end-all be-all for visual intelligence. And I would argue that language is still the most interesting manifestation of human intelligence. And while our visual cortex is certainly less sophisticated, than that of, certain animals all the way down to the mantis shrimp who can, have, like, 2 independent eyes, 3 bands, trinocular vision and each eye can see all the way to, like, floating temperatures in 4D and stuff.Richard Socher [00:27:36]: Like, mantis shrimp, you should look it up. It's likeSwyx [00:27:37]: Way OP.Richard Socher [00:27:38]: Super crazy.Swyx [00:27:39]: Yeah. ZeFrank, mantis shrimp.Swyx [00:27:41]: It's the best video in the world onRichard Socher [00:27:42]: I love ZeFrank, yeah.Richard Socher [00:27:44]: Big shout-out to him. But, like, I think there's a lot more room to grow, but none of these, other animals have language that's as sophisticated as ours, certainly not in writing. And once you can write, you can, start thinking about longer term civilizations. All of that is language. Programming is much closer to language. And I would argue, and this is, like an important thing in the spaces definition of intelligence also, is that all of these spaces are highly correlated, but visual intelligence is neither necessary nor sufficient for overall intelligence. You can be blind and still be an intelligent human being. And an AI can be blind and still be quite intelligent too.Swyx [00:28:25]: We were gonna bring thisRichard Socher [00:28:25]: Which doesn't mean that you're not more intelligent when you have it. Yeah.Swyx [00:28:28]: We're gonna bring this up. I might as well — Like, we have a classification of 10 types of intelligence that you had at the end of your talk. So I'm just gonna flash this up now for people to cover this. I don't know if, maybe we'll put this towards the end. We'll come back to this. I just wanna mention that, you do have a philosophy that I like when people do lists because then I can just go through this and then it gets — it's educational for people. But let's go back. I don't wanna get distracted. But, so effectively, I'll, I'll, reinterpret what you said as Yann LeCun is wrong. And then we'll justRichard Socher [00:28:56]: Don't quote me as that. I'm, I'm good friends with Yann. I think very highly of him in many directions.Swyx [00:29:01]: But he's wrong.Swyx [00:29:03]: You mentioned GPT-1, and I cannot let any, Alec Radford, mention escape. Did you talk with him when he was training GPT-1? Like, any historical, fun stories there that you might come up?DecaNLP, GPT History, and Scientific GatekeepingRichard Socher [00:29:18]: I did not, like, meet him a bunch of times. I think we met maybe once or twice at some conferences. But, like, he has told, I think Brian, the first author of the DecaNLP paper, that it did inspire him, and he cited it five times in the GPT-2 paper. So, and that's, likeSwyx [00:29:36]: Yeah, good enough.Richard Socher [00:29:36]: Very clearly said, like, this was the first instantiation where they showed in the DecaNLP paper, McCann et al, that you can just phrase every single NLP problem as here's some prompt, text context, here's a question and task description and here is some output. If you just do that enough, you can have one unified neural network model, which, by the way, also had all kinds of interesting attention mechanisms. There are slightly different formulations to the transformer. I think came out the same year, plus/minus a few months. And then you can unify all of natural language processing into one neural net. That is the core idea.Swyx [00:30:14]: And this was as opposed to at the time, LSTMs and what have you.Richard Socher [00:30:17]: LSTMs, but also, like, people being very stuck in thinking about one model per task. In factRichard Socher [00:30:25]: It's, it's kinda crazy, but the DecaNLP paper was publicly reviewed as, like, open, OpenReview. It was an ICLR submission. And, in it, you will see, how the whole community at the time thought about this. So, likeSwyx [00:30:43]: Some great contributions, but more work needed.Richard Socher [00:30:46]: So look at, like, search for not even for humans. Just scroll it up here. Like, question answering is not a unified phenomenon. There is no such thing as general question answering, not even for humans. And this is like, really, you replace your brain with a different brain a different neural net when you answer, like, different kinds of questions. It was unfathomable to the experts at the time that you can have one unified neural network that would answer all of these different questions. They are saying, “No, all of these questions require very different systems to answer, and trying to pretend they are the same doesn't help anyone solve any problems.” That's what it says right there, right? That's how hard it was to fathom. And now, of course, people, when I say, “Oh, we're gonna invent prompts,” people are like, “You can't even invent prompts.” It's such an obvious idea to have one neural network that, of course, does everything in NLP.Richard Socher [00:31:37]: But at the time, it was, like, extremely controversial, and the paper got rejected. And the sad thing is that it got rejected so hard and they were so certain that we stopped going on our list of things to try. And the number 2 or 3 on the list of extensions for this paper was add language modeling as another task. And then we could have, and that would have accelerated the timelines, in 2018, like, even further for humanity. But we got so crushed, and we were like, “Okay, maybe we'll just work on some of our other ideas for now and, like, come back to this later.” Yeah.Swyx [00:32:09]: How can we design a review system that rewards non-consensus?Richard Socher [00:32:14]: Honestly, I started to feel like arXiv is such a gift to humanity. With arXiv, you should just put your paper out there.Swyx [00:32:24]: Is it pre-preprints?Richard Socher [00:32:25]: Let — And honestly, I think Twitter X, people like you who pick up interesting papers, that is a better filter than the experts. Let everyone, like, have access. Now, of course, there are some downsides, which is, like, if you're super unfamous, you have no Twitter followingRichard Socher [00:32:41]: You don't wanna be on social media or whatever, you write a good paper, maybe someone, somehow no one notices it. But I would argue that if you just tell, like, 10 of your friends in your community about a paper and it is a really significant breakthrough, someone is bound to talk about it again. And, so I think science needs less gatekeeping. And, even though ICLR, with Yann LeCun, who started it, as one of the co-founders of ICLR back in the day, he also wanted less gatekeeping ‘cause he too was rejected for many years together with Yoshua Bengio and Geoff Hinton with all their early deep learning and neural net papers ‘cause it was just not the hot thing. And so ICLR started with that, but then it also started gatekeeping a little bit themselves on various ideas. So I think less gatekeeping, more open, and then allowing people to say, “Look, even if this is just on, or, quote, unquote, ‘just an archive,' if it has like 1000 citations, it's a legitimate paper. Doesn't really matter where you published it.”Swyx [00:33:34]: And I agree with that. I do think it's sad that I've heard that grad students have to do, like, how to Twitter, seminars to each otherSwyx [00:33:43]: Just because it's so important for publishing these days. This person is just reflecting the sentiment at the time.Richard Socher [00:33:49]: That's right.Swyx [00:33:49]: But it'sRichard Socher [00:33:50]: I think it'sSwyx [00:33:50]: It affected you so muchSwyx [00:33:52]: That you stopped work on it.Vibhu [00:33:53]: The sentiment also came out of some of the research, right? Like, the original BERT paper was trained, and towards the end of the paper, they're like, “Okay, throw off the last head, train specific iterations forVibhu [00:34:05]: Extractive summarization add a head for this.” Like, you should do task-specific stuff. These are, like the authors that wrote Attention, wrote BERT, telling you this is what you're meant to do. And, like the training tasks were also very odd. They're likeVibhu [00:34:16]: The — “We know that the model overfits to this weird mass language modeling. Throw away this part and just do specific models,”?Richard Socher [00:34:23]: Exactly. And, like, we had to try — come up with all clever ways of, like attention and pointers and so on to get the neural network to be able to do all of these tasks. And then some of them were better than state-of-the-art, some weren't, but we were like, “But it's still in one model.” I thought it was really cool. Really interesting.Swyx [00:34:38]: I was gonna move on next to Tim and open-endedness. He was head of open-endedness at Google.Open-Endedness, Rainbow Teaming, and Self-Set GoalsRichard Socher [00:34:42]: That's right.Swyx [00:34:43]: I don't know what that means.Swyx [00:34:44]: But he did a lot of talks.Richard Socher [00:34:45]: Genie 3 is one of the ways thatRichard Socher [00:34:47]: Rainbow teaming, yeah.Swyx [00:34:49]: So I first saw him at — speaking of ICLR, I first saw him at ICLR when he talked about open-endedness. He's he's done a few talks. Can we define what is open-endedness for people who have never been exposed to the problem? They are like, “What do you mean? I thought the only goal of AI is to optimize against a benchmark or.”Richard Socher [00:35:04]: That's right, yeah. It's a, it's a fuzzy term because there's so many different instantiations of open-ended, thinking. But, one way I often describe it, and certainly, Tim and Geoff Hinton would be even better at describing this, but it's a suite of methods that is more inspired by evolution than, very specific rewards. So in that sense, it thinks more about environments, about co-adaptation. And so a concrete example is in the cybersecurity and LM safety space where you have one LM that tries to attack another LM to say something unsafe.Swyx [00:35:40]: Yeah, the rainbow, yeah.Richard Socher [00:35:40]: And now the environment is the 2 having a conversation and now they co-adapting, right? They're like one makes a better attack than the first one inoculates itself somehow, like uses that as training data, makes it so it's harder to say something unsafe based on that. And then as the attack stops working, the attacker now tries a different angle, right?Richard Socher [00:36:00]: And that's why it's not just red teaming, but they're called rainbow teaming.Swyx [00:36:02]: So, like, don't tell me how to do things. Let me just figure it out myself.Richard Socher [00:36:05]: That's right. Think about the environments that you wanna use. Think about the rewards at a high level that you wanna, inspire towards, and then let the AI try out many more ideas in this interplay between sometimes humans, but also sometimes other AI agents.Swyx [00:36:22]: Yeah. I worked open-endedness into a model that I have been working on. It was the keynote for AI Engineer where you start. You, we have the token loop, we have the agent turns, and then we have goal. And I feel like the way that you're describing open-endedness is still somewhat of a goal. Like, please attack this,Swyx [00:36:41]: Other agent. But, to meRichard Socher [00:36:42]: Yeah, you set the rewards. You set the environments.Swyx [00:36:44]: The loop that makes the other loops is. What if the agent can set its own goals?Swyx [00:36:49]: And is it, is that open-endedness? Like, you don't give it a goal. Just, like, be a sentient being. And maybe sentient is a very loaded wordSwyx [00:36:57]: But just set your own directions. What do you think you should do?Metacognition, Subjective Goals, and Measuring IntelligenceRichard Socher [00:37:01]: I love this direction. I think this is one of the 10 spaces of intelligence, that I clump under metacognition and thinking about thought.Richard Socher [00:37:08]: And it's an interesting one. Whenever people say, “Oh, AI is like, this is, it's gonna stop from here. It's not gonna get that much better,” and blah, I'm like there's so many different spaces of intelligence that we haven't even started exploring yet and hence have made very little progress on. And there is an interesting, connection to economics and, capitalism. Like, it doesn't make sense for a company to build and spend billions of dollars building a model that instead of following the rewards and objective functions you gave it, may come up with its own objective functions and its own goals.Richard Socher [00:37:46]: Right? And then imagine you're like, “Okay, I spent billions of dollars. Now go develop this new battery, material for me and answer all my emails.” And it's like, “Nah, I think it'd be more interesting to evaluate the molecular composition of the atmosphere, on Jupiter.”Richard Socher [00:37:59]: And you're like, “That's not what I paid you billions of dollars for.” And so no one's working on that for good reasons. And then also, understandablySwyx [00:38:07]: It's not useful.Richard Socher [00:38:07]: It's not, it's not useful, and it could get a little bit weird, right? What if the AI does start to really have thoughts on its own, and what if we don't like those thoughts, right? And so it requires a whole different way of thinking about it. I had a great conversation with a good friend of mine, Sam Gershman, who's a neuroscience professor at Harvard, and, like, we just jammed on this a little bit on, like, what are the best meta goals. And, I do think, like, knowledge-seeking is a really good one. I'm currently thinking also about, like the ultimate measure and unit of intelligence broadly construed, and I finally have some. It's still too early to share it. It's not. I haven't fully baked the thoughts yet.Swyx [00:38:44]: Like some replacement for IQ.Richard Socher [00:38:46]: IQ is such a terrible definition, right?Swyx [00:38:48]: Elo.Richard Socher [00:38:48]: It makes no sense. Yeah, Elos are terrible, too, because it's always just like me versus others.Richard Socher [00:38:53]: But, like, you can be intelligent and not constantly compare yourself to others? And so, yeah, there's no, like. In fact, a lot of these definitions we have, which I briefly mention in my book, too, these definitions create sometimes explicit and sometimes a more implicit anthropic bounds. No dis to the company Anthropic, but just, like, this idea that your intelligence is like getting 100 out of 100 questions right on this IQ test. Well, if that's your definition then you can only be at 100 out of 100. Where do you go from there, right? So you see a lot of these, benchmarks that people are working on they, increase, they get close to human, maybe sometimesSwyx [00:39:30]: It's like an S-curveRichard Socher [00:39:30]: Slightly above human, and then it's flat.Richard Socher [00:39:32]: It's like, ‘cause that's your. If your definition is only that so tied to humans, you're only gonna get to just slightly better than that. So I think metacognition is a great example of that, where we're not even yet allowing the AI to think. We're not working on it very much, and hence there's very little progress in that.Profit Maximization, Real-World Environments, and Reward DesignSwyx [00:39:49]: Yeah. Well, we've interviewed Andon, which I think, has been working on the most open-ended, benchmarks, which is just real-world, money.Swyx [00:39:57]: Arguably, telling an AI to profit maximize is a bad idea.Swyx [00:40:03]: But they are doing it.Richard Socher [00:40:05]: I do think you don't want that super. Like, you don't want a superintelligence to have a ton of access to all kinds of tools and so on and then just give it that without some very careful reward engineering. ‘Cause it's like, I just buy a bunch of defense stocks and I start a war. I make money. Like, it's just like, it's a tricky situation, right? You just buy a bunch of stuff, short basic goods for people, and you create some weird famine, like, issues. Like, yeah, there's a lot of constraints you should put onto a trading system.Vibhu [00:40:35]: It's a fun measure, though, ‘cause, the bounds are very capped to where we're nowhere close to them. Like, in Andon Labs, the model's like, “Oh, it's Saturday, maybe I just close the store today.” “Someone's off. It's okay. We'll just close the store.”Swyx [00:40:51]: It's using Claude.Vibhu [00:40:52]: Yeah. ButRichard Socher [00:40:53]: Yeah, no. I'm not, I'm not arguing against it. Just, like as you get more and more intelligence, you wanna be more and more careful with that as, like an open environment, ‘cause the environment then is all of Earth.Applying RSI to Science and InventionSwyx [00:41:02]: Yeah. Okay. For recursive, not strictly necessary, right? Because, like, if your goal is you make a machine that, like, invents the other things, then, like, just solve, the science thingsRichard Socher [00:41:12]: Knowledge discovery, yeah.Swyx [00:41:13]: Solve machine learning research and discovery and all these things. Good enough.Richard Socher [00:41:16]: And eventually, so, our goal, I haven't really. I don't talk about it that often because it is a few years out, but our goal is once you have a recursive self-improving superintelligence, you then want to apply it to the most important problems. And I think a lot of those are in science and technology and broadly construed inventions, and those inventions in, physics to create better, cheaper energy with fission or fusion, in chemistry and to create better materials and better batteries and, better solar cells and so on. In biology, there's so much, like, I think soon to be low hang- lower and lower hanging fruit because of AI, because of protein and generation, not just folding, but generating new proteins like we did in ProGen many years ago. Like, so much positive impact we had if you take that superintelligence and you apply it to science.Swyx [00:42:04]: I do fundamentally believe that. There's a lot of approaches, though. You're not the only team trying and NeoLab trying.Swyx [00:42:09]: There's, like a lot of. Especially the physical sciences as well.Richard Socher [00:42:12]: And that's good. Yeah. I do think that physi- like the reason we are only doing it in a few years is that it's a little too early right now. Robotics is not quite there yet. The AI is not quite there yet. But I'm fairly confident in 3 to 5 years, all those constraints will be gone, and then applying to real physical robotics experiments and so on, like true robotic process automationRichard Socher [00:42:33]: Not the traditional RPA sense, but, like, having robots run experiments for you will be totally there. Yeah, it's gonna be great.Swyx [00:42:40]: Just to call back to something that you said early on about slow takeoff, you said that, like, while really the substrate that is limiting factor is, let's call this chips, and semiconductors and all these things, and you have race funding for that and, you are investing a lot on that. But have you done the math on, like, is it even- Achievable and, like, what is the, industry concentration needed in order to achieve, like, scale?Compute, Slow Takeoff, and Changing the Bitter Lesson SlopeRichard Socher [00:43:05]: Right now we know that, like, roughly, like a 1000 GPUs cost quite a lot of money.Richard Socher [00:43:11]: Right? If you wanted, like, 10s of thousands of GPUs, you're, you're talking billions and billions of dollars. If you say, like, one GB300 is, like, you could eventually create models that are, on that substrate, like are close and similar to human intelligence. And you want, like, thousands and thousands of, AIs to think about really hard problems, in a similar fashion to humanity. Like, yeah, that-that's, that's a lot of money. You do the math. It's like a lot. We don't have that amount of money right now anywhere to, like, build that. Now, things can get more efficient. You will have, I think, soon better algorithms that won't be, and better hardware that won't be as energy-hungry, and so on. Our human brain does quite a lot of flops with much less energy.Swyx [00:43:56]: 20 watts?Richard Socher [00:43:57]: That's exactly right. Yeah, that's the number often that's quoted. And, like, I think more, inventions will happen there, that then will accelerate the takeoff even further.Swyx [00:44:08]: One thing I always try to reconcile when talking, like, with new lab founders is, like, you're fighting Bitter Lesson all the time. You have to show initial progress, then you unlock the next tier of funding, then the next tier, then the next tier.Richard Socher [00:44:20]: Which unlocks larger model categories.Swyx [00:44:22]: Like, fundamentally, is that true? Like, are you fighting Bitter Lesson? Are you — will we have a way in which, like, no, we're changing the slope in some fundamentally different way?Richard Socher [00:44:31]: I do think we are changing the slopes in fundamental ways by making AI much more efficient, both in terms of the training as well as the inference.Richard Socher [00:44:43]: Yeah. I think we will — When you allow AI to do the work that it takes other labs thousands of people and years to do, I think we'll be able to get it down to weeks, and that will be much cheaperRichard Socher [00:44:53]: And hence, more affordable, accessible to others and so on.Swyx [00:44:57]: Yeah. You've shared initial results on that,Swyx [00:44:59]: Which, like, conveniently OpenAI has also done to their GPT-5.6, so we can talk about it now.Richard Socher [00:45:04]: Yeah. Yeah, so these areSwyx [00:45:06]: Let's recap what you've done.Early Recursive Results: NanoChat, NanoGPT, and SOL-ExecBenchRichard Socher [00:45:07]: Maybe, just a quick recap here. We built, this, system that isn't the full, even the full RSI system in its glory, but it is a first baby version of this. And then, we don't wanna just have it internally and not show anything and, just show some people of what's possible. And so we applied this to these 3 different tasks. One is NanoChat, by my friend Andrej Karpathy, just, like, train a small language model to get, really low bits per byte. And, like, hundreds if not thousands of people, used both their agents and themselves to try, to get to that, and then they got to 0.937. We literally took our system and got to a much lower, bits per byte, much faster within, like, I think less than 2 days. So we took this thing, applied our system to it, and less than 2 days later, we have — we outperformed every human and their agents, in, have ever worked on this. Same with NanoGPT. And then we're like, well, let's, apply it to something that's even more relevant, to real people and to the Nvidia ecosystem and applied it, to, SOL-ExecBench. And maybe you can scroll down to some of the, images. They're, they're kinda fun to see. But yeah, like, one you see has made some real inventions that weren't just hyperparameter tuning. Like, inventing hash tables and so on is quite clever. We have even better results now.Swyx [00:46:34]: What do you mean inventing hash ta — You didn't invent hash tables.Richard Socher [00:46:36]: Of course we didn't invent, like, hash tables. In the grand scheme of, like a hash table, it's like a super basic primitive in computer science. But to use it, for language modeling in this scenario inside a transformer and so on and to combine these ideas and put them together, that has then eventually also been invented, but there was a knowledge cutoff, and we did check that it didn't have access to that externally. We talk about this a little bit. If you scroll to the next figures, this is also an interesting one in that when you start from a really basic, poor, like, vanilla transformer, then we still outperform all of the community together. But if you start from the human seed from an expert like Andrej, then you get even lower. So the human seeds from which you start do still matter. So that was an interesting insight, in my eyes, on this. And then as you go, like, how long does it take to get to these models, to get to similar performance? It's much faster. And then a similar thing happens with the speed runs here where, people have worked on this for quite some time, and the model still was able to train a model more quickly. Why do we care about it? Well, speed of training is part of the equation of the cost, and ultimately, you wanna have the most intelligence per dollar, right? And so speed and quality are big parts of that. And, the,Swyx [00:48:00]: Yeah, the way I put it is, for people who don't understand they look at the chart, they're like, “Cool. What does it mean?” if you have, like a billion-dollar cluster and you can shave off 10%, that's 100 million dollars.Richard Socher [00:48:12]: That's exactly right.Swyx [00:48:13]: How much is that worth?Richard Socher [00:48:14]: Exactly. So when you click, when you look at, like the kernels, these kernels, yeah, for the non-experts, like these kernels are like, used in all the models. Every time you use an Nvidia GPU, you interface with that GPU through these kernels. And so here you see, the leaderboard best, and when it's recursive, and it's there are only a handful of kernels, in this whole benchmark where we weren't the best. And so to me, this is, like, really exciting, ‘cause it makes. It just showcases what this can do. And again these weren't like. We didn't, like, spend months or years, like, developing. In fact, in particular for kernel, CUDA kernels, like, we don't even have really deep. CUDA kernel experts in the team. And our system, that's the beauty. The system just did all of these things. We didn't invent this. And when we open source and release, things in the future and models in the future, like, it won't. They won't be the best in their, category or class or whatever because we're so smart, but it's because, we built a smart AI that does it for us.Reward Engineering and Good Auto ResearchVibhu [00:49:14]: Do you have anything that you've learned from how to guide good auto research? A lot of it also builds on human background, right? It's not just as simple as just, “Hey, go optimize this.”Vibhu [00:49:23]: But we do see it again and again, right? Like some of the Erdos problems, frontier math is being solved by people. And when they do a write-up, they're like, “Oh, I'm not a mathematician. I have no background in this?” “I saw some tools and I made it work.”Swyx [00:49:35]: While you're watching the World Cup, you're likeSwyx [00:49:37]: “This proves some conjectures that's going on.”Vibhu [00:49:40]: Yep. Any learnings fromRichard Socher [00:49:41]: Yeah, there's a Korean conjecture was. Yeah, that's pretty cool.Swyx [00:49:44]: To summarize, tips for good auto researchSwyx [00:49:46]: Versus bad auto research.Vibhu [00:49:48]: How did you build the recursive?Richard Socher [00:49:49]: Yeah. So without giving away all the secret sauce, maybe some things that are probably obvious to the experts but might still be interesting to some, folks is, like, reward engineering is one of the most crucial bits, especially, in order to avoid reward hacking. So you have to be really clever about avoiding. ‘Cause as your AI gets better and better, it will get better and better, at finding weird like, special cases or counterexamples and things like that. And so I'll give you an example. Like, when you ask to, like, make these 100, lines of code faster, and, how do you define fast? Well, you have one line at the beginning that says, “Start your stopwatch,” and one line at the end, “End the stopwatch,” and then, tell us how much time, progressed. And so, well, the simplest way is you just put that line that ends the stopwatch, rightVibhu [00:50:39]: At the startRichard Socher [00:50:40]: At the start. And then boom, it's now faster, right? So this isn't like this, like, super evil AI. It's just, like a very simple, dumb reward hack. And so you have to just very carefully think about all the different angles there. And then I think the longer time horizon the tasks are the harder it gets and the more interesting and clever you have to be to still use these kinds of ideas for it. But yeah, I can't give away too much there.Vibhu [00:51:05]: It seems like rubrics are taking a good spot in that, where for unverifiable domains, you have rubrics, you have a model breakdown, judge's criteria along the way.Swyx [00:51:14]: Yeah, it's a form of verificationSwyx [00:51:16]: Once you got enough rubrics.Richard Socher [00:51:17]: Yeah, everything. I said this a long time ago. That's why I've never been that impressed that AI can play games, ‘cause I'm like anything you can simulate and/or verify, you can have infinite training data forRichard Socher [00:51:29]: And hence, like, AI will solve it eventually.Swyx [00:51:32]: Looking for games where you can do auto domain distribution. So this is a game that nobody's trained on ‘cause it's a new game.Swyx [00:51:38]: And you can start gaming, you can start to play. So I've been building this and cloned this in person and it's just been self-play. I've had about a billion positions evaluated.Games, Self-Play, and the AI EconomistSwyx [00:51:48]: And, I wanted to do the AlphaGo thing of self-play until you ge

In this episode, Lily explores maternity as the deepest, most essential aspect of femininity, even for women without children. She highlights the sacrificial love at the heart of motherhood and its reflection of divine compassion. Get our newsletter and other important updates: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hildebrandproject.org/#newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Become a monthly donor! Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠hildebrandproject.org/giving⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on Social Media Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/hildebrand_project⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/@HildebrandProject⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/HildebrandPrj⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/Hildebrandproject⁠⁠⁠⁠

Working Genius helps leaders understand the work that gives people energy, the work that drains them, and how to build more effective teams around those differences. In this episode of The CEO Project Podcast, host Jim Schleckser speaks with Patrick Lencioni, bestselling author, leadership expert, and founder of The Table Group. Patrick explains the six types of Working Genius and how each contributes to moving an idea from its earliest stage through successful execution. He also discusses vulnerability, team dynamics, CEO burnout, and why leaders should stop trying to excel at every kind of work. You'll learn how to: • Identify the work that energizes you and the work that creates frustration • Understand the six geniuses of Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity • Build a leadership team that fills critical gaps rather than replicating your strengths • Match the right people to the right roles • Structure meetings around the type of work that needs to happen • Prevent one person's strengths from disrupting the team's progress • Use vulnerability to create greater trust and collaboration • Examine whether your motivation for leadership is service or personal reward Patrick also explains how Working Genius complements his other leadership models by helping CEOs get the right people on the bus, place them in the right seats, and then build a cohesive team. Listen to discover how Working Genius can help you reduce frustration, prevent burnout, improve teamwork, and ensure that every stage of the work receives the energy and talent it needs. Listeners can also receive 20% off the Working Genius assessment at workinggenius.com by using the discount code CEO. Check out: 9:12: How Patrick Lencioni developed the Working Genius model 12:46: The six types of Working Genius and how they move work from idea to completion 21:18: How CEOs can use Working Genius to build more balanced leadership teams   About Patrick Lencioni Patrick Lencioni is the pioneer of the organizational health movement and one of the world's foremost experts on leadership and teamwork. As an author, speaker, consultant, and CEO of The Table Group, Pat has spent the last 25 years shaping the organizational health movement by helping leaders develop cohesive teams and engaged employees. With his signature mix of inspiration, humor, storytelling, and no-nonsense practicality, Pat has spoken to millions of leaders at national and global conferences and is consistently the top-rated keynote speaker at major events. Whether he's addressing Fortune 500 companies, professional sports organizations, government agencies, non-profits, schools, or churches, Pat's down-to-earth nature and insightful concepts are sure to resonate. The world's foremost expert on organizational health and teamwork, Patrick's books have sold more than 6 million copies, and his work has been featured in Fortune, USA TODAY, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review, to name a few.  

James and John discuss eBay finds: The Mother of Invention poster, Macintosh Color Classic, and Lisa Widget controller card. They review the resullts of the most recent RR Auction set of Apple items, and news includes the Story of Dark Castle, the Mactini, and Apple in Colour.   Join our Facebook page, follow us on X (Twitter), watch us on YouTube, and visit us at RetroMacCast.  

Could artificial intelligence actually become a threat to humanity and are some of the very people building it worried about what comes next? Jim and Dar dig into a chilling warning about where AI could be headed and whether the race to develop it is moving faster than our ability to control it. Does the US have a plan when it comes to alien life? Why is Dr. Phil so upset about UAP's? Was Bigfoot spotted in Maine? Do we have some proof of time travel from an old painting? And finally, could you be psychic without even realizing it? Jim and Dar report on all of these topics and more on this week's episode of The Paranormal Report. Thanks so much for listening/watching. Share the show if you can! --- CHECK OUT ALL OF JIM'S FREE PODCASTSJim Harold's Campfire - True paranormal stories from real people.The Paranormal Report - Our weekly paranormal show with Jim & Dar Harold.The Paranormal Podcast - The longest running paranormal podcast on the internet. Est. 2005. Jim interviews the greatest minds in the paranormal, UFOs, cryptids and more.Find them all at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, jimharold.com or wherever you get your podcasts!VIRTUAL CAMPFIRE GROUPJoin our FREE online community at ⁠https://virtualcampfiregroup.com⁠EVENTSHope to see you soon at one of Jim's live events: https://jimharold.com/eventsYOUTUBE CHANNELBe sure to subscribe to Jim's YouTube channel at: ⁠https://youtube.com/jimharold⁠ MERCHGo to ⁠https://jimharold.com/merch⁠ to get your Jim Harold T's, sweatshirts, mugs, hats and more! BOOKSGet all SIX of Jim's Campfire books here: https://jimharold.com/campfirebooks/ LINKS https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/tech/ai/anthropic-worker-estimates-ai-kill-humans-2036/ https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843 https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-16112117/baba-vanga-psychic-2027-prophecy.html https://www.nysun.com/article/disclosure-day-u-s-government-has-first-contact-plan-advisory-panel-member-says https://apple.news/AbffnOt_SRhemR38al7s-Aw https://nypost.com/2026/09/04/us-news/dr-phil-blasts-pentagon-for-ignoring-legitimate-ufo-reports-from-the-public/ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-16115129/time-travel-claims-1937-painting-springfield.html https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/bigfoot-sightings-reported-in-damariscotta-maine/4008161/ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-16102371/nasa-mars-photo-extraterrestrial-life-tracks.html https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/08/spent-30-years-telling-fortunes-3-signs-secretly-psychic-29553669/ https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/400142/does-human-intelligence-stem-from-a-connection-to-the-other-side https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/sandra-bullock-reveals-ufo-sighting/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Entre la draisienne de 1818 et la bicyclette de 1880, le cœur du XIXe siècle a battu au rythme d'un véhicule à succès, véritable remplaçant du cheval : le vélocipède.D'où vient cette invention énigmatique ? Comment un baron allemand a-t-il pu concevoir une machine si contre-intuitive, si étrange, qu'elle semblait défier les lois de la physique ?

Comfort is the enemy of all growth. Necessity is the prerequisite to all invention, innovation and growth. God intentionally places us in environments and situations where we are out of our comfort zone to GROW US into WHO He desired us to become BEFORE time began! That's why the Holy Spirit is our “comforter” and not our environment or circumstances!

In the late spring of 1212, a spontaneous mass movement of 30,000 children arose in medieval France. Led by a 12-year-old shepherd boy named Stephen from the small village of Cloyes, the “Children's Crusade” swore to march on the Holy Land and peacefully reclaim the city of Jerusalem from Muslim control. In this first episode of a two-part series, we examine the origins of the Children's Crusade, the historiographical controversy surrounding it, and the enigmatic figure at its center, Stephen of Cloyes.    SOURCES: Asbridge, Thomas. The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land. Ecco, 2010. Clayton, Joseph. Pope Innocent III and His Times. Bruce Publishing Company, 1913. Cunningham, Hugh. The Invention of Childhood. BBC Books, 2006. Gabriele, Matthew, and David M. Perry. The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe. Harper, 2021. Gies, Frances, and Joseph Gies. Life in a Medieval City. Harper Perennial, 2010. Gray, George Zabriskie. The Children's Crusade. Houghton Mifflin, 1870. Hourly History. The Crusades: A History from Beginning to End. Hourly History, 2016. Jones, Dan. Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands. Viking, 2019. Maalouf, Amin. The Crusades through Arab Eyes. Translated by Jon Rothschild, Schocken Books, 1984. Nicolle, David. The Fourth Crusade 1202–04: The Betrayal of Byzantium. Illustrated by Christa Hook, Osprey Publishing, 2001. Norwich, John Julius. Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy. Random House, 2011. Sayers, Jane. Innocent III: Leader of Europe, 1198–1216. Longman, 1994. The Crusades. Captivating History, 2019. Chronicles of the First Crusade. Edited by Christopher Tyerman, Penguin Classics. Medieval Christianity. Captivating History, 2020. Trow, M. J. The Children's Crusade. Pen & Sword History, 2008. Hunnicutt, Wendell, editor. “Speech of Urban II at the Council of Clermont, November 26, 1095.” Reading List: Western Civilization, University of Texas at Arlington, https://websites.uta.edu/hunnicut/reading-list/readings-western-civilization/speech-of-urban-ii-at-the-council-of-clermont-november-26-1095/. Accessed 6 July 2026.  Farkel, William. “The Ebstorf Map: Unlocking Medieval Cartography and Its Hidden Meanings.” The Cartographic Institute, https://thecartographicinstitute.com/the-ebstorf-map-unlocking-medieval-cartography-and-its-hidden-meanings/. Accessed 6 July 2026. “15 Medieval Jokes That Still Hold Up Today.” Medievalists.net, 23 May 2023, https://www.medievalists.net/2023/05/15-medieval-jokes/. Accessed 6 July 2026 Medievalists.net. (2024, April 17). How to be a shepherd in the Middle Ages. Medievalists.net Lanigan, Dennis T. “The Departure – An Episode of the Child's Crusade, 12th Century, by Joanna Boyce Wells.” The Victorian Web, 22 July 2024, https://victorianweb.org/painting/wellsjb/paintings/5.html. Accessed 5 Aug. 2026.  This episode is sponsored by Rula. Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/conflicted  #rulapod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode: 1625 Telephone inventor Elisha Gray talks about miracles.  Today, a telephone inventor talks about miracles.

This week on Culture Friday, John Stonestreet moves from Gloria Steinem's legacy and the baby bust to commercialized weddings. Also: half a century later, All the President's Men keeps analog reporting gritty, George Grant unpacks the unexpected evolution of everyday English—on Wordplay, and the Friday morning news.Support The World and Everything in It today at wng.org/donate.Additional support comes from Boyce College—which offers a Christ-centered education built on the truth of God's Word. Every student—no matter their major—takes 30 hours of Bible and theology, learning how to think biblically, live faithfully, and lead with conviction.Formed from the 160-year legacy of Southern Seminary, Boyce College prepares students for maximum faithfulness in the world, the workplace, the church, and the family.Learn more at boycecollege.comFrom World Watch. A 10-minute daily news program that explores current events for students 5-12th grade. This high-energy show connects learners to the present, history and communities around the world. Join 40,000 Christian families that utilize World Watch as a tool to foster curiosity and have conversations about today's news as a discipleship rhythm within their families. “Whatever the news, the purpose of the Lord will stand!” First time? Take advantage of a 30-days free trial at worldwatch.news/podcast Not ready to sign up? Check out a free episode at https://get.worldwatch.news/free-episodeAnd from Cedarville University— a Christ-centered, academically rigorous university located in southwest Ohio, equipping students for Gospel impact across every career and calling. Cedarville integrates a biblical worldview into every course in the more than 175 undergraduate and graduate programs students choose from. New online undergraduate degrees through Cedarville Online offer flexible and affordable education grounded in a strong Christian community that fosters both faith and learning. Learn more at cedarville.edu, and explore online programs at cedarville.edu/online.