Podcasts about merchants

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Did you know that there is no standard legal definition of “regenerative” food and agriculture? Join Food Sleuth Radio host and Registered Dietitian, Melinda Hemmelgarn for her conversation with Kendra Klein, PhD, Deputy Director of Science at Friends of the Earth, and co-author of “Regenerative Food Labels: What's Behind the Claim?” Klein helps us navigate organic and regenerative food labels in the marketplace, the many benefits of organic food and farming, and communication and policy challenges. Klein references the report: “Merchants of Poison:” https://foe.org/resources/merchants-of-poison/  Related Websites:  https://foe.org/resources/label-guide/

The great London freeze of January had turned the River Thames into a magnificent highway of solid ice. Merchants had erected a bustling "Frost Fair" directly over the frozen tides, filling the air with the scents of roasting chestnuts, hot gin, and boiling tallow. Inside 221B Baker Street, the cold pressed hard against our windows, but Sherlock Holmes was utterly absorbed. He sat at his chemical table, using a pipette to drop a reagent onto a tray of ice crystals.

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You are not a life coach. You are not a motivational speaker. You are a merchant of hope.In a world increasingly gripped by depression, high anxiety, and shifting societal pressures, what is the true assignment of the believer and the church? Pulling from the bedrock truths of 1 Corinthians 13:13, this powerful message cuts through religious noise to remind us of the three pillars that must remain in the house of God: Faith, Hope, and Love.The speaker challenges pastors and believers alike to look past superficial markers of success and anchor their ministries in what truly matters to heaven. Discover why these three elements are completely non-negotiable for walking out your calling:Faith That Pleases God: Why the Lord isn't tracking your lifestyle metrics, but looking for a relentless, active faith that finishes the race.Merchants of Hope: Why the church must reject hopeless narratives and aggressively preach that while weeping may endure for a night, joy must come in the morning.The Supremacy of Love: How faith works by love and hope is sustained by love. Learn what it means to open your heart past tribalism, community bias, and conditional grace to love as Christ loved.

In 1919, a group of business people gave themselves a strange name: the Merchants of Peace. Their bet was that trading nations fight less. They had just watched Central Europe destroy itself, and they believed commerce could be a brake on war. A century later, with the Strait of Hormuz blocked and tariffs rising, that idea is being tested in real time. Sebastian Ferrari leads strategic initiatives at the International Chamber of Commerce, the world business organization representing an estimated 45 million companies across 170 countries. He argues the answer to fragile supply chains is not less trade but less concentration: more regional integration, especially across Africa and Latin America. We cover EUDR, TradeRoots Africa and AfCFTA, food as social stability, and whether trade can still keep the peace. Listen and share at samueletini.com.

In this episode the lads discuss:00:00 Intro6:20 England World Cup expectations21:04 Dark Horses? 28:30 France expectations?32:40 Messi or Ronaldo better World Cup?34:29 Best midfield?36:45 Who will win the World Cup?42:04 Best defence?47:27 Breakout player48:03 Madrid mystery player?59:26 Which Host Nation will go the furthest?01:01:00 Games most looking forward to?01:04:10 Merchants of the WeekStay TAPPED IN with us by liking, commenting, subscribing and turn those notifications on! #TTIMhttps://linktr.ee/tapinmerchants#football #arsenal #liverpool #manutd #chelsea

Most businesses lose thousands a year to credit card processing fees — and most never ask whether those fees can be reduced. Here are five legitimate strategies that actually work. To learn more, visit https://quicsuite.myclickfunnels.com/landing-page Northern Media Services City: Oswego Address: 274 Cemetery Rd Website: https://www.northernmediaservices.com/

Have you experienced been short-changed at the shops not because of an absent-minded or dodgy cashier, but rather due to their tills running out of small change? Is it within our rights to insist that they give us our change, even if it means them having to give out a coin of larger denomination? Lester Kiewit speaks to Pearl Kgalegi, Head of Currency at the SA Reserve Bank. Good Morning Cape Town with Lester Kiewit is a podcast of the CapeTalk breakfast show. This programme is your authentic Cape Town wake-up call. Good Morning Cape Town with Lester Kiewit is informative, enlightening and accessible. The team’s ability to spot & share relevant and unusual stories make the programme inclusive and thought-provoking. Don’t miss the popular World View feature at 7:45am daily. Listen out for #LesterInYourLounge which is an outside broadcast – from the home of a listener in a different part of Cape Town - on the first Wednesday of every month. This show introduces you to interesting Capetonians as well as their favourite communities, habits, local personalities and neighbourhood news. Thank you for listening to a podcast from Good Morning Cape Town with Lester Kiewit. Listen live on Primedia+ weekdays between 06:00 and 09:00 (SA Time) to Good Morning CapeTalk with Lester Kiewit broadcast on CapeTalk https://buff.ly/NnFM3Nk For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/xGkqLbT or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/f9Eeb7i Subscribe to the CapeTalk Daily and Weekly Newsletters https://buff.ly/sbvVZD5 Follow us on social media CapeTalk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@capetalk CapeTalk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ CapeTalk on X: https://x.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapeTalkSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The saga of Chris' yowling companion continues with a story of the broken foster cat! Then the gang gets into the game they've been playing including Dead of Winter, Star Wars The Deck Building Game, Dale of Merchants, Shackleton Base Expansion, Scales of Fate, and a feature review of Chaosmos from designers Matthew Austin, Dani Vigour, and Joey Vigour. Then after Tony T's wild and crazy news segment the Founders talk about the movies and TV shows they're excited about coming out this summer! Dead of Winter: 00:04:39, Star Wars The Deck Building Game: 00:15:13, Dale of Merchants: 00:20:51, Shackleton Base Expansion: 00:29:52, Scales of Fate: 00:35:53, Chaosmos Review: 00:43:35, News with Tony T: 01:22:26, Summer Movie Extravaganza: 02:14:30. Check out our sponsors Restoration Games at https://restorationgames.com/, Game Toppers at https://www.gametoppersllc.com/ and Prester's Painting at https://www.presterspainting.com/

Brian and David do a deep dive into the NBA Playoffs. How we got here and what will happen between the Spurs and the Knicks??

In this episode the lads ft @YouKnowBallpod discuss:00:00 Intro 03:07 PSG v Arsenal 20:50 What do Arsenal need to do to compete again next year?31:10 Where does this PSG team rank in the last 15 years?40:32 Where should Leao go next?48:50 Maresca at City?49:15 Slot Out, Iraola In?01:00:45 Man United expectations01:04:15 Liverpool summer plans?01:06:50 Nic jackson v Ekitike01:12:10 Merchants of the WeekFollow YouKnowBall everywhere: @ykbpodStay TAPPED IN with us by liking, commenting, subscribing and turn those notifications on! #TTIMhttps://linktr.ee/tapinmerchants#football #arsenal #liverpool #manutd #chelsea

Credit card processing costs are rising for U S businesses — and more retailers are comparing cash discount programs and surcharges to protect already narrow profit margins. Here is how they differ. To learn more, visit https://quicsuite.myclickfunnels.com/landing-page Northern Media Services City: Oswego Address: 274 Cemetery Rd Website: https://www.northernmediaservices.com/

Credit card processing fees are quietly draining retail profits with every transaction — and most merchants do not realize how much it adds up over a year. Here is how modern payment models can help. To learn more, visit https://quicsuite.myclickfunnels.com/landing-page Northern Media Services City: Oswego Address: 274 Cemetery Rd Website: https://www.northernmediaservices.com/

The doomer YouTubers are working overtime. Shoggoth monsters behind the mask. Models faking alignment. Mythos secrets the AI labs allegedly won't release. Compelling theater — and almost entirely empty under the empirical microscope. Coach AF asks the question your favorite fear influencer won't: who profits from your panic? Episode 73 cuts open three of the loudest AI fear narratives for what they really are. The Shoggoth metaphor — where it came from, what it actually meant, and how content creators hijacked it. The alignment faking paper from Anthropic and Redwood Research — what the protocol actually tested, and what the headlines deliberately bury. The Claude Mythos leak — accident, not conspiracy. This is the same colonization pattern that turned the Agile Manifesto into a certification factory and Bitcoin into a speculation casino. Different costume. Same vendor playbook. Read the source. Trust the craft. Dare real agile, applied to real AI.

Recorded live at Google Marketing Live 2026, Phillip and eCommerce reporter Nicole Silberstein sit down with Ashish Gupta, VP & GM of Merchant Shopping at Google, who is behind the foundational commerce infrastructure powering the Shopping Graph and Universal Commerce Protocol. Gupta breaks down the GML announcements: UCP's expansion beyond shopping into hotels and food delivery, the multi-item Universal Cart that spans Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail, and why the future of agentic commerce still depends on merchants nailing the fundamentals. A Shopper for Every Shopper Key takeaways: UCP is expanding beyond shopping into hotel bookings and local food delivery, giving every shopper their own personal shopper. The Universal Cart lets shoppers buy multiple items at once across Google surfaces, streamlining the buying experience as shoppers venture from inspiration to discovery and comparison. Merchants remains the seller of record no matter where the transaction is completed, tackling industry concerns about disintermediation. Conversational attributes enrich product feeds so AI can match nuanced shopper intent. Winning in agentic commerce starts with the fundamentals: feeds, first-party data, and UCP readiness. In-Show Mentions: Google Marketing Live 2026 and Google I/O 2026 Universal Cart & Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) Further Reading: Google Imagines a Future Where Everyone Shops in Ads — A special edition of The Senses that distills the week's key announcements Episode 463: LIVE @ Google I/O: Universal Cart, Agentic Payments, and the Protocols Powering the Agent-Mediated Economy — Companion interview with Suresh Ganapathy Episode 464: LIVE @ Google Marketing Live: How Google Is Taking the Drudgery Out of Shopping— Companion interview with Nick Fox Google Solidifies Its Place in the AI Race — Insiders coverage of Google's UCP debut at NRF 2026, the foundation for this week's announcements [Member Brief] Agentic Commerce and the eCommerce Site's New Existential Crisis — How agentic platforms are reshaping the role of the branded eCommerce site Associated Links: Learn more about  Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Zip Loan supports merchant growth with technology-driven financing solutions that simplify approvals and enhance the customer experience. Zip Loan City: Matthews Address: 624 Matthews-Mint Hill Road Website: https://www.zip-loan.com/ Phone: +1-877-308-0088 Email: info@zip-loan.com

A @Christadelphians Video: [Inspiring]In this outstanding and thought-provoking episode of the Watchman Report, we delve into a major geopolitical shift that is quietly reshaping the world order: Europe's move towards strategic independence from America. As headlines from February 2026 report that European leaders are preparing for a future without the US as its ultimate security guarantor, we ask the question—what does this mean for the student of Bible prophecy?This is an insightful and revealing exposition of Ezekiel 38 and Revelation 17, exploring how current events are aligning with the prophetic stage. We examine the ancient nations of Magog, Meshech, Tubal, and Gomer, using the historical writings of Josephus to identify them with modern-day Russia and Europe. The video lays out a wonderful, scriptural framework showing how a Russian-led European confederacy is set to emerge in the latter days, standing apart from the Anglo-Saxon maritime powers of Tarshish (Britain) and her young lions (the United States).Join us for this inspirational study as we connect the dots between today's headlines and the sure word of prophecy, pointing towards the ultimate intervention of God and the establishment of His Kingdom.*Chapters:*00:00 - Introduction: The Shifting Alliances in Europe01:52 - News Headlines: Europe Prepares for Life Without US Backing03:26 - The Prophetic Significance: Ezekiel 38 and the Latter Days04:55 - Identifying the Nations: Josephus and the Scythians07:00 - The Prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal: The Russian Connection08:39 - Gomer and his Bands: Identifying Western Europe09:52 - Revelation 17: The Ten Kings and European Unity11:25 - The Merchants of Tarshish: Britain, America, and the Young Lions13:28 - The Direction of Travel: Setting the Stage for Prophecy15:05 - Conclusion: Moving Towards God's Kingdom*Bible Verses Referenced:*

Why did the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse? Beyond the technical failure lies a deeper story of corporate shell games, foreign labor exploitation, and the Judeo-capitalist order that prioritizes profit over infrastructure. Greg Conte joins the show to connect the dots.Follow Greg's work below: Substack:substack.com/@gregorycontePrussian Socialism Podcast on Odysee:odysee.com/@gregoryconte:2Book: “Be a Hero: Revolution by Legal Means”amazon.com/dp/1963591267NEXT: If you liked the show, feel free to continue supporting my work. Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/josenino This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.josealnino.org/subscribe

In this episode the lads discuss:00:00 Intro13:00 Arsenal Premier League Champions18:21 Arteta Legacy made?21:20 Saliba and Gabriel top 3 PL duo27:00 What Arsenal need to do to repeat?34:40 Bigger prem legacy - Pep or Salah?43:24 Can Villa challenge next year?46:00 England World Cup squad reaction 58:25 Reece James v Kobbie1:01:42 Joao Pedro snub 1:04:00 PSG v Arsenal1:11:32 Merchants of the WeekStay TAPPED IN with us by liking, commenting, subscribing and turn those notifications on! #TTIMhttps://linktr.ee/tapinmerchants#football #arsenal #liverpool #manutd #chelsea

At Google I/O 2026, Phillip sits down with Suresh Ganapathy, Senior Director of Product Management for Consumer Shopping at Google, to unpack the day's announcements: Universal Commerce Protocol's expansion into new verticals, agentic payments arriving in Gemini Spark, and the debut of Universal Cart. We trace what these foundational pieces mean for how a billion daily shoppers, and the merchants serving them, will operate in an agent-mediated economy. Enter the Delegation Era Key Takeaways: Universal Cart maintains shopper state across Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail. The cart works on your behalf: tracking prices, flagging restocks, and catching product incompatibilities. Agent Payments Protocol's (AP2) tamper-proof contracts make agent purchases verifiable and accountable to shopper intent. Merchants remain seller of record, preserving customer relationships inside agentic flows. Gemini Spark becomes Google's first consumer agent with purchasing authority this fall. Key Quotes: "We're laying the foundational building blocks of agentic commerce." — Suresh Ganapathi "People come to shop at Google over a billion times a day, and we want to make sure that we're delivering the best experience to them when they do." — Suresh Ganapathi "We want to make it really simple for shoppers to enjoy the fun parts of shopping and then delegate some of these more tedious aspects to agents." — Suresh Ganapathi "Spark is the agent. AP2 is the payments protocol. Universal Cart is the ability for consumers to have less friction." — Phillip Further Reading: More on Google's AI play: Insiders: Google Solidifies Its Place in the AI Race More on agent-mediated commerce: Member Brief: Agentic Commerce and the eCommerce Site's New Existential Crisis Our 2026 Predictions: The Age of Autonomy Learn more about Google I/O Google's Universal Cart Announcement Our Links: Check out Future Commerce on YouTube Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's an unspoken rule in the social impact sector: we tell the truth, we follow the science, we play fair. But those rules are increasingly a losing strategy, because the industries we're up against don't have to win the argument. They just have to muddy it. Joelle Lester, Executive Director of the Public Health Law Center, has spent 25 years studying how Big Tobacco manufactured doubt, and how that same playbook now drives opposition to progress on climate, food, and public health.Episode Highlights: [00:04:00] Merchants of doubt: how the tobacco industry wrote the playbook for manufacturing scientific uncertainty [00:09:00] Why philanthropy needs to step up right now, and which foundations are leading [00:15:00] The strategic calculus of when to resist publicly versus when to go underground [00:24:00] Why scientists with integrity are at a structural disadvantage against opponents with none [00:33:00] “Cultural engineering” — Alessandra Orofino: why culture is always upstream of public policy [00:40:30] Why public health groups need to get better at storytelling and soundbitesNotable Quotes: Joelle Lester [00:05:00]: "The art of it is that they don't try to disprove it. They just try to raise doubt in people's minds about how believable the science is." Joelle Lester [00:41:05]: "Having all the evidence and having the legal authority and being right is not getting us where we need to go."Resources & Links:Public Health Law Center — https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/Cooking with Smoke report — https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/sites/default/files/resources/Cooking-With-Smoke.pdfMerchants of Doubt (book & film) — https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.→ Subscribe: designingtomorrow.show → Work with Cosmic: designbycosmic.comListeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you!We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.comThank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

Less than 30 days until the 2026 World Cup, and the fever is really starting to kick in. On the latest episode of the Urban Pitch podcast, we discuss LA's lowkey underrated public transit system, the Theo Hernandez controversy, and why former players become hot take merchants once they get into the media space after retirement. (00:30) World Cup concern vs. excitement (02:13) LA's public transit improvement (10:39) Theo Hernandez and laughing gas (16:08) Hot take merchants in the media space (24:56) The potential USMNT World Cup roster Cast Hosts: Ramsey Abushahla, Julio Monterroza, & Brigitte Flores Producer: Roy Cho Subscribe to our newsletter for more interviews and latest news on street football, freestyle, and urban culture, read more about soccer culture on our website, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Don Chigazola is back with Chigazola Merchants French wines on California Wine Country with Dan Berger and Daedalus Howell. Don Chigazola receives the first Golden Corkscrew with a fanfare for brass orchestra, for being a guest ten times on CWC. The last time Don Chigazola was on CWC was this episode last January, with a selection of wines he imports from Italy. Today, we will taste Chigazola Merchants French wines, which Don has just begun to import. These wines come from a vineyard and winery called Domaine Tour Campanets, located about an hour north of Aix en Provence in a village called Les Puys. Don has brought five bottles, two whites, two Rosés and one red blend. The winemaker is Emanuelle Baude, the daughter of the family that bought the property decades ago. The first is a Rosé, made of 70% Grenache and 30% Syrah. We’ll hear a lot of those varietals today, since they make up a lot of the production in Provence. California Wine Country is brought to you by Deodora Estate Vineyards. Visit Deodora to discover 72 acres in the Petaluma Gap that produce exceptional Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling. Sip the difference! Chigazola Merchants French Wines Don Chigazola opened Chigazola Merchants 14 years ago after retiring from Med Tech. The regulatory process took 6 months, but he finally got federal and state licenses to import, distribute and retail wines from Europe. They have been importing wines from Italy for 13 years, including most of the well-known Italian varietals, from 12 of the 20 regions covered. They developed an interest in French wines when his wife Debbie tasted some French Roses. Now, Chigazola Merchants French wines are coming in through the same process they have for importing Italian wines. Dan says that this Rosé wine carries so much more of that tropical fruit plus spice component from the Grenache. The Syrah is there for flavor but not or intensity. Dan says that Grenache makes the best Rosé in Provence. It’s delicate but dry, loaded with flavor. Domaine Tour de Campanets There is a centuries-old tower on the property, Tour de Campanets means bell tower in Provençale French. The wines labeled Bois des Fées are their top quality production. Along with his wife and son, Don travels to meet the producers and visit the wineries. The don’t import from a producer unless they walk the vineyards and get to know the family. The other Rosé is under the Bois de Fées label. This one is made with Cabernet Sauvignon, it has more acidity and more weight. Dan observes that American wine buyers think that if a wine is inexpensive, it can’t be any good, even if they are. People didn’t trust inexpensive wines from Provence because the price was low. On the east coast, these were the bargain hunters’ paradise. People knew about them. But on the west coast they didn’t sell. All these wines cost under $30 but Dan says they are comparable to wines that cost over $40. Don says to his clients who may resist Rosé, if you taste this Rosé it will change what you think about Rosé. A Vermentino by any other name The Tour de Campanets Cuvée is a blend of 50% Rolle (which is another name for Vermentino), 35% Sauvignon Blanc and 15% Ungi Blanc. Rolle, or Vermentino, has taken hold in France. The Italians claimed the name and so the French renamed it. This grape has a trace of pineapple in the aromatics that you don’t get anywhere else. This wine is completely dry. Daedalus suggests marketing it as “Rolle in the hay,” Marketing department, work on that. Ungi Blanc is the same as Trebbiano. It is another renaming. In Sardengna, Cannonau is Grenache, but the French wouldn’t let the Italians use the name Grenache. It’s the same grape. It’s global politics in a bottle. There is an annual wine show in Paris that the Chigazolas have attended for the last 3 years. This is how they started making contacts in France. The last tasting is a 2024 red blend. Dan says that Don is doing a service to his customers These wines are different than his Italian wines. Don has the experience to know how to find these wines, that are unique, delicious and priced at $30 and below. These wines and these bargains are unique. 

Featured playlist: The Church (That Meets in My Home) — https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5Yobt1jZDd9Zzn8Ufa-BNciyYv04Cl6mMy books:Exalted: Putting Jesus in His Place — https://www.amazon.com/Exalted-Putting-Jesus-His-Place/dp/0985118709/ref=tmm_pap_title_0God's Design for Marriage (Married Edition) — https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Design-Marriage-Married-Amazing/dp/0998786306/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493422125&sr=1-4&keywords=god%27s+design+for+marriageGod's Design for Marriage (Pre-married Edition) — https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Design-Marriage-What-Before/dp/0985118725/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_topSupport us - become a CTC Partner: https://crosstocrown.org/partners/crosstocrown.org@DougGoodin

Well now, we were treated to another smashing weekend of Gaelic Football. The Football Pod are breaking it all down, James was in Killarney, Tommy was in the Hyde, and Paddy is on top of it all. Chapters(01:00) - Kerry's 'dream' Munster title - Cork issues, Clifford, Donegal worries.(20:00) - GAA+ vs. RTE, Tailteann Cup run-through, upsets and big scores(29:00) - Roscommon seize the day, Galway aren't done yet.(54:00) - Leinster & Ulster finals - what to expect...Thank you for tuning in, we'll be back next Monday after another weekend of Championship football.

For thousands of years, before Europeans crossed the Atlantic or steamships crossed the seas, the Indian Ocean connected the known world. Merchants riding the monsoon winds carried spices, silk, gold, ivory, porcelain, and ideas between Africa, Arabia, India, Southeast Asia, and China.  Along these routes, religions spread, empires rose, and some of the world's richest trading cities emerged. It was a commercial system that shaped history long before the modern global economy existed. Learn more about the Indian Ocean Trade and how it helped forge civilizations on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Newspapers.com Honor the past by uncovering its stories at Newspapers.com  Promo Code EVERYTHINGEVERWHERE Samsara Don't wait for the next accident to take action. Head to Samsara.com/EVERYTHING ButcherBox Get your choice between chicken breast or top sirloin for a year OR ground beef for life, PLUS $20 off when you go to ButcherBox.com/everything Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! Mint Mobile Save 50% on Unlimited premium wireless plans starting at $15/month at MintMobile.com/EED Audible Listen to Project Hail Mary Audible.com/hailmary Fast Growing Trees Get 20% off your first purchase when using the code DAILY at checkout at fastgrowingtrees.com/daily Subscribe to the podcast!  https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Ds7Rx7jvPJ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-the-need-for-pax-indica-malacca-was-blocked-1001-years-ago-hormuz-is-choked-now-14005673.htmlIn 1025 CE, exactly 1,001 years ago, Emperor Rajendra Chola sent an armada (probably the largest fleet in history before the advent of steam) 4,000 kilometers clear across the Indian Ocean. It was on a mission strangely familiar to us in 2026: open up a critical strait that was being choked by a littoral state. The thalassocratic SriVijaya Empire of Sumatra was closing the strait and imposing tolls, as well as winking at a little piracy.The strait in question then was Malacca. The Chola goal: to reopen Indian trade with Southeast Asia and China. Remarkably, the Cholas were not interested in territorial conquest, only in freedom of navigation.It is ironic that today, it is again a question of free trade, that shibboleth that has been waved about for decades (although that was a euphemism for ‘managed trade that benefits the West').The difference between then and now? The salient fact is that Rajendra Chola was able to open Malacca with his wooden ships. With all his aircraft carriers and F-35s and missiles, President Trump is unable to open Hormuz. This must mean something, although reasonable people may differ on what that is. My claim is that it means India has the opportunity, in fact the need, to step into the breach.Maritime trade is severely disturbed today, and it is increasingly a disaster for innocent bystanders bereft of oil and gas. And it is increasingly the Indian Ocean that matters: specifically the sea-lanes from Hormuz to Malacca, which handle a significant portion of both oil/gas trade and goods trade globally.Geo-politics and geo-economics, Mahan's and Spykman's theoriesIt is a reasonable conjecture that the locus of power has shifted over the centuries: in the 19th century, the Atlantic was supreme; in the 20th century, the Pacific; and in the 21st century, the most important ocean is the Indian Ocean. Asia has returned to center stage. In support of this assertion, see how the economic center of gravity of the world has returned to the vicinity of India, after the European colonial interlude.It is therefore appropriate to ask what it would take for India to regain its former keystone role in the Indian Ocean. Of course geography offers it to the country on a platter. From both Alfred Thayer Mahan's theory of naval power, and from Nicholas Spykman's Rimland theory, India could be, or should be, the dominant power in the region: it is almost literally India's ocean.Mahan's ideas, updated for today, suggest that a strong navy should protect a large merchant marine fleet, manage trade, and control choke-points. The preferred hardware may have changed from battleships to aircraft carriers and especially nuclear submarines these days, but the basic idea remains: speak softly but carry a big stick with a force-projection navy.Spykman's Rimland theory seems more appropriate in current circumstances than the Heartland theory popularized by Halford MacKinder. The Eurasian land mass may well be subject to control by a coastal hegemon or an alliance that controls the sea lanes and choke points. Despite pipelines and rail-borne containers, maritime trade still dominates.Spice Route >> Silk RoadA stark reminder of this is the comparison between the fabled ‘Silk Road' and the ancient ‘Spice Route'. Despite all the breathless propaganda about the Silk Road, it is abundantly clear that sea-borne trade was an order of magnitude greater, because a caravan of 500 camels, braving deserts, bandits and so on across central Asia couldn't possibly carry more than 100 tons of goods; whereas an ocean-going stitched teak ship, like a single uru from Beypore, Kerala, could easily carry 400 tons. And the monsoon winds provided predictable, seasonal propulsion.India's prowess was built on the monsoons. By mastering the seasonal winds, Indian mariners turned the ocean into a highway. This made India the supreme trading power. Merchants from Rome and Egypt traded with Chinese and Southeast Asian counterparts on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, leaving behind troves of coins as evidence.The SwitchThe remarkable thing is that these merchants did not even need to meet each other physically, because India provided the “multi-protocol switch”: translating their diverse needs and offering the conveniences of an entrepot, while also itself producing coveted, high-value products such as black pepper. For example, a Greek buyer could buy something from a Chinese seller, and settle the transaction using Indian credit.And how did India do it? By providing the “switching fabric”, such as the ports, the credit systems, and the security, that allowed these disparate worlds to exchange products and wealth without ever meeting.This is much like what a network gateway such as TIBCO does for packets of different kinds of data (in passing, how appropriate that TIBCO was founded by an Indian-American, Vivek Ranadive!). Hardware switches, eg. from Cisco Systems, have been around for a while, but TIBCO abstracted that functionality in software to connect those with different protocols.India already has many of the ingredients of the switching fabric in the India Stack. Using protocols like UPI, e-KYC, Account Aggregation, Central Bank Digital Currency, and ONDC, especially along with distributed-ledger blockchain-based Smart Contracts, it should be possible to provide end-to-end transparent and reliable multi-party trade support which complements the SWIFT payment system. Complement, not necessarily replace.The same pattern held with India's age-old trade system. The ports were on the Malabar Coast, such as Muziris; on the Coromandel coast, such as Arikkamedu; and on the Konkan Coast, such as Bharuchcha. The credit systems were run by temples which acted as both bankers and venture capitalists for the trading guilds. The security: well, that's what Rajendra Chola demonstrated in 1025 CE.Alas, medieval India lost its maritime focus. So did China. Both became insular, and were overwhelmed by invaders, including Turkics and Europeans. In India's case, the Turkic invaders were land-focused powers, although there were isolated maritime attempts (e.g. the Maratha Navy, Travancore defeating the Dutch in an amphibious battle at Colachel in 1741, etc.)Now, however, there are new ports. The most interesting is the Port of Trivandrum (Vizhinjam). This deep-water container transhipment port is only 10 nautical miles away from the Hormuz-Malacca sea lanes, and now when Dubai is closed, it reportedly has a backlog of a hundred container ships waiting to be berthed. Then there is the upcoming Vadhavan container port in Maharashtra, and the Galathea Bay container port in Great Nicobar, which overlooks the mouth of Malacca.Pax Indica todayThe modern idea of Pax Indica borrows from both perspectives: hard power and a switch. An Internet search brings up the fact that it was my friend Bapa Rao and I who first started talking about it in terms of India being the benevolent hegemon in the Indian Ocean, way back in the 1990s.Later, Shashi Tharoor wrote in his 2011 book Pax Indica that it could be “a peace system based on cooperation, stability, and rule‑based order in Asia and beyond, in which rising India helps shape the rules of the road rather than impose its will through hegemony.” That is, along roughly the same lines as the “multi protocol switch” or entrepot concept.Pax Indica is not an empire; it is an ecosystem. There are three aspects: military power, the full exploration of the multiprotocol switch, and the port-led development policy. Bapa Rao and I will consider these in a future article. Briefly, though, here is what these entail.* Project Power: Use a 3-carrier, 18-24-submarine navy to ensure no single power can close the ocean's gates.* Enable Trade: Use the Digital India Stack to act as the “Multi-Protocol Switch” for a fragmented world, plus super-ports like Vizhinjam (Trivandrum).* Secure the Choke Points: Be ready, like the Cholas, to act decisively when a “Srivijaya-style” blockade threatens the common good.Hard power needs to come through the acquisition of a blue water navy: at least three aircraft carrier groups, one for the Arabian Sea (Hormuz), one for the Bay of Bengal (Malacca), and one in maintenance, refit and upgrades.Even though drones and missiles have rendered them less dominant than in earlier times, carrier groups are still important for air superiority and power projection. But an ever-more critical factor is “area denial” by nuclear attack submarines (SSBN) that can launch second strike nuclear missiles as part of the “triad”, of which India should have at least three to four. In addition, there should be at least a dozen silent AIP-equipped diesel-electrics for securing straits, and at least 6-12 SSN (possibly leased) to enhance blue-water reach.“The IOR must become an Indian lake,” said General Raj Shukla on X. I agree: Not as a territory of conquest, but as a sanctuary of trade, where India sits at the center, as the protocol provider that makes world trade work again, as in millennia past.1500 words, 27 Apr, 2026Here's the notebookLM.google.com AI-generated video about this article: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

Pope/president disputes; Behind the scenes; Bible metaphors; "Patriotism"; "Pope"; Roman Sees; Governments = Corporations + Trusts; International Law; Magna Carta?; Rebuilding The Church?; Holy = Separate (from the "world"); Christ's appointment of His Kingdom; Julius Caesar; Bondage of Egypt; Jacob's servants; Making the word of God to none effect; Biblical constitutions; Easter post from POTUS; IRGC?; Satan; President in position of power; King?; Saul's duties; Commander-in-chief; Firing judges; Emperor?; "gods" Ex 22:28; Giving to Caesar; Why is there a pope?; "Call no man on Earth Father"; Passports; Corvee - Laboring for the government; Cities of blood; "Jesus" on Pope Leo; Exercising authority; One purse; Forced sacrifice?; Rewards of unrighteousness; Repentance solution; Merchants of the Earth (Canaanites); Rev 18:11; Rebellion; Getting God to hear you; Are you willing to help?; Civil government; Are you following Christ?; First pope?; Bishops of Rome; Revelation to Peter; Divine revelation; The keys of the kingdom; Covetous practices; Mt 16:13; Mt 18:18; Are you gathering in Jesus's name?; Hearing the cries of others; God wants you to be at liberty; Temptations of TV?; Learning forgiveness to be forgiven; Seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

In this episode, the host Catherine Lam sits down with Stephanie Forbes, founder and CEO of The Forbes Group. Stephanie is an internationally recognized expert in supply chain strategy and operational resilience. To explore her groundbreaking new book, Global Wealth, Local Impact. From the gladiators of the Roman Coliseum to the East India Company, from the Silk Road to the Strait of Hormuz, Stephanie reveals how the invisible machinery of global trade has always shaped local lives, and why understanding that history is the ultimate playbook for navigating today's volatile world economy. This episode is part history, part world affairs, part leadership guide. It will change how you see every product and every business decision. Key Insights You'll Learn ·         Supply Chains Are as Old as Civilization: From Caesar's gladiator games to the Silk Road to the East India Company, the mechanics of global trade, logistics corridors, currency exchange, quality control, insurance, letters of credit, have been evolving and compounding for over two thousand years. ·         The East India Company Changed Everything: At its peak, it controlled two-thirds of world trade. It created the modern company, shared ownership, and insurance. It also shows what happens when one company controls too much. ·         The Silk Road Was the World's First Trust Economy: It ran for over 1,300 years. Merchants used early credit systems and reputation to do business. Think of it as the first five-star review system. ·         Trust and Reputation Are Still the Foundation of Commerce: From Silk Road merchants to Facebook Marketplace sellers, the rules haven't changed. People do business with those they trust. Stephanie's book dedicates an entire chapter to this truth — and why trust remains the single most important asset in any business relationship. ·         The Strait of Hormuz Is a Global Pressure Point Right Now: About 20% of the world's energy passes through it. Any disruption hits fuel, shipping, food, and whole economies. Geopolitics and supply chains are connected. ·         Disruption Is the New Normal — Build for Resilience: Big unexpected events happen more often now. Leaders need backup plans. They need multiple suppliers. The question isn't whether something goes wrong, it's how fast you can adapt. ·         Critical Minerals Are the New Geopolitical Battleground: Lithium, cobalt, potash, and other critical minerals are redefining global power dynamics. Who controls these resources controls leverage over the infrastructure of the modern economy, from electric vehicles to defense systems. ·         History's Lessons Are the Best Strategic Playbook: Every challenge facing supply chain leaders today, monopoly risk, geopolitical disruption, infrastructure bottlenecks, trust breakdowns, has a historical precedent. Stephanie's book connects the dots between ancient trade systems and modern business strategy in a way that is both illuminating and immediately actionable.   Global Wealth, Local Impact is a rare book that makes the complex feel personal and the historical feel urgent. Whether you're a supply chain professional, a business leader, or simply someone trying to make sense of why the world feels increasingly unstable, this book will give you the context, the language, and the framework to lead with confidence.  

Another one LIVE from the MRC 2026 show floor in Las Vegas, this episode breaks down the high-stakes battle against digital deception with Super.com's Allen Newton and the Joe Midtlyng from Incognia. Uncover why an incredible 90% of digital goods fraud might actually originate from your own users and how "fraud as a service" allows anyone to launch massive attacks without technical skills.   From AI deepfakes tricking ID checks to a bold "personal opinion" on how to finally penalize first-party fraudsters, this talk reveals the hidden war happening behind every click. Watch to see how top platforms use agentic tech and device signals to stay ahead of the curve and protect their bottom line.   Special thanks to Incognia for making this episode possbile and providing the cutting-edge technology needed to ground digital identity in the physical world. To learn more about how they utilize persistent device IDs to stay ahead of sophisticated evasion tactics like app reinstalls and factory resets, visit https://www.incognia.com/blog/incognias-network-graph-persistent-device-id-for-faster-fraud-investigations

Cash discount programs have evolved significantly in 2026, with clearer compliance standards, wider merchant adoption, and growing customer acceptance, making them a practical and legal fee-elimination strategy for U.S. businesses. To learn more, visit https://quicsuite.myclickfunnels.com/landing-page Northern Media Services City: Oswego Address: 274 Cemetery Rd Website: https://www.northernmediaservices.com/

This week we check out THREE games - well, one new version of an older game, along with expansions for two recent card games Merchants of Andromeda by Reiner Knizia from Allplay Faraway and its Under Starry Skies expansion by Johannes Goupy and Corentin Lebrat from Pandasaurus Games Pixies and its Flower Power expansion by Johannes Goupy from Pandasaurus Games Fun times for new visits with added cards, as well as the Allplay title which is a revamping of the classic Merchants of Amsterdam! Remember you can support this podcast and our video series by going to www.patreon.com/garrettsgames OR check out the extensive list of games that no longer fit on our shelves, but belong on YOUR table: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16ovRDNBqur0RiAzgFAfI0tYYnjlJ68hoHyHffU7ZDWk/edit?usp=sharing  

Send us Fan MailPolicing in the United States feels permanent, like it has always been there. But the timeline says otherwise and the motive is even more unsettling: the first publicly funded police force traces back to 1838 Boston, when shipping merchants realized they could stop paying for private guards if they could persuade the city to pay instead. That single cost shift turns “public safety” into an invoice and it forces a different way of reading everything that comes after.We walk through the forgotten systems that came before modern departments, from the Night Watch model that relied on volunteers and the “hue and cry” to constables paid per warrant served, rewarded for processing crime rather than preventing it. Then we pivot to the South's slave patrols, organized government forces built to stop freedom and control labor, with sworn oaths focused on searching enslaved people for weapons. The story isn't clean or comforting, but it is documented and it explains why “order” so often meant protecting property and managing populations that threatened commercial activity.From there, we follow professional policing as it grows in Boston and New York, shaped by political patronage, anti-uniform backlash, and open corruption under machine politics. We revisit the moment the system broke so badly that two rival police forces physically fought each other on the steps of City Hall, and we connect that instability to the long arc of money, elite influence, and the ruthless suppression of unions. Finally, we bring it to the present with modern police budgets, US government spending on policing, and the question that rarely makes it into textbooks: if the system wasn't built for you, who was it built for?If this reframe changes how you think about the history of American policing, share the episode, subscribe, and leave a review so more people can find it. What part of the timeline hit you hardest? Support the show

- The Strait reopens, oil drops hard, and the blockade is framed as a clean strategic win that forces Iran to fold without a broader naval clash. - Trump moves to shut down further Israeli strikes in Lebanon, undercutting the claim that he is simply being dragged around by foreign interests.  - The focus snaps back home fast, where Republicans are blasted for helping extend protections for Haitian migrants despite voter anger over crime, welfare dependence, and open-border fallout. - The House is portrayed as squandering a rare window of unified Republican power, failing to deliver on election security, deportation priorities, and the basic promises that drove the last win. - Another far-left Democrat rises in New Jersey, while figures like Ilhan Omar and other urban progressives are used to argue that the radical wing is gaining ground just as the right starts sleepwalking toward the midterms.  Today's podcast is sponsored by : CHAPTER - If you're turning 65 or already on Medicare, call Chapter at 27-MEDICARE for the plan that suits you best. Listen to Newsmax LIVE and see our entire podcast lineup at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://Newsmax.com/Listen⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Make the switch to NEWSMAX today! Get your 15 day free trial of NEWSMAX+ at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://NewsmaxPlus.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Looking for NEWSMAX caps, tees, mugs & more? Check out the Newsmax merchandise shop at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://nws.mx/shop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow NEWSMAX on Social Media:             • Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://nws.mx/FB⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠             • X/Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://nws.mx/twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠            • Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://nws.mx/IG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠            • YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/NewsmaxTV⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠             • Rumble: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://rumble.com/c/NewsmaxTV⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠             • TRUTH Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://truthsocial.com/@NEWSMAX⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠            • GETTR: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://gettr.com/user/newsmax⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠            • Threads: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://threads.net/@NEWSMAX⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠             • Telegram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://t.me/newsmax⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠              • BlueSky: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bsky.app/profile/newsmax.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠            • Parler: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://app.parler.com/newsmax⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most agents are stuck competing for small accounts where pricing is everything—but enterprise deals play by a completely different set of rules. In this episode of the Merchant Sales Podcast, James sits down with Jerry Gialanella of Fort Point Payments to break down what it really takes to win larger merchants, from shifting your mindset to focusing on real business problems instead of basis points. They dive into how to uncover true merchant pain points, manage longer sales cycles, and leverage the right partnerships to close complex deals. Plus, Today in Payments covers rising interchange costs, pay-by-bank momentum, and key trends shaping the future of the industry.

We find out why victims of the 2023 Maui wildfires won’t see payments yet, even though the Maui wildfire settlements have officially been finalized. A blessing will be held for the eight massive boulders that crashed onto Kamehameha Highway near Waimea Bay. Merchants reflect on sales and new trends from this past Merrie Monarch week.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How can you trace capitalism from long-distance merchant networks (including 12th-century Aden) to a modern-day world economy? What are alternative stories to the commonly held Eurocentric view of capitalism's origins? Sven Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University and is also the author of several books. His most recent titles include Capitalism: A Global History, Empire of Cotton: A Global History, and Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Greg and Sven discuss how Sven sees the history of capitalism, contrasting it with neoliberal-leaning accounts that underplay violence, the state, and capitalism's global character. He also offers a helpful minimalist definition—privately owned capital productively invested to produce more capital—and argues markets are universal but become central only in capitalism.  He dissects the pillars that propped up capitalism through the years, including diverse labor regimes such as slavery and indenture, noting slavery's major but time-specific role in the Americas, enabled by European power and used to overcome resistance to capitalist transformation. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes: Challenging Eurocentric narratives about capitalism 23:49: Look at the world today. We are living in a world in which no one in their right mind would, A, say, “Okay, we need to only look at the European continent to understand the global economy today.” And B. Nobody would ignore, you know, the history of Asia or Latin America, or even Africa, in telling the history of the global economy today. So, we are entering this debate now at a different vantage point. I am not saying that, you know, scholars a hundred years ago or so had some terribly ill-intentioned thought in their way of looking at this. No, they lived in a different world, and the world looked different to them. But today we are living in a world in which clearly Europe is not at the center of the universe and not at the center of global capitalism. And that now forces us, I think, to not just think differently about the present, but to think differently about the entire history of capitalism. Capitalism is a state of constant growth 49:25: Capitalism is not conservative. Capitalism is the most revolutionary economic civilization ever. It is a state of permanent revolution. No expansion seems to be impossible within that capitalist civilization. I think it goes against its very core, what it is. It is a state of constant growth. It is a state of constant expansion. Capitalism without markets is conceptually unimaginable 05:05: I think capitalism without markets is conceptually unimaginable, and markets, of course, play a very important role in contemporary capitalism. But I think it would be mistaken to define capitalism primarily by the fact that it is a society in which markets regulate all or parts of economic life. Because, as far as I know, I have not yet found a human society which did not know of markets. I have not yet found a human society which did not engage in some forms of trade. So I think these are kind of universal attributes of economic life on planet Earth. But what is not universal is societies in which markets are not just on the margins of economic life, as they are in many, many societies, but really are at the very center of economic life. And this is certainly the case for capitalism. Why is capitalism essential in our lives? 39:13: Capitalism is extremely important to our lives today. It structures the biggest processes that we inhabit, but also the most intimate parts of our lives. And people are having passionate opinions about capitalism. They want to understand how we claim to live in the world in which we live right now. Show Links: Recommended Resources: Capitalism Karl Polanyi Fernand Braudel Wage Labour Slavery Aden Robert Brenner Karl Marx Industrial Revolution East India Company Guest Profile: SvenBeckert.com Faculty Profile at Harvard University Wikipedia Profile Guest Work: Amazon Author Page Capitalism: A Global History Empire of Cotton: A Global History American Capitalism: New Histories Global History, Globally: Research and Practice around the World Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development Plantation Kingdom: The American South and Its Global Commodities The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this week's episode, I answer questions I receive whenever I mention that STARFIELD is my favorite game of the 2020s. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Orc Paladin, Book #3 in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: HECTOR50 The coupon code is valid through April 20th, 2026. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 298 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 10th, 2026. Today I'm doing an FAQ about my experiences with Starfield, which is my favorite game of the 2020s. Before that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's Coupon Code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Orc Paladin, Book #3 in the Half-Elven Thief series (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward), at my Payhip store. That coupon code will be HECTOR50. And as always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. And this coupon code will be valid through April 20th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook for this spring, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am done with the first pass of editing through Blade of Wraiths and then starting on the second. It's taken a bit longer than I've wanted because I've had a lot of Real Life Stuff to do, but if all goes well, I'm hoping to have the book out in the second half of April, so hopefully not too much longer now. I'm also 19,000 words into Dragon-Mage, which will be the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. Hopefully that will be out in May, if all goes well. No, that might slip to June, but I'm really hoping to get that one out in May. In audiobook news, Hollis McCarthy has started work on Cloak of Illusion, so hopefully if all goes well, we'll have that out to you in May sometime. In fact, I'm hoping that will come out concurrently with Dragon-Mage, because it's always nice when I can stack an ebook and an older audiobook in the series like that together. So that is where we're at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:01:46 Main Topic: Starfield Now onto our main topic. This is ostensibly a podcast about writing and the business of writing, but I like video games, so we're going to talk about a video game this week. The reason for that is whenever I post about Starfield or share a screenshot from it, I frequently get a number of questions. I think it's because Starfield was an oddly divisive game when it came out. People have strong opinions about it and then have strong opinions about other people's strong opinions and I do not have these strong opinions myself. While I enjoy the game a great deal, if you don't like it, that's fine. There are lots and lots and lots of legitimate reasons to criticize Microsoft, which is the ultimate owner of Starfield. It's possible for two things to be simultaneously true that Microsoft has done a lot of sketchy things, and that Starfield is a good game that I enjoyed. I suspect it's a bit like enjoying a football game while at the same time knowing that the NFL is an unscrupulous cartel that could benefit from some thorough reforms. Despite that, I have to admit that I don't think it's super healthy to make gaming opinions, whether video games or sports games, a core part of your identity. A game in the end is just a fancy toy for amusement and idle moments. If God descended tomorrow and told me that Starfield would vanish from the face of the earth, I'd be rather disappointed, but my dinner would still taste just as good and my house would be just as warm. That said, I did enjoy the game quite a bit. Everybody needs a hobby and even I can't work every hour of every day. I wrote like a hundred novels in the last 10 years. Everyone has their own stresses in life, of course, but we seem to live in particularly stressful time these days, so a harmless hobby is a nice break from real life. The game's newest expansion came out a couple days ago on April 7th. And so with that in mind, I thought I would answer the most common questions I get whenever I post or talk about Starfield. Question: Did Starfield influence your Silent Order Science fiction series at all? No. But I'm always pleased when I get this question because it's easily answered. The final book of Silent Order came out on September the 4th, 2023, and Starfield came out on September 6th, 2023. I tried Starfield like the day after it came out, but I didn't actually start playing it in earnest until April of 2024, like I didn't actually finish the starter dungeon until April of 2024. So no, Starfield was not an influence on Silent Order. It would be fair to say that Silent Order was more influenced by James Bond, some H.P. Lovecraft, and Wing Commander: Privateer, which is actually our next question. Question: What initially drew your interest to Starfield? Part of the game reminded me a lot of Wing Commander: Privateer from the '90s, which was one of my favorite games back in the day. If you're not familiar with it, Wing Commander: Privateer was what's now called a "space trading sim" set in the Wing Commander universe. In all the previous Wing Commander games, you played as a Starfighter pilot fighting in the humans' war against the cat-like Kilrathi invaders. Your missions were assigned to you along with the specific ship you would fly for that mission. But in Privateer, you played a freelance captain with a rundown freighter. You can carry cargo, go bounty hunting, do mercenary work, trading, and just wander around the map following infinite procedurally generated missions from the Mission Board, the Merchants' Guild, and the Mercenaries' Guild. Eventually, you would have enough cash to upgrade your rundown ship to something better and configure it however you liked. There's a main plot, but you can totally ignore it and do whatever you want. I loved Privateer and I finished both it and the expansion. And of course, spent a lot of time doing the infinite procedurally generated quests. Starfield does the same thing, but with 30 years' worth of advancement of game design and technology improvements. In grand Bethesda game tradition, you don't even have to do any of the main plot lines. You can just wander around doing procedurally generated quests. It's like Privateer, but better and with ground-based quests as well. You can get out of your ship and walk around in a way you couldn't in Privateer. In Starfield, you can land at some random science outpost or industrial outpost and the inhabitants will have a quest for you. I've heard Starfield described as a "cozy game", since quite a few people enjoy just building their outposts and their ships and then decorating them like the science fiction version of Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley. In another sense, I suppose Starfield could be described as "cozy adventure". Granted, that might be a strange thing to say about missions where you machine gun space pirates, blow up their base, and then loot all their stuff, but Starfield is an excellent game for just puttering around. It's fun after a long day to play for an hour, take out some space pirates, upgrade your ship a little, maybe tinker with your outpost. And I do like, I have to admit, the main plot line and the various faction quests. Question: So the procedural generation stuff doesn't bother you? No. Procedural generation has been part of gaming forever and long before the civilizational blight that is modern LLM systems. Certainly there are points where the procedural generation of Starfield could be improved and it has been improved with patches, but I enjoy the randomness of it. Question: If you think Starfield is good, why did it have such mixed reviews? It did have some rough points at launch, like the lack of surface vehicles, the lack of city maps, and some weird choices for inventory management (among some other issues, though those were later patched or upgraded). I honestly think the game is better than the mixed reviews would indicate, and I also think the mixed reviews were a combination of different converging social factors, specifically, people's expectations of what they imagined the game would be versus what it actually was, its Xbox and PC exclusivity, and the unfortunate addiction to outrage culture in social media. As I mentioned before, I think it's obvious that we live in stressful times and for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this episode, I think people are overall angrier and eager to lash out when a target presents itself, especially online. Additionally, I suspect a big part of the mixed reviews is that Microsoft has built up a lot of ill will since the launch of Windows 11 and Copilot, and Starfield is a convenient outlet for that. Like Outlook and Teams are widely hated software tools, probably some of the most hated software tools in the world, but your job forces you to use them and you can't do anything about it. It's more effective to criticize a consumer-facing business like video games than it is Outlook and Teams, since those tend to be sold in blocks of thousands of licenses to large institutional customers that don't particularly care what their employees think about Outlook or Teams. In fact, fun fact, while I was writing this episode, Outlook was causing problems on Artemis II, NASA's first manned mission to the moon in over 50 years. So there is yet another historical milestone for Outlook. Question: You've said repeatedly that you don't like multiverse stuff, yet Starfield's main plot revolves heavily around the multiverse. That's true. I don't really like multiverse stuff in fiction because it's hard to execute well without making the story pointless. If there are a billion parallel universes and somebody dies in one of them, so what? Just hop over one universe and find a new version of the dead guy. Multiverse and parallel universe plot lines are a bit like homemade lasagna or homemade spaghetti carbonara. It needs to be done by someone who really, really knows what they're doing, otherwise the end result is sad and unpleasant, indigestible, or outright disgusting. That said, multiverse as a game mechanic is actually the clever idea. Like we all know that if you really like a game, you're going to play it more than once. How many times have you replayed Skyrim? How many uncounted quintillions of times has the original Super Mario Brothers been replayed? Starfield rather cleverly builds that replaying into the game. You can start over in a new universe and play the game again, but this time your character has in- game foreknowledge of everything that's going to happen and that can affect the gameplay in fun ways. Question: Did you really lose 40 pounds while playing Starfield? Yes. Of course, the main factor was some lifestyle changes in terms of exercise and diet, but I did lose 40 pounds since starting to seriously play Starfield in April of 2024. The game was an excellent distraction instead of late night snacking, so I suppose I sublimated the snacking urge into blowing up space pirates. Question: Aren't you worried Starfield will influence or slow down your writing? Well, writers and other creatives draw inspiration from all sorts of places, but no, I'm not worried about that because Starfield draws so heavily on multiverse tropes and as I've mentioned a few times before, I don't really like multiverse stuff in fiction. In terms of productivity, I published a million new words in 2024 and again in 2025. Though in full disclosure, I will be surprised if I hit a million words in 2026 due to the amount of Real Life Stuff I will have to do this year, but admittedly that is Real Life Stuff unconnected to gaming or recreation and it's only April, so who can say how the rest of the year will play out? Question: Did playing Starfield so much take time away from reading? Probably not. In 2025, I read 69 books and by the end of March in 2026, I have read 15. Lots of people read more than I do, but 69 books in a year is still significantly higher than the American national average. In all honesty, I both read less and play fewer video games now than I did like 20, 25 years ago when I had way fewer responsibilities. Question: The expansion pack Shattered Space got mixed reviews, but you really enjoyed it. Why? I thought the concept was intriguing. "Religious leader builds machine to contact his conception of God and accidentally blows up half his capital city and creates a space time rift" is an interesting concept for both a game and for fiction. I also liked how the expansion pack went in depth into the crazy space cultists' home planet, which was a fun environment to play. Shattered Space is definitely Starfield on hard mode though. The game recommends it for Level 35 characters, but I think 50 might be better, if I'm honest. Question: If Starfield was a commercial failure, why do you play it? Well, "commercial success" and "I enjoyed this" don't necessarily overlap on the Venn Diagram, do they? Just because something is popular doesn't mean it is good and just because something is unpopular doesn't mean it is bad. That said, I don't think it's objectively correct to say Starfield is a commercial failure, regardless of one's opinion of the game. Microsoft is a ruthless corporate empire that has absolutely no qualms about cutting things that are liabilities, especially as more and more of its resources go into Copilot and LLM slop (though there are some indications that its AI focus is starting to loosen as reality begins to impose itself on the grand delusion of the AI powered future). Considering that in the two and a half years since Starfield came out, it's received a lot of patches, a lot of new free content, and two paid expansions, it's clear that the Lidless Eye of Microsoft has not turned towards Starfield in fiery wrath, especially since Microsoft laid off lots of people and shut down a bunch of its game studios during that time. People tend to focus on Steam rankings, but that's only a segment (if a very large segment) of the market. Various Starfield devs in interviews have said that the game is in the top 10 for played hours on Xbox Game Pass. Xbox Game Pass is really important to Microsoft, probably more important than the physical Xbox itself. So I don't think it's objectively true that Starfield is a commercial failure, though it definitely wasn't as successful as Skyrim or Fallout 4. Question: Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3) came out at about the same time as Starfield. Did you like Starfield better than Baldur's Gate 3? Yes. Question: What? Why? Everyone knows Baldur's Gate 3 is the better game. Baldur's Gate 3 is an excellent game. Well written, well designed, excellent voice acting, the works. That said, I also think Starfield is an excellent game and I just enjoyed it more. It's a matter of taste, I think, which is not quantifiable. BG3 is a big Larian/BioWare-style narrative RPG, which is kind of its own genre in the same way that a Bethesda RPG is also its own genre. I mentioned above that I enjoy the puttering around aspect of Starfield a great deal and BG3 doesn't offer as much space for that kind of puttering, some but not nearly as much. I have enjoyed that style of narrative RPG in the past. Dragon Age: Origins and Knights of the Old Republic were both excellent games I played back to back in 2009 or maybe 2008, back when I had more time for that kind of thing and I think they qualify as direct predecessors to Baldur's Gate 3. But these days, I like the freedom of puttering more, even if a game like BG3 offers an excellent interactive narrative. Additionally, I admit I got frustrated a lot with BG3 in a way I didn't with Starfield. In BG3, I kept frequently running into Total Party Kill situations, which is exasperating after you've sunk 20 or 30 minutes into a complicated combat encounter. So I think it's objectively and quantifiably true to say that Baldur's Gate 3 is significantly more popular than Starfield, but on the subjective level, I just enjoy Starfield more. Question: Do you like the soundtrack of Starfield? Oh yeah. It's some of my favorite writing music. For fun, go search on YouTube and watch the London Symphony Orchestra's concert of the Starfield soundtrack. The composer Inon Zur gets to conduct some of it. I'd say my favorite tracks are Into the Starfield, New Atlantis, The Safety of the Citizens, Freestar, The New Old Frontier (I think that plays in the Trackers' Alliance headquarters), Cydonia, Sublevels, Neon, and In Silent Orbit. The battle of music when you fight the Star Born is pretty great as well. I think it's called "Stars and Sacrifice", but I'm not 100% sure. I also quite liked the soundtrack for Baldur's Gate 3 as well, to return to an earlier question. Andrew Wincott totally deserved the BAFTA for "Raphael's Final Act." Question: If a Switch 2 port comes along of Starfield, will you buy it? I would wait for reviews, but honestly, I would be amazed if there was a Switch 2 port of Starfield. The Switch 2 is more powerful than its predecessor, but there's no denying that Starfield is a chunky, chunky game. Then again, I wouldn't have thought it was possible to get Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3, or Fallout 4 on the Switch, and apparently those are good ports, so I guess we'll see. Question: Favorite Quest in Starfield? The Mantis, Groundpounder, and the entire thing with the Terrormorphs. Also the whole freaky quest with the Crucible and the clones, that was some great '70s-style science fiction stuff. I enjoy any of the quests with Walter Stroud because he's a fun character, and also voiced by the actor who played Quark in Deep Space Nine in the '90s, back when I was playing Privateer. (Full circle moment!) Also fighting The Hunter for the last time is pretty great since he's such a smug Nietzschean jerk. One of the greatest moments in the game is how The Hunter is just chilling in a Spaceport bar and willing to have amiable conversations with you at the start of the game since he's killed alternate versions of you thousands of times before and isn't expecting trouble, so no reason not to have a civil chat over a drink. I also played through the new Trackers' Alliance plotline. If you get the premium edition of Starfield and its bonus 1,000 Creation Credits, I highly recommend you use them on the Trackers' Alliance expansion. It is a lot of fun. Question: Favorite ship in the game? The Razor Leaf and the Ecliptic Claymore. Also, this is a new addition, but I really like the Orchid you pick up from the fake Mantis Quest in the Trackers' Alliance Quest line. I think my favorite overall ship is the Shieldbreaker that you can buy on New Atlantis, but if you're going to buy a ship instead of stealing it, I think Walter's company Stroud-Ecklund (see above) has the best ships. Honestly, one of my favorite activities in Starfield is stealing ships from space pirates. It's always so much fun. Question: Favorite gun? The Magstorm hands down. Peace through superior firepower. The Magstorm is what I used for the final battle with The Hunter and then again for the final mission of Shattered Space. For stealth, the Hard Target with a suppressor and a scope. I've taken out entire pirate bases with the Hard Target and stealth mode. The one Starborn lady who sells stuff to you in New Universes has a really excellent stealth optimized version of the Hard Target in her inventory. I also really like the Urban Eagle pistol you get early in the Vanguard plotline, since it's usually the best gun in the game I found at that point. Conclusion I hope that explains why I enjoy Starfield and answers some of the questions people always seem to have whenever I mention it. I doubt anyone involved with Starfield will ever listen to this, but I would like to thank everyone who has worked on the game in any capacity: devs, artists, writers, composers, Q&A people, everyone. Thank you for all your hard work, which has given me a lot of enjoyment and mental escape during some very stressful times. So that's it for this week. I promise we will go back to writing related topics next week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your view on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week.  

This is a two-part episode on the role of disagreement in science. In the first part, we discuss the "why," before moving on to the "how" in the next episode. Enjoy.    Shownotes Dellsén, F., & Baghramian, M. (2021). Disagreement in science: Introduction to the special issue. Synthese, 198(Suppl 25), 6011-6021. Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2011). Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Popper, K. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson. Seidel, M. (2021). Kuhn's two accounts of rational disagreement in science: an interpretation and critique. Synthese, 198(25), 6023-6051. Shaw, J. (2021). Feyerabend and manufactured disagreement: reflections on expertise, consensus, and science policy. Synthese, 198(25), 6053-6084.  

This episode we close out discussion of this reign with a bit of a grab bag.  There is the minting of new coins, new letters to write Japanese, board games, and more. For more, check out our blogpost:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-146 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 146: Coins, Letters, Games, and More   The large audience hall was filled with nobles, sitting in pairs across from each other.  Throughout the hall, the roof and walls reverberated with the sounds of numerous stone markers being placed on painted wooden tables—or more appropriately, game boards.   It was accompanied by the sound of dice clattering.  At the far end of the hall was the royal presence, where his majesty could likewise join in the entertainment—with someone of sufficient standing, of course. Throughout the day there were bursts of joy and frustration throughout the hall.  In some instances, one could see two players sharing in the joy and love of the game.  In other cases, political rivals stared each other down, neither one willing to give away any strategic advantage.  Any smiles there were merely a mask.  And yet, no matter how hard one tried, there was only so much you could do.  Ultimately, your fate was in the hands of the dice, though you could certainly do your best to nudge it here and there. And so they continued.  As they played, small wagers were made between players.  At the conclusion of their match, each player could find another opponent, and see if their luck held out.  Victory was desired, but at the very least one didn't want to be embarrassed.  As such, losing gracefully was just as important as winning with humility.  Sure, there were  the petty stakes that were gambled here and there, but the real stakes were embedded in the politics of the court.  That was a game  that everyone was playing, except that there was no board, and the rules were often merely suggestions, at best.     This episode we are going to close out the reign of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tenno.  It has been a while getting here—but then again, Ohoama's reign is the best documented so far, almost like the entire Chronicle has built up to this point.  We have spent about a dozen episodes on this reign—not including the four before that discussing the Jinshin no Ran. During that time we've talked about how Ohoama continued the Ritsuryou experiment, while  at the same time shaping it into something that was even more directly under his control.  A lot of this appears to have been done with the mostly willing consent of a good part of the archipelago. That may have been because of a few different things.  For one, all of this was justified through the philosophical underpinnings of the continent.  This is the new knowledge that the court had been devouring for over a century, and so I suspect that none of it seemed particularly surprising or out of place.  Furthermore, it seems that Ohoama's actions may have appealed to some of the more middle-tier elites; those for whom the idea of a government stipend was quite appealing. There was also the external threat of Silla and Tang.  Though in reality, Silla was in conflict with the Tang dynasty, up until the conclusion of the Silla-Tang War, around 676.  In truth, the Tang court wouldn't recognize Sillan sovereignty south of the Taedong river until 736, so there were still tensions.  However, early on in the reign there was at least the thought that hostilities could spill over onto the archipelago. And then there are all of the projects.  The designation of national temples, the beginning of a national history project, the founding of a permanent capital city, and the creation of a formal code—the Asuka Kiyomihara Code. Compared to all of that, the topics of this episode really are some miscellaneous stuff that I didn't have anywhere else to put, but wanted to bring to light anyway.  First, we'll talk about the minting of coins, and what that meant.  Once again, this is really neat because we actually have some coins that appear to be from this time frame, providing what might be a direct relationship between what is written down and what we have in the archaeological record.  Then we'll touch on another project of Ohoama's—this one less successful than some of the others we've discussed.  This was an attempt to create a new writing system specific to the Japanese language.  Remember, at this point literate people in the archipelago were using kanji to write everything down, and for the most part they were using kanbun—so Sinitic characters and grammar, with occasional use of characters purely for their phonetic qualities when they absolutely had to spell something out.  Eventually this would evolve into the syllabaries of katakana and hiragana, but there were several false starts before that, and we'll talk about what was being attempted during Ohoama's reign. Beyond those court projects we'll talk about some of the kami and Buddhist related rituals, especially as they related to growing merit and attempting to protect the state and its people from disasters—natural or otherwise.  And then there are various omens, and just a few edicts that were more geared towards the court but are still fun, like when Ohoama forced the entire court to join him for a day of… board games.  I guess when you are the sovereign and trying to set up a game day, scheduling is suddenly not so big of a problem. So that's what we are going to cover.  We are skipping around throughout the reign, and so while I'll mention dates here and there, I'll try not to get too bogged down with the exact dates unless it really matters. First off: coins.  We are going to start somewhere in the middle, on the 15th day of the 4th month of 683.  It is here that we see a note that Ohoama decreed that copper coins would be used, and not silver.  Remember that a silver mine had been discovered in Tsushima back in 674.  At that time we know that there were silver coins being made, but in 683 it looks like they were changing from silver to copper.  But three days later, they reversed the decision to completely cancel the silver coins, so they presumably had both silver and copper coins. Coins are interesting for several reasons.  For one, coins often help us to date various collections—if they are distinctive enough.  They can be quite helpful in telling us that a particular archaeological assemblage is almost certainly from sometime after the coins had begun to be circulated.  After all, if you unearth a stratum of an archeological dig and you find a penny dated to 1912, you can be reasonably confident that that layer was last exposed on or after 1912, unless time travel was at play. There are some exceptions where animals or tree roots or other forces can disturb the layering, but that's why archeologists carefully pay attention to soil features.  That isn't to say that all coins of the time had clear dates on them.  In fact, the oldest coins we have in the archipelago are something called "Mumon Ginsen"—literally unmarked silver coins.  They are found in various assemblages and thought to have originated under Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou.  The silver from Tsushima would have likely been used for this.  For many reasons it is unclear if these were minted by the state or if they were privately minted and circulated. The copper coin mentioned in Ohoama's record in the Nihon Shoki would appear to be what is known as a Fuhonsen coin, which we also have extant examples of.  These are round copper coins with a square hole in the middle, as was common on the continent.  The previous unmarked silver coins were just small circles of solid silver.  In contrast, the Fuhonsen bear the characters "FU-HON":  FU, or "Tomi", means wealth, and HON, or "moto", means something like base or basis.  "SEN" just refers to the fact that it is a coin.  So the coin represents the basis of wealth. They are just under an inch in diameter, and 1.5 millimeters thick.  While primarily copper, they do have traces of antimony, silver, and bismuth.  The use of copper was likely because of its lower melting point, which would have been easier to cast with. So it seems that these were the new copper coins mentioned in the Chronicles, and the intent was originally to completely replace any silver currency.  I suspect that they quickly realized that they could not easily replace all of the silver, and so the older silver coins were probably still in circulation—though I don't know if any new ones were being minted. We don't exactly know how the coins were used.  They weren't being used to pay taxes or similar things—that was still all being handled in rice, silk, cloth, and labor.  They might have been used by the government to pay individuals, who would then exchange them for goods, but they were probably not used very often between individuals.  There is even some suggestion that they had a more ritual meaning.  Coins of a similar shape—round with a square hole in the center—go back to at least 350 BCE on the continent, and were quite common by the  time of the Han dynasty.  The round hole allowed them to be placed on strings—you'll often see references to strings of cash.  In the Qin dynasty, a string was meant to be a superunit, made up of 1000 coins.  Merchants and others operating at some scale could then just pay in "strings" of cash rather than counting out each and every coin.  It also provided a way of transporting them.  Anyone doing business in east Asia would have encountered coinage from one of the dynasties on the mainland, and we certainly see various coins making their way over to the archipelago, though how exactly they were used and valued isn't certain.  It may have been more important to just have them on hand for trips to the continent so that an embassy or trading vessel could participate in the economy, there. The next coin to be minted in the archipelago itself wasn't until 708, and that was the Wadokaichin, or Wado coins, named for the four characters around the square hole, which included the era name that they were created, "Wado".  This seems to have kicked off an actual national currency that would only last for a couple hundred years before it was debased and lost its value.  For centuries after that, rice was once again the primary currency, and would continue to be so, even though the Tokugawa shogunate would begin to mint and issue coins again through much of their rule.  Still, coins were often outside the grasp of most of the common people. While coins may not have fully caught on, they did better than our next project.  This was a task that was given to Sakahibe no Muraji no Iwashiki who compiled, by royal command, a new set of characters, which were recorded in a book of 44 volumes.  Though this book  is no longer extant, we do have later sources that claim it was once in the royal library.  It describes the characters as similar to Sanskrit characters.  This appears to be an attempt to create an alphabet, or syllabary, for the Japanese language. While Yamato had adopted the Sinitic systems of logographic writing, it wasn't exactly up to the task of directly writing in Japanese.  For one thing, the languages had different sounds that they used, and in different combinations.  Furthermore, grammatically, the two were quite different.  Many Sinitic languages are Subject, Verb, Object, similar to English, while Japanese is Subject, Object, Verb, meaning the verb goes at the end.  But beyond that, Japanese relies extensively on conjugation of verbs, with verbs and adjectives changing to express tense and other such things that Sinitic languages, such as modern Putonghua and languages such as Middle Chinese handle in other ways.  To give an English speaking person a similar experience, imagine writing sentences as "The bird in the tree sat"  or "the man the bread at the store bought".  Now remove many of the articles and prepositions, so you get things like "bird tree sit" and "man bread store buy".  You can imagine how that can really get unwieldy if you want to convey more nuanced concepts. Japanese would either need to add a phonetic writing system—which it did—or it would need to come up with new characters to use in place of the special qualities of the language.  Or they would need to continue to write in Sinitic grammatical order and  continue to do the translation to Japanese on the fly.   One can imagine that this was hardly efficient—in order to learn how to write you would basically have to learn a whole new language. That these new symbols were similar to characters associated with Sanskrit also makes sense, and we even see similar attempts on the continent, though they had other writing systems to compare to as well.  For example, we see the Persian Sogdian, written with a variation of Syriac script, and the Ghandari language written with its own Ghandari or Kharosthi script, but the influence of Buddhism likely explains why scripts associated with Sanskrit likely had a greater influence than other languages.  I should note here that Sanskrit itself does not have a single script—today, people probably think of the Devanagari script, commonly used in India, but that doesn't seem to have been developed until the 8th century.  The work of Iwashiki was likely based on something like the Siddham, or Kutila, script.  This is an abudgida, where consonants and vowels are connected together when written.  This would have worked well for the Japanese language as phonemes are often grouped together as consonant-vowel clusters known as morae.  Siddham evolved in the late 6th century and many Buddhist scripts that were making their way along the Silk Road would have used it.  However, it is said that Siddham proper—or at least as we know it today—was introduced to Japan by the famous monk Kuukai in the early 9th century.  If that is the case, then what script was Iwashiki using as his inspiration? Regardless of the details, this new script doesn't seem to have taken off.  It may have just been too much to ask someone to learn the various kanji AND another system on top of that.  Instead, the Japanese would adopt certain kanji over time, and simplify them into what we know, today, as kana.  Our earliest example is what we know of as Man'yogana, named for the Man'yoshu, an 8th century collection of poems attributed to various contemporary and historical figures.  Because the poetic structure of Japanese required specific counts of syllables or, more specifically, morae, it was important to capture the actual pronunciation of the language.  Certain characters were chosen and used over and over again purely for their phonetic value, rather than any other inherent meaning.  Over time, those characters were simplified and standardized, developing into the katakana and hiragana still used today.  While it was these organically-evolving systems that would eventually be most popular and fill the gap, but it is still incredible to see someone deliberately tackling the problem at this early date. Moving on from money and writing, let's turn now to matters of the kami and the Buddha.   Yamato existed in a world that saw itself as being caught between forces both seen and unseen.  Besides the natural world there was the spiritual world, and to many it was just as real as anything else. We've talked all along about the interplay between the court, the kami and the Buddha, and some of the evidence we see is relatively simple.  For instance, in 675, the Ohokami, the great god, of Tosa presented a divine sword to the sovereign.  I doubt that a kami was showing up in person to the court—this would have been priests from the shrine.   Aston suggests that the kami in question was probably either Hitokotonushi no Mikoto or Misukitakahikone no Mikoto, quoting "authorities" which he does not otherwise name.  We get more serious, though, when it comes to major events.  And the drought and famine of 676 seems to fit that description.  As you may recall from episode 144, the governor of Shimotsukeno reported a bad harvest in the 5th month, and by the 6th month we see more reports coming in of a great drought.  Clothing was collected for the Buddhist temples to help build merit.  Later, there was a comet in the sky, and then, in the 8th month, we see that the court compelled the Kuni no Miyatsuko and the governors to all contribute to an Ohoharae, or Great Purification.  Eventually, the Ohoharae would become a regular ceremony held on the 30th day of the 6th and 12th months of the year, with royal princes down to the high ministers gathering at the southern gate—the Suzaku-mon. Members of the Urabe, the Diviners, would read the various norito, the ritual prayers, to disperse evil influences.  It was, and is,also used when there is a royal visit to the Ise or Kamo shrines, as well as at the Dajosai festival at the start of a new reign.  It can also be done if there is thought to have been some kind of offense that was committed. "Harae", or "purification", is a common part of Shinto ritual today.  From the simple washing of the hands and mouth before entering the shrine grounds to pray to spiritual purification performed by a priest who waves a large stick with paper streamers—the ohonusa or haraegushi—while chanting prayers to ward off evil influences, purification is a key component in Shinto, which often concerns itself with aspects of spiritual pollution.  And so the Oho-harae, the Great Purification, is that, but turned up to eleven. The litany used for the Ohoharae, today, is also known as the Nakatomi no Ohoharae, indicating the importance of the Nakatomi in the ritual.  This Ohoharae, however, was taking place in the 8th month, and may not have had all of the traditions of the later rituals we know today.  Rather, we are told what was required:  The Kuni no Miyatsuko of the provinces were instructed to send one horse and a piece of cloth to specific shrines of purification.  In addition, the governors of the various districts were each told to supply one sword, one deerskin, one mattock, one smaller sword, one sickle, one set of arrows, and one sheaf of rice.  In addition, each household had to supply a bundle of hemp cloth.  These may not have been used in the ritual as much as they were offerings to the kami and their shrine. We'll see this in various cases where the State places rather onerous financial requirements on the population in order to perform rituals.  Of course, by the logic of the time, whatever was donated would make the ritual more effective—it would be more pleasing to the kami.  Still this seems remarkably costly in a year where we are told that the peasants were starving just a few months prior. I'll also take this moment to point out a link here to something that anyone who has been to a shrine may be familiar with, and that is the donation of horses. Horses were common enough a donation—if people of status rode horses, then how much more so the kami themselves?  Sacred or votive horses could be used to carry the kami, and even today some shrines keep sacred horses for the kami.  However, not everyone has horses to donate, and I suspect that the shrine probably didn't need an entire herd of horses.  And so some would pay money for an image of a horse, instead, to be hung in the shrine, likely indicating the donor.  Of course, this wasn't just a picture, but an official record of some kind of donation, which could theoretically go to purchase horses and other such things that the shrine might need.  These pictures of horses were known as "e-ma", literally "picture horse", and we still see them today: The most common type of e-ma will be small wooden placards sold at the shrine, and people will write their desires on the back, with their name and information.  They will often be found hanging in groups on specially designated racks meant for that purpose.  Today, e-ma might have horses on them, but more often have other pictures, associated with the particular shrine and kami.  Speaking of horses, we have a couple more references to them this year.  At some point, Ohoama had issued an edict seeking horses, not just for riding, but other good horses so that the givernment would have them when needed, distributed to the various post-stations.  So when he was returning from a banquet by the Todoroki pool in Hatsuse—modern Hase--Ohoama made a diversion to the post-station of Tomi and had the horses demonstrate their speed.  Presumably this was just a horse race, which seems to be popular around the world, in any place with horses. We see something similar when we are told that Ohoama went to Asatsuma to inspect the horses of the officials there.  At his request, the officials organized a competition of horseback archery.  This appears to reference the famous art of Yabusame—though it may not have been recognized as such just yet, there is some thought that the idea of a horsed archer shooting at three targets while galloping past may have originated in the 6th century, with ties to Usa Jingu.  Still, horseback archery would remain important, and later it would become the primary art of the warrior class from about the 12th to the 13th century or so—and arguably even up until the Sengoku period, with its spear formations and foreign guns. Later, in the 10th lunar month of 681, Ohoama and the court were prepared to go hunting on the Hirose plain.  A temporary palace was prepared and all of the bags were packed, but ultimately, Ohoama didn't go.  Instead, those from the rank of Prince to high ministers stayed at Karunoichi—a market at a cross-roads in the Nara basin that likely was the location of a government stable.  There, they inspected the horses and saddle equipment.  Those from the rank of Shokin up sat under the trees while those of Daisen and below mounted up and passed along from south to north.  Not quite as exciting as horse racing or horsed archery, but who doesn't like a parade. One wonders what happened to call off the hunt.  Perhaps Ohoama, while not bedridden, was not in the best of health.  If he was having some kind of recurring problems then that could explain some of the merit-making as well.  You may recall we discussed how much merit the state seemed to be trying to make in support of the sovereign's health, which we discussed in episode 142. Getting back to the Ohoharae—the great purification.  That was followed up by a general amnesty, which we talked about last episode, as well as a command to let loose living things.  This is a Buddhist practice that one still sees today in various places, usually in the form of letting loose animals like fish and birds that were kept by individuals.  I don't think they were just opening up the paddocks and letting the horses, cattle, and other animals go.  As fascinating as that might be to contemplate, with horses just running wild and cattle trampling the rice fields, I doubt they took it that far.  Still, this practice was clearly an attempt to make more merit for the State.   This edict was repeated only a few months later, in the 11th lunar month, but then it was confined to those provinces that were considered to be "near" to the capital, so a little more focused.  The day after that second release of animals, men were dispatched to all parts to expound the Konkwoumyou and Ninou sutras.  This was the Sutra of Golden Light and the Sutra of the Benevolent King—both sutras focused on concepts of good rulership and protection of the State.  In fact, together with the Lotus Sutra, they would come to be considered the Gokoku Sanbukyou—the Three sutras for Protection of the State.  They were read for the purpose of averting disaster, but they also helped to prop up the image of a righteous and benevolent ruler—what might be termed a golden-wheel turning sovereign, or Chakravarti. So all of this would seem to simultaneously reflect an intention to protect the State while also demonstrating performative regnal righteousness.  It was, after all, what a good ruler was supposed to do, which also conveniently told people what a good ruler was supposed to do. It is unclear whether or not the court actually felt this did anything.  I would note that a month later they were asking Princes and Ministers to gather up weapons, so it is possible that they were concerned about more than just natural disasters— such as a concern that the people were getting restless.  A few days later, we see more largess, as the court made presents to public functionaries and men of the frontier states.  It is unclear to me if this is a reward of some sort or perhaps an attempt to boost their morale and support. Later in that month we see preparations for the upcoming Feast of First Fruits, or Niinamesai, two months later.  We are told that the Jingikan, the Office of Kami Matters, had made the divination that the Yuki, the ceremonially pure rice for the ritual would come from the District of Yamada, in Owari.  For the Sugi, the "next" lower quality of rice, that would come from the district of Kasa, in Tamba.  The feast went off as usual in the 11th month, pre-empting the normal announcement of the first of the month. Later in the record we see that preparations were started for another Ohoharae, or Great Purification, and a general amnesty was issued.  This time, instead of sending horses for the kami, the Miyatsuko of each province were to supply one male and one female servant to the shrines, instead.  Fifteen days later, in the intercalary 7th lunar month—an extra month inserted to keep the lunar and solar calendars in synch—we see the queen, Uno, hosting a feast after ritual fasting.  She then had sutras expounded throughout the capital.  I find it particularly interesting that this was apparently instigated by the queen, but along with the Ohoharae, this all speaks towards the feeling that the State needed to be purified and supplied with good merit. The Ohoharae was not the only way to curry favor with the kami.  For example, in one record we see Ohoama designating sacred rice-tax for the shrines of Heaven and Earth—shrines for the Amatsu kami and Kunitsu kami.  One third of the rice was to go to the kami directly, while two thirds of the rice was to go to the priests who kept the shrines going. This same year, 677, we aren't told where the rice for the Niiname-sai came from, but we are told that those who donated as well as members of the Jingikan, who were involved in the divination and ritual more generally, were all compensated for their troubles with various presents. The Jingikan is one of those aspects of the new, bureaucratic state, that feels extremely tied to the archipelago.  It literally is the Bureau of Kami Matters, or the Bureau of Kami Affairs—the Kami no Tsukasa.  It would even come to be ranked above the Council of State in the official org chart of the government.  While the government had national temples and appointed members of the clergy who were responsible for keeping the Buddhist institutions in line with the State, the Jingikan was that entity for court ritual, and even for interfacing with various shrines around the country.   In the 10th century, all of the official shrines across the archipelago would be catalogued and assessed a rank and position, with Ise Shrine and the royal court at the top of the list. Speaking of the national temples, the fourth month of 680 was when Ohoama designated the national temples—which we also covered in Episode 142.  On the first day of month after that, we are told that he bestowed gifts of silk and cloth to 24 temples around the capital; and if there really were 24 temples just around the capital itself, one can imagine why they had to put a stop to publicly funding all of them.  That must have been quite the upkeep.  That same day, the Golden Light Sutra was expounded in the palace and at select temples as well.  As we've seen, the court relied just as heavily—or more—on Buddhism for certain rituals and providing spiritual power. While both Kami-based rituals and Buddhism were revered for their ability to affect the supernatural, Buddhist priests seem to have had a particularly revered place in—or perhaps more rightly outside—of society.  One is more likely to hear about someone who was a Buddhist priest or a novice being revered than a kannushi, or shrine priest.  For example, in the 7th month of 680, the priest Kouchou, of Asukadera, passed away. The royal princes Ohotsu and Takechi were sent to express royal condolence.  Later that same year we would see something similar, with Royal—later Crown—Prince Kusakabe visiting the eminent priest (Y)emyou on his death bed.  Yemyou died the next day, and three royal princes were sent to offer the condolences on behalf of the royal family. Towards the end of 680, Ohoama fell ill. One hundred individuals were made to take holy orders on his behalf, after which he appears to have recovered—or at least recovered enough for the time.  Earlier in the month his queen, Uno no Sarara, had taken ill, for which Ohoama had pledged to build Yakushiji, a temple of the Medicine Buddha, as we talked about in Episode 142. Although Ohoama temporarily recovered, we have mentioned how there are plenty of suggestions that he may not have been entirely better.  It could just be that time and numerous diseases were taking a toll, or perhaps he had an ailment that came and went.  I get that impression from things like in the 10th month of 685, as autumn changed to winter,  several nobles were sent to Shinano to build a temporary palace in preparation for a royal progress.  It seems that Ohoama wanted to visit the hot springs at Tsukama.  Tsukama may have been located on the outskirts of modern Matsumoto city, in Nagano, which is known for its hot springs, today.  Bentley implies  that the court was not entirely thrilled with Ohoama taking this journey.  I have to wonder whether or not this was all about Ohoama's health—hot springs were often seen as restorative.  At the same time, this sounds like a fairly long journey into the mountains as the weather was growing colder.  That also may have been part of the draw, however, allowing them to travel and see the changing leaves, a very common pastime in successive centuries, and even today. I can't help but imagine that Ohoama was seeking the restorative properties, while his court may have been apprehensive about the journey there and back as the days were getting colder.  Compare this to his actions at the start of the Jinshin no Ran, when he made that incredible dash from Yoshino, through the mountains, over to Owari.  But that was well over a decade ago, at this point, and he seems not quite so spry as he once had been. Another popular record that we find in this reign were various oddities and omens.  We've covered quite a few, but I did want to cover a few more before we pull the curtain closed on this era. First off, early in the reign, we see a record in the 10th month of 675 for a woman in the district of Takakura, in the province of Sagami, giving birth to triplets.  A quick Internet search suggests that natural triplets occur in about 1 in every 8000 or 10,000 births.  However, there is another thing to consider at this time:  giving birth to a single child was already a risky business, and death during or just after childbirth was a constant threat.  So now consider the issues with giving birth to twins or even triplets.  The odds that there is a complication just go up at that point.  So I suspect this was a very rare occurrence.  The fact that it was three sons was probably also seen as particularly auspicious, at least for any who were studying traditional Confucian scholarship. Moving on to the 4th day of the 4th lunar month of that same year, we get an omen for the court.  First is a cock sent to the court by Wanitsumi no Yogoto, from the Lower Sofu district in Yamato province.  This cock is said to have had a comb like a camelia flower, which was apparently quite auspicious.  On the other hand, a report came in from Akunami, also in Yamato province, about a hen that had turned into a cock.  Aston, of course, considers that this would have been an ominous sign—a disruption of the natural order.  To be honest, I don't see any particular judgment placed on it one way or the other.  It is just listed as a wondrous or miraculous occurrence. The year 678 has remarkably few events, in total, with nothing recorded between the 4th and 9th months.  And the 9th month was just a note about the death of one, Prince Wakasa, of the third princely rank.  The month after that we have another one of those strange occurrences.  This time it is a report of something falling from the sky like silk floss, except that it was 5 or 6 feet long and 7 or 8 inches wide.  It supposedly floated on the wind and waved from the fir woods and the reed plains.  People who saw it called it kanro, or "sweet nectar". This is really just a crazy entry.  I've wracked my brains to think of a natural event that could cause something like this, but this seems like something that was more like a rumor that got written down.  "Kanro" is thought to be something that Buddhist texts refer to as "Amrita", an exlixir of immortality.  In continental lore, it is said to be a sweet nectar that forms when yin and yang are in harmony—such as during a benevolent reign.  So whatever the truth of any natural event, to the Chroniclers the entry is clearly a chance to hype up Ohoama's reign. And then, towards the end of the 8th month, we see Katsura no Miyatsuko no Oshikatsu presenting auspicious stalks of grain.  Reportedly they all came from different plots and yet had very similar ears of grain.  Auspicious stalks of rice weren't uncommon, but Aston suggests that this was possibly an allegory for all of the royal princes who were brought together in Yoshino to swear to support each other.  The 8th month may have been when the grain was harvested—because it wasn't until the final month of the year that we see the court reacting.  At that point presents were made to the Royal and non-Royal Princes, the Ministers, and the public functionaries, all according to rank, in consequence of the auspicious stalks of grain.  In addition there was an amnesty for all offences from capital crimes on down. Now on top of all of that, there were a few edicts that touched on various topics that we just haven't gotten to, elsewhere. For instance, in the 8th month of 681, on the 10th day, we see a notification to all of the people in the archipelago who claimed descent from those from the continent—specifically those from the Korean peninsula, or the Samhan.  They were told that the taxes, which had previously been remitted for 10 years, so starting in 671, had come to an end.  However, corvee labor was still remitted for ten years to them and their children and grandchildren who had been with them when they first arrived. There are some questions about this passage, but in general it seems that those refugees who had escaped to the archipelago from Baekje and Goguryeo had previously been given 10 years from the time they arrived during which they did not owe taxes.  This included corvee labor—which also extended to any children that had been with them at the time.  Children that were born after that… well they wouldn't be of age to be used as corvee labor in 10 years so this would only apply to those who were with them at the  time and who would be of age within that 10 year timeframe. This exemption from taxes appears several times in different forms, and appears to be a grace period, during which people were expected to establish themselves, open fields, and begin to thrive.  At the end of 10 years, then they would start paying taxes, with the assumption that they had more than enough time to prepare and work the land. Moving on to one of my favorite entries, on the 18th day of the 9th lunar month in 685, Ohoama declared a game day.  He had the Princes and Ministers gather at the Ohoandono, the Great Audience Hall, and had them play a game called "Pakugi" or "Bakugi".  We aren't quite sure what the rules were—it probably wasn't Settlers of Catan, but you never know.  It was likely a game with dice, possibly a version of backgammon, which is quite old and commonly known as a game for gambling.  That same day, Ohoama gave out gifts of robes and trousers to ten princes and others—perhaps related to the gaming session? The history of games and gaming is particularly fascinating.  For one thing, many of the games that were played in the archipelago had come from the continent, and many had variants that had traversed the entirety of Eurasia.  Backgammon and Chess were both games that had variants that would be known in Japan.  Backgammon was known as sugoroku, and in Japan they played a game similar to chess known as Shogi.  They would also play go—or more appropriately igo—from at least the Nara period, though that game, invented in what is now China, does not seem to have spread quite as much as either backgammon or chess variants.  And while chess was a game that was often highly localized—with different pieces representing different things and often moving in different ways depending on the variant—backgammon seems to have been quite similar everywhere, and could probably be played by two people with wildly different cultural backgrounds with very little interpretation needed. The day after Ohoama had the court join his game day, there were more presents.  This time it was brown bear hides given to the royal and non-royal princes.  In total there were 48 hides given out, which is really pretty incredible.  I have this image in my mind of a very Asuka era wooden mansion, with wood and bronze and silk, and then a large bear hide sprawled out on the floor.  I'm not sure exactly how they were used, but I suspect that they were mostly used as floor coverings for people to sit or lay on, though I could also see them being used as sleeping mats.  It seems they were clearly elite status goods, but hardly what we think about in this period. And that is where we are going to come to a close.  There are only a few more things that we'll get to, but they are all related to what happened with the events surrounding Ohoama's death and the succession that followed, so we'll touch on those when we kick off the next reign. Until then if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

It's a rollercoaster of a show for Elis James. He has the opportunity to rectify recent Welsh footballing disappointment by becoming the only player in Cymru Connection history to connect with 5 people twice. National pride can be restored, as long as Elis opens his eyes and doesn't go down a Cymru cul-de-sac. Come on El, a (potentially imaginary) listener's haircut depends on it!Plus John plays hardball with the One Show, there's a trip down the Shame Well that knocks Elis bandy, and Dave finally reveals what he's known for turning up to parties with… Send in your whats and wares to elisandjohn@bbc.co.uk.

Former Jose Andres Group CEO Sam Bakhshandehpour recently joined Bilt, a $10 billion loyalty platform that rewards people for paying their rent and mortgage on Bilt cards, helping to fuel the so-called “points economy.” Recently, the company released a flashy video full of top-name chefs and restaurateurs to launch Bilt Hospitality, a kind of digital concierge service targeted at restaurants. But what is it, exactly? And how does it work? In this episode, Sam answers these questions and more — including when we might see a launch video with more than one woman in it. 

Big Truss Tuesday Did you know that the way you sleep says more about you than you may realise?… In todays show we have some EXCITING news to share with you in our Sharesies Money Moment around a pivotal project that the team at Sharesies has been working hard away at… Papa Mike McRoberts is back home safe and sound and joins us back in studio to break down the biggest stories with us!… Sharesies Financial Limited provides the Spend service, including Investback. The Spend debit card is issued by Change Labs NZ Pty Ltd pursuant to license by Mastercard. Spend fees and Investback earn rate are subject to change. A currency exchange fee applies to overseas transactions (in-person or online). Merchants may apply surcharges. Spend Terms apply. Hit that link below to stay caught up with anything and everything TMS. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.facebook.com/groups/3394787437503676/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ We dropped some merch! Use TMS for 10% off. Here is the link: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youknowclothing.com/search?q=tms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you to the team at Chemist Warehouse for helping us keep the lights on, here at The Morning Shift... ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.chemistwarehouse.co.nz/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 00:00 - Intro 1:49 - Check In 10:01 - Daily Bread (Letting Go Day) 17:34 - Breaking Down The Biggest Stories With 'Papa' Mike McRoberts 30:58 - Sharesies Money Moment 37:05 - What The Way You Sleep Says About You! 49:05 - Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Read OnlineAnd when he entered Jerusalem the whole city was shaken and asked, “Who is this?” And the crowds replied, “This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.” Matthew 21:10–11The commemoration of our Lord's Passion has begun. Today, Mass begins with the reading of Matthew's account of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Riding on a donkey, Jesus is greeted by a very large crowd who “spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and strewed them on the road” (Matthew 21:8). The people welcomed Him with shouts of: “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest” (Matthew 21:9).The word “Hosanna” in Hebrew means, “Save us, we pray!” Though it was originally a plea for deliverance, it became an expression of praise and joy, especially as it came to be associated with the Messiah's arrival. The phrase “Hosanna in the highest” calls for God, enthroned in Heaven, to bring His saving power to earth. The crowds' acclamation reveals both a hope for salvation and a recognition of Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah.During Passover week, Jerusalem's population increased several times over with pilgrims from across Israel. The atmosphere was vibrant with religious fervor and communal celebration. Merchants sold sacrificial animals, food, and provisions to the crowds. Central to the festivities was the Temple where sacrifices were offered and the Passover lambs were prepared for the sacred meal. Roman authorities increased security, wary of potential unrest, as the commemoration of Israel's liberation from Egypt stirred hopes of national deliverance. The Jewish authorities were also on high alert, concerned that any disturbance might provoke harsh reprisals from the Romans.Imagine the excitement, concern, and surprise that many of the religious and Roman leaders felt as large crowds professed their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Was Israel's deliverance at hand? This public acclaim highlighted why some saw Jesus as a threat. The Pharisees, in particular, feared that His messianic identity might undermine the religious authority to which they clung. Most of them dismissed the possibility that Jesus was the Messiah they awaited.Jesus, however, had a very different understanding of the Passover that year. He knew it was the time for His hour of suffering and death, leading to His glorification. He had no interest in political maneuvering. His sole desire was to fulfill His mission as the Messiah by becoming the one perfect Lamb of Sacrifice whose blood would atone for the sins of many. Jesus was determined and confident as He rode into Jerusalem. Though He knew the suffering that awaited Him, His gaze was fixed on His mission of saving souls. In His sacred humanity, He overcame every temptation to fear or anxiety, allowing peace, strength, and joy to fill His heart.Not only is Jesus our Savior and the one Mediator between God and us, His human life perfectly models how we are to live. Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem especially models for us how we are to face every difficult situation that tempts us to fear and anxiety. His courage must become our courage, and His determination our determination.Reflect today on Jesus' interior disposition during His triumphal entry. He invites us to share in His sacrificial love, laying down our lives selflessly for others. This is only possible if we allow His virtues to take root in us every time we are called to imitate His love. As we embrace our own mission, we must not allow fear or anxiety to hinder us. Pray that the courage, peace, and steadfast love that Jesus embodied during that first Holy Week may flourish in your heart. Let go of fear, worry, and selfishness, and allow Jesus' love and strength to fill you, so that His mission may continue through you and, with our Lord, you may lay down your life for others.Sacrificial Lamb of God, You entered Jerusalem as the new and perfect Lamb of Sacrifice, whose blood would be shed for the salvation of all who turn to You. Please open my heart, dear Lord, to receive all You wish to bestow upon me. Fill me with the virtues You possessed, so that my life will be united to Yours and Your Sacrifice will become alive in me. Jesus, I trust in You.Image: Jesus on Palm Sunday Source: Free RSS feed from catholic-daily-reflections.com — Copyright © 2026 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. This content is provided solely for personal, non-commercial use. Redistribution, republication, or commercial use — including use within apps with advertising — is strictly prohibited without written permission.

Let's be honest: the climate conversation is having a bit of a PR crisis. The word ‘climate' itself has become politically charged, federal funding is under threat, and media coverage has gone quiet. But the technologies are still working, the solutions are still scaling, and the people building them haven't gone anywhere. So how do you keep telling that story?This week on Everybody in the Pool, Molly sits down with Josh Garrett, CEO and co-founder of Redwood Climate Communications, a specialty PR and strategic communications firm that works exclusively with climate tech companies and climate-focused nonprofits. Josh has been communicating about climate for 14 years, and right now, his expertise has never been more needed.We talk about:How to craft compelling stories about climate tech and policyWhy silence is not a strategy — and how to keep talking about climate even when the political winds have shiftedSimple word swaps that works across the aisle, like saying "pollution" instead of "greenhouse gases"How the fossil fuel industry built a century-long messaging machine — including the origin story of "now we're cooking with gas"Why climate advocates over-explain when they should be keeping it simple and repeatableThe power of leading with co-benefits: affordability, public health, energy freedomHow to be a “Climate YIMBY,” and why showing up to your local zoning meeting might be the highest-impact thing you can do right nowBalancing fear and hope: why disasters are our current reality, yet progress is inevitableLinks:Redwood Climate Communications: https://www.redwoodclimatecomms.com/Yale Center for Climate Change Communication: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/Potential Energy Coalition: https://potentialenergycoalition.org/Emily Atkin's Heated Newsletter: https://heated.world/Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/merchants-of-doubt-9781608193943/Greenlight America: https://www.greenlightamerica.org/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member for the ad-free version of the show: https://everybodyinthepool.supercast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Running a hotel can mean processing all sorts of guest transactions, from check-in, to spa treatments, to a martini in the lobby bar. One company promises to consolidate all of those transactions — and all of that customer data — onto one single platform. Taylor Lauber is the CEO of Shift4 payments, which trades under the symbol FOUR. Taylor's been with the company since 2018 with prior roles including President and Chief Strategy Officer, he was also one of the company's first interns 25 years ago. Taylor joins us to discuss Shift4's incredible growth over the last few years, how they differentiate themselves in the crowded payments industry, and their strategy for generating new revenue streams organically or through M&A.Highlights:What is Shift4? (2:02)Shift4's Market Share (5:38)Brands within the brand (8:55)Taking over as CEO (10:26)Strategy for Organic Growth (11:49)M & A Strategy (13:58)Global Blue Acquisition (17:22)Stable Coin payment processing (20:18)Building cross-regional consistency (22:18)AI's evolving role in the business (23:47)Balancing growth and profitability (25:47)Exciting things ahead (27:41)Links:Taylor Lauber LinkedInShift4 LinkedInShift4 WebsiteICR LinkedInICR TwitterICR WebsiteFeedback:If you have questions about the show, or have a topic in mind you'd like discussed in future episodes, email our producer, joe@lowerstreet.co

Alex Wilson, Co-Founder and CEO of Cyclops, joins the show. In this episode: Alex's background running The Giving Block and the company's acquisition by Shift4 Difficulty in enabling stablecoin solutions when utilizing existing providers while inside of Shift4 Backgrounds of the founding team at Cyclops Regulatory strategy for Cyclops Products: Pay with Crypto (POS, E-Com), Stablecoin Settlement (for Merchants vs. Wire or ACH), Stablecoin Payouts (Payroll, Contractor Payments, Remittance) Key features for building specifically for payments companies See more at cyclops.io

This podcast is made possible by our listeners and viewers. If this show has brought you value, you can support it by becoming a member of The Way Forward, our platform designed to help you find the health and freedom community (people, practitioners, schools, farms, and more) near you. Your membership directly supports the podcast and the work we do.Save $50 on your InPower Membership: Access the NoL Creator, guided webinars, and a community dedicated to reclaiming authority. Did you know your signature is being used to generate money?In this episode, I sit down with Cal Washington to trace the unexpected path that pulled him from an ordinary life into a relentless investigation of the family court system, common law, and what he believes is a massive financial structure operating beneath the surface. We dive into his deep study of the Motor Vehicle Act, his $300 million story, the hidden signature system, and a confrontation with provincial authorities that led to outcomes few would expect.This conversation moves through philosophy, legal sovereignty, and the growing tension between citizens and institutions. If you've ever felt there was more happening behind the curtain of the legal system, this one will give you a lot to sit with.You'll Learn:[00:00] Introduction [01:49] How a corrupt divorce exposed the trillion-dollar divorce industry[08:18] Driving without insurance, and self-bonding under the Motor Vehicle Act[25:17] How Cal filed a $300 million promissory note inside a courtroom[46:28] The idea behind the $300 million[59:25] How a piece of notarized paper sent 16 politicians into retirement [01:28:54] The mechanism that holds executives personally liable [01:37:59] Merchants, birth certificates, and the enrollment of the entire human race[01:54:56] The blank page, the mortgage, the credit card: how your signature has been creating money you never saw[02:14:17] The internal factions, the IRS angle, and the queen who swore she'd never abdicate[02:30:52] Who is running the world right now?[02:45:00] Why voting and protesting reinforce the systemRelated The Way Forward Episodes: Christ's Millennial Reign & Satan's Little Season with Paul Stobbs | YouTubeResources Mentioned:InPower Movement - Meet Lex Dove | YouTubeThe Nephilim Looked Like Clowns by Paul Stobbs | BookFind more from Cal:InPower | WebsiteInPower | YouTubeFind more from Alec:Alec Zeck | InstagramAlec Zeck | XThe Way Forward | InstagramThe Way Forward is Sponsored By:Paleovalley is 100% Grass-Fed Bone Broth Protein is a nutrient-dense, easy-to-digest source of collagen and essential amino acids. Sourced from grass-fed cows, this protein powder provides the building blocks for healthy joints, skin, and gut function—without fillers or artificial ingredients. Support the show and claim 15% off your PaleoValley order!Designed for deep focus and well-being. 100% blue light and flicker free. For $50 off your Daylight Computer, use discount code: TWF50New Biology Clinic: Redefine Health from the Ground UpExperience tailored terrain-based health services with consults, livestreams, movement classes, and more. Use code THEWAYFORWARD (case sensitive) for $50 off activation.The Way Forward members get the $150 fee waived

The boys kick off a new series examining the Foxcatcher murder and the dynasty behind it. The Du Pont family didn't just produce a killer... they helped design modern America. War profiteering, political manipulation, and industrial death are baked right into their legacy. This is what privilege without limits really looks like. For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free, plus get Friday episodes a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.