Podcasts about muddling

Evolutionary biologist ⁠⁠Richard Dawkins⁠⁠ chats with Trey Elling, ahead of his ⁠⁠US tour stop⁠⁠ in Austin at ⁠⁠ACL Live at the Moody Theatre⁠⁠ on ⁠⁠September 7th⁠⁠. Topics include: ⁠⁠The Genetic Book of the Dead⁠⁠ (0:00) His teaching roots (2:28) The letter to his 10-year-old daughter (5:33) Sports ball! (9:01) Adapt, or die like the dinosaurs? (12:25) Admitting a mistake (16:21) Memes (17:45) Favorite animal? (18:43) Muddling basic language (20:08) Happiness (23:23) An ode to science (24:58)

Come behind the scenes and hear a real-life business journey of how Rebecca went from muddling through to booking out her one-on-one clients, to launching her group programme and setting up solid foundations in her business.    Rebecca's story is so inspiring! 2years ago we worked together through one-on-one life coaching to support her with her anxiety, mindset, and building trust and confidence in herself. This was the start of opening up her entire world and the possibility of going after her desire to become a personal trainer and mindset coach and supporting so many wonderful humans through her gifts.    Now, just a short time on, she has a thriving business! So come behind the scenes and hear some of the things that supported Rebecca on this journey!    Rebecca is a Certified Personal Trainer and an ICF Certified Coach in training. She blends these approaches together to empower women to embrace exercise, building a foundation for a healthy, active future while gaining the confidence & energy to become their favourite version of themselves in all areas of life.   Let's dive in! Connect with Evie: Join Runway To 1K Now Free Masterclass: Dream Clients On Repeat  Download Your Free Playbook  Download your free templates – “How to Soulfully Sell Out Your Next Offer”  1:1 Life Coaching  Instagram: @evelynrobertakelly Watch over on my YouTube Channel  Website: https://www.evelynkelly.co.nz/   Connect with Rebecca:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coach.rebeccavandam/ Work with me: https://subscribepage.io/coachrebeccavandam

In this bonus episode of Season 5 I am sharing about how the summer holidays can feel exhausting leaving us as mums feeling frazzled and burnout.  You will hear me talk about: my experience of the summer holidays how we 'just' muddle through simple ways to not 'just' muddle through I also share about my new six week summer programme for mums, 'Steppings Stones to September'. I totally get how the summer holidays can feel so, I created this solution to help you to approach the summer holidays with much more ease and simplicity. This Six Week Stepping Stones to September is designed to be flexible, accessible with ease and simplicity, it's going to cut through the overwhelm and help you be present and grounded all summer! Sound good and just what you need to not ‘just' muddle through? Grab your spot! We start taking the stepping stones to September on 20th July 2024! Stepping Stones to September - https://emmabenyoncoaching.co.uk/coaching-with-emma/stepping-stones-to-september To see more of Emma, the Positive Wellbeing Zine for Mums and coaching sessions, on demand courses, resources and workshops head to: Facebook - @emmabenyon.coach Instagram - @emmabenyon.coach Website - https://emmabenyoncoaching.co.uk/ Email - emma@emmabenyoncoaching.co.uk Sign up to the newsletter and get your copy of Self Care Hacks for Busy Mums and have simple self care tools and techniques you can use right away in under 5 minutes-  https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/851037/114640934069601722/share

In Part 6 of "The Path Is Made By Walking, Ronnie quotes Janet Hagberg, words that serve as proper commentary to the Emmaus Road experience of Luke 24: “Now we surrender to God's will, but with our eyes wide open…for we have been changed. We sense a looser grip on ourselves and all we have believed, because our confidence is in God - not what we think about God. Our primary motivation in life becomes the desire to love and to live honestly. We acquire an inner peace and calmness because we grow into the full awareness that God truly loves us. We learn how to go about our lives with patience and freshness, a vitality that can only come from God. There is no striving, just evolving. The healing experience is so personal and so profound, we may find it difficult to express.” How do we get this? Persistence. Muddling through. Surrender. Being melted down and re-formed. Anger. Tears. Shaking your fist or the middle finger at heaven. Kicking and screaming on the floor. Trying out atheism for a while. Shunning anything religious, spiritual, prayerful, or anything like you knew in the past. But if you are a person with a bent toward faith - if you are a person who discovers that the eternity planted in your heart cannot be ignored - you will begin to poke around in the ashes for the bones. You will begin to put the pieces back together, and maybe - just maybe - you will have an Emmaus experience: “Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…They said to each other, 'Didn't our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road.” 

In any gym, there are people there who are just getting it done . . . a certain number of reps, a certain duration of time, and – whew! – they're done, and they're gone. And there are others who push themselves, and they give it their all! And it shows. Today on A NEW BEGINNING, Pastor Greg Laurie points out, this life is too important to muddle through. The Lord wants us to run this race with endurance, and to run this race to win. We'll learn more about how to do that in Acts. Listen on harvest.org --- Learn more and subscribe to Harvest updates at harvest.org . A New Beginning is the daily half-hour program hosted by Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Southern California. For over 30 years, Pastor Greg and Harvest Ministries have endeavored to know God and make Him known through media and large-scale evangelism. This podcast is supported by the generosity of our Harvest Partners.Support the show: https://harvest.org/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In any gym, there are people there who are just getting it done . . . a certain number of reps, a certain duration of time, and – whew! – they're done, and they're gone. And there are others who push themselves, and they give it their all! And it shows. Today on A NEW BEGINNING, Pastor Greg Laurie points out, this life is too important to muddle through. The Lord wants us to run this race with endurance, and to run this race to win. We'll learn more about how to do that in Acts. Listen on harvest.org --- Learn more and subscribe to Harvest updates at harvest.org . A New Beginning is the daily half-hour program hosted by Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Southern California. For over 30 years, Pastor Greg and Harvest Ministries have endeavored to know God and make Him known through media and large-scale evangelism. This podcast is supported by the generosity of our Harvest Partners.Support the show: https://harvest.org/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Philippians 3:13-14 Miles Myer Newman shares with us his true story. Visit our podcast website to learn more about this ministry, unshackledpodcast.org.

Travis from https://open.spotify.com/show/5rSlYJMYPau8kAawrFUf3v joins us for the entire episode! https://linktr.ee/FromBehindTheBarcast patreon.com/frombehindthebarcast --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/frombehindthebarcast/message

[You're listening to a preview of this episode, available exclusively on Patreon. To hear the full episode, join us at patreon.com/forever35. And if you join at the $10 tier, you can also watch it on video!!]We're back for another special Q&A episode with our friend and podcast pro Jackie Johnson. And we're getting vulnerable! (Again.) We discuss our decisions around having children, learning the hard lessons of making mistakes as podcasters on and off mic, our current self-care practices, and so much more. To leave a voicemail or text for a future episode, reach them at 781-591-0390. You can also email the podcast at forever35podcast@gmail.com.Visit forever35podcast.com for links to everything they mention on the show or visit shopmyshelf.us/forever35.Shop our merch at balancebound.co/shop/forever35.Donate to the Forever35 Giving Circle (https://www.grapevine.org/giving-circle/2nlhxOl/Forever35-Podcast) to help flip the Virginia State House!Follow the podcast on Instagram (@Forever35Podcast) and sign up for the newsletter at forever35podcast.com/newsletter.Join our Patreon at patreon.com/forever35! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tune into this week's episode to hear how we can navigate the often complex differentiation between contractors and employees. Muddling these roles can result in avoidable complications and risks - something none of us want! IRS's 20Factor Test for Independent Contractors: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/independent-contractor-self-employed-or-employee This episode is sponsored by: https://www.directsuggest.com/subscribe.php?id=6992 Use Promo Code: HumanHR CultureBot: https://getculturebot.com/humanhr  Connect with Traci here: https://linktr.ee/HRTraci   Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe!   Disclaimer: Thoughts, opinions, and statements made on this podcast are not a reflection of the thoughts, opinions, and statements of the Company by whom Traci Chernoff is actively employed. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hrtraci/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hrtraci/support

This Week We Need 2 Talk The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, RHONJ Reunion, Vanderpump Rules, Smoke Takes over NYC, A Man Called Otto, Blackberry the Movie, Never Have I Ever, Taylor Swift, Dave Matthews, LIV Golf and so much more

Wolf Richter summarizes that the economy is a mix of different sectors, with some doing well and some struggling. Consumers are still spending, but the banks are facing high interest rates and the commercial real estate sector is facing repurposing and foreclosure. The auto industry is seeing a decline in sales, but Tesla is still doing well. Tesla is shaking up the auto industry by cutting prices and building production capacity in large amounts, forcing legacy automakers to compete on price. This is good for industrial America and consumers, but bad for automakers as sales of internal combustion engine vehicles are at levels not seen since the 1970s. Electric utilities are also benefiting from increased electricity sales. Wolf Richter and Kerry Lutz discussed the current state of the financial system, with Wolf noting that the economy is adjusting to higher interest rates and that banks are struggling with them. They also discussed the possibility of the Federal Reserve cutting rates and the potential impact it would have. Wolf concluded that the economy will muddle through and that it will be many more years before autonomous driving is widely available. Visit Wolf's site: https://wolfstreet.com

Ærede garnityrer! Hvordan takler gutta ensomhet etter show? Daniel trenger terapi og forteller om hvorfor. Mikael er ikke like nær å dø, og har gode tips til bryllupsarrangering. Og så har Daniel en forferdelig overraskelse til Mikael.----------Husk å finne oss på @cocktailterapi og send gjerne en hilsen til cocktailterapi@gmail.com. Legg også igjen rating og kommentarer, så elsker vi dere enda mer!

With some of his regular conversation companions unavailable, Daniel (C70 At The Bat, @C70) goes to the pen and brings in Russ Robinson (Redbird Rants, @frrobinson1957) to talk about another middling week for the Cardinals. How concerning is it to be in the bottom part of the division as the season closes in on finishing its first month? Does this West Coast swing add to those worries? Can we be encouraged over Jordan Hicks's last couple of outings and what will Adam Wainwright bring when he returns to the rotation? And just how is Mo going to be able to manage this roster? All this and much more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Jack Fowler examine Biden's performance from SOTU to Super Bowl talk, Fetterman's recent political moves, Fauci's Mea culpa and the history of the Yalta conference.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We're in a podcast series focused on addressing various deserts we might be going through, aiming to understand why God allows them, how He uses them, and what He accomplishes through them. With Valentine's Day just about the corner, I wanted this episode to address the desert of singleness and dating and encourage singles with some biblical and practical lessons I've learned from my own journey in singleness. If you're married or in a relationship, please listen as well. You'll find plenty of principles that will apply to your life as well!   ABOUT: Lina AbuJamra founded Living with Power Ministries and is a popular Bible teacher, podcaster, and conference speaker. She's also the host of a radio show and the author of several books, including Fractured Faith and new Bible study Through the Desert. Lina is a pediatric ER doctor who practices telemedicine and in her “spare” time, she provides medical care and humanitarian help to Syrian refugees and others in disaster areas. Learn more about her at LivingWithPower.org. Follow on Insta: linaabujamra Follow on facebook: Lina Abujamra Follow on Twitter: @LinaAbujamra

Investors have dumped equities at a record pace in the days since major central banks signaled, they won't be deterred in their fight against inflation—a fitting end to the worst year for world stocks since the global financial crisis. Equity funds were hit by outflows of almost $42 billion, the highest ever, in a week … Continue reading "Muddling Through: Market Update For Week To 24th Dec 2022 [Podcast]"

Bangladesh has transformed tremendously in the last twenty-five years. Average incomes have more than quadrupled, and many of its human development indicators have improved alongside. It has also become an export powerhouse with its garment industry, and generally a shining example of development - though things are far from perfect. Five decades ago, when Bangladesh became an independent country, many were not hopeful about its chances of development. So how did Bangladesh turn its story around? Well, it turns out the history of its transformation is longer than credited - and the process is more complex than what is cleanly presented.I could not think of a better person to help me unpack the Bangladeshi miracle than Dr. Akhtar Mahmood. He is an economist and was a lead private sector specialist for the World Bank Group - where he worked in various parts of the world for three decades on privatization, state enterprise reforms, investment climate, competitiveness, and more broadly private sector development. He has written some excellent books (see embedded links), and his column for the Dhaka Tribune is one of my wisest sources of economic development commentary.TranscriptTobi;Welcome to the show Akhtar Mahmood. It's a pleasure talking to you. I am very fascinated and curious about Bangladesh, and you are my number one option for such a journey. It's a pleasure, personally, for me to be having these conversations. I've been reading your column for about a year now with the Dhaka Tribune, and I've learned so much. They are very perceptive, and I'm going to be putting up links to some of my favourites in the show notes for this episode. Welcome once again, and thank you so much for doing this.Akhtar;Thank you very much for having me. Thanks, Tobi.Tobi;There's so much that I want to talk to you about, as you'd imagine, but let me start right at the end, which is now. There has been a lot of attention on Bangladesh, recently, at least in my own orbit, there have been two quite detailed and interesting columns in the Financial Times about Bangladesh. There is also Stefan Dercon's book, which used Bangladesh as a positive case for what he was describing about the development process. But also, there's the issue of what's going on right now with the global economy. First, it started with COVID and how the economy suddenly stopped, and all the reverberation that comes with that - the supply chain, and now, a lot of countries are going through a sort of sovereign debt crisis and Bangladesh, again, is in the spotlight. So, I just want you to give me an overview, and how this, sort of, blends with countries that put so much into development…you know, in terms of policy, in terms of the things they are doing right, in terms of investment and attracting investment, and the exposure to these sorts of global economic risks and volatility. [This is] because, usually, what you get in Western discourse is that a lot of countries are victims of some of these risks because of some of the wrong policy decisions they make. But in the case of Bangladesh, at least to my knowledge, nothing like that is going on. And yet, it is usually talked about as a very exposed country in that regard. I know you wrote a column recently about this. So I just want you to give me a brief [insight]—is there anything to worry about? How do countries that are trying to get rich, that are trying to do things right, how do they usually manage these sorts of global risks?Akhtar;Right? I think, inevitably, we'll have to go a bit into the history of how we came here. But since you started with the current situation, let me briefly comment on that, and then maybe I'll go to the history. Right now, yes, like most other countries, we are facing challenges, but I think there has been a bit of hype about how serious the challenge is, in terms of the risk of a debt default, the risk of foreign exchange reserves going down very sharply. And I think there is a bit of the Sri Lanka effect, and then also the Pakistan effect, as people are trying to put Bangladesh in the same bracket, which I think is very, very misplaced. I think the IMF has made it clear, [not only] in its latest country report, which came out in March 2022 but also in many recent statements, that Bangladesh has both a solvency situation and a liquidity situation. As you know [that] the solvency is typically measured by the external debt to GDP ratio, one of the ratios is external debt by GDP and the liquidity is measured by debt service requirements - the external debt service requirements by the export earnings ratio. And there are these certain thresholds, and if you go beyond that, it's considered a bit risky. Bangladesh on both these accounts is much below the threshold. So there's already a lot of headroom in the sense that even if things get worse over the next few months and maybe a year or two, Bangladesh would still be able to manage the situation. So I just wanted to make that clear at the beginning. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't other issues in Bangladesh, issues which have been brewing for quite some time. For example, many of us are concerned with the efficiency of public expenditures. We know of projects where there have been cost overruns. Some of it may be for genuine reasons, some of it may be related to corruption, which sadly still remains a serious problem in Bangladesh. I feel that I've written about it, and you may have read some of these articles about the spectre of rising cronyism, which, again, is not surprising; when an economy grows as fast as Bangladesh's has, there are certain people who become economically powerful. And at some stage they acquire political power as well, and then you start seeing the problem of cronyism. So we have that, we have a serious problem in the banking sector with a lot of non-performing loans. I'm not suggesting that we don't have serious problems, we do. But there is a disconnect between the typical headlines and where the real problems lie in Bangladesh.  Now, this may be a good moment to bring up a little bit of history, and I can go deeper into it. The Bangladesh economy has certain resilience. And I just want to comment on that. One which is not discussed much, because the story often is about garments and remittances, is the transformation that has happened in the rural areas. It started with agriculture, it actually started with rice production, which is the most important crop in Bangladesh. And then it expanded into other crops, and then even non-farm activities in the rural areas, we can go into the details of this later. But agriculture provides a certain resilience. And we saw that again during COVID. Because the agricultural activities in Bangladesh were not affected that much by COVID, and that was a big benefit. The other is the unleashing of an entrepreneurial spirit in Bangladesh. And this spirit has been unleashed across the board, so it's not just some large conglomerates or some large government manufacturers who have become entrepreneurial. This is something which has happened across the board, from small farmers to large conglomerates. And that, I think, is a big asset for the country. Because we don't have natural resources; unlike Nigeria, we don't have natural resources. In some ways, it's actually a good thing. Because then we are forced to use other assets and latent entrepreneurship… you know, Albert Hirschman, the famous economist, wrote a book in 1956, which is a classic, on the strategy of economic development, and he made a very interesting comment. He said, in developing countries, you have a lot of latent resources. In developed countries, the task is how to allocate the resources you have; how to best allocate them. In developing countries, it is about bringing out the latent resources you have; and entrepreneurship is one of the latent resources developing countries have, but many countries have not been able to bring that out and make use of it. Bangladesh has, and that gives a certain resilience to the economy. So yes, the shocks are going to affect us, especially because our major industry, in fact, is export-oriented, which is garments. So that is affected by the shocks, but unlike commodity prices, export earnings don't fluctuate that much. And the industry has proven to be resilient over the years.Tobi;Yeah, I'm glad you touched on history because, really, that's where I wanted to start. But I just want to get the pulse of the moment and how to make sense of all the headlines that we're seeing around. So usually, and I'll refer to the two pieces I've read in the FT [Financial Times] recently that I referenced in my first question. The development trajectory of Bangladesh is usually dated as something that started around 1990. But Bangladesh became an independent country two decades before that. So my question then is: that intervening period before that sort of consensus about the takeoff point, what were the things that were brewing in the background that culminated in that takeoff? I know a lot of things went down, and just to mention that one of the reasons I'm very interested in Bangladesh is that it sort of defies some of the seductive examples of development and progress - the Asian tigers, you know, so to speak - where things seem to be very clear, the prescriptions are very precise, you need to do this and do this. Bangladesh seems like a regular country - like Nigeria, with its history, its complexities, its problems like every other country in the world, but that has also managed, despite a situation that has seemed hopeless, at first, to people who look at these things in terms of hard boundaries - that has emerged as this fantastic example of economic growth and development. So what were the major things that happened before 1990 that sort of made this takeoff possible?Akhtar;Now, one may debate on whether 1990 is the point of the takeoff. In any case, it's very difficult to pinpoint. But anyway, it's good. So 1990, twenty years after independence and also a transition to democratic rule after fifteen years or so of military or quasi military rule. So that's another reason people take that as a counterpoint. But it's a good counterpoint to start discussing these things. Professor Stefan Dercon, whom I think you had on your show recently, who wrote this book Gambling on Development; he has been saying that actually, in some ways, it's a Bangladesh experience which may be more relevant for many developing countries than the East Asian [experience]. And one of the reasons he mentions is, I think, what you just alluded to - that there is a certain messiness, and yet Bangladesh developed. So countries which think that they are also in a somewhat messy situation, or whatever dimensions, say in governance or other dimensions - whether it's possible for them to develop. And that's why the Bangladesh example may be more relevant and encouraging than the East Asian, where one common characteristic has been the strong capabilities of the state. In China, it has been there for hundreds or more,  thousands of years. In East Asia, yes, I'm sure they also have that but they certainly acquired that quite fast. So how do you develop in a country context where the state capacity, the governance quality are not that great, and then you have many other problems as well. So you're right. In that sense, Bangladesh may be very relevant. I think I'd like to first start with, um, even deeper history, because if you look at the region which now constitutes Bangladesh, it used to be part of a province in British India. So it was East Bengal, and then you had West Bengal and then together it was Bengal. Now there was a time in history when Bengal including East Bengal was supposed to be reasonably rich, perhaps the richest province in [the] whole of India before the British came. But if we go back to the beginning of the twentieth century, East Bengal was actually quite backward economically and in many other ways. And if you look at the political discourse in the first half of the twentieth century, before the British left, the political and intellectual discourse in what is now Bangladesh, you'll see there's a lot of talk about peasants being exploited. We were a very peasant dominated economy and society. In many ways we still are, although there has been a lot of urbanisation and industrial activity. At that time it was very much peasant dominated, and the theme which dominated the discourse was exploitation of the peasants. And the aspiration that the leaders whether political or intellectual had is how can we improve the conditions of the poor people. And that sort of got ingrained in the minds of the leaders, and that continued during the time when we were a part of Pakistan. Because you may have heard that there was a lot of disparity and there was a lot of discriminatory treatment by the Pakistani establishment. So that theme was there. When we became independent in ‘71, you could think of the political leadership, you could think of the professional leadership, the bureaucracy, the intellectuals, the media, this theme of doing something for the poor, was actually very strong. So right at the beginning, and, I heard somewhere that our first prime minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was asked by a foreign journalist: what is the number one problem of your country? And he said, I actually have two number one problems. One is food security, and one is population. And we need to take care of that. So right from the beginning, even in the midst of all the turmoil in the first few years, and all the challenges of relief and rehabilitation, work had started on ensuring agricultural growth and food security. And we were fortunate that the HYV rice, the high yielding variety of rice, had been introduced just before independence, so we had something to work with. So that was very important. And there was a strong program to bring down the rate of growth of [the] population and we succeeded on both counts. So by the time we come to 1990, agriculture is taking off. Rice production had taken off significantly, farmers were diversifying into other crops. And we had started to see the beginnings of a rural non farm sector. So agriculture and non agriculture together. And, Bangladeshis had been going out as migrants, and they're sending back remittances, most of it going into the rural areas. So there was a vibrancy in the rural area by the time you come to 1990. Secondly, sometime in the late 70s, the government decided that not only should we move away from the early talk about socialism, [but] towards a more private sector-oriented or market-oriented economy. They also understood that industry has to grow to absorb the surplus labour in agriculture, and export orientation has to grow, because the market in Bangladesh is simply not large enough. So there was an early emphasis on exports. And of course, fortuitously, you know, the South Koreans were running out of their garment quota, so they wanted to relocate some of the production to Bangladesh, but we were ready to take advantage because by then the government and let's say the elite of the class had decided that we need to industrialise and the major driver of industrialization is going to be exports. And then throughout the 80s, we saw the takeoff of the garment industry. The third thing which happened was the liberalisation of policies, mostly in the 80s. So, privatisation was done, the banking sector was open to the private sector. The agricultural input market, which was previously dominated by the government, was gradually liberalised and towards the late 80s, there was a significant liberalisation of that. And finally, as remittances started coming in, our foreign exchange constraint was relaxed. So that also gave government some comfort that we can decontrol certain things. And we can allow industry to move ahead without too many controls. So all these things coming together sort of created the context in which we entered the 1990s. So a lot of the preconditions - the population growth rate had fallen significantly by the time it came to the 1990s, agricultural growth had taken off, industry was taking off, especially the labour intensive garments, which is export-oriented, that industry was taking off.Tobi;That was such a loaded answer, which has preempted some of my further questions. But let me quickly make one digression on agriculture, because over the past seven years or so, in Nigeria, there's been this debate. There's been a huge debate about agriculture, the current administration sort of prioritised agriculture and a lot of resources (capital) was allocated to that sector. And there's been challenges and there's been critics, sometimes I've found myself on the critic's side of things. Now, what I want to know from you is that,the link between agriculture, especially investment and the agricultural productivity that is necessary for the vibrance of that particular sector, how was the Bangladeshi experience? How did Bangladesh achieve food security, especially in terms of improving yield and productivity?Akhtar;Right, so a few things. Firstly, as I said, the high yielding variety of rice had been introduced in the late 60s, and then just after independence, government continued, but more vigorously with a model of… it was more [of a] public sector driven model, where the public sector would import the major inputs. One is irrigation equipment, because this rice needed irrigation, and the other was fertiliser. So, they're imported by the public sector, then they're distributed by the public sector going all the way to the farmers. Maybe at the last mile, there were some private traders who act as dealers on behalf of the government. So, the government took that responsibility. Later on, as I said, in the 80s, they started liberalising it. We'll come to that later. Second is, there's been quite a bit of investment in agricultural research. Now the HYV rice came from abroad, but as it was being applied in Bangladeshi farms, in many cases, we realised that there was some adaptation needed, because the conditions were not always well suited for this variety. The crop conditions varied even within Bangladesh, even though it's a small country, lots of variation. Later on, for example, salinity became a problem, because a lot of water was coming from the Bay of Bengal into Bangladesh. So there are all kinds of problems - there's flooding also. There were many areas where after floods, the waters don't recede that fast, so they remain underwater for a long time. So the agricultural scientists in Bangladesh, and they were all in the public sector, they came up with innovations to come up with rice varieties and later other varieties like maize varieties or vegetables, which are better suited to the conditions in Bangladesh. And then the public sector effort was also complemented, supplemented by NGO efforts. You may have heard about BRAC [Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee], which is the largest NGO in the world, and we often talk about their activities in the health sector, in education, in microfinance. They were actually doing a lot of work in the economic sphere as well. R&D in agriculture was one of the things that we're doing, in collaboration with the government often, so there was R&D. Another thing happened, which I forgot to mention, when I mentioned sort of the run up to the 90s. In the 80s, the government started a massive program to build rural roads, connecting the rural areas to the small towns and the small towns to the bigger towns. So,a huge rural road network was built starting from the late 80s. And it continued into the 90s, which broadened the markets of the farmers. So in all of this, the core player was the small farmer. As I said, Bangladesh is a peasant, small farmer dominated economy, so it is remarkable that these farmers were willing to innovate, they were willing to move away from what their parents and grandparents had done for many, many years, and adopt these new varieties. So the combination of the government with some NGOs and the farmers, I think that created the basis for productivity improvements in agriculture. And that was sustained because the market was sustained. There were lots of public policies. And at some point, when the government thought the public sector delivery model was not working that well, they allowed the private sector to come in.Tobi;I don't want to infer anything, but from your answer, I can tell what Nigeria is doing wrong, but maybe we'll get to that later. So let's talk about the conditions, which you've also sort of answered for me but I want to know if there is more. Dercon in his book, I'm talking about Professor Stefan Dercon, talked about elite consensus that sort of becomes the bedrock of deciding to pursue economic development. So this broad consensus amongst the Bangladeshi political elites to improve the conditions of the poor, and, which, I'm speculating sort of enabled an ecosystem of policy consistency, even if there are deviations at the margins, how did it emerge? And how was it sustained?Akhtar;Okay, as I had mentioned to Professor Dercon ‘cause I also had a conversation with him for our Bangladeshi group. And I said that – and, he agreed that, it's really difficult to define if there was an elite consensus because it's not that the elite are sitting in a room discussing and bargaining and one day they come out and say, okay, here is an agreement, we have agreed on these three things, it doesn't happen. And there is a bit of tautology in his book as well. And he agreed with that, that in his country chapters, he says, these countries had an elite bargain. And then he says, Okay, this is how the countries grew. And if they have grown, therefore, they must have had a bargain. So there's a bit of tautology there. But coming back to this, I think, I started giving you a flavour of that when I brought in history, even before the British left and how in East Bengal, there was this deeply ingrained feeling that something has to be done for the poor people. And then just after independence in ‘74, we had a big famine. And that sort of strengthened this feeling amongst Bangladeshis. And you know, you mentioned the word elite and it's a bit difficult to define the elite. I would say that it's a broader… I'm talking about people who can influence policy, both the formulation and the quality of implementation. There are a lot of people in the bureaucracy who may not, in that sense, be called part of the elite, but they do have some authority. Now, most of these people, they actually are not too far away from the poor people of Bangladesh. Many of them still have very strong connections with their villages. They go back regularly. They know what the conditions are there. And in a densely populated country like Bangladesh, you see poverty all around you. So all these things, I think, have ingrained in the minds of the elite, however you define it, this commitment to doing something to safeguard the interests of the poor, but that is the security side - food security, [to] address the vulnerability. But somewhere down the line, people started recognizing that Bangladeshis also have an entrepreneurial potential. And there was a feeling that we should try and help unleash that potential. So, as I said, it's difficult to pinpoint a particular period where there has been a consensus but in a subtle way, there has been this consensus that to achieve food security, to help take advantage of the latent entrepreneurship of Bangladeshis, we should be focusing a lot on growth and more generally on development. And that has survived the transitions in administrations, from one government to another, that common element has been there.Tobi;It's not exactly a push back, and I should note that there is a lot more; there's vastly a lot more to Bangladesh than Dercon's book. So, and I don't want to be caught in debating his book. But, why I find that particular line of thought relevant is that, from what you have described, it's amazing to me, so maybe you can help me understand the difference. Now, how a country can set out to do some of these things; invest in agriculture, agricultural R&D, and all these other support programs with big macro effects. Whereas a Nigeria can set out to do those same things and then you find divergent outcomes in their implementation, particularly the inability to execute. You know? There's always a plan. We want to improve the lot of the poor. We want to invest in agriculture. We want to improve productivity. We want to build infrastructure, you know, this, that, they are always so nice and interesting. But the difference is always at the end of the day, countries often don't do these things, right, they never stay true to these things. And of course, we can talk about various reasons why it fell astray - corruption, state capacity, and all that. But what I… which you mentioned in your last sentence [is] how policies survive, even though there are political transitions, election cycles come and go, the particular direction that policy goes, survives this transition, I think that's really what I'm trying to get at.Akhtar;Okay, so I don't know that much about Nigeria. Now, people say that the fact that you have natural resources may have been in some ways a curse, I don't know if it's true or not, but certainly, that sometimes gives governments a sense of complacency and therefore, even if they start on a certain course, they may not have the discipline to stay that course. Now Bangladesh, we never had the advantage of having natural resources. Nowadays, certain things have improved, you know, foreign exchange reserves have been at comfortable levels for several years. So, that may induce a certain degree of complacency, but for a long time, the government knew that we were operating with very narrow degrees of freedom. So that was the context in which Bangladesh had to operate. Which also meant that we were somewhat dependent on donors and that certainly imposed an additional set of disciplines on Bangladesh. But later on, I may come and comment on exactly the kind of relationships I think existed between donors and Bangladesh. But maybe the best way to answer your question would be to say a little bit about the way in which policies have evolved in Bangladesh. And in a sense, it's a bit of a “muddling through” process. And I wrote a blog for the Brookings Institute a year ago, where I said that Bangladesh did it, alluding to that famous song of Frank Sinatra - “I did it my way.” So what was that “my way?” We all know that the Bangladeshi Government has never been tremendously competent, there's always been corruption problems as well. So the way it has happened is the following. Things happened in the economy, let's say agricultural productivity is improving. But then it hits certain constraints, and the economic actors, or people acting on behalf of the actors; like academics, donors, journalists, will bring up those issues. And they will probably say that, “here are ten things which need to be done.” Now what the governments in Bangladesh have done, successive governments, [is] they have responded to that, not by doing all the ten things. No. They may have picked up two or three things. And they may have done a little bit. Why a little bit? Because they were risk averse. They wanted to test out what would happen in the market, how the market players respond. [As the government], if I do just three or four things and not everything, and then see the response…and here comes the entrepreneurial side - the response was usually quite good, and when the response was good, the government felt encouraged. And then the government said “okay, let's do a few more of the things that were demanded.” The other thing which happened was, as the response came, newer constraints were revealed, or constraints which were not binding before became binding. For example, initially when the agricultural growth was not that great, when production wasn't that huge, the fact that we did not have a good rural road network connecting the rural areas to broader markets wasn't that big a constraint, because you're not producing enough to go out in a big market. When you started producing a lot of marketable surplus, you needed a broader market. And that's when you started feeling the constraint. And people started talking about the need to build up the rural road network. And to the credit of the government, they responded. So, this is what I call the sort of back and forth, policy dynamics - things happen in the economy, government notices it or it is brought to their notice, they react not in a grand way, just doing a little bit here and there;nd then the market responds, may be much more than in many other countries, because of the entrepreneurial spirit, and then the government responds. And that process has gone on uninterrupted throughout the last fifty years. And so, once you accumulate, even if these are modest steps, once you accumulate all of that, you'll see a tremendous result. And that's what we're seeing here. So, what it means is countries – the governments don't have to be very competent, they just have to pick the signals. So, you know, you have this phrase called “picking the winners” and a lot of people say, no, governments should not be in the business of picking winners. I say, in Bangladesh, that what the government just does is pick signals. They've picked signals from the private sector, from the farmers, and they have acted accordingly. And I think the accumulation of all these, the synergies created by all these is, I think, what has made the difference.Tobi;That's interesting. So, generally, the usual story with development is structural transformation. That is, for you to grow rich, the economy has to transform from a largely agrarian, low productivity economy to preferably an industrial high productivity economy. And, I mean, to an extent, we've seen the same process also in Bangladesh. Manufacturing, particularly the garment industry, is eighty or so percent of exports and employment is largely created also in that industry. Now, what I want to ask you is, the role of foreign direct investments in that cannot be understated. You talked about South Korea earlier, and how it played a role in that. For South Korea, so many other scholars would cite the role of Japan in kickstarting the South Korean garment industry; garment and textile industry itself. So, my question then is, is there a link here? I mean, also in your columns, I've read about the role of Samsung, and the electronics industry in Vietnam. Right. So the role of FDI in development, and especially getting industrialization started, what are the favourable conditions? To what degree is it external and internal? I guess that would be my question.Akhtar;Okay. Well, you use the term kickstarting, because in Bangladesh, in the garment industry, a foreign investor helped kickstart that industry, but didn't do much beyond that. So, Bangladesh's Government has been largely domestic…[it is] a case of domestic entrepreneurship leading the sector to the heights that it has achieved now. Yes, we have some Export Processing Zones where we have a number of foreign invested garment factories, but the bulk of it is domestic entrepreneurship. But you're right. The initial thrust came from this partnership with Daewoothe IU. It was a five year partnership. Daewoo trained Bangladeshis, (they) took them to their plants in Korea, trained them. They obviously had the market connections and market knowledge, all that was very useful. But what many people don't know is that the Bangladeshi partner actually quit that agreement just one year into that five year period. So after one year, he thought that he had learned everything that needed to be learned. Now, if he hadn't done that, I believe Daewoo had other plans of coming into other sectors, which we may have lost. But then we did end up with this vibrant mostly domestic-owned garment industry. But foreign investment had a role in jumpstarting that. If you go a little beyond industry, think about sectors which facilitate industry. The entire mobile phone development in Bangladesh, which is also remarkable, was foreign investment led. So, foreign investment played a major role there. So, I agree that foreign investment can play an important role in kickstarting industries, and that is something very important now that we want to diversify our exports, make them more sophisticated, we can come to that subject later. Now, you asked me about what are the conditions which are conducive for foreign investment. And this is where I would say that in Bangladesh, the conditions are still not that conducive. In the case of garments in the late 70s, it was the exhaustion of the South Korean quota of garments, which was the major inducement for them to come in. But also, as I said, the new government, which came into power in ‘75 was talking a lot about export promotion. So, that was there. But the most important constraint that Bangladesh faces, and it's true of many other countries, is policy and regulatory uncertainty. So, Bangladesh often says that we have got a policy regime which is very friendly to foreign investors. And that may well be true. But the execution has problems. And there are a lot of case by case decisions which are taken, which affect the foreign investors adversely. And that creates uncertainty. And those stories are told to other prospective investors. And when they hear those stories, they get discouraged. And the World Bank where I used to work, in fact, the last unit that I worked on, they did a survey of CEOs of multinational corporations just a few years ago, asking them about what are the factors which are very important for you when you decide to invest or not invest in a country, and policy and regulatory uncertainty was top of the list. So that is where Bangladesh still has got a lot of work to do. It is attractive in many other ways - very large domestic market, relatively cheap labour, the labour is quite fast at learning, a lot of good things there. But I think the policy environment, particularly the implementation, the certainty, that has to be ensured.Tobi;I have a further question, particularly on that point, and referencing another one of your columns, I think I'll just stick to your columns today for all my questions. For example, in Nigeria, I'll give you an example. In Nigeria, recently, foreign airlines are threatening to quit. Over the past three, four years, foreign investment (FDI) has plummeted. It's barely a billion dollars, currently, one of the lowest even in Africa. And of course, a lot of these things you mentioned are the problems that investors and business people talk about - policy uncertainty, especially around the control of the exchange rates and inability of companies to repatriate their capital, and to fund their operating expenses, and so forth. So, I mean, that's one constraint. But one distinction you made is like the types of FDI. There are different categories of FDI; market-seeking FDI, natural resource-seeking, efficiency-seeking [FDI]. And the reason I'm asking this is that there seems to be one problem, which, to my mind, Bangladesh has solved, it's not perfect, that Nigeria is struggling with, which is this inertia to get things started, you know, once you start on a journey, you can muddle through, but the inertia to get that process going is still something that Nigeria struggles with, in my opinion. So, now talking about FDI, if I were a policymaker today talking to you; advise me, what kind of FDI should I prioritise in trying to lure investors into my country, for them to create jobs and [create] a nest of high productivity manufacturing industry? So is it market seeking? Is it natural resources seeking? Is it efficiency seeking? Which one is the best in terms of the necessary incentives for sustainability?Akhtar;Okay, so one of the articles, not as part of the regular column, I think, but I wrote for the same newspaper a few years ago, was titled “investment for what?” So that's a question the governments have to ask. Because everyone talks about attracting FDI. It's a mantra all over the developing world. But governments need to ask why exactly do we want FDI? How is it aligned with our development aspirations and development programs? I wanted to just emphasise that because often governments just go blindly trying to attract foreign investors. And whoever comes in, we welcome that. That's not necessarily a good strategy always. For example, in Bangladesh, if we now have a lot of foreign investors coming in, to make jeans and T-shirts, using the same technology as before, we don't really need that, we can't afford to give our scarce land and utility and other things to do things which our domestic entrepreneurs have become reasonably good at doing. So it has to be something new that comes in. Now, at the same time, we also have to recognize that the foreign investors also have their own interest and their own calculations. So we have to come to a balance between the two as well. Now, it's difficult to say a priori that we prefer market-seeking or efficiency-seeking. On a natural resource, it's a slightly different issue if you have natural resources, and if you don't have the capacity to develop them yourself, you may need foreign investors. And obviously, we all know why foreign investors are often very attracted to that. But let me confine my answer to the choice between market-seeking and efficiency-seeking. Now, let's take the case of Bangladesh. We are now talking about diversifying our exports. And we are talking about going into more sophisticated products like electronics. If that is our objective, we may want to target some people who come and make electronics. Now they may come for two reasons. Bangladesh has a huge market, our per capita income may not be that high, but our total economy size is actually pretty large. We are amongst the top 40 economies in the world. And if you look at the size in the purchasing power parity terms, we're actually in the top 30. That's a very large economy. So, naturally foreign investors would come in looking at the market as well. But if our objective in this sector is to make a breakthrough in the global value chains, and not just serve the domestic market, then we'd like to have foreign investors come in with an efficiency-seeking objective that, in Bangladesh, we can make these things more efficiently, at lower cost, than in other places. So that Bangladesh then can ride on the backs of the foreign investors, who know the markets, who have the brand recognition and show the world that things can be made efficiently in Bangladesh. And, then once we have shown that with the help of foreign investors, maybe Bangladeshi entrepreneurs can also start doing it. So here you see I give you an example, where you have a strategic objective, and you attract foreign investors of a particular type. Now, there are also many needs in the domestic market. Bangladesh needs to develop a very good logistics system. And we may need foreign investors to come in and invest there, but will be more market-seeking. I mentioned the case of mobile telephones, that was not an export-oriented industry, although it may have facilitated exports, that was domestic market-oriented. And we encouraged foreign investors to come in, who were obviously coming in as market-seeking investors. So the answer would vary depending on the sector or the activity. But that brings me back to my first point, the government should have a clearer idea of what is the role of foreign investment in implementing the various dimensions of your development strategy. And accordingly, you're going to target efficiency-seeking investors in some cases, and market-oriented investors in other cases.Tobi;So, now, from a policy perspective, because really, that's what's sort of dominating this conversation. One thing that keeps coming up is the role of government, the strategy it pursues, you know, this, that. But inevitably, that leads to the question of what… in terms of economic development, what role does the government play by itself? Now, China, and, of course, other East Asian economies are very, very popular in the development discourse and these are largely autocratic governance. Right. And, to an extent the gospel of state-led development has travelled far and wide, sometimes in contrast to what is generally called the neoliberal or the Washington Consensus-type policies. But at the same time, at the nexus of all this is the role of markets, how the economy is regulated, liberalisation. How does a government approach regulation and policymaking generally, with the right incentives for the government to take the lead in areas where, maybe because of access to market or not seeing the prospect of returns, private actors are reluctant? And also at the other end, this sort of control, excessive control, that you see in so many developing countries, like Nigeria, and so many others in Africa, where government sees itself as the primary player in the economy, right? What is the balance? What is the heuristic generally, in trying to, [or] should I say, make policy and regulations to encourage economic development, and, of course, your Bangladeshi experience of that?Akhtar;Okay. So, when you say state-led, there are many ways you can define that. One is the direct participation of the state in productive activities. And in China, that is still pronounced, there are different models of state-owned enterprises, including public private partnerships, but the state plays a dominant, or at least an important direct role in the production of activities. That's one thing. The other is playing a direct role, not in production, but in things that facilitate production. So I had mentioned the case of research and development in the agricultural sector of Bangladesh, which was there right from the beginning. It was largely a private sector activity, but that was meant to facilitate productive activities by the private sector, in this case, thousands and thousands of farmers. So, the whole spectrum of things that the government does and, of course, there is the whole regulatory function of the government. And I think in choosing the balance, and the balance itself may shift over time as the economy develops. And I give an example of that, again, from the agricultural sector of Bangladesh, how the government moved away from the direct import and distribution of agricultural inputs, giving more and more space to the private sector over time. So initially, in the 70s, maybe that was the right thing to do. And then later on, the right thing to do was to withdraw and create space for the private sector. So the balance, (a) has to be thought of carefully, in terms of the capacity of the government, that's very important. And, again, if I [could] mention Stefan Dercon, he talks about the self awareness of [the] government. Are governments aware of what they can do and what they cannot do? And that answer would vary by country. Often governments make the mistake of thinking that they can do a lot of things, and therefore they; (a) go into productive activities themselves directly, and (b) also controlling too much the activities of the private sector. Controlling is not that easy. It requires a lot of skills, and many governments actually don't have the skills of doing that. The thing that may have happened in Bangladesh is the government has been more or less self aware, not always, but more or less self aware of what they can do and what they cannot do. And that has led to a certain division of labour between the government and the private sector, and the NGOs. With that division of labour also changing over time. That's very important. So the government needs to be aware of where its capacities are, and they need to also have some faith that the private sector, if given the opportunity, can come and do certain things. Because governments often say, okay, but if we don't intervene, the private sector is not going to come in. Or we have a big factory, if we close it down, then a lot of people will lose their jobs, and the private sector will not be forthcoming to create jobs for them. If you want, I can give you a good example of that kind of thinking. In Bangladesh, we had the world's largest jute mill called the Adamjee Jute Mill, and it was bleeding like hell, and every year the government had to subsidise. So there was lots of debate on whether the factory should be (a) privatised, and there was no taker, then the question is whether it should be closed down. Then, about 20 years ago, exactly 20 years ago, a very bold decision was taken to actually close down the factory. It was a controversial decision. About 26,000 workers lost their jobs. Some of them were ghost workers, maybe 20,000. Now the story of what happened after that is very interesting. That land was converted into an export processing zone. And now the latest figures are that about 65 to 70,000 jobs have been created there. So you had lost about 20 [thousand jobs] and you have created so many. These are all private sector firms, they're all export oriented firms, the government doesn't need to subsidise them. So you can see once given the opportunity what the private sector can come and do. So you don't have to hold on to a loss making enterprise just because you're worried about job losses.Tobi;Let me sort of ask you a big picture question on this particular point, which is the role of democracy in development, generally. Democracies have been taking a beating recently, so maybe you can speak up for it, somewhat. Do you think democracy has some kind of unique weakness in terms of trying to engineer economic development, particularly because of elections? I mean, to cite the example of the jute mill you mentioned, some regime that is sensitive, maybe in an election year, or maybe that wants to appeal to a particular constituency, or, maybe workers Union or something might actually kick the can down the road. An example is (fuel) petrol subsidy in Nigeria, which the bill keeps increasing, but I mean, each government promises to remove it or reduce it, and then kicks it to the next government because nobody wants to annoy the workers union, nobody wants to lose votes, the party wants to remain in power, you know, and these incentives that are common in democracies. So, do you think this makes democracies weak in a way, in trying to develop the national economy? Because a lot of people will say that's why China has developed much faster than India, for example. What's your take?Akhtar;Okay, let me start by giving you an anecdote. So this is from about I think it was 2008 or so, 2007 maybe. Bangladesh then had a quasi military government, it was called a caretaker government, whose major responsibility was to conduct free and fair elections. So they were in power for about two years. And I was actually working in Bangladesh at that time. And we had, I think we had a natural disaster, or maybe we had floods. So conditions were pretty bad. And one of the… well, they were called advisors, but they were de facto ministers, who was having to deal with this problem of getting food to poor people, dealing with rising prices [and] all that; he said to me, “I can feel a certain handicap being part of this kind of government.” What is the handicap? Right now what I need a lot is information from the grassroots, I need to know what is happening in different parts of the country, and I need that information very fast. I need it right now, about what's happening earlier today, or what has happened yesterday. Fortunately, I have some connections in the NGO world, this gentleman was an academic. I'm getting some information. But if this was a political campaign, I would rely on my political network, my workers, my small town leaders, and within a few hours, I'll be getting information from all over the country on what the conditions are. Now, why do I mention this anecdote? Because in a democratic system, your feedback mechanisms may work very well. Yes, there can also be a lot of noise. But otherwise, the feedback which is very, very important for government, they need to know what's going on throughout the country with different groups of people, with different localities etc. That is something that autocratic governments lack. Yes, information flows, flows from lower level bureaucrats, but I'm sure they are modified on their way. Because, the boss often doesn't want to hear certain things. It may happen in political democratic setups, but generally, the flow of information is much better for politicians. Now, how they act upon that information is another issue, but that's very important. Secondly, politicians operating within a democratic setup, (a) they develop a lot of empathy, because of their interactions with people, [b] they also get a good idea of what the trade-offs can be. And these are very, very important in decision making. So those are the good sides of democracy. Now, yes, in democracy, you also need to cater to your political constituencies, and that may lead to certain decisions, which technocrats may feel are sub optimal. But that is the price you pay for democracy. Compared to the gains for having a democratic system, that is sometimes a small price to pay, although sometimes that can get out of hand. But if it gets out of hand, it's usually where you may in name have a democracy system, but in practice, you don't. So the kinds of disciplines that democracy imposes on the government are lacking there. So that is my answer. Now, as you can see, implicit in my answer was some definition of democracy. It's not just about electoral politics. It's not just about having regular elections and free and fair elections. It is the monitoring mechanism. Are governments picking the signals, are they getting the information? How wide is the information that they're getting? That's a very important characteristic of development.Tobi;So another one of my sort of big picture questions to you, and in this case, using the Bangladeshi experience and example, is, in the last couple of years, there has been this big debate in development over, oh, do you prioritise the big things or the small things you can measure? You were with the World Bank, I'm sure you have some familiarity with the so-called empirical revolution and how it has sort of taken over the field of development economics where, yeah, there is a lot more preference in terms of international aid funding for interventions, things that you can measure. So, the RCTs, or, whether it is conditional cash transfers, and all these things – and the atmosphere with which this debate happens sometimes, personally, I find it frustrating because it makes it seem like a zero-sum kind of thing. Like, you can either have one or the other. You either pursue growth, or you forego that and choose to do all these small scale, local and domestic interventions. But Bangladesh, like you mentioned, the issue of BRAC and also people like Naomi and co. have written about – Naomi Hussein [that] Bangladesh managed both. There was a sort of productive combination of both frameworks, that is, the role of non governmental organisations who were able to provide some support for the rural communities. And of course, there was the big macro policies that were explicitly designed to pursue economic growth, get businesses going, create jobs, you know, and all the other things that happen in the private sector. So, my question would be, how did that sort of synergy happen in Bangladesh? How was that cooperation, so to speak… I mean, you talked about the role of BRAC in R&D and agriculture, you know, how did that happen? How did, perhaps, it wasn't intended, but in practice, how does it work?Akhtar;Okay. Let me start by recounting something I heard Abhijit Banerjee, the Nobel laureate, who got a Nobel prize for his work on RCTs, said something about the rationale for going into RCTs. And he's saying that the kinds of interventions that we talk about in the context of RCTs, they're not the only interventions that bring about development. In fact, the most profound development impact may come from other kinds of interventions and policies, and other factors. But his point was that, let's say, as a development practitioner, we are not able to influence these big things. So I'm going to focus on the things that we can influence. So I'm doing a project here, a project there, and we can change the parameters of the project in certain ways that we achieve the most significant impact. And how do we change the parameters or what parameters we choose or how do we design the project? That's where randomised control trials can give us very useful insights. And we can get more bang for the buck from the development expenditures in those kinds of projects. Now, he never said that that's all about development. There are many other things that need to be done. And governments, in their collective wisdom, may have a better idea of what those things can be. And that's different from a particular project team trying to do a project. They won't have all that knowledge, which can lead them to think about much bigger things, but governments can; not perfectly, but governments can. Or large organisations like BRAC can within certain spheres of operation. So, yes, I agree with you that this is a false dichotomy, that you either completely forget about RCTs or you get completely immersed into RCTs. So, one has to find the right places where the randomised control trials, which are after all an instrument, one of the tools in your toolbox… which is the best time and place to deploy it. I would say in Bangladesh, yes, the scope for applying them is more than the actual application so far, which means that we have a scope to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending by using these techniques judiciously in certain areas. Now, coming back to, I think you mentioned the question of BRAC in the context of R&D, but also BRAC has played an important role in market development through their social enterprise world. So, as I said before that the part of BRAC's work which is not discussed much is the work on the economic sphere. So what happened there? I'll just give one or two examples. I think giving concrete examples is the best way to illustrate this. So, they got into, let's say, they got into dairy [farming]. Actually, the way BRAC started most of these activities was from a livelihood concern. They wanted to create livelihood opportunities for the poor people in the rural areas of Bangladesh. So they said, okay, we have dairy farmers whose incomes are limited, we want to do something to help enhance their inputs [output]. So they came up with certain small interventions, which helped improve the productivity of their dairy farming, and they ended up with more production, then they had a problem. Now, milk is not something that you can preserve for a long time, you need to have some cold storage facilities, some refrigeration facilities, and that was lacking. So a lot of these increased output was actually being wasted. That led BRAC to start thinking about what else it needs to do. So then it went into refrigeration plants. So, they set up refrigeration plants, where the dairy farmers would come from adjoining villages and store their milk. And that led to other things also down the road. So there are many examples of BRAC where they went into a certain activity, they went into poultry, for example, and then discovered that there isn't a good supply of day old chicks, which is an important ingredient in poultry. So they went into that. And the interesting thing is, in many cases, BRAC was the first one to go into that, later the private sector came in and came in in a big way. And when they did, BRAC withdrew. Because BRAC thought, okay, we have played the role of a pioneer, we have catalysed the entry of private enterprises, we can now withdraw and attend to certain other things. So what's going on here? What's going on here is, you have value chains, which are underdeveloped - there are gaps in the value chain. And one aspect of development is to make the value chains more complete. And here you have an actor, BRAC, which has entered the market… [enters] one part of the market, trying to do something, discovering that there is not much it can do unless it intervenes in other parts of the value chain. Well, it can do something but the impact will not be that great, so then it intervenes. But at one point, it realises that other players who are better at scaling this up have entered the field so let me withdraw. So judicious entry, and judicious withdrawal. And that is also true of the government. It's also true of BRAC. I think that's the kind of dynamics of development which is very important. And somewhere there, yes, you may have some trials, which may be randomised control trials, it may be just informally observing from your own experience of what is working, what is not working, but this idea of learning by doing, learning by doing, the government has done it in Bangladesh, BRAC and other BRAC-type institutions have done it. The private sector is also doing it.Tobi;The last of my big-picture questions to you is– Another dichotomy that I have observed is the business cycle concerns of an economy and policy and these sorts of other long-run development growth policies. For example, in Nigeria, it's a common refrain that we had growth in some years, but we never really had development. Income didn't grow as fast as GDP, and growth has been cyclical, it's not sustained. And some of the issues that really plague governments and policymakers is that even in trying to make policies that are tolerant and favourable to long-run growth, there are short term issues that you have to deal with [like] foreign exchange policy, inflation, and sometimes I've heard people say that, Oh, as a developing country, you have a lot more tolerance for inflation than developed economies. I think you'll have to tell me whether that's true or not. Because inflation does not happen in a vacuum, it affects the purchasing power of people, poor people even more so. Right. So how do policymakers in growing countries manage these tensions in terms of – and, I'm working my way through your book with Gustav Ranis on this – how policymakers mine through these everyday concerns of the economy, versus the long-term prospects and the projects you are trying to put forth as a government?Akhtar;Okay. Well, since you alluded to that book, I will first briefly mention the main theme of the book, and then come to this specific [question]. The main theme of the book, which we illustrated through a comparative study of East Asian countries and Latin American countries, [was that] we talked about the East Asian pattern of government behaviour and the Latin American pattern of government behaviour. And the period covered was from the mid 60s to the mid 80s so things may have changed after that. And in any case, it's difficult to talk about (a) East Asian pattern, and (b) Latin American pattern. But what we were talking about is that during the course of a business cycle, or terms of trade cycle, as your terms of trade improve, your foreign exchange reserves go on increasing, obviously, growth accelerates. The question is what does a government do when things are good? Do they let growth accelerate according to some normal – “normal trajectory”, or they get excited, and they try to push growth beyond the “normal trajectory”-- making it higher than what the good times normally would make it? So, in the “Latin American” scenario, when things were good, growth was happening, government wanted to have more of it. So they went for expansionary fiscal policies, expansionary monetary policies to push growth beyond what the natural trajectory is. And then inevitably, because we are talking of cycles, inevitably a time came, where things started going down. And conditions were not as conducive as before. At that time, what the East Asian countries did– but first– they never tried to artificially push growth above the natural level. When the downturn came, they allowed the growth to fall. So they went for contractionary policies, they allowed the growth to fall. But in the Latin American scenario, having pushed growth beyond the natural path, it's almost like being intoxicated, you could not get rid of that habit. So, you try to artificially maintain growth even though the signs were all pointing downwards. And then the time came when things just crashed. And you fell into a deep crisis. Whereas the East Asians, they had their ups and downs, but they didn't have a serious crisis at that time. They had later, but not at that time. So that was the main thing about how you conduct your policies during the upturn, and then also during the downturn. Now, coming back to the specific situation like the one we observe now, when there are many economic challenges facing countries, and what can governments do to ensure that the course on which they had been before the crisis started, or the challenges started, and hopefully it was a course of development, how can they stay on that course as best as they can? First is, governments should look for existing inefficiencies. For example, in your public expenditures, there may be a lot of inefficiencies, and if you can identify those and get rid of those [inefficiencies], then you can bring things under control in the context of the challenges without sacrificing growth. Most developing countries, including Bangladesh, do have inefficiencies in their public expenditures. So the question is, do you target those inefficiencies and curtail them? Or, do you target those parts of expenditures which are actually very useful? So that's number one. And that's why we often have this phrase, “don't let a crisis go to waste.” Because a crisis can often focus attention better than good times can. And a crisis can also create the political and social consensus to take some tough decisions. So that's one thing. Second is the importance of social protection. And we must remember that for people at the margin, and in our kind of countries, Nigeria, Bangladesh, a lot of people are still at the margin. Even a small shock which takes them below the threshold is not a temporary damage that after some time they can come back [from], often it's a permanent damage. They have to sell off their productive assets, which means even when things start improving, their conditions won't improve. So that's why it's very, very important to have good social protection systems in place.Third, coming back to a point I made earlier, it's very important to have good monitoring systems. ‘Cause we really want to know what's going on, how the lives of different people across the country is being affected by the tough conditions in which you are, without that your policies will be suboptimal. So that monitoring is very, very important. And it's very important to engage different stakeholders in society. And for two reasons. One is part of the monitoring, because economists, business people, journalists, and others, would know a lot beyond what the government knows and it's important to tap into that knowledge, but also to build consensus about some of the tough decisions that need to be taken. So, at the end of the day, it is a lot about governance. It's a governance challenge that countries face when they're facing an economic challenge.Tobi;My final question to you, I have a couple of other questions, but… from a policy-making perspective, how do you then make knowledge count? Because from everything you have talked about, the role of knowledge… which takes me back to where we started, you know, talking about agriculture. The role of knowledge is actually very important. But you have situations where you can have knowledgeable people in government, world class economists, and the government itself might be making policies that are clearly wrong, which means there's a disconnect somewhere. And I mean, in Bangladesh, it's often talked about how there is a policy knowledge ecosystem that informs the public and shapes their accountability and expectations, and also informs policymakers at the other end of that spectrum. How does a country build and nurture that? Especially, how does knowledge of, whether it is knowledge of economics, whether it is knowledge of society and other programs, how it transmits to the key decision makers, and influence some of the actions or policies, or regulations, that are taken? How does that happen?Akhtar;Okay, so you mentioned the sort of the ecosystem linking policy and knowledge in Bangladesh. We have an ecosystem, I wouldn't say it always functions very well. And we do have many instances where people in government feel that the

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.ideasuntrapped.comBangladesh has transformed tremendously in the last twenty-five years. Average incomes have more than quadrupled, and many of its human development indicators have improved alongside. It has also become an export powerhouse with its garment industry, and generally a shining example of development - though things are far from perfect. Five decades ago, w…

Dr. Peterson's extensive catalog is available now on DailyWire+: https://utm.io/ueSXh Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Congressman Mike Johnson discuss the current state of conservative America, the understated importance of inherent value, the trumped up climate crisis and the all too real crisis facing much of Europe this coming winter. Rep. Mike Johnson is in his third term representing the 4th Congressional District of Louisiana. He represents nearly 760,000 residents of 15 parishes in the northwest and western regions of the state. Mike was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on December 10, 2016, by the largest margin of victory in his region in more than 50 years and is currently serving his third term. He earned his undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Louisiana State University in 1995, and then his Juris Doctorate from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in 1998. Before joining Congress, Johnson was a partner in the Kitchens Law Firm and a senior attorney and national media spokesman for the Alliance Defense Fund, now known as Alliance Defending Freedom.  He serves as the Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference—the No. 4 ranked Republican in Congress—is a leader on the Judiciary and Armed Services Committees, and serves as an Assistant Whip for House Republicans. Last Congress, he served as Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, known as the "intellectual arsenal" and the largest caucus of conservatives in Congress. Prior to becoming elected to the U.S. Congress, Johnson served as a constitutional law litigator for nearly 20 years.  - Links - For Congressman Mike Johnson: Mike's website:https://mikejohnson.house.gov/ Follow Mike on social media:@RepMikeJohnson Listen to the Truth be Told podcast on all platforms or at:https://www.mikeandkellyjohnson.com/  - Chapters - (0:00) Coming Up(1:24) Intro(3:55) Eve of the election, predictions(5:20) Biden's chaotic reign(7:54) Inflation at a 40 year high, causes and effects(10:00) US oil and the global climate “crisis”(13:34) Gaia before God, the new globalist religion(17:25) The ultimate agenda: control(19:22) The Republican response(23:05) Seven Core Principles of American Conservatism(27:35) Identity from the political perspective(32:26) The need of faith in society and for individuals(34:35) Foundational principles and why the left despises them(40:23) To look upon what terrifies us, why we must(47:08) The scientific view of faith, and why it's wrong(54:12) Preserving what guides us(57:45) The vision going forward(1:01:39) Muddling through up hill, the energy front(1:03:49) The best way to serve the poor(1:06:56) Taking the opportunity, clarity unites(1:08:39) Practical steps to get involved in the political front  // SUPPORT THIS CHANNEL //Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/jordanbpeterson.com/youtubesignupDonations: https://jordanbpeterson.com/donate // COURSES //Discovering Personality: https://jordanbpeterson.com/personalitySelf Authoring Suite: https://selfauthoring.comUnderstand Myself (personality test): https://understandmyself.com // BOOKS //Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life: https://jordanbpeterson.com/Beyond-Order12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-for-lifeMaps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-meaning // LINKS //Website: https://jordanbpeterson.comEvents: https://jordanbpeterson.com/eventsBlog: https://jordanbpeterson.com/blogPodcast: https://jordanbpeterson.com/podcast // SOCIAL //Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordanbpetersonInstagram: https://instagram.com/jordan.b.petersonFacebook: https://facebook.com/drjordanpetersonTelegram: https://t.me/DrJordanPetersonAll socials: https://linktr.ee/drjordanbpeterson #JordanPeterson #JordanBPeterson #DrJordanPeterson #DrJordanBPeterson #DailyWirePlus

Cindy and Cullen are back with their Spooktacular Halloweenie edition of the Bunngalow. Listen in and join the fun!You can support this show by visiting our merch store, or by leaving us an Apple Podcasts review.

Join Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Sami Winc to talk about the John Durham investigation, Ukraine war rhetoric, and our Ministry of Truth.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Key Conversation Points: Is muddling through faith the exception or the rule?  Sometimes we can feel like we're following breadcrumbs to connect the dots but guess what we see when we look back?! Lisa-Jo and Christie share moving and personal stories to show us what faith looks like.  Faith isn't passive but it's an in motion experience.  We are a loaf of bread that God breaks to multiply. The Black Barn Online community here. Podcast links: Follow Lisa-Jo on Instagram @lisajobaker and Christie at @christiepurifoy and please leave a review about what you think about today's podcast! Click here to join the conversations we have with listeners every week around the podcast. _______ Sponsor appreciation: We're so grateful to partner with show sponsors that keep making our work possible. Click here to visit join Thrive Market today and get $80 in free groceries! Click here to purchase the book Liturgy of the Ordinary and use the code TISH22 for 30% off the book. Click here to visit Green Chef and use code ordinary135 to get $135 across 5 boxes and your first box ships free! The #1 Meal Kit for Eating Well! Click here to join over 1 million people taking charge of their mental health through the online counseling offered by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month. Click here to visit Nutrafol and use the promo code ORDINARY to save $15 off your first subscription. Plus, FREE shipping on every order.

Key Conversation Points: How does Diet Coke and KitKats honor God?  There is a sense that the holidays happen if mom makes it happen, but we have ideas on how to make it less stressful.   The low bar is sacred and intentional. We can be creative and still not go overboard. We're not creating an image for social media, but an experience for our family.  The planning and preparation is most importantly in our hearts.  Christ wants you to come to communion as you are and not just when you have it all together.  Song Mention: "The Meal We Could Not Make" by Son of Laughter Podcast links: Follow Lisa-Jo on Instagram @lisajobaker and Christie at @christiepurifoy and please leave a review about what you think about today's podcast! Click here to join the conversations we have with listeners every week around the podcast. _______ Sponsor appreciation: We're so grateful to partner with show sponsors that keep making our work possible. Click here to visit join Thrive Market today and get $80 in free groceries! Click here to purchase the book Liturgy of the Ordinary and use the code TISH22 for 30% off the book. Click here to visit Green Chef and use code ordinary135 to get $135 across 5 boxes and your first box ships free! The #1 Meal Kit for Eating Well! Click here to join over 1 million people taking charge of their mental health through the online counseling offered by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month. Click here to visit Nutrafol and use the promo code ORDINARY to save $15 off your first subscription. Plus, FREE shipping on every order.

Key Conversation Points: Why is Christie afraid of mediocrity? Scared of being normal? Let's not miss out on an experience because we're trying to make it extraordinary!  There is grace in muddling through the unique transitions and goodbyes that aren't ordinary or daily. We can do it differently than our past.  If you're wanting to mark a ritual as something special, you may not have to look far.  Lower the bar in a healthy way.  Give yourself permission to be a human. Whether a kid is driving, going to college or something else....do whatever you can to take off the weight it can bring. Books mentioned: Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self by Chuck DeGroat. Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys by David Thomas and Stephen James. Podcast links: Follow Lisa-Jo on Instagram @lisajobaker and Christie at @christiepurifoy and please leave a review about what you think about today's podcast! Click here to join the conversations we have with listeners every week around the podcast. _______ Sponsor appreciation: We're so grateful to partner with show sponsors that keep making our work possible. Click here to visit join Thrive Market today and get $80 in free groceries! Click here to purchase the book Liturgy of the Ordinary and use the code TISH22 for 30% off the book. Click here to visit Green Chef and use code ordinary135 to get $135 across 5 boxes and your first box ships free! The #1 Meal Kit for Eating Well! Click here to join over 1 million people taking charge of their mental health through the online counseling offered by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month. Click here to visit Nutrafol and use the promo code ORDINARY to save $15 off your first subscription. Plus, FREE shipping on every order.

Key Conversation Points: We're starting a new series about muddling through and lowering the bar for you!  Have you known anyone in real life that has gotten rabie shots?! Christie's is a real life person who has muddled through a bat encounter.  Muddling through is a choice.  It's not always making the best of it but it's just accepting it.  Adult temper tantrums don't move us to peace and doesn't make us feel better.  Lisa-Jo's daughter reminds us in the intense, crazy moment we can say, "It'll make a great story tomorrow." Podcast links: Follow Lisa-Jo on Instagram @lisajobaker and Christie at @christiepurifoy and please leave a review about what you think about today's podcast! Click here to join the conversations we have with listeners every week around the podcast. _______ Sponsor appreciation: We're so grateful to partner with show sponsors that keep making our work possible. Click here to visit join Thrive Market today and get $80 in free groceries! Click here to purchase the book Liturgy of the Ordinary and use the code TISH22 for 30% off the book. Click here to visit Green Chef and use code ordinary135 to get $135 across 5 boxes and your first box ships free! The #1 Meal Kit for Eating Well! Click here to join over 1 million people taking charge of their mental health through the online counseling offered by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month. Click here to visit Nutrafol and use the promo code ORDINARY to save $15 off your first subscription. Plus, FREE shipping on every order.

Cem is the Founder and Senior Managing Partner of KAI Volatility Advisors. He is responsible for firm-wide management, as well as its Head of Research and Risk Management. Cem triple majored in Economics, Policy Studies and English at Rice University and holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Follow Cem on Twitter https://twitter.com/jam_croissant Learn more about his company https://www.kaivolatility.com/ IN THIS EPISODE: 0:00 Swan Bitcoin promo 1:18 Born in London, lived in Turkey, grew up in Houston and Oklahoma 2:55 Family's immigration stories 4:22 Grandfather fled Bulgaria 6:16 Early interest in social sciences, parents were engineers 7:47 Founding Kai Volatility Advisors 10:23 Equity volatility 12:27 Macroeconomic analysis, dramatic inequality, distrust of system 21:38 Fixing inflationary problem, Federal Reserve chairs before Paul Volcker 31:09 Control inflation with real supply-side responses 34:43 Equality and fairness relative to growth 38:14 Muddling through a recession like in the 70's 40:35 Why the timing was right for Volcker's moves in the 80's 41:45 What is Jay Powell going to do? 42:21 iTrustCapital promo 43:08 Bitcoin Amsterdam and Bitcoin 2023 promo 44:13 Fold app promo 44:42 Rebalancing takes time, no shortcuts 48:41 Decoupling the US dollar from the gold standard in 1971 52:05 Dollar is threatened, countries de-dollarizing; fairness is naive 55:08 Are Bitcoiners naive? 56:00 First discovering Bitcoin in 2009/2010 58:40 Money is power; future of BTC 1:02:24 Utopia vs. innate desire to compete 1:06:51 "I think rates are going to go a lot higher" in next 6-12 months 1:14:18 Collapse in market will trigger a pivot 1:15:10 "Market is not the economy. Economy is not the market." 1:17:32 Opportunity in this environment 1:19:30 Investing in anything close to government: infrastructure 1:23:19 UBI: Universal Basic Income 1:25:15 Sticky double-digit inflation in the next 5 years 1:27:38 Fed pivot affecting tech stocks 1:29:07 Crises are good because they rebalance things and drive future growth   Coin Stories is powered by  @Swan Bitcoin  the best way to build your Bitcoin stack with automated Bitcoin savings plans and instant purchases. Swan serves clients of any size, from $10 to $10M+. Visit https://www.swanbitcoin.com/nataliebrunell for $10 in Bitcoin when you sign up. If you are planning to buy more than $100,000 of Bitcoin over the next year, the Swan Private team can help. Swan Bitcoin is hosting this year's inaugural Pacific Bitcoin event designed to deliver two days of Bitcoin-only programming featuring top experts and celebrity Bitcoin fans. This unique event November 10-11 in Los Angeles will give you the ability to meaningfully engage the Bitcoin community & industry insiders. Visit https://www.PacificBitcoin.com/ for tickets. Use code HODL for 30% off your pass.  BITCOIN 2023 will be the BIGGEST BITCOIN EVENT IN HISTORY held May 18-20 in Miami Beach. If you missed Bitcoin 2022 head to  @Bitcoin Magazine  for highlights of all the biggest events and panels. You can get an early bird pass for Bitcoin 2023 at a steep discount at https://b.tc/conference/bitcoin2023. Use code HODL for 10% off your pass. With iTrustCapital you can invest in crypto without worrying about taxes or fees. iTrustCapital allows clients to invest in crypto through an individual retirement account. IRAs are tax-sheltered accounts, which means all your crypto trading is tax-free and can even grow tax-free over time. The best part is it's totally free to open an account, and there are no hidden fees, monthly subscriptions or membership fees. If you open and fund an account you will get a $100 funding bonus added to your account. To learn more and open a free account go to https://itrust.capital/nataliebrunell. Fold is the best Bitcoin rewards debit card and shopping app in the world! Earn Bitcoin on everything you purchase with the Fold's Bitcoin cash back debit card and spin the Daily Wheel to earn free Bitcoin. Head to https://www.foldapp.com/natalie for 5,000 in free sats! OTHER RESOURCES - Natalie's website https://talkingbitcoin.com/ - Kai Volatility Advisors https://www.kaivolatility.com/ - Cem on Twitter https://twitter.com/jam_croissant ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ VALUE FOR VALUE — SUPPORT NATALIE'S SHOWS Strike ID https://strike.me/coinstoriesnat/ Cash App $CoinStories BTC wallet bc1ql8dqjp46s4eq9k3lxt0lxzh6f2wcu35cl6944d ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ FOLLOW NATALIE ON SOCIAL MEDIA Twitter https://twitter.com/natbrunell  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nataliebrunell Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliebrunell ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ ⏤ DISCLAIMER This show is for entertainment purposes only and does not give financial advice. Before making any decisions consult a professional.

Kevin Harvick became the first back-to-back winner in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2022. Join the hosts, Will Porter and Jacob Simpson, as they discuss his race winning strategy, Denny Hamlin's late race run to the finish that didn't quite work out this time around, Joey Logano's race dominance that ended in defeat, and the final playoff push for drivers looking to get in - including Ryan Blaney's quest to hang on over Martin Truex Jr. Plus, a surprise topic involving a possible reconfiguration of a certain track? You can find it right here on this installment of The Boogity Bros Podcast! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theboogitybrospodcast/message

Plus: The editors reaffirm free speech absolutism in the wake of the recent attack on Salman Rushdie.

As I shared with Andy today, I recall one of his books being among the first that I read early in my career. Now, more than two decades later, it was a pleasure to find so much common ground in how we think about fundraising. Perhaps what I most appreciated about our conversation was that Andy wants fundraisers to enjoy space where the metrics aren't the focus and where collecting a check isn't the only goal. As I have said many times myself, we have to afford the relationship the opportunity to do at least some of the job for us.  Andy wants fundraisers and their employers to be more comfortable with ambiguity because our world seems to get more complex and unpredictable by the day; Andy insists that developing a tolerance for ambiguity is a good trait to have. As studies demonstrated decades ago, Andy wants boards and nonprofit leaders to appreciate the fact that muddling through can sometimes be as good an approach as a well-structured and highly detailed strategy. As always, we are especially grateful to our friends at CueBack for sponsoring The Fundraising Talent.  If you'd like to learn more about Responsive Fundraising's sense-making retreats, email me for more information.  If you'd like to learn more about the messy middle, download our free white paper entitled, Making sense of the messy middle. For more information about the upcoming Nonprofit Consulting Conference, visit their website here. 

Wease takes his puppy to the vet and tries muddled strawberry in Tequila

Enjoy this re-released episode of The Antithesis.Order “Christianity and Wokeness” here.Follow Dr. Strachan and The Antithesis on Twitter.If you like what you hear on The Antithesis, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform!Check out the B.A.R. Network for more amazing, theologically-sound content.

In this episode of ThePrint #NationalInterest, Shekhar Gupta explains how Modi govt's Kashmir policy has been a success in changing status of state & redefining what remains negotiable. To expect it was going to end terror & alienation was wishful thinking. Brought to you by @Kia India   To know more, read: https://theprint.in/national-interest/lets-discuss-is-modi-govts-kashmir-policy-a-success-failure-or-same-old-muddling-along/982693/

With in-person conferences back in full swing now, Jon and Chris had some follow-on takes on Enterprise Connect, along with perspectives from the Channel Partners Expo that Jon recently attended. One main theme is the growing role Big Tech is playing in shaping workplace collaboration experiences to support hybrid work, and another is the role private equity seems poised to play now in consolidating the channel space. Just for good measure, we added our thoughts on HP's acquisition of Poly.  

# 2.2 - Muddling Through the Clashing Narratives of the Multipolar World with Dr. David Bosold by Panoramas of the Local Globe

Tensions rise between party members as they form an alliance to chase the cult of Saviours to the sea.Join PREMIUM for just $3.99p/m and gain access to our exclusive bonus show AFTER DARK; a behind the scenes talk show where the cast and crew reflect on the most recent episodes. You also gain access to professionally written short stories that expand the lore and history of the world of Gregoor-Sheav & much more!Join us on:Live on YouTube every Friday at 5pm PDThttps://www.twitch.tv/spawnofchaosdndWebsite: https://www.chaosawaits.com/Discord: https://discord.com/invite/vgGvHYNGwbFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpawnofChaos/Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpawnofChaosDnDTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thespawnofchaos?Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spawnofchao...Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpawnofChaos/#DungeonsandDragons #DnD #SpawnofChaos #Criticalrole #dimension20

As observers in Washington look back at the Biden administration's first year and prepare for its forthcoming national security and defense strategies, the Net Assessment crew debates the virtues of muddling through. Does the Biden team have a grand plan? Does it need one? And are errors of omission worse than those of commission? Chris, Melanie, and Zack debate recent articles on muddling through by Josh Rovner, Richard Fontaine, and Anne-Marie Slaughter. Chris gives an attaboy to Tom Brady, since he hasn't won enough already. Melanie issues both a grievance and an attaboy to Newt Gingrich. And Zack hails the wonders of easily available satellite imagery. Links:  Joshua Rovner, “How Long can Biden Muddle Through on China?” War on the Rocks, Jan. 26, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/01/how-long-can-biden-muddle-through-on-china/.  Richard Fontaine, “The Case Against Foreign Policy Solutionism,” Foreign Affairs, Feb. 8, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-02-08/case-against-foreign-policy-solutionism.  Richard Fontaine, “Washington's Missing China Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, Jan. 14, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-01-14/washingtons-missing-china-strategy.  Anne-Marie Slaughter, “It's Time to Get Honest About the Biden Doctrine,” New York Times, Nov. 12, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/opinion/biden-foreign-policy.html.  Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022), https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691147130/spies-lies-and-algorithms. Stacie L. Pettyjohn, "Spiking the Problem: Developing a Resilient Posture in the Indo-Pacific with Passive Defenses," War on the Rocks, Jan. 10, 2022.   Dustin Walker, “The Pentagon is in Desperate Need of an Intervention from the Top,” War on the Rocks, Jan. 27, 2022.  Joe DiPaolo, " Newt Gingrich Says January 6 Committee Members 'Face a Real Risk of Jail' if Republicans Win the House," Mediaite, Jan. 23, 2022.  Liz Harrington, Tweet, Jan. 30, 2022.  Newt Gingrich, Tweet, Jan. 26, 2022.  The Hill, Tweet, Jan. 26, 2022.  Stephen Breyer, "Why Regulation Rarely Achieves the Goals It Is Designed to Serve," PBS Commanding Heights (no date). Jeff Darlington and Adam Schefter, “Tom Brady retiring after 22 seasons, seven Super Bowl wins with New England Patriots, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, sources say,” ESPN, Jan. 29, 2022, https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33173652/tom-brady-retiring-22-seasons-seven-super-bowl-wins-new-england-patriots-tampa-bay-buccaneers-sources-say.  Dustin Volz, “Vast Troves of Classified Info Undermine National Security, Spy Chief Says,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 27, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/vast-troves-of-classified-info-undermine-national-security-spy-chief-says-11643286602.  Oona Hathaway, “Keeping the Wrong Secrets: How Washington Misses the Real Security Threat,” Foreign Affairs (January-February 2022), https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/2021/12/14/keeping-the-wrong-secrets/content.html.  Patrick G. Eddington and Christopher A. Preble, “Bad Idea: Overclassification,” Defense360, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dec. 6, 2019, https://defense360.csis.org/bad-idea-overclassification/.  Mathew Burrows and Evan Cooper, “Engagement Reframed #1: Vaccinate the world,” New American Engagement Initiative, Feb. 1, 2022, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/engagement-reframed/vaccinate-the-world/.

Half of the world's population will experience perimenopause and menopause – and yet barely anyone's talking about it. It's estimated that around 13 million women are going through this natural biological process right now in the UK – experiencing such joyful symptoms as hot flushes, fatigue, insomnia, loss of libido, and mood swings – but still stigma, secrecy and shame surround the subject. In this episode, TV and radio presenter Lisa Snowdon shares her experience of perimenopause with women's health expert Dr Shahzadi Harper. They discuss why this is such a crucial conversation for everyone to have (not just women), and why, with the right information and support, menopause can actually be a positive experience.RESOURCES Menopause Support, Advice & Products | BootsBoots Online Doctor Menopause & HRT Treatment The Boots Health Hub NHS menopause information My Menopause Centre Referenced products:Boots Menopause by Complete Woman (vitamins) Boots Vaginal Moisturiser Gel (30g Tube & Applicator) Boots Good Gut Live Friendly Bacteria + Women's Health Support Capsules Boots Synbiotics Pre & Pro Gut Blend Menopause Capsules Boots Menolieve Black Cohosh root extract Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our heroes are back home and discussing serious topics such as life, death, matching your personality to refreshing adult beverages, and if jerking off in adult theatres is acceptable or not...the Pee Wee conspiracy. Adrian gives an honorable shout out to a close friend who recently passed away this week.

This week I talk about Senate votes, Brittany Renner on the Fresh & Fit podcast, and more!

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is Slack and the Sabbath, Part 6: Sabbath Commentary, published by Zvi. Epistemic Status: Several months of experimentation, then talking from the hip Commentary On: Bring Back the Sabbath Required: Slack I have a lot of thoughts on the topic that don't belong in the main presentation. I'm going to put them here in disorganized form for the curious. These claims are believed, but I may not have good explicit evidence to defend them with. I'm fine with that. I. Slack Against Slack One might challenge Sabbath with, “Isn't it weird protecting Slack by taking Slack away? Aren't you avoiding hard bounds on behavior by imposing hard bounds on behavior?“ Yes, I am doing that. Yes it is weird. Also suspicious. You're taking some types of Slack away by forbidding and requiring activities, to guard and create the Slack that matters. This can backfire. When I was a kid the Sabbath was rules preventing fun. Saturday was just Sunday except nothing worked and you sat in a room for three hours while people mumbled in Hebrew. That's not a solution, that's making the problem worse. Sunday was free from outside pressures and insanely great! Why not do that? So no, not everyone needs a Sabbath for Slack or relaxation. It is one solution among many to the problems of outside pressures, to too many choices, to having less than no time and not enough money. Not everyone even has those problems. If you have so much time and so little to do, rather than striking that and reversing it, a regular Sabbath is not right for you. This is your periodic reminder to reverse all advice you hear. You still need to take stock sometimes. If there's nothing worth doing, forcing the issue by taking away your social media and match three games might help solve your rut. Is that worth one day in seven? Probably not, but one in forty-nine? II. Sabbath Dinner I kept and went into a lot of detail on the Sabbath dinner. The dinner speaks to me and my needs a lot. It might not speak to yours, but I'm a big fan, and want to say more about that. Here are some non-obvious benefits, in addition to the ones I already mentioned – a place and time that enables social gatherings and visits and/or family/relationship time, a strong demarcation and strongly positive experience for the transition to your day of rest, and providing urgency and incentive to take care of business around the house and make it a place worth living in. Sabbath dinner gives incentive and opportunity to learn to cook. Cooking skill is an investment that pays off. The few things I know how to cook well provide great benefit to me, even though my wife Laura is a much better cook. If you can't cook, you'll be forced to do commerce constantly to eat reasonably. Having to go into that mode in order to get your daily sustenance is actually pretty bad. It's great to know that if need be, you can take care of things yourself, if you're short on cash or in an unfamiliar place without good options. There's also something very satisfying about both cooking and knowing how to cook. With time, you learn to make things exactly the way you like, and things are pretty great. They're even better than that for those around you. Highly recommended. Basic life skills and self-sufficiency are a thing, they are key to Slack. Muddling through without them is a trap. This then contrasts with the lack of cooking during Sabbath. I suspect that it should go a step further and you should perhaps fast on the Sabbath, with the feast at the start setting you up well for either. Fasting takes away the distraction of thinking about food, and fasting is a key Slack skill – if you need to eat all the time, that can lead to some bad trade-offs. If I don't have good options I know I can always fast, because I have the practice. Even if cooking is allowed, consumption shouldn't be a focus...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is Slack and the Sabbath, Part 6: Sabbath Commentary, published by Zvi. Epistemic Status: Several months of experimentation, then talking from the hip Commentary On: Bring Back the Sabbath Required: Slack I have a lot of thoughts on the topic that don't belong in the main presentation. I'm going to put them here in disorganized form for the curious. These claims are believed, but I may not have good explicit evidence to defend them with. I'm fine with that. I. Slack Against Slack One might challenge Sabbath with, “Isn't it weird protecting Slack by taking Slack away? Aren't you avoiding hard bounds on behavior by imposing hard bounds on behavior?“ Yes, I am doing that. Yes it is weird. Also suspicious. You're taking some types of Slack away by forbidding and requiring activities, to guard and create the Slack that matters. This can backfire. When I was a kid the Sabbath was rules preventing fun. Saturday was just Sunday except nothing worked and you sat in a room for three hours while people mumbled in Hebrew. That's not a solution, that's making the problem worse. Sunday was free from outside pressures and insanely great! Why not do that? So no, not everyone needs a Sabbath for Slack or relaxation. It is one solution among many to the problems of outside pressures, to too many choices, to having less than no time and not enough money. Not everyone even has those problems. If you have so much time and so little to do, rather than striking that and reversing it, a regular Sabbath is not right for you. This is your periodic reminder to reverse all advice you hear. You still need to take stock sometimes. If there's nothing worth doing, forcing the issue by taking away your social media and match three games might help solve your rut. Is that worth one day in seven? Probably not, but one in forty-nine? II. Sabbath Dinner I kept and went into a lot of detail on the Sabbath dinner. The dinner speaks to me and my needs a lot. It might not speak to yours, but I'm a big fan, and want to say more about that. Here are some non-obvious benefits, in addition to the ones I already mentioned – a place and time that enables social gatherings and visits and/or family/relationship time, a strong demarcation and strongly positive experience for the transition to your day of rest, and providing urgency and incentive to take care of business around the house and make it a place worth living in. Sabbath dinner gives incentive and opportunity to learn to cook. Cooking skill is an investment that pays off. The few things I know how to cook well provide great benefit to me, even though my wife Laura is a much better cook. If you can't cook, you'll be forced to do commerce constantly to eat reasonably. Having to go into that mode in order to get your daily sustenance is actually pretty bad. It's great to know that if need be, you can take care of things yourself, if you're short on cash or in an unfamiliar place without good options. There's also something very satisfying about both cooking and knowing how to cook. With time, you learn to make things exactly the way you like, and things are pretty great. They're even better than that for those around you. Highly recommended. Basic life skills and self-sufficiency are a thing, they are key to Slack. Muddling through without them is a trap. This then contrasts with the lack of cooking during Sabbath. I suspect that it should go a step further and you should perhaps fast on the Sabbath, with the feast at the start setting you up well for either. Fasting takes away the distraction of thinking about food, and fasting is a key Slack skill – if you need to eat all the time, that can lead to some bad trade-offs. If I don't have good options I know I can always fast, because I have the practice. Even if cooking is allowed, consumption shouldn't be a focus...

We ignore history. Policymakers certainly do. But there is very little new under the sun. Duncan Weldon reminds us that we ignore history at our peril. And peril is where we are at. There is so much in this unusually readable book. ‘Levelling up’ is at least a century old, despite Boris Johnson taking credit for its invention. Want to know what some of today’s Trump-Johnson-Orban leaders resemble Mafia Dons? Take a look at history: we are more often ruled by kleptocrats than democrats. Jim and Chris have an enjoyable, longer than usual, but highly entertaining chat with Duncan Weldon about his new book, ‘Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through. The Surprising Story of the British Economy’. You will be surprised! Subscribe at cjpeconomics.substack.com

Talking to James Cary this week are Adrian and Celia Reynolds. Adrian serves as associate national director for FIEC and also as a leader at Christchurch Harborough where Celia works part time as the women's worker at church as well as in the home.They have have been married for 30 years,  have three daughters, and three grandchildren and have written several books on marriage and sexual intimacy and are running a couple of seminars during Week 3 of this year's convention on Faithfulness in the Home: Faithful in marriage. You can have a look at Keswick's publications and further resources here.This podcast is from Keswick ministries. You can also find a link to their other podcast, Kes Talks, here.This podcast was presented and produced by James CaryThe theme tune is Tiny Things by Yvonne Lyon Register and book for the Keswick Convention 2021 here.Support the Show.Visit the Keswick Ministries website for more resources. The Keswick Convention is free and runs from 13th July until 2nd August 2024. https://keswickministries.org/

Episode 10! I discuss what I've done over the past month. Go over the Chasing the Yield & That's All I Got podcasts. Discuss workflow, wordpress, and thought process.

In his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey wrote, "Begin with the End in Mind means to begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination, and then continue by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen". Having a clear vision for the future applies to all areas of your life, parenting is no exception. The mothering 'project' might be long, but having a goal for what you want to achieve with your children gives you clarity from the barrage of demands, the tedium of getting dinner on the table and the worry about their school work. Today on High Five Friday, Michelle Dawson talks about the importance of parenting with the end in mind. You can find the full write up from this episode including the Show Notes at www.Lisa-York.com/076 Your iTunes Rating and Review helps spread the SuperMum message. Thanks so much! Go Conquer Motherhood!  

Many of us have had mountain-top experiences at one time in our life or another. We have had times when God seemed right there, so close that, at that moment it seemed like nothing to offer God everything, to sacrifice all for the sake of Christ. These mountain-top experiences, at least for me, are very few and far between. It is a kind of miracle when this happens. But like most miracles, it happens not so that we don't have to suffer, don't have to slog through the rest of life on the plains. Rather, God gives us these moments as signs, as encouragement to keep us on the way, as a foretaste so that we know what the coming main meal will be. But the wonderful experience of nearness to God soon passes and we find ourselves back in the world, back in the arena of our salvation, back now having to fulfill the promise of giving our life to God. On the mountain top it seemed that it would be so easy, but on the plains, in the mud and snirt (a Canadian term referring to snow mixed with dirt), in the messiness of the lives we actually live, giving our life to God is much more difficult and messy than we ever imagined it would be.

I know. Isn't that the cuttest family ever? That's Jackie and her beautiful family. I met Jackie--through the podcast. No really. She was a listener who found my show but we've been in contact and now I feel like we've been friends since middle school. She's a young mom who admits she does NOT having all together, and by sharing her story of navigating through motherhood and being a wife, she has developed a loyal following of people who love her. This show just made my heart happy because at the end of the day we all just want to connect with other people and know that we have been "seen" by someone. And I think Jackie and I do that for another. Also, Jackie started an awesome non-profit that garners diapers to families who just can't afford them. I know. She's rad. Check out and follow all things Jackie: Blog: muddlingmomma.com Diaper Non-Profit: www.12for1.org Twitter/Insta: @jmw3883 On Facebook: muddlingmomma and jackiemweismanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.