Podcasts about National academy

Paid Subscribers are invited to tonight's weekly SUPD hangout at 8pmEST! I will send the link at 7EST Subscribe and Watch Interviews LIVE : On YOUTUBE.com/StandUpWithPete ON SubstackStandUpWithPete Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. This show is Ad free and fully supported by listeners like you! Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 750 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Subscribe now Dr. Michael E. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. He served as Penn's inaugural Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action, and currently serves as Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM). Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research interests include the study of Earth's climate system and the science, impacts and policy implications of human-caused climate change. Dr. Mann was a Lead Author on the Observed Climate Variability and Change chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report in 2001 and was organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science in 2003. He has received a number of honors and awards including NOAA's outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. He contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union in 2012 and was awarded the National Conservation Achievement Award for science by the National Wildlife Federation in 2013. He made Bloomberg News' list of fifty most influential people in 2013. In 2014, he was named Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and received the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education. He received the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One in 2017, the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018 and the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union in 2018. In 2019 he received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and in 2020 he received the World Sustainability Award of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2020. He received the Leo Szilard Award of the American Physical Society in 2021 and was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 2023. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2024 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2026. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is also a co-founder of the award-winning science website RealClimate.org. Listen rate and review on Apple Podcasts Listen rate and review on Spotify Pete On Instagram Pete on Blue Sky Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on Twitter Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page All things Jon Carroll Gift a Subscription https://www.patreon.com/PeteDominick/gift Send Pete $ Directly on Venmo May I be safe and protected from harm. May I be happy in the midst of how things are. May I be healthy, strong, and whole. May I live with ease of well-being

What does it take to bring a seabird back from the brink—and can we keep it there? We travel from a rocky island of Maine to a tiny restored island in coastal Louisiana to learn the astonishing comeback stories of two beloved birds, puffins and pelicans. This is a hopeful story about how innovative ideas can save wildlife — and asks whether that's enough in a rapidly changing world.CREDITSThis episode was reported by Katelyn Harrop and Michael McEwan and hosted by Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun. Eve Abrams edited the pelicans story. The puffins story was edited by Carlyle Calhoun. The episode was fact-checked by Philip Kiefer with help from Shruti Gautam. Sound design by Rebecca Nolan and our theme music is by Jon Batiste. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO's Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation. 

The same mathematics that explains why a fridge magnet sticks to your refrigerator also explains why neural networks work when they have no right to. His group did the calculation. Nobody else had. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Goldenfeld is a Professor of Physics at UC San Diego, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences who spent 36 years at the University of Illinois applying condensed matter physics to problems everyone else had given up on: why the genetic code is optimal, why early life evolved impossibly fast, and why AI works despite being overparameterized beyond anything classical statistics can explain. The thread connecting all three is one idea: that what emerges from many things together is qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. That idea explains magnetism, AI, the origin of the genetic code, and why life may be inevitable wherever the laws of physics apply. He also argues that what is happening to science right now is not a disagreement about facts but a fracture in how people decide what is true, and that is a more dangerous problem. What you'll hear: -Why the same phase transition that explains magnetism also explains why AI works at all -Why Francis Crick concluded life must have come from outer space and what Goldenfeld found instead -What horizontal gene transfer has to do with how libraries work -Why Goldenfeld thinks Enceladus is a better bet for life than Europa -The purpose of life, stated as a thermodynamics problem -Why “different is more” is more useful than “more is different” “The impact you make is the ratio of what you do divided by what everybody else does. Minimize the denominator.” — Nigel Goldenfeld CHAPTERS 00:00 AI shouldn't work. It does. 00:56 What is a phase transition? 03:10 What the renormalization group does 08:54 Ising gave up. Wrong dimension. 13:32 Nigel almost met Ising. 40 minutes away. 26:38 AI is the best example of more is different 33:52 Bardeen won two Nobels. The transistor looked like chewing gum. 37:24 The three mysteries Crick couldn't solve 46:20 The genetic code can't evolve. And yet it did. 49:00 How early life evolved like a library 57:06 The purpose of life as a physics problem 01:00:04 Life is physics, not chemistry 01:05:56 Anti-science age. Not because of opinions. 01:13:00 20 seconds with your 20-year-old self 01:17:14 Different is more Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Featured Guest: Nigel Goldenfeld website: https://guava.physics.ucsd.edu/~nigel/ Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0201554097?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallbackNigel Goldenfeld on Twitter/X: https://x.com/NigelGoldenfeld My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #intotheimpossible #briankeating #NigelGoldenfeld #physics #AI #originoflife #condensedmatterphysics #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the key to leading change isn't having all the answers, but knowing how to listen? In this episode, Sue Hassmiller, a nationally recognized nurse leader, leadership coach, and health care strategist, talks about the human side of leading teams through change and what it takes to build trust, psychological safety, and true ownership. She explains why deep listening and genuine relationships are more effective than simply telling people what to do. She also explores the difference between compliance and ownership, and how leaders can help teams take greater responsibility for improvement by connecting change to their values and giving them a voice. Finally, Sue shares how coaching, curiosity, and self-awareness can help leaders overcome judgment and better understand why teams may feel stuck, resistant, or exhausted. Tune in to learn how leaders can listen differently, build stronger connections, and create the conditions for meaningful, lasting change in health care! IHI Spotlight - Jesse McCall: In this IHI Spotlight, Jesse McCall, Senior Director at IHI, explains that sustainable healthcare improvement depends as much on people and culture as it does on technical methods. He emphasizes connecting frontline staff to a shared purpose, creating psychologically safe environments where people can speak up and test new ideas, and ensuring leaders close feedback loops so employees become partners in change rather than recipients of it. About Sue Hassmiller: Sue Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, is an executive and leadership coach for nurse executives and health care leaders. Across a distinguished career spanning frontline public health, nursing academia, high-level government policy, and 25 years leading national initiatives at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she has dedicated her life to transforming health care systems from the inside out. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, recipient of the Florence Nightingale Medal, and recognized as a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing, Sue combines multi-sector expertise with certified coaching to help health care leaders navigate complex relationships, drive health equity, and champion compassionate care. She is also the author of Resetting: An Unplanned Journey of Love, Loss, and Living Again, which explores healing and the vital human element in modern health care. Things You'll Learn: Deep listening is essential for understanding how people experience and respond to change. Leaders build ownership by listening to their teams, acknowledging their perspectives, and connecting change to shared values. Psychological safety enables teams to contribute ideas, innovate, and perform at their best. Effective behavior change requires leaders to change their own behaviors by becoming more curious, self-aware, and less judgmental. Leaders can better support stuck or exhausted teams by asking questions and seeking to understand the underlying causes instead of making assumptions. Resources: Connect with and follow Sue Hassmiller on LinkedIn.

Last Friday on Louisiana Considered, we brought you the first part of the latest episode of Sea Change, all about the fight against pollution in the Texas Gulf. Today, we bring you part 2. Neil McQueen learned to surf as a Texas teenager, and it changed his life – eventually pulling him away from a career as a plastics engineer and into the fight to save the very waters that shaped him. Thanks to the way ocean currents loop through the Gulf, the Texas coast collects roughly 10 times more plastic debris than any other Gulf state, much of it spilling from the massive petrochemical complex that lines its shores.Today, reporter Avery Thompson follows Neil from the surf off Mustang Island to the halls of the Texas Capitol to witness a personal reckoning with the plastics economy that helped build modern Texas—and one man's determination to leave the ocean better than he found it.To learn more about the citizen-led science project tracking pre-production plastics, called nurdles, check out the Nurdle Patrol. And for more about the Surfrider Foundation's work on the Texas coast, click here.CREDITSThis episode was reported by Texas-based reporter Avery Thompson. It was edited by Carlyle Calhoun and Eve Abrams, with additional help from Johanna Zorn, Eva Tesfaye, and Michael McEwan. Carlyle Calhoun is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste, and sound design by Dennis Funk with help from Avery Thompson.Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO's Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

Tina Seelig is the Executive Director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University, the world's largest fully endowed graduate fellowship program. She is also Director Emerita of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and has spent decades teaching creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership at Stanford, including in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and the d.school. Tina earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford Medical School, where she studied neuroplasticity, and has worked as a management consultant, multimedia producer, and entrepreneur. She is the author of numerous books on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, including What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, inGenius, Creativity Rules, and her newest book, What I Wish I Knew About Luck. Her work has earned numerous honors, including the National Academy of Engineering's Gordon Prize for her contributions to engineering and entrepreneurship education. In this episode we discuss the following: For Tina, improving her luck by saying thank you means looking at her calendar at the end of each day and writing thank you notes to everyone who helped her that day. What a powerful story about her college professor. She thanked him 20 years after the class, and 20 years after that, her thank you letter was read at his funeral. As Tina said, there is no statute of limitations on saying thanks. Luck is also a long game. For years, Tina invited John Hennessy to speak to her class. And every year she wrote him a thank you note after he spoke. When she recently asked him if he would have kept speaking without the notes, he said, probably not. And she would have never known it was because she hadn't expressed gratitude. Now Tina runs the Knight Hennessy Scholars program with John. I also love how Tina applies this in the workplace and creates a culture of people saying thank you by simply modeling the behavior.

Dr. Julia Bailey-Serres is Director of the Center for Plant Cell Biology and Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Riverside. She also holds the University of California John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair and is Professor of Rice Physiology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. A major focus of Julia's lab is to investigate how plants survive water extremes with the goal of improving the ability of crops to survive a temporary flood. When she's not working, Julia enjoys gardening, hiking, traveling, and spending time with her friends and family. She also has fun baking and cooking with fresh vegetables from her garden. She was awarded her B.S. in biology from the University of Utah and her Ph.D. in botany from the University of Edinburgh. Afterwards, Julia conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley before joining the faculty at UCR. She has received many awards and honors over the course of her career, including being named an elected Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists. In addition, she has been recognized with the Stephen Hales Prize from the American Society of Plant Biologists. In our interview, Julia shares more about her life and research.

In 1997, Miss USA won Miss Universe with one perfectly judged answer. She revealed just enough to charm, but not enough to shock. Harvard professor Leslie John says that's scientifically proven to persuade. Her research shows revealers are more likeable, more hireable, and even more dateable. In this episode, she shares why oversharing beats staying guarded, why privacy promises make us shy, and how putting fears into words can cure phobias. --- ​​Become an FSB member: https://get.fsb.org.uk/nudge/ Unlock the Nudge Vaults: https://www.nudgepodcast.com/vaults Leslie's book Revealing: https://amzn.to/3RkFTAq  Leslie's website: https://www.proflesliejohn.com/  Join 12,199 readers of the Nudge Newsletter: https://www.nudgepodcast.com/mailing-list Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phill-agnew/  --- Today's sources:  Huang, K., Yeomans, M., Brooks, A. W., Minson, J., & Gino, F. (2017). It doesn't hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 430–452. John, L. K., Acquisti, A., & Loewenstein, G. (2011). Strangers on a plane: Context-dependent willingness to divulge sensitive information. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(5), 858–873. John, L. K., Barasz, K., & Norton, M. I. (2016). Hiding personal information reveals the worst. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(4), 954–959. Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G. (2012). Feelings into words: Contributions of language to exposure therapy. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1086–1091. Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274–281. Spera, S. P., Buhrfeind, E. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (1994). Expressive writing and coping with job loss. Academy of Management Journal, 37(3), 722–733.

It's back-to-school szn, and while some kids are stressing over earlier wake-ups, this year's incoming medical students have a bigger question to answer: how do you train for a career that could still have you practicing medicine in the 2070s, when the tools of medicine are changing so rapidly?For our back-to-school episode, we sat down with Stanford University School of Medicine Dean Dr. Lloyd Minor to talk about how AI is already reshaping what future doctors learn and how they're taught, as well as what's still not working in American healthcare.We cover:What medical students are actually being taught about AI, and where Stanford still draws the lineWhy Stanford's tumor boards no longer start with humansThe surprising way Dr. Minor thinks AI could level the playing field in healthcare accessWhy the same AI tools helping patients feel more informed are also making them more anxiousThe counterintuitive reason new medical technology gets more expensive before it gets cheaperWhat's still standing in the way of a vision for precision medicine that's been decades in the makingAbout our guest:Lloyd B. Minor, MD, is a scientist, surgeon, and academic leader. He is the Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Stanford University. Dr. Minor also is a professor of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and a professor of Bioengineering and of Neurobiology, by courtesy, at Stanford University.As dean, Dr. Minor has had an integral role in setting strategy for the clinical enterprise of Stanford Medicine, an academic medical center that includes the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Health Care, and Stanford Medicine Children's Health. With his leadership, Stanford Medicine leads the biomedical revolution in Precision Health. His book, “Discovering Precision Health,” describes this shift to more preventive, personalized health care and highlights how biomedical advances are dramatically improving our ability to treat and cure complex diseases. In 2021, Dr. Minor articulated and began realizing a bold vision to transform the future of life sciences at Stanford University and beyond – a multi-decade journey enabled by Precision Health.In August 2023, Dr. Minor was appointed Vice President for Medical Affairs to lead all matters related to health and medicine at Stanford University.Before Stanford, Dr. Minor was provost and senior vice president for academic affairs of Johns Hopkins University. Prior to this appointment in 2009, Dr. Minor served as the Andelot Professor and director (chair) of the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and otolaryngologist-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital.With more than 160 published articles and chapters, Dr. Minor is an expert in balance and inner ear disorders perhaps best known for discovering superior canal dehiscence syndrome, a debilitating disorder characterized by sound- or pressure-induced dizziness. He subsequently developed a surgical procedure that corrects the problem and alleviates symptoms.In 2012, Dr. Minor was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.—

In this week's episode, both of our storytellers uncover cracks in the education system that prove harder to ignore than they expected.Part 1: While teaching a summer school math class in Texas, Justine Ang Fonte realizes that many of her students have never received even the most basic sex education.Part 2: Guilherme Lichand uncovers a flaw in Brazil's education system that leaves thousands of children with invisible disabilities unidentified and unsupported.Justine Ang Fonte, M.Ed, MPH is the child of Philippine immigrants and an award-winning sex educator, international keynote speaker, and professor based in New York City. She received her Master's in Education in Teaching from the University of Hawai'i and her Master's in Public Health in Sexuality from Columbia University. She has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Glamour, and the BBC and Hulu docuseries, Planet Sex. Justine is the author and voice of the Audible Original, How to Talk to Your Kids About Sex and is the co-editor of the award-winning book, Fundamental Concepts and Critical Developments in Sex Education.Guilherme is proudly Brazilian. His research focuses on the sources of educational inequities in the global South and on solutions with the potential to overturn them. He is co-director at the Stanford Lemann Center and a faculty affiliate at the Stanford King Center on Global Development and at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. He holds a PhD in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. He was previously the UNICEF Professor of Child Well-being and Development at the University of Zurich. Guilherme is also a co-founder of Brazilian EdTech Movva, a student success management system supporting vulnerable students graduate college. He was acknowledged by the Schwab Foundation as top-10 Brazilian social entrepreneur in 2020 (post-Covid legacy) and by MIT Technology Review as the top under-35 Brazilian innovator in 2014. His research has been published in numerous scientific journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Nature Human Behavior, and campaigns featuring his work won multiple awards, including two lions at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

HEALTH NEWS Turmeric Extract CLE Improves Orientation and Attention in Middle-Aged Adults, Study Finds Healthy midlife habits linked to longer dementia-free years Industrial Chicken Farming Is Supercharging the Spread of a Dangerous Foodborne Bacterium How folic acid may protect a baby's developing brain and spinal cord Study: Exercise Prompts Liver Enzyme That May Protect Brain Barrier Turmeric Extract CLE Improves Orientation and Attention in Middle-Aged Adults, Study Finds August 10 2026 (Natural News) A 24-week clinical trial published in Frontiers in Nutrition has found that a non-curcumin turmeric extract known as CLE (curcuma longa extract) improved two cognitive functions – orientation and attention – in healthy adults aged 40 to 69. The study tested 35 cognitive measures and reported statistically significant improvements on only two: awareness of time, place and surroundings (orientation) and the ability to focus and ignore distractions (attention). Alzheimer's disease affects about 5.3 million Americans, making it the leading cause of dementia and the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. The CLE extract tested in this trial contains different compounds – turmeronols A and B and bisacurone – which have shown anti-inflammatory effects in laboratory models. The trial enrolled 40 participants with subtle cognitive changes still considered within the normal range. They were randomly assigned to take either two CLE capsules daily or a placebo for 24 weeks. Cognitive assessments were administered at baseline, at 12 weeks, and at 24 weeks using standard screening tools and an eye-tracking platform. After six months, participants in the CLE group scored higher on orientation compared with the placebo group, according to both an eye-tracking cognitive test and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment – Japanese version (MoCA-J). The CLE group also demonstrated better attention – the ability to focus and ignore distractions – based on the eye-tracking assessment. Healthy midlife habits linked to longer dementia-free years New York University Langone Health, August 6 2026 (News-Medical) Having normal blood pressure, no diabetes, and not smoking from age 48 to 68, are associated with nearly 13 additional years on average of dementia-free life, a new study shows. Led by NYU Langone Health researchers, the new work also found that, no matter how many risk factors they had, women lived longer without dementia than men, and that white study participants had more dementia-free years than Black participants. The findings argue that people need to actively avert these factors in midlife as a strategy for preserving brain health for more than a decade. The current study looked at 12,409 people with an average age of 56 who were free of dementia. Participants were assessed for three risk factors: high blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking. They were then followed for an average of 26 years. Those who had no risk factors lived without developing dementia nearly 13 years longer than people with the three risk factors (30 years total after the study's start versus 17 years). The team also sought to determine how cardiovascular risk factors in midlife influenced dementia-free survival across demographics. Women with all three risk factors lived an average of 18.1 years from the start of tracking without developing dementia, compared to 16.6 years for male study participants. White participants with all three risk factors lived an average of 19.6 years without developing dementia, compared to 16 years for Black participants. Industrial Chicken Farming Is Supercharging the Spread of a Dangerous Foodborne Bacterium Oxford University, August 10, 2026 (SciTech Daily) Commercial poultry farms now hold billions of chickens, creating a vast habitat where bacteria can move, mix and adapt. An analysis from the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research at the University of Oxford found that industrial poultry production has increased the movement of Campylobacter more than 100 times, allowing strains once associated with wild birds to circulate widely among farmed chickens. Campylobacter is the world's most common bacterial cause of diarrhea. Treatment is also becoming more difficult as antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the ability of bacteria to withstand drugs intended to kill them, continues to rise. Researchers analyzed nearly 2,800 Campylobacter genomes collected from chickens and wild birds in 30 countries (including the UK and USA) between 1979 and 2024. Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicates that the global growth of chicken production has given different strains more opportunities to spread, exchange genetic material and acquire traits that support survival. Chickens now represent about 70% of all bird biomass on Earth. The findings suggest that enormous, densely packed flocks may function as ecological ‘pathogen sponges,' taking in bacterial strains from different sources and amplifying them. How folic acid may protect a baby's developing brain and spinal cord Hebrew University of Jerusalem, August 11 2026 (Medical Xpress) For more than 30 years, one piece of pregnancy advice has been remarkably consistent: Take folic acid. The reason is clear. Folic acid, or vitamin B9, can lower the risk of neural tube defects, serious birth defects that happen when the early structure that becomes the brain and spinal cord does not close properly. What has been much less clear is how folic acid works. Now, researchers may have found an important part of the answer. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists discovered that folic acid appears to rely on an enzyme called ALDH1L1. That enzyme helps produce retinoic acid, a powerful developmental signal made from vitamin A. Scientists have long known that folic acid can help prevent many of these defects. But the vitamin seems to be doing more than simply supplying nutrients. The new research suggests that folic acid helps switch on ALDH1L1, a gene that makes the ALDH1L1 enzyme. That enzyme can then help turn a vitamin A-related molecule called retinaldehyde into retinoic acid. Retinoic acid acts like a set of instructions, telling developing cells when to grow, what to become, where to go and when to stop dividing. Study: Exercise Prompts Liver Enzyme That May Protect Brain Barrier University of California at San Francisco, August 10 2026 (Natural News) Researchers at the UC San Francisco Bakar Aging Research Institute have found that exercise prompts the liver to release an enzyme that travels through the bloodstream to the brain and repairs the blood-brain barrier, according to a study published in the journal Cell. The enzyme, called GPLD1, removes a protein called TNAP that accumulates on blood-brain barrier cells over time, the report stated. The findings describe a direct liver-to-brain pathway that partly explains how physical activity protects the brain. The study identified TNAP as a protein that builds up on blood-brain barrier cells over time, according to the researchers. GPLD1 acts to remove TNAP, restoring the barrier's ability to admit nutrients and oxygen while blocking toxins, pathogens, and inflammatory molecules. The findings suggest that consistent, moderate exercise may trigger GPLD1 release, according to the report. Activities such as walking, cycling, and yoga may support cognitive health through this liver-brain connection, the researchers said.       Discussion about this episode

rWotD Episode 3388: Edward Chang (neurosurgeon) Welcome to random Wiki of the Day, your journey through Wikipedia's vast and varied content, one random article at a time.The random article for Thursday, 13 August 2026, is Edward Chang (neurosurgeon).Edward Chang is an American neurosurgeon and scientist. He is the Joan and Sandy Weill Chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco and Jeanne Robertson Distinguished Professor.Chang specializes in operative brain mapping to ensure the safety and effectiveness of surgery for treating seizures and brain tumors, as well as micro-neurosurgery for treating cranial nerve disorders such as trigeminal neuralgia and hemifacial spasm. In 2020, Chang was elected into the National Academy of Medicine for "deciphering the functional blueprint of speech in the human cerebral cortex, pioneering advanced clinical methods for human brain mapping and spearheading novel translational neuroprosthetic technology for paralyzed patients."This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:37 UTC on Thursday, 13 August 2026.For the full current version of the article, see Edward Chang (neurosurgeon) on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm generative Matthew.

Throughout the Western history of conservation, protecting nature has often meant removing people. It's what happened during the creation of many of America's national parks. But what if protecting nature didn't have to mean displacing the people who call it home? That's the question that brings us to Culatra, a small fishing island off Portugal's southern coast, and one of the country's seven natural wonders. For decades, the Portuguese government saw only one way to save the fragile lagoon surrounding Culatra: kick out the residents. This episode follows one woman's decades-long fight for her island — and the unlikely alliance she built along the way with the very scientists once sent to evict her.CREDITSThis episode was reported and produced by Geert Vlieger. Sound design also by Geert. Johanna Zorn edited the episode with help from Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun. Fado was performed on acoustic guitar by Ricardo Martins and Cláudio Sousa. All other music in the episode is composed and produced by Geert. Sea Change's theme music is by Jon Batiste.Production of this episode was made possible with support from the Walden Collective and Sciaena, and funding from the European Union's Big Green Project. One brief update: Valentina Munoz is now in Lisbon and is no longer working for the NGO, but hopes to continue working on community-based ocean protection programs. Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. And to help others find our podcast, please share this episode with a friend!Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO's Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation. 

James-Christian Blockwood interviews Academy Fellow Dr. Howard Balanoff of the William P. Hobby Center for Public Service at Texas State University and municipal attorney Alan Bojorquez about defining “good government” amid declining public trust and growing conflict at even local meetings. We learn about the value of the "Ten Texas Traits of Good Government": Good Government is Respectful, Responsive, Effective, Transparent, Competent, Ethical, Lawful, Innovative, Fiscally Sound, and Accountable.00:00 Qualified Leaders Matter01:06 Defining Good Government02:31 Ethics and Competence03:44 Trust and Public Cynicism06:46 Ten Texas Traits09:08 Traits Explained14:07 Training Elected Officials15:08 Advice for Newcomers18:44 Personal Commitments21:43 Transparency and EngagementCheck out the 10 Texas Traits here: https://texasmunicipallawyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Ten-Texas-Traits-of-Good-Gov.pdfManagement Matters is a presentation of the National Academy of Public Administration produced by Lizzie Alwan and Matt Hampton and edited by Matt Hampton. Support the Podcast Today at: donate@napawash.org or 202-347-3190Episode music: Hope by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.comMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comFollow us on YouTube for clips and more: @NAPAWASH_YT

In this episode of THE MENTORS RADIO, Host Dan Hesse talks with Bengt Holmström, the Emeritus Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at MIT, to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of receiving the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to contract theory. His research has advanced the understanding of incentives, organizations, corporate governance, and financial liquidity. Bengt is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford and before MIT, he held faculty appointments at Yale and Northwestern. Dr. Holmstrom explains why factors that are hard to measure usually drive better behavior in incentive plans than those that are easy to measure.  He mentors his students that asking the right questions is far more important than answering questions. A self-described “AI optimist,” he considers the AI companion he has created, Charlie, clever and life-enriching.  LISTEN TO this radio broadcast live on iHeart Radio, or go to “THE MENTORS RADIO” podcast any time, anywhere, on any podcast platform – subscribe here and don't miss an episode! SHOW NOTES: BENGT HOLMSTRÖM: BIO: BIO: Bengt Holmström https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengt_Holmstr%C3%B6m BOOKS: Inside and Outside Liquidity, by Bengt Holmström and Jean Tirole — Two leading economists develop a theory explaining the demand for and supply of liquid assets. Why do financial institutions, industrial companies, and households hold low-yielding money balances, Treasury bills, and other liquid assets? When and to what extent can… WEBSITE: The Nobel Prize: Bengt Holmström MIT Economics: Bengt Holmström (includes access to presentations, etc)

Good afternoon, I'm _ with today's episode of EZ News. Lai boards coast guard vessel to observe coastal defense President Lai Ching-te boarded a Coast Guard Administration vessel in New Taipei's Bali District to observe coastal defense (海岸防禦) operations during the Han Kuang military exercise. According to the Presidential Office, Lai received briefings (簡報) on the patrol vessel's equipment and coastal strike operations. He also inspected its missile launcher system and learned about its configuration and operational readiness (作戰準備狀態). Thursday marked the second day of the Han Kuang exercise, with drills in the north focusing on coastal defense and other defensive operations. Typhoon Dolphin moves west Meteorologist Wu De Rong says Typhoon Dolphin appears to be moving further west even as it continues to weaken. The Central News Agency cites Wu as saying that while the system is expected to pass near the Ryukyu Islands today, uncertainty in its projected track (預測路徑) is increasing, making it less likely that the storm might miss Taiwan completely. Because of this, Wu is warning of intense rainfall in northern Taiwan and later in central and southern Taiwan tomorrow through the early morning of the 10th. While temperatures are expected to drop in parts of Taiwan, eastern Taiwan may experience extreme heat due to downslope warming (下坡增溫) caused by air descending over the mountains. Strong wind gusts are also expected across Taiwan, and residents are advised to take precautions. National Central University planning Arctic expedition Members of the National Central University's Polar Institute are taking part in what is Taiwan's first ever independently planned expedition (考察／探險) to the Arctic. According to the university, a 30-member team will be spending 12 days near Norway's Svalbard archipelago (群島), which is located midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The team includes scientists from Academia Sinica, the National Taiwan University and the National Academy of Marine Research. The university says although Taiwan is not an Arctic nation, changes in the Arctic could have long-term consequences for Taiwan. UKRAINE WARNS ALLIED AIR DEFENCE MISSILE SUPPLIES DOWN BY A THIRD AS ZELENSKY URGES URGENT ACTION AHEAD OF WINTER Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine has hit more oil facilities deep inside Russia. The attacks are part of Kyiv's effort to undermine (削弱) Moscow's wartime economy. Meanwhile, Russian drone and glide bomb attacks across Ukraine killed at least three civilians and wounded 22 others. Zelenskyy is urging his allies to supply interceptor missiles to bolster (加強／強化) Ukraine's air defenses. William Denselow reports from Brussels. That was William Denselow reporting. Iran reviews ban on US ships An Iranian parliamentary committee is ​reviewing a preliminary bill ‌that would bar (禁止) U.S., Israeli and ​other "hostile" vessels from ​transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The ban was reported by Iran's semi-official ​Fars news agency… and its citing a lawmaker. The draft bill would impose ​fines (處以罰款) of up ​to 20% of a ship's ‌cargo value for violations of the proposed restrictions. The lawmaker said ​the ​legislation was still under expert review ​and that ​parliament had invited specialists to submit recommendations before the ​draft is ​finalised. Canada climate change wildfires In North America, a new analysis (分析) found that climate change created conditions that led to Canada's Wildfires… even though the Trump administration thinks otherwise. Ed Donahue explains. That was the I.C.R.T. EZ News, I'm _. -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

Mindy Brashears, Ph.D. is the USDA's Under Secretary for Food Safety. Dr. Brashears previously served as Under Secretary for Food Safety from 2020–2021, and Deputy Under Secretary in 2019. Dr. Brashears returns to USDA from Texas Tech University, where she was a Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Food Safety and Public Health, the Roth and Letch Family Endowed Chair for Food Safety, and the Director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence. Dr. Brashears' research program has advanced food safety in meat and poultry production, with a focus on public health. Her work evaluated interventions in pre- and post-harvest environments and antimicrobial drug resistance in animal feeding systems. She has led international research teams across the globe to enhance food safety, security, and sustainable agriculture systems. Her research has resulted in more than 20 patents and patents pending for innovations in food safety.Beyond academia, Dr. Brashears has held leadership roles on boards and advisory committees, including the American Meat Science Association, the Development Council, the International Stockman's Educational Foundation, and the Protein Pact. She was a founding member of the SAFE Think Tank and has chaired the National Alliance for Food Safety and Security and the USDA's multi-state research group. Her contributions have earned national and international recognition, including induction into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame, Fellow status in the American Meat Science Association (AMSA) and the National Academy of Inventors, and numerous awards from leading associations.  Justin Ransom, Ph.D. is Administrator of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), where he oversees FSIS' mission to ensure the safety, wholesomeness, and proper labeling of America's commercial supply of meat, poultry, and processed egg products. He leads the agency's modernization efforts, streamlining inspection systems, strengthening public health protections, and advancing science-based policies.  Dr. Ransom brings more than 20 years of executive leadership in food safety, quality systems, animal welfare and sustainability. Immediately prior to his appointment, he served as senior director of sustainable food strategy at Tyson Foods, where he spearheaded enterprise-wide sustainability programs. His diverse industry experience also includes roles at McDonald's and OSI Group, where he managed and advanced complex food supply chains across global markets.  With roots in production agriculture, Dr. Ransom has worked as a scientist, livestock breeder, and global supply chain leader, deepening his first-hand knowledge of end-to-end food system management. He began his public service career at USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, contributing to the development of technical standards for the National School Lunch Program, instrument grading systems, and international trade facilitation.  Dr. Ransom holds a B.S. degree in Agricultural Communications from Texas Tech University and earned an M.S. degree and a Ph.D. in Animal Science from Michigan State University and Colorado State University, respectively.  In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak with Dr. Brashears [4:35] about: USDA-FSIS' in-progress plans for its Salmonella SAFE Strategy, encompassing a new Salmonella Gold Standard The data FSIS will be gathering across all poultry facilities and at individual establishments producing higher-risk products How the new data-gathering initiatives will help FSIS spot trends sooner and take faster action to address food safety issues FSIS' updated approach to Listeria compliance, and how it plans to address the overreliance among small establishments on compliance method Alternative 3 FSIS' creation of a new Office of Food Safety Scientific Panel, and the areas of FSIS work in which this scientific expertise will be utilized We also speak with Dr. Ransom [20:11] about: How USDA-FSIS is shifting from examining individual inspection findings to analyzing connected datasets, and how this will optimize FSIS inspection work FSIS' use of AI and large language models to help identify food safety risks, and the safeguards FSIS is putting in place to ensure the scientific accuracy and transparency of these tools How video-enabled glasses and AI-assisted imaging could change how inspections are conducted in the field How FSIS is preparing inspectors and veterinarians to work alongside new data and AI-enabled tools The importance of retaining human judgement in food safety oversight as these emerging technologies are rolled out across FSIS departments Resources USDA-FSIS Announces Pilot Program to Evaluate Salmonella Control Strategies in Raw Poultry Establishments We Want to Hear from You! Please send us your questions and suggestions to podcast@food-safety.com

A career in public service is not something many people automatically think about. Kelli Bentley, HR director for a city in Alabama is trying to change that. Listen to how she recruits people to work in her city's water and sewer department. And she's one of 250 Government Champions from the National Academy of Public Service. Brought to you by The Good Government Institute, bringing together proven ideas, principled leaders, and real-world solutions to strengthen how we govern—not by reinventing the system, but by advancing what already works. GoodGovernmentShow.com Thanks to our sponsors: HelloNation Ourco Good News For Lefties (and America!) - Daily News for Democracy (Apple Podcasts | Spotify) How to Really Run a City Leading Iowa: Good Government in Iowa's Cities (Apple Podcasts | Spotify) The Context: A Podcast by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation The Good Government Show is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what's broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. The Royal Cousins: How Three Cousins Could Have Stopped A World War by Jim Ludlow Executive Producers: David Martin, David Snyder, Jim Ludlow Host/Reporter: David Martin Producers: David Martin, Jason Stershic Editor: Jason Stershic

In this episode of Scaling the Summit—Radio Gold, hosts Charity Bryan and Sandra Sims welcome Dr. Amy Upton for a conversation about moving from passion to influence.Dr. Upton shares insights from her experience as a counselor educator, former school counselor, researcher, organizational leader, and nationally recognized advocate. Together, they explore what effective advocacy really looks like, the habits of successful advocates, common mistakes professionals make, and why strong relationships with decision-makers matter.The conversation also examines how health and physical literacy professionals can become stronger advocates without needing to be political experts, why professional associations such as NAHPL are important to collective impact, and what it means to stay committed to “winning the long game.”To learn more about the National Academy, please visit our website: nahpl.org

Evidence of early plate tectonics Science Sessions are brief conversations with cutting-edge researchers, National Academy members, and policymakers as they discuss topics relevant to today's scientific community. Learn the behind-the-scenes story of work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), plus a broad range of scientific news about discoveries that affect the world around us. In this episode, Brad Peters explores what we can learn from the journey of sediments from the early Earth through the rock cycle. In this episode, we cover: •[00:00] Introduction. •[01:04] Geochemist Brad Peters tells us about the Marquesas Archipelago and why is it a place of interest for geologists. •[02:42] He recounts evidence suggesting that one component of the Marquesas lavas was recycled sediment from the early Earth. •[04:59] Peters walks us through the likely journey of this sediment from its origins to its eruption on the Marquesas Archipelago. •[06:24] He explains what this lava tells us about the tectonic processes that were active four billion years ago. •[07:43] Peters summarizes how this result is different than what we previously thought about the inception of plate tectonics. •[08:19] He talks about what the results mean for the story of the early Earth. •[09:13] He lists the caveats and limitations of the study. •[10:09] Conclusion. About Our Guest: Brad Peters Postdoctoral researcher ETH Zurich View related content here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2500506123 Follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts for more captivating discussions on scientific breakthroughs! Visit Science Sessions on PNAS.org: https://www.pnas.org/about/science-sessions-podcast  Follow PNAS: Twitter/X Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Sign up for the PNAS Highlights newsletter

Hello Interactors,I've long been a fan of “regreening” cities, imagining replacing bits of asphalt and concrete with trees, plants, mini-parks, and green roofs to cool them down. In many cases these are indeed good interventions. But even these celebrated nature-based solutions to the “urban heat island” effect require closer inspection. It turns out any land cover change alters energy, water, and momentum exchanges between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere. Which are the right ones and where?To understand why cookie cutter greening plans can fail and how planners and policy makers can build cities that can handle climate change, we need to understand how land and the air interact. Environments vary from place to place, and this puts limits on what we can do to land to create urban climates that are both beautiful and healthy.To get a handle on what the research says, I found a literature review from 2025 that synthesized findings from 84 peer-reviewed studies. In was published in the journal Climate Risk Management.Let's see what they, and others, found.BEATING HEAT WITH BIOPHYSICAL FEATSWhat better place to start than science. Let's just delve right into how urban green spaces affect temperature. It starts with determining the energy balance at the surface of the earth. This comes from a budget equation found in physical geography. When sunlight hits the Earth's surface, it breaks down into three main fluxes, or ways heat moves around* Sensible heat flux: the heat that directly warms the surrounding air, which we measure as temperature.* Latent heat flux: the heat that's used to turn water from a liquid to a gas, like when we sweat or plants release water vapor (transpiration).* Ground heat flux: the heat stored in building materials, asphalt, and soil.In conventional urban environments dominated by concrete and asphalt, latent heat flux is minimal because we've built cities in ways that rapidly drain water away as ‘waste'. As a result, incoming solar energy is funneled into sensible heat. This raises daytime air temperatures that gets stored as ground heat, which is slowly radiated back into the city at night. Urban greening can reshuffle this thermodynamic budget through three interconnected physical mechanisms: shading, evapotranspiration, and albedo modification.Mechanism 1. Shading: Intercepting Solar RadiationShading — the most immediate and reliable cooling mechanism provided by vegetation — requires precise microclimatic quantification. Vegetative canopies act as physical shields, intercepting incoming shortwave solar radiation before it strikes impervious surfaces like concrete or asphalt. By preventing these dense materials from absorbing heat and emitting sensible heat flux back into the boundary layer, shading dramatically lowers surface temperatures and reduces the baseline thermal energy transferred to the surrounding air. (Bowler, D. E., et al. 2010)The cooling benefit of urban trees is non-linear, accelerating significantly once neighborhood canopy cover crosses a critical threshold of around 40%. Measuring daytime air temperatures across urban gradients, they found that canopy cover above this 40% mark can lower local air temperatures by up to 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius, effectively offsetting the thermal burden created by surrounding roads and impervious surfaces. (Ziter, C. D., et al. 2019)Mechanism 2. Evapotranspiration: Trading Sensible Heat for Latent HeatWhile shading blocks heat absorption, evapotranspiration actively removes heat from the air. Plants absorb soil moisture through their root systems and release it as water vapor through tiny microscopic pores in their leaves called stomata. This process requires thermal energy that turns phase-changing liquid water into gas. This energy transfer absorbs sensible heat and converts it into latent heat.Evapotranspiration from well-watered urban green spaces can lower local air temperatures by 2-4 degrees celsius. (Coutts, et al., 2013) However, physical geographers emphasize a crucial physical prerequisite that is easy to overlook: evapotranspiration is entirely dependent on available water. When the soil is dry or the air is super dry, plants close their stomata to save water. When stomata close, evapotranspiration shuts down. This leaves shading as the sole remaining cooling mechanism.Mechanism 3. Albedo Dynamics: The Surface Reflectivity ParadoxAlbedo measures the reflectivity of a surface on a scale from 0.0 (total absorption) to 1.0 (total reflection). Urban asphalt has a low albedo (0.05 to 0.10), absorbing up to 95% of incoming solar energy. Vegetation's albedo can range from 0.11 to 0.25.In temperate climates, replacing low-albedo asphalt with greenery or reflective surfaces increases surface reflectivity, sending more solar radiation back into space before it can be absorbed as sensible heat. One study documented that increasing urban surface albedo typically lowers peak ambient air temperatures by 0.3 degres Celsius to 1.0 degree Celsius — alongside much larger drops in surface pavement temperatures. While a temperature change under one degree Celsius may sound modest at first glance, a baseline shift of this magnitude across a neighborhood is enough to redefine a local microclimate. (Santamouris, 2014)But swapping out light urban surfaces for dark vegetation can also have a negative effect. Paradoxically, when researchers in 2023 replaced dry, light-colored desert soil with darker vegetation in hot, arid regions it reduced overall surface reflectivity. The drop in albedo caused an increase in daytime surface warming. (Schlaerth, et al., 2023)Furthermore, dense tree canopies inside narrow urban street canyons can act as thermal blankets at night. While trees provide valuable shade during the day, their foliage reduces the sky view factor at street level, trapping outgoing longwave thermal radiation emitted by surrounding building facades and asphalt. When combined with reduced wind permeability, this canopy barrier restricts nocturnal radiative cooling and holds warm air near ground level (Lee et al., 2016).These are the physical realities that can demonstrate how urban greening is not a consistently inherent cooling practice. It is a complex thermodynamic intervention whose success relies entirely on local environmental conditions.PLACEMENT, PATCHES, AND PARK PATTERNSBecause thermodynamic processes happen across physical spaces, cooling urban green space can be uneven. The literature review reveals that a green space's cooling capacity depends on four spatial and biological variables: vegetation density, species selection, spatial configuration, and urban morphology. Let's break them down individually.Cooling Factor 1. Vegetation Density and Species TraitsNot all greenery cools equally. One way to measure this is through a Leaf Area Index (LAI). This is the total leaf area per unit of ground area and is a primary predictor of thermal performance. As you might imagine, dense foliage absorbs more from the sun and then produces higher cumulative transpiration (so long as there's adequate water).Botanical traits also play a big role. Broadleaf deciduous species (like oaks or maples) feature large surface areas that maximize summer transpiration, but that goes away when they drop their leaves in winter. Evergreen coniferous trees, however, maintain continuous canopy coverage through every season.In temperate rainforest environments like Seattle or Vancouver, researchers found that conifers cooled urban surroundings up to 1.7 degrees celsius more effectively than broadleaf trees. Dense needle canopies continuously block incoming solar radiation due to higher LAI and the fact that clusters of spiny needles better trap a stable buffer of calm air which moderates heat exchange with the surrounding urban environment. (Eyster & Beckage, 2022, 2023) Cooling factor 2. Spatial Configuration: Landscape Ecology PrinciplesEcologists and geographers commonly evaluate green spaces through two main attributes: composition (how much green space exists) and configuration (how those green patches are arranged across the landscape). Over 58% of the mechanism-focused studies in the literature review analyzed spatial pattern metrics. The consensus is the spatial layout of green space is just as important as its total area!Other empirical studies consistently demonstrate that cooling effects decay the further you get from green spaces. Research done in 2016 and 2023 shows how urban parks can produce a primary “cooling footprint” that extends typically 100 to 300 meters from the park boundaries. If you're lucky enough to live within this buffer, temperatures drop between 1.9 and 3.1 degrees celsius, but beyond 300 meters, the cooling influence quickly falls off. (Bao, et al. 2016, Shi et al. 2023)This spatial limit leads to a couple spatial layout choices. A few big parks or connected networks of smaller green spaces. Large, consolidated parks (>2 hectares) generate intense, stable “cool islands” at their core, but their benefits remain localized. For example, a study in Xalapa, Mexico, revealed that parks larger than 2.8 hectares with over 21% tree cover provided reliable local cooling of around 2 degrees celsius . (Lemoine-Rodriguez et al., 2022)Connected networks of smaller green spaces distributed across a city create a more equitable cooling effect. Three studies in 2019 and 2021 show that fragmented, isolated green patches — like big parks — perform poorly compared to continuous, linear green corridors. Linear “green belts” or street-tree networks (in the right environment) can act as ventilation channels, allowing cool air generated by vegetation to flow into adjacent built-up neighborhoods. (Masoudi et al., 2019, 2021; Pramanik, 2019)Cooling factor 3. Urban Morphology: The Built Environment MatrixObviously, green spaces don't exist in isolation. They're embedded within a three-dimensional hodge podge of buildings, streets, and other bits of infrastructure. Urban morphologists can quantify this urban morphological cacophony using building height-to-street-width ratio and sky view factor - the extent to which surrounding structures and canopies obstruct a location's view of the open sky.High-density urban cores with tall buildings create deep “urban canyons” that generate their own shade. In these settings, building shade can combine with tree shade during peak daylight hours to significantly lower temperatures.However, studies show that if tree canopies in narrow street canyons are too dense — particularly in humid environments — they can trap anthropogenic heat emitted by vehicle exhaust and air conditioning condenser units. They can also significantly reduce localized wind speeds. As a result, maximizing green space cooling efficiency requires aligning vegetation density and canopy architecture with prevailing wind corridors to preserve urban ventilation channels (Cheung & Jim, 2019; Morakinyo et al., 2019).Nothing is every as easy as it seems.BRIDGING GAPS WITH BETTER MAPSWhile academic literature can offer detailed insights into microclimatic processes, there remains a big gap between academia and urban planning and governmental policy. That gap may be self-fulfilling. The literature review of 84 papers revealed 61% of the papers simply advocate for expanding green space area, whereas only 26% focus on optimizing existing green infrastructure.Recommending that dense, historical cities “add more large parks” ignores real-world urban constraints. In modern, rapidly expanding cities, urban land is expensive, highly contested, and structurally constrained. Space dedicated to a new park often competes directly with housing, transit infrastructure, or commercial development. To move beyond idealistic slogans, urban planning will have to recon with three major implementation challenges.Challenge 1. The Water-Energy-Heat Nexus in Arid CitiesThe most significant implementation challenge facing nature-based solutions occurs precisely where urban heat stress is most severe — in hot, arid regions. Cities like Phoenix, Cairo, Tehran, or Riyadh already suffer from intense summer heatwaves. You don't have to live in or visit these places to know water there is extremely scarce.Maintaining green spaces in places like this requires pumping groundwater or desalinating seawater. Pumping and desalinating water requires massive amounts of electricity, which only increases greenhouse gas emissions if that power is coming from fossil fuels. Furthermore, if irrigation water runs out during a heatwave, non-adapted vegetation dries out, loses its cooling capacity, and can even become a wildfire risk.To solve this dilemma, physical geographers advocate evaluating urban greening through a standardized resource efficiency metric: evapotranspirative cooling per unit of water applied. In plain language, this ratio measures how many degrees of cooling you get for each liter (or gallon) of water that plants and soil release into the air through evaporation and transpiration.In dry climates — where municipal water is already tightly rationed and turfgrass is increasingly discouraged but rarely banned (I'm looking at you Arizona) — urban greening strategies are going to have pivot away from high-water lawns and non-native foliage. These cities have to move from simply prioritizing or incentivizing drought-tolerant species to requiring them. While drought-tolerant plants transpire less water than many other plants and trees — and still require water — when combined with drip-irrigation using treated municipal wastewater (greywater), they can provide a pretty reliable canopy shade and even modest evaporative cooling without draining water reserves.Challenge 2. Environmental Justice and Thermal EquityUrban heat exposure is rarely, if ever, distributed evenly across socio-economic groups. In many cities worldwide, low-income neighborhoods exhibit significantly lower tree canopy cover, higher proportions of impervious asphalt, and higher building densities than the more affluent suburbs and ex-urbs. This imbalance leaves more vulnerable populations exposed to extreme heat hazards.When municipalities undertake uncoordinated “regreening” projects, they risk triggering green gentrification. Installing fancy attractive parks can then inflate surrounding property values, displacing residents while still not reducing their heat related vulnerability.To address this, requires targeted interventions like deploying small-scale, distributed interventions (think pocket parks, vegetated bus stops, and road corridors) directly in high-vulnerability, low-canopy/vegetation neighborhoods. You could focus on functional shading over high-maintenance aesthetics. This could better ensure that at least transit stops, pedestrian walkways, and playgrounds are prioritized for canopy cover. Lastly, combining situated green infrastructure with social policy could create and/or protect more affordable housing around old and new greened public corridors and spaces.Challenge 3. A Multi-Benefit, Context-Specific Design FrameworkNo single cooling intervention works everywhere. Planners and policy makers need to adopt an integrated, multi-tiered approach that combines nature-based solutions with material interventions.In arid and semi-arid environments, planners should prioritize structural canopy shading and end an over-reliance on water-intensive lawn evapotranspiration. It's time to demand drought-tolerant trees with greywater irrigation networks, shade sails, and high-albedo “cool pavements” that can better reflect solar radiation without draining water resources.In contrast, humid and more temperate climates would likely benefit most from maximizing green spatial connectivity. By linking existing parks through linear street-tree corridors — with select broadleaf and/or coniferous species — summer evapotranspiration can be enhanced while maintaining year-round microclimate regulation.Finally, within high-density, built-up cores where ground space for new parks is limited, cities should leverage vertical green walls and green roofs paired with reflective building materials. But they best also preserve prevailing wind corridors while preventing nighttime heat traps through street canyons.“Regreening” is a compelling slogan, but as physical geography demonstrates, simplistic blanket policies can yield unpredictable thermodynamic results. Simply planting trees without considering local climate, available water, species traits, spatial configuration, and urban geometry can lead to unintended consequences.The exhaustive synthesis of decade-long research provided by Hadi Soltanifard and Majid Amani-Beni (2025) offers a clear path forward. Nature-based solutions are not off-the-shelf products that can be copy-pasted across different global cities. They are dynamic, living interventions that alter energy fluxes across urban surfaces.By moving beyond blanket acreage targets and framing urban greening as the strategic reorganization of surface-energy relations, geographers, urban planners, and policymakers will need to work together. When we design green infrastructure that respects local environmental constraints, honors spatial equity, and optimizes microclimatic processes, urban greening moves from a vague policy promise toward tools of experimentation that can pragmatically evolve our cities and megaregions into truly climate-resilient urbanscapes.ReferencesBowler, D. E., Buyung-Ali, L., Knight, T. M., & Pullin, A. S. (2010). Urban greening to cool towns and cities: A systematic review of the empirical evidence. Landscape and Urban Planning, 97(3), 147-155.Cheung, P.K., Jim, C.Y., 2019. Differential cooling effects of landscape parameters in humid-subtropical urban parks. Landscape and Urban Planning 192, 103651.Coutts, A.M., Tapper, N.J., Beringer, J., et al., 2013. Watering our cities: the capacity for Water Sensitive Urban Design to support urban cooling and improve human thermal comfort in the Australian context. Progress in Physical Geography 37(1), 2–28.Eyster, H. N., & Beckage, B. (2022). Conifers may ameliorate urban heat waves better than broadleaf trees: Evidence from Vancouver, Canada. Atmosphere, 13(5), 830.Eyster, H. N., & Beckage, B. (2023). Arboreal urban cooling is driven by leaf area index, leaf boundary layer resistance, and dry leaf mass per leaf area: Evidence from a system dynamics model. Atmosphere, 14(3), 552.Lee, H., Mayer, H., & Chen, L. (2016). Contribution of trees and grasslands to the mitigation of human heat stress in a residential district of Freiburg, Southwest Germany. Landscape and Urban Planning 148:37–50.Lemoine-Rodríguez, R., Inostroza, L., Falfán, I., & MacGregor-Fors, I. (2022). Too hot to handle? On the cooling capacity of urban green spaces in a Neotropical Mexican city. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 74, 127633.Masoudi, M., Tan, P.Y., 2019. Multi-year comparison of the effects of spatial pattern of urban green spaces on urban land surface temperature. Landscape and Urban Planning. 184, 44–58.Masoudi, M., Tan, P.Y., Fadaei, M., 2021. The effects of land use on spatial pattern of urban green spaces and their cooling ability. Urban. Clim 35, 100743.Masoudi, M., Tan, P.Y., Liew, S.C., 2019. Multi-city comparison of the relationships between spatial pattern and cooling effect of urban green spaces in four major Asian cities. Ecol. Indic 98, 200–213.Morakinyo, T.E., Ouyang, W., Lau, K.-K.-L., et al., 2020. Right tree, right place (urban canyon): Tree species selection approach for optimum urban heat mitigation-development and evaluation. Sci. Total. Environ 719, 137461.Pramanik, M. (2019). Impacts of urban expansion on land surface temperature and urban heat island in Kolkata Municipal Corporation, India. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 191(12), 738.Santamouris, M. (2014). Cooling the cities—a review of reflective and green roof mitigation technologies to fight heat island and improve comfort in urban environments. Solar Energy, 103, 682-703.Schlaerth, Hannah L., et al. "Albedo as a competing warming effect of urban greening." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 128.24 (2023): e2023JD038764.Soltanifard, H., & Amani-Beni, M. (2025). The cooling effect of urban green spaces as nature-based solutions for mitigating urban heat: Insights from a decade-long systematic review. Climate Risk Management, 49, 100731.Ziter, C. D., Pedersen, E. J., Kucharik, C. J., & Turner, M. G. (2019). Scale-dependent interactions between tree canopy cover and impervious surfaces reduce daytime urban heat. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 116(15), 7575-7580. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

A mathematician sets out to participate in the study of evolution... and ends up engaging in some fascinating research about social cooperation and the queerness of evolution!    In this episode, Sara Jolena sits down with her old college friend Ben Allen, a mathematician whose work models how cooperation evolves — from iron-sharing bacteria to communal-nesting birds. They consider what this research might illuminate about cooperation in human communities. They then turn towards some of Ben's current research on queerness in evolution. Same-sex behavior has now been documented in more than 1,500 species... and it just keeps getting more interesting! Key Topics & Timestamps00:00 — Intro: welcome to ReMembering and ReEnchanting01:05 — Meet Ben Allen: mathematician, old friend, and a researcher on evolution 02:56 — From pure math to evolutionary biology: how Ben's path unfolded04:26 — Why organisms cooperate — and why "survival of the fittest" is an incomplete story06:27 — The bacteria that share iron with their neighbors08:18 — Modeling evolution mathematically: networks, neighbors, and cooperation09:13 — From microbes to mammals: what changes (and what doesn't) when culture enters the picture11:03 — Local connection as a strategy for large-scale engagement (including activism)12:52 — Other paths to cooperation: kin selection, reciprocity, and reputation14:26 — What evolution actually means: reproduction, inheritance, and mutation16:53 — A parallel to religious traditions: continuity and change in tension17:42 — What "reproduction" really means across the tree of life (sexual, asexual, horizontal gene transfer)19:37 — What biologists actually mean by "male" and "female" — and why the definition breaks down23:04 — Evolution "finds a way": clonal fish, sex-changing clownfish, and the limits of a human template25:45 — Sex beyond reproduction: play, pleasure, and social bonding across species26:43 — The 2019 paper reframing same-sex behavior in animals31:28 — Ben's current research: could early marine life not even "see" sex at all?33:15 — Deep-sea squid, imperfect filtering, and why indiscriminate mating can be an evolutionary advantage36:37 — Two evolutionary strategies: cost of mating vs. population density38:36 — Connection, yearning, and sociability across species41:10 — Individual variation: why generalizing about any species misses the truth42:16 — "A very queer evolutionary story"43:20 — Darwin's Victorian assumptions that we are still unlearning44:40 — The perspective of the scientist shifts the questions and analysis that the scientist does. We need many, many different perspectives for these big complex questions! 45:31 — Situated knowledge, Donna Haraway, and the case for multiple vantage points46:23 — Closing reflections and thanksBen Allen is a Professor of Mathematics at Emmanuel College, Boston, MA. Their research focuses on mathematical modeling of evolution—in particular the evolution of social (other-directed) behavior. Their work has appeared in Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and The Atlantic. Send us a messageSupport the showLearn more about Sara Jolena Wolcott and Sequoia SamanvayaMusic Title: Both of UsMusic by: madiRFAN Don't forget to "like" and share this episode! 

In the Netherlands, water has always been both a threat and a triumph. A quarter of the country lies below sea level, and for centuries the Dutch have engineered their way to safety. It's a place not unlike New Orleans: a delta shaped by risk, resilience, and the belief that with enough ingenuity, water can be controlled. But as sea levels rise, that centuries-old confidence is beginning to crack.In this episode of Sea Change, reporter Jonathan Groubert takes us to the Netherlands to explore a relationship in turmoil. From floating farms to visions of entire cities on water, the Dutch are beginning to rethink everything they thought they knew. The question is no longer how to win the war against water—but whether it's time to learn how to live with it.---This episode was hosted by Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun and Amsterdam-based journalist Jonathan Groubert. Jonathan reported this story. Fact-checking by Philip Kiefer. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste and sound design by Dennis Funk.Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO's Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

In this episode, we will discuss multiverse analysis–what it is, why we use it, and how we should use it. We also discuss many analyst projects, and Daniel's new preprint on multiverse analysis.    Shownotes Auspurg, K. (2025). Robustness is better assessed with a few thoughtful models than with billions of regressions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(43), e2521917122. Chamberlin, T. C. (1890). The method of multiple working hypotheses. Science, (366), 92–96. Dochtermann, N. A., & Jenkins, S. H. (2011). Developing multiple hypotheses in behavioral ecology. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 65(1), 37–45. Dreber, A., & Johannesson, M. (2025). The credibility gap: Evaluating and improving empirical research in the social sciences. Routledge. Gelman, A., & Loken, E. (2013). The garden of forking paths: Why multiple comparisons can be a problem, even when there is no “fishing expedition” or “p-hacking” and the research hypothesis was posited ahead of time. Department of Statistics, Columbia University, 348(1-17), 3. Knief, U., & Forstmeier, W. (2025). Are our 95% CIs only worth 45% confidence? bioRxiv, 2025-08. Lakens, D., Rasti, S., & Tunç, M. N. (2026). There is only one correct analysis. (Preprint) Platt, J. R. (1964). Strong Inference: Certain systematic methods of scientific thinking may produce much more rapid progress than others. Science, 146(3642), 347–353. Simonsohn, U., Simmons, J. P., & Nelson, L. D. (2020). Specification curve analysis. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(11), 1208–1214. Steegen, S., Tuerlinckx, F., Gelman, A., & Vanpaemel, W. (2016). Increasing transparency through a multiverse analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(5), 702–712. Wimsatt, W. C. (2007). Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: Piecewise approximations to reality. Harvard University Press.  

Neil McQueen learned to surf as a Texas teenager, and it changed his life – eventually pulling him away from a career as a plastics engineer and into the fight to save the very waters that shaped him. Thanks to the way ocean currents loop through the Gulf, the Texas coast collects roughly 10 times more plastic debris than any other Gulf state, much of it spilling from the massive petrochemical complex that lines its shores. In this episode of Sea Change, reporter Avery Thompson follows Neil from the surf off Mustang Island to the halls of the Texas Capitol to witness a personal reckoning with the plastics economy that helped build modern Texas—and one man's determination to leave the ocean better than he found it.To learn more about the citizen-led science project tracking pre-production plastics, called nurdles, check out the Nurdle Patrol. And for more about the Surfrider Foundation's work on the Texas coast, click here. CREDITSThis episode was reported by Texas-based reporter Avery Thompson. It was edited by Carlyle Calhoun and Eve Abrams, with additional help from Johanna Zorn, Eva Tesfaye, and Michael McEwan. Carlyle Calhoun is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste, and sound design by Dennis Funk with help from Avery Thompson. Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO's Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation. 

TODAY ON THE ROBERT SCOTT BELL SHOW: Fauci Diaries Update, Public Health Needs MAHA, National Academy of Pseudoscience, Cyclospora Outbreak Warning, Lac Vaccinum Defloratum, Statin Floodgate, Xanthan Gum Inflammation, NVAC Vaccine Prediction, Microplastic Removal Options, Curcumin Cancer Success and MORE! https://robertscottbell.com/fauci-media-diaries-public-health-needs-maha-national-academy-of-pseudoscience-failure-cyclospora-food-outbreaks-lac-vaccinum-defloratum-new-statin-guidelines-xanthan-gut-inflammation-nvac-vacc/ Purpose and Character The use of copyrighted material on the website is for non-commercial, educational purposes, and is intended to provide benefit to the public through information, critique, teaching, scholarship, or research. Nature of Copyrighted Material Weensure that the copyrighted material used is for supplementary and illustrative purposes and that it contributes significantly to the user's understanding of the content in a non-detrimental way to the commercial value of the original content. Amount and Substantiality Our website uses only the necessary amount of copyrighted material to achieve the intended purpose and does not substitute for the original market of the copyrighted works. Effect on Market Value The use of copyrighted material on our website does not in any way diminish or affect the market value of the original work. We believe that our use constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you believe that any content on the website violates your copyright, please contact us providing the necessary information, and we will take appropriate action to address your concern.

"You have to figure out how to make self-care a priority because you know the body does not sit still... Your mindset will allow you to move forward, or it will take you backwards." —Dr. Mitra Ray Stanford-trained biologist Dr. Mitra Ray spent three decades building a career in women's longevity, but the habits she taught everyone else became something she never expected: the infrastructure that kept her upright after her husband, Doug, died suddenly in a paragliding accident in October 2023. In this conversation with host Justine Reichman, Dr. Ray traces her path from NIH- and Alzheimer's-funded cancer research to walking away from the lab, building a word-of-mouth wellness brand that sold 2 million copies with zero advertising, and eventually testing her own biological age during the hardest year of her life — and watching it go backward. This episode is for anyone navigating midlife, grief, perimenopause, or the quiet realization that the wellness habits they've dismissed as trendy might be the thing holding them together. Dr. Ray and Justine talk candidly about cold plunging, sobriety, plant-based nutrition, sleep science, and the gut-microbiome research behind cravings — grounding every claim in the biology, not the buzzwords. Key takeaways: Dr. Ray's biological age measurably reversed during the year she grieved her husband, evidence that consistent habits can outperform circumstance. Comparing your current body to a memory of your 25-year-old self is biologically counterproductive — memories change every time you access them, and the comparison itself triggers cortisol and inflammation. Cold plunging activates the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, the brain region tied to willpower and will to live, which Dr. Ray leaned on deliberately after losing Doug. Food cravings are largely dictated by gut bacteria, not willpower — feeding plant-based bacteria gradually shifts what your body craves. "Superagers" in their 80s are still generating new neurons, making neurogenesis — not a return to a younger self — the more useful benchmark for healthy aging. Grief lives in the body: cortisol, thyroid, and hormone levels shift during loss, and naming that process without judgment is part of recovering from it. Listen to the full conversation and subscribe to Essential Ingredients for more real conversations at the intersection of food, purpose, and building a better future: https://tinyurl.com/Essential-Ingredients-Podcast  Meet Dr. Ray:  Living a long, healthy life is not as complicated as the wellness industry would have you believe. Dr. Mitra Ray has spent more than 30 years helping people understand this, and more importantly, live it. Her path into health was shaped by both rigorous science and lived experience. She completed her undergraduate degree at Cornell University and earned her PhD from Stanford Medical School, where her research was funded by multiple NIH grants and recognized with the Young Investigator Award from the Federation of American Societies in Experimental Biology. Her work has been published in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Cell Biology: journals that do not publish ideas lightly. But credentials alone do not explain why audiences across four continents keep coming back to hear her speak, or why her books and lectures on health, beauty, brain function, and longevity have resonated as widely as they have. The reason is simpler: she translates what the science actually says into something you can do and sustain. Her focus has always been whole plant foods, an active body, and a clear mind. These three things, she has come to understand, are not a wellness trend. They are the foundation. Everything downstream of that foundation- how you look, how you feel, how you age- follows. The Elder's Evolution, her Substack publication, is where she writes about what it means to age well, with full attention paid to both the biology and the deeper questions that biology alone cannot answer. Website LinkedIn Instagram Substack Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube Podcast Chapters: 01:31 Meet Dr. Mitra Ray: From Stanford Lab to Wellness Pioneer 05:41 Leaving Science: How Her Family and Peers Reacted 09:03 Why Doctors Still Ignore Whole-Food Nutrition 16:52 Stop Comparing Yourself to a Body That No Longer Exists 19:45 Building a 2-Million-Copy Word-of-Mouth Wellness Brand 23:03 After Doug's Death: The Habits That Became Her Infrastructure 32:36 Cold Plunging, the AMC, and Rebuilding Willpower After Loss 51:02 The Real Benchmark for Aging Isn't Your 25-Year-Old Self 54:34 Cravings Aren't Willpower — It's Your Gut Microbiome 

For most of the last century, gardeners were taught to cultivate their soil after every rain to conserve moisture, to think of plant roots as lone competitors, and to treat "plant communication" as science fiction. All of that was built on the best evidence available at the time, and all of it has been revised, in some cases more than once, as better tools let researchers see what earlier generations simply could not. In this episode, we walk through four real case studies of plant science changing its mind. Along the way, we talk about how the scientific method works, why one of my favorite phrases, "we don't know what we don't know," is not a discouraging idea but an exciting one, and what all of this means for the choices you make in your own garden each season, now and into the future. Let's dig in! References and Resources: Chalker-Scott, L., and C.H. Daniels. (2016). "Scientific Literacy for the Citizen Scientist." WSU Extension Manual EM100E. https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/extension/uploads/sites/30/2024/07/Scientific-Literacy-for-the-Citizen-Scientist.pdf Chalker-Scott, L. (2021, revised). "Dust Mulch Efficacy in Gardens and Landscapes." WSU Extension Fact Sheet FS167E. https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/wp-ecommerce/uploads/sites/2/product-3540-sku-FS167E.pdf Chalker-Scott, L. (2017). "A Gardener's Primer to Mycorrhizae: Understanding How They Work and Learning How to Protect Them." WSU Extension Fact Sheet FS269E. https://wpcdn.web.wsu.edu/wp-ecommerce/uploads/sites/2/product-3286-sku-FS269E.pdf Chalker-Scott, L. (2023). "Gardening with Companion Plants." WSU Extension Publication EM128E. https://pubs.extension.wsu.edu/product/gardening-with-companion-plants-home-garden-series/ Oklahoma State University Extension. "Mycorrhizal Fungi." Fact Sheet. https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/mycorrhizal-fungi Pacific Horticulture Society. "Mycorrhizal Fungi, Nature's Key to Plant Survival and Success." https://pacifichorticulture.org/articles/mycorrhizal-fungi-natures-key-to-plant-survival-and-success/ Cao, D., Chabikwa, T., Barbier, F., Dun, E.A., Fichtner, F., Dong, L., Kerr, S.C., & Beveridge, C.A. (2023). "Auxin-independent effects of apical dominance induce changes in phytohormones correlated with bud outgrowth." Plant Physiology, 192(2), 1420–1434. https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiad034 Mason, M.G., Ross, J.J., Babst, B.A., Wienclaw, B.N., & Beveridge, C.A. (2014). "Sugar demand, not auxin, is the initial regulator of apical dominance." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(16), 6092–6097. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322045111 Barbier, F.F., Dun, E.A., & Beveridge, C.A. (2017). "A Growing Stem Inhibits Bud Outgrowth — The Overlooked Theory of Apical Dominance." Frontiers in Plant Science, 8:1874. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5671643/ "Lessons from a century of apical dominance research." (2023). Journal of Experimental Botany. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10400159/ Simard, S.W., Perry, D.A., Jones, M.D., Myrold, D.D., Durall, D.M., & Molina, R. (1997). "Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field." Nature, 388, 579–582. https://www.nature.com/articles/41557 "Belowground carbon transfer across mycorrhizal networks among trees: Facts, not fantasy." (2023). Review discussing the scope and limits of current evidence for mycorrhizal carbon transfer. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10751480/ Baldwin, I.T., & Schultz, J.C. (1983). "Rapid Changes in Tree Leaf Chemistry Induced by Damage: Evidence for Communication Between Plants." Science, 221(4607), 277–279. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.221.4607.277 Heil, M. (2014). "Herbivore-induced plant volatiles: targets, perception and unanswered questions." New Phytologist, 204(2), 297–306. https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12977 Just Grow Something: https://justgrowsomething.com Gardening Courses: https://justgrowsomething.com/courses Just Grow Something Merch and Downloads: https://justgrowsomething.com/shop Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/18YgHveF5P/ Check out how you can become a patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JustGrowSomething Feed my coffee habit: https://buymeacoffee.com/justgrowsomething Amazon storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/justgrowsomething Get 10% off and FREE shipping on my favorite raised planters at Planter Box Direct using code JUSTGROW10: https://planterboxdirect.com/?ref=593 Save on your Aquatru water system at Aquatru.com using code GROW. https://aquatru.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Steve Milloy reviews Trump's fossil-fuel agenda, EPA rollback of the 2009 endangerment finding, and concerns that litigation delays and Justice Department staffing could let a future Democratic administration reverse course. The speaker attacks the National Academy of Sciences as climate activists, cites a climate chapter in a judges' science manual, notes Elena Kagan said she didn't read it, and urges cutting NAS funding. They praise Matt Wielicki's appointment to lead the U.S. Global Change Research Program. They argue wildfire-smoke PM2.5 health scares lacked NYC hospital spikes, criticize linear no-threshold regulation (radiation, PFAS), and discuss Yucca Mountain standards. They describe shareholder activism against corporate ESG (Netflix, Exxon), criticize carbon capture subsidies, and praise young “climate realist” advocates.00:00 Trump EPA Rollbacks01:37 NAS Versus Trump04:16 Defunding NAS Push06:30 Kagan Foreword Controversy08:24 Climate Realist Appointment09:43 Democrats And Green Money11:59 Big Tech Climate Censorship13:21 X Algorithms And Reach16:10 Viral Tweet No Warming18:20 Wildfire Smoke Reality Check22:30 EPA PM2.5 Experiments26:12 LNT Model And Hormesis30:18 Yucca Mountain Absurdity32:37 PFAS And Low Dose Effects33:37 Forever Chemicals Are Inert34:41 Dose Makes the Poison36:34 Parts Per Trillion Panic37:31 Why Fear Spreads38:06 Conservative Shareholder Activism41:07 Exxon and ESG Battles42:23 Carbon Capture Reality Check43:53 Subsidies and Nanny Government45:31 Next Gen Climate Realists47:43 Awards and Staying the Course50:31 NASA Names and Media Retreat56:01 Debate Challenge and Wrap UpSteve on X: https://x.com/JunkScienceWeb: https://junkscience.com/=========Slides, summaries, references, and transcripts of my podcasts: https://tomn.substack.com/p/podcast-summariesMy Linktree: https://linktr.ee/tomanelson1

Host James-Christian Blockwood interviews Ambassador Joe Westphal and former senior FBI executive Lauren Anderson about how national security has evolved from the Cold War through 9/11 to today's interconnected threats, including terrorism, geopolitical shifts, and emerging technologies. Both warn that global changes, partner uncertainty, polarization, and reduced information sharing can make the U.S. less safe, alongside a loss of government expertise and strained diplomacy. 01:55 How Security Has Changed03:17 Collaboration And Trust05:11 Today's Threat Landscape09:11 Eroding Trust And Expertise15:09 Rebuilding Trust18:49 Listening And Self Correction21:39 Serving Above Politics23:02 Advice For Next Generation26:16 Checks And BalancesManagement Matters is a presentation of the National Academy of Public Administration produced by Lizzie Alwan and Matt Hampton and edited by Matt Hampton. Support the Podcast Today at: donate@napawash.org or 202-347-3190Episode music: Hope by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.comMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comFollow us on YouTube for clips and more: @NAPAWASH_YT

Lyle Probst is the CEO of NomadX and an accomplished entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience in operations, product development, engineering, biodefense, and advanced technology commercialization. Lyle was previously a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and has founded and led multiple companies spanning technology development, manufacturing, biomedical technology, and biological defense. He was part of the team that developed the U.S. BioWatch program and previously served as CEO of MicroFluidic Systems, which, under a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, developed the M-BAND biological detection system to continuously monitor for biological threats. The system was ultimately licensed by a major defense contractor. Lyle has also designed and shipped multiple mobile command centers and laboratories around the world for several governments and notable private companies. Today, Lyle leads NomadX's mission to help food producers prevent contamination through innovative approaches to detection and decontamination. He has spoken at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, National BioWatch conferences, and has appeared as a contributor on national media outlets. He is the recipient of several awards and certificates of appreciation from the U.S. Government for his work and contributions to the BioWatch program and related projects. Lyle holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and an MBA in Executive Management. In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak with Lyle [2:18] about: How his background in biodefense, autonomous pathogen detection, and national security led Lyle into food safety, and lessons from biodefense that can be applied to food production and food safety The importance of moving beyond a compliance mindset when it comes to food safety and how recalls and food safety events can impact a business beyond direct costs Industry blind spots related to microbiological contamination control The advancement of rapid pathogen detection technologies and what it means for real-life applications Utilizing pathogen detection data to guide root cause analyses, inform targeted interventions, and prevent recurrence Potential applications for artificial intelligence in food safety What the future of food safety programs may look like in light of advancements in testing, automation, and data integration Advice for food safety leaders as they prepare for the future. Resources The Three-Pillar Food Safety Solution Sponsored by: NomadX We Want to Hear from You! Please send us your questions and suggestions to podcast@food-safety.com

One of the characteristics of life is that living organisms gather information and put it to use. Even one of the simplest lifeforms, bacteria, are able to sense features of their surroundings and alter their behavior accordingly. Most impressively, they are able to sense the presence of similar bacteria by a process called quorum sensing. Today's guest, Bonnie Bassler, is a leader in this field, and explains how quorum sensing allows groups of bacteria to do things (including in our bodies) that wouldn't be possible for individual bacteria. Blog post with transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/07/20/361-bonnie-bassler-on-how-bacteria-talk-and-work-together/ Support Mindscape on Patreon. Bonnie Bassler received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University. She is currently Andrew K. Golden University Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among her awards are a MacArthur Fellowship, the Gruber Prize in Genetics, and the National Medal of Science. Lab web site Princeton web page Google Scholar publications Wikipedia

Howie Kurtz on the environmental impact of Canadian wildfires, President Trump ordering a review of climate guidance from the National Academy of Sciences, a media report detailing dismissed immigration assault charges, and escalating military conflicts between the U.S. and Iran. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2007, two Harvard researchers added a splash of balsamic vinegar to beer.  When drinkers knew the beer contained vinegar, they hated it.  But when the researchers told them “this is our MIT brew," the majority loved it.  The study reveals the secrets behind marketing.  On today's episode of Nudge with award-winning science writer David Robson, we explain how good marketing can shape our perception.  Link to the bonus episode: ⁠https://nudge.kit.com/86d3e39845⁠  Become an FSB member: https://get.fsb.org.uk/nudge/ Read the Expectation Effect: https://amzn.to/4dvkb3s  David's website: https://davidrobson.me/  David's Substack: https://davidarobson.substack.com/  ---  Today's sources:  Amar, M., Ariely, D., Bar-Hillel, M., Carmon, Z., & Ofir, C. (2011). Brand names act like marketing placebos. Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Clark, A. (2016). Surfing uncertainty: Prediction, action, and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press. Crum, A. J., & Langer, E. J. (2007). Mind-set matters: Exercise and the placebo effect. Psychological Science, 18(2), 165–171. Faasse, K., Martin, L.R., Grey, A., Gamble, G., and Petrie, K.J. (2016). Impact of brand or generic labeling on medication effectiveness and side effects. Health Psychology, 35(2), 187. Grabenhorst, F., Rolls, E. T., & Bilderbeck, A. (2008). How cognition modulates affective responses to taste and flavor: Top-down influences on the orbitofrontal and pregenual cingulate cortices. Cerebral Cortex, 18(7), 1549–1559. Lee, L., Frederick, S., & Ariely, D. (2006). Try it, you'll like it: The influence of expectation, consumption, and revelation on preferences for beer. Psychological Science, 17(12), 1054–1058. Lidstone, S. C., Schulzer, M., Dinelle, K., Mak, E., Sossi, V., Ruth, T. J., & Stoessl, A. J. (2010). Effects of expectation on placebo-induced dopamine release in Parkinson disease. Archives of General Psychiatry, 67(8), 857–865. Plassmann, H., O'Doherty, J., Shiv, B., & Rangel, A. (2008). Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(3), 1050–1054. Quattrone, A., Barbagallo, G., Cerasa, A., & Stoessl, A. J. (2018). Neurobiology of placebo effect in Parkinson's disease: What we have learned and where we are going. Movement Disorders, 33(8), 1213–1227. Robson, D. (2022). The expectation effect: How your mindset can transform your life. Canongate. Spence, C., & Piqueras-Fiszman, B. (2014). The perfect meal: The multisensory science of food and dining. John Wiley & Sons.

As AI's capability grows, what once-human tasks will it be able to do, by when? What will those displaced humans do? We look to the automation revolutions of the past to see what the historical pattern has been, and explore in what ways AI is different that could change the pattern. The pattern will change. The implications are immense. SourcesLeontief's horse. Wassily Leontief, 1983, National Academy of Engineering symposium The Long-Term Impact of Technology on Employment and Unemployment. Quote and horse-population figures via Brynjolfsson & McAfee, "Will Humans Go the Way of Horses?", Foreign Affairs (2015): https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/will-humans-go-way-horsesSoftware developer pay. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Software Developers (SOC 15-1252): https://www.bls.gov/oes/2021/may/oes151252.htm · https://www.bls.gov/oes/2022/may/oes151252.htm · https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151252.htm · Occupational Outlook Handbook: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm · Total-comp figure: Levels.fyi (2026).AI timelines (experts). Katja Grace et al., "Thousands of AI Authors on the Future of AI" (2023 survey, 2,778 researchers): https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.02843 · https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Thousands_of_AI_authors_on_the_future_of_AI.pdfAI timelines (forecasters). Metaculus (community forecasts; live figures): "first general AI system" https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5121/ · "weakly general AI" https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3479/Goldman Sachs. "An AI Job Apocalypse?", Goldman Sachs Research, June 25, 2026: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/an-ai-job-apocalypse (Goldman's own view is that the disruption is temporary.)Occupational exposure. Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, Daniel Rock, "GPTs are GPTs," Science 384 (2024): https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj0998 · working paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130Entry-level cracks. Stanford Digital Economy Lab, "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of AI" (Nov 2025): https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/app/uploads/2025/11/CanariesintheCoalMine_Nov25.pdfCurrent labor data. Maxim Massenkoff & Peter McCrory, "Labor Market Impacts of AI: A New Measure and Early Evidence," Anthropic (Mar 5, 2026): https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts (Note: Anthropic funds both the models and this research.)Depression unemployment anchor. U.S. unemployment peaked near 25% in 1933 (verify exact figure before citing on air). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AlabamaGovernor Ivey sends swift water rescue teams to TX to help with flash floodsState senator questions why data centers are being given tax breaksTwo House Delegate sign onto bill that clarifies that Daughters of the American Revolution are real women, not menHeads of lettuce from Taylor Farms identified as source of cyclosporiasisTroy Carico praises Vietnam hero James Caper and his stand against race baitingNational2 US military members killed in Jordan by Iranian airstrikesPresident Trump suspends National Academy of Sciences for fraudulent journals on climate changeDC Circuit court rules in favor of Trump admin and the USPS handling of mail in ballotsBorder czar Tom Homan says deportations of illegals is getting back on trackNYC Mayor not cooperating with ICE and federal immigration laws, but does want to see Israeli Prime Minister arrested when he comes to NYCVice President JD Vance and wife Usha welcomed birth of fourth child

Domestication of wheat Science Sessions are brief conversations with cutting-edge researchers, National Academy members, and policymakers as they discuss topics relevant to today's scientific community. Learn the behind-the-scenes story of work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), plus a broad range of scientific news about discoveries that affect the world around us. In this episode, David Lordkipanidze recounts archaeological findings from Georgia expanding the history of bread wheat. In this episode, we cover: •[00:00] Introduction. •[00:51] Archaeologist and paleobotanist David Lordkipanidze tells about the archaeological sites where wheat samples were found. •[02:53] He talks about methods for identifying plant grains among archeological artifacts. •[04:49] Lordkipanidze explains the significance of finding bread wheat and goat grass grains together. •[06:45] He talks about how the findings change the origin story of bread wheat. •[08:28] He lists the caveats and limitations of the study. •[09:24] Conclusion. About Our Guest: David Lordkipanidze Director Georgia National Museum View related content here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2537697123 Follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts for more captivating discussions on scientific breakthroughs! Visit Science Sessions on PNAS.org: https://www.pnas.org/about/science-sessions-podcast  Follow PNAS: Twitter/X Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Sign up for the PNAS Highlights newsletter

This episode of the Amazing Cities and Towns Podcast sponsored by Bearing Advisors, Jim Hunt interviews   ·       A candid conversation about the Prevent and Protect Program with Mike Conduff ·       And, much more   7 Steps to an Amazing City:   Attitude Motivation Attention to Detail Zing Inclusiveness Neighborhood Empowerment Green Awareness   Thanks for listening and look forward to having you join us for the next episode.   Links Mentions During Show:  https://bearingadvisors.net/wellness-done-well/ ·       www.AmazingCities.org ·       www.AmazingCities.org/podcast to be a guest on the podcast   About Mike Conduff     Mike Conduff is one of the nation's leading experts on leadership, governance, and organizational performance. As President and CEO of The Elim Group, based in Denton, Texas, he has spent decades helping boards, executives, and elected officials build high-performing organizations through better governance and leadership practices. Before founding The Elim Group, Mike served for more than 30 years in local government, including as city manager for four university communities across Kansas and Texas. He is an ICMA Credentialed Manager, a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and has served on the executive board of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). He has also served as Chairman of the International Policy Governance Association and continues to advise organizations around the world on governance excellence. Mike is a multiple-time bestselling author and internationally recognized speaker whose books—including The On Target Board Member: 8 Indisputable Behaviors—have become go-to resources for boards, executives, and community leaders seeking to improve decision-making, accountability, and organizational results. His practical, real-world approach has made him a trusted advisor to corporations, nonprofits, utilities, municipalities, and governing boards across North America. Today, Mike continues to coach leaders, facilitate strategic planning sessions, and help organizations create cultures of trust, clarity, and exceptional performance.   About Your Host, Jim Hunt: Welcome to the "Building Amazing Cities and Towns Podcast" … The podcast for Mayors, Council Members, Managers, Staff and anyone who is interested in building an Amazing City.   Your host is Jim Hunt, the author of "Bottom Line Green, How American Cities are Saving the Planet and Money Too" and his latest book, "The Amazing City - 7 Steps to Creating an Amazing City"   Jim is also the former President of the National League of Cities, 27 year Mayor, Council Member and 2006 Municipal Leader of the Year by American City and County Magazine.   Today, Jim speaks to 1000's of local government officials each year in the US and abroad.   Jim also consults with businesses that are bringing technology and innovation to local government.   Amazing City Resources:   Buy Jim's Popular Books: ·       The Entrepreneurial City: Building Smarter Governments through Entrepreneurial Thinking:   https://www.amazingcities.org/copy-of-the-amazing-city   ·       The Amazing City: 7 Steps to Creating an Amazing City:   https://www.amazingcities.org/product-page/the-amazing-city-7-steps-to-creating-an-amazing-city   ·       Bottom Line Green: How America's Cities and Saving the Planet (And Money Too)  https://www.amazingcities.org/product-page/bottom-line-green-how-america-s-cities-are-saving-the-planet-and-money-too   FREE White Paper: ·       "10 Steps to Revitalize Your Downtown"  www.AmazingCities.org/10-Steps   Hire Jim to Speak at Your Next Event: ·       Tell us about your event and see if dates are available at www.AmazingCities.org/Speaking   Hire Jim to Consult with Your City or Town: ·       Discover more details at https://www.amazingcities.org/consulting   Discuss Your Business Opportunity/Product to Help Amazing Cities: ·       Complete the form at https://www.amazingcities.org/business-development   A Special Thanks to Bearing Advisors for the support of this podcast:  www.BearingAdvisors.Net      

As a nurse with MS, I’m interviewed about AI’s real role in care: pattern recognition, human-in-the-loop skepticism, and the Three T’s and Two C’s framework. Click here to view the printable newsletter. More readable than a transcript. Click here for a verbatim transcript Summary I sit in the guest chair on Practical AI in Healthcare with Steve Labkoff. I walk through my experience feeding my own symptom logs, lab results, and ten years of clinician notes into an AI LLM: a physical therapy referral I needed and hadn’t scheduled, a medication side effect my neurologist later confirmed, and a rating scale buried in my chart that no one had surfaced. I describe the less impressive side: the four-pound box of unsorted paper my primary care practice mailed me and the 296 pages of unsearchable PDFs I got back from another system in fifteen minutes. Along the way, I lay out my framework for judging any digital health tool, the Three T’s and Two C’s: time, trust, talk, control, and connection, and explain why I insist on keeping humans in the loop even though the research on that is more complicated than people assume. This isn’t a pitch for AI in healthcare. It’s a working nurse and patient’s honest field report. What’s your experience been feeding your own health data into an AI LLM? Tell us in the comments. Episode Transcript Proem I usually ask the questions. This time I'm the guest. I met Drs. Steve Labkoff and Leon Rozenblit a couple of years ago at a DCI Network conference. They host Practical AI in Healthcare, a show I've listened to steadily, though it creates more tension for me than any other podcast I keep coming back to. Usually, I jettison podcasts that do that. I stay with this one because I approach AI in healthcare the way I approach best health; I'm an N of one and resist generalizing, while most guests do a fair amount of it. I bristle at most of them, wanting the shades of gray that reflect deep understanding. In four of 33 episodes, the guest has had lived experience: ePatient Dave DeBronkart, Amy Price, Hugo Campos, and me. I invited Steve and Leon to join my virtual Reckoning group, which I've hosted since 2019. We give podcasters warm critiques of selected episodes: the kind of feedback you give when you've made a hundred mistakes yourself, can spot them quickly in someone else's cut, and have endless thoughts about production, audience, dissemination, and life. They took the critique well. When Steve later asked me to come on his show to talk about how I use AI, not the theory but the daily grind, I readily agreed. They let me publish it here unchanged, apart from this Proem and Reflection. I struggled to prepare for this conversation. I wanted to wear all my hats, but had to narrow my focus to two. I chose my lived experience and nurse hats. Underneath it all was the question I keep circling back to. Not a cure. Best health, the most function, and Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of Practical AI in Healthcare. My name is Dr. Steven Lapcoff, and this week I’m actually on my own because my partner, Dr. Leon Rosenblatt, is actually on spring break with his kids, so I am covering for him and he’ll be back in the next week. This week we have a guest who we met at a conference in Boston a few months ago at the Beth Israel at the DCI network. Steven Labkoff: We have Danny van Leeuwen. Danny is a nurse. He has background in giving actual physical care to patients. He actually runs his own podcast called Health Hats, the Podcast, and he’s been using AI in both his personal life and in his professional life very extensively. Also, Danny has a significant medical condition, and I’ll let him explain that in the course of the discussion because it’s with that lens that we got introduced at our patient-centric AI conference, and that’s why we thought it’d be a good idea to have Danny come and have a chat with us. So welcome to the podcast, Danny. How are you today? Health Hats: I’m good. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Steven Labkoff: So Danny, as you probably have heard because you’ve helped us with our podcast, and for that I want to say thank you. For those who are listening in, Danny runs actually a group that actually helps folks running podcasts improve their podcasts, and he’s had Leon and I on many times to listen to critiques and feedback, and it’s been very, very helpful. Danny, we often start our podcast with asking for folks’ origin stories, like how did they get their cape and their superhero tights. What did you do to get you to this point in your life? And just tell us the background of what brought you here. Health Hats: Oh, thanks. So I’m a child of Holocaust survivors, and my parents– when I was young, my parents were active in the civil rights and fair housing movement in the ’60s. And when I was 16 and I was thinking about the war in Vietnam and worried about getting drafted, I wanted to learn what I could learn about the draft and how I could protect myself and manage. And I went to a church in downtown Detroit, and I went for a session of draft counseling as, you know, a little precocious at 16, and I found it fascinating, and they found me fascinating, and they encouraged me to become a draft counselor. And so I, uh, I actually took their course and became a draft counselor, and what I learned is that you change systems from the inside, not the outside. And I learned how the sausage was made, and that, uh, really pointed me in a direction. The way I got into nursing is really because I didn’t want to cut my hair I had an opportunity for a job at one point, and I could have read water meters or become an aide at the Detroit Psychiatric Institute. And reading water meters paid more, but I didn’t wanna cut my hair, so I got the job as, as nurse’s aide. And while I was there, they introduced me to the idea of going to nursing school, which was amazing. Steven Labkoff: It was more– You got paid more to read meters, water meters, than you did- Health Hats: Yes. Steven Labkoff: That’s unbelievable. Life gives you some real interesting turns and twists, doesn’t it? Health Hats: It does. And I was really fortunate because my first jobs in nursing were in physical rehabilitation and home care. I just happened to be in a place where the Holyoke Visiting Nurses was dying to hire a guy, and I was a brand-new nurse, and they ended up hiring me. And so my first introduction to nursing was not in acute care. It was in home care, and actually, I was the first male public health nurse in Western Massachusetts in 1976. And really, what I learned there was that most healthcare does not occur in the medical system. It occurs outside the medical system. And so when I ended up getting into medical care, it was always so interesting to me that everybody there thought this is where, you know, health happened, which it doesn’t. So over the 20 years of working as a nurse, I’ve worked in, other than the rehab and home care, I’ve worked in the emergency department, I’ve worked in ICU, I worked in pediatrics, behavioral health. And after about 15, 20 years, I shifted from becoming a student of individual health to a student o- of organizational health. And what I mean by that is I got into performance improvement. I led a couple of electronic health record implementations. I had a couple of gigs in the C-suite. I did some consulting. Now, in 2009, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and when I was diagnosed, I learned that I had had it for 25 years. And since my father died young, he died at 45 when I was 19 of his second heart attack, and so every time I would have some kind of episode, I would get a cardiac workup. And by the time the cardiac workup was done, you know, the episode was over, and this went on two, three, four times a year for a long time. And there was a pattern there, and nobody was connecting the dots for 25 years. That’s very important to me because the pattern of what was going on was in my records for 25 years, but nobody had synthesized it. Steven Labkoff: Yeah, they may have been biased, right? Because of your family history and having these episodes, you know, as a clinician, you get very biased by family history, and that can actually lead you down roads which may not be correct, and it sounds like that’s precisely what happened with you. Health Hats: So I’ve– I wanna bring in the caregiver role because I have been a caregiver for my grandmother, my mother, and a son in their end-of-life journeys. So I’ve been on many sides of very difficult decisions. As you said, that my shtick is health hats, and I’m health hats because I’m a patient, I’m a caregiver, I’m a nurse, I’m an advocate, I’m an informaticist, I’m a podcast host. I wear a lot of hats. And wearing many hats has gotten me a seat at many tables because they can check off boxes. When it was really different to be bringing patients o-on board, I was an easy choice. Uh, I was at the table for technical expert panels at CMS, at National Academy of Medicine, at AHRQ, National Quality Forum, PCORI, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. But really, I wasn’t really there in it for the seat itself. My goal was always to open seats for people who weren’t there yet Now let’s build the bridge, since this is a podcast about AI, let’s build that little bit of that bridge. So my first, like, serious experience with– Well, I don’t know about my first. I was involved in something that you probably are familiar with, which was the Blue Button Plus program, and my goal in that, I was there both as a patient and as somebody who was working with people with disabilities. I, I was VP of quality for an organization that supported about 40,000 people with disabilities. And my goal for that couple of years of weekly or every other week, I can’t remember, calls was, uh, to add a f- a caregiver field to the data set, and to also introduce the idea that what people needed was information that would be able to say what works for me when I’m in pain and what works for me when I’m afraid, which was an issue for me, and it was an issue for the organization that I was working with at the time. Now, I have to say that the caregiver field got added, so I felt some success in that. But as a nurse leader in the informatics group I was part of, really they were only interested in putting a name in the field, not doing anything with that information, which I- Just collecting, so just collecting the data. Steven Labkoff: They didn’t care what the data was used for? Is that what you’re saying? Health Hats: Correct. Yeah. And I couldn’t– got no traction on the pain and fear, which now that I’m older, I understand why, how difficult that is. Nevertheless, it’s something that’s important to patients and caregivers. So I think I would close this section with that I am both an early adopter of technology and a rapid skeptic, that I’m kinda making this number up, but I’ve probably tried over 100 health apps, and I would say that I’ve used five more than three times. And so I think there’s a gap between what’s promised with digital technology and what’s useful for people. So that’s really why I’m here and what’s guiding for me in this. Steven Labkoff: So let’s take it to the next step. In our prequel, I didn’t even know about your personal background to that degree. Mm-hmm. We can take that one offline later about the Holocaust survivor issues. We, we have family, I have family in that same situation, frankly. Let’s change gears and talk about the challenges that you’ve seen. You opened the door a little bit on that a few minutes ago- Yeah … in terms of people wanting to collect data but not necessarily doing much with the data, not being able to understand the true value of the data to some degree. And you said it yourself, people weren’t connecting the dots. Medical records have always been complicated. They’ve always been bulky. They’ve always been full of information, some of which is really relevant, a lot of which is not so relevant, and connecting the dots to making that a, uh, an important information source is not always an obvious task. So what, what was the particular angle on that challenge that you were trying to gun at? Health Hats: Well, I think we have to take a step back- and think about what is– Well, I’m just gonna speak for myself, okay? I know that I often, you know, as I said, I get asked to sit at the table because people can, you know, check boxes, like is that I’m a patient. I wanna be clear that I’m a privileged white old man with MS living in Boston, but I’m an N of one, and I don’t represent other patients. I’m representing myself here and my perspectives. My goal in terms of my health is best health, and what I mean by best health is optimal health and function, physical, mental, spiritual. Not a cure, but best health for where I am, what I have right now. And to get there, I need my own health data, not just what’s in my clinician’s chart, but what I know about myself, my circumstances, my environment, my history, my habits. Not just my medical history, my life history, my treatment responses. And so that’s like patient-reported data, and that’s stuff that’s only exists because I observe it and sometimes I record it And that’s where it falls apart right away. You were just alluding to some of it, that there’s all this medical data and what’s useful about that. I think Dave DeBronkart was a guest on your show. And when he launched his Gimme My Damn Data campaign, I responded to him with, “Watch what you wish for. You’ll be trying to drink dirty water from a fire hose.” And, and that was years ago, and it’s still true. So six months ago, I, I’d been on a mission to gather my medical data, and my– I’d been with my, uh, primary care practice since 2011, and I wanted all that data from 2011 to 2025. This was, like, in December I started on this crusade of trying to get my data. And actually, two months later, I got a box, a four-pound box of paper, and it was paper that was not in chronological order. And it’s just sitting right here. I’ve scanned it in. It’s not, um- Was it in– Steven Labkoff: Was it a printout of Epic or something, or was it actual- Health Hats: It’s a computer printout. It seems like it’s a vendor that they use to- Steven Labkoff: It wasn’t digital. They sent you, literally sent you a box of paper. Health Hats: Yeah, it was a box of paper. Oh. And then I use a lot the, the Beth Israel Lahey Mount Auburn system, and I asked for the last three months of my records, and I got 296 pages of redundant, non-searchable PDFs, and I got that in 15 minutes. Uh, I see a lot of doctors, so maybe I had seen Hmm. I think I had maybe eight or nine visits, and it just happened to be a three-month period that was busy for me, but I got s- 296 pages. And so that really adds to your comment, which is that access to data and access to usable data are really different. Steven Labkoff: Oh, absolutely. And yeah, I’ll tell you, in my world, I think you know that I’ve worked in the life sciences for many, many years, and we are consumers of healthcare data on many levels. We consume medical claims, we consume electronic medical records, and one of the hardest things about using medical records for research or for outcome studies and things like that is the very fact you’re describing, which is the data tends to be sparse, it tends to be poorly organized. It doesn’t always come in an encoded fashion. Thank God most of what we get these days is at least digital. No boxes of paper for us these days, but it wasn’t so long ago that when it was all paper, we couldn’t get that data in the first place. It just wasn’t even gettable. So at least you’ve made some progress. And- Yeah … yeah, I know that you sit on some national level boards, uh, around outcomes, and you can talk about that in a moment. But those are, you know, those boards are trying very hard to come up with outcome studies and ways of– Let me back that up. They’re coming up with ways of using data to perform outcome studies by harmonizing and, and distilling down to usable forms of this EHR data, which is so challenging. Health Hats: I think what’s key, I– like I, I think I w- I’d like to focus on my data. And so what I wanna do is I wanna see patterns. I wanna see patterns that takes my circumstances, my environment, my habits, my treatment over time, and because I think that these patterns are how I formulate the right questions, so the right questions before I go into a clinical encounter. They’re how I track when something is actually working, and it helps me to coordinate across care teams that don’t talk to each other and make decisions that I can live with that help me attain this goal of best health. So that’s the job, formulate better questions, g- seek better answers, make better decisions. And AI is the tool that I try to use to do it. Now, whether it’s up to the task or not is different. I wanna stick in the nursing angle, if you don’t mind- You know, one of the things that I learned the way I got started in nursing is that my goal as a nurse was to put myself out of a job. Steven Labkoff: So that sounds counterintuitive, but what I mean is from minute one with a patient and family, I’m planning my exit. Like, and to do that, I need maximum face time. I need real present, real conversation, real relationships, not less charting. I was gonna say not charting, not documentation, so that’s just ridiculous. Health Hats: But less, you know. The way you do that, I think, is, you know, less charting, less documentation, you know, not hunting through information you can’t find. And that’s where nursing, that’s a genuine promise. So pattern recognition across specific cohorts of patients. So as a nurse, even though I worked a lot of different places, in each place I worked, there was commonalities. In– When I lived in West Virginia and I was an ER nurse in a super rural hospital, if I had had more information about my patients, their families, I could get– an AI could help me surface those patterns that exist for the people that I’m taking care of, I think I could get time back as a nurse. And if the nurse gets time back, then the patient and family gets the presence of the clinician. So that’s the trade that I’m interested in I wanna go back to that thing about pain and fear. I wanna add what I’ve learned working on the blue button, plus I wanna add cognition. So when you think about it, the data almost never captures the variability of pain, fear, and cognition, and those things are really important because pain changes what you can do and what you can decide. Fear closes your heart. It closes your mind. And so when you’re scared in a clinical encounter, you’re not making good decisions. You’re just saying yes to end it. And cognition is, you know, it varies. Like I can absorb better at 10 in the morning on a good day compared to 3:00 in the afternoon when I’m spent. You know, you could extrapolate this to other people. They have their own particular patterns and circumstances. But I think What I’m trying to get at in all of this is it isn’t first about the data, it’s first about what about life and what about the things that are important to people, uh, patients, caregivers, and the clinicians that they partner with, and how can AI help them? Steven Labkoff: So you’ve explained to me in the pre-call that you’re doing some of this work, so maybe you can unpack a little bit about what it is you’re actually doing with it and how it’s helping or, in some cases, not helping those efforts. Health Hats: Well, what have I done? I, I’ve done different things. One of the things that, that I’ve done is to try to build my toolkit. You know? So when I say build my toolkit, I’m a, I’m a, a conglomeration of symptoms. I mean, you know, I’m, I’m not MS, I’m not my symptoms, but they’re big and they’re there, and I feel like I’m trying to, I’m trying to figure out for anything that I have to deal with, whether it’s any of the different kinds of pains I have, my, my anxiety, my bladder, you know, my mobility, I have challenges, and I, I need a toolbox. I need a toolbox, and the way I think is I need at least three things that will work so that when they happen, I got something I can go do, and pretty much the most common thing is drink water. Drink water is by far the most successful intervention across all of my symptoms. It’s kind of amazing. It’s so cheap, so easy. It isn’t the drugs. Okay, but so how do I do that? Well, for me, I’ve done that partially just in my head. Partially I’ve done that by keeping lists. Like, I keep track of the steps I take. I keep track of the amount of time I play music. I keep track of my falls. I keep track of my weight. And so I use digital tools to do that when I can. Steven Labkoff: I also record my clinician visits because- When you say record, do you mean like audio record or dig- Health Hats: Yeah. Yeah, audio record, right. And, uh, until recently I used Abridge, which is a company that, um- Steven Labkoff: How did you get to use Abridge? You– I thought Abridge was only selling basically into doctor’s offices, uh, from the clinician side. Do you- Health Hats: So I was before that. Ah. And they started as a patient-facing product, and actually they sponsored my podcast for three years. So I was pre that. So putting all that together, so I play with, you know, trying to put into Claude There’s nothing magic or special. You know, it’s me playing, just trying stuff. You know, some of it, you know, my wife will say, “Hey,” she sees a pattern. My kids will see a pattern, or I’ll- Steven Labkoff: Give, give, give us an example of what, of what this looks like. I mean, you’re saying you’re giving Claude or another LLM- Yeah … a series of symptoms, or you’re giving it a series of, plus your data. Like, unpack it and let us know. Yeah. What have you did- Okay, so what- … with the system, and how is it working for you? Health Hats: I’ve done a couple of different things. One is, you know, I have a spreadsheet, and I just put the spreadsheet in, you know, as a document or whatever you call it when you have a project and, you know, you load. I load my spreadsheet. I keep a annual summary, and I keep the year that I’m working on. And I will have fits of journaling. You know, I, this is not something that I am, like, super consistent on, but I’ll, especially when I’m struggling with something, if I’m struggling with my blood pressure or I’m struggling with my mood. I have a progressive mobility thing going on, and I’ll put that in and I’ll prompt. I’ll say, “Can you– do you see a pattern in this?” You know, and I’ve gotten, you know, that there’s- Steven Labkoff: Has it given you some insights? Is it… Like, give me an example of some of the insights it’s actually given you that you didn’t see yourself. Health Hats: Well, I’ve gotten, like, uh, it’s kind of humorous. But, but I’ve gotten, like, you know, “Have you thought about seeing a physical therapist?” And I, I have. You know, I have a physical therapist, uh, that I don’t go to very often. You know, my relationship with her is I go for a tune-up. But they’ll– I, I want– It’ll show, like, I’ll do my sort of things are clearly, you know, I’m not walking as far, I’ve fell on a few times, you know, and I’ll get this suggestion, you know. I also– What else have I done? Oh, oh, uh, once I had a medication that I was taking for neuropathy, and I was– my mood had, like, changed considerably and, you know, I got a thing on that might be a side effect. You know, “Have you talked to your doctor about this?” Steven Labkoff: And I- And you got that out of the LLM? You fed that to the LLM? Health Hats: I did. Yeah. Steven Labkoff: And it suggested it was a side effect, which you didn’t figure out. Health Hats: I didn’t. A neurologist said that he thought– He said, “It sounds like you have an allergy to it.” And, you know, he wanted it to be listed as an allergy because he thought it was very possible that he’s had people that have had a problem. Steven Labkoff: When you tell me that you’ve loaded your data, you give the LLM your signs, your symptoms, you give it your labs, you give it what’s in, in the system, and it comes up with a recommendation that you hadn’t thought– Now, you’re a clinician. You’re a nurse. Yeah. You’ve been a nurse for many, many decades. Health Hats: 50 years. Steven Labkoff: 50 years. And does it surprise you that it comes up with stuff that you didn’t see? Health Hats: No. Steven Labkoff: Cause I, to be honest with you- I- … if I, if I did what you just said and it came up with something completely radical that I’d never thought of and it was right- I would be scratching my head and thinking, “Okay, that’s in- that’s beyond interesting. I better pay more attention to this, and maybe I wanna use it differently.” Because not, it’s not just yous using it. Like, people around everywhere are starting to use it for the same, in the same sim- in the same exact way. So that’s the simplification of the medical system, right? Health Hats: It does. I mean, like when I tell my neurologist, he laughs, and he’s like a whatever works kinda guy, you know? That he feels like he doesn’t have all the answers, and that he likes- those stories. I feel like I’ve learned, I think you know Amy Price, right? Steven Labkoff: Yeah, very well. Health Hats: Yeah. We’re buddies. And so one of the things that I’ve learned from her is how to query and how to be skeptical and how to ask questions from different angles, from different perspectives so that you– And that’s why I think that’s where the unexpected comes up. Steven Labkoff: Well, you’re describing something that we did at the conference. I don’t know if you were in the room in the working group that we did this on, but you’re describing, and actually we’re submitting a paper on it very shortly, on AI literacy. Yeah. And you, you didn’t label it as such, but you’re describing yourself as being AI literate and understanding how to use the tools, most importantly, how to be skeptical of the answers, how to interpret the information that’s being presented to you. Health Hats: A- and that, those are all components of literacy, of AI literacy specifically. One of the things I’m finding in my world is that painfully few people are indeed AI literate. Even the folks in IT departments in large life science companies or hospitals who even work in the space and think that they’re good at it and are literate sometimes are not. That has other implications, which are if people are taking on these really impressively powerful tools and they don’t quite know how to use them as well as they should, and if they query them incorrectly, to your point earlier about making good queries, the responses that come out may or may not be the point. And if patients use that information inappropriately because they didn’t know how to ask the right questions to start with, that could have deep implications to the healthcare system. You could say that same thing about doctors. Steven Labkoff: I will say it about doctors. I mean, not about AI, about the advice that doctors give. Health Hats: There’s a, a tremendous variation, and it is very different. When I am feeling good enough to be organized and to be directive in the conversation with a clinician, I get a very different output than when I’m not. And I still have to be skeptical of what doctors tell me, and until I build some trust. And, and then I, you know, then there’s just too many decisions to make when you’re a person with chronic illness. It’s like putting in a kitchen. There’s so many decisions to make, and I’m happy for the doctors that I trust to make the decisions for me. But there are certain decisions I don’t want to give to the doctor or to AI, like I don’t wanna mess with my pathological optimism. I wanna progress as slowly as possible, and I wanna keep playing my horn. These are really important things to me, and I don’t give those decisions that affect that, I don’t give up. But all the rest of it I do, and, and I’ve worked really hard to build the team that I have that appreciates me and my strangeness and my assertiveness, and, you know, they’re not threatened by it. Steven Labkoff: Is your team AI literate? Do they also use the, these same tools in your care? Health Hats: Uh, like I don’t know. I mean, AI literate is like, is huge. You know? I mean, that’s just such a big thing. Do they use AI? Yes. Do I know how they use AI? Well, you know, they use what’s attached to Epic. I know that. Uh, I mean, look, my neurologist, who I just love, he thinks like he uses, he uses the portal well because he takes– he just keeps adding things to the end of the, a note. Yeah. And so he feels like… Well, I don’t find his notes at all useful, and I tell him that. I tell him, “What I really wanna know is, how am I doing? Am I getting better? Am I getting worse? Am I stable? What should I be paying attention to in the next six months till I see you again?” And I can’t find that in his note. That’s true. Yeah. Now, on the other hand, I’ve taken his note and asked Claude and say, “Here’s the note. How am I doing? You know, have I progressed? H-how is he measuring it?” Oh, well, then I find he’s using this scale, right? And it’ll come up with looking through this note, which is like 10 years running, and it’ll find, I can’t remember the name of it, but there’s a scale that he uses. And then we go back and I’ll say to him, “Oh, you’re using this scale.” And he goes, “Yeah.” And I say, “Well, why don’t you like put that at the top of your note?” You know, so that I can find it. You know, so we have that kind of conversation- Yeah … that AI has helped. Steven Labkoff: Well, that’s actually an interesting perspective that AI is helping to reorganize things, ’cause one of the use cases that has been discussed at, at length actually, and it was discussed at our conference, is using AI to digest medical records. Health Hats: And when I say digest, it’s not about like ingesting them, which is slightly different, but digesting, which means find all the different pieces, put them together, come up with a narrative that summarizes perhaps 300 pages of information which may be sparse and may be poorly organized, and bring it all together. And that’s actually a task that AI is actually turning out to be pretty darn good at. And that again changes the nature of the healthcare system and the healthcare journey. You know- And it does a fair job. You say it’s really good at it. So- It’s better than I could do. It’s better than I could do. Well, yes. Well, you’re not– First of all, that’s not your training, and you don’t have the time for it. And you still have to review it. Yeah, of course. Because I have never used AI that gave me a, “Oh, this is great.” I mean, the first time I read it pretty much every time I think it’s amazing. And then, you know, my rule is sleep on it and check it again. And then it’s like, oh my God, this, first of all, it either just said nothing very fancy or it got some very basic things wrong. And then I’ll say, “Oh, you know, you missed this and you missed that.” And it’ll go, “Oh, you’re right, I did.” You know? Steven Labkoff: Well, that also speaks to the concept of keeping a human in the loop- Yeah which is something that you espouse and many folks in the healthcare aisle- I do … espouse. Ironically, you know Adam Rodman, I think. He was at our conference, he spoke. Yeah. Uh, he’s done a study which shows actually having a human in the loop in some cases actually makes the conclusions worse, believe it or not. Ah. Which is w- a non-intuitive finding. You would think that the two together would be better than either one alone, but so that’s, that’s now relatively n- well, it’s not even that new anymore. That information came out about a year ago. So I, we gotta start wrapping up in a few minutes here. Yeah. You know, we didn’t cover the concept around outcomes around your three T’s and two C’s. Maybe we can cover that in the last bit here, and then we can get to closing. Health Hats: Okay. So I feel like one of the questions that you’ve asked is how AI helped, right? And so what I need to tell you is the framework that I’ve developed over the years, which I’ve actually shared in my AI Claude project that’s Danny’s Health, what I call the three T’s and the two C’s, and this is like the framework I use to evaluate any digital health technology. And so they are time, trust, talk, control, and connection. What I mean by that is time is, you know, you need time to learn, to plan, to talk, to build trust. So I say the clock isn’t the enemy, it’s the, the wrong things filling the time, so the, the time. The second is trust. You know, trust can take a really long time. It can happen really quickly. Sometimes you never have it, and you know in your gut when you don’t have it. And most digital health tools, AI, have a trust deficit, I think, not because they’re untru- untrustworthy, which maybe they are, but it’s really because the people who use them, use the tools, don’t, don’t trust them, and I think it’s really important. You c- you can’t shortcut trust in the use of any tool. I think talk is really important. It’s woven through all of it, real conversation. There is nothing like actual conversation that is making decisions together, which is a lot of what healthcare is about, is making decisions. AI can help you prepare for it, and it can help process it. And then control. I trust more when I have power in a situation. So if I’m feeling like an ant ready to be crushed, I’m not making good decisions. And finally, I would say connection is, it’s the human lifeline. You know, when somebody greets you when you cross a threshold, that’s a connection. When someone’s been where you’re going and they can say, “Oh, that helped me.” AI can extend that connection. They can help people find communities that are available at 3:00 in the morning, but you can’t manufacture it. I, I think that connection is really important, so that’s where I g- you know, time, talk, trust, control, and connection, and I use that framework when I’m evaluating. Steven Labkoff: And that framework gives you a better, you know, a how do I say this right? It gives you a, like a rubric, if you will, to go- Yes … through, uh, the information that’s coming out of it. Danny- Yeah … we’re gonna have to wrap up here in a second. Sure. Are there any last comments you wanna make that, that will, you know, help other patients in the, in the space in terms of how they might wanna think about adopting- an AI tool in their world? Health Hats: I think that I would say use it, use AI, keep using it, experiment with it. That, that i- i- just like anything else, it takes time to learn. It takes time to be comfortable with it. Use it. I would say advocate for humans in the loop. I don’t care what the study says. It’s about humans. We are human. Keep it humans in the loop. I would say find a buddy, you know. Do this with somebody else. Find a buddy- That’s good advice … and experiment. I would say, yeah, talk to your clinician about it. It’s a good barometer of a physician. If they don’t wanna talk or blow you off, that tells you something. Absolutely right. And I would say if you’re comfortable with it, mentor. You know- That’s a good idea … be the buddy. And for clinicians and for systems and developers, I would say you need to have patients, caregivers, and practicing partner clinicians in the design. They need to be there from the beginning. And, you know, so i- it solves the problems people have, not the problems that the developers think are there or the venture capitalists thinks are gonna make money. You know, y- and if you have an opportunity, join, you know, participate. Steven Labkoff: All good advice. Well, Danny, I wanna thank you very much for your participation in, in today’s discussion. Hopefully that there are other patients out there who listen to the podcast, they’ll take something away. For the clinicians out there who are listening, you know, you’ve heard it straight out from a patient who happens to be a healthcare provider himself, and he’s got very strong perspectives on how this can be used in a positive and productive way, and I think the framework that he’s put together is very useful. Danny, I wanna just say thank you for all the help that you’ve provided helping this podcast get off the ground. That’s been really incredibly generous of you and your friends who have helped us a lot, and a lot of the things that have happened on our podcast, uh, for improvement’s sake, have come directly from those conversations, so thank you for that. I wanna thank you for being a guest and sharing your journey and sharing your experiences here. And for the rest of us, I’m gonna say thank you for joining us, and we will see you again next time on another episode of Practical AI in Healthcare. Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining us this week on Practical AI in Healthcare. If you’re ready to go beyond buzzwords and hype and explore how AI is truly transforming healthcare, stay tuned for more conversations that get us to what works. Until next time, stay practical Reflection When Steve interviewed me, he didn't know that everything I told him is the origin story of TrustMyOwn.Health. The box of paper. The 296 pages that were technically my data and practically useless. Twenty-five years of a pattern that sat in my chart the whole time, that it took a person, my PCP, a year to put together. Could AI have done it in an afternoon?  I got tired of that being the normal experience instead of the exception. [Add: what specifically prompted starting TMOH, and when.] TMOH starts from a premise I didn't have language for until I said it out loud to Steve: trust isn't a feature you bolt onto a health platform after the engineering is done. It's the whole structure, or the whole thing fails. The three T's and two C's I use to size up any digital health tool turn out to be close to a design spec. Time, because a vault of your whole health history takes patience to build, not a single import. Trust, built into governance rather than promised in marketing; TMOH's Data Sovereignty Covenant binds the board and investors to the same terms as everyone else, which is the only version of trust I believe in. Talk, because the point was never to replace the conversation with my clinician, it was to walk in more prepared for it. Control, because I decide what goes in the vault and who sees it, the same way I decide which of my own decisions I hand to a doctor or an AI and which ones I keep for myself. Connection, which no vault can manufacture, but a good one can make room for. I told Steve that AI found a pattern in my chart that twenty-five years of clinicians missed. That's not really a story about AI being smart. It's a story about who owned the data long enough to ask the question. That's the whole bet behind TMOH: put the owner at the center, and let the rest of the ecosystem, the networks, the vendors, the AI, earn its place around that. See you around the block. Practical AI in Healthcare Episodes https://open.spotify.com/episode/4wA4ltjmZfIZ5VpmTeTTOF?si=KbEvc2_ERNWakJ3JeP2Ddg https://open.spotify.com/episode/0LDetUFJJrSV1cy6LtpGFx?si=qAqoqKBBSNm9PiwPjSIXYA https://open.spotify.com/episode/0wXEm1KnnGorOvTt9GTh7o?si=K_DKXzGyThusBPA6KoVkCg https://open.spotify.com/episode/6krV94ob6Lcv7VNo0qahZ5?si=B6lZDkvsQ9y2Z2FhkXzQGQ Referenced in episode Patient data access history: “Introducing Blue Button Plus: The Next Generation in PHRs” — HealthIT.gov (Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT) — https://www.healthit.gov/blog/consumer/introducing-blue-button/ The “Gimme My Damn Data” campaign Danny references: “Gimme My Damn Data (and Let Patients Help!): The #GimmeMyDamnData Manifesto” — Dave deBronkart, Journal of Medical Internet Research — https://www.jmir.org/2019/11/e17045/ Amy Price, mentioned as a mentor in questioning and skepticism: “Welcoming Dr. Amy Price as Editor-in-Chief” — Society for Participatory Medicine — https://participatorymedicine.org/2024/welcoming-dr-amy-price-dphil-as-the-editor-in-chief-for-the-journal-of-participatory-medicine/ AI literacy for patients, the concept Steve names in the episode: “Critical AI Health Literacy as Liberation Technology: A New Skill for Patient Empowerment” — National Academy of Medicine — https://nam.edu/perspectives/critical-ai-health-literacy-as-liberation-technology-a-new-skill-for-patient-empowerment/ Human-in-the-loop research Danny and Steve discuss (Adam Rodman): “AI and the Evolution of Medical Thought with Dr. Adam Rodman” — NEJM AI Grand Rounds (podcast) — https://ai-podcast.nejm.org/e/ai-and-the-evolution-of-medical-thought-with-dr-adam-rodman/ Abridge, the ambient AI scribe tool Danny mentions using: “Pioneers in Generative AI for Healthcare” — Abridge — https://www.abridge.com/about The DCI Network conference where Danny met the hosts: “About DCI Network” — DCI Network, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center — https://www.dcinetwork.org/about-us Please comment and ask questions: at the comment section at the bottom of the show notes on LinkedIn  via email YouTube channel  DM on Instagram, TikTok to @healthhats Substack Patreon Production Team Kayla Nelson: Web and Social Media Coach, Dissemination, Help Desk  Leon van Leeuwen: editing and site management Oscar van Leeuwen: video editing Julia Higgins: Digital marketing therapy Steve Heatherington: Help Desk and podcast production counseling Joey van Leeuwen, Drummer, Composer, and Arranger, provided the music for the intro, outro, proem, and reflection Claude, Perplexity, Auphonic, Descript, Grammarly, DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci AI Art Generator, OpenArt AI Creator Studio Inspired by and Grateful to: Steve Labkoff, Leon Rosenbilt, Amy Price, Leon and Oscar van Leeuwen, Laura Marcial Artificial Intelligence in Podcast Production Health Hats, the Podcast, utilizes AI tools for production tasks such as editing, transcription, and content suggestions. While AI assists with various aspects, including image creation, most AI suggestions are modified. All creative decisions remain my own, with AI sources referenced as usual. Questions are welcome. Creative Commons Licensing CC BY-NC-SA This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. CC BY-NC-SA includes the following elements:    BY: credit must be given to the creator.   NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.    SA: Adaptations must be shared under the same terms. Please let me know. dannyhealthhats@gmail.com  Material on this site created by others is theirs, and use follows their guidelines. Disclaimer The views and opinions presented in this podcast and publication are solely my responsibility and do not necessarily represent the views of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute®  (PCORI®), its Board of Governors, or Methodology Committee. Danny van Leeuwen (Health Hats)

Dr. Gary Parker is one of the defining figures in modern river mechanics and sediment transport. He's a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois or Urbana Champlain where he's been since 2005.  Before that he was a distinguished professor at the University of Minnesota. He's a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and has won more scientific awards than I can count - in multiple disciplines - that could each be thought of as a career-defining honor. You do not have to dig very deep into many of the topics we talk about in this podcast before you encounter his work. His early research on channel form, meander mechanics, and dynamic armoring may each represent Kuhnian paradigm shifts in those sub-disciplines. But part of the evidence of his influence is that I don't think there's another name that has come up more often in these conversations as I've talked to subject matter experts about how they understand rivers. When I first got interested in sediment transport I found Dr. Parker's Morphodynamics website:Before Universitas started making their materials publicly available (shoot, before there was much on the internet) Dr. Parker put the notes and code from his Morphodynamics class up on a website.  I spent hours pouring over them. Then years before the ASC 110 manual of practice was published, he posted his chapter on gravel bed rivers on that same website, which may be the single most influential document in my career. Christopher Lee, who played Saruman in the Lord of the Rings films, used to talk about how much he wanted to be in those films because he read the books through every year. That was me with Dr. Parker's chapter for at least a decade. I sat down and read that chapter every year to try to contextualize the new mysteries I'd encountered in these systems since the last time I picked it up. Later, as I started my graduate work, it became clear that you simply could not get up to speed on modern Morphodynamics and sediment transport without doing business with Gary's literature.Dr Parker also has an unusual facility to translate complex river mechanics principles into fun, vivid, metaphor…and if you have followed my teaching at all, you might suspect that this is one of my favorite flavors of science communication.So, I am obviously delighted to wrap up this season of the RSM River Mechanics podcast talking gravel bed rivers with Dr. Gary Parker.This series was funded by the Regional Sediment Management (RSM) program.Mike Loretto edited the first three seasons and created the theme music.Tessa Hall is editing most of Season 4.Stanford Gibson (HEC Sediment Specialist) hosts.Video shorts and other bonus content are available at the podcast website:https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/confluence/rasdocs/rastraining/latest/the-rsm-river-mechanics-podcast...but most of the supplementary videos are available on the HEC Sediment YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/stanfordgibsonIf you have guest recommendations or feedback you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or ResearchGate or fill out this recommendation and feedback form: https://forms.gle/wWJLVSEYe7S8Cd248

This is part 3 of our three-part series about elements. And today is a biggie: carbon. When we hear about carbon, it's usually about its role in heating up the planet. And while that's an absolutely critical part of the story, the story of this most miraculous of substances is so much larger.We talk to Peter Brannen, author of The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything, about how carbon has always been central to just about every major turning point in the history of life on Earth...including why life is here in the first place.---This episode is hosted by Executive Producer Carlyle Calhoun. Editing help from Eva Tesfaye and Jack Rodolico. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste, and our sound design by Dennis Funk.Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO's Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

All Home Care Matters and our host, Lance A. Slatton were honored to welcome Rima Nathan as guest to the show.   About Rima Nathan:   Rima Nathan is a clinical professor at FSU Law and directs the Claude Pepper Elder Law Clinic. Professor Nathan previously practiced in the areas of complex civil litigation, trials, and appeals, and she served as a judicial clerk to Justice Jorge Labarga of the Supreme Court of Florida. Professor Nathan teaches the Elder Law Clinic and directs the Claude Pepper Elder Law Moot Court Competition.   She has received various awards including the 2024-25 University Teaching Award for Community Engaged Teaching, AARP Florida's Fraud Fighter award, and was the Elder Law Section of the Florida Bar's member of the year. She is a member of various organizations including the First District Appellate American Inn of Court, the Consumer Protection Law Committee of the Florida Bar, and the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.   About Florida State University College of Law:   At Florida State University College of Law, we prepare bold, leaders who shape the future of law and strengthen communities through knowledge, advocacy, and service. We are united by a shared commitment to shaping future lawyers who lead with integrity, give back to their communities, and uphold ethical practices that benefit all.   We recognize the importance of our collective role in fostering a deep understanding of the legal profession's impact and responsibility. Our mission is to cultivate a dynamic environment grounded in professionalism, excellence, and collaboration and connection.   Through a rigorous, forward-thinking curriculum, world-class faculty mentorship, and hands-on learning opportunities, we empower the next generation of legal leaders. Located in the heart of Florida's capital, the College offers unmatched access to courts, governmental institutions, and a thriving legal community.   Florida State University College of Law aspires to be a national leader in legal education, scholarship, and public service. We envision a community where students, faculty, and alumni drive innovation in the law, advance social justice, and shape the future of the legal profession.   Through our strategic location, distinctive programs, and commitment to excellence, we aim to empower graduates to make a profound impact on their communities, the state of Florida, and the world.   Here, excellence is more than a standard—it is our way of life and the foundation of our national reputation. We are committed to delivering outstanding academic programs, supporting our faculty and students at every stage, and continually raising the bar for professional achievement.   Our reputation for excellence is built every day through exceptional student recruitment, service, and support; the scholarship and dedication of our faculty; and active engagement with the broader community.   We proudly share these achievements through our clinics, partnerships, and outreach efforts, ensuring that the excellence we cultivate is recognized and celebrated.

How much of your life -- and everyone's -- is a compulsive, futile effort to deny your own death? What happens when you see what's really happening?SourcesLeontief's horse. Wassily Leontief, 1983, National Academy of Engineering symposiumHumans and Horses. Brynjolfsson & McAfee, “Will Humans Go the Way of Horses?”, Foreign Affairs (2015): https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/will-humans-go-way-horsesSoftware developer pay. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Software Developers (SOC 15-1252): https://www.bls.gov/oes/2021/may/oes151252.htm · https://www.bls.gov/oes/2022/may/oes151252.htm · https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151252.htm · Occupational Outlook Handbook: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm Total-comp figure: Levels.fyi (2026).AI timelines (experts). Katja Grace et al., “Thousands of AI Authors on the Future of AI” (2023 survey, 2,778 researchers): https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.02843 · https://aiimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Thousands_of_AI_authors_on_the_future_of_AI.pdfGoldman Sachs. “An AI Job Apocalypse?”, Goldman Sachs Research, June 25, 2026: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/an-ai-job-apocalypse (Goldman's own view is that the disruption is temporary.)Occupational exposure. Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, Daniel Rock, “GPTs are GPTs,” *Science* 384 (2024): https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj0998 · working paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130Stanford Digital Economy Lab, “Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of AI” (Nov 2025): https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/app/uploads/2025/11/CanariesintheCoalMine_Nov25.pdfCurrent labor data. Maxim Massenkoff & Peter McCrory, “Labor Market Impacts of AI: A New Measure and Early Evidence,” Anthropic (Mar 5, 2026): https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special Crossover episode with Governance Matters, James-Christian Blockwood is joined by Raphe Sonenshein, President and CEO of the the Haynes Foundation.We're focused on local government charters as “local constitutions” that can be changed more easily, and impact people more immediately, than the U.S. Constitution.Management Matters is a presentation of the National Academy of Public Administration produced by Lizzie Alwan and Matt Hampton and edited by Matt Hampton. Support the Podcast Today at: donate@napawash.org or 202-347-3190Episode music: Hope by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.comMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comFollow us on YouTube for clips and more: @NAPAWASH_YT

During this podcast I read part two of a draft, yet-to-be-published essay titled, “Institutional Betrayal: HHS and the National Academy of Medicine's Failure to Decarbonize the US healthcare Industry.” That the window formally closed in January 2025 means healthcare will not approach reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in 2030. HHS will continue to intentionally fund the industry's harm-treat-harm business model meaning healthcare is by design traumatic. Iatrogenesis is built-in. Americans will become increasingly consumed by, not consumers of, healthcare.Comments are of course welcomed. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

In this conversation, Ari Whitten and I go straight to the cellular level to answer a question most of cardiology never asks: where does your energy actually come from, and what happens to your heart when it runs low? Ari walks through the work of Dr. Robert Naviaux and the ‘cell danger response,' the idea that your mitochondria are constantly reading the environment and deciding whether to make energy or switch into defense mode. Stressors like toxins, junk food, poor sleep, and chronic psychological stress push them toward defense, and that shift shows up as fatigue, oxidative stress, and inflammation, the same drivers I see underneath so much heart disease.From there, we get practical. Ari breaks down why how you breathe matters as much as how much you move, how a simple breath-hold test reflects your body's oxygen delivery, and why 20 to 30 minutes of daily movement may be one of the most powerful things you can do for your heart. It all comes back to what I teach every day: Eat Well, Live Well, Think Well. Give your cells what they were designed for, and your energy and your heart tend to follow.- - - - -About the Guest:Ari Whitten, MS, is the founder of The Energy Blueprint and one of the most respected evidence-based voices on fatigue, energy, and mitochondrial health. He holds a Master of Science in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, a bachelor's in Kinesiology, and certifications from the National Academy of Sports Medicine as a Corrective Exercise Specialist and Performance Enhancement Specialist.After losing nearly a year of his own life to severe chronic fatigue in his twenties, Ari devoted his career to understanding how cellular energy is built and broken. He is the bestselling author of Eat for Energy and The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy, and has taught his science-first approach to energy on stages around the world.Website: theenergyblueprint.comInstagram: @theenergyblueprintPodcast: The Energy Blueprint- - - - -Jack Wolfson, DO, FACCWebsites: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drjackwolfson.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠; ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://naturalheartdoctor.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjackwolfson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ready to move past the confusion and fear of typical heart health approaches? Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠naturalheartdoctor.com/discovery⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to schedule your free discovery call and start your journey toward a 100-year heart with real, evidence-based answers.- - - - -PODCAST Thank you for listening. Please subscribe and share. This podcast is produced by DrTalks.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drtalks.com/podcast-service/

Links For The Occult Rejectshttps://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Substackhttps://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-pageCash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsAssmann, Jan. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Translated by David Lorton. Cornell University Press, 2005.Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death. Translated by Helen Weaver. Knopf, 1981.Beard, Mary, John North, and Simon Price. Religions of Rome. 2 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1998.Blackmore, Susan. Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences. Prometheus Books, 1993.Boyce, Mary. Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge, 1979.Bremmer, Jan N. The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife: The 1995 Read-Tuckwell Lectures at the University of Bristol. Routledge, 2002.Chalmers, David J. “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 2, no. 3 (1995): 200–219.Fenwick, Peter, and Elizabeth Fenwick. The Art of Dying: A Journey to Elsewhere. Continuum, 2008.Graf, Fritz, and Sarah Iles Johnston. Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2013.Greyson, Bruce. After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond. St. Martin's Essentials, 2021.Greyson, Bruce. “The Near-Death Experience Scale: Construction, Reliability, and Validity.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 171, no. 6 (1983): 369–375.Griffiths, Roland R., William A. Richards, Una McCann, and Robert Jesse. “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.” Psychopharmacology 187, no. 3 (2006): 268–283.Hornung, Erik. The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Translated by David Lorton. Cornell University Press, 1999.Johnston, Sarah Iles. Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. University of California Press, 1999.Kerr, Christopher W., et al. “End-of-Life Dreams and Visions: A Longitudinal Study of Hospice Patients' Experiences.” Journal of Palliative Medicine 17, no. 3 (2014): 296–303.Le Goff, Jacques. The Birth of Purgatory. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. University of Chicago Press, 1984.Moody, Raymond A. Life After Life. Mockingbird Books, 1975.Nahm, Michael, Bruce Greyson, Emily Williams Kelly, and Erlendur Haraldsson. “Terminal Lucidity: A Review and a Case Collection.” Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 55, no. 1 (2012): 138–142.Nelson, Kevin R., Michelle Mattingly, Sherman A. Lee, and Frederick A. Schmitt. “Does the Arousal System Contribute to Near Death Experience?” Neurology 66, no. 7 (2006): 1003–1009.Obayashi, Hiroshi, ed. Death and Afterlife: Perspectives of World Religions. Greenwood Press, 1992.Osis, Karlis, and Erlendur Haraldsson. At the Hour of Death. Avon, 1977.Parnia, Sam, et al. “AWAreness during REsuscitation—II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest.” Resuscitation 191 (2023).Plato. Phaedo. In Plato: Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Hackett, 1997.Segal, Alan F. Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion. Doubleday, 2004.Stevenson, Ian. Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation. Rev. ed. McFarland, 2001.Taylor, John H., ed. Journey through the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Harvard University Press / British Museum Press, 2010.Tucker, Jim B. Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives. St. Martin's Press, 2005.van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. University of Chicago Press, 1960.van Lommel, Pim, Ruud van Wees, Vincent Meyers, and Ingrid Elfferich. “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands.” The Lancet 358, no. 9298 (2001): 2039–2045.Xu, Gang, et al. “Surge of Neurophysiological Coupling and Connectivity of Gamma Oscillations in the Dying Human Brain.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 19 (2023).Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. 

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, I am offering something that has genuinely changed the way I think about my body — the circadian rhythm. I share what this 24-hour internal clock actually is, why researchers say it runs everything from your metabolism and hormones to your sleep and immunity, and how understanding it gave me a whole new perspective on the ongoing conversation around meal timing and breakfast. I walk through a few practical strategies rooted in circadian science that you can simply be aware of and explore in your own life.And yes — I am raising my hand on the late-night phone habit, because that quote of the week? It hit home for me too. Come learn something new about the incredible, intelligent design of your own body.QUOTE OF THE WEEK“Studies have shown that every hour you're still on your mobile phone, tablet, laptop, or watching TV at night, melatonin is suppressed by 30 minutes.”— Dr. Satchin Panda, The Circadian CodeCITATIONS ·      Panda, S. (2019). The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight. Rodale Books.·      Circadian rhythm science and the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN): National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Circadian Rhythms. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/circadian-rhythms.aspx·      Insulin sensitivity and meal timing: Saad, A., et al. (2012). Diurnal pattern to insulin secretion and insulin action in healthy individuals. Diabetes, 61(11), 2691–2700.·      Circadian disruption and metabolic health: Scheer, F. A. J. L., Hilton, M. F., Mantzoros, C. S., & Shea, S. A. (2009). Adverse metabolic and cardiovascular consequences of circadian misalignment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(11), 4453–4458.·      Shift work and health outcomes: Wang, X. S., Armstrong, M. E. G., Cairns, B. J., Key, T. J., & Travis, R. C. (2011). Shift work and chronic disease: the epidemiological evidence. Occupational Medicine, 61(2), 78–89.·      Social jet lag: Wittmann, M., Dinich, J., Merrow, M., & Roenneberg, T. (2006). Social jetlag: misalignment of biological and social time. Chronobiology International, 23(1-2), 497–509.·      Melatonin suppression and blue light/screens: Harvard Health Publishing. (2020). Blue light has a dark side. Harvard Medical School. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side·      https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/59135872-the-circadian-code-lose-weight-supercharge-your-energy-and-transformLet's go, let's get it done.Get more information at: http://projectweightloss.org

World-leading behaviour change expert Katy Milkman details how to change your habits.  --- Become an FSB member: https://get.fsb.org.uk/nudge/ Unlock the Nudge Vaults: https://www.nudgepodcast.com/vaults Katy's book: https://amzn.to/3RF63xA  Katy's podcast: https://www.schwab.com/learn/choiceology  Katy's newsletter: https://www.katymilkman.com/newsletter-milkman-delivers  Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.nudgepodcast.com/mailing-list  Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phill-agnew/  --- Today's sources: Beshears, J.Beshears, J., Dai, H., Milkman, K. L., & Benartzi, S. (2021). Using fresh starts to nudge increased retirement savings. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 167, 72–87. Dai, H., Milkman, K. L., & Riis, J. (2014). The fresh start effect: Temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior. Management Science, 60(10), 2563–2582. Eskreis-Winkler, L., Fishbach, A., & Duckworth, A. L. (2018). Dear Abby: Should I give advice or receive it? Psychological Science, 29(11), 1797–1806. Eskreis-Winkler, L., Milkman, K. L., Gromet, D. M., & Duckworth, A. L. (2019). A large-scale field experiment shows giving advice improves academic outcomes for the advisor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(30), 14808–14810. Schroeder, S. A. (2007). We can do better — Improving the health of the American people. New England Journal of Medicine, 357(12), 1221–1228.

In Part 2 of The Mechanics of Magick: Drumming, Trance, and the Brain, we follow rhythm from the sacred road into the war road and the modern machine. This episode examines war drums, military cadence, synchronized movement, crowd power, ritual physiology, propaganda, slogans, media framing, algorithmic repetition, moral-emotional contagion, and the illusory truth effect. The argument is not that rhythm is evil. The argument is that rhythm is morally flexible and powerful. It can heal, gather, strengthen, command, manipulate, or capture depending on the world built around it. The drum teaches us to hear the visible pulse first, so we can recognize the hidden drums of the modern world: the chant, the slogan, the feed, the notification loop, the soundtrack, the repeated frame, and the rhythm that trains attention before thought has time to speak.Links For The Occult Rejectshttps://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Substackhttps://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-pageCash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsRhythm, Marching, Synchrony, and the GroupBodyMcNeill, William H. Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.Use for dance, drill, marching, synchronized movement, and “muscular bonding.” This is one of the best historical anchors for the claim that moving together in time can help bind human groups through the body. It belongs in the war drum, marching, military cadence, procession, and crowd-power material.Wiltermuth, Scott S., and Chip Heath. “Synchrony and Cooperation.” Psychological Science 20, no. 1 (2009): 1–5.Use for the claim that synchronized action can increase cooperation. This supports the argument that marching, chanting, dancing, and acting in time can alter group attachment and behavior.Hove, Michael J., and Jane L. Risen. “It's All in the Timing: Interpersonal Synchrony Increases Affiliation.” Social Cognition 27, no. 6 (2009): 949–960.Use for interpersonal synchrony and affiliation. This supports the softer social-bonding side of rhythm: people who coordinate timing can feel more connected.Tarr, Bronwyn, Jacques Launay, and Robin I. M. Dunbar. “Music and Social Bonding: ‘Self-Other' Merging and Neurohormonal Mechanisms.” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014): 1096.Use for music, synchrony, bonding, self-other merging, endorphins, and why rhythmic group activity can feel socially powerful. This belongs in both crowd sections and the “operator as instrument” material.Reddish, Paul, Ronald Fischer, and Joseph Bulbulia. “Let's Dance Together: Synchrony, Shared Intentionality and Cooperation.” PLOS ONE 8, no. 8 (2013): e71182.Use as extra support for synchrony and cooperation. Good optional source if you want more than Wiltermuth and Heath.Ritual Physiology, Crowd Arousal, and Collective EffervescenceKonvalinka, Ivana, Dimitris Xygalatas, Joseph Bulbulia, Uri Schjødt, Else-Marie Jegindø, Sebastian Wallot, Guy Van Orden, and Andreas Roepstorff. “Synchronized Arousal Between Performers and Related Spectators in a Fire-Walking Ritual.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 20 (2011): 8514–8519.Use for the strongest fire-walking physiology source. This is the study showing synchronized arousal between active ritual performers and related spectators. It supports the claim that intense ritual fields can show up in bodies, not only in symbols.Xygalatas, Dimitris, Ivana Konvalinka, Joseph Bulbulia, and Andreas Roepstorff. “Quantifying Collective Effervescence: Heart-Rate Dynamics at a Fire-Walking Ritual.” Communicative & Integrative Biology 4, no. 6 (2011): 735–738.Use as a shorter interpretive companion to the PNAS fire-walking study. Good for the phrase “collective effervescence” and for explaining shared heart-rate dynamics in accessible language.Xygalatas, Dimitris. Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2022.Use for ritual, pain, synchrony, group bonding, arousal, and embodied social meaning. This is useful when moving from older ritual containers into modern crowd and spectacle.Hobson, Nicholas M., Juliana Schroeder, Jane L. Risen, Dimitris Xygalatas, and Michael Inzlicht. “The Psychology of Rituals: An Integrative Review and Process-Based Framework.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 22, no. 3 (2018): 260–284.Use for ritual as emotion regulation, performance regulation, social bonding, and formalized action. This supports the “ritual does things, it does not merely represent things” argument.War, Crowds, Mass Movements, and Collective IdentityLe Bon, Gustave. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. 1895.Use carefully. Le Bon is historically important for crowd psychology, but outdated and often elitist. Good as a historical source on crowd fear and mass suggestion, but balance it with modern social psychology.Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power. New York: Viking Press, 1962.Use for a literary-philosophical treatment of crowds, power, command, fear, and collective bodies. Good for atmosphere and conceptual framing, not as a modern experimental source.Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951.Use for mass movements, fanaticism, belonging, identity, resentment, sacrifice, and the psychology of ideological devotion. Use carefully; it is sharp and useful, but not a modern empirical study.Tajfel, Henri, and John C. Turner. “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.” In The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited by William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel, 33–47. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979.Use for social identity theory, in-groups, out-groups, belonging, status, and group comparison. This supports the claim that slogans and group language do not only communicate ideas; they also mark identity.Tajfel, Henri. Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.Use as a broader social-identity source. Good for group belonging, categorization, prejudice, and in-group/out-group dynamics.Propaganda, Symbols, Slogans, and Mass CommunicationLasswell, Harold D. Propaganda Technique in the World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927.Use for propaganda as symbolic management, war messaging, enemy construction, morale, and the manipulation of attitudes through stories, reports, images, rumors, and other significant symbols. This is a core Part 2 source.Lasswell, Harold D. “The Theory of Political Propaganda.” The American Political Science Review 21, no. 3 (1927): 627–631.Use for the clean definition: propaganda as the management of collective attitudes through significant symbols. This is perfect for the slogan/crowd/media rhythm sections.Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. Translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.Use for propaganda as a modern social technique, not merely lies. Ellul belongs in the “modern machine” argument because he treats propaganda as environmental, repetitive, social, technological, and tied to belonging.Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. New York: Horace Liveright, 1928.Use for public relations, engineered consent, mass persuasion, and the management of public opinion. Good supporting source, especially if you want advertising and PR to sit beside political propaganda.Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.Use if you want a media-system critique: institutional filtering, agenda power, elite framing, and consent formation. This is useful for Part 2 but has a more political-economy angle than the rhythm/trance argument.Media Framing, Agenda-Setting, and Repeated AttentionMcCombs, Maxwell E., and Donald L. Shaw. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.” Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1972): 176–187.Use for agenda-setting: media may not tell people exactly what to think, but it can influence what people think about and how important issues feel. This fits the “repetition trains attention” argument.Entman, Robert M. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (1993): 51–58.Use for framing: selecting certain aspects of reality and making them more salient. This supports the section on media frames as secular ritual structures that define problems, causes, moral judgments, and remedies.Gitlin, Todd. The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.Use if you want a historical case study on media framing and protest movements. Good optional source for how movements get shaped, simplified, or distorted by media attention.Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985.Use as cultural/media theory support for entertainment, spectacle, image, and public discourse. Useful for the “modern machine” angle, but more essayistic than experimental.Repetition, Familiarity, and the Illusory Truth EffectHasher, Lynn, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino. “Frequency and the Conference of Referential Validity.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 16, no. 1 (1977): 107–112.Use for the classic repetition/familiarity basis of the illusory truth effect. This supports the claim that repeated statements can gain perceived validity because they become easier and more familiar to processAlso want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball.