Podcasts about National Science Foundation

We've been told forever that women are the only natural caregivers, but neuroscience shows that's just not true; men actually go through huge biological shifts when they become dads, too.Sitting down with Emily for this episode is clinical psychologist Darby Saxbe, who chats to us about her book Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives, which challenges neo-traditional assumptions about parenting roles. Their conversation highlights the biological reality of fatherhood, exploring how men experience hormonal shifts, brain changes, and even paternal postpartum depression. Darby also uncovers how hands-on parenting trends are shifting across generations, the connection between relationship conflict and a dad's mental health, and how policy changes like paid paternity leave can transform modern family dynamics.Listen and Learn:How the modern science of fatherhood rewrites traditional gender roles, why the "Dad Brain" is biologically wired for caregiving, and how millennial and Gen Z fathers are redefining the rewards and divides of modern parentingThe concept of "facultative adaptation" and how it shapes the natural variability of fatherhood How a father's brain and body prepare for parenthood during pregnancyHow a couple's relationship conflict during pregnancy can directly impact the labor and delivery experience Why the prenatal period is a critical window for couples to proactively strengthen their communication, navigate relationship shifts, and better manage the stress and emotional toll of childbirth and early parenthood The ways postpartum depression manifests in new dads How a father's hormone levels naturally drop after birth and why high testosterone can unexpectedly strain romantic relationships and parenting The unique benefits of the father-child relationship Why we need to view men's mental health through a family lens How progressive policy shifts are working to empower and destigmatize active fatherhood Resources: Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9781250387523 Darby's Website: https://www.darbysaxbe.comDarby's Substack: https://darbysaxbe.substack.comConnect with Darby on Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darbysaxbehttps://www.instagram.com/darbysaxbephd/Behind Every Dad Bod is a Healthy Dad Brain https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/06/opinion/dad-brain-health-fatherhood.htmlAbout Darby SaxbeDarby Saxbe, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and tenured full professor of psychology at the University of Southern California.She has published over eighty scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and secured major research grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. She earned awards from the American Psychological Association and the Society for Research in Child Development and was a Fulbright fellow. Dr. Saxbe received her PhD in clinical psychology from UCLA and her BA in English and psychology from Yale University.Her research focuses on the transition to parenthood, particularly the neural and hormonal underpinnings of fatherhood. She integrates neuroscience and psychology to explore how close connections shape health and wellbeing.When she is not doing research, she hangs out with her husband and two kids, plays guitar in an all-mom indie rock band, and writes the Substack newsletter, Natal Gazing. She was a mediocre contestant on the show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire and recently lost a chili cookoff.Related Episodes:446. Cognitive Household Labor with Allison Daminger445. The Unexpected Magic of Caring with Elissa Strauss361. Dudes and Dads: Men's Mental Health with Danny Singley206. Fair Play Part 2 with Eve Rodsky176. Fair Play with Eve RodskySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the very institutions designed to educate and empower were also places where harm could quietly thriveIn this powerful and eye-opening episode, I sit down with Julie Cruse—writer, inventor, instructional designer, and author of The Burn List: A Memoir of Abuse from Home to Higher Education. Julie has been recognized by Dance Magazine as a “pioneer of computational choreography,” and her work spans over two decades across Ivy League, public, and community colleges. With more than 30 grants and honors, including a National Science Foundation fellowship, her accomplishments are remarkable—but her story is also deeply sobering.Julie courageously shares her journey from an abusive childhood into a prolonged experience of academic exploitation. Across seven universities, she faced grooming, harassment, and retaliation from faculty—experiences that ultimately forced her out of her PhD program and academic career.What Is Academic Abuse?Academic abuse is often hidden in plain sight. It can include:Grooming and manipulation by those in positions of authorityHarassment and coercionRetaliation when boundaries are set or complaints are madeDespite protections like Title IX and Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), these issues persist—making awareness and advocacy more important than ever.Key Takeaways from This Episode✨ Why some students are more vulnerable Julie explains how factors like isolation, power imbalance, and a desire to succeed can make students easier targets.✨ How to protect yourself Practical, empowering advice including:Set clear boundariesAvoid being alone with faculty in private settingsKeep detailed records of interactions (dates, times, events)✨ What to do if harassment occurs There is often a required process and hierarchy of reporting. Understanding the steps ahead of time can help you navigate the system more effectively.✨ Why this conversation matters Silence allows abuse to continue. Open conversations help validate survivors, create accountability, and drive change.A Safe Place to Be HeardJulie has created a survivor-led platform at Academic Abuse where individuals can:Share their stories in a safe, supportive environmentAccess resources for healingResearch documented cases of abuse at specific universitiesIf you or someone you know has experienced discrimination or abuse in higher education, this platform offers both validation and support.Connect with JulieWebsite: Julie Cruse official website https://www.juliecruse.com/Advocacy Platform: Academic Abuse https://www.academicabuse.com/  Final ThoughtsThis episode is a courageous step toward shining light on a difficult but critical issue. By speaking openly about academic abuse, we can better protect students, support survivors, and work toward meaningful change in higher education.If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might benefit.And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review Linda's Corner to help spread more hope, healing, and awareness.Listen, Share, and SupportIf this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who may need hope today.Be sure to subscribe, leave a rating and review, and help us spread more healing and inspiration to the world.Free Resource for HealingIf you're ready to release stress, calm your mind, and begin healing from within, visit:

On Monday, Oregon Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski led a group of Democratic Senators to urge the National Science Foundation to stop its plans to dismantle a nearly $400 million ocean monitoring network. The Associated Press reported on the letter Sens. Merkley and Murkowski wrote to the NSF, which was signed by nine other U.S. Senators, including Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington. More than two dozen Democratic U.S. Representatives signed onto a separate letter, per the AP’s reporting, to warn against the “illegal decommissioning” of the Ocean Observatories Initiative.    The OOI is a network of 900 sensors anchored off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and in the North Atlantic. For more than a decade, the instruments have transmitted real-time data that has helped detect coastal flooding events, manage sustainable fisheries, track marine heat waves and more.  A memo from the NSF posted last month said the “major descoping” is already underway for the array of instruments managed by Oregon State University, with the removal of most of the rest of the network expected to be completed next summer.   Sen. Merkley joins us to discuss his and other Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to protect the OOI, along with other federal issues affecting his Oregon constituents.    

The National Science Foundation has announced it will begin removing most of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a collection of roughly 900 instruments in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans that gathers fixed-point data on temperature, carbon dioxide levels, and more. The move is part of a broader trend within the current administration to shelve climate science research and reporting.   Also, today the Agora and Acropolis of Athens, Delphi on Mount Parnassus, and other Greek archaeological sites preserve not only cultural heritage, but also animal and plant species, including some that were around in ancient times and are described in historical accounts and Greek mythology. And the indigenous residents of Bougainville island in Papua New Guinea say their home used to provide them with everything they needed—shelter, fertile land, and clean water. That is until a copper and gold mine run by British-Australian company Rio Tinto set up shop and operated in the 1970s and 80s. Today, heavy metals like copper sulfate and cadmium still pollute waterways, and Theonila Roka Matbob, the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize Winner for Islands and Island Nations, has been fighting for years to pressure Rio Tinto into taking full responsibility for remediating this damage. --   Save the date and sign up for the next virtual Living on Earth Book Club event on July 14 at 5 pm PDT / 8 pm EDT! We'll talk with Yurok activist and attorney Amy Bowers Cordalis about how multiple generations of her family have advocated for the protection of Northern California's Klamath River, a crucial habitat for salmon and the lifeblood of the Yurok tribe. Her book is The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life. You can sign up for this free event at loe.org/events.   Music licensed from Blue Dot Sessions: sessions.blue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

DOCKET ALERTS: A federal judge in Colorado enjoined the National Science Foundation from shutting down the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. APA, FTW!   The DC Circuit ruled that Pete Hegseth's policy kicking out all trans service members and barring enlistment by anyone who ever had a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is rooted in animus and cannot stand. But the remedy was narrowly cabined to the plaintiffs in this case, and only those who are currency active duty.   The Supreme Court let Alabama redraw its Congressional maps while primary voting was already underway and use a racially-discriminatory map in order to squeeze one more Republican seat in Congress out for the 2026 midterms.   Doofus of the Day: BATMAN! Eric Batman, some whiny dork in LA who says his Christian faith means that he has to work from home during June lest he be oppressed by a trans flag flying outside his office. The grifters at Liberty Counsel eagerly fundraising off their preposterous trollsuit on Doofus's behalf.   MAIN SHOW:   The DOJ filed a superseding indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center. It's meant to remedy the obvious deficiencies in the first indictment, but it actually seems to bolster the SPLC's claim that they were trying to protect informants, not take down donors.   Meanwhile, DOJ seems to have leaked a draft version of the new indictment to reporters before presenting it to the grand jurors, potentially violating grand jury secrecy. SPLC moved for a show cause order forcing DOJ to explain "its conduct and why it should not be sanctioned considering the prejudicial consequences at stake here."   Back in Chicago, US Attorney Andrew Boutros explained that he wasn't inappropriately trying to voir dire the grand jury. Perish the thought! And how very dare you, sir! He was just advising them that if they didn't think they could convict, they should put their hands up and explain themselves. Ummmmm…..    On May 1, NASDAQ implemented major rule changes to the way in which newly-public companies can join the Nasdaq 100 index.   University Corporation for Atmospheric Research v. National Science Foundation https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72496922/university-corporation-for-atmospheric-research-v-national-science/   Talbott v. USA [Trans Troops DC Circuit] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69800554/nicolas-talbott-v-usa/   Allen v. Milligan (Alabama redistricting) [Supreme Court stay] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a1314_7m58.pdf   SpaceX Prospectus https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026036936/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm   NASDAQ 100 New Methodology https://indexes.nasdaq.com/docs/Methodology_NDX.pdf   Liberty Counsel's press release (Batman v. Los Angeles County) https://lc.org/newsroom/details/260530-la-to-christians-youre-mentally-ill   Batman v. LA County [docket via CourtListener] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72385442/eric-batman-v-los-angeles-county/?filed_after=&filed_before=&entry_gte=&entry_lte=&order_by=desc   Copy of Batman's complaint [via Liberty Counsel] https://lc.org/PDFs/Attachments2PRsLAs/2026/031026-1VerifiedComplaint.pdf   US v. SPLC https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73223865/united-states-v-southern-poverty-law-center-inc/   US Attorney Andrew Boutros Statement https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/media/1443716/dl?inline   Show Links: https://www.lawandchaospod.com/ BlueSky: @LawAndChaosPod Threads: @LawAndChaosPod Twitter: @LawAndChaosPod

In this newscast: Democratic incumbent Rep. Andi Story now has an opponent in the race for her current seat in the state House: Annette Kreitzer, Haines' former borough manager; After years of planning, the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska soft-opened a casino on Douglas Island this week. It's Juneau's first casino; The National Science Foundation plans to yank a long-standing ocean observation station from the sea floor far off the coast of Alaska next year. It's one in an entire ocean monitoring system slated to be dismantled as part of the Trump Administration's rollback on federal science programs that help researchers study the changing climate; The developer of the Alaska LNG project released its first specific public cost estimates Wednesday for the proposed 800-mile gas pipeline and associated infrastructure.

Today's guest is Professor Charlotte Alexander, a leading scholar whose work has focused on the efficiency, transparency, and openness of the court system, particularly in civil litigation. Charlotte is a Harvard Law-trained scholar whose research has been published in some of the most prestigious journals in the world, including Science, the NYU Law Review, and the Texas Law Review. Today, Charlotte leads the Law, Data, and Design Lab at Georgia Tech and is Professor of Law and Ethics at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business. Charlotte and her team at Georgia Tech use AI and machine learning to process massive amounts of court data and surface of patterns and disparities that have long been buried in millions of pages of legal text. Charlotte's work has attracted funding from the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Labor, and Google. She serves on the AI Committee for the Georgia Judiciary and was a Fulbright Scholar. Simply put, Charlotte has been doing this work long before AI and machine learning became mainstream, bringing a perspective that is both deeply technical and human-centered. In today's conversation, we'll explore the challenges hidden in court data, what AI can and can't do for the justice system, and ethical questions that come with deploying these technologies at scale. Read the full transcript of today's episode here: https://www.seyfarth.com/dir_docs/podcast_transcripts/Pioneers_CharlotteAlexander.pdf

Send us Fan MailJoin me and some new friends as we shrink down and travel through a cell, checking out organelles along the way. It's a cell biology adventure!This episode was written and performed by the 6th graders in Kelsey Starke's classes at Vancouver iTech Preparatory. Thanks to WSU's John Hinz for the expert factcheck.Can't get enough cell bio?Check out the National Geographic cell biology collectionEnjoy PBS Learning videos about life sciencesTake a another trip through a cell with Amoeba SistersPeep the National Science Foundation kids' video about cells As always, submit burning questions at askdruniverse.wsu.edu.  Who knows where your questions will take us next.

Hello and welcome to The Rob Burgess Show. I am, of course, your host, Rob Burgess. On this our 299th episode, our guest is Julie Cruse. Hailed as “pioneer of computational choreography” by Dance Magazine, Julie Cruse is a writer, inventor, instructional designer, content strategist and former academic with an MFA and MA. Spanning two decades, her educational innovations have served four Ivy League, four public and two community colleges. Her distinctions include 30-plus grants and honors, a National Science Foundation fellowship and recognition as Outstanding Alumni in Innovation. A first-generation student and creator of VICKi™(patent-pending), the world's first choreographic software, Cruse has turned her own story into a movement for transparency and survivor solidarity through AcademicAbuse.com. Her new book, “The Burn List: A Memoir of Abuse from Home to Higher Education” was published in March. Follow me on Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/robaburg.bsky.social Follow me on Mastodon: newsie.social/@therobburgessshow Check out my Linktree: linktr.ee/therobburgessshow Subscribe to my Substack: therobburgessshow.substack.com/

The Page One Podcast, produced and hosted by author Holly Lynn Payne, celebrates the craft that goes into writing the first sentence, first paragraph and first page of your favorite books. The first page is often the most rewritten page of any book because it has to work so hard to do so much—hook the reader. We interview master storytellers on the struggles and stories behind the first page of their books. About the guest author: In addition to being the author of The Way of The Rose,  which she spoke about with her co-author and husband Clark Strand on Ep. 49 of the Page One Podcast, Perdita Finn is the author of several children's books and middle grade novels, including the Time Flyers series for Scholastic Books, My Little Pony Books, among many others and has worked as ghostwriter, book doctor, copy editor and writing teacher.  Perdita Finna also has done extensive study with Zen masters, priests, and healers, and apprenticed with the psychic Susan Saxman, with whom she wrote The Reluctant Psychic. She currently leads popular workshops on Collaborating with the Other Side, in which participants are empowered to activate the magic in their own lives with the help of their ancestors. She lives with her husband in the Catskill Mountains of New York. About the host: Holly Lynn Payne is an award-winning novelist and writing coach, and the former CEO and founder of Booxby, a startup that built an AI book discovery platform with a grant from the National Science Foundation. She is an internationally published author of four historical fiction novels. Her debut, The Virgin's Knot, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book. Her latest book, Rose Girl: A Story of Resilience and Rumi, a medieval, mystical thriller was awarded a Kirkus (starred) review and named Editors Choice from the Historical Novel Society. Holly lives on a houseboat near the Golden Gate Bridge with her daughter and Labrador retriever, and enjoys mountain biking, hiking, swimming and pretending to surf. To learn more about her books and writing coaching services, please visit her at hollylynnpayne.com  and subscribe to her FREE weekly mini-masterclass, Power of Page One, a FREE newsletter on Substack, offering insights on becoming a better storyteller and tips on hooking readers from page one! (And bonus: discover some great new books!) Tune in and reach out: If you're an aspiring writer or a book lover, this episode of Page One offers a treasure trove of inspiration and practical advice. I offer these conversations as a testament to the magic that happens when master storytellers share their secrets and experiences. We hope you are inspired to tune into the full episode for more insights. Keep writing, keep reading, and remember—the world needs your stories.  If I can help you tell your own story, or help improve your first page, please reach out @hollylynnpayne or visithollylynnpayne.com.  You can listen to Page One on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher and all your favorite podcast players. Hear past episodes. If you're interested in getting writing tips and the latest podcast episode updates with the world's beloved master storytellers, please sign up for my very short monthly newsletter at hollylynnpayne.com and follow me @hollylynnpayne on Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, and Facebook. Your email address is always private and you can always unsubscribe anytime.  The Page One Podcast is created on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, is a labor of love in service to writers and book lovers. My intention is to inspire, educate and celebrate. Thank you for being a part of my creative community!  Be well and keep reading, Holly @hollylynnpayne on IG Thank you for listening to the Page One Podcast! I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I loved hosting, producing, and editing it. If you liked it too, here are three ways to share the love:Please share it on social and tag @hollylynnpayne.Leave a review on your favorite podcast players. Tell your friends. Please keep in touch by signing up to receive my Substack newsletter with the latest episodes each month. Delivered to your inbox with a smile. You can contact me at @hollylynnpayne on IG or send me a message on my website, hollylynnpayne.com.For the love of books and writers,Holly Lynn Payne@hollylynnpaynehost, author, writing coachwww.hollylynnpayne.com

Former NSF water researcher, Texas Farmers Union secretary, and candidate for Texas Ag Commissioner, Clayton Tucker joins the Soil Sisters to discuss the rapid expansion of AI data centers across Texas—and why many farmers and rural communities are sounding the alarm. Tucker explains how large AI facilities are impacting water supplies, electricity prices, housing costs, health, and agricultural land in towns like Abilene and across rural Texas. The conversation explores concerns around power grid strain, backup generators, noise pollution and heat, effects on livestock, and the lack of transparency surrounding data center resource use. We also talk regenerative ranching, hemp, data center cooling alternatives, soil remediation, food monopolies, PFAS runoff, and Tucker's campaign ideas for the future of Texas agriculture. Plus: school gardens, local organizing, and why he believes communities need a stronger voice in shaping AI infrastructure development. MEET OUR GUEST: Clayton Tucker is a former water researcher for the National Science Foundation, Secretary of the Texas Farmers Union, a fair trade organizer, and he helps manage his family ranch in Lampasas, TX. Clayton is running to be our next Texas Agriculture Commissioner to make food and farming affordable, protect our water, and put the brakes on AI Data Centers in our communities. Learn More & Get Involved: https://www.claytontuckertx.com/  | Connect Clayton Tucker on Social: @claytontuckertx on X, FB, IG, YT TIME STAMPS: 00:00 Meet Clayton Tucker 02:17 Ranch Roots and Regenerative Shift 06:05 Why Data Centers Alarm Farmers 08:50 Noise and Heat Impacts 15:03 Tech Fixes and Short Lifespans 17:25 Jobs Claims and Local Inflation 21:37 What Counts as AI Data 26:04 Power Grid Strain and Organizing 32:36 Water Risks and Water-Free Cooling 35:47 Hemp Oil and Texas Hemp Future 58:46 Food Policy And Monopolies 01:04:33 School Gardens For Kids

Elephants call each other by name. They grieve. They remember. They communicate across distances in frequencies we are only beginning to hear. What does it mean to truly listen to another species — one with memory, language, and a social world as intricate as our own?In this Listening Field conversation, we enter the world of elephant communication with two of its most devoted witnesses.  Dr. Mickey Pardo led the landmark discovery that elephants address one another with name-like calls — a finding that traveled around the world and cracked open new questions about animal cognition and communication. Moderated by Katie Surma of Inside Climate News, whose reporting sits at the intersection of science, rights of Nature, and environmental justice, this conversation asks not only what elephants are saying, but what it means for us to finally listen.Dr. Mickey Pardo is a behavioral ecologist and bioacoustician interested in the intersection of animal communication, cognition, conservation, and welfare. He earned his PhD in behavioral ecology from Cornell University, where he studied vocal communication and social cognition in both Asian elephants and Acorn Woodpeckers. He completed a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Colorado State University on vocal communication in African elephants, working in collaboration with Save The Elephants in Kenya, where he led the discovery that elephants address each other with name-like calls. This work was featured by over 3,000 media outlets in more than 90 countries, including the New York Times, NPR: Morning Edition, and BBC World, and helped contribute to the recent surge of interest in using machine learning to understand animal communication. During a second postdoc in the Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Dr. Pardo expanded his skillset into applied wildlife conservation, using passive acoustic monitoring, AI, and computer simulations to assess the status of bird populations. He is currently a Senior Scientist at the non-profit research organization ElephantVoices, where he is once again studying vocal communication in African elephants. Dr. Pardo has authored over a dozen scholarly publications, including in top scientific journals such as Nature Ecology and Evolution and Current Biology. In addition to his scientific work, he is an outspoken advocate for the rights of nonhuman animals and for food system reform to end our reliance on animal agriculture and commercial fishing.To learn more about Mickey's work, visit ElephantVoices' website here:  https://elephantvoices.org/Katie Surma is a reporter at Inside Climate News covering the rights of nature movement and international environmental justice. Her work has a strong focus on the intersection of human rights and the environment. Before joining ICN, she practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation. Her journalism work has been recognized by the Overseas Press Club, the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and others. Katie has a master's degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, an LLM in international rule of law and security from ASU's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, a J.D. from Duquesne University, and was a History of Art and Architecture major at the University of Pittsburgh. Learn more about Katie's work at https://insideclimatenews.org/Support the show

When was the last time you sparked up a conversation with a stranger and surprised yourself with how good it felt? Behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley, author of A Little More Social, returns to the podcast to discuss with Michael why we systematically underestimate how positively strangers respond, how connection supports happiness, health, and longevity, and the key mechanisms behind our social pessimism (misjudging warmth vs. competence, overlooking reciprocity, and self-fulfilling avoidance). Nicholas shares research on how quickly people update after a conversation and how fast those gains can fade, plus practical “easy choice” experiments like asking someone to take your photo or simply asking, “Can you tell me your story?” Plus, in a special post-interview discussion, listener-turned-friend of Michael's, therapist Dr. Jennifer Kauder, joins Michael to reflect on voice vs. text, comfort-zone challenges, and why real-time connection changes everything.Listen and Learn: The surprising benefits of connecting with people you don't know, and why our minds trick us into fearing these interactions that can lengthen and enrich our livesPsychological traps that make us overly pessimistic about reaching out to others, and why we miss out on deeper, happier connections due to misplaced expectations Research on why trying to push past social awkwardness just once isn't enough, and why our brains quickly forget positive interactions Why our confidence drops right before we approach someone new, the psychology behind why starting a conversation is much easier than anticipating it, and how small mindsets can instantly dissolve social anxiety A simple, foolproof question that skips past awkward small talk, ignites genuine curiosity, and uncovers the fascinating, hidden storiesResources: A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9780593319543 Nicholas' Website: https://www.nicholasepley.com/Nicholas Epley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-epley/ Michael's Confidence Course: https://herold.coach/courseRejection Proof by Jia Jiang: https://bookshop.org/a/30734/9780804141383 About Nicholas EpleyNicholas Epley is the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Director of the Roman Family Center for Decision Research, at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He studies social cognition—how thinking people think about other thinking people—to understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other. He teaches an ethics and happiness course to MBA students called Designing a Good Life. His research has appeared in more than two dozen empirical journals, been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Wired, and National Public Radio, among many others, and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Templeton Foundation. He has been awarded the 2008 Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2011 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association, the 2015 Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality Science, and the 2018 Career Trajectory Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. Epley was named a “professor to watch” by the Financial Times, one of the “World's Best 40 under 40 Business School Professors” by Poets and Quants, and one of the 100 Most Influential in Business Ethics in 2015 by Ethisphere. He is the author of Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want. His new book, A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection, was published in May! (Our UK listeners will find the book titled Hello: The Unexpected Power of Choosing To Connect)Related Episodes422. Mindwise with Nicholas Epley454. Remain Calm. Confidence Ahead with Michael Herold313. ACT-Informed Exposure for Anxiety with Brian Pilecki and Brian Thompson393. Supercommunicators with Charles Duhigg360. The Laws of Connection with David RobsonSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Photo courtesy Heard Museum / Facebook The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Ariz. remembered Indigenous servicemembers, who made the ultimate sacrifice, during a Memorial Day observance. KJZZ's Gabriel Pietrorazio has more. On this hot Monday morning, Kiowa-Comanche singer Kenneth Cozad Sr. chants a series of honor songs. Each melody is meant to pay tribute to the fallen as the Oklahoma native beats upon a drum made from rawhide. One of his patriotic tunes is called “Star and Stripes”. It is inspired by World War II Kiowa Code Talker Leonard “Red Wolf” Cozad Sr. “My grandpa, he had a thought came to him about this flag here that our folks fought for this red, white, and blue, he said.” For Cozad, he's thankful to share his music. “Because we don't just be singing songs, just to be singing them, there's always has to be a purpose.” Visitors of the exhibition, “Arctic Marine Science: Sikuliaq to Shore”, can learn about various science instruments used by Sikuliaq research crews to study the environment. (Photo: James Daggett / Alaska Public Media) A new exhibit at an Alaska museum takes visitors inside an Arctic research vessel. Since opening last week, it has given guests a chance to glimpse at what it is like to study the Arctic marine ecosystem – and how Indigenous communities shape that research. The Alaska Desk’s Alena Naiden from our flagship station KNBA has more. Rachel Boesenberg is associate curator at the Anchorage Museum. She is walking under a tall crane, with deep blue all around her. “So you enter here through the stern of the vessel.” Boesenberg is giving a tour of the new exhibition called Arctic Marine Science: Sikuliaq to Shore, which brings the audience aboard a replica of the research vessel Sikuliaq. Visitors make their way onto the bridge. Here, the captain’s chair faces a ceiling-high projector screen with a vast ocean that changes from stormy swells to chunks of pancake ice. “We’re looking off the bow of Sikuliaq, which visitors at this point have walked through.” Sikuliaq is operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and owned by the National Science Foundation. Each year, dozens of scientists board the vessel to study the Arctic. Brendan Smith is the communications director at the North Pacific Research Board. He dreamed up the idea for the exhibition. “I said to myself, what if we bring the Sikuliaq … into the museum? How do we give people an experience that makes them feel like they’re out at sea?” The result is an immersive experience, focused on how the ship is used to study the environment, and the people who bring that knowledge to life. And there is a station with Arctic soundscapes. “That’s a bowhead whale.” Boesenberg says these are the sounds that scientists gather using hydrophones they deploy from the real vessel. Harmony Jade Sugaq Wayner is an Indigenous scholar from Naknek in Southwest Alaska. She consulted on the exhibition and suggested curators include what Arctic research means for Alaska Native people. “We see a lot of big graphs about climate change and the extent of sea ice and those big global processes, but we don’t see the joy of living our culture in coastal Alaska and river Alaska.” The exhibition runs through April 2027. Whitewater rafting on the Gallatin River in Montana in 2023. (Photo: Watts / Flickr) People working in Montana's outdoor industry are reporting emotional impacts tied to climate change. According to reporting from Glacier Raft Company and environmental advocates, river guides are increasingly experiencing ecological grief as changing waterways affect their work and livelihoods. Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today. Download our NV1 Android or iOs App for breaking news alerts. Check out today’s Native America Calling episode Tuesday, May 26, 2026 – Border wall construction causes sacred site destruction

Nick Epley, psychologist, Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and author of A Little More Social, joins me on this episode. Nick studies social cognition—how thinking people think about other thinking people—to understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other. His research has appeared in more than two dozen empirical journals and has been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Wired, and NPR, among many others. His work has also been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Templeton Foundation.

Access to energy has been one of the major driving forces in geopolitics since at least the industrial revolution. Without reliable access to the dominate form of energy, economies stall, people protest, and governments fall apart. The United States has become an energy superpower, leading the way in multiple forms of diversified energy resources, however, its economy remains vulnerable to supply disruptions, particularly for oil and the rare earth minerals currently necessary for renewable energy production. How does the closing of the Strait of Hormuz lead to higher gas prices? What steps can we take to insulate ourselves from these shocks? What are the new and emerging technologies that will reshape our energy infrastructure of the future?This month we speak with Dr. Stephen Bird, Director of the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire, to explore these questions and more. Dr. Bird's career has focused on all aspects of energy policy, with a particular focus on energy conflicts, polarization, and the energy transition. Join the conversation as we explore the critical spaces that energy occupies in our daily lives and how decisions made thousands of miles away can shape your daily life.Stephen Bird is the Director of Carsey School of Public Policy and a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. He is also a research professor (courtesy) at the Institute for Sustainable Environment at Clarkson University where he was formerly a full professor of political science. In addition, he's a faculty Research Affiliate with the Positive Energy Project at the University of Ottawa.Stephen's work examines all aspects of energy policy and regulation broadly, with a deep focus on impacting the energy transition. Engagements and research awards have included New York's Energy Research Authority, the U.S. State Department, the European Commission, National Resources Canada, a 2016 Fulbright Research Chair, and the National Science Foundation. Corporate partnerships have included the NY Power Authority, GE, National Grid, AMD, the US Green Building Council, and IBM.His current research and engagements focus on energy conflict & polarization, drivers of energy acceptance (fracking, solar, wind), split incentives and smart housing, and energy technology governance & implementation (microgrids, green data centers).Stephen completed his PhD at Boston University and his Masters at Harvard University. 

Congressional Democrats want answers from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency https://cyberscoop.com/cisa-credential-leak-congress-demands-answers/ on GitHub in an incident that the security researcher who discovered it called one of the worst leaks he's ever seen. Other security professionals also voiced concern Tuesday about the leak and the potential for abuse by any malicious parties who got a hold of the information. Security firm GitGuardian said it discovered a public GitHub repository last week that exposed credentials for privileged AWS GovCloud accounts and internal CISA systems dating back to November. The repository, apparently maintained by a contractor, was named “Private-CISA.” Krebs on Security first reported the incident. A GitGuardian researcher said his main fear upon verifying the leak was real “is that a state actor will get the data and might be able to do bad stuff.” State-based attackers who obtained the credentials “might be able to gain persistence,” the researcher said, calling it worse than an attacker destroying a database or having an intruder gain access to a government system. The Office of Personnel Management would get a better handle on the federal biotechnology workforce under a pair of bills from a bipartisan House duo. Introduced Wednesday, the Federal Biotechnology Workforce Assessment Act directs OPM to coordinate with agency heads on defining the federal biotech workforce, in addition to assessing current and future needs for those “bio-literate” federal employees. The bill from Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rich McCormick, R-Ga., shared first with FedScoop, is aimed at ensuring the federal government workforce keeps the country a step ahead of China in the biotech space. Priority No. 1 for OPM's assessment is identifying the total number of biotech positions required at federal agencies. The legislation is focused specifically on the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, State, and Treasury, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the offices of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Trade Representative.

Modern science has given us the ability to edit our genes, life-saving vaccines, and glimpse the origins of the universe. But is the same system holding itself back? Critics argue that the pressure to publish and fierce competition for funding rewards safe, incremental work over bold thinking. Others see a system still capable of paradigm-shifting discoveries — one where global collaborations and long-term thinking motivate scientists to pursue grand, ambitious ideas. Now we debate: Is the Scientific Enterprise Too Risk-Averse?  This debate was produced in partnership with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, as part of The Hopkins Forum series. Arguing Yes:  Tyler Cowen, Author of "The Great Stagnation"; Economics Professor at George Mason University; Founder of Emergent Ventures; Host of "Conversations with Tyler" podcast   Brandon Ogbunu, Computational Biologist; Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University; Professor at the Santa Fe Institute  Arguing No:   Kate Biberdorf (“Kate the Chemist”), Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame; Science Entertainer  The Honorable Sethuraman Panchanathan, 15th Director of the National Science Foundation; University Professor of Technology and Innovation and Foundation Chair at Arizona State University  Emmy award-winning journalist John Donvan moderates  Join the conversation on Substack—share your perspective on this episode and subscribe to our weekly newsletter for curated insights from our debaters, moderators, and staff.  Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and TikTok to stay connected with our mission and ongoing debates.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Federal CIO Greg Barbaccia has tapped the Department of Education's chief information officer as the government's new No. 2 IT official. Thomas Flagg will take over as deputy federal CIO after spending more than 11 years at the Department of Labor and leading Education's IT shop since October 2024. In an email sent Thursday to agency CIOs and shared with FedScoop, Barbaccia said there was “an overwhelming amount of interest” in the deputy role “from an exceptionally strong field of candidates.” Flagg stood out due to the “depth and seriousness of his experience across multiple technology leadership roles,” Barbaccia wrote, pointing to his time at the Department of Education and DOL. The hiring of Flagg gives the White House its first permanent deputy CIO since September 2025, when Drew Myklegard left the public sector to become Carahsoft's executive director of government programs. Since then, the acting deputy federal CIO position has been held by Jay Teitelbaum, an Office of Management and Budget, U.S. Digital Service and Department of Homeland Security alum. The Trump administration is redirecting a cybersecurity scholarship program that requires recipients to work in government service toward artificial intelligence, leaving some current program scholars dismayed and bewildered. In an email to participating school program coordinators obtained by CyberScoop, the Office of Personnel Management and National Science Foundation said the CyberCorps Scholarship For Service program would now be known as CyberAI SFS. The email reads: “The SFS students we enroll today will not be employable when they graduate in 2-3 years without significant AI background. Any SFS student in this new program must be proficient in using AI in cybersecurity or providing security and resilience for AI systems. Therefore, new students in the legacy CyberCorps program must learn to acquire AI expertise to augment their cybersecurity expertise.” It also explains that “new SFS scholars will not be accepted to the Legacy CyberCorps(C) program without a description on how they will develop competencies at the intersection of cybersecurity and AI.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Trump Administration fired the entire board overseeing the National Science Foundation. UNR scientists respond.

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. travelersinthenight.org From December 2025. Today's 2 topics: - The Dark Energy Camera on the National Science Foundation's Blanco 4-meter telescope on Cerro Tololo in Chile is taking near Sun twilight images to search for asteroids, hidden in the glare of our Sun, sneaking up on home planet.   - Just before noon on September 1st of 1859 Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson were making sketches of clusters of sunspots when they were nearly blinded by an intense solar flare. 17.6 hours later a geomagnetic storm thought to be caused by a solar coronal mass ejection traveling at some 1,500 miles per second slammed into the magnetic field surrounding our home planet. We missed being hit with a such large coronal mass ejection by only 9 days in July of 2012. Next time we might not be that lucky.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

Scientists at NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, have submitted an unprecedented set of asteroid detections to the IAU Minor Planet Center, including hundreds of distant worlds beyond Neptune and 33 previously unknown near-Earth asteroids. In this podcast, Dr. Mario Juric discusses how these asteroids were discovered and what we can look forward to in the future from the Rubin Observatory.    Bios:  Rob Sparks is in the Communications, Education and Engagement group at NSF's NOIRLab in Tucson, Arizona. Prof. Mario Juric is the P.I. of UW's contribution to the construction of the Rubin Observatory, Senior Fellow at UW's eScience Institute, and director emeritus of UW's Institute for Data-intensive Astrophysics and Cosmology (DiRAC). Once fully operational in 2026, the Rubin Observatory will deliver the largest sky survey in the history of mankind, answering questions from the nature of Dark Energy to discovering potential "killer" asteroids. Prof. Juric led the definition of Rubin data products and oversees the solar system team. Prof. Juric received his PhD in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and a Hubble Fellow at Harvard University. His research is in the area of data-intensive survey astronomy and AI. He developed a range of astronomical software products and techniques, including software for asteroid detection, mapping the Milky Way, novel astronomical databases, and cloud-based astronomical data analysis systems. Prof. Juric discovered what was at the time the largest known structure in the Universe (the Sloan Great Wall; with J. Richard Gott), a dwarf galaxy colliding with the Milky Way (the Virgo Overdensity; with Z. Ivezic), and over a hundred asteroids (including 22899 Alconrad, the smallest known main-belt binary asteroid; with Korado Korlevic). A Jupiter-family comet 183P/Korlevic-Juric is named after him.   Links: NOIRLab Press Release NOIRLab social media channels can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/NOIRLabAstro https://twitter.com/NOIRLabAstro https://www.instagram.com/noirlabastro/ https://www.youtube.com/noirlabastro   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

On May 13, 2026, the Public Relations Global Network will present the key findings of the PRGN Influence Insights 2026, the second edition of its global survey on brand influence.The 2026 PRGN Influence Insights Survey offers a closer look at how brands are managing trust, reputation, AI, audience behavior and the growing complexity of influence across channels, audiences and markets worldwide.Join us for a live webinar presentation of the survey data, built on global findings from more than 1,800 professionals across 48 countries.Register for one of the webinar sessions: May 13: EMEA and Americas May 13: Americas and APAC About the Hosts Abbie Fink is president of HMA Public Relations in Phoenix, Arizona and a founding member of PRGN. Her marketing communications background includes skills in media relations, digital communications, social media strategies, special event management, crisis communications, community relations, issues management, and marketing promotions for both the private and public sectors, including such industries as healthcare, financial services, professional services, government affairs and tribal affairs, as well as not-for-profit organizations.Dr. Adrian McIntyre is a cultural anthropologist, media personality, speaker, and strategic communications consultant for PR agencies and marketing firms. He's lived in over 30 countries and spent more than a decade in the Middle East and Africa as a researcher, journalist, communications adviser, media spokesperson, and storytelling consultant. He earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a Fulbright scholar and National Science Foundation fellow. Adrian helps agency leaders strengthen their positioning, sharpen their messaging, boost their visibility, and win new clients by replacing impersonal, intrusive and ineffective marketing tactics with authentic human conversations.PRGN Presents is brought to you by Public Relations Global Network, the world's local public relations agency. Our executive producer is Adrian McIntyre. The show is produced by the team at Speed of Story, a B2B communications firm in Phoenix, AZ. Follow the Podcast If you enjoyed this episode, please follow PRGN Presents in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast app. We publish new episodes every other Thursday. To have them delivered automatically and free of charge, just choose your preferred podcast player from this list, open the app, and click the button to “Follow” the show: https://prgnpodcast.com/listen Need to hire a PR firm? Leading a business effectively in today's fast-paced world requires expert guidance and a strong communications strategy. No matter where you do business, PRGN has a member agency in your region with the deep industry expertise, international experience, and local market knowledge you need to connect with your target audience and achieve your goals. Find a PR firm near you »

Modern electronics are expected to perform multifunctional tasks, and interdisciplinary knowledge is required to develop these materials and systems. Ruyan Guo, the Robert E. Clarke Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio, talks about her experiences doing electronics research at both The Pennsylvania State University and UT San Antonio, describes how she helped launch an interdisciplinary graduate program at the latter institution, and shares the ways in which she is giving back to the ceramics community by serving previously as a National Science Foundation program director and currently on the ACerS Board of Directors.View the transcript for this episode here.About the guestRuyan Guo is the Robert E. Clarke Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research group specializes in the study and development of multifunctional materials for electronic devices. She previously served as a program director in the Electrical, Communications, and Cyber Systems Division of the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Engineering, helping coordinate national research during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is now serving on the ACerS Board of Directors.About ACerSFounded in 1898, The American Ceramic Society is the leading professional membership organization for scientists, engineers, researchers, manufacturers, plant personnel, educators, and students working with ceramics and related materials.

Host Joe DeMare talks about the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the HBO Miniseries by the same name, and what both say about humans and our attitudes towards technology, the truth, and each other. Next he interviews Scott Weidensaul, author of the new book, "The Return of the Oystercatcher." Rebecca Wood takes a deeper dive into Ohio's Cedar Bog Nature Preserve. Ecological News includes: Trump eliminating scientists from the National Science Foundation; Indigenous Youth locking themselves to mining equipment defending the Black Hills; and Larry Householder's failed attempt to make bribery legal.  

On this week's episode: Claude takes a proactive approach to the tech sector ... Another would-be Trump assassin turns out to be as inept as his intended victim ... And Trump realizes that if you fire all of science, the lying thing works itself out in payroll.To support our show on Patreon, go here:patreon.com/skepticratTo hear more from Evil Giraffes on Mars, go here:facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMarsGet great deals while supporting the show by checking out our sponsors:mintmobile.com/skepticratauraframes.com (code: SKEPTICRAT)quince.com/skepticratgroundnews.com/skepticratbetterhelp.com/skepticratHeadline Sources:White House Correspondents' Dinner attack: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/27/politics/conspiracy-theories-whcd-attackClaude-powered AI agent's confession after deleting a firm's entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given':https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/29/claude-ai-deletes-firm-databaseKing Prince Charles lectures America on the dangers of monarchy: https://apnews.com/article/king-charles-us-state-visit-trump-congress-4cd294e6333b4a9ba7ada2af4dd71aa9Kash Patel sues The Atlantic for pointing out he's drunk all the time: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-director-drinking-absences/686839/https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/kash-patels-implausible-lawsuit-against-the-atlanticTrump fires entire advisory board of National Science Foundation: https://apnews.com/article/national-science-board-nsf-trump-6a23f3ab1b4c6eb131b4e79d95b3536fEverest guides accused of poisoning foreign climbers to force fake rescues in $20m scam: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/mount-everest-climb-nepal-insurance-scam-sherpa-poisoning-b2952027.html#

Eight U.S. technology companies have signed formal agreements to deploy their frontier AI capabilities on the Defense Department's classified networks “for lawful operational use,” according to a Pentagon press release published Friday. DOD's new deals with SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle follow a major contract dispute between the department and Anthropic that culminated earlier this year over potential ethical constraints that accompany the use of AI in warfare and for national surveillance. “Integrating secure frontier AI capabilities into the Department's Impact Level 6 (IL6) and Impact Level 7 (IL7) network environments will streamline data synthesis, elevate situational understanding, and augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments,” officials wrote in Friday's press release. A bipartisan congressional push to codify a National Science Foundation-based artificial intelligence research enabler continued this week with the reintroduction in the Senate of the CREATE AI Act. The bill from Sens. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., Todd Young, R-Ind., Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., would establish the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) that would give AI researchers, educators and students more access to tools, data and other information to help develop new systems. Heinrich, founder and co-chair of the Senate AI Caucus, said in a press release that the NAIRR would go a long way toward “democratizing access to AI,” ensuring that American workers are prepared for the future and primed to lead “rapid advancements” with the emerging technology that boost the U.S. economy. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Want a quick estimate of how much your business is worth? With our free valuation calculator, answer a few questions about your business, and you'll get an immediate estimate of the value of your business. You might be surprised by how much you can get for it: https://flippa.com/exit --
 In this episode of The Exit, we sit down with Victor Varnado, CEO of Supreme Robot, to unpack his unconventional journey from television producer to tech entrepreneur and IP dealmaker. Victor shares how a simple idea for a video game interface led to a patent, and ultimately, an IP exit opportunity. He walks through the realities of monetizing intellectual property, including how provisional patents work, why solving big problems matters more than effort, and what it actually takes to navigate negotiations, due diligence, and deal structures with major companies.

 We also dive into the lessons learned along the way, including the importance of contract protections, the power of warm introductions over cold outreach, and how to properly prepare your IP for sale. Beyond patents, Victor reveals one of the most overlooked opportunities in business today: newsletters. He breaks down his “hybrid newsletter” model, showing how combining products, audiences, and distribution can create scalable, recurring revenue. Whether you are building your first product, exploring an IP exit, or looking to own your audience, this episode offers a practical and forward-thinking playbook for entrepreneurs navigating the modern digital economy.

 
-- Victor Varnado is a legally blind, black albino, and neurodivergent creator, entrepreneur, and comedian who operates at the intersection of technology, comedy, and social change. A New Yorker cartoonist and award-winning comedian with appearances on Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel Live, he has also contributed writing to Marvel, Vice, and Salon. As founder of Supreme Robot, a studio focused on experimental media and storytelling, he recently completed his first major IP exit, selling a patent to a billion-dollar tech company. His commitment to accessibility has earned him a National Science Foundation grant, and he is the creator of Magic Bookifier and its AI-powered Writing Coach — a tool designed to guide first-time authors and educators through the writing process — as well as BrightWrite, developed in collaboration with Rising Tide Educators to bring accessible creative AI tools to neurodivergent students. With a combined network of roughly 25,000 fans and peers, Victor brings hard-won business insight, unexpected perspective, and an authentically underrepresented voice to everything he builds.  LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/victorvarnado/ 

Website - https://www.supremerobot.com/ 


 -- The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You'll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

In his weekly clinical update, Dr. Griffin and Vincent Racaniello note the uncertain future of the National Science Foundation amid shifting U.S. funding priorities and governance; the rise of China as a global research powerhouse; ongoing advances and controversies in vaccines shaped by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; vaccine policy battles in Florida; European approval of the moderna mCOMBRIAX, COVID-19 and influenza vaccine, the mounting evidence supporting preventive vaccination strategies including that for HPV and the HepB birth dose; the spread of drug-resistant infections and the resurgence of HIV in Zambia; and the enduring public trust in scientists despite political turbulence, before Dr. Griffin deep dives into the measles outbreak, recent statistics RSV, influenza and SARS-CoV-2 infections, the Wasterwater Scan dashboard, Johns Hopkins measles tracker, the efficacy of the influenza vaccine for children, PEMGARDA authorized use for certain immunocompromised individuals where to find PEMGARDA, how to access and pay for Paxlovid, use of remdesivir for RSV, how administration of Paxlovid did not affect hospitalization of high-risk vaccinated patients, where to go for answers about long COVID-19, if SARS-CoV-2 infection may facilitate EBV reactivation, exercise for treating long COVID and contacting your federal government representative to stop the assault on science and biomedical research. Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiV! Links for this episode Entire NSF science advisory board fired by Trump administration (Nature) United States v. Arthrex, Inc.(Harvard Law Review) United States v. Arthrex Inc. [SCOTUSbrief] (Federalist Society) China could be the world's biggest public funder of science within two years (Nature) The Vaccine Skeptic in Trump's New C.D.C. Leadership Team (NY Times) World Immunization week: Largest catch-up initiative delivers over 100 million childhood vaccinations (WHO) Pigs are flying!: Florida Republicans refuse to take up DeSantis bill loosening vaccine mandates (NY Times) Moderna Receives European Commission Marketing Authorization for mCOMBRIAX, Moderna's mRNA Combination Vaccine Against Influenza and COVID-19(moderna) America First! AIDS Creeps Back in Parts of Zambia, a Year After U.S. Cuts to H.I.V. Assistance (NY Times) Emergence of Extensively Drug-Resistant Shigellosis — United States, 2011–2023 (CDC: MMWR) Scientists Esteemed by Public, with Vaccine Scientists Seen as Similar to Scientists in General (Annenberg: Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania) RFK Jr. is holding up $600M in vaccines for poor countries (Politico) Trump Withdraws Nomination of Casey Means for Surgeon General (NY Times) What? Benefit of preventive strategies like vaccination? Incidence of human papillomavirus infections in women aged 27 years and older in the US: A federated data network study (International Journal of Infectious Diseases) Economic Impact of Delaying the Infant Hepatitis B Vaccination Schedule (JAMA Pediatrics) Impact of Removing the Universal Hepatitis B Birth-Dose Vaccination in the US (JAMA Pediatrics) Wastewater for measles (WasterWater Scan) Measles cases and outbreaks (CDC Rubeola) Measles Dashboard (South Carolina Department of Public Health) Utah measles outbreak response (Utah Department of Health and Human Services) Utah Measles Dashboard (Utah Department of Health and Human Services) Tracking Measles Cases in the U.S. (Johns Hopkins) Measles vaccine recommendations from NYP (jpg) Weekly measles and rubella monitoring (Government of Canada) Measles (WHO) Get the FACTS about measles (NY State Department of Health) Measles (CDC Measles (Rubeola)) Measles vaccine (CDC Measles (Rubeola)) Presumptive evidence of measles immunity (CDC) Contraindications and precautions to measles vaccination (CDC) Adverse events associated with childhood vaccines: evidence bearing on causality (NLM) Measles Vaccination: Know the Facts (ISDA: Infectious Diseases Society of America) Deaths following vaccination: what does the evidence show (Vaccine) Dangers of measles infection (NY Times) Influenza: Waste water scan for 11 pathogens (WastewaterSCan) US respiratory virus activity (CDC Respiratory Illnesses) Respiratory virus activity levels (CDC Respiratory Illnesses) Flu vaccine recommendations: Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee March 12, 2026 Meeting Announcement (FDA) WHO updates all 3 viral strains to be included in fall flu shots (CIDRAP) FDA vaccine advisers recommend adding subclade K to fall shots (CIDRAP) Weekly surveillance report: cliff notes (CDC FluView) OPTION 2: XOFLUZA $50 Cash Pay Option (Xofluza) Influenza Vaccination Coverage Among Nursing Home Residents and Health Care Personnel — United States, 2024–25 Influenza Season (CDC: MMWR) Pediatric Vaccine Effectiveness Against Influenza Hospitalization And Outpatient Visits: 2021–2024 (Pediatrics) Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness in European Primary Care Pediatric Practices: 2022–2024 (Pediatrics) RSV: Waste water scan for 11 pathogens (WastewaterSCan) Respiratory Diseases (Yale School of Public Health) USrespiratory virus activity (CDC Respiratory Illnesses) RSV-Network (CDC Respiratory Syncytial virus Infection) Vaccines for Adults (CDC: Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection (RSV)) Economic Analysis of Protein Subunit and mRNA RSV Vaccination in Adults aged 50-59 Years (CDC: ACIP) Respiratory Diseases (Yale School of Public Health) Impact of universal nirsevimab prophylaxis in infants on hospital and primary care outcomes across two respiratory syncytial virus seasons in Galicia, Spain (NIRSE-GAL): a population-based prospective observational study (LANCET: Infectious Diseases) First Report on Remdesivir Use for the Treatment of Respiratory Syncytial Virus in Five Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplant Recipients (JID) Waste water scan for 11 pathogens (WastewaterSCan) COVID-19 deaths (CDC) Respiratory Illnesses Data Channel (CDC: Respiratory Illnesses) COVID-19 national and regional trends (CDC) COVID-19 variant tracker (CDC) SARS-CoV-2 genomes galore (Nextstrain) Where to get pemgarda (Pemgarda) EUA for the pre-exposure prophylaxis of COVID-19 (INVIYD) Infusion center (Prime Fusions) CDC Quarantine guidelines (CDC) NIH COVID-19 treatment guidelines (NIH) Oral Nirmatrelvir–Ritonavir for Covid-19 in Higher-Risk Outpatients(NEJM) Same Pill, Different Impact — Reassessing the Efficacy of Nirmatrelvir–Ritonavir(NEJM) Paxlovid doesn't reduce hospitalization, death rates in vaccinated high-risk COVID outpatients, trial shows (CIDRAP) Drug interaction checker (University of Liverpool) Help your eligible patients access PAXLOVID with the PAXCESS Patient Support Program (Pfizer Pro) UnderstandingCoverage Options (PAXCESS) Infectious Disease Society guidelines for treatment and management (ID Society) Molnupiravir safety and efficacy (JMV) Convalescent plasma recommendation for immunocompromised (ID Society) What to do when sick with a respiratory virus (CDC) Managing healthcare staffing shortages (CDC) Anticoagulation guidelines (hematology.org) Daniel Griffin's evidence based medical practices for long COVID (OFID) Long COVID hotline (Columbia: Columbia University Irving Medical Center) The answers: Long COVID Acute COVID-19 is associated with altered CD8 T-cells indicative of impaired ability to control Epstein–Barr virus reactivation (Medical Microbiology and Immunology) Exercise and Weekly Sirolimus (Rapamycin) in Older Adults: RAPA-EX-01 Randomised, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial (Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle) Reaching out to US house representative Letters read on TWiV 1318 Dr. Griffin's COVID treatment summary (pdf) Timestamps by Jolene Ramsey. Thanks! Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees Send your questions for Dr. Griffin to daniel@microbe.tv Content in this podcast should not be construed as medical advice.

Welcome to The Daily Wrap Up, an in-depth investigatory show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours (4/29/26). As always, take the information discussed in the video below and research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay Vigilant. !function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src="https://rumble.com/embedJS/u2q643"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+"/?url="+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+"&args="+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, "script", "Rumble");   Rumble("play", {"video":"v76zwyo","div":"rumble_v76zwyo"}); Source Links (In Chronological Order): The Last American Vagabond Substack | Substack Iain Davis Interview - The Technocratic Dark State & The Network State Agenda Bibhu Dev Misra Interview - Do World Leaders Expect A Cataclysm & Is There A Shift Underway? New Tab (19) Ken Silva on X: "The SPLC also disclosed today that it provided the feds with information about a member of the now-defunct Vanguard America, which later splintered and became Patriot Front. https://t.co/9ObVopZPNR" / X (19) Hans Mahncke on X: "Todd Blanche is on an absolute tear right now. From indicting the SPLC, to appointing Joe diGenova as Russiagate czar, to now going after the Covid origin fraudsters, it's been a relentless run of action, all while dealing with an assassination attempt in the middle of it." / X (19) Liz Churchill on X: "ARRESTED Former Fauci aide Dr. David Morens has been CHARGED with conspiring to evade Covid-related records requests… THROW THEM ALL IN PRISON https://t.co/pINU3Prq9P" / X (19) Mikki Willis Official on X: "This is HUGE! Will this lead to actual justice and will Fauci be next?" / X Office of Public Affairs | Former Senior NIAID Official Indicted for Concealing Federal Records During COVID-19 Pandemic | United States Department of Justice Former Fauci aide charged with conspiring to evade Covid-related records requests - POLITICO (20) The Last American Vagabond on X: "@nicksortor @GuntherEagleman Morons." / X (20) Hans Mahncke on X: "Daszak is the co-conspirator here. His indictment should be next. I didn't think we'd ever see it, but accountability for the Covid origin cover up has finally arrived. Incredible. https://t.co/lX7O6WdTCD" / X (20) Jikkyleaks

Twelve official definitions for R&D. Zero agreement. The US government publishes at least a dozen distinct official definitions across agencies, accounting standards, tax authorities, and international bodies. Not one agrees with the others on where research ends and development begins. Trillions of dollars flow through R&D budgets every year. Boards approve them. Investors evaluate them. Governments subsidize them. Analysts benchmark them. And the term at the center of all of it has no settled definition. A company can gut its research investment without triggering a single alarm on its income statement. Researchers who gained rare access to confidential federal R&D data found exactly this: when companies face financial pressure, they cut research while leaving development essentially untouched, and the combined number barely moves. Every benchmark, every board conversation, every investment thesis built around the R&D line may be built on sand. Innovation, ideas made real, requires both. Research is how you find the idea. Development is how you make it real. Strip out the research and you're not innovating, you're iterating on what already exists. Strip out the development and you're just experimenting. The problem is that nobody in the room knows which one they're actually funding, because the definition that would tell them doesn't exist. Someone needs to draw the line. This episode is about why nobody has, and the definition I think should replace the chaos. By the end, I'm going to put that definition in front of you and ask you to push back on it. Not to agree. To tell me where it breaks. How We Got Here Four institutions took a run at defining R&D. Each one got it right for their own purposes. None of them got it right for yours. Frascati: Built for Governments In June 1963, OECD economists met at a villa in Frascati, Italy, south of Rome, and produced what became the international standard for measuring R&D across nations. Now in its seventh edition. The Frascati Manual divides R&D into three tiers: basic research (theoretical work with no application in view), applied research (original investigation toward a specific practical objective), and experimental development (using existing knowledge to produce new products or processes). To qualify, an activity must be novel, creative, uncertain in outcome, systematic, and transferable. Used by governments across roughly 75 countries. Solid for what it was designed to do: let nations compare R&D investment on consistent terms. What Frascati cannot tell you: whether a specific company's spending is creating competitive advantage. It counts the type of activity. It doesn't assess what the activity produces for the organization doing the spending. A company can satisfy every Frascati criterion investigating something every competitor already knows. The knowledge is new to them. That is enough. The accountants drew a different line, for a different reason, with a different consequence. FASB: Built for Accountants In October 1974, the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued Statement No. 2, Accounting for Research and Development Costs, now codified as Topic 730. Every public company filing under US GAAP operates under it. The rule: all R&D costs expensed as incurred. Research, development, basic, applied: one line on the income statement. Their definition: research is a planned search aimed at discovery of new knowledge. Development is the translation of research findings into a plan or design for a new product. The rationale is explicit in the original standard. Future benefits from R&D are, in FASB's language, "at best uncertain." Expense everything immediately. The standard solved the problem it was asked to solve, which was accounting treatment: when to recognize the cost, not whether the cost was strategically sound. The consequence: sustaining engineering, feature maintenance, and incremental product updates all land on the same line as genuine exploratory research. Nobody looking at the income statement from outside can see the difference. The number is technically accurate and analytically opaque. Abraham Briloff, the late accounting professor at Baruch College, put it plainly: "Accounting statements are like bikinis. What they show is interesting, but what they conceal is significant." He was talking about financial reporting broadly. He could have been writing specifically about the R&D line. Researchers at Duke and London Business School spent years tracking corporate scientific output and found that it declined steadily across industries even as headline R&D spending kept rising. The combined number was hiding a substitution. Nobody on the outside could see it. Outside the United States, a different standard governs, and it creates a comparison problem most analysts never account for. IFRS: Built for International Investors IAS 38 governs R&D under IFRS, and its treatment differs from FASB in one significant way. Research costs are always expensed, same as FASB. But development costs can be capitalized as an asset on the balance sheet once a company can demonstrate technical feasibility, intent to complete, ability to use or sell the result, likely future economic benefit, adequate resources, and reliable cost measurement. A European company that capitalizes its development phase carries those costs as an asset: lower expenses in the period, higher total assets. An identical US company expensing everything under FASB takes the full hit immediately: higher expenses, lower assets. Same underlying investment. Incomparable financial pictures. Run the standard industry benchmark, R&D as a percentage of revenue, and you may conclude the US company is investing more aggressively. You may be comparing the same dollar invested under two different accounting regimes. Roughly 169 jurisdictions use IFRS. The United States does not. India uses an adapted version. Japan maintains its own standards board. The benchmark the industry trusts most is meaningless for cross-border comparison, and almost nobody says so. Section 174: Built for Tax Authorities The Internal Revenue Code adds another layer. Section 174 governs the deductibility of what the US tax authority calls "research or experimental expenditures," and the definition is not the same as FASB Topic 730. A company's R&D for tax purposes and its R&D for financial reporting can cover different activities and produce different numbers. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 tightened this further: domestic R&D expenses that were previously deductible immediately now must be amortized over five years, international over fifteen. The definition of what qualifies shifted when the timing rules changed. Within one country, one company, three definitional regimes apply simultaneously: Frascati for any government reporting, FASB for the income statement, and Section 174 for taxes. A single dollar of R&D spending can be classified three different ways depending on who's asking. The Gap None of Them Fill Four frameworks, built by four institutions, for four different purposes. Not one was built for the question that actually matters. Is this investment creating new knowledge that gives us a capability nobody else can easily replicate? The gap between them is where innovation decisions actually live. The National Science Foundation recognized the problem clearly enough that it publishes a separate annotated document just to catalog the competing definitions, because they're too inconsistent to assume any two readers are using the same one. That gap isn't an oversight. It's a structural consequence of four institutions doing their own jobs well. The question practitioners need answered was nobody's institutional job. You've been in the room. The R&D number is on the slide. Nobody asks what's inside it, because the accounting standard doesn't require an answer, and the room has learned not to expect one. So it went unanswered. Until now. A Better Definition for R&D Research is work directed at creating new knowledge where the outcome is genuinely uncertain and the knowledge cannot be readily obtained from existing sources. Development is the translation of that knowledge into products, services, or processes that meaningfully advance an organization's capability in ways competitors cannot easily replicate. Four elements define it: Genuinely uncertain outcome. If you know what you're going to get before the work starts, it's engineering execution, not research. The uncertainty doesn't have to be total. Most applied research has a likely direction. But there has to be real doubt about whether the approach works, whether the knowledge emerges. Cannot be obtained from existing sources. This is the one nobody puts in writing. If the knowledge is already in the literature, available from a consulting engagement, or present in a competitor's published work, finding it again isn't research. Generating new knowledge and capturing existing knowledge are different activities. Only one belongs here. This criterion alone would reclassify a significant portion of what companies currently call R&D. Advances capability competitors cannot easily replicate. Development only qualifies when it translates research into something that genuinely moves the organization forward competitively. Sustaining engineering doesn't pass it. Feature parity doesn't. Competitive catch-up doesn't. All real work, none of it development under this definition. Agnostic to accounting jurisdiction. This definition doesn't tell you how to expense or capitalize anything. That's already governed by whichever standard applies. What it does is establish what genuinely belongs in each category, regardless of where the company files. That makes it usable across FASB and IFRS companies without translation. There is a simpler way to put it. For any project in your R&D budget, ask two questions. First: are we creating new knowledge, or executing against something we already know? If you're executing, it's not research. Second: does this translate into a capability competitors cannot easily replicate? If not, it's not development either. It's product engineering, valuable and necessary, but a different budget category entirely. Three buckets: Research, Development, and Product Engineering. That taxonomy, applied honestly across a typical portfolio, would reclassify a significant share of what most companies are currently reporting as R&D. The Call I'm not asking FASB to rewrite Topic 730. What I am asking: that the people who actually make innovation decisions start applying a definition built for the question they're trying to answer. If you run an R&D function: apply this definition to your current portfolio. Not to change the accounting. To see what's actually in the category and what isn't. The gap between what your budget calls R&D and what this definition calls R&D will tell you something worth knowing. If you sit on a board: ask what portion of the R&D line is directed at new knowledge creation versus sustaining existing products. If no one in the room can answer, you're governing a number you don't understand. And if you think the definition is wrong, tell me. Where should the line be drawn differently? What element doesn't hold? What did I miss? That's not a polite invitation. That's the actual point of this episode. Definitions become standards when enough serious people apply them consistently and make the case until the institutions catch up. The four frameworks we inherited were each built by an institution serving its own purpose. This one is built for the people making the decisions. The most consequential line in any company's budget is the one separating what builds the future from what protects the present. Nobody drew it clearly. It's past time someone did. The idea was never the hard part. It never is. The call is. If this episode shifted something for you, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, hit subscribe and the bell so you don't miss the next one. And if you want to go deeper every Monday, Studio Notes is free at philmckinney.com. Until next time. See the pattern. Make the call. The Innovators Studio | philmckinney.com

This Day in Legal History: Rodney KingOn April 29, 1992, a California jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist whose assault had been captured on videotape the year before. The beating took place on March 3, 1991, after a police chase, when officers repeatedly struck King while a bystander recorded the incident from nearby. The footage became one of the most important pieces of video evidence in modern American legal history, not because it settled the matter, but because it showed how even seemingly clear evidence can be interpreted differently in a courtroom.To much of the public, the video appeared to show obvious police brutality. To the defense, it became something to be slowed down, segmented, and reframed as a series of split-second decisions by officers claiming fear and loss of control. When the jury acquitted the officers, the verdict landed in Los Angeles as a statement about far more than one criminal prosecution. For many residents, especially Black Angelenos, it confirmed the belief that the legal system was unwilling or unable to hold police accountable for violence against Black citizens.The verdict triggered several days of unrest across Los Angeles, leaving more than 60 people dead, thousands injured, and large portions of the city damaged. The case also forced the country to confront the relationship between race, policing, prosecutorial burden, and jury perception. The state-court acquittals did not end the legal story, because federal prosecutors later brought civil rights charges against the officers.In 1993, two officers, Laurence Powell and Stacey Koon, were convicted in federal court, while two others were acquitted. King also later received a civil damages award from the City of Los Angeles. April 29 remains a major date in legal history because it revealed the limits of video evidence, the difficulty of prosecuting police officers, and the deep public consequences that can follow when a courtroom verdict collides with what millions of people feel they have already seen.Purdue Pharma was sentenced in federal court in New Jersey to $5.5 billion in fines and penalties tied to its 2020 guilty plea over misconduct connected to OxyContin sales. The sentencing helps clear the path for Purdue to wind down through bankruptcy and fund a broader $7.4 billion opioid settlement. Before approving the plea deal, Judge Madeline Cox Arleo heard hours of testimony from people who described addiction, death, and family devastation connected to the opioid crisis. More than 200 victims submitted letters, and more than 40 people spoke in court.Purdue's chairman, Steve Miller, apologized directly to victims after the judge instructed him to do so. Arleo also apologized from the bench, telling victims that the government had failed them by missing opportunities to stop Purdue's conduct earlier. Many speakers said financial punishment was not enough and argued that Purdue's owners, the Sackler family, or company executives should face prison time. The judge said she could not impose jail time because the Justice Department had charged the company, not the individual owners or executives. Although the formal sentence is $5.5 billion, most of that amount will not actually be paid, with the government expected to collect $225 million if Purdue uses its remaining assets to pay creditors.The settlement includes money for governments and an $865 million fund for individuals, but many victims worry they will be excluded because they cannot produce old prescription records. Purdue says it is on track to exit bankruptcy as a new nonprofit company focused on opioid addiction treatment and overdose-reversal medicines.Purdue Pharma receives $5.5 billion sentence, paving way for opioid settlement | ReutersThe Justice Department has indicted former FBI Director James Comey over a 2025 Instagram post showing seashells arranged as “86 47,” which prosecutors say amounted to a threat against President Donald Trump. The case was filed in federal court in North Carolina and charges Comey with threatening the president's life and transmitting a threat across state lines. Comey has said he did not intend violence, explaining that he deleted the post after learning some people interpreted the numbers that way.Trump and his allies had argued the message was a threat, with “47” referring to Trump as the 47th president and “86” being read by them as a call to remove him violently. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the indictment as a standard threat case, while critics and Comey's lawyers say it looks like a politically motivated prosecution. The Secret Service had previously looked into the post and interviewed Comey, but he was not charged at that time. One should also place the indictment in the broader context of Trump's Justice Department pursuing cases against people and groups seen as political opponents.Comey already faced a separate criminal case over alleged false testimony to Congress, but that case was dismissed after a judge found a problem with the prosecutor's appointment, and the government is appealing. Comey's lawyers are expected to argue that the new case is both retaliatory and protected by the First Amendment. The central legal fight will likely be whether the post was a “true threat” or protected political speech.Trump's DOJ indicts former FBI director James Comey over ‘86 47' post | ReutersThe Trump administration has fired all current members of the National Science Board, according to two former board members who spoke to Reuters. The board, created in 1950, helps oversee the National Science Foundation and advises both the president and Congress on science and engineering policy. It had more than 20 members, who were appointed to six-year terms, and most of them came from academia, with others from national labs, nonprofits, and private industry. Former board members Yolanda Gil and Keivan Stassun said they were told by email that their removals were effective immediately.According to Gil, all 22 current members were terminated and no explanation was given. Stassun said the move was disappointing but not surprising in light of other Trump administration actions affecting scientific research and independent federal bodies. The National Science Foundation referred questions to the White House. A White House official said the NSF's work would continue without interruption and suggested that the board's congressionally created powers may need to be updated. The firings fit into a broader pattern described by political experts as an effort by the administration to reshape independent institutions by replacing existing officials with more loyal leadership.Trump administration fires entire National Science Board | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This week's episode has a little bit of everything—local politics, a suspicious number of Star Trek–named kittens, some genuinely cool green tech, and a short story that hits you with an existential haymaker. Real Life  Devon's in a "life is… fine" zone, which is either stability or the calm before chaos—we'll let you decide. That leads into a surprisingly interesting question: does a mayor's party affiliation actually matter at the local level? Texas elections are happening right now, and it sparks a broader conversation about how much politics really trickles down into day-to-day governance. Also on the home front: kids' birthday parties, which are somehow both joyful and mildly exhausting. Ben has fully entered his foster-dad era—but for kittens. A whole crew of them: Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer, and their mom Majel. He claims he didn't name them, which statistically feels unlikely. Either way, it's a Starfleet-grade lineup. Meanwhile, Devon's household remains firmly anti-new-pet, so don't expect a crossover episode there. We also touch on For All Mankind, and then pivot into the upcoming Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender film—specifically the leaks, early reactions, and what happens when studios lose control of the narrative before release. There's some real-world legal tension brewing there. Steven… well, Steven exists this week. (You'll hear it.)   Future or Now  Devon brings in a heavy one: reports that the independent board overseeing the National Science Foundation has been abruptly dismissed, raising serious concerns about political interference in scientific research and long-term innovation. You can read more here:  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/28/trump-fires-national-science-foundation-board  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-fired-national-science-foundation-board-b2965242.html  This isn't just bureaucratic reshuffling—it could have real downstream effects on funding, research priorities, and scientific independence. Ben tries to balance things out with something genuinely cool: Mosscrete. https://gorespyre.com/  It's a bioreceptive concrete designed to grow moss directly on buildings using nothing but rain and humidity. No irrigation, no maintenance-heavy systems—just passive, living architecture. It's one of those ideas that feels obvious in hindsight but actually takes some clever engineering to pull off. This whole topic also dredges up a deep memory: Bill Nye's moss-and-milk experiment. If you know, you know. If you don't, you probably just learned something slightly unsettling about childhood science videos. Steven is present in this segment as well. Technically.   Book Club Next Week: Saint Zero of the Hollows and the Eagle Knight by V.M. Ayala https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/saint-zero-of-the-hollows-and-the-eagle-knight/  "The only sound Zero heard in their helmet was their own hyperventilating and the gentle pings from their pegasus." That line alone is doing a lot of work. We're excited for this one. This Week: Learning To Be Me by Greg Egan http://thetafiction.com/story/learning-to-be-me/  "I was six years old when my parents told me that there was a small, dark jewel inside my skull, learning to be me." This story landed hard for all of us. It follows a life from childhood to adulthood in a way that feels deceptively simple—until it isn't. The structure does a ton of heavy lifting, and the twist is the kind that makes you immediately want to reread it. We get into some big ideas here, especially panpsychism—the notion that consciousness might be a fundamental property of the universe rather than something that just "emerges." It's one of those discussions that starts philosophical and ends slightly unsettling. If you like episodes that bounce between grounded real life, big-picture science, and brain-bending fiction, this one's for you.  

Victor Varnado is many things: standup comedian, founder of Supreme Robot, King Super Nuts, and the man behind the Worldwide Tic-Tac-Toe Championship. He's also the guy who built disability gaming tech worth $500K — and never saw a dime. Lou sits down with Victor for one of the more wide-ranging conversations we've had on this show: Richard Pryor's evolution as a performer, what a histology class taught Victor about how history gets told, the UCB rap battle comedy scene, why AI is "like discovering electricity," and how you turn tic-tac-toe into a global competitive sport. Oh, and the story of the National Science Foundation grant Victor received to build voice-control and audio-description software for disabled gamers — software that could help people who are paralyzed, blind, or deaf play video games without extra hardware — that got sold to a tech company for shares against their IPO... and then the IPO never happened. TOPICS: — Gary, Indiana, The Jackson 5, and tall-tale fathers — Richard Pryor vs. George Carlin (and why Pryor won) — The histology class that changed how Victor sees the world — Bombing at the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival callback — 7 years of rap battle comedy at UCB (Battle Ish) — Supreme Robot: how Victor builds and tests IP before finding investors — AI and what stays valuable when everything changes (people's attention) — Opening for Scott Thompson (Kids in the Hall) and Gilbert Gottfried — Norm MacDonald on Sam Kinison and what comedy is actually about — Tic-tac-toe as a strategy game (and how to make it competitive) — The disability gaming tech that a company bought and buried — Neuralink and the medical future Victor actually wants Play the game: highscoregamearcade.com 0:00 Intro — who is Victor Varnado? 1:35 Growing up in Gary, Indiana and the Jackson 5 4:40 Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and the art of performance 6:15 The histology class that changed how he sees the world 9:30 Moving to Minneapolis, bombing at HBO Aspen, and going solo 11:30 UCB, the Hammer Cats, and 20 years of NYC comedy 13:50 Battle Ish: 7 years of rap battle comedy at UCB 16:10 All those unfilmed shows — and why Victor actually recorded everything 18:30 Supreme Robot: his IP incubator explained 21:10 AI is like electricity — and why that's scary and exciting 24:40 Opening for Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall 26:40 Opening for Gilbert Gottfried at Caroline's 27:05 The joke he's working on about marriage 29:20 Norm MacDonald, Sam Kinison, and what comedy is really about 31:55 The Worldwide Tic-Tac-Toe Championship — yes, really 36:10 HighScoreGameArcade.com and the 100M player goal 37:55 The National Science Foundation grant and disability gaming tech 40:10 The $500K he never got — and what happened to the tech 41:40 Neuralink and the medical future he actually wants 42:15 Outro The Lou Perez Podcast is part of the Lions of Liberty Podcast Network. Watch full episodes of The Lou Perez Podcast and more on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Vb53s4I0A&list=PLb5trMQQvT077-L1roE0iZyAgT4dD4EtJ  Listen on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lou-perez-podcast/id1535032081  Listen on Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2KAtC7eFS3NHWMZp2UgMVU  Lou's book — That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r  TheLouPerez.com |  info@thelouperez.com  Newsletter: https://substack.com/@louperez #comedy #standupcomedy #victorvarnado #AI #disabilitytech #tictactoe #UCB #lionsofiberty Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Victor Varnado is many things: standup comedian, founder of Supreme Robot, King Super Nuts, and the man behind the Worldwide Tic-Tac-Toe Championship. He's also the guy who built disability gaming tech worth $500K — and never saw a dime. Lou sits down with Victor for one of the more wide-ranging conversations we've had on this show: Richard Pryor's evolution as a performer, what a histology class taught Victor about how history gets told, the UCB rap battle comedy scene, why AI is "like discovering electricity," and how you turn tic-tac-toe into a global competitive sport. Oh, and the story of the National Science Foundation grant Victor received to build voice-control and audio-description software for disabled gamers — software that could help people who are paralyzed, blind, or deaf play video games without extra hardware — that got sold to a tech company for shares against their IPO... and then the IPO never happened. TOPICS: — Gary, Indiana, The Jackson 5, and tall-tale fathers — Richard Pryor vs. George Carlin (and why Pryor won) — The histology class that changed how Victor sees the world — Bombing at the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival callback — 7 years of rap battle comedy at UCB (Battle Ish) — Supreme Robot: how Victor builds and tests IP before finding investors — AI and what stays valuable when everything changes (people's attention) — Opening for Scott Thompson (Kids in the Hall) and Gilbert Gottfried — Norm MacDonald on Sam Kinison and what comedy is actually about — Tic-tac-toe as a strategy game (and how to make it competitive) — The disability gaming tech that a company bought and buried — Neuralink and the medical future Victor actually wants Play the game: highscoregamearcade.com 0:00 Intro — who is Victor Varnado? 1:35 Growing up in Gary, Indiana and the Jackson 5 4:40 Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and the art of performance 6:15 The histology class that changed how he sees the world 9:30 Moving to Minneapolis, bombing at HBO Aspen, and going solo 11:30 UCB, the Hammer Cats, and 20 years of NYC comedy 13:50 Battle Ish: 7 years of rap battle comedy at UCB 16:10 All those unfilmed shows — and why Victor actually recorded everything 18:30 Supreme Robot: his IP incubator explained 21:10 AI is like electricity — and why that's scary and exciting 24:40 Opening for Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall 26:40 Opening for Gilbert Gottfried at Caroline's 27:05 The joke he's working on about marriage 29:20 Norm MacDonald, Sam Kinison, and what comedy is really about 31:55 The Worldwide Tic-Tac-Toe Championship — yes, really 36:10 HighScoreGameArcade.com and the 100M player goal 37:55 The National Science Foundation grant and disability gaming tech 40:10 The $500K he never got — and what happened to the tech 41:40 Neuralink and the medical future he actually wants 42:15 Outro The Lou Perez Podcast is part of the Lions of Liberty Podcast Network. Watch full episodes of The Lou Perez Podcast and more on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Vb53s4I0A&list=PLb5trMQQvT077-L1roE0iZyAgT4dD4EtJ  Listen on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lou-perez-podcast/id1535032081  Listen on Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2KAtC7eFS3NHWMZp2UgMVU  Lou's book — That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r  TheLouPerez.com |  info@thelouperez.com  Newsletter: https://substack.com/@louperez #comedy #standupcomedy #victorvarnado #AI #disabilitytech #tictactoe #UCB #lionsofiberty Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rod and Karen banter about the NBA play-offs, Hoes With Crabs, Farmers Market, a lady tried to get us to go to her church, trees and Starry. Then they discuss Trump fires all 24 members of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s governing body, attempted assassination at the WHCD, Black Folks Business™ (Megan Thee Stallion accuses Klay Thompson of cheating, Iceman sculpture for Drake’s album release, Tiffany Henyard running for office in GA), woman tells cops her name is Donald Duck, murder of onion rings at Steak ‘n’ Shake, woman pulls gun over parking space at Target and sword ratchetness. Bomani Jones Live W/ TBGWT – https://septembercreative.ticketspice.com/bomani-jones-live-in-atlanta Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theblackguywhotips Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@rodimusprime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@SayDatAgain⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TBGWT⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheBlackGuyWhoTips⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠theblackguywhotips@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Blog: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.theblackguywhotips.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Teepublic Store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠- https://the-black-guy-who-tips-podcast.dashery.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon Wishlist⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ – https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1PDD9JUQUNVY5?ref_=wl_share ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Crowdcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ – https://www.crowdcast.io/theblackguywhotips Voicemail: ‪(980) 500-9034Go Premium: https://www.theblackguywhotips.com/premium/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Advanced computing and AI are reshaping nearly every sector, but access to those capabilities remains uneven. The National Science Foundation is launching a new effort aimed at broadening who can use advanced computing. Dr. Erwin Gianchandani joins me from the National Science Foundation.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hollywood has been gatekept for decades, but a multi-hyphenate who has appeared in films with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Werner Herzog, co-written a screenplay with Stan Lee, and produced for VH1 and Comedy Central is now building something the studios never could have given him. Victor Varnado, stand-up comedian, actor, filmmaker, National Science Foundation grant recipient, and CEO of Supreme Robot Pictures, spent the pandemic pivoting hard into tech and never looked back. The centerpiece right now is High Score Game Arcade, a global competitive gaming platform he built from scratch, recently showcased at South by Southwest, and is now closing a distribution deal that puts his games in front of over 100 million monthly users across Samsung TVs and beyond. The flagship product, a deceptively deep single-player tic-tac-toe championship with a heuristic scoring engine, is just the beginning. The conversation covers how Victor developed patented accessibility technology to help people with disabilities play video games, got a National Science Foundation grant for it, then watched a company called Infinite Reality buy it with shares right before a failed IPO. He and Christopher Nichols dig into what it actually takes for artists to pay themselves in 2025, the power of the hybrid newsletter and the email list as sustainable revenue engines, and why the Roger Corman model is still the smartest path forward for indie filmmakers. Victor also co-produces the Iron Mule Comedy Film Festival in New York, programming monthly short comedy screenings, and makes a sharp case that the biggest threat from AI is not the technology itself but the people deploying it who do not know what they are doing. Links: Victor Varnado on IMDb > High Score Game Arcade > Iron Mule Comedy Film Festival > Supreme Robot Pictures > The Great Fantasy Debate >  This episode is sponsored by: Center Grid Virtual Studio Kitbash 3D (Use promocode "CGGarage" for 10% off)

Every public company's R&D number is a lie hiding in plain sight. Not because anyone falsified it. Because the number was never built to tell the truth. It was built to satisfy an accounting standard written in 1974. And for fifty years, boards, analysts, and CEOs have been making billion-dollar innovation decisions based on a number designed by accountants to solve a different problem entirely. Here's what makes this genuinely strange. The real number exists. The government has been collecting it from every major US company for decades. It would answer the question every innovation leader and investor actually needs answered. And it is locked away by federal law. Confidential. Never published. Never seen by the people who need it most. It's sitting in a federal database right now. And there's a way to estimate it for any public company, without asking anyone's permission. I know it exists because I spent years building it from the inside. Why the R&D Signal Was Blurry When I was running innovation at HP, we discovered this problem firsthand. We had a connection between R&D investment and gross margin that held up across decades of HP history. Better than anything Wall Street was using. But the signal was blurry. None of us could figure out why. The answer came from a question someone on the team asked almost as an aside. What if R&D isn't one thing? Research and Development Are Not the Same Thing Think about what actually lives inside a typical R&D budget. There's a team somewhere investigating whether a new approach could enable a capability that doesn't exist yet. No product defined. No spec written. Asking whether something is even possible. And there's a team building the next version of a product that ships in eighteen months. Spec locked. Timeline set. Engineering executing against a defined target. Both show up on the same line in the budget. Both get called R&D. Both count equally toward the number that gets reviewed every quarter. They are not the same thing. One is Research. The other is Development. Research is the work you do when you don't yet know what you're building. The output is understanding. New knowledge that might enable future products nobody has designed yet. You can't know exactly what you'll find. If you already knew, it wouldn't be research. Development is the work you do when you know exactly what you're building. The spec exists. The product is defined. The question isn't what to make. It's whether it can be made, on time, at cost, at quality. One creates the future. The other delivers the present. And for fifty years, every public company in America has been required to report them as one indistinguishable number. When we split the HP data along that line, Research on one side and Development on the other, the signal sharpened immediately. Research spend, measured against gross margin three to five years later, was a meaningfully stronger predictor than the combined number had ever been. The blur hadn't been in the gross margin data. It had been in the R&D number itself. Two fundamentally different things, averaged together, producing a number that looked precise and predicted almost nothing. But splitting R from D at the company level was only the beginning. The model was still lying to us. Just more quietly. Why Company-Level R&D Splits Still Mislead Even with the split, something was still soft. HP wasn't one business. It was dozens. Printers, PCs, servers, software, each running on different timelines, different technology cycles, different competitive dynamics. What if the R/D split meant something different depending on where it was applied? We pushed it to the product line level. Then further, to the platform level within product lines. Printers were the clearest example. HP's printer business wasn't one story. There were platforms built on established technology. Mature ink systems, proven print head chemistry, products that had been shipping for years. And there were platforms built on genuinely new core technology. New chemistry. New mechanisms. New approaches to fundamental problems that nobody had solved yet. Research investment by platform told a completely different story than Research investment by product category. The Research going into new technology platforms had a completely different relationship to future margin than Research going into mature platforms. Different time horizons. Different risk profiles. Different margin implications years down the road. Laptops told the same story. A traditional consumer laptop line and a high-performance portable workstation weren't the same investment. One was Development-heavy. Defined product, known market, engineering executing against spec. The other had genuine Research behind it. Unsolved thermal problems, new form factor constraints, and materials questions that hadn't been answered yet. When a single R&D assumption is applied across all of that, treating every dollar the same regardless of what it actually does, the signal disappears into the average. Peanut butter across the portfolio. The model only got honest when it got specific. Research by platform and Development by platform, matched against the margin performance of those specific platforms years later. Which platforms were building future margin? Which ones were running on margin that past Research had already bought? We could see it because we were inside the company. The question is whether anyone on the outside could ever see the same thing. The R&D Data the Government Collects and Won't Release Outside the internal budget process, everyone sees the same thing: a single line on the income statement. The US government recognized decades ago that the combined R&D number was analytically useless. So they built a system to collect the real one. The National Science Foundation runs a survey called the Business Enterprise Research and Development survey. The BERD survey. Every year, roughly 47,500 US companies are required to report their R&D spending broken into three categories: basic research, applied research, and experimental development. The split that every board and every investor needs to see. Mandatory. Collected. Verified. And then locked away. The firm-level data is confidential under federal law. The NSF publishes only industry-level aggregates. So every company fills out this survey and reports its real R/D split to the government. That data sits in a federal database. And the boards, investors, and analysts who need it most cannot access it. Researchers at Northwestern and Boston University were given rare access to that confidential data. What they found is striking. When companies face financial pressure and cut R&D, they don't cut Development. They cut Research. Almost entirely. Development barely moves. Every earnings squeeze. Every activist campaign. Every cost optimization program. Systematically targeting the one part of R&D that builds future margin. And because the combined number barely moves, nobody on the outside sees it happening. That's not a coincidence. That's the accounting standard doing exactly what it was designed to do: produce one clean number for the income statement. It was never asked to protect the future. How to Estimate the Research-to-Development Split Without Inside Access So what can actually be done without access to the locked data? More than most people realize. Step 1. Find the industry baseline. The aggregate BERD data is public at the sector level. Ask an AI tool for the Research-to-Development ratio for the relevant industry. That's the benchmark. Everything else gets measured against it. A company spending 8% of its R&D on Research in an industry where the average is 25% is telling you something the combined number never would. Step 2. Look at the gross margin trend compared to peers. Gross margin over time is the most honest external signal of Research health. A company with a declining margin relative to peers, while reporting flat or growing R&D spend, is almost certainly shifting the mix toward Development. The math works in the other direction, too. An AI tool can pull this comparison for any public company in minutes. This is exactly the signal that was invisible at HP until it was too late. Step 3. Look at patent trends compared to peers over time. Patents are an imperfect but useful directional indicator. Not because more patents always means more Research. It doesn't. But a sustained decline in patent output relative to peers, alongside flat R&D spend, suggests the investment is maintaining existing products rather than creating new knowledge. Combined with the gross margin trend, it starts to triangulate where the split actually sits. None of these three steps requires access to an internal budget. All of them can be done in an afternoon with public data and an AI tool. Together, they produce a working picture of the R/D split that the income statement was never designed to reveal. What the R&D Split Revealed at HP That No One Outside Could See When Hurd took over in 2005, HP was spending $3.5 billion on R&D. Roughly 4% of revenue. By 2009, his last full year as CEO, that had dropped to $2.8 billion. Revenue had grown significantly over that period, so the percentage had fallen further still, to under 2.5%. Both the dollar amount and the ratio were declining simultaneously while the company got larger. Wall Street tracked the combined number. The board reviewed it. Nobody raised a structural alarm. The Research component within that total was well below the industry average for comparable technology companies. Not slightly. Significantly. The margin consequences arrived years later. They always do. What Happens When the Definition of Research Doesn't Exist The R/D split gave us a real predictive signal. We ran with it. The conversations were sharper. But the team kept pulling on a thread that nobody expected. When we looked closely at what was actually being called Research, project by project and budget line by budget line, things that didn't feel the same kept appearing. Work aimed at fundamental discovery. Work aimed at solving a specific defined problem using entirely new methods. Both labeled Research. Up close, they behaved differently, predicted different things, and when budgets got tight, got treated very differently. So we went looking for the agreed definition. The official standard that would tell exactly where to draw the lines inside Research. It didn't exist. Not the way we needed it to. And without it, everything we'd built was sitting on sand. How do you build a predictive model on a definition that doesn't exist? That's the next episode. If this helped you see something you might have missed, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, hit subscribe and the bell so you don't miss the next episode. And if you want to go deeper every Monday, join us at Studio Notes — free, at philmckinney.com. Until next time. See the pattern. Make the call.  

This week on Better Buildings for Humans, host Joe Menchefski welcomes back Dorit Aviv, joined by Eric Teitelbaum, for a powerful conversation on one of the most urgent—and often overlooked—climate challenges: extreme urban heat. Drawing from their work at the University of Pennsylvania and AIL Research, they unpack how the urban heat island effect disproportionately impacts vulnerable communities and why conventional cooling solutions fall short.Together, they explore an innovative breakthrough—membrane-assisted radiant cooling—and how it reimagines comfort by cooling people directly, not the air around them. From solar-powered cooling shelters to redesigned bus stops, their work blends building science, material innovation, and human-centered design to reduce heat stress in real-world settings. This episode challenges us to rethink how cities can become not just more sustainable—but more livable, equitable, and resilient in a warming world.More About Dorit Aviv and Eric TeitelbaumDorit Aviv, PhD, AIA, is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, where she directs of the Thermal Architecture Lab, a cross-disciplinary laboratory at the intersection of thermodynamics, architecture, and material science. Her work examines synergies between renewable environmental forces and architectural materials and forms to improve energy efficiency and occupant wellbeing. Aviv is a licensed architect and holds a PhD in architectural technology from Princeton University. Her work has been supported by federal grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. Her prototypes for passive and low-energy cooling have won major international awards, including a Holcim Award for Sustainable Design and Construction for a prototype of passive cooling in desert climate in 2021 and a Ramboll Foundation grant to investigate applications of radiant cooling for urban shelters in 2024.Eric Teitelbaum, PhD, is an engineer and educator working at the intersection of architectural systems, thermal comfort, and materials science. With AIL Research Inc., he develops novel technologies that reduce reliance on conventional air conditioning. His research and development efforts have been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the USDA. A lifelong tinkerer, DIY home renovator, treehouse builder, and inventor of sensors and heat pumps, Eric believes deeply in learning through building with your hands. Most recently, he has focused on developing and commercializing membrane-assisted radiant cooling panels for outdoor thermal comfort as cofounder of the early-stage startup Clearly Cool.CONTACT:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dorit-aviv/ https://www.instagram.com/thermal_architecture_lab/https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-teitelbaum-16805bb9/ Where To Find Us:https://bbfhpod.advancedglazings.com/www.advancedglazings.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/better-buildings-for-humans-podcastwww.linkedin.com/in/advanced-glazings-ltd-848b4625https://twitter.com/bbfhpodhttps://twitter.com/Solera_Daylighthttps://www.instagram.com/bbfhpod/https://www.instagram.com/advancedglazingsltdhttps://www.facebook.com/AdvancedGlazingsltd

This week on Better Buildings for Humans, host Joe Menchefski welcomes back Dorit Aviv, joined by Eric Teitelbaum, for a powerful conversation on one of the most urgent—and often overlooked—climate challenges: extreme urban heat. Drawing from their work at the University of Pennsylvania and AIL Research, they unpack how the urban heat island effect disproportionately impacts vulnerable communities and why conventional cooling solutions fall short.Together, they explore an innovative breakthrough—membrane-assisted radiant cooling—and how it reimagines comfort by cooling people directly, not the air around them. From solar-powered cooling shelters to redesigned bus stops, their work blends building science, material innovation, and human-centered design to reduce heat stress in real-world settings. This episode challenges us to rethink how cities can become not just more sustainable—but more livable, equitable, and resilient in a warming world.More About Dorit Aviv and Eric TeitelbaumDorit Aviv, PhD, AIA, is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, where she directs of the Thermal Architecture Lab, a cross-disciplinary laboratory at the intersection of thermodynamics, architecture, and material science. Her work examines synergies between renewable environmental forces and architectural materials and forms to improve energy efficiency and occupant wellbeing. Aviv is a licensed architect and holds a PhD in architectural technology from Princeton University. Her work has been supported by federal grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. Her prototypes for passive and low-energy cooling have won major international awards, including a Holcim Award for Sustainable Design and Construction for a prototype of passive cooling in desert climate in 2021 and a Ramboll Foundation grant to investigate applications of radiant cooling for urban shelters in 2024.Eric Teitelbaum, PhD, is an engineer and educator working at the intersection of architectural systems, thermal comfort, and materials science. With AIL Research Inc., he develops novel technologies that reduce reliance on conventional air conditioning. His research and development efforts have been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the USDA. A lifelong tinkerer, DIY home renovator, treehouse builder, and inventor of sensors and heat pumps, Eric believes deeply in learning through building with your hands. Most recently, he has focused on developing and commercializing membrane-assisted radiant cooling panels for outdoor thermal comfort as cofounder of the early-stage startup Clearly Cool.CONTACT:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dorit-aviv/ https://www.instagram.com/thermal_architecture_lab/https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-teitelbaum-16805bb9/ Where To Find Us:https://bbfhpod.advancedglazings.com/www.advancedglazings.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/better-buildings-for-humans-podcastwww.linkedin.com/in/advanced-glazings-ltd-848b4625https://twitter.com/bbfhpodhttps://twitter.com/Solera_Daylighthttps://www.instagram.com/bbfhpod/https://www.instagram.com/advancedglazingsltdhttps://www.facebook.com/AdvancedGlazingsltd

The government is finally catching up to what biohackers have known for decades, and the man helping lead that charge just sat down with Host Dave Asprey to talk longevity science, aging biomarkers, dietary overhaul, AI in medicine, and what a real science-first health agenda actually looks like. Watch this episode on YouTube for the full video experience: https://www.youtube.com/@DaveAspreyBPR Jim O'Neill served as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and Acting Director of the CDC before being nominated to lead the National Science Foundation in March 2026. Before entering government, he was CEO of SENS Research Foundation, where he led cutting-edge regenerative medicine research targeting mitochondrial mutations, senescent cells, and neocortex rejuvenation. He is a 30-year veteran of health care reform and a genuine longevity insider. Dave and Jim cover the complete rewrite of federal dietary guidelines, the government's new randomized controlled trials on saturated fats, and why grains are no longer the core of a "balanced diet." They dig into a 144 million dollar ARPA H program to establish causal aging biomarkers that will unlock real anti-aging drug development and accelerate the kind of longevity research the SENS Foundation pioneered. Jim explains why current aging clocks and DNA methylation markers are not enough, and what comes next for functional medicine, sleep optimization, and metabolism research. They also break down the CDC's return to its infectious disease core, the future of AI in health care, wearable data for disease surveillance, organ bioprinting, GLP-1s, supplements like vitamin D, peptides, and the right to self-experiment. You will learn: Why the new federal dietary guidelines finally reject grain-centric nutrition and validate what the biohacking world has argued for 25 years How a 144 million dollar government program aims to build the causal biomarkers that will make real anti-aging and longevity drug development possible What Jim thinks about DNA methylation clocks and why better tools are needed to measure aging and human performance How AI is reshaping prescription refills, clinical decision support, Medicare reimbursement, and the future of functional medicine Why Jim wears an Oura Ring and uses sleep optimization data to make daily health decisions The government's evolving stance on peptides, supplements, and therapies that are not patent protected How organ bioprinting using a patient's own cells could solve the organ shortage crisis What real science replication looks like and why the government is now funding it What the CDC is doing to refocus on infectious disease while shedding mission creep How GLP-1s, fitness tracking, and updated nutrition strategies could significantly cut national obesity rates within five years Thank you to our sponsors! - Neuronic | Go to www.neuronic.online Code DAVE for $100 off - iRestore | Reverse hair loss with www.irestore.com/DAVE and get exclusive savings on the iRestore Elite, use code DAVE - Go to timeline.com/dave and save 20% with code DAVE20 - Superstratum Labs | Get Dave's exact home mold detox kit and save 10% at superstratumlabs.com/products/dave Dave Asprey is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, founder of Bulletproof Coffee, and the father of biohacking. With over 1,000 interviews and 1 million monthly listeners, The Human Upgrade brings you the knowledge to take control of your biology, extend your longevity, and optimize every system in your body and mind. Each episode delivers cutting-edge insights inhealth, performance, neuroscience, supplements, nutrition, biohacking, emotional intelligence, and conscious living. New episodes are released every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday (BONUS). Dave asks the questions no one else will and gives you real tools to become stronger, smarter, and more resilient. Keywords: Jim O'Neill, CDC, HHS, dietary guidelines, saturated fat, aging biomarkers, ARPA H, SENS Research Foundation, longevity, anti-aging, senescent cells, mitochondria, DNA methylation, sleep optimization, Oura Ring, AI healthcare, organ bioprinting, GLP-1, peptides, vitamin D, supplements, functional medicine, biohacking, Dave Asprey, human performance, metabolism Resources: • Learn more at: https://www.hhs.gov/ • Get My 2026 Clean Nicotine Roadmap | Enroll for free at https://daveasprey.com/2026-clean-nicotine-roadmap/ • Dave Asprey's Latest News | Go to https://daveasprey.com/ to join Inside Track today. • Danger Coffee: https://dangercoffee.com/discount/dave15 • My Daily Supplements: SuppGrade Labs (15% Off) • Favorite Blue Light Blocking Glasses: TrueDark (15% Off) • Dave Asprey's BEYOND Conference: https://beyondconference.com • Dave Asprey's New Book – Heavily Meditated: https://daveasprey.com/heavily-meditated • Join My Substack (Live Access To Podcast Recordings): https://substack.daveasprey.com/ • Upgrade Labs: https://upgradelabs.com Timestamps: 00:00 – Trailer 01:15 – Dietary Guidelines Overhaul 06:48 – Misinformation & Scientific Integrity 10:26 – Longevity vs. Chronic Disease 13:03 – Aging Biomarkers & ARPA-H 14:31 – CDC's Refocus on Infectious Disease 16:55 – Alternative Therapies & Biohacking 19:21 – Health Trackers & Privacy 22:27 – AI in Healthcare 24:01 – Diet, Supplements & School Meals 27:31 – Food Safety, Pesticides & Peptides See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anne Aghion has been praised as a filmmaker of poetic vision and a unique documentarian whose films, in the words of one critic, “pull us deep into the social fabric” of the places she covers. She gained international renown for “The Gacaca Series” (pr. ga-CHA-cha), four films on post- genocide justice and social reconstruction in Rwanda. There, Anne Aghion charted the emotional impact of a controversial system of justice that returned killers to their homes to live side-by-side with the survivors of unimaginable violence. The final film in the series, “My Neighbor My Killer“, premiered in Official Selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival; was nominated for Best Documentary at the Gotham Awards; and earned Aghion the Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Additionally, other films in the series received an Emmy Award and the UNESCO Fellini Prize. The 2008 feature “Ice People” was described by Variety as “staggeringly beautiful,” and New York Magazine's noted critic Bilge Ebiri wrote that “it might be the most immersive documentary I've ever seen.” The film, which explores the physical, emotional and spiritual adventure of living and conducting science in Antarctica, was produced with ARTE France and ITVS International in association with Sundance Channel. Her award-winning 1996 directorial debut “Se Le Movió El Piso: A Portrait of Managua (The Earth Moved Under Him),” examines how Nicaraguan slum dwellers had survived the double ravages of political and natural disasters. In 2024, Anne Aghion finished “Turbulence” which poses the question: How do we overcome the heartbreaks, sorrow and traumas we endure or witness, and come out whole? The film, written, directed and produced by Aghion, is made in association with Arte France – La Lucarne, and with the participation of the French Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, Procirep & Angoa, Jewish Story Partners, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Anne Aghion has collected numerous prestigious awards for her work, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has earned a host of grants from such organizations as the United States Institute of Peace, the National Science Foundation, the French Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, and the Soros and Sundance Institute Documentary Funds. She has had residencies at the MacDowell Colony in the United States, the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, and others. For “Turbulence” she also received a Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship to India. She has served as a juror for La Scam's L'Oeil d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and the International Documentary Association (IDA), among others. She is an international speaker at universities and has conducted documentary workshops and master classes at film programs in countries including Haiti, India, Morocco, Lebanon, France and the United States. She serves on the board of Camargo Foundation's French association. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0FgITLEiKE Both “My Neighbor My Killer” and “Turbulence may now be streamed on the platform kinema.com.

From Wednesday, March 25, 2026. In this special episode, funded by the National Science Foundation, we're taking a break from the headlines to share the background story of comets. Today, we'll focus on the origin of comets and their basic anatomy, and in future episodes, we'll dive deep into how comets are discovered, what we can learn from them, and how they can literally and figuratively impact our world.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

Accenture Federal Services and Booz Allen Hamilton will take the lead on contracts to help the National Weather Service replace a legacy IT system and transition its weather data and resources to cloud-based technology. The two contracts, announced last week, are aimed at transferring the functions of the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) to two new tools in a move the agency says will improve availability of that data to forecasters across the nation. Among the anticipated benefits: access to the systems away from home offices and ability for forecasters to provide remote backup. As it stands, the AWIPS is an on-premises system and deployed at roughly 170 sites across the country, per a request for information the agency posted on the modernization effort last year. But that structure has drawbacks, Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service, told FedScoop via email, pointing to the fact that the current operational system is physically installed and tied to each NWS office separately, limiting employees' ability to easily work alongside decision-makers, like local emergency operational centers.The two new cloud-based systems will change that, allowing forecasters to conduct their work — including creating and distributing forecasts and warnings — “without being tied to a specific location,” Graham said. Three years after launching a dashboard to provide agencies with a governmentwide view of the federal cybersecurity workforce, the Office of Personnel Management has stopped using the tool for its own planning, a new report found. According to the Government Accountability Office, OPM and five of the six other agencies examined by the congressional watchdog are no longer using the Cyber Workforce Dashboard, which went live in April 2023. The agencies cited “limitations” with the product, “including communications with OPM, access, functionality, and use of data,” per a GAO press release. The dashboard, which came out of a working group co-chaired by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of the National Cyber Director, was created to support agencies in cyber workforce planning, helping them make data-driven decisions for current and future requirements. Overseen by the Strategic Workforce Planning and Forecasting Methods team under OPM's Workforce Policy and Innovation group, the dashboard tracked cyber workforce data for all 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies, as well as OMB, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Archives and Records Administration, according to the GAO. In conducting its audit from January 2025 to March 2026, the watchdog was told by OPM officials that the human capital agency was not using the dashboard for its own cyber workforce planning purposes. The other agencies audited by the GAO were the Small Business Administration, the National Science Foundation, the General Services Administration, and the departments of Justice, State and Treasury. The GSA is the only one that still uses the tool. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Feeling a little stressed lately? You're certainly not alone. Counterintuitively, instead of beating yourself up for not being able to calm down and eliminate stress altogether, consciously taking on more stress can actually make you perform better. It's strange but true: "When you need something done, give it to a busy person." Stress doesn't need to paralyze you or bowl you over, it's a natural energy that can be directed and used to your advantage. The problem is that our ancient brains can't keep up with modern threats. As our guest puts it: tigers of the savanna have transformed into a snarling inbox. Since avoiding stress is impossible, what if we stopped trying to "reduce stress" and instead learned to open the floodgates, harnessing our natural energy to use stress as a source of strength, focus and momentum?In this age of unprecedented technological change and and crippling career insecurity, how can we conquer fear and regain clarity and confidence in the face of uncertainty? Today we're here with Dr. Rebecca Heiss, a stress physiologist, researcher, keynote speaker, and author of the new book Springboard. Her work has been called transformative by the National Science Foundation, and after this episode, you'll understand why.In this episode, you'll learn:Why telling a stressed out person to calm down is the worst possible thing you can doWhy stress management workshops make us more stressedHow rugged individualism is fueling a stress epidemic, especially for menWhy adults desperately need more play, community, and shared challenge — and how that protects your brainWhy we're more afraid of snakes, spiders, and public speaking than the tiny daily choices that quietly steal years off our livesAnd much more...If you're feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or stuck in your own head, this conversation will help you see stress in a totally different light — not as something to escape, but as natural energy you can channel and direct to launch you to the next level of success. Find Dr. Rebecca Heiss and her work at: Website: RebeccaHeiss.comBook: SpringboardFacebook: @drrebeccaheissX: @DrRebeccaHeissInstagram: @drrebeccaheissYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO3XmakQmJX0z0TbSfr3aggLinkedIn: @rebeccaheissPlease take a moment to make sure you're subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts, and to stay up-to-date, sign up for my newsletter at AbelJames.com.You can also join Substack as a free or paid member for ad-free episodes of this show, to comment on each episode, and to hit me up in the DM's. Join at abeljames.substack.com. And if you're feeling generous, write a quick review for the Abel James Show on Apple or Spotify. You rock.This episode is brought to you by:Tonum Health – Go to Tonum.com/WILD and punch in code WILD for 10 % off your first order.MUD/WTR - Go to mudwtr.com and use code ABELJAMES to save 43% off your order with free shipping, plus a free rechargeable frother gift.

Feeling a little stressed lately? You're certainly not alone. Counterintuitively, instead of beating yourself up for not being able to calm down and eliminate stress altogether, consciously taking on more stress can actually make you perform better. It's strange but true: "When you need something done, give it to a busy person." Stress doesn't need to paralyze you or bowl you over, it's a natural energy that can be directed and used to your advantage. The problem is that our ancient brains can't keep up with modern threats. As our guest puts it: tigers of the savanna have transformed into a snarling inbox. Since avoiding stress is impossible, what if we stopped trying to "reduce stress" and instead learned to open the floodgates, harnessing our natural energy to use stress as a source of strength, focus and momentum?In this age of unprecedented technological change and and crippling career insecurity, how can we conquer fear and regain clarity and confidence in the face of uncertainty? Today we're here with Dr. Rebecca Heiss, a stress physiologist, researcher, keynote speaker, and author of the new book Springboard. Her work has been called transformative by the National Science Foundation, and after this episode, you'll understand why.In this episode, you'll learn:Why telling a stressed out person to calm down is the worst possible thing you can doWhy stress management workshops make us more stressedHow rugged individualism is fueling a stress epidemic, especially for menWhy adults desperately need more play, community, and shared challenge — and how that protects your brainWhy we're more afraid of snakes, spiders, and public speaking than the tiny daily choices that quietly steal years off our livesAnd much more...If you're feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or stuck in your own head, this conversation will help you see stress in a totally different light — not as something to escape, but as natural energy you can channel and direct to launch you to the next level of success. Find Dr. Rebecca Heiss and her work at: Website: RebeccaHeiss.comBook: SpringboardFacebook: @drrebeccaheissX: @DrRebeccaHeissInstagram: @drrebeccaheissYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO3XmakQmJX0z0TbSfr3aggLinkedIn: @rebeccaheissPlease take a moment to make sure you're subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts, and to stay up-to-date, sign up for my newsletter at AbelJames.com.You can also join Substack as a free or paid member for ad-free episodes of this show, to comment on each episode, and to hit me up in the DM's. Join at abeljames.substack.com. And if you're feeling generous, write a quick review for the Abel James Show on Apple or Spotify. You rock.This episode is brought to you by:Tonum Health – Go to Tonum.com/WILD and punch in code WILD for 10 % off your first order.MUD/WTR - Go to mudwtr.com and use code ABELJAMES to save 43% off your order with free shipping, plus a free rechargeable frother gift.

After Iran appoints a new supreme leader, what does the choice tell us about the resilience of the regime and how the war will progress? Scientific research in America has taken a battering in Donald Trump's second term. And why British choirs face a shortage of tenor voices.Guests and host:Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondentDaniella Raz, US correspondentJoel Budd, Britain social affairs editorRosie Blau, host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, oil pricesScientific research, National Science Foundation, renewable energyTenors, choirs, Oxford UniversityListen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After Iran appoints a new supreme leader, what does the choice tell us about the resilience of the regime and how the war will progress? Scientific research in America has taken a battering in Donald Trump's second term. And why British choirs face a shortage of tenor voices.Guests and host:Gregg Carlstrom, Middle East correspondentDaniella Raz, US correspondentJoel Budd, Britain social affairs editorRosie Blau, host of “The Intelligence”Topics covered: Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, oil pricesScientific research, National Science Foundation, renewable energyTenors, choirs, Oxford UniversityListen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 2769 - Vinnie Tortorich and Anna Vocino discuss trusting product certifications as well as make some fun announcements. https://vinnietortorich.com/2026/03/trusting-product-certifications-episode-2769 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS Pure Vitamin Club Pure Coffee Club NSNG® Foods VILLA CAPPELLI EAT HAPPY KITCHEN YOU CAN WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE - @FitnessConfidential Podcast Vinnie's workout videos are available to purchase! Choose from a 2-day, 4-day, or 6-day workout–or buy all three at a discount! TO PURCHASE VINNIE'S WORKOUT VIDEOS, CLICK THIS LINK: https://vinnietortorich.com/workout Trusting Product Certifications Anna was just on the Mike Rowe podcast, "The Way I Heard It". (2:00) Vinnie is excited about his guest, D-D Breaux, who is a legendary gymnastics coach. (7:00) D-D's episode has already been posted so that you can enjoy it sooner. You can listen to it here: https://sites.libsyn.com/40024/building-excellence-with-d-d-breaux-episode-2768 Vinnie wants to be back into skiing for the first time in nine years! (13:00) Anna received her Jaspr air scrubber. (22:00) Certification of products—what is that about, and is it real? (32:00) Anna explains how it works, and they discuss olive oil as an example. Compliance and scaling up manufacturing needs are important. Vinnie won't work with a company unless it is GMP- and NSF-certified. GMP is Good Manufacturing Practices. NSF is the National Science Foundation. Supplements can be suspect if they are manufactured in a facility without GMP or NSF practices. Certifications can matter and can also be abused. (48:00) Anna has a fantastic announcement: she is stepping into the shoes of the late Estelle Harris and becoming the voice of Mrs. Potato Head in Toy Story 5! (50:00) They discuss a little of the darker side of being an actor in L.A. (1:00:00) Did you miss it?: The NSNG® VIP group closed, but you can get onto the waitlist for next time by signing up at https://www.nsngvip.com/join. A New Sponsor Jaspr Air Scrubbers has a discount code, VINNIE, that gets you $300 off for a limited time. Jaspr offers a lifetime warranty. Go to Jaspr.co for more information or to purchase. (1:05:00) You can book a consultation with Vinnie to get guidance on your goals. https://vinnietortorich.com/phone-consultation-2/ More News Serena has added some of her clothing suggestions and beauty product suggestions to Vinnie's Amazon Recommended Products link. Self Care, Beauty, and Grooming Products that Actually Work! https://www.amazon.com/shop/vinnietortorich/list/3GPVU29UHHPMY?ref_=aipsflist Don't forget to check out Serena Scott Thomas on Days of Our Lives on the Peacock channel. "Dirty Keto" is available on Amazon! You can purchase or rent it here.https://amzn.to/4d9agj1 Please make sure to watch, rate, and review it! Eat Happy Italian, Anna's next cookbook, is available! You can go to https://eathappyitalian.com You can order it from Vinnie's Book Club. https://amzn.to/3ucIXm Anna's recipes are in her cookbooks, on her website, and on Substack —they will spice up your day! https://annavocino.substack.com/ PURCHASE DIRTY KETO (2024) The documentary launched in August 2024! Order it TODAY! This is Vinnie's fourth documentary in just over five years. Visit my new Documentaries HQ to find my films everywhere: https://vinnietortorich.com/documentaries Then, please share my fact-based, health-focused documentary series with your friends and family. Additionally, the more views it receives, the better it ranks, so please watch it again with a new friend! REVIEWS: Please submit your REVIEW after you watch my films. Your positive REVIEW does matter! PURCHASE BEYOND IMPOSSIBLE (2022) Visit my new Documentaries HQ to find my films everywhere: https://vinnietortorich.com/documentaries FAT: A DOCUMENTARY 2 (2021) Visit my new Documentaries HQ to find my films everywhere: https://vinnietortorich.com/documentaries FAT: A DOCUMENTARY (2019) Visit my new Documentaries HQ to find my films everywhere: https://vinnietortorich.com/documentaries