Podcasts about Old English

In this episode of The Wisdom Of … Show, Simon Bowen speaks with Jennifer Hill, CEO and co-founder of OptiMatch, co-founder of MetaBizics LLC, founder of The Jen Hill Tribe, and one of the most interesting thinkers on the question of self-leadership as the foundation for business leadership. Jennifer sold her first company in 2018, has spoken to over 100,000 people from a single stage, hosts the podcast Regarding Consciousness with guests including Bruce Lipton and Gregg Braden, and is building an alignment algorithm at OptiMatch that makes the traditionally unmeasurable work of human connection systematic.Jennifer and Simon build a live visual model in the episode - the CEO of Your Own Life Framework, a three-pillar architecture of Clarity, Courage, and Connection built on the foundation of a regulated nervous system.Episode breakdown00:00 Welcome to The Wisdom Of … Show and introduction of Jennifer Hill03:00 The 2018 exit: what the success moment actually felt like, and what it taught her about building07:30 The lesson about key relationships during acquisition: what she'd do differently12:00 "Who you are as a leader shapes everything you build": the premise behind all of Jennifer's work16:00 Clarity, Courage, Connection: the three pillars of the CEO of Your Own Life philosophy21:30 Creating from a regulated nervous system: what it actually means to build from groundedness27:00 Speaking to 100,000 people from a single stage: what scale teaches you about human transformation31:30 LIVE MODEL BUILD: The CEO of Your Own Life Framework42:00 OptiMatch: building a proprietary alignment algorithm and why human connection can be made systematic47:30 The mismatch of coherence: how misaligned relationships drain energy that could go toward the work51:00 Motivation matching: what OptiMatch measures and why it changes how teams are built54:00 Closing wisdom: "You already have a miraculous life. You've just forgotten how to look for it."56:00 The busyness etymology: what the Old English root reveals about how most leaders are actually operating58:30 The miracle practice: writing down moments of awe, synchronicity, wonder, and miracles every dayAbout Jennifer HillJennifer Hill is a keynote speaker, executive coach, community builder, and technology founder whose work centres on a single premise - who you are as a leader shapes everything you build. In 2018, she sold her first company to a subsidiary of Marcum LLP. Over the past decade she has spoken on hundreds of stages worldwide, including to audiences of over 100,000 people in India. She hosts Regarding Consciousness, a podcast featuring thinkers including Bruce Lipton and Gregg Braden, and founded The Jen Hill Tribe, a global community of entrepreneurs, leaders, creatives, and philanthropists.She is currently co-founding OptiMatch, a platform powered by a proprietary algorithm designed to systematically improve alignment in businesses and communities, supporting stronger relationships, healthier teams, and greater psychological safety. She is a member of Evolutionary Leaders and has helped build two schools.Connect with Jennifer Hill:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferkhill/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenhillspeaker/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GetYourselftheJobWebsite: https://jenniferkhill.com/About Simon BowenSimon has spent over two decades working with influential leaders across complex industries. His focus is on elevating thinking in organisations, recognising that success is directly proportional to the quality of thinking and ideas within a business. Simon leads the renaissance of thinking through his work with global leaders and organisations.Connect with Simon:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonbowen-mm/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialsimonbowen/Website: https://thesimonbowen.com/Get Simon Bowen's personal newsletter for leaders, thinkers, and entrepreneurs:Sign up now: https://thesimonbowen.com/newsletterJoin Simon's Masterclass: Apply The Models Method in your own organisation.Make your thinking visible, make your value undeniable.Watch it now: https://thesimonbowen.com/masterclass

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 13, 2026 is: hale • HAIL • adjective Someone described as hale is in good and often exceptional health. Hale is commonly used in the phrase "hale and hearty." // Their mother remains hale and hearty in her old age. See the entry > Examples: "Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell star [in the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes] as two vivacious all-American showgirls whose friendship is as fast as their attitudes to men are poles apart. Whereas Monroe's Lorelei Lee prizes wealth and devotion in a suitor, Russell's Dorothy Shaw is more inclined towards the hale and hunky ..." — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph (United Kingdom), 2 May 2026 Did you know? English has two hale homographs: the adjective that is frequently paired with hearty to describe those healthy and strong, and the somewhat uncommon verb that has to do with literal or figurative hauling or pulling. (One can hale a boat onto shore, or hale a person into a courtroom with the aid of legal ramifications for resistance.) The verb comes from the Middle English halen (also the root of our word haul), but the adjective has a bifurcated origin, with two Middle English terms identified as sources: hale and hail. Both of those come from words meaning "healthy," the former from the Old English hāl, and the latter from the Old Norse heill. The Middle English hail is also the source of the three modern English words spelled as hail, the verb, interjection, and noun that have to do with greeting.

Come explore the Galloway Hoard with me, a Viking era treasure hoard found buried beneath a field in Galloway, Scotland back in 2014. Silver Viking arm bands, a rock crystal jar dating back to ancient Rome, a silver vessel from 4,000 miles away in present day Iran - these treasures hidden around the year 900 are incredible. But, upon closer inspection, they raise more questions than answers. Is this actually Viking treasure? Arm bands are very Viking. But then why do they have inscriptions on them written in Anglo-Saxon runes, a form of Old English? Why is there a Christian cross? Reference to a Bishop? And what does the mysterious inscription "DIS IS IIGNA F" mean? We'll uncover all of this and more to reveal a tumultuous time in an ever changing world. Support the show! Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)Buy some merchBuy Me a CoffeeVenmo @Shea-LaFountaineSources:National Museums Scotland "Discover the Galloway Hoard"Smithsonian Magazine "A Proposed Translation Hints at the Origins of the Mysterious Galloway Hoard"NorthLink Ferries "The Galloway Hoard - an interview with Martin Goldberg"Wikipedia "Galloway Hoard"Shoot me a message! Support the show

They're speaking African American English, according to linguist Lisa Green at the University of Massachusetts Amherst - in other words, "it's not mainstream English with mistakes." Lisa grew up speaking AAE in Louisiana, and since then, her ground-breaking research has found that AAE is based on a system of consistent grammatical rules, pronunciations and definitions. Some call it a dialect, which evolved from the African languages that slaves spoke blended with plantation English; in fact, when someone says, "she aks" instead of "she asks," they might be echoing Old English from centuries ago. Lisa argues that schools need to acknowledge and respect black children's African American English, even while they teach them Standard American English that they need to succeed in broader society.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 5, 2026 is: interloper • in-ter-LOH-per • noun An interloper is a person who intrudes in a place or sphere of activity; they are not wanted or welcome by the other people present. // Summer residents were regarded as interlopers who lacked a commitment to the town's welfare. See the entry > Examples: "... my garden is wildlife friendly, sometimes too friendly. By not being overly concerned about interlopers, it welcomes birds and bugs now, including beneficial insects. They help keep things in balance. Not so welcome are rabbits, but they still find their way in." — David Hobson, The Waterloo (Ontario) Region Record, 16 Apr. 2026 Did you know? If you keep chickens, a coyote loping around in the vicinity of your coop is not welcome. You'd be justified, both semantically and etymologically, in calling such a coyote an interloper. The -loper part of interloper shares an ancestor with the Old English verb hlēapan, meaning "to leap," and the Dutch verb lopen, meaning "to run." (The verb lope does too.) The prefix inter- means "between" or "among," so an interloper is essentially one that leaps in among others (for example, a flock of hens) without an invitation to do so. Interloper made itself at home among English speakers in the late 1500s; the verb interlope, which arrived close in tow in the early 1600s, is likely a back-formation.

 How did a small band of Norman soldiers in 1170 begin 800 years of English control over Ireland?  It started as a deal between rival Irish kings. It ended in plantation, dispossession, and a divided island.  This is the story of how a short-term alliance became a centuries-long occupation, and why it still shapes politics in Ireland today.  Anglo-Normans enter Ireland: Diarmait seeks Strongbow's help. Henry II claims authority; Dublin-centred foothold established. The Pale forms; Normans adopt Irish ways, Old English. Henry VIII breaks with Rome; declares himself King of Ireland. Surrender and regrant changes land and inheritance rules. Elizabeth I's conquest; Nine Years' War threatens English control. Battle of Kinsale defeat; O'Neill's submission follows. Flight of the Earls ends Gaelic political power. Plantation of Ulster seeds division leading to later partition. Cromwell's massacres; “To Hell or to Connacht” resettlement. Full interactive transcript, subtitles and key vocabulary available on the website: https://www.leonardoenglish.com/podcasts/conquest-of-ireland ---You might like:

fWotD Episode 3317: Æthelred the Unready Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia's finest articles.The featured article for Thursday, 4 June 2026, is Æthelred the Unready.Æthelred II (c. 968 – 23 April 1016), known as Æthelred the Unready, was King of the English from March 978 to December 1013 and again from February 1014 until his death. The epithet "Unready" is a pun on his name in Old English, Æðel (noble) and ræd (counsel). He was the son of King Edgar (reigned 959–975) and Queen Ælfthryth.Æthelred was born between 966 and 969, and very little is known of his early life. He came to the throne after the assassination by unknown perpetrators of his older half-brother, King Edward the Martyr (reigned 975–978). The crime deeply shocked people, but Æthelred was too young to be suspected of involvement. Shortly after his accession, Viking attacks resumed after a generation of peace. Minor raids in the 980s escalated to large attacks from the 990s. As the English were rarely victorious in battle, the king and his advisers resorted to giving the Vikings tribute to leave England. In 1002 Æthelred ordered the St Brice's Day massacre of Danes, which is seen by historians as a sign of his increasing paranoia, and this culminated by 1009 in the rise of Eadric Streona to become the most powerful of Æthelred's advisers. Increasingly destructive raids by Viking armies wore down English resistance, and in December 1013 King Swein Forkbeard of Denmark conquered England. Æthelred fled to Normandy, but when Swein died in February 1014 he returned to the throne and drove out Swein's son Cnut. In early 1015 civil war broke out when Eadric Streona murdered close allies of Æthelred's oldest surviving son, Edmund Ironside. Cnut returned soon afterwards and Edmund and Æthelred tried to unite against him, but suspicion between father and son hampered them, as did Eadric's treachery and Æthelred's poor health. Æthelred died in April 1016 and Edmund carried on the war until he died in December and Cnut became the king of all England.Æthelred was only nine to twelve years old when he became king, and during his minority the country was governed by his father's leading advisers, including his mother. When he came of age in the mid-980s, he rejected these advisers and adopted new ones, who persuaded him to grant them property at the expense of the church. By the early 990s he had come to regret the course he had followed and to see the Viking raids as God's punishment for his persecution of the church. The 990s and early 1000s formed the most successful period of his reign, when his advisers were of high calibre and there were major cultural achievements in Latin and Old English literature. Historians writing after the Norman Conquest saw him as a bad king until the late twentieth century, when a new generation reassessed his record and argued that although his reign ended catastrophically, there were significant achievements in the 990s and early 1000s.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:14 UTC on Thursday, 4 June 2026.For the full current version of the article, see Æthelred the Unready on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Joey.

Discover the true meaning of health and why life genuinely begins after 40. In this powerful conversation, chiropractor, storyteller and third‑generation healer Dr Kyle Hulsebus unpacks the ancient origins of the word health, the philosophy behind chiropractic care, and why so many people transform their wellbeing in their 40s and beyond.Dr Kyle shares his “40 Over 40” framework — 40 simple, practical, whole‑being habits designed to help you reconnect with purpose, vitality and wholeness. From breathing and movement to curiosity, culture, laughter and self‑reflection, this episode is a masterclass in living well.“Health literally means a state of wholeness in which all the organs of the body function together at 100%.”“Life really does begin at 40. Everything leading up to that is just practice.”In this episode: • The ancient Old English and Latin roots of the word health • Why health is about wholeness, not disease• The power of storytelling in healing• Why most people seek true wellness between ages 40–55• The philosophy behind the “40 Over 40” program• Outlier habits that transform wellbeing (dance, people‑watching, spontaneous laughter, and more)Perfect for anyone wanting to feel whole, grounded and empowered in their health journey — especially if you're 40+.

Join The Man of the West for a pair of Sindarin words from Shelob's Lair, and three Old English words from the open horse-lands of Rohan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Luke Mills joins me to talk about his article "His Dark Materials," as well as C.S. Lewis' nightmare imagery across his fiction. Among other things, we discuss: [2:08] – Welcome & guest introduction: Dr. Luke Mills, Associate Professor of English at Wingate University [2:57] – Dr. Mills's article: "His Dark Materials: C.S. Lewis's Nightmares as Inspiration" [4:10] – What drew Mills to the topic: Lewis's dreams of lions and the writing of Narnia [5:09] – Lewis's diary (All My Road Before Me) and the wolf-and-sheep nightmare (April 27, 1923) [6:13] – Reading of the wolf-and-sheep nightmare [7:07] – Lewis as an author of both heavenly beauty and horror [7:41] – The Unman in Perelandra and Lewis's vivid portrayal of evil [8:39] – How common were nightmares for Lewis? Insects, specters, and a lifelong pattern [10:29] – Lewis near death: vivid dreams and beautiful visions [11:38] – Etymology of "dream" and "nightmare" (Old English roots) [12:07] – Did Lewis think his dreams were spiritually significant? [12:46] – The Dark Tower and J.W. Dunne's Experiment with Time: precognitive dreams [15:21] – Lewis, Tolkien, and their shared interest in time and dreams [16:29] – Lewis's belief in precognitive dreams and his complicated relationship with Dunne's theories [17:22] – The Dark Tower: the chronoscope and alternate timelines [20:01] – Dreams as portals to other realities; Lewis's strong belief in the supernatural [22:07] – Lewis's imaginative receptivity; running toward and away from something [24:09] – Preface to Paradise Lost, letting the "leash slip," and Lewis's portrayal of evil [26:13] – Other nightmare imagery in Lewis: The Last Battle, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength [27:31] – Ransom's strange dream in Perelandra; the Unman as absurdist horror [30:17] – Lewis and the word "un-man": dreams about his dead father and Perelandra's antagonist [32:24] – Lewis's horror of corpses; childhood trauma of seeing his mother's body [34:10] – Zombie squirrels and a digression to Grove City College [37:11] – Are Lewis's nightmares demonic? Dreams of lions before Narnia [38:24] – Lewis, modernism, surrealism, and the via negativa [40:21] – Till We Have Faces: modernist technique and divinely sent nightmares [43:03] – Aslan as terrifying: the scratch in The Horse and His Boy [46:09] – Mark in the Objective Room at N.I.C.E.: nightmarish images turning him toward the good [47:12] – Closing thoughts; terror and the uncanny as paths toward the good [50:07] – Where to follow Dr. Mills; current research on Lewis's library at UNC (including Lewis's marginalia) As always, if you want to get in touch, email me at inklingsvarietyhour@gmail.com Rate the show if you like it and haven't rated it yet.

It's time to uncork the bottle of mythology and folklore to talk about a true English original - Imps!Beginning their lives as horticultural metaphors, the Anglo Saxon 'ympe' appears in all sorts of moralizing, overtly Christian texts, including those written by Alfred the Great - only by the 17th century if you had an imp of your own you could be hanged for the crime.How did this all come about?Well, it's a combination of several factors, including Bronze Age beliefs about Middle Eastern supernatural entities that haunted toilets, bed chambers, and windowsills, the stinking bogs and fens of Ireland and the British Isles, and Medieval explanations for the hierarchies of demons following Lucifer's rebellion against God.We track the imp's evolution from House Spirits made of dough, fed with milk and flour, through to the Witch Hunts of the English Republic, and the 19th century 'Imp Revival' as prompted by Romantic and Gothic literature, fairy stories, and Victorian satire.With a disgraceful number of puns (even more than last month!) and some really weird beliefs, as well as Eleanor reading some Old English, they may be tiny but we've gone in on Imps in a big way. Just don't tell the Witch Hunter General, who for some reason thinks we're keeping our mischievous familiars stashed in our armpits...We also hope you increasingly pleased by our new Bestiary episode art, as drawn by our good friend Tom Peteuil of Creature Castle - check out brand new Imp, Mermaid and Leprechaun merch here and visit the Creature Castle shop for prints and other wonderful things here.Speak to you again on Thursday for this week's Lang Fairy Tale, Graciosa and Percinet, and some no doubt spirited chat about it, before Saturday's Three Ravens Live episode, packed with Sussex folklore, as recorded at Ditchling Bookshop on 16th May!Three Ravens is an English Myth and Folklore podcast hosted by award-winning writers Martin Vaux and Eleanor Conlon.Released on Mondays, each weekly episode focuses on one of England's 39 historic counties, exploring the history, folklore and traditions of the area, from ghosts and mermaids to mythical monsters, half-forgotten heroes, bloody legends, and much, much more. Then, and most importantly, we take turns to tell a new version of an ancient story from that county - all before discussing what that tale might mean, where it might have come from, and the truths it reveals about England's hidden past...Bonus Episodes are released on Thursdays plus Local Legends episodes on Saturdays - interviews with acclaimed authors, folklorists, podcasters and historians with unique perspectives on that week's county.With a range of exclusive content on Patreon, too, including audio ghost tours, the Three Ravens Newsletter, and monthly Three Ravens Film Club episodes about folk horror films from across the decades, why not join us around the campfire and listen in?REGISTER FOR THE TALES OF SOUTHERN ENGLAND TOURVisit our website Join our Patreon Social media channels and sponsors Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gary has a chat with artist Julie Nicholson about her show, Nostalgia, opening May 21st at CBD Gallery in Sydney. Julie has recently exhibited with CBD Gallery at the Aotearoa Art Fair (NZ), and her work has been widely recognised in national awards such as the Paddington Art Prizre and the Muswellbrook, and held in private collections in Australia and overseas. She co-hosts the popular arts podcast, Art Wank.Her duo solo exhibition, Nostalgia, stems from a sense of homesickness after moving from the UK to Australia at the age of 23. A deep sense of nostalgia has shaped her life, and only recently did she discover that nostalgia was once considered a disease. The works in this exhibition sit within that tension, posing the question of whether nostalgia is something that nurtures us, or something that holds us back.Many of the canvases in the exhibition are split across multiple panels, reflecting the fractured experience of trying to locate familiarity within a foreign landscape. Moments of recognition such as sketching in Berrima in the Southern Highlands, where the landscape can feel momentarily like home are interrupted by distinctly Australian elements, like a palm tree or native plant, which jolt her back into the awareness of distance and displacement.Julie has also titled many of the works using Old English words for landscape elements—such as weald, meaning forest. This reflects her interest in etymology and the evolution of language over time. Just as words shift, fall out of use, and take on new meanings, her understanding of the Australian landscape has also changed. Language, like memory, holds a connection to the past while continually adapting to the present, mirroring her experience of navigating place, identity, and belonging. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good afternoon, I'm _____ with today's episode of EZ News. Tai-Ex opening The Tai-Ex opened down 76-points this morning from Friday's close, at 41,095 on turnover of 9.8-billion N-T. The market lost 1.39-per cent on Friday after falling back close to the 41,000 point mark, as U-S President Donald Trump wrapped up his summit in Beijing with China's Xi Jinping. FM in Geneva for WHA sidelines events Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung will be attending events organized by the government and N-G-O's in Geneva this week to coincide with the upcoming World Health Assembly. The trip means that Lin is Taiwan's first top diplomat to have visited the Swiss city during the annual meeting of the global health body. Lin says he has already attended two events there with Health Minister Shih Chung-liang. Taking to Facebook, the foreign minister said he attended an annual symposium organized by the European Federation of Taiwan Health Alliance and a banquet (宴會) hosted by the health ministers and permanent representatives of allied nations in Geneva. Taiwan's representative office in Geneva, says Lin and Shih also held a press event on Sunday to release a government-produced promotional video calling for Taiwan's inclusion in the W-H-A. Japan variety goods chain 3coins to open 1st shop in Taiwan in August And, Japanese discount variety goods chain, 3 coins, is slated to open its first outlet here in Taiwan in August. The company says its first store will open in an Eslite Spectrum outlet located on Wuchang Street in Taipei's Ximending business district. 3coins' has a pricing strategy in Japan of charging only 300 Japanese yen, or about 60 N-T for most of the products it displays The retailer provides a wide range of products, from kitchenware to cosmetics and beauty goods, and seasonal (季節性的) merchandise. Competing Discount Japanese variety chain, Daiso, opened its first shop in Taiwan in the early 2000s. Ukraine conducts large-scale drone strikes on Russia, killing 4 and wounding a dozen others Ukraine conducts large-scale drone strikes on Russia, killing 4 and wounding a dozen others. AP correspondent Julie Walker reports Canada Confirms Hantavirus in One from Cruise Canada's national health agency confirms that one of four Canadians returning from a cruise ship with a hantavirus outbreak has tested positive. The Public Health Agency of Canada announced the positive test Sunday, following initial reports from the public health officer for the province of British Columbia. The individual, part of a couple in their 70s from the Yukon, is hospitalized in Victoria. The other three travelers are also in isolation. The outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius has resulted in three deaths and 10 confirmed cases. The agency states the risk to the general Canadian population remains (保持) low and is working with the World Health Organization on the investigation. Oldest Surviving English Poem Discovered Researchers in Dublin have uncovered the oldest surviving English poem in a Roman library. The poem, "Caedmon's Hymn," was composed in Old English by a Northumbrian worker in the seventh century. It appears within the Latin text "Ecclesiastical (教會的) History of the English People" by the monk known as the Venerable Bede. The discovery highlights the diffusion of the English language centuries earlier than previously believed. The manuscript had a complex history, traveling across Europe and the Atlantic before being found in Rome's public library. The library's digitization (數位化) efforts may lead to more discoveries. That was the I.C.R.T. EZ News, I'm _____. －－－－以下為 SoundOn 動態廣告－－－－ 找工作不再焦慮！ 參加YS鋼鐵人職場體驗計畫，讓你在職場脫穎而出！ 專為18-29歲青年打造的免費職涯資源： 1.職涯導師陪伴精準求職 2.60小時實戰工作坊 3.知名企業3-5天職場體驗 6/14前報名迎戰三大職場試煉，煉就鋼鐵通才：https://sofm.pse.is/93x2eu -- 左岸咖啡館乘載巴黎塞納河左岸的人文底蘊，還有每個人對法式生活的美好嚮往。 走進左岸咖啡館，點一杯深焙濃郁的曼特寧風味咖啡，用極致香醇喚醒法式浪漫的靈魂… 享受一個人的獨白時光☕ 我在左岸咖啡館

#705 It comes from the Old English word, punian, which means, to beat, crush or pulverize.

If you know how the sound "f" worked in Old English, it suddenly isn't mysterious why the "f" in "leaf" turns into a "v" in the plural form "leaves."

Support us on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---Just over one thousand years ago, an unknown scribe committed to vellum a fantastical tale of swordsmen and sea monsters, set not in contemporary Anglo-Saxon England, but instead in the distant swamps of Denmark, hundreds of years in the past and hundreds of miles away. In doing so, they would open a portal to one of the most mysterious and murky periods of European history. In this episode of Gladio Free Europe, Liam and Russian Sam return to the mighty mead-halls of the Migration Era for a discussion of Beowulf, the greatest work of Old English and one of the most fascinating documents of the early medieval world.The poem is effectively without parallel. It is a full-length heroic narrative written in Old English, whose eponymous protagonist is attested nowhere else. Though other works in this genre had been created, its sole survival and rediscovery made it the national epic of the English people, often compared to Homer's Iliad in both theme and content. As it was popularized in the early 19th century, the poem became useful to British, German, and even Danish nationlists who sought to use their ancient and medieval heritage to justify present-day political ambitions. But Beowulf does not belong to any existing society. Instead, it is an early medieval document of an idealized antiquity, possibly analogous to the role of King Arthur's Camelot to later medieval Englishmen. Beowulf provides a unique view into the Anglo-Saxon imaginary, illustrating how a deeply Christian population reckoned with their pagan past, and how the insular descendants of North Sea migrants understood their relationship to an ancestral home. But beyond its anthropological value, Beowulf is a mature reflection on ephemerality and loss. The setting, Heorot, is the most glorious of mead-halls, yet the audience knows from the start that it shall one day burn. Beowulf and King Hrothgar are the best of men, yet even their virtues cannot prevent the ruin caused by mankind's own doomed nature. The concept of wyrd, fate, features prominently in the poem. Despite not having a direct influence on the culture of high medieval and early modern England, Beowulf has profoundly shaped contemporary English literature. Its heroic narrative, prefiguring chivalric romance and King Arthur stories by several centuries, would inspire the career of J.R.R. Tolkien and shape the contemporary understanding of early medieval Northern Europe. Comparative studies with Norse and German literary works help us understand more fully the cold, courageous, and sometimes cruel world of early Germanic-speaking peoples. Most importantly, it is one of the most engaging and entertaining pieces of early fiction. Everybody, whether a proud Sea-Geat or a descendant of Cain, ought to read Beowulf.

Episode: 1566 Glottochronology: In which language decays like carbon-14.  Today, a new word for you: glottochronology.

Join The Man of the West as this week's linguistic deep dive includes a look at Estel, and a reminder of the Old English inspiration behind the beginning of the legendarium. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Sparks joins the show to explore the rich intersection between fantasy storytelling and modern gaming, offering insights drawn from his work as a fantasy author, comedy writer, and lifelong gamer. He shares how immersive game worlds—especially sprawling RPGs like Elder Scrolls Online—have influenced his approach to worldbuilding in the New Rock series, where layered histories and interactive-style environments bring his settings to life. Sparks explains how gaming has reshaped audience expectations, pushing writers to create worlds that feel explorable, dynamic, and alive.The conversation dives into the roots of fantasy itself, tracing inspiration back to Old English hero epics and mythological traditions that continue to shape creature design and narrative tone today. Sparks discusses how these ancient archetypes found modern expression in works like The Lord of the Rings, and how he adapts those influences into fresh, engaging creations. By blending the familiar with the unexpected, he builds creatures and cultures that resonate with readers while still offering something new.A major focus of the episode is character development, particularly the balance between relatability and humor. Sparks emphasizes the importance of writing characters who feel human—even in fantastical settings—and how comedy can make them more accessible. He explains how witty dialogue and grounded reactions help readers connect emotionally, even when the story involves dragons, magic, or epic quests.The discussion also highlights Sparks' approach to the classic Hero's Journey, showing how he uses its structure as a foundation while still allowing room for subversion and humor. Rather than treating the framework as rigid, he views it as a guide that can be adapted to suit modern audiences. This flexibility enables him to maintain narrative momentum while surprising readers along the way.Sparks reflects on his journey as an author, offering encouragement to aspiring writers who may feel intimidated by the competitive publishing landscape. He speaks candidly about the challenges of breaking in and the importance of persistence, creativity, and finding one's unique voice. His story reinforces the idea that new authors still have a place—and a chance to succeed—if they remain committed to their craft.Wrapping up, the episode paints a compelling picture of how fantasy and gaming continue to influence each other in meaningful ways. From worldbuilding and character design to narrative structure and humor, Sparks demonstrates that the overlap between these mediums creates exciting opportunities for storytellers. Whether you're a writer, gamer, or fan of fantasy, this conversation offers inspiration and practical insight into crafting engaging, imaginative worlds.

1180. Why does "Ye Olde Shoppe" look old-fashioned? This week, we look at the vanished letters of English — thorn, eth, and yogh — and at why English has so many words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, such as "compact" (an agreement) and "compact" (to press together). The homographs segment was written by Samantha Enslen who runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at dragonflyeditorial.com.The Old English segment was written by Karen Lunde who writes the newsletter I'll Go First. Find her on igofirst.org.

If you work in tech support, you might use snarky slang for problems caused by computer users themselves. There's the acronym PEBCAK, for example, which stands for Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard. And: a lush poem about the sea inspired by kennings, those riddle-like compound terms from Old English. Plus, more vocabulary from RV enthusiasts: If you drive a motor home, what does it mean to be chasing 70? Also: ID10T problem, abasicky and sisper shame, how to pronounce antenna, Billy Blue Blazes, a letter-swapping brain teaser, the origin of if you catch my drift, word-peckers, miigwech, to slag someone, and took off like a ruptured duck. Hear hundreds of free episodes and learn more on the A Way with Words website: https://waywordradio.org. Be a part of the show: call or text 1 (877) 929-9673 toll-free in the United States and Canada; elsewhere in the world, call or text +1 619 800 4443. Send voice notes or messages via WhatsApp 16198004443. Email words@waywordradio.org. Copyright Wayword, Inc., a 501(c)(3) corporation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this selection... the aim has been to bring within moderate compass a collection of these songs of the people which should fairly represent the range, the descriptive felicity, the dramatic power, and the genuine poetic feeling of a body of verse which is still, it is to be feared, unfamiliar to a large number of those to whom it would bring refreshment and delight. (Summary from introduction)Genre(s): PoetryLanguage: EnglishKeyword(s): English (121), LibiVox (35), Ballads (16), Scottish (14)

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 16, 2026 is: brazen • BRAY-zun • adjective Brazen describes someone who is acting, or something that is done, in a very open and shocking way without shame or embarrassment. // The opposition party's campaign has not been shy in assailing the brazen corruption of the incumbent for funneling public funds into private coffers. See the entry > Examples: “There are no coyotes on Block Island. However, they have a presence in all of Rhode Island's other communities. ... This all makes sense, because Rhode Island, for the most part, is a heavily wooded area. Furthermore, rabbits, berries, mice and voles are in plentiful supply; add to this a burgeoning population, eventually food may become an issue. This is where the clever coyote is perhaps becoming more brazen and bold while hunting for food in certain neighborhoods.” — J. V. Houlihan, The Block Island (Rhode Island) Times, 30 Jan. 2026 Did you know? The oldest meaning of brazen, which traces back to the Old English word for “brass,” bræs, is a literal one: “made of brass” (you might on occasion encounter “brazen cups” or “brazen doors” in something you're reading). Over the centuries, brazen picked up a number of figurative senses stemming from the physical properties of brass, from its strength to its sound to its color, as when poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of “The glory that the wood receives, / At sunset, in its brazen leaves.” But it's the hardness of brass that led eventually to the now common “shameless” meaning of brazen. Consider this passage written by the minister Thomas Doolittle in the late 1600s: “... though thinkest it no shame, or if thou dost, thou has a face of brass ... and blushest not ...” A face of brass, or a “brazen face” (a phrase recorded in writing as early as the late 1500s) is one that is more or less immobile, betraying no sign of shame of wrongdoing. Today, brazen is used not just for people who are openly shameless or disrespectful, but for openly shameless or disrespectful behavior, as in “a brazen disregard for the rules.”

Well, we are going to learn some important truth concerning Israel tonight, and we're going to see that Israel is also going to be called Yaakov or Jacob. And there's so much false teaching about that word or name, Yaakov or Jacob, it does not mean deceiver or cheater, or in the Old English, a sir planter. None of that is biblically accurate. https://get.theapp.co/yjjqTo donate please visit us at:https://loveisrael.org/donate/Checks may be sent to:LoveIsrael.org

Stop Longing For What Once Enslaved You And Start Rejoicing In Where God Is Taking You, Don't Look Back!The Bible is a Book that moves forward, not backwards. It was first written in Aramaic, then Hebrew, then in Greek and put into Old Syriac, Old Latin, Old German and finally in Old English. God pulls us forward into the light, Satan lurks in the shadows behind us, looking back puts us in the ring with the Devil. Staying there too long and we become bruised and bloodied in the battle. Today my message is Don't Look Back, and it is a call to putting our eyes on Jesus Christ as He moves us forward here in these last days.“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14 (KJB)

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 27, 2026 is: dross • DRAHSS • noun Something referred to as "dross" is of low value or quality. Dross may also be used as a technical term to refer to unwanted material that is removed from a mineral to make it better. // He's a skilled editor who has a talent for turning literary dross into gold. See the entry > Examples: "Hollywood optimists argue that AI's greatest weakness will be originality. After all, viewers already complain of being deluged with formulaic, low-budget dross churned out by streaming platforms because an algorithm deems it popular." — Tom Leonard, The Scottish Daily Mail, 23 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Dross has been a part of the English language since Anglo-Saxon times. It comes from the Old English word drōs, meaning "dregs," those solid materials that fall to the bottom of a container full of a liquid such as coffee or wine. While dross today is used to refer to anything of low value or quality, its earliest use is technical: dross is a metallurgy term referring to solid scum that forms on the surface of a metal when it is molten or melting—remove the dross to improve the metal. The metallurgical sense of the word is often hinted at in its general use, with dross set in contrast to gold, as when 19th century British poet Christina Rossetti wrote "Besides, those days were golden days, / Whilst these are days of dross."

Each page of Ancient Spells and Incantations holds verses adapted from text unearthed through extensive research—grimoires, letters, and trial transcripts from across the ages and around the world. Many of these were tucked away in university libraries not easily accessible even to one actively in search of them. Enid Baxter Ryce painstakingly researched this collection, finding fragments from across the centuries.Translating some from Latin and Old English herself, Enid has made the spells accessible to today's witches. What was once whispered or chanted, spiraling in cursive, or carved in stone, still echoes like a song. The words that survived connect us to that ancient magic, and we can feel the truth and power.As we marvel at these ancient magical words, we think of our ancestors. Thanks to them, scraps of papyrus, shards of pottery, secret books, and hissed recipes can, hundreds of years later, still show themselves to those who seek them.Find the book and Enid:Website: https://enidryce.com/Social Media: @enidryce on social mediaShops: https://enidryce.com/store-1Pre-Order Ancient Spells and Incantations: https://bookshop.org/p/books/ancient-spells-and-incantations-echoes-of-magic-through-the-ages-and-across-cultures-enid-baxter-ryce/04275e35fceb231a or anywhere books are sold!Enid Baxter Ryce is a writer, artist, and filmmaker who has exhibited at museums internationally, including the National Gallery of Art, the Getty, and the Arnolfini. A descendant of three Salem witches, she comes from a long family history of natural magic practice. Enid has an MFA in visual arts and studied at Cooper Union, Yale University, and Claremont Graduate University. She won the Elizabeth Kray Prize from the Society for American Poets when she graduated from Cooper Union. Enid is currently working on the Getty Foundation Art x Science Initiative project “From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments,” a forward-looking ethnobotanical study undertaken as the basis of a forthcoming exhibition and an accompanying publication at Armory Center for the Arts. She is the community engagement director and a curator for the Philip Glass Center for Art, Science, and the Environment. Her latest film, War and the Weather, featuring the music of Philip Glass, premiered at the National Gallery of Art Theater in Washington, DC. Enid's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, ArtReview, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications.

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.” —D. H. LawrenceThe sky is a flawless blue above the high mountain desert of Northern New Mexico. Though the air is thick with dust and pollen, transitional winds sharpen the senses and sweep away winter's accumulations. White blossoms rise from the upturned branches of the apricot tree while the ground beneath them cracks with thirst.Strange, precarious, hopeful, persistent—spring is arriving like this.The footnote beneath every casual conversation about the weather is the acknowledgment that winter never truly came. There was no white hush of falling snow, no soft crunch of boots on morning trails. Instead, we drifted mildly between seasons. And now, as one season seems to step over the stalled breath of another, some disturbed, animal part of us still seems to be waiting for what should have been.Meanwhile, my son runs into the kitchen sobbing. He has found his black betta fish floating belly-up among artificial sea grass and smooth glass pebbles. He holds our hands and dares to look again at the body of the fish that drifts motionless with its long, obsidian streamers. He asks us unanswerable questions. Inside this clear bowl with its fabricated landscape is a miniature initiation with a force more surprising and less negotiable than anything he has known.So, we speak softly about the kingdom of the living, and how every living thing will one day cease to be as it was, about energy, and spirit, and how time moves all things.The earth tilts, and so must we. Even in grief, the world continues making its arrangements, asking us to gather ourselves and show up for its manifold losses and resurrections.For one example, house finches are nesting in the transoms above my downtown office, their tangled warbling made of brief, insistent notes, repeated and rearranged over and over again. Their lives are delicate, I know, but their song carries no hint of brevity or mourning.Equinox offers a momentary balance in the forward thrust of light. It reminds us how we, too, can find our way to equilibrium, and thereby resource the heart as it learns to bear its own weather. Framed by all manner of human suffering, current and perennial, simple acts of care can become green shoots rising up through hardened soil. A hand held, a stranger respected, a woman rested—these are all defenses against despair.“Care”—from the Old English caru, cearu—once referred to the burdens that bend the heart: “sorrow,” “anxiety,” “concern,” “grief.” In this sense, the impulse to nurture began as a name for the wound itself. Before it meant to tend or guard, to care meant to ache, to remain near the pain.True care does not hover above suffering, nor does it rescue; it simply shows up with a willing heart and persists. What appears small is not, therefore, insignificant. The heart hears the finch's song and remains willing to listen, not because it is promised anything, not because the world is kind or comforting, but because it still knows how, and that counts for something. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shawnparell.substack.com/subscribe

A strange brew that's hard to resist, even for a modern day microbe. In the war on devilish microbes, our weapons are starting to fail us. The antibiotics we once wielded like miraculous flaming swords seem more like lukewarm butter knives. But in this episode, originally released in 2015, we follow an odd couple, of a sort, to a storied land of elves and dragons. There, they uncover a 1,000-year-old secret that makes us reconsider our most basic assumptions about human progress and wonder: what if the only way forward is backward? Special thanks to Steve Diggle, Professor Roberta Frank, Alexandra Reider and Justin Park (our Old English readers), Gene Murrow from Gotham Early Music Scene, Marcia Young for her performance on the medieval harp and Collin Monro of Tadcaster and the rest of the Barony of Iron Bog. Can't get enough of that sweet, sweet antibiotic resistance content? Then you'll be over the moon about next week's release. It's the podcast cut of our most recent installment of our live show series called Viscera. This one features executive editor Soren Wheeler and Avir Mitra, and it's all about how our millenia's-long war against bacteria came to a tipping point in this modern age. Subscribe or follow our show on your favorite streaming platform and you'll be the first to know when it drops. EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Latif Nasser Produced by - Matt Kielty and Soren Wheeler EPISODE CITATIONS: Articles - Uncovering the multifaceted mechanism of action of a historical antimicrobial (https://zpr.io/mucw6Td6LBxT) by Harrison, F et al, 2026 bioRxv (PREPRINT). In this article Freya and her team describe the mechanisms under which Bald's Remedy actually works. Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Karma as the Law of Responsibility Building 4th Gathering | March 17, 2026 What if karma isn't punishment — and isn't even a scorecard? In this episode, Doug Scott, MA, MSW, LCSW presents a framework drawn from the Ra Material and his own Raian Process Metaphysics that redefines karma as inertia — the simple physics of consciousness in motion — and connects it to what Ra calls the Law of Responsibility. The presentation begins with Ra's striking definition from Session 34.4: karma is inertia, and forgiveness is the brake. The two concepts are inseparable. From there, Doug traces the Latin etymology of responsibility — re-spondere, "to pledge back" — revealing that responsibility is not burden but response-ability: the growing capacity to answer the Creator's eternal calling embedded in every being's nature. Using his Law of Three framework (what he calls teleopotentiation), Doug maps the karmic dynamic onto three forces: the Original Desire as the Affirming Force — the Creator seeking to know itself through us; the Veil of Forgetting as the Denying Force — the necessary resistance that makes genuine choice and growth possible; and Responsibility as the Reconciling Force — the conscious holding of tension between calling and constraint that produces genuine transformation. When that tension goes unresolved, karmic inertia rolls forward. When forgiveness — for-giefan, Old English for "giving away completely" — is applied, the wheel stops. The community discussion that follows is wide-ranging and deeply personal. Participants explore forgiveness as the recognition of shared divinity, the Vedic distinction between mutable and immutable karma, the connection between Jung's shadow complex and karmic inertia, and the clinical principle that forgiveness does not equal approval. Doug shares a personal story of being scammed during COVID and the conscious choice to forgive. Others offer stories of family reconciliation, the practice of compassionate imagination in everyday frustrations, and the contemplative insight that karma may perpetuate through our attachment to doership — and that true release may involve surrendering the illusion of separate agency altogether. The evening closes with a quiet recognition: the brake is always available. Right here. Right now. Topics covered: Ra's definition of karma (Session 34.4) — The Law of Responsibility and its etymology — The veil of forgetting as essential resistance — Teleopotentiation and the Law of Three — The knowing-without-doing gap — Forgiveness as metaphysical brake — Shadow work and karmic patterns — Vedic perspectives on mutable and immutable karma — Forgiveness as radical acceptance — The relationship between doership and karmic perpetuation

What makes a character so compelling that readers will forgive almost anything about the plot? How do you move beyond vague flaws and generic descriptions to create people who feel pulled from real life? In this solo episode, I share 15 actionable tips for writing deep characters, curated from past interviews on the podcast. In the intro, thoughts from London Book Fair [Instagram reel @jfpennauthor; Publishing Perspectives; Audible; Spotify]; Insights from a 7-figure author business [BookBub]. This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community and get articles, discounts, and extra audio and video tutorials on writing craft, author business, and AI tools, at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn This episode has been created from previous episodes of The Creative Penn Podcast, curated by Joanna Penn, as well as chapters from How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book. Links to the individual episodes are included in the transcript below. In this episode: Master the ‘Believe, Care, Invest' trifecta, how to hook readers on the very first page Define the Dramatic Question: Who is your character when the chips are down? Absolute specificity. Why “she's controlling” isn't good enough Understand the Heroine's Journey, strength through connection, not solo action Use ‘Metaphor Families' to anchor dialogue and give every character a distinctive voice Find the Diagnostic Detail, the moments that prove a character is real Writing pain onto the page without writing memoir Write diverse characters as real people, not stereotypes or plot devices Give your protagonist a morally neutral ‘hero' status. Compelling beats likeable. Build vibrant side characters for series longevity and spin-off potential Use voice as a rhythmic tool Link character and plot until they're inseparable Why discovery writers can write out of order and still build deep character Find the sensory details that make characters live and breathe More help with how to write fiction here, or in my book, How to Write a Novel. Writing Characters: 15 Tips for Writing Deep Character in Your Fiction In today's episode, I'm sharing fifteen tips for writing deep characters, synthesised from some of the most insightful interviews on The Creative Penn Podcast over the past few years, combined with what I've learned across more than forty books of my own. I'll be referencing episodes with Matt Bird, Will Storr, Gail Carriger, Barbara Nickless, and Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer. I'll also draw on my own book, How to Write a Novel, which covers these fundamentals in detail. Whether you're writing your first novel or your fiftieth, whether you're a plotter or a discovery writer like me, these tips will help you create characters that readers believe in, care about, and invest in—and keep coming back for more. Let's get into it. 1. Master the ‘Believe, Care, Invest' Trifecta When I spoke with Matt Bird on episode 624, he laid out the three things you need to achieve on the very first page of your book or in the first ten minutes of a film. He calls it “Believe, Care, and Invest.” First, the reader must believe the character is a real person, somehow proving they are not a cardboard imitation of a human being, not just a generic type walking through a generic plot. Second, the reader must care about the character's circumstances. And third, the reader must invest in the character's ability to solve the story's central problem. Matt used The Hunger Games as his primary example, and it's brilliant. On the very first page, we believe Katniss's voice. Suzanne Collins writes in first person with a staccato rhythm—lots of periods, short declarative sentences—that immediately grounds us in a survivalist mentality. We care because Katniss is starving. She's protecting her little sister. And we invest because she is out there bow hunting, which Matt pointed out is one of the most badass things a character can do. She even kills a lynx two pages in and sells the pelt. We invest in her resourcefulness and grit before the plot has even begun. Matt was very clear that this has nothing to do with the character being “likable.” He said his subtitle, Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love, doesn't mean the character has to be a good person. He described “hero” as both gender-neutral and morally neutral. A hero can be totally evil or totally good. What matters is that we believe, care, and invest. He demonstrated this beautifully by breaking down the first ten minutes of WeCrashed, where the characters of Adam and Rebekah Neumann are absolutely not likable, but we are completely hooked. Adam steals his neighbour's Chinese food through a carefully orchestrated con involving an imaginary beer. It's not admirable behaviour, but the tradecraft involved, as Matt put it—using a term from spy movies—makes us invest in him. We see a character trying to solve the big problem of his life, which is that he's poor and wants to be rich, and we want to see if he can pull it off. Actionable step: Go to the first page of your current work in progress. Does it achieve all three? Does the reader believe this is a real person with a distinctive voice? Do they care about the character's circumstances? And do they invest in the character's ability to handle what's coming? If even one of those three is missing, that's your revision priority. 2. Define the Dramatic Question: Who Are They Really? Will Storr, author of The Science of Storytelling, came on episode 490 and gave one of the most powerful frameworks I've ever heard for character-driven fiction. He explained that the human brain evolved language primarily to swap social information—in other words, to gossip. We are wired to monitor other people, to ask the question: who is this person when the chips are down? That's what Will calls the Dramatic Question, and it's what he believes lies at the heart of all compelling storytelling. It's not a question about plot. It's a question about the character's soul. And every scene in your novel should force the character to answer it. His example of Lawrence of Arabia is unforgettable. The Dramatic Question for the entire film is: who are you, Lawrence? Are you ordinary or are you extraordinary? At the beginning, Lawrence is a cocky, rebellious young soldier who believes his rebelliousness makes him superior. Every iconic scene in that three-hour film tests that belief. Sometimes Lawrence acts as though he truly is extraordinary—leading the Arabs into battle, being hailed as a god—and sometimes the world strips him bare and he sees himself as ordinary. Because it's a tragedy, he never overcomes his flaw. He doubles down on his belief that he's extraordinary until he becomes monstrous, culminating in that iconic scene where he lifts a bloody dagger and sees his own reflection with horror. Will also used Jaws to demonstrate how this works in a pure action thriller. Brody's dramatic question is simple: are you going to be old Brody who is terrified of the water, or new Brody who can overcome that fear? Every scene where the shark appears is really asking that question. And the last moment of the film isn't the shark blowing up. It's Brody swimming back through the water, saying he used to be scared of the water and he can't imagine why. Actionable step: Write down the Dramatic Question for your protagonist in a single sentence. Is it “Are you ordinary or extraordinary?” or “Are you brave enough to love again?” or “Will you sacrifice your principles for survival?” If you can't answer this with specificity, your character might still be a sketch rather than a person. 3. Get rid of Vague Flaws, and use Absolute Specificity This was one of Will Storr's most important points. He said that vague thinking about characters is really the enemy. When he teaches workshops and asks writers to describe their character's flaw, most of them say something like “they're very controlling.” And Will's response is: that's not good enough. Everyone is controlling. How are they controlling? What's the specific mechanism? He gave the example of a profile he read of Theresa May during the UK's Brexit chaos. Someone who knew her said that Theresa May's problem was that she always thinks she's the only adult in every room she goes into. Will said that stopped him in his tracks because it's so precise. If you define a character with that level of specificity, you can take them and put them in any genre, any situation—a spaceship, a Victorian drawing room, a school playground—and you will know exactly how they're going to behave. The same applies to Arthur Miller's Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, as Will described it: a man who believes absolutely in capitalistic success and the idea that when you die, you're going to be weighed on a scale, just as God weighs you for sin, but now you're weighed for success. That's not a vague flaw. That's a worldview you can drop into any story and watch it combust. Will made another counterintuitive point that I found really valuable: writers often think that piling on multiple traits will create a complex character, but the opposite is true. Starting with one highly specific flaw and running it through the demands of a relentless plot is what generates complexity. You end up with a far more nuanced, original character than if you'd started with a laundry list of vague attributes. Actionable step: Take your protagonist's flaw and pressure-test it. Is it specific enough that you could place this character in any situation and predict their behaviour? If you're stuck at “she's stubborn” or “he's insecure,” keep pushing. What kind of stubborn? What kind of insecure? Find the diagnostic sentence—the Theresa May level of precision. 4. Understand the Heroine's Journey: Strength Through Connection Gail Carriger came on episode 550 to discuss her nonfiction book, The Heroine's Journey, and it completely reframed how I think about some of my own fiction. Gail explained that the core difference between the Hero's Journey and the Heroine's Journey comes down to how strength and victory are defined. The Hero's Journey is about strength through solo action. The hero must be continually isolated to get stronger. He goes out of civilisation, faces strife alone, and achieves victory through physical prowess and self-actualisation. The Heroine's Journey is the opposite. The heroine achieves her goals by activating a network. She's a delegator, a general. She identifies where she can't do something alone, finds the people who can help, and portions out the work for mutual gain. Gail put it simply: the heroine is very good at asking for help, which our culture tends to devalue but which is actually a powerful form of strength. Crucially, Gail stressed that gender is irrelevant to which journey you're writing. Her go-to examples are striking: the recent Wonder Woman film is practically a beat-for-beat hero's journey—Gilgamesh on screen, as Gail described it. Meanwhile, Harry Potter, both the first book and the series as a whole, is a classic heroine's journey. Harry's power comes from his network—Dumbledore's Army, the Order of the Phoenix, his friendships with Ron and Hermione. He doesn't defeat Voldemort alone. He defeats Voldemort because of love and connection. This distinction has real practical consequences for writers. If you're writing a hero's journey and you hit writer's block, Gail said, the solution is usually to isolate your hero further and pile on more strife. But if you're writing a heroine's journey, the solution is probably to throw a new character into the scene—someone who has advice to offer or a skill the heroine lacks. The actual solutions to writer's block are different depending on which narrative you're writing. As I reflected on my own work, I realised that my ARKANE thriller protagonist, Morgan Sierra, follows a hero's journey—she's a solo operative, a lone wolf like Jack Reacher or James Bond. But my Mapwalker fantasy series follows a heroine's journey, with Sienna and her group of friends working together. I hadn't consciously chosen those paths; the stories led me there. But understanding the framework helps me write more intentionally now. Actionable step: Identify which journey your protagonist is on. Does your character gain strength by being alone (hero) or by building connections (heroine)? This will inform every plot decision you make, from how they face obstacles to how your story ends. 5. Use ‘Metaphor Families' to Anchor Dialogue and Voice One of the most practical techniques Matt Bird shared on episode 624 is the idea of assigning each character a “metaphor family”—a specific well of language that they draw from. This gives each character a distinctive voice that goes beyond accent or dialect. Matt explained how in The Wire, one of the most beloved TV shows of all time, every character has a different metaphor family. What struck him was that Omar, this iconic character, never utters a single curse word in the entire series. His metaphor family is pirate. He talks about parlays, uses language that feels like it belongs in Pirates of the Caribbean, and it creates this incredible ironic counterpoint against his urban setting. It tells us immediately that this is a character who sees himself in a tradition of people that doesn't match his immediate surroundings. Matt also referenced the UK version of The Office, where Gareth works at a paper company but aspires to the military. So all of his language is drawn from a military metaphor family. He doesn't talk about filing and photocopying; he talks about tactics and discipline and being on the front line. This tells us that the character has a life and dreams beyond the immediate scene—and it's the gap between aspiration and reality that makes him both funny and believable. He pointed out that a metaphor family sometimes comes from a character's background, but it's often more interesting when it comes from their aspirations. What does your character want to be? What world do they fantasise about inhabiting? That's where their language should come from. In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a spiritual hermit, but his metaphor family is military. He uses the language of generals and commanders, and that ironic counterpoint is part of what makes him feel so rich. Actionable step: Assign each of your main characters a metaphor family. It could be based on their job, their background, or—more interestingly—their secret aspirations. Then go through your dialogue and make sure each character is consistently drawing from that well of language. If two characters sound the same when you strip away the dialogue tags, this is the fix. 6. Find the Diagnostic Detail: The Diagonal Toast Avoid clichéd character tags—the random scar, the eye patch, the mysterious limp—unless they serve a deep narrative purpose. Matt Bird on episode 624 was very funny about this: he pointed out that Nick Fury, Odin, and eventually Thor all have eye patches in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Eye patches are done, he said. You cannot do eye patches anymore. Instead, look for what I'm calling the “diagonal toast” detail, after a scene Matt described from Captain Marvel. In the film, Captain Marvel is trying to determine whether Nick Fury is who he says he is. She asks him to prove he isn't a shapeshifting alien. Fury shares biographical details—his history, his mother—but then she pushes further and says, name one more thing you couldn't possibly have made up about yourself. And Fury says: if toast is cut diagonally, I can't eat it. Matt said that detail is gold for a writer because it feels pulled from a real life. You can pull it from your own life and gift it to your characters, and the reader can tell it's not manufactured. He gave another example from The Sopranos: Tony Soprano's mother won't answer the phone after dark. The show's creator, David Chase, confirmed on the DVD commentary that this came from his own mother, who genuinely would not answer the phone after dark and couldn't explain why. Matt's practical advice was to keep a journal. Write down the strange, specific things that people do or say. Mine your own life for those hyper-specific details. You just need one per book. In my own writing, I've used this approach. In my ARKANE thrillers, my character Morgan Sierra has always been Angelina Jolie in my mind—specifically Jolie in Lara Croft or Mr and Mrs Smith. And Blake Daniel in my crime thriller series was based on Jesse Williams from Grey's Anatomy. I paste pictures of actors into my Scrivener projects. It helps with visuals, but also with the sense of the character, their energy and physicality. But visual details only take you so far. It's the behavioural quirks—the diagonal toast moments—that make a character feel genuinely alive. That said, physical character tags can work brilliantly when they serve the story. As I discuss in How to Write a Novel, Robert Galbraith's Cormoran Strike is an amputee, and his pain and the physical challenges of his prosthesis are a key part of every story—it's not a cosmetic detail, it's woven into the action and the character's psychology. My character Blake Daniel always wears gloves to cover the scars on his hands, which provides an angle into his wounded past as well as a visual cue for the reader. And of course, Harry Potter's lightning-shaped scar isn't just a mark—it's a direct connection to his nemesis and the mythology of the entire series. The rule of thumb is: if the tag tells us something about the character's interior life or connects to the plot, it's earning its place. If it's just there to make the character visually distinctive, it's probably a crutch. Game of Thrones takes character tags further with the family houses, each with their own mottos and sigils. The Starks say “Winter is coming” and their sigil is a dire wolf. Those aren't just labels—they're worldview made visible. Actionable step: Start a “diagonal toast” notebook. Every time you notice something strange and specific about someone's behaviour—something that feels too real to be made up—write it down. Then gift it to a character who needs more texture. 7. Displace Your Own Trauma into the Work Barbara Nickless shared something deeply personal on episode 732 that fundamentally changed how I think about putting pain onto the page. While starting At First Light, the first book in her Dr. Evan Wilding series, she lost her son to epilepsy—something called SUDEP, Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy. One day he was there, and the next day he was gone. Barbara said that writing helped her cope with the trauma, that doing a deep dive into Old English literature and the Viking Age for the book's research became a lifeline. But here's what's important: she didn't give Dr. Evan Wilding her exact trauma. Evan Wilding is four feet five inches, and Barbara described how he has to walk through a world that won't adjust to him. That's its own form of learning to cope when circumstances are beyond your control. She displaced her genuine grief into the character's different but parallel struggle. When I asked her about the difference between writing for therapy and writing for an audience, she drew on her experience teaching creative writing to veterans through a collaboration between the US Department of Defense and the National Endowment for the Arts. She said she's found that she can pour her heartache into her characters and process it through them, even when writing professionally, and that the genuine emotion is what touches readers. We've all been through our own losses and griefs, so seeing how a character copes can be deeply meaningful. I've always found that putting my own pain onto the page is the most direct way to connect with a reader's soul. My character Morgan Sierra's musings on religion and the supernatural are often my own. Her restlessness, her fascination with the darker edges of faith—those come from me. But her Krav Maga fighting skills and her ability to kill the bad guys are definitely her own. That gap between what's mine and what's hers is where the fiction lives. Barbara also said something on that episode that I wrote down and stuck on my wall. She said the act of producing itself is a balm to the soul. I've been thinking about that ever since. On my own wall, I have “Measure your life by what you create.” Different words, same truth. Actionable step: If you're carrying something heavy—grief, anger, fear, regret—consider how you might displace it into a character's different but emotionally parallel struggle. Don't copy your exact situation; transform it. The emotion will be genuine, and the reader will feel it. 8. Write Diverse Characters as Real People When I spoke with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer on episode 673—Sarah is Choctaw and a historical fiction author honoured by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian—she offered a perspective that every fiction writer needs to hear. The key message was to move away from stereotypes. Don't write your American Indian character as the “Wise Guide” who exists solely to dispense mystic wisdom to the white protagonist. Don't limit diverse characters to historical settings, as though they only exist in the past. Place them in normal, contemporary roles. Your spaceship captain, your forensic scientist, your small-town baker—any of them can be American Indian, or Nigerian, or Japanese, and their heritage should be a lived-in part of their identity, not the sole reason they exist in the story. I write international thrillers and dark fantasy, and my fiction is populated with characters from all over the world. I have a multi-cultural family and I've lived in many places and travelled widely, so I've met, worked with, and had relationships with people from different cultures. I find story ideas through travel, and if I set my books in a certain place, then the story is naturally populated with the people who live there. As I discuss in my book, How to Write a Novel, the world is a diverse place, so your fiction needs to be populated with all kinds of people. If I only populated my fiction with characters like me, they would be boring novels. There are many dimensions of difference—race, nationality, sex, age, body type, ability, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, class, culture, education level—and even then, don't assume that similar types of people think the same way. Some authors worry they will make mistakes. We live in a time of outrage, and some authors have been criticised for writing outside their own experience. So is it too dangerous to try? Of course not. The media amplifies outliers, and most authors include diverse characters in every book without causing offence because they work hard to get it right. It's about awareness, research, and intent. Actionable step: Audit the cast of your current work in progress. Have you written a mono-cultural perspective for all of them? If so, consider who could bring a different background, perspective, or set of cultural specifics to the story. Not as a token addition, but as a real person with a real life. 9. Respect Tribal and Cultural Specificity Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer on episode 673 was emphatic about one thing: never treat diverse groups as monolithic. If you're writing a Native American character, you must research the specific nation. Choctaw is not Navajo, just as British is not French. Sarah described the distinct cultural markers of the Choctaw people—the diamond pattern you'll see on traditional shirts and dresses, which represents the diamondback rattlesnake. They have distinct dances and songs. She said that if she saw someone in traditional dress at a distance, she would know whether they were Choctaw based on what they were wearing. She encouraged writers who want to write specifically about a nation to get to know those people. Go to events, go to a powwow, learn about the individual culture. She noted that a big misconception is that American Indians exist only in the past—she stressed that they are still here, still living their cultures, and fiction should reflect that present reality. I took a similar approach when writing Destroyer of Worlds, which is set mostly in India. I read books about Hindu myth, watched documentaries about the sadhus, and had one of my Indian readers from Mumbai check my cultural references. For Risen Gods, set in New Zealand with a young Maori protagonist, I studied books about Maori mythology and fiction by Maori authors, and had a male Maori reader check for cultural issues. Research is simply an act of empathy. The practical takeaway is this: if you're going to include a character from a specific cultural background, do the work. Use specific cultural details rather than generic signifiers. Sarah talked about how even she fell into stereotypes when she was first writing, until her mother pointed them out. If someone from within a culture can fall into those traps, the rest of us certainly can. Do the research, try your best, ask for help, and apologise if you need to. Actionable step: If you're writing a character from a specific culture, identify three to five sensory or behavioural details that are particular to that culture—not the generic version, but the real, researched, lived-in version. Consider hiring a sensitivity reader from that community to check your work. 10. Give Your Protagonist a Morally Neutral ‘Hero' Status Matt Bird was clear about this on episode 624: the word “hero” simply means the protagonist, the person we follow through the story. It's a functional role, not a moral label. We don't have to like them. We don't even have to root for their goals in a moral sense. We just have to find them compelling enough to invest our attention in their problem-solving. Think of Succession, where every member of the Roy family is varying degrees of awful, and yet the show was utterly compelling. Or WeCrashed, where Adam Neumann is a narcissistic con artist, but we can't look away because he's trying to solve the enormous problem of building an empire from nothing, and the tradecraft he employs is fascinating. As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, readers must want to spend time with your characters. They don't have to be lovable or even likable—that will depend on your genre and story choices—but they have to be captivating enough that we want to spend time with them. A character who is trying to solve a massive problem will naturally draw investment from the audience, even if we wouldn't want to have tea with them. Will Storr extended this idea by pointing out that the audience will actually root for a character to solve their problem even if the audience doesn't actually want the character's goal to be achieved in the real world. We don't really want more billionaires, but we invested in Adam Neumann's rise because that was the problem the story posed, and our brains are wired to invest in problem-solving. This connects to something deeper: what does your character want, and why? As I explore in How to Write a Novel, desire operates on multiple levels. Take a character like Phil, who joins the military during wartime. On the surface, she wants to serve her country. But she also wants to escape her dead-end town and learn new skills. Deeper still, her father and grandfather served, and by joining up, she hopes to finally earn their respect. And perhaps deepest of all, her father died on a mission under mysterious circumstances, and she wants to find out what happened from the inside. That layering of motivation is what turns a flat character into a three-dimensional one. The audience doesn't need to be told all of this explicitly. It can emerge through action, dialogue, and the choices the character makes under pressure. But you, the writer, need to know it. You need to know what your character really wants deep down, because that desire—more than any external plot device—is what drives the story forward. And your antagonist needs the same depth. They also want something, often diametrically opposed to your protagonist, and they need a reason that makes sense to them. In my ARKANE thriller Tree of Life, my antagonist is the heiress of a Brazilian mining empire who wants to restore the Earth to its original state to atone for the destruction caused by her father's company. She's part of a radical ecological group who believe the only way to restore Nature is to end all human life. It's extreme, but in an era of climate change, it's a motivation readers can understand—even if they disagree with the solution. Actionable step: If you're struggling to make a morally grey character work, make sure their problem is big enough and their methods are specific and interesting enough that we invest in the how, even if we're ambivalent about the what. 11. Build Vibrant Side Characters Gail Carriger made a point on episode 550 that was equal parts craft advice and business strategy. In a Heroine's Journey model, side characters aren't just fodder to be killed off to motivate the hero. They form a network. And because you don't have to kill them—unlike in a hero's journey, where allies are often betrayed or removed so the hero can be further isolated—you can pick up those side characters and give them their own books. Gail said this creates a really voracious reader base. You write one series with vivid side characters, and then readers fall in love with those side characters and want their stories. So you write spin-offs. The romance genre does this brilliantly—think of the Bridgerton books, where each sibling gets their own novel. The side character in one book becomes the protagonist in the next. Barbara Nickless experienced this firsthand with her Dr. Evan Wilding series. She has River Wilding, Evan's adventurous brother, and Diana, the axe-throwing research assistant, and her editor has already expressed interest in a spin-off series with those characters. Barbara described creating characters she wants to spend time with, or characters who give her nightmares but also intrigue her. That's the dual test: are they interesting enough for you to write, and interesting enough for readers to demand more? As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, characters that span series can deepen the reader's relationship with them as you expand their backstory into new plots. Readers will remember the character more than the plot or the book title, and look forward to the next instalment because they want more time with those people. British crime author Angela Marsons described it as readers feeling like returning to her characters is like putting on a pair of old slippers. Actionable step: Look at your supporting cast. Is there a side character who is vivid enough to carry their own story? If not, what could you add—a specific hobby, a distinct voice, a compelling backstory—that would make readers want more of them? 12. Use Voice as a Rhythmic Tool Voice is one of the most important elements of novel writing, and Matt Bird helped me think about it in a technical, mechanical way that I found really useful. He pointed out that the ratio of periods to commas defines a character's internal reality. A staccato rhythm—lots of periods, short sentences—suggests a character who is certain, grounded, or perhaps survivalist and traumatised. Katniss in The Hunger Games has a period-heavy voice. She's in survival mode. She doesn't have time for complexity or qualification. A flowing, comma-heavy style suggests someone more academic, more nuanced, or possibly more scattered and manipulative. The character who qualifies everything, who adds sub-clauses and digressions, is a different kind of person from the character who speaks in declarations. This is something you can actually measure. Pull up a passage of your character's dialogue or internal monologue and count the periods versus the commas. If the rhythm doesn't match who the character is supposed to be, you've found a mismatch you can fix. Sentence length is the heartbeat of your character's persona. And voice extends beyond rhythm to the words themselves. As I discussed in the metaphor families tip, each character should draw from a distinctive well of language. But voice also encompasses their relationship to silence. Some characters talk around the thing they mean; others say it straight. Some are self-deprecating; others are blunt to the point of rudeness. All of these choices are character choices, not just style choices. I find it useful to read my dialogue aloud—and not just to check for naturalness, but to hear whether each character sounds distinct. If you could swap dialogue lines between two characters and nobody would notice, you have a voice problem. One practical test: cover the dialogue tags and see if you can tell who's speaking from the words alone. Actionable step: Choose a key passage from your protagonist's point of view and read it aloud. Does the rhythm match the character? A soldier under fire should not sound like a philosophy professor at a wine tasting. Adjust the ratio of periods to commas until the voice feels right. 13. Link Character and Plot Until They're Inseparable Will Storr made the case on episode 490 that the number one problem he sees in the writing he encounters—in workshops, in submissions, even in published books—is that the characters and the plots are unconnected. There's a story happening, and there are people in it, but the story isn't a product of who those people are. He said a story should be like life. In our lives, the plots are intimately connected to who we are as characters. The goals we pursue, the obstacles we face, the same problems that keep recurring—these are products of our personalities, our flaws, our specific ways of being in the world. His framework is that your plot should be designed specifically to plot against your character. You've got a character with a particular flaw; the plot exists to test that flaw over and over until the character either transforms or doubles down and explodes. Jaws is the perfect example. Brody is afraid of water. A shark shows up in the coastal town he's responsible for protecting. The entire plot is engineered to force him to confront the one thing he cannot face. Will pointed out that the whole plot of Jaws is structured around Brody's flaw. It begins with the shark arriving, the midpoint is when Brody finally gets the courage to go into the water, and the very final scene isn't the shark blowing up—it's Brody swimming back through the water. Even a film that's ninety-eight percent action is, at its core, structured around a character with a character flaw. This is the standard I aspire to in my own work, even in my action-heavy thrillers. The external plot should be a mirror of the internal struggle. When those two are aligned, the story becomes irresistible. Will also made an important point about series fiction, which is where most commercial authors live. I asked him how this works when your character can't be transformed at the end of every book because there has to be a next book. His answer was elegant: you don't cure them. Episodic TV characters like Fleabag or David Brent or Basil Fawlty never truly change—and the fact that they don't change is actually the source of the comedy. But every episode throws a new story event at them that tests and exposes their flaw. You just keep throwing story events at them again and again. That's a soap opera, a sitcom, and a book series. As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, character flaws are aspects of personality that affect the person so much that facing and overcoming them becomes central to the plot. In Jaws, the protagonist Brody is afraid of the water, but he has to overcome that flaw to destroy the killer shark and save the town. But remember, your characters should feel like real people, so never define them purely by their flaws. The character addicted to painkillers might also be a brilliant and successful female lawyer who gets up at four in the morning to work out at the gym, likes eighties music, and volunteers at the local dog shelter at weekends. Character wounds are different from flaws. They're formed from life experience and are part of your character's backstory—traumatic events that happened before the events of your novel but shape the character's reactions in the present. In my ARKANE thrillers, Morgan Sierra's husband Elian died in her arms during a military operation. This happened before the series begins, but her memories of it recur when she faces a firefight, and she struggles to find happiness again for fear of losing someone she loves once more. And then there's the perennial advice: show, don't tell. Most writers have heard this so many times that it's easy to nod and then promptly write scenes that tell rather than show. Basically, you need to reveal your character through action and dialogue, rather than explanation. In my thriller Day of the Vikings, Morgan Sierra fights a Neo-Viking in the halls of the British Museum and brings him down with Krav Maga. That fight scene isn't just about showing action. It opens up questions about her backstory, demonstrates character, and moves the plot forward. Telling would be something like: “Morgan was an expert in Krav Maga.” Showing is the reader discovering it through the scene itself. Actionable step: Look at the main plot events of your novel. For each major turning point, ask: does this scene specifically test my protagonist's flaw? If not, can you redesign the scene so that it does? The tighter the connection between character and plot, the more powerful the story. 14. The ‘Maestra' Approach: Write Out of Order If you're a discovery writer like me, you may feel like the deep character work I've been describing sounds more suited to plotters. But Barbara Nickless gave me a beautiful metaphor on episode 732 that reframes it entirely. Barbara described her evolving writing process as being like a maestra standing in front of an orchestra. Sometimes you bring in the horns—a certain theme—and sometimes you bring in the strings—a certain character—and sometimes you turn to the soloist. It's a more organic and jumping-around process than linear writing, and Barbara said she's only recently given herself permission to work this way. When I told her that I use Scrivener to write in scenes out of order and then drag and drop them into a structure later, she was genuinely intrigued. And this is how I've always worked. I'll see the story in my mind like a movie trailer—flashes of the big emotional scenes, the pivotal confrontations, the moments of revelation—and I write those first. I don't know how they hang together until quite late in the process. Then I'll move scenes around, print the whole thing out, and figure out the connective tissue. The point is that discovery writers can absolutely build deep characters. Sometimes writing the big emotional scenes first is how you discover who the character is before you fill in the rest. You don't need a twenty-page character worksheet or a 200-page outline like Jeffery Deaver. You need to be willing to follow the character into the unknown and trust that the structure will emerge. As Barbara said, she writes to know what she's thinking. That's the discovery writer's credo. And I would add: I write to know who my characters are. Actionable step: If you're stuck on your current chapter, skip it. Write the scene that's burning in your imagination, even if it's from the middle or the end. That scene might be the key to unlocking who your character really is. 15. Use Research to Help with Empathy Research shouldn't just be about factual accuracy—it's a tool for finding the sensory details that create empathy. Barbara Nickless described research as almost an excuse to explore things that fascinate her, and I feel exactly the same way. I would go so far as to say that writing is an excuse for me to explore the things that interest me. Barbara and I both travel for our stories. For her Dr. Evan Wilding books, she did deep research into Old English literature and the Viking Age. For my thriller End of Days, I transcribed hours of video from Appalachian snake-handling churches on YouTube to understand the worldview of the worshippers, because my antagonist was brought up in that tradition. I couldn't just make that up. I had to hear their language, feel their conviction, understand why they would hold venomous serpents as an act of faith. Barbara also mentioned getting to Israel and the West Bank for research, and I've been to both places too. Finding that one specific sensory detail—the smell of a particular location, the specific way an expert handles a tool, the sound of a particular kind of music—makes the character's life feel lived-in. It's the difference between a character who is described as living in a place and a character who inhabits it. As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, don't write what you know. Write what you want to learn about. I love research. It's part of why I'm an author in the first place. I take any excuse to dive into a world different from my own. Research using books, films, podcasts, and travel, and focus particularly on sources produced by people from the worldview you want to understand. Actionable step: For your next piece of character research, go beyond reading. Watch a documentary, visit a location, talk to someone who lives the experience. Find one sensory detail—a smell, a sound, a texture—that you couldn't have invented. That detail will make your character feel real. Bonus: Measure Your Life by What You Create In an age of AI and a tsunami of content, your ultimate brand protection is the quality of your human creation. Barbara Nickless said that the act of producing itself is a balm to the soul, and I believe that with every fibre of my being. Don't be afraid to take that step back, like I did with my deadlifting. Take the time to master these deeper craft skills. It might feel like you're slowing down or going backwards by not chasing the latest marketing trend, but it's the only way to step forward into a sustainable, high-quality career. Your characters are your signature. No AI can replicate the specificity of your lived experience, the emotional truth of your displaced trauma, or the sensory details you've gathered from a life of curiosity and travel. Those are yours. Pour them into your characters, and they will resonate for years to come. Actionable Takeaway: Identify the Dramatic Question for your current protagonist. Can you state it in a single sentence with the kind of specificity Will Storr described? Is it as clear as “Are you ordinary or extraordinary?” or “Are you the only adult in the room?” If you can't answer it with that kind of precision, your character might still be a sketch. Give them a diagonal toast moment today. Find the one hyper-specific detail that proves they are not an imitation of life. And then ask yourself: does your plot test your character's flaw in every major scene? If you can align those two things—a precisely defined character and a plot that exists to test them—you will have a story that readers cannot put down. References and Deep Dives The episodes I've referenced today are all available with full transcripts at TheCreativePenn.com: Episode 732 — Facing Fears, and Writing Unique Characters with Barbara Nickless Episode 673 — Writing Choctaw Characters and Diversity in Fiction with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer Episode 624 — Writing Characters with Matt Bird Episode 550 — The Heroine's Journey with Gail Carriger Episode 490 — How Character Flaws Shape Story with Will Storr Books mentioned: The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love by Matt Bird The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr The Heroine's Journey by Gail Carriger How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book by Joanna Penn You can find all my books for authors at CreativePennBooks.com and my fiction and memoir at JFPennBooks.com Happy writing! How was this episode created? This episode was initiated created by NotebookLM based on YouTube videos of the episodes linked above from YouTube/TheCreativePenn, plus my text chapters on character from How to Write a Novel. NotebookLM created a blog post from the material and then I expanded it and fact checked it with Claude.ai 4.6 Opus, and then I used my voice clone at ElevenLabs to narrate it. The post Writing Characters: 15 Actionable Tips For Writing Deep Character first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 12, 2026 is: gambit • GAM-bit • noun A gambit is something done or said in order to gain an advantage or to produce a desired effect. // The workers' opening gambit in the negotiations was to demand a wage hike. See the entry > Examples: “Now the book publishing industry has sent a message to all A.I. companies: Our intellectual property isn't yours for the taking, and you cannot act with impunity. This settlement is an opening gambit in a critical battle that will be waged for years to come.” — Andrea Bartz, The New York Times, 1 Oct. 2025 Did you know? Don't let the similarities of sound and general flavor between gambit and gamble trip you up; the two words are unrelated. Gambit first appeared in English in a 1656 chess handbook that was said to feature almost a hundred illustrated gambetts. Gambett traces back first to the Spanish word gambito, and before that to the Italian gambetto, from gamba meaning “leg.” Gambetto referred to the act of tripping someone, as in wrestling, in order to gain an advantage. In chess, gambit (or gambett, as it was once spelled) originally referred to a chess opening whereby the bishop's pawn is intentionally sacrificed—or tripped—to gain an advantage in position. Gambit is now applied to many other chess openings, but after being pinned down for years, it also finally broke free of chess's hold and is used generally to refer to any “move,” whether literal or rhetorical, done to get a leg up, so to speak. While such moves can be risky, gambit is not synonymous with gamble, which likely comes from Old English gamen, meaning “amusement, jest, pastime”—source too of game.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 11, 2026 is: besotted • bih-SAH-tud • adjective Someone described as besotted is so in love that they are unable to think clearly; they are utterly infatuated. Besotted can also be used as a synonym of drunk. // The opening scene of the movie follows a besotted couple at a party, the camera's focus emphasizing their ignorance of all that's around them. See the entry > Examples: “Kathrin [tour guide] is endearingly besotted with her adopted country and spoke about it with the reverence of a convert. Some more things I heard from her that contribute to people in Finland being happy included: sauna culture discouraging fatphobia; emphasis on design—that means even very basic, cheap things are beautiful and robust; and, of course, nature.” — Imogen West-Knights, Slate, 27 Aug. 2025 Did you know? Stumble on the word sot and you will likely find it attached to a person who tends to over-imbibe. The word has referred to a habitual drunkard since the late 16th century, and before that—from the days of Old English—it referred to a fool generally. The now-archaic verb sot followed a similar trajectory, its original meaning of “to cause to appear foolish” being joined later by its “to drink alcohol excessively” meaning. The earliest known recorded use of the related adjective besotted (in the late 16th century, from the the verb besot), however, described a state of figurative intoxication: one besotted was stupefied by love rather than liquor. The still-current sense of besotted meaning “drunk” didn't show up until the early 19th century. In fact, evidence of the “infatuated” sense of besotted also predates the tipple-related senses of the noun sot, verb sot, and verb besot, suggesting perhaps that love may be the strongest intoxicant of all.

Today's poem is a selection from the Old English, Beowulf, translated by R. M. Liuzza. In these lines, Beowulf prepares for a harrowing showdown with Grendel's mother, and the cold, clear beauty of the lines almost makes you wish you were there. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

We look at the works of perhaps the most accomplished author in the Old English canon: Ælfric of Eynsham. Credits – Music: 'Wælheall' by Hrōðmund Wōdening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQfdqIyqJ4g&list=LL&index=5&ab_channel=Hr%C5%8D%C3%B0mundW%C5%8Ddening Social Media - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/anglosaxonengland Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Anglo-Saxon-England-Podcast-110529958048053 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anglosaxonenglandpodcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 5, 2026 is: deem • DEEM • verb Deem is a somewhat formal word used when someone comes to think something or to have something as an opinion after some consideration. // The covered bridge was closed to automobile traffic for the winter because town officials deemed it a hazard to motorists. See the entry > Examples: “bbno$ is an artist who has certainly taken some flak over the years for his style. Some find it to be a gimmick, while others deem it corny. Despite this, he does have a pretty sizable fanbase.” — Alexander Cole, HotNewHipHop.com, 10 Jan. 2026 Did you know? If you feel a sense of doom when asked to define deem, we're here with some details for your dome (sense 7). While today deem is used generally as a synonym of consider (as in “a movie deemed appropriate for all ages”), its origins are more formal, coming specifically from the realm of law. The oldest meaning of deem, which comes from the Old English verb dēman (relative of dōm, meaning “doom”) is “to sit in judgment upon,” as employed by Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queen: “... at th'one side six Judges were dispos'd, / To view and deem the deeds of arms that day.” This sense was obsolete by the early 17th century, and other senses including “to expect or hope” have come and gone, but deem's use overall has never dimmed. In fact, today's most common meaning of “to come to think or judge something; to consider” has also been in use since Old English and is still deemed quite common.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 27, 2026 is: nettle • NET-ul • verb To nettle someone is to make them angry or annoyed. // Though he tried to maintain a friendly tone, the town official was clearly nettled by the reporter's suggestion that the town was at fault. See the entry > Examples: "I can't help but be reminded of an idiom that irked me no end during times of familial stress ... : 'Use it or lose it.' The message being that if a skill or resource is not regularly utilised, over time, we will lose it. As nettled as I was by it, I now feel obliged to acknowledge the obvious truth behind the catchphrase." — Gwen Loughman, The Journal (Ireland), 21 Aug. 2025 Did you know? If you've ever brushed against nettles, you know those plants have sharp bristles that can leave you smarting and itching. The painful and irritating rash that nettles cause can last for days, but at least it is a rash with a linguistic silver lining. The discomfort caused by nettles can serve to remind one that the verb nettle is a synonym of irritate. Nettle originated as a plant name that we can trace to the Old English word netel. Eventually, people likened the persistent stinging itch caused by the plant to the nagging aggravation of being annoyed, and nettle joined the likes of vex, peeve, and irk in describing such little miseries.

Unlocked bonus episode: A very brief intro to the history and focus of Old English prose. Credits –  Music: 'Wælheall' by Hrōðmund Wōdening ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQfdqIyqJ4g&list=LL&index=5&ab_channel=Hr%C5%8D%C3%B0mundW%C5%8Ddening⁠ Social Media -  Patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/anglosaxonengland⁠ Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/Anglo-Saxon-England-Podcast-110529958048053⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/anglosaxonenglandpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

DESCRIPTION - TNS 18, 2 - St. Bede the Venerable (672-735 CE), Doctor of the Church - on the (biblical text) Song of Songs - Love as LearningOur Guest has been understood to have been the most learned of the Anglo-Saxon Christians. The particular Form of love that we will notice in him is his love expressed in his devotion to learning of God and of the world that God has given us.The age of the Anglo-Saxons extends from the time when the Romans lost control of Britain around 410 CE up to 1066 CE when the Normans invaded Britain. The Anglo-Saxons (the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes - invaders from modern day Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands) were the original “English” peoples (vs. the Britons who were far older, Celtic, inhabitants of Britain), and the type of English that they spoke and wrote was what we call “Old English”.Bede was only 7-years old when he entered a monastery (Benedictine), spending the rest of his life there. Mostly teaching himself by his voracious reading, he had what was clearly a divine desire (what we call a “charism”) to love God through learning. And because God is lord of all, so Bede became through extraordinary effort a polymath; i.e., he became an accomplished student of many disciplines, not just the Bible and all the ways of reading it, not just of Theology, but also, and most famously, of History, and more specifically, his writing of the history of how the Anglo-Saxons came to become Christians. His Ecclesiastical History of the English [i.e., Anglo-Saxon] People is a founding document of the whole discipline of History.Last month at The Night School, our Guest was the author of the biblical book, Song of Songs. This month, we will appreciate how Bede's love for learning gave him the insights he had into Song of Songs. We will explore sections of his Commentary on Song of Songs.Welcome to the Night School.

Beloved,Happy Valentines Day. I have a LOVE STORY that you will SEE YOUR OWN STORY within. We all feel it.A vigilance for justice and new resurging freedom in the coming year as the Fire Horse takes the lead.The blaze ignites suppressed collective forces and pushes survival systems past their breaking points. We are entering a new era where authority shifts from systems and structures to the visceral intelligence of the spirit intelligence. So as we mark the end of survival as the organizing principle and the beginning of heart opening aliveness…….ultimately we are:Choosing Love Out LoudRight now, more than ever, we are collectively craving one thing—safety.Not just physical safety, but the kind that lets us exhale fully. The kind that allows our shoulders to drop, our hearts to soften, and our nervous systems to rest.We are living in a world that feels uncertain. The division, the pace, the pressure— all rising. And in the midst of it, many of us are quietly asking: Where can I feel safe? Where can I return to myself?For me, this question has shaped everything.My life's work has been about nurturing this very feeling—-creating spaces, -rituals, and deep connections that help others remember ….in what it feels like to truly rest inside the light within ourselves.And recently, something sacred arrived in my life, a presence I call Love—and I want to honor her arrival with the reverence she deserves.But before I introduce you to her, I want to share a bit about the journey that brought us together. I believe it holds a mirror to so many of our own paths.The Power of the PathTwo years ago, I put my name on a waitlist for a litter of puppies.At the time, I didn't realize what I was actually signing up for.It would take two full years to finally be granted first pick.Two years of waiting.Two years of wondering if it would ever happen.Looking back, I see that those two years were not a delay—they were a divine invitation.My angels and guides used that time to do deep, quiet work within me.To clear out old stories.To help me soften into the truth of who I am.I wasn't just waiting for a puppy.I was being prepared to receive Love.Choosing a Different Kind of LifeDuring that time, I was also navigating a life that doesn't follow the traditional script.No marriage.No children.Just me, my work, and the sacred space I hold for others.It's a path that has asked me to shed layers of perfectionism and comparison.To stop apologizing for what my life doesn't look like.And instead, to honor what it is: creative, spiritual, intentional.I've learned that we often shrink what we love in order to stay safe.But that shrinking is an illusion.Real safety comes from expansion.From saying, This is what I love. This is what I'm building - the Kingdom of God in a stolen world - offering us a opportunity of lifetimes.Meeting LoveAnd now, she's about here.Five more weeks.A small, grounded being with soft eyes and a quiet strength.She's not here to selfishly fill a emptiness - She's here to be.To embody what I've been learning.I've had many visions of us channeling together.To walk with me through the streets, into my salon, into the hearts of those we meet.She is Love, made visible.And she is a reminder that one regulated nervous system—just one—can shift the energy of a room.Of a day.Of a life.Anchors for the JourneyAre you working through uncertainty right now?If so, I want to offer you a few anchors that have helped me:Keep Your Vision Bright.Your imagination is sacred. It's not a distraction—it's a direction. Follow it.Serve with Boundaries.You can love people deeply without abandoning yourself.Evolve at Your Own Pace.The world will try to rush you. Don't let it. Go slow. Go deep.Stay Cheerful Inside.Not toxic positivity—but a quiet cheerfulness. A kind of spiritual defiance that says, I still believe in beauty.There Is No Finish Line.There is only today. Only the practice. Only the breath.Love as a FrequencyLove is a resonance that needs no words.It's not weakness.It's alignment.It's power.When we choose to become love—not just give it, but become it—it meets us back in ways we could never have planned.That's what's happening for all of us - now.❤️ I love you. May you find the safety to soften.May you choose Love, out loud.And may you FEEL the Love choosing you right back.❤️ Love, KassandraOOOH! PS: On Christmas Eve, I surprised my parents by putting money down for their own little puppy to enter their lives. To my delight, they said yes! This week, they welcomed little Albert. I'm SO in love with my parents, and now I have another love in my life as we welcome this new addition to their home, filling it with even more joy. He's just so adorable.PPS: If you have a dog or also in the pursuit…….please hit reply, as I am creating a epic journey to support the sacred naming process.Yup. I've already started a SACRED DOG naming journey (or meaning to a current dog's name). Here's a sneak peek of how it curates the energy and spiritual connection with “LOVE.” Origin & EtymologyDerived from Old English lufu, and rooted in the Proto-Germanic lubō, “Love” is a word that has transcended language to become a universal vibration. It is not bound by culture, creed, or species—it is the essence that binds all.Core MeaningUnconditional affection, divine union, and the highest vibrational field available to sentient beings. Love is the frequency that dissolves fear, heals wounds, and magnetizes abundance.How “Love” Filters the Energy of the Heart and HomeThe name “Love” acts as a harmonic tuning fork. Each time it is spoken, it initiates a subtle recalibration of the home's energetic field—transmuting conflict, anchoring presence, and inviting softness. Your dog becomes a walking reminder of your soul's true north.This name is especially potent in spaces where healing, forgiveness, or heart-centered leadership are needed. It is not passive—it is powerful.The Seed Sound: Why “Love” ResonatesPhonetically, “Love” is a single-syllable seed sound. The soft “L” opens the heart chakra gently, while the “V” vibrates through the throat and solar plexus, encouraging expression and emotional courage.Spoken slowly—“Luhv”—it becomes both a mantra and a medicine.The Name Decree (The Scroll)✦ ✦ ✦By the power of presence, and in honor of the sacred bond between human and guardian soul,I hereby decree the name of this Spiritual Ambassador to be:✦ LOVE ✦May this name be spoken with reverence,May its frequency ripple through every corner of our home,And may its essence awaken truth, tenderness, and transformation.This name is not given lightly—it is offered as a gift, a vibration, a vow.So it is spoken. So it shall be.✦ ✦ ✦The Light Between is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelightbetween.substack.com/subscribe

Mystery-Clad Being The Primal Rhythm of Being and the Heart of All Reality by Doug Scott, LCSW I. The Nature of Mystery We have just heard [previous presenter] speak beautifully about the theme of mystery. I want to build on that foundation with a particular question: What is the nature of the mystery that we are exploring? Mystery is not that which cannot be known. Mystery is that which can never be exhausted in all the ways of knowing. It is infinitely knowable—which means we can spend eternity exploring it and never arrive at complete comprehension. Not because it withholds itself from us, but because it is inexhaustible in its richness. This is a crucial distinction. Mystery is not ignorance. It is not a wall we cannot penetrate. Mystery is an ocean we can swim in forever, each stroke revealing new depths, new currents, new wonders. The fullness of mystery—what we might call gnosis—is not a destination we arrive at but a horizon that recedes as we approach, always inviting us further. Ra describes this with precise language when speaking of the fundamental rhythms of intelligent infinity: "The basic rhythms of intelligent infinity are totally without distortion of any kind. The rhythms are clothed in mystery, for they are being itself." (27.7) Clothed in mystery. Not hidden by mystery. Clothed in it—the way a body is clothed, the way we wear our appearance. Mystery is not what conceals being from us. Mystery is being, wearing its own inexhaustibility. So tonight I want to ask: If being itself is clothed in mystery, can we nonetheless discern something of its shape? Its flow? Its fundamental rhythm? Can we, while honoring the inexhaustibility, trace patterns that appear consistently across Ra's teachings—patterns that might illuminate something primal about the nature of reality itself? II. Being as Verb: Does It Have a Shape? Notice that Ra says the rhythms are being itself. Not that being has rhythms. Not that being does rhythms. The rhythms are being. This is being as verb, not as noun. Not a thing that exists, but existence itself as dynamic, self-processing oscillation. What does Ra tell us about the shape of this rhythm? In Session 27.6, we find a remarkable description: "Intelligent infinity has a rhythm, or flow, as of a giant heart beginning with the Central Sun... the presence of the flow inevitable as a tide of beingness without polarity, without finity; the vast and silent all beating outward, outward, focusing outward and inward until the focuses are complete. The intelligence or consciousness of foci have reached a state where their, shall we say, spiritual nature or mass calls them inward, inward, inward until all is coalesced. This is the rhythm of reality." A giant heart. Beating outward, outward... then inward, inward, inward until all is coalesced. This is the shape of being itself: a circulation. Not linear progression, not random chaos, but rhythmic circulation—emanation and return, expansion and coalescence, systole and diastole. III. The Primal Desire: Joy Seeking to Know Itself But why? Why does being beat outward and then inward? What drives the circulation? Ra gives us the answer in the most fundamental teaching of all: "The Creator will know Itself" (27.8). This is the First Distortion, the primal movement from undifferentiated unity toward manifestation. Not "wants to know" as if lacking something—but will, an active, ongoing, generative drive. Here is the crucial insight: This desire is not experienced as lack. It is experienced as Joy. The Creator's desire to know Itself is not a hunger born of deficiency but a fullness seeking to express and discover itself through infinite perspectives. Joy is the fundamental affective quality of being itself. And this Joy can only be fulfilled through experience. The Creator cannot know Itself through static contemplation. Self-knowing requires circulation—going forth into differentiated expression and returning enriched by what the journey has gathered. This means experience is circulation. The going forth and the returning are not separate from experience—they are experience itself in its most fundamental form. IV. The Heart as Locus of Circulation If experience is circulation, and circulation has a pattern—outward, inward, coalescence—then we can ask: Is there a center to this circulation? Is there a locus where the three movements meet? Ra speaks directly to this in Session 82.7: "There is a center to infinity. From this center all spreads. Therefore, there are centers to the creation, to the galaxies, to star systems, to planetary systems, and to consciousness. In each case you may see growth from the center outward." A center from which all spreads. This is the ontological definition of a heart—not merely an organ that pumps blood, not merely a chakra that processes emotion, but the locus of circulation itself. Wherever being localizes—whether as universe, galaxy, star, planet, or person—there exists a heart: a center where the three forces of circulation operate. The Three Forces Outward Flow (Emanation): From the heart, energy emanates. The Original Thought—the Creator's desire to know Itself—pulses forth from this center into manifestation, seeking, exploring, differentiating. Ra speaks of the vast and silent all "beating outward, outward." Inward Flow (Return): To the heart, experience returns. The spiritual nature or mass of the foci "calls them inward, inward, inward." This is what Ra elsewhere calls "spiritual gravity"—the attractive force drawing consciousness back toward center, back toward Source. Coalescence (Integration): Within the heart, what went forth and what returns are integrated. Ra uses several terms for this: coalesced (27.6), distilled (18.5—"distilling from them the love/light within them"), and in other passages, the image of atoms finding "precise distances from each other" to "produce a lattice structure which we call crystalline" (29.23). Coalescence is not mere combination. It is integration that transforms. What went forth as seed returns as harvest. What emanated as question returns as lived answer. The heart distills, processes, and prepares the next arising. V. The Modes of Joy: Yearning, Longing, Rejoicing Now we can go deeper. The three movements—outward, inward, coalescence—are kinetic. They are movements. But what generates them? What is the affective quality that drives the circulation? I want to suggest that the three movements are responses to three prior conditions—three ontological yearnings that are themselves modes of Joy. These yearnings do not cause the movements mechanically; they are the movements in their affective dimension. Yearning (to go forth): At the primal level, yearning is not lack. It is eager desire, anticipation, the joy in becoming. The Old English giernan means "to strive, be eager, desire"—and shares roots with the Greek chaírein, "to rejoice." Yearning is rejoicing—no lack, only eager delight in the adventure about to unfold. This generates the outward flow. Longing (to return): Once consciousness has gone forth and differentiated, a new quality of desire emerges. Longing is desire stretched across the distance that experience has created. The Old English langian means literally "to grow long, to lengthen"—stretching toward what is distant. This is the memory of home pulling homeward, joy stretched toward reunion. This generates the inward flow. Rejoicing (in union): When outward and inward meet in the heart, there is consummation. Rejoicing, from the Latin gaudēre, originally meant "to possess, to enjoy possession of, to have fruition of." It is the joy of completion, of harvest gathered, of distillation accomplished. This generates coalescence and seeds the new arising. And throughout—enjoying. Being in joy. The Old French enjoir means literally "to be placed within joy, to dwell in joy." This is the medium through which the entire circulation occurs. There is no moment outside of joy, because joy is being itself in its affective dimension. VI. The Two Energies Within Us This cosmic pattern is not distant from us. Ra tells us it operates within our own energy system. In Session 49.5-6, Ra describes two types of energy operating within the mind/body/spirit complex: "The most important concept to grasp about the energy field is that the lower, or negative pole, will draw the universal energy into itself from the cosmos. Therefrom it will move upward to be met and reacted to by the positive spiraling energy moving downward from within." "Meanwhile the Creator lies within. In the north pole the crown is already upon the head and the entity is potentially a god." Two flows: one rising from below, drawing universal energy from the cosmos; one descending from within, where the Creator already dwells. The place where they meet—this is what Ra calls kundalini, "the meeting place of cosmic and inner vibratory understanding." This meeting point is our heart, in its deepest sense. The cosmic rhythm that beats through all creation beats through you. The yearning that sends energy outward, the longing that draws it back, the rejoicing where they meet—these are not metaphors. They are the actual dynamics of your being. VII. The Pattern Appears Everywhere This pattern of three forces—outward flow, inward flow, coalescence—appears throughout nature and science. Not because science "proves" metaphysics, but because the same pattern that constitutes being manifests at every scale. Physics: White holes (cosmic emanation) and black holes (cosmic return). The Big Bang as universal outward flow, gravitational collapse as universal inward flow. The strange attractor in chaos theory—which we will watch in a moment—reveals how apparent chaos organizes around a hidden center. Chemistry: Dissipative structures maintain organization through constant circulation of energy—taking in, transforming, releasing. Living systems are precisely such structures. Biology: The heartbeat itself. Systole (contraction, emanation) and diastole (relaxation, reception). Breath: inhalation drawing the world in, exhalation releasing transformed air. The cell taking nutrients in, processing, releasing waste. Psychology: Attachment theory describes the child moving out into the world (secure base), returning to the caregiver (safe haven), and being transformed by the cycle. We spend our lives circulating between independence and intimacy. Neuroscience: The brain itself can be understood as a torus on its side—two hemispheres longing for each other across the corpus callosum, which functions as both veil and bridge. The left hemisphere specializes in focused analysis; the right in holistic context. Neither is complete without the other. The longing between them is the mechanism of integrated consciousness. VIII. Strange Attractor Contemplation   Watch the point move through space. It never repeats. Never traces the same path twice. And yet—it does not wander randomly. Something draws it. Something organizes its apparent chaos.   This is called a strange attractor. "Attractor" because the system is drawn toward it. "Strange" because it has a shape that can never be fully occupied—the trajectory approaches infinitely close but never lands. The point spirals around one wing... then crosses to spiral around the other... then crosses back. Two centers. One circulation. The pattern never settles, never completes, never exhausts itself.   Watch how each spiral tightens toward center... then releases... and is drawn across to begin again. This is what longing looks like when mapped in phase space. The memory of center draws the wandering point. Not forcing—luring. The attractor does not compel. It invites. The point is free at every moment—and at every moment, it is being called.   You are watching the shape of yearning made visible. Going forth... being drawn back... crossing over... spiraling in... releasing out... and being drawn again. The outward is contained by the inward. The inward is activated by the outward. Neither exists without the other. This is circulation. This is life.   Now notice: there is no visible center. You cannot see the attractor itself. You see only the response to it—the endless spiral dance of something being drawn, being lured, being loved into pattern. The attractor is known only by its effects. It is mystery-clad. Present everywhere in the system. Visible nowhere except in what it organizes.   Ra said the rhythms of intelligent infinity are "clothed in mystery, for they are being itself." This is what it looks like when being wears its mystery: infinite complexity, perfect order, inexhaustible novelty—all dancing around a center that can never be possessed, only approached.   Feel how this is also your life. Going forth into experience... being drawn back toward something you cannot name but cannot forget... crossing between worlds—outer and inner, manifest and hidden—spiraling closer, then releasing, then spiraling again. You have never been lost. The attractor has always been calling. Every apparently random movement was already part of the pattern—the inexhaustible pattern that clothes the Center in visible mystery.   The heart beats. Outward, outward... inward, inward... until all is coalesced. This is the rhythm of reality. --- IX. Consolation: We Are Never Alone Before we turn to practice, I want to offer something pastoral. If the cosmic rhythm is yearning-longing-rejoicing, and if this same rhythm operates in you... then your own yearning and longing are not separate from God's. Your ache to return, your restlessness for something more, your homesickness for a home you cannot quite remember—this is God's own longing operating within and through you. You are inside divine longing even as it is inside you. Whitehead called God "the fellow sufferer who understands." But it goes deeper than that. God is not watching our longing from outside. God is longing through us, with us, as us. The yearning you feel is not evidence of God's absence but of God's presence within that very yearning. This means: You are never alone. The sense of alienation—the veil's deepest effect—produces not separation itself, but the felt conviction that separation is absolute. Softening that conviction is the heart of spiritual practice. Not replacing it with certainty of connection—that would be another kind of grasping—but allowing the possibility that we are not alone, that we have never been alone, that aloneness was always appearance rather than reality. And the restlessness? The ache that never quite goes away? This is not meant to be eliminated. It is meant to be tended—like a wound that is healing, like butterfly wings that are still wet, like an infant in arms. The tender, aching place is holy ground. It is where the longing lives. And the longing is the connection. X. Feeling the Torus Within I want to share from my own personal experience, because perhaps you have this too—and if you do not, you can, because it is simply a latent sense organ. You and I have five sense organs that perceive third density space/time: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. But did you know that we also have subtle sense organs? These are latent—not often used consciously—but they do arise in us through intuitive knowing and through the empathic connections we make with others. I'd like to share that you can begin to feel a sense of circulation around you. For the past five years or so, I feel this all the time. At my core—at the heart, the central axis of my personal torus—I feel a clockwise circulation spinning within me. But there is also an outward field around me, and this outer field circulates counterclockwise. I feel it. It is my subtle skin. I feel this most acutely when I am connecting with someone else. As a counselor—or simply as a friend—when I am fully aware of what I am doing, I will intentionally extend my toroidal field and connect it with the other person. Sometimes I extend it so far that it encompasses them entirely, depending on what I feel called to do in the moment. When I do this, I essentially become the other person. We are all one self, other-selves in one body, and this is a transposition of consciousness. In the counseling moment, it is myself—Doug—who connects with my client, and then I become embodied inside of their experience. I become that person, in a sense, through the energy. Through this flow, through this exchange of information on the subtle realm, I feel intuitively the blockages or the places of freedom within their aura, within their energy centers, as if they were my own. And so I am able to almost surgically connect with the other person through verbal speaking—articulating what I myself am feeling as if it were my own body on the other side. Because when I join that field, it is my own body. You can learn to do this too.   XI. Living from the Heart To "live from the heart" is not sentimental advice. It is an invitation to conscious alignment with the very structure of being. The heart already functions as this center—it cannot do otherwise, for this is what hearts are. But we can dwell there consciously or unconsciously, harmoniously or in resistance. The center was never absent. The rhythm never ceased. What awakens is not the heart itself but our recognition of it—our willingness to inhabit the center we never left, to feel the pulse we always were, to dance the rhythm that dances us. The yearning that sent you forth on this journey—it was already joy in the guise of anticipation. The longing that draws you homeward—it is joy stretched across the distance you have traveled. And the rejoicing that awaits in the meeting—it is joy consummated, the fullness you have always been moving toward. The heart beats. The mystery clothes itself in rhythm. And we—mystery-clad beings ourselves—pulse with the same life that pulses through all creation. Outward, outward... inward, inward... until all is coalesced. This is the rhythm of reality. This is who we are. * * * Appendix: Key Ra Quotes Referenced Ra 27.6: "Intelligent infinity has a rhythm, or flow, as of a giant heart beginning with the Central Sun... the vast and silent all beating outward, outward, focusing outward and inward until the focuses are complete. The intelligence or consciousness of foci have reached a state where their, shall we say, spiritual nature or mass calls them inward, inward, inward until all is coalesced. This is the rhythm of reality." Ra 27.7: "The basic rhythms of intelligent infinity are totally without distortion of any kind. The rhythms are clothed in mystery, for they are being itself." Ra 27.8: "In this distortion of the Law of One it is recognized that the Creator will know Itself." Ra 82.7: "There is a center to infinity. From this center all spreads. Therefore, there are centers to the creation, to the galaxies, to star systems, to planetary systems, and to consciousness. In each case you may see growth from the center outward." Ra 49.5: "The most important concept to grasp about the energy field is that the lower, or negative pole, will draw the universal energy into itself from the cosmos. Therefrom it will move upward to be met and reacted to by the positive spiraling energy moving downward from within." Ra 49.6: "Meanwhile the Creator lies within. In the north pole the crown is already upon the head and the entity is potentially a god." Ra 18.5: "[T]o experience all things desired, to then analyze, understand, and accept these experiences, distilling from them the love/light within them." Ra 29.23 (Question and Answer summarized): "[A]s the atoms form from rotations of the vibration which is light, they coalesce in a certain manner sometimes. They find distances, inter-atomic distances, from each other at precise distance and produce a lattice structure which we call crystalline." Ra 36.7: "The mass increases, shall we say, significantly but not greatly until the gateway density [7th]. In this density the summing up, the looking backwards—in short, all the useful functions of polarity have been used. Therefore, the metaphysical electrical nature of the individual grows greater and greater in spiritual mass." Ra 52.12: "This octave density of which we have spoken is both omega and alpha, the spiritual mass of the infinite universes becoming one central sun or Creator once again."

Quantum Physics Proves Faith (4) Be Careful – Words Create (audio) David Eells – 2/1/26 Mar 11:23-24 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that what he saith cometh to pass; he shall have it. (24) Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye received (Greek) them, and ye shall have them. Looking at it from a surface level, it would seem a ridiculous statement that Jesus made. How is it possible that spoken words would send a mountain, or a spiritual equivalent, into the sea?   Mustard Seed and Quantum Physics When Jesus said in Luke 17:6, “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you would say…” He was speaking of the smallest seed that could be seen in His time. If He were here today, He might say, “If you had faith as an atom…” Or even smaller, “If you had faith as a quark (which is a subatomic particle)…” The point He was making was that small things that cannot be easily seen manifest themselves and affect things in this larger world where we live. Quantum physics is the study of things so small that we cannot see them, yet everything we see is made of these subatomic particles. Remember, Hebrews 11:3 “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Before God spoke and said, “Let there be light”, the substance for light was there. The sound vibration of His words caused the substance to manifest and appear. Words are energy and energy affects matter. The energy of your microwave vibrates the water molecules and heats the water. The energy of electricity flows to your washing machine and powers the motor that spins the tub and cleans your clothes. So, we can rightfully say that energy affects matter. Your words are energy and they affect the matter in your life. When you speak the words, “This is the worst car I have ever had! You stupid piece of junk!” Those words are vibrations of energy that affect the atoms that make up that car. If you speak those words long enough, your car will obey you! Scientists have performed experiments with atoms and their subatomic particles, such as electrons. If you paid attention in school, you saw the diagram of an atom with the electron orbiting it like the Earth orbits the sun. The interesting thing is that scientists have discovered that the electron that is shown orbiting the nucleus is not always there in particle form. It exists in a wave state (like a cloud, everywhere at once) until someone looks at it. When the scientist observes it, it suddenly appears as a dot (particle). What we all want to know is, “How does it know someone is looking at it?” It obviously is responding to the observer's interaction with it. One of the difficulties in quantum physics is that the particles behave somewhat differently for each observer, which leads to the question, “Does it behave according to what the scientist believes?” In any event, we can definitely conclude that Jesus was right when He taught that all matter responds to faith and words. The substance from which our world is made is influenced and manifested by words. The things that you desire are made up of atoms. They know what you believe, hear what you say and behave accordingly! The thoughts and beliefs that you carry also produce an energy around you. Have you ever noticed that when you are angry, things go wrong, and people are insulting and angry with you? Your thoughts and beliefs produce an energy that people can perceive and react to. If you believe that no one likes you, then you emit that rejecting type of energy, and people will be driven away from you. If you love people and care about them, they will feel that and be drawn to you. Have you ever been around someone who is pleasant and full of love? It is an energy you can actually feel. The energy of love is a powerful drawing card for good in your life. After all, God is Love. When you believe that God loves you and wants you to prosper, then you change your words and beliefs about money. Now, I have learned to think, believe, and say, “Things always work out for me. Everything that I do prospers and I have abundance in Jesus' name.” God is not limited to the things that you and I see. There is an infinite supply of substance waiting to be manifest according to your beliefs and words! Let me share with you portions of this video transcript on how we need to be careful, because our words create. Please remember, I only used what I agree with, but my advice in red is from a biblical perspective. It's called:   This Ancient Code Reveals EXACTLY How Your Words Control Reality The Universe Obeys This Philosophical Essence - 12/1/2025 (David's notes in red) Everything is energy, including the words you speak. This deep-dive uncovers the hidden influence language has on perception, belief, emotion, and the human nervous system. You'll explore how words shape internal states, how meanings influence behavior, and why conscious speech can transform the trajectory of your life. This masterclass breaks down the roots behind commonly used terms, how repetition affects the subconscious, and why intentional language can create profound psychological shifts. You'll learn practical tools to upgrade your vocabulary, shift limiting self-talk, and reclaim the creative power hidden inside everyday speech. If you've ever felt like your potential was muted, your confidence diluted, or your reality stuck on repeat — this is the missing piece. Your words are not just expressions… they're instructions. Reclaim the code. Pro 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue; And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. Your words have a very dark secret. I'll prove they're controlling your reality. What if I told you that every word you've ever spoken was a spell? And what if the people who designed language knew this from the very beginning? (Correction: God created this from the scattering of Babel by their languages He gave them.) There's a reason they call it “spelling”. It's called that because you're literally casting spells every time you arrange letters into words. And here's what nobody tells you: the words you were taught to use were specifically chosen to keep you trapped in a mental prison you can't even see. (Correction: Jesus taught that our words bind AND loose.) But it's not your mistake. And before you dismiss this as a conspiracy theory, let me show you something. Look at the word “grammar”. Where does it come from? Grimoire. That's a book of magic spells. The structure of language grammar was originally understood as a magical system. (But it is more correctly a supernatural system.) Then there's “cursive writing.” We call it cursive because it creates curses. And “spelling”; you're casting spells. This isn't hidden. It's right there in plain sight. They just trained you to laugh it off as coincidence. (Most of what lost man says is a curse.) But here's where it gets disturbing. In 1946, something vanished from American schools. Not prayer. Not paddling. Etymology. The study of where words come from and what they actually mean. And the moment they removed it, you lost the ability to see the trap. Because when you understand what words really mean at their root, you start noticing that almost every word you use was designed to program you into accepting limitations you never agreed to. Let me prove it to you right now. There's a reason they stopped teaching etymology in 1946. Before that, every kid learned to decode words to understand the hidden programs inside language. Then it stopped. Everywhere all at once. They replaced it with memorization and standardized tests. Why? Because if you knew that, ‘understand' literally means ‘to stand under' - to submit, you might stop saying ‘I understand' in every agreement. If you knew ‘government' breaks ‘to govern,' meaning to control and ‘meant' meaning mind, you might start questioning authority differently. They gave you a corrupted vocabulary and told you words don't matter. But words are spells. And they've been casting them over you your entire life. Listen, I know how that sounds. I know you're probably thinking, OK, this is going to be some weird metaphor thing, but stay with me because what I'm about to show you isn't a metaphor at all. It's physics. It's biology. And they've (more like Satan has) systematically hidden it from you, because once you understand that your words aren't describing reality, they're creating it, you become ungovernable. (It starts with the heart. Rom 10:10 for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.) Here's the truth nobody's telling you. You've been doing the work right? Like positive thinking? This means you're not lazy and you're definitely not missing some secret ingredient. But here's what's happening. You've been using contaminated language that programs failure directly into your nervous system. And they did that on purpose. (It's not “they”, its unbelief in God who made the rules.) Think about it. You say, “I'm trying to lose weight.” What does your subconscious hear? “Trying. Attempting but not succeeding.” It means effort without result. You say, “I want to be successful.” Your body hears, “want, lack, desire. The state of not having.” You say, “I need more money.” Your cells receive “need, scarcity, desperation, and emergency mode.” Every single one of those statements is a spell. And you just cast limitation into your reality without even knowing it. (Jesus said, “believe you have received”.) Now here's what they don't want you to know. The elite study etymology like their lives depend on it. They teach their children Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Hebrew, these ancient languages that are basically frequency codes. While they're learning to program reality, they give your kids text, speak, and emojis. They dumb down the vocabulary. They remove etymology from schools, and they tell you the biggest lie ever told. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” That's not protection. That's programming you to dismiss the most powerful force in your reality. Words aren't neutral. I need you to understand this. They're not just communication tools; they're technology. Frequency technology. Every word you speak creates an electromagnetic signature. Doctor Masaru Moto proved this. He exposed water to different words: written words, spoken words, and even thoughts directed at water. Then he froze it and photographed the crystals under a microscope. Water, exposed to love and gratitude, form perfect, beautiful, symmetrical crystals. Absolute geometric perfection. Water exposed to ‘hate' and ‘you make me sick' create chaos, broken, distorted, ugly formations. Now here's where it gets crazy. You are 70% water. Every cell, every organ, every system, is mostly water. And you speak, what is it like, 16,000 words a day? Every single word is creating either coherence or chaos inside your body. When you say, “I'm so stupid,” your cells hear that. When you say, “I'm broke, I'm tired; I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed,” every water molecule in your body is reshaping around that frequency. The problem is, nobody told you that thoughts don't create reality. Words do because thoughts are made of words, right? You can't think without language. And if your language is corrupted, your thoughts are corrupted, which means your reality is corrupted. It's that simple. And get this. Spelling and casting spells aren't a coincidence. Grammar comes from Grimoire, a book of spells. Cursive comes from curse. It's all hiding in plain sight, and we laugh it off because we've been trained to dismiss it as coincidence. But once you decode even five words, you can't “unsee it”. “Mortgage” - Mort means death, like mortal mortuary. Gauge means pledge, like engage in a binding agreement. So mortgage equals “death pledge”. You're signing a death pledge, and they call it that right to your face. “Pharmacy” comes from pharmakeia, which is sorcery, witchcraft. “Government” equals governance, control, plus ‘meant, mind' equals mind control. They're telling you exactly what they're doing, and you're agreeing because nobody taught you to read the code. So here's what changes once you understand this. Once you get that language is literal reality programming technology, you gain complete linguistic sovereignty. You stop speaking unconsciously. You stop signing invisible contracts. You stop casting limitation spells over your own life. You reclaim the creative power they've deliberately hidden from you. This isn't about positive thinking. Positive thinking is surface-level. It's like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. This is about understanding that you are a frequency generator broadcasting electromagnetic signatures every second, and language is how you tune that frequency. (It's not positive thinking alone, its faith in God's thinking which we are told, “overcomes the world”.) Some people manifest easily and listen. It's not because they're more spiritual or more blessed. They just understand that every sentence is a contract with the universe. And the universe always says yes. You're about to learn what the elite know. You're about to understand why certain people seem to bend reality while others stay stuck in the same patterns year after year. And you're never going to speak the same way again. Because once you know, words are spells, every conversation becomes a conscious ritual. And you are the spellcaster. So let me take you back to 1946. Before that year, every kid in school learned etymology. Not as some optional elective you could skip as protection. They taught you to decode words, to understand the hidden programs inside language. To recognize when someone was casting a spell over you through carefully chosen vocabulary. It was the standard curriculum everywhere. The United States, Europe, Asia, everywhere. Then 1946 hit, and it stopped globally, simultaneously. They replaced etymology with memorization, standardized testing, and regurgitation. Why decode language when you can just memorize what they tell you it means, right? Just trust us. This word means this. Don't ask where it came from, don't ask what the roots are, just memorize it and move on. Here's where it gets crazy. This wasn't a gradual shift. It's not like schools slowly phased it out over decades. This was a coordinated effort after World War II, after they saw what propaganda could do, how language could move entire nations, how words could convince people to do unspeakable things. They systematically removed linguistic literacy from education. Edward Bernays. You've got to know this name. The nephew of Sigmund Freud literally wrote the book on propaganda; “public relations,” he called it. He understood that controlling language controls populations. And his whole philosophy was this: a population that decodes language is dangerous. A population that understands etymology asks too many questions. They see through the manipulation. They recognize the spells being cast. So what did they do? They gave you dumbed-down vocabulary. They told you words are just sounds we assign meaning to. Random, arbitrary. ‘Oh, we just decided this collection of sounds means this thing.' But that's a lie. Every word carries frequency. Every route carries programming. And when you don't know what you're saying, you can't control what you're creating. Think about how many contracts you've signed in your life without understanding the etymology of the terms. How many agreements have you made using words you never decoded? You've been consenting to things you didn't understand because they removed your ability to read the fine print hidden in plain sight. I mean, when you sign a mortgage, do you know you're signing a death pledge? When you go to the pharmacy, do you know you're visiting a place whose name literally means sorcery? When you say, “I understand” in a legal agreement, do you know you're saying, “I position myself beneath your authority?” No, because they removed that knowledge in 1946. Systematically, globally. And nobody questioned it because they framed it as educational reform, progress, and modernization. But it wasn't progress. It was control, and once you see that, you can't “unsee it”. Now, let me remind you about Doctor Masaru Emoto and why his work should have changed everything. This man did something so simple and so profound that it broke through all the academic gatekeeping and hit people right in the gut. He took water, just regular water. And exposed it to different words. He'd write words on paper and tape them to containers of water. He'd play music with different emotional tones. He'd have people speak to the water with different intentions. ‘Love, gratitude, hate.' ‘You make me sick.' ‘I will kill you.' Different frequencies through language and sound. Then he froze the water and photographed the crystals under a microscope. And what he found, water exposed to ‘love and gratitude,' formed perfect, beautiful, symmetrical crystals. Sacred geometry appearing in frozen water because of a word. Water exposed to ‘hate' and ‘you make me sick' became chaotic, distorted, and broken. Now here's what you need to understand. You are 70% water. Every cell in your body, your blood, your organs, your brain, your muscles, is mostly water. And you speak 16,000 words a day. Every single word creates either coherence or chaos inside your body. When you say, “I'm so stupid,” your cells hear that. When you say, “I'm broke, I'm tired, I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed,” every water molecule responds, shifting to match that frequency. Symatics proves this even further. Sand on a vibrating plate forms geometric patterns depending on the frequency. Your body is the plate, your words are the frequency. Your cells arrange themselves accordingly. This is why some people heal, and others don't. This is why placebo works. This is why someone who speaks life lives longer than someone who speaks negativity. The water is listening and it obeys. You've been broadcasting 16,000 reality commands a day and nobody told you your body was listening. Nobody told you that “I am sick” isn't a description, it's an instruction. Your body follows it. Now let's talk about what the elite know. Ever wonder why elite schools still teach Latin? Why their kids study Greek, Sanskrit, and Hebrew, dead languages nobody uses? Why waste time on those? Because those languages are frequency codes, not corrupted, not diluted. Sanskrit words hold precise vibrational signatures. Hebrew letters have numerical frequency structures. Latin is the root of law, medicine, government, and systems of power. They're not learning history. They're learning to program reality. While their kids study ancient frequency languages, yours get text, speak emojis. Slang that changes every few months, so you never develop deep linguistic roots. Corrupted language creates corrupted thinking. (Psa 45:1… My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Where does it write? On your soul.) Corrupted thinking creates powerless people, and powerless people are controllable. The elite know language is technology. They study etymology obsessively. They understand words like, mortgage, pharmacy, and understand, all carry hidden commands. They use these words on you while avoiding them themselves. (This is not possible because what they sow they reap and they are clearly corrupted.) Listen to how they talk privately. Precise, intentional, never casual. Every word is a contract. Every conversation is a ritual. Language is how they cast spells. They removed etymology so you wouldn't see the manipulation. They simplified your vocabulary. They told you language doesn't matter while mastering rhetoric, persuasion and linguistic magic at elite universities. The game has always been rigged. But now you know. Princeton University ran an experiment for decades called The Global Consciousness Project. They set up random number generators all over the world. Machines that should produce completely random data. No pattern. No predictability. Just pure randomness. Then they measured what happened during major global events. September 11th, massive natural disasters, Princess Diana's funeral, and the moment Obama was elected. Moments when millions of people focus their consciousness on the same thing at the same time, feeling the same emotions, thinking similar thoughts. The random number generators became less random. Significantly, measurably, statistically impossible to explain away. Human consciousness was affecting machines not through touch, not through proximity, through field, through frequency, through collective attention, creating coherence in the quantum field. (I have found this so. Machines respond to commands.) Now I heard about this, and I thought, “OK, that's interesting. But it's happening with millions of people. What about one person? What about me?” So I got a random number generator app on my phone. Simple thing. Just spits out random numbers between 1 and 100. I watched it for a week, completely random, as expected. No patterns, just chaos. Then I tried something. I focused my intention on it, not hoping, not wishing. I declared out loud, “This device now responds to my consciousness. I'm collapsing the randomness into pattern.” And I held that state. Not desperate, not forcing, just absolute certainty. Like when you know you're about to catch something someone throws to you. That kind of certainty. The numbers started clustering. At first I thought it was chance, but it kept happening. Then patterns emerged, runs of similar numbers, sequences. Then I started trying to will specific ranges, “Give me numbers above 70.” And they came. Not 100% of the time, but way above statistical chance. Enough that I couldn't explain it away, enough that I had to sit with the implications. And here's what hit me in that moment. Sitting there watching my consciousness affect electronics, “If I can do this to a random number generator, what am I doing to my body? What am I doing to my relationships? What am I doing to my bank account?” To every situation I walk into, broadcasting unconscious frequency. Your words aren't just vibrating air. They're not just sound waves that disappear. They're altering electromagnetic fields. They're collapsing quantum possibilities; their programming matter. And when you understand that, when you feel that, you can never speak carelessly again. Every word becomes a conscious act of creation. So let's get into why we call it ‘spelling.' Why not wording? Why not lettering? Think about it. When you're in school, they call it spelling tests. You have to spell words correctly. Why? Why is that the term? Because you're casting spells letter by letter, word by word. You're assembling symbols that carry frequency and when you arrange them correctly, they execute their programming. “Grammar” comes from Grimoire, and a Grimoire is a book of magic spells. “Cursive” comes from curse. It's all hiding in plain sight, but we laugh it off because we've been trained to dismiss it as coincidence. But there are no coincidences in etymology. Language evolved over thousands of years, and every word carries the memory of its origin. The frequency signature of its root. (Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.) Spelling is called spelling because assembling letters into words is literally how you cast spells over reality. Think about school. They drilled it into you. Spelling tests. You had to spell words correctly. Why was that so important? Because incorrect spelling breaks the spell. The frequency changes, the code doesn't execute properly. They were teaching you spell casting and calling it literacy. And you thought you were just learning to read and write. Every e-mail you write, every text you send, every conversation you have, you're casting spells, programming reality, creating experiences. Most people do this unconsciously, which is why most people feel powerless. They're broadcasting random frequency all day long, contradicting themselves, creating chaos, and then wondering why their life feels out of control. But once you know, once you see that language is literally magic (supernatural) disguised as communication, everything changes, you become intentional. You become sovereign. You become the conscious creator they never wanted you to be. Now, let me break down the words you've been using without knowing what you're actually saying. This is where it gets really wild. Because once I show you even 5 or 6 of these, you're going to start seeing it everywhere. Mortgage: You sign this document to buy a house, right? It's normal, everybody does it. But let's decode it. ‘Mort' equals death, like mortal, subject to death. Mortuary where they keep dead bodies. Mortality, the state of dying. ‘Gauge' equals pledge, like engage to pledge yourself. Mortgage equals “death pledge.” You're literally pledging your life force to the bank for 30 years. They're telling you exactly what it is right in the name, but nobody taught you to read the code. You're signing a death pledge and thinking you're just buying a house. The elite who own the banks know exactly what they're making you sign. They know the frequency that word carries, and they use it deliberately. Government: You hear this word every day, but let's break it down. ‘Govern' means to control, to steer, to direct, like a governor on an engine. ‘Meant' means mind, like mental or mentality. Government equals “mind control.” It's not conspiracy theory, it's etymology. They're broadcasting their function in the name itself. They govern your mind through media, education, language, and you call them your government, thinking it's about representation and democracy. Maybe it started that way, but the word tells you what it actually does. Understand: You say it all the time. ‘I understand' what you're saying. ‘I understand' the agreement. But let's look at the roots. ‘Under' equals ‘beneath, below, in a position of submission.' ‘Stand' equals ‘to take a position.' Understand equals “to stand beneath, to submit.” Every time you say, “I understand,” you're literally saying, “I submit to your authority.” (We have to be careful of legalism. Romans 13 commands us to submit to government authority.) Try saying I comprehend instead. Comprehend means to grasp. Feel the difference? Pharmacy: You go there when you're sick. You trust them. But pharmacy comes from the Greek, pharmakeia, which means sorcery, witchcraft, the use of drugs and potions for magical purposes. They're literally practicing sorcery and calling it medicine. And again, I'm not saying don't take medicine, I'm saying know what you're invoking. The word itself carries the frequency of ‘chemical sorcery'. Human: This one is beautiful. ‘Hue' equals light, color. ‘Man' equals mind. Human equals ‘light mind,' ‘light-being.' (We are men who walk in the light when we follow Christ.) You're a ‘being of light and consciousness'. Not an accident, not a meat robot. A light-being having a physical experience. They don't want you knowing that. Person: ‘Per' equals through. ‘Son' equals sound. (We are born “through” the “Son”.) “Person” equals ‘sound moving through form.' You are vibration. You are frequency. Every person is a unique frequency signature broadcasting through matter. This is quantum physics. This is string theory. This is ancient wisdom. And they hid it in a word you use every day. You're not a solid thing. You're sound moving through form, your frequency, wearing meat, and once you get that, you understand why your words matter so much. Because you're already sound. You're already frequency. Your words are consciously directing that frequency. Every one of these words is a revelation. And you've been using them your whole life without knowing what you were saying. That's not an accident, that's intentional obscurity. They don't want you to know what you are or what you're doing. Because once you know you can't be controlled, once you decode the spells, you can't be programmed anymore. Now let's talk about the Bible, because whether you're religious or not, you need to understand what it's telling you about language. The Bible isn't just a religious text. It's a frequency manual, and it tells you flat out, words create reality. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1. But in the beginning was the thought, not the feeling, not the intention, the Word. Creation happens through spoken language. God spoke, and light appeared. God said, and it was so. That's not metaphor, that's mechanics. That's the operating system of reality. Life and death are in the power of the tongue. Proverbs 18:21. Not ‘kind of influenced' by the tongue, not ‘partially affected' by what you say. Life and death. Your tongue, your words, are the determining factor between creating life or creating death in your experience. You're either speaking life over yourself, your family, your finances, your health, or your speaking death. Every day, every conversation. There's no neutral. And then Exodus 3:14. This is huge, Moses asks, ‘God, Who are you? What's your name? Who should I say sent me?' And God doesn't say Steve. God doesn't give some mystical ancient name. God says, I AM that I AM. The most powerful name in the Bible, the name of God, is I AM. And then throughout Scripture, God basically says that's your name, too. You're made in the image of God, right? That means you have the same creative power every time you say, “I am.” You're invoking creator consciousness. You're declaring reality into existence. You're speaking as the source of your experience. Jesus didn't ‘think' demons out of people. He didn't wish them away. He didn't pray quietly and hope they'd leave. He spoke to them, direct command. “Come out,” and they obeyed. Not because He had special magic that you don't have. Because He understood that authority comes through words, through declaration, through command, He understood frequency disrupting frequency. When He calmed the storm, He didn't meditate on calmness. He spoke to the storm, “Peace be still,” and it obeyed. When He healed people, He spoke healing, “Rise and walk. Be made whole. Your faith has healed you.” Words, commands, frequency, altering matter. This isn't about religion. You'd be an atheist, and this still applies because it's physics. It's quantum mechanics. The Bible is just one of many ancient texts trying to tell you that you have this power you always have. They coded it into scripture, into mythology, into every wisdom tradition. Words are creative force, and you are the wielder. You are the one speaking. You are the one creating. So what are you saying? Now let's talk about your electromagnetic body. Because this is where it all comes together. You think you're solid, right? You feel solid. You look in the mirror, and you see a physical body. But that's an illusion. You're 99.9999% empty space. The atoms that make up your body are mostly electromagnetic fields. You are frequency, wearing meat. The HeartMath Institute proved something incredible. Your heart generates an electromagnetic field that extends 15 feet around you in all directions. 15 feet; that's huge! That field carries information, emotion, intention, and frequency. It affects everyone and everything nearby. You felt this. You know when you walk into a room, and someone's angry? You feel it before they say a word. You know when someone's in love. They radiate it. That's not psychic ability, that's electromagnetic field detection. You're reading frequency. Water crystals respond to words because water is a crystalline structure that holds frequency. Doctor Emoto proved that. Symatics shows that sound creates form. Different frequencies literally arrange matter into different patterns. You can watch sand form perfect geometric patterns just from sound vibration. Your voice is frequency, your words are vibration, and your body is rearranging itself in response every single second. Think about this simply. Your cells communicate through chemical signals, right? But also electrical impulses and electromagnetic fields. When you speak, you're broadcasting frequency through all three channels simultaneously. You're not just making sounds, you're programming biology. You're sending instructions through chemistry, electricity, and electromagnetism all at once. This is why negative people drain your energy. Their frequency is chaotic, discordant, low vibration. Your body has to work harder to maintain coherence around them. This is why being around certain people lights you up. Frequency matching resonance. You're synchronizing. This is why some places feel good and others feel heavy. Residual frequency in the electromagnetic field of that space. You are a walking broadcasting station. Your heart is pumping out a 15-foot field of electromagnetic information. Your brain is generating measurable frequencies. Your words are adding specific vibration to that broadcast. The question is, what are you broadcasting? Limitation or possibility? Fear or power? Submission or sovereignty? Your reality is matching your broadcast. Always. So now let's talk about how they control you with this knowledge, because they know everything I'm telling you. They've known it for centuries, and they weaponize it against you every single day. The media doesn't report news; it casts mass spells. Think about it. Every headline is a frequency broadcast. Every phrase repeated across channels is a ritual. Repetition is how you program consciousness. They're not informing you, they're programming you. And they know exactly what they're doing. “Stay safe.” You hear that everywhere now, right? Sounds caring. Sounds like they're looking out for you. But let's decode the frequency. “Stay” equals ‘remain (Remain Safe is good), don't move, don't change, don't grow.' “Safe” equals ‘protected from danger,' which implies danger is everywhere, which triggers fear, which creates contraction. “Stay safe” is a submission command. It programs fear of the world, dependence on authority, and small living. “Stay small.” “Stay controlled.” “Stay afraid.” That's what your subconscious hears every single time. (Remain in safety is a good command.) “The new normal.” Remember this phrase from 2020 repeated 10,000 times across every media outlet? Why that specific phrase? Because repetition programs reality. They're telling you this is normal now. Accept it, adapt. Don't question, don't resist. This is just how things are now. Your mind hears that phrase enough times and it becomes your operating system. You stop fighting. You comply. You adjust. Mission accomplished. Edward Bernays. You've got to understand who this guy was. The nephew of Sigmund Freud literally wrote the book on propaganda in 1928. “Public Relations,” he called it, because propaganda sounded too negative after World War I. But it's the same thing. He understood that controlling language controls populations. He understood that you don't need physical force when you can program minds through repetition, emotional manipulation, and carefully chosen words. His whole philosophy was this: “Give people the illusion of choice while controlling the language that shapes their thinking. Let them think they're free while you're actually directing their thoughts, their beliefs, their behaviors through linguistic programming.” (Not just words but their emotion and intent are also broadcast. Stay safe, be healed, be free, have emotion and intent.) He helped sell wars. He helped sell cigarettes to women by calling them ‘freedom torches'. He helped sell political candidates like products, using the same techniques. Control the language, control the people. They know language is frequency. They know repetition programs consciousness. They know fear-based words trigger survival responses that shut down critical thinking. So they weaponize it every single day on every platform. News, social media, and entertainment. It's all programming, all frequency manipulation, all spell casting at a massive scale. But here's the key. Here's what they don't want you knowing. You can't be programmed if you're aware. Once you recognize the spell being cast, it loses power over you. You start noticing, “Oh, they're using that phrase to trigger fear. (Don't leave out emotion and intent.) They're repeating this to program acceptance. They're framing this to shut down questions.” And the spell breaks. You become immune. You become sovereign, you become ungovernable. Now let's talk about the “I am” secret, because this is the most powerful thing I can teach you. “I am” are the two most powerful words in any language. Not just English, any language. Why? Because I AM is the name of God. The tetragrammaton, YHWH in Hebrew. I AM that I AM. When Moses asked God's name of the burning Bush, God didn't say Jeff. God didn't give some mystical ancient title. God said, “I AM.” That's not a name, that's a state of being, it's present tense existence, pure presence, pure creative power. And then the Bible tells you over and over. This is your name, too. You're made in the image of God. You have the same creative authority. When you say, “I am”, you're not describing yourself. You're not making an observation. You're commanding reality. You're speaking as the creator of your experience. The quantum field responds to “I am” declarations instantly. Not eventually. Not if you're good enough. Instantly. Because “I am" is the voice of Source consciousness and reality obeys Source. Here's where most people mess this up completely. They say, “I am trying to be confident.” Wrong. Trying cancels creator power. Trying means ‘attempting but not succeeding.' Its failure language. They say, “I am working on being healthy.” Wrong. Working on means, ‘not there yet.' Its future language; the quantum field only responds to now. They say, “I wish I was,” or “I want to be”, or “someday I'll be”. All wrong, all failure codes, all spells of lack. (True, we are to believe and speak that Jesus lives in us, and our old man is dead. 2Co 3:18. We are to speak the end from the beginning as the Lord said.) “I am” is present tense, absolute, declarative, not hope, not intention, command. “I am abundant,” not, “I want abundance”, not, “I'm trying to create abundance”. “I am abundant right now as I speak”, present tense, total certainty. (True) “I am healthy,” not “I'm trying to get healthy”, not “I'm working on being healthy”. I am healthy, period. No question, no doubt. “I am sovereign.” Not, “I'm working on confidence”. Not, “I wish I were more confident”. I am sovereign. Full stop. No negotiation. Whatever follows “I am” becomes your reality instruction to the universe, and the universe doesn't argue, it doesn't judge, it doesn't question whether you deserve it. It says “yes” and starts arranging circumstances, people and opportunities to match your declaration. That's how creation works. That's the operating system. This is why Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, the life.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am the resurrection.” He was demonstrating Creator consciousness. Teaching the template, showing you how to use your divine authority. And then they diluted it. They made it about worshipping Him instead of becoming like Him. Because they don't want you knowing you have this power. They don't want 7 billion people walking around speaking with “I Am authority”. That would be the end of control. (1Pet 4:11 If any man speaks, let it be as an oracle of God.) Now let's get into quantum physics, because this is where science catches up to ancient wisdom. The famous double slit experiment broke physics; changed everything. Scientists shot particles, electrons, and photons at a screen with two slits in it. When they observed which slit the particle went through, the particles behaved like particles. They went through one slit or the other. Made two distinct bands on the back screen. But when they didn't observe, when they just let it happen without measuring, the particles behaved like waves. They went through both slits simultaneously. Created an interference pattern on the back screen, like waves in water overlapping and creating ripples. Same particles; same experiment. The only thing that changed was observation. And that changed the outcome completely, from wave to particle, from potential to actual; from possibility to reality. What does this mean? Particles, the building blocks of everything; matter, energy, and reality, don't exist in a fixed state until observed. They exist as potential, as possibility, as wave function, multiple states existing simultaneously. And observation, consciousness collapses that potential into one definite reality. You're not living in a solid, fixed reality; you're living in a fluid field of potential. And your consciousness is constantly collapsing possibility into form. Every moment, every thought, every word. You're choosing which reality manifests by where you put your attention and what you declare. Your words are observation devices. When you say, “I am broke”, you're not describing your bank account; you're collapsing the wave function of all financial possibility into the specific reality of poverty. You're taking infinite potential and forcing it into one limited outcome. When you say, “I am abundant”, you're collapsing different probabilities. You're observing a different reality into existence. This is why manifestation isn't about begging the universe. It's not about hoping and wishing and trying really hard. It's about declaring. You're not asking for reality to change. You're observing it into the form you choose. Your words are the observation device. And reality has no choice but to comply. That's quantum mechanics. That's how creation works at the subatomic level. Most people don't manifest because they're observing current reality and describing it. “I'm broke, I'm stuck, I'm tired, I'm alone.” Let's just solidifying what already exists. That's like taking a photograph of a photograph. You're not creative, you're copying. (True) Creators observe the desired reality and speak it into being. “I am abundant.” “I am free.” “I am energized.” “I am connected.” You're collapsing different probabilities. You're choosing from infinite potential. Now let's talk about victim language versus creator language. Because this is where you practically apply everything I've been teaching you. Every sentence you speak positions you as either victim or creator, and most people default to victim language without even realizing it. “I can't afford it.” You say this all the time, right? Seems harmless. But you're claiming powerlessness. You're declaring. You're positioning yourself as victim of circumstances. Replace it with, “I'm choosing to invest elsewhere right now.” Completely different frequency. You have choice. You have agency. You're the one making decisions. Create a language. “I'm so stressed.” (Say, “I cast out stress”, which can be a demon.) Victim language. Stress is happening to you, you're powerless against it, it's attacking you, and you're suffering. Replace with, “I'm processing intense energy right now.” Create a language. You're actively working with what's present. You're not helpless. You're in the process of transformation. You're handling it. “I have to work.” Victim language. You're trapped. No choice. You're a slave to circumstances. Replace with, “I choose to honor my commitments.” Create a language. Even if you don't love the job, claiming choice reclaims power. You're choosing. You have agency. You're not a victim. “I'm trying to lose weight.” Victim language. Trying means not succeeding. It's coded failure. Replace with, “I'm becoming healthier every day.” Create a language present tense, active, progressive. No failure coded in. “I'm stuck.” Victim language frozen, helpless, no movement possible. Replace with, “I'm gathering information in this chapter.” Creator language. You're in a process, there's purpose, you're learning, you're preparing for the next phase. Completely different energy. “I need more money.” Victim language. Need broadcasts lack, desperation, emergency. Your body goes into survival mode when you say need. (It's better to say, I believe I “have received” abundant provision. Php 4:19 And my God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.) “I can't do this.” Victim language, total powerlessness, complete defeat. (Say, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.) “But I really want to.” Victim language. “But” cancels everything before it. “I love you, but…” means, “I don't love you.” (Think: Php 4:13  I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me. ) “I want to succeed but…” means, “I don't believe I can succeed.” Replace with, “and I'm choosing to prioritize this.” Creator language. (Thank you, Jesus, that I am successful as I abide in your will and faith.) Every single transformation shifts you from passive receiver to active creator, from being done unto, to doing, from powerless to sovereign. And your nervous system responds immediately. Your cells respond. Your electromagnetic field responds. Your reality responds. This isn't positive thinking. This is frequency reprogramming at the cellular level. (Ask for the Lord's help. Psa 141:3  Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth; Keep the door of my lips.) Eliminate “Can't and try.” Every time you catch yourself saying, “I can't” or “I'm trying,” stop mid-sentence if you have to. (Say, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.) Rephrase. “I can't afford that,” becomes “I'm choosing to invest elsewhere.” “I'm trying to be healthier” becomes (1Pe 2:24  who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.  I thank you Lord, it's done.) Eliminate “have to” and “need to.” These program obligations and lack. Every “have to” is claiming you're trapped. Every “need to” is broadcasting desperation. Replace with, “I choose to” or “I'm ready to.” “I have to go to work,” becomes “I choose to honor my commitments.” “I need to make money” becomes “I'm ready to receive income.” Feel the difference? Your whole body shifts Eliminate “But.” This one's sneaky because you say it constantly without noticing. “But” cancels everything before it. I mean, think about it. “I love you, but…” Doesn't feel like love, right? “I want to succeed, but I'm scared” means “I don't believe I can succeed.” (Say, I cast down doubt and unbelief.) (Remember, Self works will not accomplish what Faith will. Eph 2:8 for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not of works, that no man should glory.) Don't say, “I am so lazy.” “I am terrible with money.” “I am always anxious.” “I am not smart enough.” “I am too old.” “I am not attractive,” “I am unlucky.” Every single one is a spell you're casting over yourself multiple times a day. Those aren't descriptions. Those are instructions and your body, your energy field, your reality, they're all saying yes and arranging themselves to match. (Say, Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me. This confession will bring power.) For each limitation spell, write the power declaration, not the opposite, the truth of who you are. “I'm so lazy” becomes “I am disciplined and energized.” “I am terrible with money” becomes “I am a wise steward of resources.” “I am always anxious” becomes “I am calm and centered in my power.” “I'm not smart enough” becomes “I am intelligent and capable.” “I am too old” becomes “I am in my power at every age.” “I am not attractive” becomes “I am magnetic and radiant.” (Jesus made reconciliation, which means an exchange of His life for yours. Everything He is has been given to you, and you were crucified with Him.) Keep it present tense. Keep it declarative. No trying, no hoping, no someday. This is who I am right now. And you have to speak it out loud. Your body needs to hear it, not in your head. That's thought, that's weak. Out loud. That's creation. That's powerful. You're broadcasting frequency into your field before anything else gets in there. You're setting the tuning for your whole day. Worry comes from Old English wyrgan, to strangle, to choke. Every time you say, “I'm worried,” you're literally strangling your own life force. You're choking yourself with fear. (Php 4:6 In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. 9 The things which ye both learned and received and heard and saw in me, these things do: and the God of peace shall be with you.) The linguistic shield. Listen, you're exposed to thousands of words daily. Media conversations, social media, and advertising. Not all of them are yours. Most are spells being cast at you, programming being broadcast into your field. (Stay in the Word of God and don't be distracted by the World. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind with the Word.) During media consumption, and this is big. When you notice fear language, repetitive phrases, manipulative framing, programming attempts, you say internally, “I do not accept this spell.” “I return this frequency to sender.” “I am immune to manipulation.” Every time. You don't have to say it out loud. An internal declaration is enough, but you have to catch it and actively reject it. Evening release before sleep: “I release all words not aligned with my truth.” “I release all frequency, not mine to carry.” “I reclaim my linguistic sovereignty.” “I am cleansed.” “I am clear.” “I am free.” This isn't paranoia. This is protection. You wouldn't let strangers reprogram your phone, right? Why let them reprogram your consciousness? Every word you consciously reject weakens its power over you. Every spell you refuse breaks the caster's hold. You're building immunity. Most people fall asleep scrolling, stressed, or rehearsing tomorrow's anxiety. “I gotta do this.” “I gotta do that.” “What if this goes wrong?” They're programming their subconscious to expect more stress. To scan for problems to find threats, flip it. End every day by remembering what worked. What made you feel alive? Your brain will deliver more of it. That's how the reticular activating system works. You get more of what you focus on. So focus on aliveness before sleep. (Thank the Lord for His faithfulness and meditate on all His promises.) You speak 16,000 words a day. That's 16,000 reality commands, 16,000 spells cast. The question is, what have you been creating? What are you creating right now? What will you create tomorrow? Speak life, speak power, speak sovereignty, speak abundance, speak health, speak joy, speak freedom and watch reality bend to your word. Watch circumstances shift, watch opportunities appear. Watch your body respond. Watch your life transform. Not because you got lucky. Not because you finally deserved it. Because you remembered you're the spellcaster and you started using your voice as the creative instrument it's always been. Here is a dictionary website of the history of English words, where you can search words and read the origin, read the root, and read the evolution, etc. https://www.etymonline.com/ Now, let me share with you from our book, The Tongue Conquers The Curse. Sweet waters are the words we speak in agreement with the Word of God and are a blessing to the people around us. They are a healing to the nations, and they spring forth out of our thoughts and hearts, and over our tongues to become words of life. An overwhelming majority of what we call Christianity speaks against God's benefits, which we must receive by faith. So we do what God does: we calleth the things that are not, as though they were (Rom.4:17) and we agree with God, even though we don't see it. This is God's method of bringing the promises into His physical creation. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly [places] (Eph.1:3); but when we confess, it becomes ours in these physical places around us. But the opposite can also come to pass. (Jas.3:10) Out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. (11) Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet [water] and bitter? (12) can a fig tree, my brethren yield olives, or a vine figs? neither [can] salt water yield sweet. Many times, the problem with our mouths is that we are speaking a mixture of blessings and curses. But with the increase of the lips, we should be growing with the knowledge of God in our heart, speaking and agreeing with this knowledge and denying those things that exalt themselves above the knowledge of God by casting them down (2 Corinthians 10:5). We grow into confessing God's Word and into righteousness because He imputes righteousness when we agree with His Word. We should be growing into the sweet water, the river of living water coming up from us, and not a mixture of blessing and cursing. (Jas.3:5) So the tongue also is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire! People think that the things that they say are insignificant and that they don't count. Not so before God and, I might say, not so before the devil, because he gets his authority from you. Remember, the devil doesn't have authority, except what we give him. Jesus said that all authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth (Mat.28:18). And He put that authority under His feet and gave Himself to be the head of the body, the Church. (Eph.1:20) Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly [places], (21) far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: (22) and he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, (23) which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. Every principality and power has been put under the feet of Jesus, which is the lowest member of His “body,” so we have the authority. The devil has to get us to give him authority and, of course, he works constantly to sow the seed of the world into our hearts. That is what a harlot is – a person who receives the seed of the world in their heart, rather than the seed of the Kingdom. (Jas.5:6) And the tongue is a fire: the world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the wheel of nature, and is set on fire by hell. The tongue defiles the body when our faith is in what we are told by the world and by the devil; therefore, it is what we believe and what comes out of our mouth that defiles the body. The “wheel of nature” or, as otherwise interpreted, “cycle of life,” is sowing and reaping. You speak things that are a curse and cursing comes upon you. You speak things that are a blessing, and a blessing comes upon you. There is a cycle that tends to be upward and a cycle that tends to be downward. We want to bring our tongue into submission by first repenting, that is, changing our minds and agreeing with the Word of God. (Pro.18:21) Death and life are in the power of the tongue; And they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. This can be just your death and life or the death and life of the people around you. We are all going to prove whether we love death or whether we love life. We are going to eat the fruit of the one that we love. If you love life, you will obviously pay very close attention to what you say, and you will begin to train your tongue to come into agreement with the Word of God. Our minds are like computers; they need to be programmed so that what we see on the monitor reflects something beneficial and a blessing. A computer by itself is worthless without a monitor. Basically, God is saying that the monitor is the tongue. It reflects what is inside the programming. If you say that you're a believer and everything you say is contrary to what God says, then that's a lie. We need to reprogram this computer so that what comes out of our mouth is the Word of the Lord and is effectual in changing us and the world around us. The Bible says the tongue is like a rudder that is able to turn the whole body (James 3:4-8). It's a very powerful tool that God has given us. (Rom.12:1) I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, [which is] your spiritual service. (2) And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We must spend time in the Word of God so we can program it into our hearts, and we have to put it in there often enough so that it begins to overcome what is already there. To show forth what the perfect will of God is in your life, your mind needs to be renewed. You will never walk in perfection without the renewing of your mind. According to James, it's not just the mind, but what comes out of the mind that matters. (Jas.3:2) For in many things we all stumble. If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also. (3) Now if we put the horses' bridles into their mouths that they may obey us, we turn about their whole body also. (4) Behold, the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by rough winds, are yet turned about by a very small rudder, whither the impulse of the steersman willeth. (5) So the tongue also is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire! How do we steer this vessel with the tongue? First, we need the will to do this. He whom the Son sets free is free indeed (John 8:36). The Lord sets us free by giving us His will. Nothing can restrain God's will. He does what He wants to in the armies of Heaven and upon the earth (Daniel 4:35). We are frustrated because we have a schizophrenic will. His will is fighting in us against our will, but as we walk by faith, He works in us both to will and to work, for his good pleasure (Php.2:13). Then, when in this way His will has overcome ours, we are free to do what we like to do. Then His will in us will steer the body with the tongue. When we hear ourselves speaking words that do not line up with the Scriptures, we can back up and say, “No, I don't like what I said there. I don't accept that, Lord. Forgive me. I'm going to agree with your Word.” (Rom.3:4) God forbid: yea, let God be found true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy words, And mightest prevail when thou comest into judgment. We are about to come into judgment and some of you are in it and don't even know it. And God is saying that the most important tool is a renewed mind speaking out of your mouth, the Word of God. That's the powerful tool that you have. Jesus and His disciples turned the world upside down with the things that they said (Acts 17:6). The things that they said, they commanded; and the things that they said agreed with the Word of God and brought repentance and deliverance. We have to change our minds, and we must be careful about what we put in our computers. We must be anxious for nothing and let our prayers and requests be made known unto God with thanksgiving (Philippians 4:6). Paul tells us something about being at peace with what we put in our minds and what we program our computers with. (Php.4:8) Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Everything we put in our minds is still there, but recall is the problem. We don't want to be polluted by the things of the world. We want to put things in our minds that will cause us to think and speak properly in agreement with the Word of God. We don't want a leaven that leavens the whole lump (1 Corinthians 5:6; Galatians 5:9). We don't want to fill up our minds with the television, the things of the world and the love of the world. We want to fill up our minds with the Word of God, fulfilling His will and walking as a disciple. He tells us to think on the good things, not the bad news, not the conspiracies, not studying the false doctrines. The Gospel is the Good News and the power of God unto salvation (Rom.1:16). Paul tells us that I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil (Rom.16:19). In other words, stop studying the evil in the world and start studying the good because when you sow the Word into your heart, it brings forth Jesus Christ. That's why we are told to “think on these things.” These things have the power to bring forth Christ in you and Christ in you can take care of evil, so it will no longer be a problem or temptation for us. Christ within you cannot be tempted with evil. It's the old man that can be tempted by evil; that's the part that needs to die. So think on the good things, the things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and the things of good report. (Php.4:9) The things which ye both learned and received and heard and saw in me, these things do: and the God of peace shall be with you. We have been given awesome examples, not only in Jesus, but in the apostle Paul and many others. They've gone out before us, filled with the Word of God, the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of God. It's a death experience of self, but it's a resurrection experience of Jesus Christ living in us. He wants to use our tongue to do the same thing that the tongue of His first body did, which brought deliverance and blessing to the world. It turned not only the body but everything around them. In order to do that, we have to fight this warfare that we're called to fight. He tells us that this warfare is not of the flesh. (2Co.10:3) For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh (4) (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds). One of those weapons, the most important one, is the tongue. When you agree with the Word of God, you are accounted righteous. Then you are entitled to the benefits of the Kingdom. One of the benefits is the reconciliation, which is the exchange between you and the Cross. God has taken away your sins, your sinful life, and your sinful tongue and has nailed them on the Cross. He has taken the righteousness of Jesus Christ and has given it to you. Now He's given this to you as a benefit, but for you to receive this benefit, you must be accounted righteous. That's why you speak what the Bible says about you. You were crucified with Christ and it's no longer you who lives, but Christ Who lives in you (Galatians 2:20). Can you confess that? This is what the apostle Paul taught us to believe, think, and speak. We don't live anymore; Christ lives in us. That's the Good News, which is “the power of God unto salvation,” but if it doesn't come out of our mouth, it's not going to work. We have to agree with the Word and refuse to say anything that is contrary to the Word. (2Co.10:5) Casting down imaginations (Greek: logismos, meaning “reasoning”), and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thoug

“Heroes and Demons” 30th-anniversary reflections Harry Kim's disappearance draws the Voyager crew into a medieval mystery as a holodeck recreation of the Old English epic Beowulf starts converting people into energy. There's just one person on the ship who can safely venture into the holographic forest to find the young ensign: the Doctor. That trip into the unknown leads to many firsts for the man briefly called Schweitzer, and reveals a very Star Trek story. In this episode of To The Journey, hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing continue our 30th-anniversary retrospective that will take you through all of Star Trek: Voyager, one episode at a time. In this installment, we discuss “Heroes and Demons,” how tapping into elements unique to the series creates a story true to the core of Star Trek, how it sets the stage for The Doctor's character, and what we think of his choice of name. Chapters Intro (00:00:00) The Setting (and the Sets) (00:02:11) A Doctor's Tale (00:13:03) Tapping into the Promise of Voyager (00:17:36) T'Pol Sidebar (00:24:27) Schweitzer! Schweitzer! (00:27:04) Final Thoughts and Ratings (00:31:04) Closing (00:32:53) Hosts C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing Production C Bryan Jones (Editor and Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer)

Ever wonder what medieval England looked and sounded like? In Old English, the word hord meant "treasure" and your wordhord was the treasure of words locked up inside you. A delightful new book uses the language of that period to create a vivid look at everyday life. Plus, a shotgun house is long and narrow with no hallway -- just one room leading into the next. It's an architectural style with a long history stretching from Africa to Haiti and into the American South. And: say you accidentally cut someone off in traffic, and you know it's your fault. What's a quick, clear way to communicate that you're sorry? NO texting allowed! All that, and feaking, feather merchant, gradoo, spondulicks, echar un zorrito, tocayo and cueto, a take-off quiz, and an onomatopoeic Old English word for "sneeze." Hear hundreds of free episodes and learn more on the A Way with Words website: https://waywordradio.org. Be a part of the show: call or text 1 (877) 929-9673 toll-free in the United States and Canada; elsewhere in the world, call or text +1 619 800 4443. Send voice notes or messages via WhatsApp 16198004443. Email words@waywordradio.org. Copyright Wayword, Inc., a 501(c)(3) corporation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 2, 2026 is: febrile • FEB-ryle • adjective Febrile is a medical term meaning "marked or caused by fever; feverish." It is sometimes used figuratively, as in "a febrile political climate." // I'm finally back on my feet after recovering from a febrile illness. // The actor delivered the monologue with a febrile intensity. See the entry > Examples: "Peppered with exclamation marks, breathless and febrile, this is an utterly mesmeric account of how one man's crimes can affect an entire community." — Laura Wilson, The Guardian (London), 20 June 2025 Did you know? The English language has had the word fever for as long as the language has existed (that is, about a thousand years); the related adjective feverish has been around since the 14th century. But that didn't stop the 17th-century medical reformer Noah Biggs from admonishing physicians to care for their "febrile patients" properly. Biggs apparently thought his medical writing required a word that clearly nodded to a Latin heritage, and called upon the Latin adjective febrilis, from febris, meaning "fever." It's a tradition that English has long kept: look to Latin for words that sound technical or elevated. But fever too comes from febris. It first appeared (albeit with a different spelling) in an Old English translation of a book about the medicinal qualities of various plants. By Biggs's time it had shed all obvious hallmarks of its Latin ancestry. Febrile, meanwhile, continues to be used in medicine in a variety of ways, including in references to such things as "febrile seizures" and "the febrile phase" of an illness. The word has also developed figurative applications matching those of feverish, as in "a febrile atmosphere."

1146. This week, we look at the history of Braille, from the tragic accident that inspired Louis Braille's six-dot system to the "War of the Dots"—a decades-long conflict over competing reading standards in the U.S. Then, we look at the origin of the phrase "pitch black," revealing how the intensifier "pitch" refers to an ancient, dark wood tar and how the word traces its roots back to Old English.The braille segment was written by Karen Lunde, a longtime writer and editor turned web designer and marketing mentor. Solo service business owners come to her for websites where beautiful design meets authentic words that actually build connections. Find her at chanterellemarketingstudio.com.The pitch black segment was run by Samantha Enslen who runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her online at dragonflyeditorial.com.Links to Get One Month Free of the Grammar Girl Patreon (different links for different levels)Order of the Snail ($1/month level): https://www.patreon.com/grammargirl/redeem/687E4Order of the Aardvark ($5/month level): https://www.patreon.com/grammargirl/redeem/07205Keeper of the Commas ($10/month level): https://www.patreon.com/grammargirl/redeem/50A0BGuardian of the Grammary ($25/month level): https://www.patreon.com/grammargirl/redeem/949F7

William Sandys was an antiquarian who published a collection of Christmas carols in the 19th century that turned out to be really influential. Research: Archambo, Shelley Batt. “The Development of the English Carol Through the Fifteenth Century.” The Choral Journal, OCTOBER 1986, Vol. 27, No. 3. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23547224REFERENCES Brain, Jessica. “History of Christmas Carols.” Historic UK. 12/13/2024. https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/History-Christmas-Carols/ “Carol, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, June 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1684298837. Carter, Michael. “The origins of Christmas carols.” English Heritage. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/origins-of-christmas-carols/ Cartwright, Mark. "The History of Christmas Carols." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 05 Dec 2023, https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2339/the-history-of-christmas-carols/. Web. 03 Dec 2025. Davey, Henry, and Elizabeth Baigent. "Sandys, William (1792–1874), writer on music and antiquary." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. September 23, 2004. Oxford University Press. Date of access 3 Dec. 2025, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-24654 Ditchfield, Peter Hampson. “Old English customs extant at the present time; an account of local observances.” London, G. Redway. 1896. https://archive.org/details/studentshistoryo00gardrich Dreamer, Percy R. et al. “The Oxford Book Of Carols.” Oxford University Press. 1928. English Heritage. “A Brief History of Christmas Carols.” https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/members-area/members-magazine/podcast-extras/history-of-carols/ Sandys, William. “Christmas carols, ancient and modern; including the most popular in the west of England, and the airs to which they are sung. Also specimens of French provincial carols. With an introduction and notes.” London, R. Beckley. 1833. https://archive.org/details/christmascarolsa00sandrich/mode/1up Sandys, William. “Christmastide: Its History, Festivities and Carols.” London: John Russell Smith. 1860. https://archive.org/details/christmastideits00sandrich/ The Law Bod Blog. “Heading towards Christmas.” 12/2/2013. https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/lawbod/2013/12/02/heading-towards-christmas/ Huxtable, Sally-Anne. “Wassailing: ritual and revelry.” National Trust. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/art-collections/wassailing-ritual-and-revelry See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's the most wonderful time of the year: that's right, the Lent of St. Martin! Okay okay, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, but the lead-up--known as the season of Advent--is an unbelievably rich tradition filled with deep meaning. On this Young Heretics special, I explain the big ideas of Advent through the surprising history of everyone's favorite song of the season, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." And God bless us, every one!  Read my co-authored essay with Andrew Klavan (no relation) on AI: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/07/ai-idols-consciousness-religion-llms/ Order Light of the Mind, Light of the World (and rate it five stars): https://a.co/d/2QccOfM Subscribe to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com

“They entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” (Matthew 2:11 NLT) One of the best ways to prepare for Christmas is to prepare for worship. Embracing a spirit of worship and praise opens our hearts to the true joy and meaning of Christmas. Worship has been central to Christmas since the wise men first encountered the child they sought. After a long and arduous journey, the wise men, who were followers of the stars, met the Lord Jesus Christ, who created the stars. They were occultists, yet God reached into their dark world with a star to bring them to their Creator. Matthew’s Gospel tells us, “They entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (2:11 NLT). Their response is almost instinctive. They recognized that they were in the presence of a deity. Their natural reaction was to humble themselves before God, even though God in this instance was a human baby. They acknowledged His majesty and greatness by bowing before Him and presenting offerings to Him. Everyone worships at Christmas. There are no exceptions to this rule. Christians worship. Atheists worship. Skeptics worship. Republicans worship. Democrats worship. Independents worship. Everyone worships at Christmas, but not everyone worships God at Christmas. Some worship material things, which they never seem to have enough of. Others worship their bodies. Others worship their families. But everyone worships something or someone. The wise men worshipped Jesus. What does it mean to worship? Our modern word worship comes from the Old English word worth-ship. We worship the One who is worthy. A god of our own making isn’t worthy of our worship, but the true God is worthy of our praise. Two words are often used in Scripture to define worship. One word means “to bow down and pay homage,” which speaks of reverence and respect. The other means to “kiss toward,” which speaks of intimacy and friendship. So, when we put these two words together, we get an idea of what worship is. To worship is to bow down and have reverence, and it is also to have tender intimacy. We see this reverent intimacy in passages such as Isaiah 25:1: “O Lord, I will honor and praise your name, for you are my God. You do such wonderful things! You planned them long ago, and now you have accomplished them” (NLT). This Christmas, let’s remember that Jesus was born, He died, and He rose from the dead so that we could come into a relationship with Him and become God’s adopted children. Simply put, we should worship the Lord because He deserves it—every day of the year. Reflection question: How will you worship God this Christmas season? Discuss Today's Devo in Harvest Discipleship! — The audio production of the podcast "Greg Laurie: Daily Devotions" utilizes Generative AI technology. This allows us to deliver consistent, high-quality content while preserving Harvest's mission to "know God and make Him known." All devotional content is written and owned by Pastor Greg Laurie. Listen to the Greg Laurie Podcast Become a Harvest PartnerSupport the show: https://harvest.org/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 16, 2025 is: writhe • RYTHE • verb To writhe is to twist one's body from side to side. The word is often used when the body or a bodily part is twisting in pain. // The injured player lay on the football field, writhing in pain. // At the instruction of their teacher, the children rolled the fallen log aside to reveal worms and other small critters writhing in the soft earth. See the entry > Examples: “The creatures named after writers are mostly bugs, which makes sense. There are a lot of those little guys writhing around, and I imagine most of them escaped our attention for long enough that science had to start reaching for new names. And a lot of them are wasps: Dante has two wasps named after him; Marx has two, Didion has one, Dickens has two, Zola has two, Thoreau has seven, and Shakespeare has three wasps and a bacterium. Nabokov has a lot of butterflies, naturally.” — James Folta, LitHub.com, 25 Aug. 2025 Did you know? Writhe wound its way to us from the Old English verb wrīthan, meaning “to twist,” and that ancestral meaning lives on in the word's current uses, most of which have to do with twists of one kind or another. Among the oldest of these uses is the meaning “to twist into coils or folds,” but in modern use writhing is more often about the physical contortions of one suffering from debilitating pain or attempting to remove oneself from a tight grasp (as, say, a snake from a hawk's talons). The word is also not infrequently applied to the twisting bodies of dancers. The closest relation of writhe in modern English lacks any of the painful connotations often present in writhe: wreath comes from Old English writha, which shares an ancestor with wrīthan.