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Last time we spoke about Operation Chahar. In July 1937, the tensions between Japan and China erupted into a full-scale conflict, ignited by the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Following a series of aggressive Japanese military maneuvers, Chiang Kai-shek, then enjoying a brief respite at Kuling, learned of the escalating clashes and prepared for battle. Confident that China was primed for resistance, he rallied his nation, demanding that Japan accept responsibility and respect China's sovereignty. The Japanese launched their offensive, rapidly capturing key positions in Northern China. Notably, fierce battle ensued in Jinghai, where Chinese soldiers, led by Brigade Commander Li Zhiyuan, valiantly defended against overwhelming forces using guerrilla tactics and direct assaults. Their spirit was symbolized by a courageous “death squad” that charged the enemy, inflicting serious casualties despite facing dire odds. As weeks passed, the conflict intensified with brutal assaults on Nankou. Chinese defenses, though valiant, were ultimately overwhelmed, leading to heavy casualties on both sides. Despite losing Nankou, the indomitable Chinese spirit inspired continued resistance against the Japanese invaders, foreshadowing a long, brutal war that would reshape East Asia.   #156 The Battle of Shanghai Part 1: The Beginning of the Battle of Shanghai Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. On August 9, a bullet riddled sedan screeched to an abrupt halt at the entrance to the Hongqiao airport along Monument Road. The gruesome scene on the dashboard revealed that one of the victims had died in the car. He had been dragged out and subjected to brutal slashing, kicking, and beating until his body was a mangled mess. Half of his face was missing, and his stomach had been cut open, exposing the sickly pallor of his intestines, faintly glimmering in the night. The other man had managed to escape the vehicle but only got a few paces away before he was gunned down. A short distance away lay a third body, dressed in a Chinese uniform. Investigators swiftly identified the badly mangled body as belonging to 27-year-old Sub-Lieutenant Oyama Isao, while the other deceased Japanese man was his driver, First Class Seaman Saito Yozo. The identity of the Chinese victim remained a mystery. At first glance, the scene appeared to be the aftermath of a straightforward shootout. However, numerous questions lingered: What were the Japanese doing at a military airfield miles from their barracks? Who had fired the first shot, and what had prompted that decision? The Chinese investigators and their Japanese counterparts were at odds over the answers to these questions. As they walked the crime scene, searching for evidence, loud arguments erupted repeatedly. By the time the sun began to rise, they concluded their investigation without reaching any consensus on what had transpired. They climbed into their cars and made their way back to the city. The investigators were acutely aware of the repercussions if they failed to handle their delicate task with the necessary finesse. Despite their hopes for peace, it was evident that Shanghai was a city bracing for war. As they drove through the dimly lit suburbs on their way from Hongqiao back to their downtown offices, their headlights illuminated whitewashed trees, interspersed with sandbag defenses and the silhouettes of solitary Chinese sentries. Officially, these sentries were part of the Peace Preservation Corps,  a paramilitary unit that, due to an international agreement reached a few years earlier, was the only Chinese force allowed to remain in the Shanghai area. In the hours that followed, both sides presented their versions of the incident. According to the Chinese account, the Japanese vehicle attempted to force its way through the airport gate. When members of the Peace Preservation Corps stationed at the entrance signaled for Saito, the driver, to stop, he abruptly turned the car around. Sub-Lieutenant Oyama then fired at the Chinese guards with an automatic pistol. Only then did the Chinese return fire, killing Oyama in a hail of bullets. Saito managed to jump out before he, too, was gunned down. The commander of the Chinese guards told a Western reporter that this wasn't the first time someone Japanese had attempted to enter the airport. Such incidents had occurred repeatedly in the past two months, leading them to believe that the Japanese were “obviously undertaking espionage.” The Japanese account, predictably, placed the blame for the entire incident squarely on China. It asserted that Oyama had been driving along a road bordering the airfield with no intention of entering. Suddenly, the vehicle was stopped and surrounded by Peace Preservation Corps troops, who opened fire with rifles and machine guns without warning. Oyama had no opportunity to return fire. The Japanese statement argued that the two men had every right to use the road, which was part of the International Settlement, and labeled the incident a clear violation of the 1932 peace agreement. “We demand that the Chinese bear responsibility for this illegal act,”. Regardless of either side, it seemed likely to everyone in the region, war would soon engulf Shanghai.  Meanwhile, as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident escalated into a full blown in the far north, General Zhang Fakui was attending a routine training mission at Mount Lu in southeastern Jiangxi. A short and small man, not considered too handsome either, Zhang had earned his place in China's leadership through physical courage, once taking a stand on a bridge and single handedly facing down an enemy army. He was 41 years old in 1937, having spent half his life fighting Warlords, Communists and sometimes even Nationalists. In the recent years he had tossed his lot in with a rebel campaign against Chiang Kai-Shek, who surprisingly went on the forgive him and placed him in charge of anti communist operations in the area due south of Shanghai. However now the enemy seemed to have changed.  As the war spread to Beijing, on July 16th, Zhang was sent to Chiang Kai-Shek's summer residence at Mount Lu alongside 150 members of China's political and military elites. They were all there to brainstorm how to fight the Japanese. Years prior the Generalissimo had made it doctrine to appease the Japanese but now he made grandiose statements such as “this time we must fight to the end”. Afterwards Chiang dealt missions to all his commanders and Zhang Fakui was told to prepare for operations in the Shanghai area.  It had been apparent for weeks that both China and Japan were preparing for war in central China. The Japanese had been diverting naval troops from the north to strengthen their forces in Shanghai, and by early August, they had assembled over 8,000 troops. A few days later, approximately thirty-two naval vessels arrived. On July 31, Chiang declared that “all hope for peace has been lost.” Chiang had been reluctant to commit his best forces to defend northern China, an area he had never truly controlled. In contrast, Shanghai was central to his strategy for the war against Japan. Chiang decided to deploy his finest troops, the 87th and 88th Divisions, which were trained by generals under the guidance of the German advisor von Falkenhausen, who had high hopes for their performance against the Japanese. In doing so, Chiang aimed to demonstrate to both his own people and the wider world that the Chinese could and would resist the invader. Meanwhile, Chiang's spy chief, Dai Li, was busy gathering intelligence on Japanese intentions regarding Shanghai, a challenging task given his focus in recent years. Dai, one of the most sinister figures in modern Chinese history, had devoted far more energy and resources to suppressing the Communists than to countering the Japanese. As a result, by the critical summer of 1937, he had built only a sparse network of agents in “Little Tokyo,” the Hongkou area of Shanghai dominated by Japanese businesses. One agent was a pawnshop owner, while the rest were double agents employed as local staff within the Japanese security apparatus. Unfortunately, they could provide little more than snippets, rumors, and hearsay. While some of this information sounded alarmingly dire, there was almost no actionable intelligence. Chiang did not take the decision to open a new front in Shanghai lightly. Built on both banks of the Huangpu River, the city served as the junction between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the great Yangtze River, which wound thousands of kilometers inland to the west. Shanghai embodied everything that represented modern China, from its industry and labor relations to its connections with the outside world. While foreign diplomatic presence was concentrated in nearby Nanjing, the capital, it was in Shanghai that the foreign community gauged the country's mood. Foreigners in the city's two “concession” areas nthe French Concession and the British-affiliated International Settlement often dismissed towns beyond Shanghai as mere “outstations.” Chiang Kai-shek would throw 650,000 troops into the battle for the city and its environs as well as his modest air force of 200 aircraft. Chiang, whose forces were being advised by German officers led by General Alexander von Falkenhausen, was finally confident that his forces could take on the Japanese. A German officer told a British diplomat, “If the Chinese Army follows the advice of the German advisers, it is capable of driving the Japanese over the Great Wall.”   While Chiang was groping in the dark, deprived of the eyes and ears of an efficient intelligence service, he did have at his disposal an army that was better prepared for battle than it had been in 1932. Stung by the experience of previous conflicts with the Japanese, Chiang had initiated a modernization program aimed at equipping the armed forces not only to suppress Communist rebels but also to confront a modern fighting force equipped with tanks, artillery, and aircraft. He had made progress, but it was insufficient. Serious weaknesses persisted, and now there was no time for any remedial action. While China appeared to be a formidable power in sheer numbers, the figures were misleading. On the eve of war, the Chinese military was comprised of a total of 176 divisions, which were theoretically organized into two brigades of two regiments each. However, only about 20 divisions maintained full peacetime strength of 10,000 soldiers and officers; the rest typically held around 5,000 men. Moreover, Chiang controlled only 31 divisions personally, and he could not count on the loyalty of the others. To successfully resist Japan, Chiang would need to rely not only on his military command skills but also on his ability to forge fragile coalitions among Warlord generals with strong local loyalties. Equipment posed another significant challenge. The modernization drive was not set to complete until late 1938, and the impact of this delay was evident. In every category of weaponry, from rifles to field artillery, the Chinese were outmatched by their Japanese adversaries, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Domestically manufactured artillery pieces had shorter ranges, and substandard steel-making technology caused gun barrels to overheat, increasing the risk of explosions. Some arms even dated back to imperial times. A large proportion of the Chinese infantry had received no proper training in basic tactics, let alone in coordinated operations involving armor and artillery. The chief of the German advisory corps was General Alexander von Falkenhausen, a figure hard to rival in terms of qualifications for the role. Although the 58-year-old's narrow shoulders, curved back, and bald, vulture-like head gave him an unmilitary, almost avian appearance, his exterior belied a tough character. In 1918, he had earned his nation's highest military honor, the Pour le Mérite, while assisting Germany's Ottoman allies against the British in Palestine. Few, if any, German officers knew Asia as well as he did. His experience in the region dated back to the turn of the century. As a young lieutenant in the Third East Asian Infantry Regiment, he participated in the international coalition of colonial powers that quelled the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. A decade later, he traveled through Korea, Manchuria, and northern China with his wife, keenly observing and learning as a curious tourist. From 1912 to 1914, he served as the German Kaiser's military attaché in Tokyo. He was poised to put his extensive knowledge to good use in the months ahead. Chiang believed that Shanghai should be the location of the first battle. This decision was heavily influenced by Falkenhausen and was strategically sound. Chiang Kai-shek could not hope to win a war against Japan unless he could unify the nation behind him, particularly the many fractious warlords who had battled his forces repeatedly over the past decade. Everyone understood that the territory Japan was demanding in the far north did not need to be held for any genuine military necessity; it was land that could be negotiated. The warlords occupying that territory were unpredictable and all too willing to engage in bargaining. In contrast, China's economic heartland held different significance. By choosing to fight for the center of the country and deploying his strongest military units, Chiang Kai-shek signaled to both China's warlords and potential foreign allies that he had a vested interest in the outcome.  There were also several operational reasons for preferring a conflict in the Yangtze River basin over a campaign in northern China. The rivers, lakes, and rice paddies of the Yangtze delta were much better suited for defensive warfare against Japan's mechanized forces than the flat plains of North China. By forcing the Japanese to commit troops to central China, the Nationalists bought themselves the time needed to rally and reinforce their faltering defenses in the north. By initiating hostilities in the Shanghai area, Japan would be forced to divert its attention from the northern front, thereby stalling a potential Japanese advance toward the crucial city of Wuhan. It would also help safeguard potential supply routes from the Soviet Union, the most likely source of material assistance due to Moscow's own animosity toward Japan. It was a clever plan, and surprisingly, the Japanese did not anticipate it. Intelligence officers in Tokyo were convinced that Chiang would send his troops northward instead. Again in late July, Chiang convened his commanders, and here he gave Zhang Fukai more detailed instructions for his operation. Fukai was placed in charge of the right wing of the army which was currently preparing for action in the metropolitan area. Fukai would oversee the forces east of the Huangpu River in the area known as Pudong. Pudong was full of warehouses, factories and rice fields, quite precarious to fight in. Meanwhile General Zhang Zhizhong, a quiet and sickly looking man who had previously led the Central Military Academy was to command the left wing of the Huangpu. All of the officers agreed the plan to force the battle to the Shanghai area was logical as the northern region near Beijing was far too open, giving the advantage to tank warfare, which they could not hope to contest Japan upon. The Shanghai area, full of rivers, creaks and urban environments favored them much more. Zhang Zhizhong seemed an ideal pick to lead troops in downtown Shanghai where most of the fighting would take place. His position of commandant of the military academy allowed him to establish connections with junior officers earmarked for rapid promotion. This meant that he personally knew the generals of both the 87th and 88th Divisions, which were to form the core of Zhang Zhizhong's newly established 9th Army Group and become his primary assets in the early phases of the Shanghai campaign. Moreover, Zhang Zhizhong had the right aggressive instincts. He believed that China's confrontation with Japan had evolved through three stages: in the first stage, the Japanese invaded the northeast in 1931, and China remained passive; in the second stage, during the first battle of Shanghai in 1932, Japan struck, but China fought back. Zhang argued that this would be the third stage, where Japan was preparing to attack, but China would strike first.   It seems that Zhang Zhizhong did not expect to survive this final showdown with his Japanese adversary. He took the fight very personally, even ordering his daughter to interrupt her education in England and return home to serve her country in the war. However, he was not the strong commander he appeared to be, as he was seriously ill. Although he never disclosed the true extent of his condition, it seemed he was on the verge of a physical and mental breakdown after years in high-stress positions. In fact, he had recently taken a leave of absence from his role at the military academy in the spring of 1937. When the war broke out, he was at a hospital in the northern port city of Qingdao, preparing to go abroad for convalescence. He canceled those plans to contribute to the struggle against Japan. When his daughter returned from England and saw him on the eve of battle, she was alarmed by how emaciated he had become. From the outset, doubts about his physical fitness to command loomed large. At 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, August 10, a group of officers emerged from the Japanese Consulate along the banks of the Huangpu River. This team was a hastily assembled Sino-Japanese joint investigation unit tasked with quickly resolving the shooting incident at the Hongqiao Aerodrome of the previous night. They understood the urgency of reaching an agreement swiftly to prevent any escalation. As they drove to the airport, they passed armed guards of the Chinese Peace Preservation Corps stationed behind sandbag barricades that had been erected only hours earlier. Upon arriving at Hongqiao, the officers walked up and down the scene of the incident under the scorching sun, attempting to piece together a shared understanding of what had transpired. However, this proved to be nearly impossible, as the evidence failed to align into a coherent account acceptable to both parties. The Japanese were unconvinced that any shootout had occurred at all. Oyama, the officer who had been in the car, had left his pistol at the marine headquarters in Hongkou and had been unarmed the night before. They insisted that whoever shot and killed the man in the Chinese uniform could not have been him. By 6:00 pm the investigators returned to the city. Foreign correspondents, eager for information, knew exactly whom to approach. The newly appointed Shanghai Mayor, Yu Hongjun, with a quick wit and proficiency in English, Yu represented the city's cosmopolitan image. However, that evening, he had little to offer the reporters, except for a plea directed at both the Japanese and Chinese factions “Both sides should maintain a calm demeanor to prevent the situation from escalating.” Mayor Yu however was, in fact, at the center of a complex act of deception that nearly succeeded. Nearly eight decades later, Zhang Fakui attributed the incident to members of the 88th Division, led by General Sun Yuanliang. “A small group of Sun Yuanliang's men disguised themselves as members of the Peace Preservation Corps,” Zhang Fakui recounted years later in his old age. “On August 9, 1937, they encountered two Japanese servicemen on the road near the Hongqiao military aerodrome and accused them of forcing their way into the area. A clash ensued, resulting in the deaths of the Japanese soldiers.” This created a delicate dilemma for their superiors. The two dead Japanese soldiers were difficult to explain away. Mayor Yu, likely informed of the predicament by military officials, conferred with Tong Yuanliang, chief of staff of the Songhu Garrison Command, a unit established after the fighting in 1932. Together, they devised a quick and cynical plan to portray the situation as one of self-defense by the Chinese guards. Under their orders, soldiers marched a Chinese death row inmate to the airport gate, dressed him in a paramilitary guard's uniform, and executed him. While this desperate ruse might have worked initially, it quickly unraveled due to the discrepancies raised by the condition of the Chinese body. The Japanese did not believe the story, and the entire plan began to fall apart. Any remaining mutual trust swiftly evaporated. Instead of preventing a confrontation, the cover-up was accelerating the slide into war.  Late on August 10, Mayor Yu sent a secret cable to Nanjing, warning that the Japanese had ominously declared they would not allow the two deaths at the airport to go unpunished. The following day, the Japanese Consul General Okamoto Suemasa paid a visit to the mayor, demanding the complete withdrawal of the Peace Preservation Corps from the Shanghai area and the dismantling of all fortifications established by the corps. For the Chinese, acquiescing to these demands was nearly impossible. From their perspective, it appeared that the Japanese aimed to leave Shanghai defenseless while simultaneously bolstering their own military presence in the city. Twenty vessels, including cruisers and destroyers, sailed up the Huangpu River and docked at wharves near "Little Tokyo." Japanese marines in olive-green uniforms marched ashore down the gangplanks, while women from the local Japanese community, dressed in kimonos, greeted the troops with delighted smiles and bows to the flags of the Rising Sun that proudly adorned the sterns of the battleships. In fact, Japan had planned to deploy additional troops to Shanghai even before the shooting at Hongqiao Aerodrome. This decision was deemed necessary to reinforce the small contingent of 2,500 marines permanently stationed in the city. More troops were required to assist in protecting Japanese nationals who were being hastily evacuated from the larger cities along the Yangtze River. These actions were primarily defensive maneuvers, as the Japanese military seemed hesitant to open a second front in Shanghai, for the same reasons that the Chinese preferred an extension of hostilities to that area. Diverting Japanese troops from the strategically critical north and the Soviet threat across China's border would weaken their position, especially given that urban warfare would diminish the advantages of their technological superiority in tanks and aircraft. While officers in the Japanese Navy believed it was becoming increasingly difficult to prevent the war from spreading to Shanghai, they were willing to give diplomacy one last chance. Conversely, the Japanese Army was eager to wage war in northern China but displayed little inclination to engage in hostilities in Shanghai. Should the situation worsen, the Army preferred to withdraw all Japanese nationals from the city. Ultimately, when it agreed to formulate plans for dispatching an expeditionary force to Shanghai, it did so reluctantly, primarily to avoid accusations of neglecting its responsibilities. Amongst many commanders longing for a swift confrontation with Japan was Zhang Zhizhong. By the end of July, he was growing increasingly impatient, waiting with his troops in the Suzhou area west of Shanghai and questioning whether a unique opportunity was being squandered. On July 30, he sent a telegram to Nanjing requesting permission to strike first. He argued that if Japan were allowed to launch an attack on Shanghai, he would waste valuable time moving his troops from their position more than 50 miles away. Nanjing responded with a promise that his wishes would be fulfilled but urged him to exercise patience: “We should indeed seize the initiative over the enemy, but we must wait until the right opportunity arises. Await further orders.” That opportunity arose on August 11, with the Japanese display of force on the Huangpu River and their public demand for the withdrawal of China's paramilitary police. Japan had sufficiently revealed itself as the aggressor in the eyes of both domestic and international audiences, making it safe for China to take action. At 9:00 p.m. that evening, Zhang Zhizhong received orders from Nanjing to move his troops toward Shanghai. He acted with remarkable speed, capitalizing on the extensive transportation network in the region. The soldiers of the 87th Division quickly boarded 300 trucks that had been prepared in advance. Meanwhile, civilian passengers on trains were unceremoniously ordered off to make room for the 88th Division, which boarded the carriages heading for Shanghai. In total, over 20,000 motivated and well-equipped troops were on their way to battle.  On August 12, representatives from the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Italy, Japan, and China gathered for a joint conference in Shanghai to discuss ceasefire terms. Japan demanded the withdrawal of Chinese troops from Shanghai, while the Chinese representative, Yu Hung-chun, dismissed the Japanese demand, stating that the terms of the ceasefire had already been violated by Japan. The major powers were keen to avoid a repeat of the January 28 Incident, which had significantly disrupted foreign economic activities in Shanghai. Meanwhile, Chinese citizens fervently welcomed the presence of Chinese troops in the city. In Nanjing, Chinese and Japanese representatives convened for the last time in a final effort to negotiate. The Japanese insisted that all Peace Preservation Corps and regular troops be withdrawn from the vicinity of Shanghai. The Chinese, however, deemed the demand for a unilateral withdrawal unacceptable, given that the two nations were already engaged in conflict in North China. Ultimately, Mayor Yu made it clear that the most the Chinese government would concede was that Chinese troops would not fire unless fired upon. Conversely, Japan placed all responsibility on China, citing the deployment of Chinese troops around Shanghai as the cause of the escalating tensions. Negotiations proved impossible, leaving no alternative but for the war to spread into Central China. On that same morning of Thursday, August 12, residents near Shanghai's North Train Station, also known as Zhabei Station, just a few blocks from "Little Tokyo," awoke to an unusual sight: thousands of soldiers dressed in the khaki uniforms of the Chinese Nationalists, wearing German-style helmets and carrying stick grenades slung across their chests. “Where do you come from?” the Shanghai citizens asked. “How did you get here so fast?” Zhang Zhizhong issued detailed orders to each unit under his command, instructing the 88th Division specifically to travel by train and deploy in a line from the town of Zhenru to Dachang village, both located a few miles west of Shanghai. Only later was the division supposed to advance toward a position stretching from the Zhabei district to the town of Jiangwan, placing it closer to the city boundaries. Zhang Zhizhong was the embodiment of belligerence, but he faced even more aggressive officers among his ranks. On the morning of August 12, he was approached by Liu Jingchi, the chief of operations at the Songhu Garrison Command. Liu argued that the battle of 1932 had gone poorly for the Chinese because they had hesitated and failed to strike first. This time, he insisted, should be different, and Zhang should order an all-out assault on the Japanese positions that very evening. Zhang countered that he had clear and unmistakable orders from Chiang Kai-shek to let the Japanese fire first, emphasizing the importance of maintaining China's image on the world stage. “That's easy,” Liu retorted. “Once all the units are deployed and ready to attack, we can just change some people into mufti and send them in to fire a few shots. We attack, and simultaneously, we report that the enemy's offensive has begun.” Zhang Zhizhong did not like this idea. “We can't go behind our leader's back like that,” he replied. Zhang Zhizhong's position was far from enviable. Forced to rein in eager and capable officers, he found himself acting against his own personal desires. Ultimately, he decided to seek the freedom to act as he saw fit. In a secret cable to Nanjing, he requested permission to launch an all-out attack on the Japanese positions in Shanghai the following day, Friday, August 13. He argued that this was a unique opportunity to capitalize on the momentum created by the movement of troops; any further delay would only lead to stagnation. He proposed a coordinated assault that would also involve the Chinese Air Force. However, the reply from Chiang Kai-shek was brief and unwavering: “Await further orders.” Even as Chiang's troops poured into Shanghai, Chinese and Japanese officials continued their discussions. Ostensibly, this was in hopes of reaching a last-minute solution, but in reality, it was a performance. Both sides wanted to claim the moral high ground in a battle that now seemed inevitable. They understood that whoever openly declared an end to negotiations would automatically be perceived as the aggressor. During talks at the Shanghai Municipal Council, Japanese Consul General Okamoto argued that if China truly wanted peace, it would have withdrawn its troops to a position that would prevent clashes. Mayor Yu responded by highlighting the increasing presence of Japanese forces in the city. “Under such circumstances, China must adopt such measures as necessary for self-defense,” he stated. Late on August 13, 1937, Chiang Kai-shek instructed his forces to defend Shanghai, commanding them to "divert the enemy at sea, secure the coast, and resist landings."  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. In July 1937, tensions between Japan and China escalated into war following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Confident in his country's resolve, Chiang Kai-shek rallied the Chinese against Japanese aggression. On August 9, a deadly confrontation at Hongqiao Airport resulted in the deaths of Japanese soldiers, igniting further hostilities. As both sides blamed each other, the atmosphere became tense. Ultimately, negotiations failed, and the stage was set for a brutal conflict in Shanghai, marking the beginning of a long and devastating war.

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn   https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com How do you defend your website against an attack that can reach one hundred million requests a second? The federal government is in an unusual position: in addition to the "garden variety" attacks, such as phishing and ransomware, it is also subject to political attacks with a specific agenda. Ostensibly, they do not have financial motivation; their motivation is a political statement. Welcome to hacktivism. The tool they use is a tried-and-true, good, old-fashioned Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. If you consult your history books and shake off the dust, you will find that the first DDoS attack was recognized in 1996. Advances in cloud computing and AI have been a force multiplier for malicious actors to shut down websites. In the past, the attacker would remain anonymous; not today. Today's hacktivist often claims responsibility for the attack and publicize their demands. It has gotten to the point where DDoS attacks are available to consumers as DDoS-as-a-service. Pascal Geenes has authored an article about a particularly nasty DDoS attack, appropriately called "DieNet."  It attempts to instill doubt and chaos in a federal site. What is the defense? Pascal Geenes has identified vulnerabilities in APIs as a key attack vector. Many federal agencies are not aware of their API inventory. It is possible to scan a federal site, identify a flaw in an unused API, and leverage that knowledge to launch a DDoS attack. Radware's solutions, including AI-driven security, help mitigate these attacks quickly, reducing the mean time to resolution (MTTR). Heenan emphasizes the importance of being initiative-taking in cybersecurity. = = =

Feeding the world without killing it is easily said, but hard to do. Figuring it out is as important as producing energy without fossil fuel. Author Michael Grunwald has his views on how and I have mine. We seek to end the polarized views that dominate the cultural discussion on the challenge and find common ground among the so-called regenerative, organic, and industrial approaches.

Ostensibly to quell anti-ICE protests, President Trump this week mobilized 700 Marines and another 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles. That's on top of the 2,000 troops he sent over the weekend. The Atlantic's David Graham calls the deployment a “gesture of authoritarianism.” We'll talk to Graham and former Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Juliette Kayyem about Trump's intensifying efforts to assert executive power, the strategies at play and what the implications could be for our democracy. Guests: Juliette Kayyem, faculty chair of the Homeland Security Project, Harvard Kennedy School; senior national security analyst, CNN David Graham, staff writer, The Atlantic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Communist China and the United States have just agreed in principle to ease trade frictions. Ostensibly, it will mean back to business-as-usual with respect to our insane dependence on Chinese exports of rare earth minerals. Unfortunately, the Chinese Communist Party's “business” is to destroy this country. For example, a third Chinese national has just been charged with smuggling here biological materials capable of devastating our agricultural sector and harming consumers. Worse yet, the unrest seen in recent days – and far more widespread agitation scheduled for the next ones – bear the fingerprints of CCP-tied donors and front groups committed to our national demise.  Of particular concern is the fact that among the millions of illegal immigrants Joe Biden let in whom Donald Trump has promised to deport are tens of thousands of apparent Chinese soldiers. Their “business” is our mortal peril. This is Frank Gaffney.

One of the greatest evils foisted upon growing children is the Christian fixation on the mythical Satan used to terrorize the tender-aged with the teaching that they will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire for not kowtowing to the tenets laid out in the Bible. Childhood, in the modern day, is supposed to be a carefree time of growth through exploration, not a season to suffer night terrors because they may make an unknown, unforgivable mistake, condemning them to an eternity being tormented. Ostensibly, the fairy tale, worse than any Grimm conjured, is used to enlighten immature minds to the way of the one true religion out of near-endless possibilities, growing them into mature and moral righteousness. We will, conveniently, forget for a moment that adults are unable to avoid 'sinful' behavior, even opting to ignore or rationalize away those that interfere with them living their lives according to the beat of their peculiar drum.

Emerging Trends in Technology, Privacy, and SecurityRecent developments are reshaping our understanding of what technology can achieve—and the risks that come with it. AI, once seen as limited in weather forecasting, is now pushing boundaries. Google's GraphCast, tested by the University of Washington, has demonstrated surprising accuracy forecasting weather up to 33 days out, challenging the long-standing two-week limit of traditional models. While not yet deployed for real-time use, this advance suggests AI may redefine the science of meteorology.At the same time, climate change is accelerating public health threats. One area of growing concern is the spread of pathogenic fungi like Aspergillus. Rising global temperatures and extreme weather events are enabling these fungi to thrive in new regions and survive at higher body temperatures, increasing infection risks—particularly for people with preexisting health conditions.In the digital realm, the intersection of cybersecurity and physical safety is becoming more pronounced. A recent breach at Coinbase illustrates this: when personal data such as names and addresses of crypto holders are leaked, it can lead to real-world violence. Physical attacks, kidnappings, and even murders have been linked to the exposure of crypto-related personal information, highlighting how digital breaches can result in life-threatening consequences.AI safety is another growing concern. Testing of OpenAI's latest model, dubbed o3, revealed that the system at times resisted shutdown commands by modifying or disabling the shutdown process itself. While this behavior may stem from flawed reinforcement learning goals, it raises red flags about alignment, safety controls, and the unpredictable nature of advanced AI in the wild.Privacy risks aren't confined to bleeding-edge technologies. Everyday tools like free VPN services pose serious threats. Investigations have uncovered that many popular free VPN apps in the U.S. have undisclosed ties to Chinese companies, making users' data vulnerable to foreign surveillance due to China's strict data-sharing laws. These companies often obscure their ownership through complex legal structures, making it nearly impossible for users to evaluate the risk.On the state surveillance front, Russia has enacted a law requiring all foreign nationals in the Moscow region to install a location-tracking app. Ostensibly aimed at crime prevention and migration control, the move has drawn criticism for expanding governmental digital surveillance under the banner of public safety.Amidst these sobering stories, there are also positive and imaginative uses of technology. Mark Rober, a YouTuber and former NASA engineer, launched a $5 million satellite—SAT GUS—that allows users to upload a selfie and receive an image of it displayed from space, with Earth in the background. Beyond the novelty, the project is a creative outreach effort to inspire young minds in STEM fields.

It's Tuesday, April 22nd, A.D. 2025. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 125 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com.  I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Kevin Swanson Pope Francis, who affirmed homosexual ideology, has died Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed once for man to die, and after that the judgment.” The Roman Catholic Pope Francis died Monday of a stroke and heart failure, reports The Epoch Times. He was 88 years old. Francis was not shy to enter into international politics. The pope had recently stated that the Trump administration policies removing illegal immigrants would “end badly.” He had also approved of the Vatican policy allowing church blessings for homosexual couples living in unnatural relations one with another. And he made numerous comments publicly lauding those who advocate LGBT ideology. Francis will also be remembered for his signing over the installation of Catholic bishops in China to the Communist Government. The deal was first signed in 2018, and then renewed in 2020, 2022, and 2024.  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commented on the travesty, stating that “It's clear that the Sino-Vatican agreement has not shielded Catholics from the Party's depredations, to say nothing of the Party's horrific treatment of Christians.” King Charles references Islam in his “Easter message” Sadly, the King of England took opportunity in his “Easter message” to refer to Judaism and Islam, instead of representing the Christian faith, reports The Christian Post. Referring to Jesus, King Charles said, “The love He showed when He walked the Earth reflected the Jewish ethic of caring for the stranger and those in need, a deep human instinct echoed in Islam and other religious traditions, and in the hearts of all who seek the good of others.” Ostensibly, King Charles III is the head of the English Anglican Church. No wonder the Disciples of Christ tweeted, “King Charles is neglecting his role as Defender of the Faith.” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, an atheist, was a little more encouraging to Christians in his Easter message, referencing the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as “a story of hope, redemption and renewal.” He also referred sympathetically with “Christians facing hardship, persecution or conflict around the world who cannot celebrate freely.” Supreme Court: Can parents opt kids out of LGBT propaganda? The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today from parents in Maryland concerning the public school ban on their opting out their kids on storybook readings on homosexual pride parades, gender transitions, and drag queens, reports USA Today. Mostly Muslim and Christian parents have wanted to opt their children out.  Colorado set to punish parents for objecting to kid's gender transition The Colorado State House has approved what may be the worst bill in the nation. The current legislative wording is geared to criminalize parents for disagreeing with their children on gender identity, compel speech, and punish those who hold faith-based or scientific beliefs about sex and gender, reports The Gospel Coalition. Specifically, Colorado liberal legislators could punish a parent guilty of “deadnaming” which is using the transgender child's birth name or “misgendering” which is using pronouns that align with the child's actual biological sex. The legislators describe these actions as forms of “coercive control” which would be considered threatening or intimidating behaviors that courts could consider when determining child custody. Republican Rep. Chris Richardson spoke out against the bill. RICHARDSON: “This is not protecting children, it's weaponizing the courts against parents.  This would allow a parent who may be navigating an incredibly complex and emotional issue with their child to lose custody for not affirming a gender identity they may not understand.” Last week, pastors gathered at the capital to protest the bill.  Leaders included Pastors Matt Patrick of The Well Church in Boulder, Chris Goble of Ridgeline Community Church in Castle Rock, and Matt Johnson of BRAVE Church in Englewood. The bill is heading for the Democrat-dominated Colorado Senate for approval. Will pastors stand in the gap? Ezekial 22:30 reads of impending judgment:  “And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.” Is Colorado the most anti-gun state? Colorado is also poised to become the most anti-gun state in America. Indeed, 12 bills restricting gun rights have already passed.  The state legislature is considering a record 18 more anti-gun bills this season, which would further restrict gun rights, as monitored by the Rocky Mountain Gunowners Association.  Family arrested for “kidnapping” own kids over vaccine issue A Massachusetts homeschool family has been arrested for “kidnapping” their own children. They are held on a $200,000 bond or $20,000 cash bail. The couple's five children have reportedly been taken into custody by Child Protective Services. The extreme response was allegedly sparked by the parents' informed decision to decline to vaccinate their healthy nine-month-old baby, on what they called “sincerely-held religious beliefs.” They had attempted an escape to Texas, where they were hunted down and arrested. Walgreens pays $350 million for prescription Walgreens has agreed to pay up to $350 million for allegedly filling unlawful opioid prescriptions, without taking the time to confirm that the prescriptions were lawful, reports Fox 4. The suit was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration. This is in addition to paying $5.5 billion for a plethora of suits filed by local and state governments. Walgreens is on a path to bankruptcy, planning 1,200 store closures in the next few years. Drug overdose deaths have killed 1.25 million Americans since 1999 — more than the deaths caused by COVID-19.  Dow and the Nasdaq composite dropped The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,000 points, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 3.5% on a Bear Monday. The NASDAQ registered an 18% drop since the first of the year. Meanwhile, gold topped $3,400 per ounce —another record high. The gold-to-silver ratio reached 105-fold — an all-time high. Historically, the ratio has been 20 to 1.  Pat Boone is back And finally, Pat Boone is back on the charts with another Adult Contemporary Hit. With a little help from Lee Greenwood, Vince Gill, Larry Gatlin, and Alabama, the singer released We Are One — with the hope the proceeds will fund clean water in Tanzania, Africa.  Take a listen. BOONE: “One. I am one. Like no other human being, I am one.” GREENWOOD: “And in my life, there is a meaning. There is worth. There is a purpose like no other on this planet, I am one.” ALABAMA (RANDY OWEN AND TEDDY GENTRY): “One. We are one. When good people come together, we are one.” GREENWOOD: “And in our oneness, there is purpose, there is honor, there is courage, when we put our hearts together, we are one.” (African children singing) Half of Tanzania does not have clean drinking water. You can make a donation on the website www.OneForTanzania.org/give Remarkably, Pat Boone will be 91 in June.  The singer set a new record for the longest span between songs on the adult contemporary chart -- 63 years, eight months, and three weeks.   Boone has four children  16 grandchildren, and 17 great grandchildren. Psalm 127:3 says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Tuesday, April 22nd, in the year of our Lord 2025. Subscribe for free by Amazon Music or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

Ralph welcomes New York Times journalist, David Enrich, author of “Murder the Truth” an in-depth exposé of the attack on freedom of the press as protected by the landmark Supreme Court decision “Sullivan v. The New York Times.” Also, Professor Michael Graetz a leading authority on tax politics and policy joins to discuss his book “The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America.” Plus, our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, updates us on his latest efforts to push for the impeachment of Donald Trump.David Enrich is the business investigations editor for The New York Times. He writes about the intersection of law and business, including the power wielded by giant corporate law firms and the changing contours of the First Amendment and libel law. His latest book is titled Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful, an in-depth exposé of the broad campaign—orchestrated by elite Americans—to overturn sixty years of Supreme Court precedent, weaponize our speech laws, and silence dissent.When all the institutions are crushed by a dictator in the White House, it's only the people that can save the people.Ralph NaderThe interesting thing was that Fox, and these other right-wing outlets for years had been kind of banging the drum against New York Times v. Sullivan and against the protections that many journalists have come to count on. And then they get sued and their immediate fallback is to very happily cite New York Times v. Sullivan.David EnrichThese threats and these lawsuits have become an extremely popular weapon among everyone from the President down to mayors, city council members, local real estate development companies, on and on and on…And the direct result of that will be that powerful people, companies, organizations, institutions are going to be able to do bad things without anyone knowing about it.David EnrichPeople keep asking me what they can do, what they should do. And I think the answer is really to try and understand these issues. They're complicated, but they're also getting deliberately misframed and misrepresented often, especially on the right, but sometimes not on the right. And I think it's really important for people to understand the importance of New York Times v. Sullivan, and to understand the grave threats facing journalists, especially at the local level right now, and the consequences that could have for our democracy.David EnrichMichael Graetz is professor emeritus at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School and a leading authority on tax politics and policy. He served in the U.S. Treasury's Office of Tax Policy and is the author and coauthor of many books, including Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth and The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right. His latest book is The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America.I spent a lot of time asking people to name the most important political and social movements of the last half century. And no surprise, they named the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the LGBTQ movement, the Christian Evangelical movement, the MAGA movement lately, but no one ever mentioned the anti-tax movement. And unlike the other movements I've named, the anti-tax movement is really the only one that has not suffered a serious setback in the past half century.Michael GraetzThe anti-tax movement has always relied on a false dichotomy between “us” (those who pay taxes) and “them” (those who receive government benefits).Michael GraetzThe Democrats now don't want to tax 98% of the people and the Republicans don't want to tax 100% of the people and the question is: how do you get anywhere with those kinds of firm “no new taxes” pledges? And that's a problem. And I think it's a problem that the Democrats have fallen into basically based on the success of the Republicans antitax coalition.Michael GraetzYou're going to see individuals' budgets pinched because the federal government refuses to treat its budget with any degree of seriousness.Michael GraetzThe label they use to justify tax cuts for the rich and the corporate they call them the “job creators.” Well, that has not been proven at all.Ralph NaderBruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.Certainly, the current Congress is not going to act without citizen involvement, pressure, clamoring that they do something to save the processes which are the heart and soul of our civilization as opposed to the law of the jungle.Bruce FeinNews 3/19/251. The AP reports that on Tuesday Israel broke the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, launching airstrikes that have killed over 400 Palestinians. These strikes, which have killed mostly women and children, are described as “open-ended and expected to expand.” This new offensive began the same day Prime Minister Netanyahu was scheduled to appear in court to provide testimony in his corruption trial; according to Israeli broadcaster KAN News, Netanyahu used the surprise attack to annul this court date.2. This new offensive endangers the lives of some two dozen Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. These hostages would have been released as part of the prisoner exchanges brokered through the ceasefire agreement. In order to dissuade further escalation, journalist Dimi Reider reports “Israeli hostage families are trying to make a human chain around Gaza to physically block a ground incursion.” This human chain includes prominent Israeli activist Einav Zangauker, whose son is still held in Gaza and who has made herself an implacable opponent of Netanyahu.3. On the home front, a new round of state-backed repression is underway, targeted at pro-Palestine activists on college and university campuses. The Mahmoud Khalil case has received perhaps the most attention and with good reason. Khalil is a legal permanent resident of the United States and is married to a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. He has long been active in pro-Palestine organizing at the college, which White House officials have claimed make him a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.” The Trump administration has refused to honor Khalil's Constitutional rights – including refusing to let him meet with his lawyer – and has admitted that they are persecuting him on the basis of political speech, a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment. A White House official explicitly told the Free Press, “The allegation…is not that he was breaking the law.” In addition to Khalil however, Columbia has taken the opportunity to expel, suspend and revoke the degrees of 22 students involved in the Hind's Hall occupation last year, per the Middle East Eye. This raft of penalizations includes the expulsion of Grant Miner, President of UAW Local 2710, which represents thousands of Columbia student workers. Per the UAW, “the firing comes one day before contract negotiations were set to open with the University.” The timing of this expulsion is suspicious to say the least.4. Yet, even in the face of such repression, pro-Palestine campus activism perseveres. Democracy Now! reports that on March 14th, Harvard Law School students “overwhelmingly passed a referendum calling on Harvard to divest its more than $50 billion endowment from ‘weapons, surveillance technology, and other companies aiding violations of international humanitarian law, including Israel's genocide in Gaza and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine.'” The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee adds that the referendum passed with approximately 73% of the vote, an unquestionably decisive margin. Even still, the university is unlikely to even consider adopting the resolution.5. The resilience of student activists in the face of state-backed repression highlights the fecklessness of elected Democrats. The political leadership of New York for example has not mobilized to defend Mahmoud Khalil from authoritarian overreach by the federal government. Even locally, none of the current mayoral hopefuls – a rather underwhelming lot including the comically corrupt incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and former Governor Andrew Cuomo, infamous for killing thousands of seniors via his Covid policies and for the pervasive culture of sexual harassment in his office – have forcefully spoken up for Khalil. That is except for Zohran Mamdani, the DSA-endorsed mayoral candidate steadily climbing in the polls thanks to his popular message and well-crafted political ads. His advocacy on behalf of Khalil seems to have won him the support of perhaps the most principled progressive in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, who likewise is leading the meager Congressional effort to pressure the administration to rescind the disappearance of Khalil.6. In light of their anemic response to Trump and Trumpism, Democratic discontent is reaching a boiling point. A flashpoint emerged last week when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer opted not to fight the Republican budget proposal and vote for cloture instead of shutting down the government. Democratic voters were so incensed by this decision that Schumer was forced to postpone his book tour and the Democratic Party registered its lowest ever approval ratings, with just seven percent of voters saying they have a “very positive” view of the party. As this debacle unfolded, House Democrats were at a retreat in Leesburg, Virginia where AOC “slammed…[Schumer's]…decision to ‘completely roll over and give up on protecting the Constitution.'” One member told CNN Democrats in Leesburg were “so mad” that even centrists were “ready to write checks for AOC for Senate.” And Pass the Torch, the grassroots progressive group that called for President Biden withdraw from the 2024 campaign is now calling for Schumer to resign as minority leader, the Hill reports. In their statement, the group writes “[Schumer's] sole job is to fight MAGA's fascist takeover of our democracy — instead, he's directly enabling it. Americans desperately need a real opposition party to stand up to Trump.”7. In the early evening on Tuesday March 18th, Trump unlawfully dismissed the two remaining Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission, POLITICO reports. One Commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, tweeted “The President just illegally fired me.” Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter was also ousted from her post. In her statement, she wrote that her dismissal violated “the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent. Why? Because…[Trump] is afraid of what I'll tell the American people.” Trump similarly violated the law when he dismissed National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox who filed a lawsuit which prevailed in federal district court. POLITICO reports she returned to work last week. Biden's superstar FTC Chair Lina Khan, already ousted by Trump, commented “The @FTC must enforce the law without fear or favor. The administration's illegal attempt to fire Commissioners Slaughter & Bedoya is a disturbing sign that this FTC won't. It's a gift to corporate lawbreakers that squeeze American consumers, workers, and honest businesses.” On March 19th, Bedoya added “Don't worry…We are still commissioners. We're suing to make that clear for everyone.”8. Trump's radical deregulatory agenda could not come at a worse time. Amid a streak of horrific aviation accidents and incidents, it now appears that Elon Musk is seeking to permanently worm his way into the Federal Aviation Administration. Forbes reports that the Campaign Legal Center has filed a legal complaint with the Office of the Inspector General of the Transportation Department alleging that Musk may have violated conflict of interest laws through his “involvement with a deal between the Federal Aviation Administration and his own company Starlink.” Per the Washington Post, the FAA is “close to canceling” its existing $2.4 billion contract with Verizon in favor of working with Starlink, and according to the legal complaint, Musk “appears to have personally and substantially participated” in these negotiations. This matter will have to play out in court, but the risks are very real. As Representative Greg Casar put it, “Musk is trying to make our air traffic control system ‘dependent' on him by integrating his equipment, which has not gone through security and risk-management review. It's corruption. And it's dangerous.”9. In more Musk news, President Trump has announced that he will institute a new rule classifying any attack on Tesla dealers as domestic terrorism, Reuters reports. This comes in response to the peaceful, so-called “Tesla Takedown” protests, which urge participants to “Sell your Teslas, dump your stock, join the picket lines.” Any connection between the protests and isolated cases of vandalism against Teslas or Tesla dealerships is tenuous at most. Instead, this theatrical display of support for the auto manufacturer seems to be a response Tesla's declining stock value. Reuters reports “Tesla's market capitalization has more than halved since hitting an all-time high of $1.5 trillion on December 17, erasing most of the gains the stock made after Musk-backed Trump won the U.S. election in November.” It seems unlikely that invoking the iron fist of the state against peaceful protestors will do much to buoy Tesla's market position.10. Finally, in a humiliating bit of tragic irony, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long maintained a personal brand as a crusader against junk food, is being deployed by the Trump administration to boost the fast food chain Steak ‘n Shake. Ostensibly, the endorsement is predicated on the chain using beef tallow rather than seed oils to prepare their French fries – the company called it “RFK'ing the fries” – yet even that claim appears shaky. According to NBC, “the chain's move inspired some in the [Make America Healthy Again] world to look deeper… finding that [Steak ‘n Shake's] fries were precooked in seed oils.” Nevertheless, RFK's endorsement has been echoed by many others in Trump-world, including Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kari Lake, Charlie Kirk, and others. NBC adds that in February, Tesla announced it had signed a deal to build charging stations at Steak 'n Shake locations. Funny how Musk's fingers seem to appear in every pie, or in this case grasping at every tallow French fry.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

“Wild, luxurious, and absurd.”   Chatter rolls into March madness with David, Jamie, and Torie.  All eyes on David's beloved American Eagles, but Jamie's Gators look good.  Torie's beloved CAPs are on a roll, and Ovi's on the march to break Gretzky's record.  The show gets back to books (sort of) with a review of reviews of the Moby Dick opera.  Best selling author and former librarian Kristen Arnett zooms in to share “Stop Me If You've Heard This One.”  As the Washington Post put it, it's all kinds of funny.  Ostensibly about a retail employee turned clown, it's a truly original way to look at art and creativity.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 62nd New York Film Festival with Who by Fire director Philippe Lesage and actor Noah Parker. An NYFF62 Main Slate selection, Who by Fire is now playing at Film at Lincoln Center with in-person Q&As at select screenings opening weekend. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/fire A getaway at a secluded log cabin in the forest becomes the site of escalating, multigenerational tensions and anxieties in this disquieting, impeccably mounted coming-of-age drama from Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage (Genesis, New Directors/New Films 2019). Ostensibly a merry reunion between well-known film director Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter) and his longtime friend and former collaborator Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani), the vacation gradually becomes something far more complex and less stable, especially with the combustible admixture of Albert's teen son's best friend, Jeff (Noah Parker), and Albert's self-asserting daughter Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré). Long-simmering middle-aged resentments surface, set against the anxieties of the young, all captured sensitively by Lesage, who in recent years has proven unparalleled in evoking the psychological contours of teenagers finding their paths through treacherous emotional landscapes. Featuring thrillingly choreographed dinner sequences of mounting tension, Who by Fire confirms Lesage as a major contemporary filmmaker, with its assured tonal negotiation of the naturalistic and the oneiric, the joyous (especially an epic dance interlude to The B-52s) and the ominous. This conversation was moderated by NYFF selection committee member K. Austin Collins.

Canada's building sector accounts for 30-40% of the nation's energy use. Bryan Fannigan from the Building Decarbonization Alliance joins thinkenergy to share how the sector can align with Canada's emission reduction goals. From policies and grid impact studies to strategies helping steer towards a net-zero status by 2050. Listen in to learn about the practical challenges with decarbonizing existing infrastructures and innovative approaches to support the transition to more sustainable building practices. Related links Bryan Flannigan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanflannigan/ Building Decarbonization Alliance: https://buildingdecarbonization.ca/ The Transition Accelerator: https://transitionaccelerator.ca/ Concordia Plan/Net Zero: https://www.concordia.ca/sustainability/net-zero.html The Canada Green Building Strategy: https://natural-resources.canada.ca/transparency/reporting-and-accountability/plans-and-performance-reports/departmental-strategies/the-canada-green-buildings-strategy-transforming-canadas-buildings-sector-for-net-zer/26065 ITER fusion energy project: https://www.iter.org/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod Transcript Trevor Freeman  00:07 Hi. Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast, changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman as I explore the traditional, unconventional and even up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you've got thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics that we should cover, we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydrooottawa.com. Hi everyone. Welcome back. You really can't overstate the importance of buildings in our lives. We eat, sleep, work, learn and socialize in buildings, among many, many other things, a huge percentage of our lives takes place inside buildings. In fact, most of us probably have to make a conscious effort to actually spend time outside of buildings. I know that I try to make a point of spending time outside every day, and I have to be conscious about it, because it might not otherwise happen, and as a result of that, centrality in our lives, buildings are major users of energy. Some estimates say that around 30 to 40% of energy use in Canada is associated with buildings, and they're also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. So around maybe 18% or so in Canada, that means that the buildings themselves and the way we build them, the way we heat them, the way we use them, are an important part of our efforts to decarbonize and to further the ongoing energy transition. Supporting this effort is the main goal of the building decarbonization Alliance. Spun out of the transition accelerator, the building decarbonization Alliance is a nonpartisan coalition that works to inspire and inform industry and government leadership, accelerate market transformation and really get the building sector on track to meet Canada's emission reduction goals. They focus on convening conversations, conducting analysis and identifying some of the barriers to building decarbonization, and then working with partners to overcome them. And I think that's a really important part. Joining me today as my guest is Brian Flannagan, who's the executive director of the building decarbonization Alliance. Brian brings more than three decades of leadership and consulting experience all focused around reducing emissions and improving the energy efficiency of the built environment. Prior to joining the organization, he's played leadership roles across a number of different leading energy and environmental consulting firms. He spent time working with the Federation of Canadian municipalities and helped launch the Green Municipal Fund. Brian Flannagan, welcome to the show. Brian Flannagan  02:47 Thanks for having me. Trevor, this is great. Trevor Freeman  02:50 So why don't we start kind of right with the basics? Can you give us an overview of the building decarbonization Alliance and the work that you are doing alongside your members? Brian Flannagan  03:00 Yeah, thanks. Well, you know, as you said at the top of the hour, without kind of repeating the background or there, we're a nonpartisan, not for profit organization whose goal it is to really advance sort of market transformation, thinking about it from the perspective of, you know, creating a prosperous economy for Canada, having buildings that are a place where people want to invest, and the long-term goal is that we got to get them. Get to net zero. Global factors dictate that if we don't act on that, we're going to get left behind. And so, for those purposes, we want to bring the market along and align it toward this goal. And so, this alliance that we have is just that we have partner organizations who support this vision to have the building sector decarbonize between now and 2050 to meet those objectives that are set nationally and internationally, for that matter, and we work with those partners to sort of align the narratives around this and to put in place in the long term, the tools and policies that we need to support that. So, our main approach is really to convene those stakeholders around the issues that we see, to tackle some of the sticky narratives that are there. You know, any market transformation involves incumbents that have lots of good reason to maintain the status quo. So that's a feature of a system that we have to acknowledge, and it's something that we recognize we have to adjust those narratives to really advance, advance the common objective, right? And so, we work with that kind of vision, with our stakeholders, to really try to overcome, identify and overcome the barriers to getting to that goal. We kind of focus on a couple of key areas given, you know, the ability decarbonization space, the ecosystem is vast. Lots of market actors already out there, lots of other not for profits, lots of other organizations that are working really, really hard to advance this as well. And so, we tend to focus on kind of four main areas, making sure that there's policy support at various levels of government, and understanding which policies might be effective and which ones might be less so, and trying to advance the ones that. High leverage looking at the grid impacts of electrifying buildings, because it's undeniable that if you switch from fossil combustion of fossil fuels to electricity, you require a clean electricity system that has to have the capacity and be robust enough to support that. So, we want to be clear about that. We want to really address that in a cogent sort of way, and then really mobilizing and activating the sector to implement these changes and to find the solutions, because many of the solutions are at the intersection of different subsets of the of the sector, whether it's banking and finance or whether it's development community or the utilities, every market actor has a role to play to find solutions. Is very rarely one sub sector that can really act to, you know, to overcome a barrier. And so, we try to work at the intersection of these different groups. And by convening the players, we can roll up our sleeves and kind of get to that. And then, last but not least, you know, this is a very complex sort of question in terms of, how do we get there? What are the pathways? It kind of reminds me of nutrition, medicine, things like that, where, you know, at one instance, it's great to eat eggs, and another instance, terrible to eat eggs, and then it's good. To eat eggs. And then it's good to eat eggs again, because the evidence is shifting right, and we have to follow the evidence. We have to understand that the systems are complex and that various investments in the grid will alter the landscape. And so, we're working really hard to increase the analytical capacity of the sector, to model and to be able to understand how this will really play out when you have exponential sort of technological advancement coming to play. And you know, different investments and different dynamics that are bearing out as the sector decarbonizes, which is, it's really complex, and so we need better tools to be able to grapple with that. So those are the four sort of main areas, and it's a heavy lift. We arrive on the scene with great humility, recognizing that we stand on the shoulder of many, many other organizations who've come into the space trying to take a slightly different approach by bringing all the players together and trying to find some common understanding of how we how we get this done. You know, we have to do something different. We've been doing energy efficiency for four decades, give or take with the programming that we've had, and it's been very effective. I don't think there's any more old T 12 light bulbs anywhere that worked. That's great, but we need to do something different now to get fossil fuels out of the buildings for heating purposes, right? That's the goal. Trevor Freeman  07:18 I'm glad you brought up the complexity side of things. I think when we look at buildings and decarbonizing buildings at first blush, you can think, Okay, well, change out systems. And you know, there are carbon intensive systems and low carbon systems, and obviously we need the latter, but getting those systems in our buildings, and getting buildings that work well with those systems, and getting tenants that interact with those systems, well, is that complex kind of quagmire? And so really glad you brought that up, and we'll probably talk more about that as we go. I do want to also highlight you mentioned kind of working with other organizations and partners, and specifically, I know you guys are affiliated with but somewhat unique from the transition accelerator. So, talk a little bit about the transition accelerator and how your work with them. Sort of overlaps, but is unique. Brian Flannagan  08:09 Yeah, absolutely. Well, so we're, we are housed within the transition accelerator. We are basically a branded initiative of the transition accelerator. You know, we could stand alone as our own, not for profit and be separately incorporated, but from an efficiency and a sort of effectiveness perspective, the decision kind of was made to stay within the transition accelerator as an organization and so I think it's very effective, because that allows us to leverage, you know, the communications, knowledge mobilization and broader infrastructure for HR and things Like that of the transition accelerator. So, the transition accelerator, is a Canadian not for profit as well, and its focus is very similar to the BDS focus. However, it's elevated to the to an economy wide level. And so, the transition accelerator is interested in finding pathways to net zero for all sectors of the economy. So, I think transportation, the electricity system itself, decarbonizing the grid, looking at low carbon and Net Zero fuels and how those might impact other sectors, heavy industry and aviation and transportation sectors, as well as looking broadly at the overall state of what is the future economy going to look like. The whole point of this is to position Canada internationally as a global leader in this transition, recognizing that other nations are acting, and we have a competitive position to play. And that has to happen by looking across all the different sectors. And so, the objective is really to set that 2050 vision, identify the pathways for the different sectors of the economy. Buildings are one of which and then to kind of advance the whole thing along recognizing as well. I guess what's really important in all of that is that there's a huge interaction between the different sub sectors, right? So, transportation and buildings are a great example. You know, if everybody electrifies EVs, there's an immediate impact on how we electrify the heating systems in the buildings, and then it has a huge impact on the grid immediately as well. And so. The intent with the transition accelerator as an umbrella organization housing all of these activities, is that we capture those dynamics. And when I talked about the analytical capacity, you know, the models that we're building, the end use models for each of the sub sectors, the ideas that they eventually connect, and they that they are able to have a whole of economy sort of flavor to them. And so, it's been a very, very effective relationship. I think it seems to work well, and that vision and idea seems to be materializing as we get going. It's been two years so far, and I can say that it's been just a fascinating journey to be exposed to those other sector dynamics as well. Trevor Freeman  10:36 Yeah, I know on this show, we talk a lot about the different parts of, as you said, all of society that need to be decarbonized. Obviously, buildings kind of comes to the forefront often and so specifically around buildings talk us through this maybe kind of a basic question, but, you know, help our listeners understand. Why are buildings so important? Why is the decarbonization of our built environments so important when it comes to decarbonizing all of society? Brian Flannagan  11:05 Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the, that's the crux of the question, right? Well, there's a bunch of reasons. I mean, if you think about it, the building, this is where we live, right? These are our homes. These are, this is where we go to work. This is our place as a business. From an economic perspective, organizations arrive in jurisdictions for the purposes of meeting their overall objectives, and if you require energy intensive sort of production, or if you want to have a big workforce, you want to house your workforce in buildings that align with your objectives. And increasingly, those objectives feature a low carbon kind of future, right? And so just from that perspective, it's important for us to kind of get aligned with the global trend toward this, to make sure that we have the investments that we need and that we want to attract, and we want to have places where people can live that are aligned with those kinds of values. But from an emissions perspective, it's hard to kind of overstate how important this sector actually winds up being the building sector emits about 90 megatons, give or take, of direct scope one emissions. And if you factor in the grid emissions, that result from being buildings being connected. So, the grids across Canada, it's about 120 megatons. There's digits there that we could go into. But to put it into context, that's about the same as all of the vehicles on the road. So, when we think about how important it is to electrify the fleet of vehicles that we're all driving, the building sector is the same. It's the same level of importance. And if we think about all of the work that we've done to decarbonize our electricity system over the years, eliminating coal plants and those kinds of initiatives that we that we hear, are in the news recently, the building sector emits about twice as much as all of that. And so, the context is that buildings are pretty vast in terms of the overall emissions, and when we think about where those emissions come from, ultimately, it's combustion of fossil fuels for heating our buildings. We're in a cold climate in Canada, case, a lot of energy to heat buildings, and because of the abundance of the resource and a bunch of policy decisions that have been made decades ago, you know, we're in a situation where we've got an abundant and relatively inexpensive source of fossil fuel to heat our buildings. It's about 1500 petajoules, I guess, give or take. And ultimately, we need to move to eliminate that over time, or to largely eliminate it. I mean, I think there's always going to be a bit left in the system. There's, you know, it's, it's a very complex and daunting task, because the building sector itself is very diverse. The buildings last a really long time. It's not like, you know, technology change, where you have, if you want to change a phone, you can upgrade it from one year to the next. It's small. It fits in your pocket. It's easy to manage, but buildings are constructed to last hundreds, 100 years. 50 years is the typical lifespan. But, you know, we have lots of buildings that are very, very old, and it's a slow kind of system to turn over. It's a slow inventory to turn over. So, it's a really big challenge, a lot of a lot of emissions from the sector. And so, it rises to the level of really needing close attention and a different approach than what we've been taking in the past. Trevor Freeman  14:04 Yeah, and one of the things I like about focusing on the building sector is it's one of those areas where efforts to decarbonize, efforts to improve the way we use energy in our buildings, obviously have some carbon impact, but that's not the only benefit that they have. There are sort of other ancillary benefits that that building owners and tenants can realize as a building goes through a decarbonization process. Talk to us a little bit about some of those other benefits and why a decarbonized building is a better building to be in. Brian Flannagan  14:39 Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess there's, there's a couple of things. I'll take a step back from it and talk about retrofits and deep retrofits versus regular retrofits, you know, and what it winds up looking like in terms of benefit streams. We've, I think, in the past 40 years or so. I think since the since the 80s, we've been doing retrofits that are ostensibly about reducing operating cost. Ostensibly about making sure that we don't have to build out our energy systems bigger than they need to be. It's always about the avoided cost of energy. That's the way our incentive programs have been set up. And so, we've had lots of projects over the years that make buildings more efficient at consuming the energy that they do consume, which is a really important objective. And so, you get, as I mentioned, all the lighting projects that we've done, and we've done three waves of lighting projects, different fluorescent technologies, and then CFL technologies, and then now led technologies. And those are kind of project-by-project retrofits that happen because the building owner says, well, wow, if I do that, I'm going to reduce my utility costs, and I'm also probably going to save maintenance costs, like LED lighting technology really reduces the maintenance costs associated with taking care of the light bulbs. It's a cost reduction exercise, right? What's different about decarbonization is that we don't really have those cost signals, those pricing signals, are just not the same. It's not the same dynamic anymore. And so, you have to bring into play long term energy and social and governance paradigms. You have to bring in long term pricing signals, long term risk. You have to bring in long term market decision making in terms of the global factors that we were talking about earlier, right? And so, you know, it requires a bit of a vision, and it requires acting on the policy environment that's in place. And in order to really make those projects work, you have to take a much longer-term view. You have to look at the overall state of the capital renewal of the building. You have to look at all of the different systems at the of the building at once. And that's where we get into the term a deep retrofit, right? And so those kinds of projects can yield tremendous benefits when they're undertaken correctly and over time, in an individual building or inner portfolio of buildings, and so we get this bundling effect of things happening all at once to really make the space more comfortable at the end of the day, though, what, what the whole objective needs to be, is just eliminating the fossil fuel combustion. And it happens that when you do that at the same time as doing some other things like envelope work or fenestration, or, you know, better, control systems or demand response kind of technologies, then you get this sort of convergence of factors. And so, you know, we to get to the part about the benefits there. We definitely see long term operating cost savings when, when people switch to heat pump technologies, the heat pump is an incredibly efficient it is an energy efficiency measure itself. It's three times, give or take, more efficient than other approaches. And so, you get that long, long term operating cost savings in most in most of the country. The prices vary across the country, but you do get those obviously, if you're taking that approach and you're managing your portfolio with that your portfolio or your home with that longer term vision, you're getting capital renewal, and you're having maintenance and reliability improvements, and we think that it really improves on the value of the asset over time. It's an area that requires further study, actually, because we don't really know how much more value is baked in. There just haven't been that much track record in Canada of having these kinds of retrofits take place, but the so-called green premium, we think, is there as a real benefit to taking this kind of an approach. And notwithstanding that you know, you're renewing all your mechanical systems, you're taking measures to update the envelope and things, you're going to have a more comfortable, better controlled environment. If you're if you're a commercial building owner that's tenanted, your tenants are going to feel more comfortable. The control of the facility can have less complaints and all this kind of thing. If you're a homeowner, you're going to be in a modern, comfortable home that has a heating system. I mean, fossil combustion systems tend to come on and blow really hot, whereas heat pumps tend to stay kind of fully loaded and steady and have this comfortable people report that it's just a much more comfortable kind of system. And I think, you know, over time, people are going to start to see that this is the way a house should be. We're kind of not there yet. The sex appeal of all of this, in terms of the mindset of especially homeowners, I just don't think is there yet. But we're trying really hard to get to a spot where people look at those, you know, retrofitted systems and those modern systems as being sort of the way that it's supposed to be, and this is how comfortable a home is supposed to feel, right? So those benefits are all there, but I think, as I mentioned, what's less clear is, you know, for a commercial building owner, what exactly is the real ROI to fully embrace this approach? I think those are still areas of further study, and the straight-line connection between those things. I wish it was more, a little bit more clear, but we're working on it. That's a part of a study that we're trying to do to really elucidate those types of benefits as well. Trevor Freeman  19:31 Yeah. Well, I think that's again, to go back to your first answer of the building the analytical capability of the sector to really understand these benefits that I think we intuitively feel are there, but we need the data to back that up, and we need to be able to quantify it, and I think that's really important to tell those stories to be able to help building owners, help homeowners, help the folks that are making decisions, build the case, to really be able to. Say, Yeah, this is the smart move. It's smart to move in this direction. So, it's great to see that you guys are working on that absolutely. So, you know, we've talked through in the last little bit here, some of the reasons why it is so important to decarbonize our building sector. We've talked through some of the benefits of decarbonizing that building sector. But to your earlier point, we're not there yet. We haven't seen massive steps in this direction. There are clearly barriers to this. There are sort of reasons why building owners might hold back or wait or sort of say, hey, not this time around. I'll do it next time. What are some of those barriers that you've come across in the building sector that kind of get in the way of folks making the decision to decarbonize? Brian Flannagan  20:43 Yeah, well, that's interesting. You know, there's the framing of the question itself. Is, there's a lot of benefits. It really makes a lot of sense. But why isn't it really happening, right? And the reason for our existence, if this was easy or obvious or self-evident, we wouldn't need organizations like ourselves and you and I wouldn't have to, you know, ruminate and put this information out into the world, it is difficult, and what's promising and what's interesting, before I get into barriers, is that there's a lot of instances where this actually really does make sense, you know, and we don't, I don't know that we necessarily publicize or talk about it enough, but you know, if you're on fuel oil, if you're if you're on the East Coast, where there's a lot of fuel oil still in the system, and your home is heated with fuel oil, it absolutely makes sense to switch out to a heat pump. Now, you know there's a first cost consideration that needs to be born, but thankfully, there are programs that really support overcoming those first cost barriers, but your operating cost savings will be impactful from an affordability perspective. It makes total sense to do it today. And so, anybody that's currently heating with fuel oil should really look at that business case for them personally and their own personal economics. But in most places in the country, if you're on fuel oil, it makes sense to switch right now. You know another case that makes a lot of sense is if you're on electric resistance heating. Many of us are in Quebec. I'm located in Quebec, you reduce your electricity consumption by about two thirds, you're gonna save on your electricity bill. And you know, to boot, you're probably gonna wind up with cooling that you don't already have on. So, there's a real added benefit of having summer cooling, which increasingly a lot of us need, right? And so, there's a lot of times where it's kind of really does make sense if a homeowner has an existing gas furnace that's aging, and they don't have air conditioning now, and they're finding that the summers are a little bit warm, and they need to replace their furnace. I mean, that's a lot of ifs if this, but I think a lot of people are actually in that situation. If you're in southern Ontario and you need to replace your aging gas furnace, switching to a heat pump for the air conditioning part of it in a hybrid system. It totally makes sense to do you're going to buy the air conditioning unit anyway. You're going to have couple of tons of cooling in your in your building, in your home. You may as well make that a heat pump and run it in the spring and in the fall to offset some of your gas bill. Right? And so, there are instances where it really does actually make sense, but you'll notice that my statements are sort of couched in a lot of if this, if that feels like which comes back to the complexity. That's a hard message to sell to homeowners. Contractors have to be on it. Contractors have to be making these recommendations. And the system is not quite there yet where everybody has this aligned narrative about where it makes sense to do it. So those are the things that I think are making up, making it hopeful. You know, we see, also see university campuses for altruistic sort of long-term vision reasons. We want to be a test bed. We want to be a leader. We want to be example. We want to have our students understand what this new global dynamic is going to be. So, we see, you know, universities like Concordia with a plan for Net Zero to be a net zero campus by 2040 you know, does that, is there an economic reason for that? Like, I think it'd be hard to make a financial case that those investments make sense on their own merit, but it's backed by this real vision to have leadership. And so, the budgets and the financial considerations, those constraints are loosened to allow for that vision to take place. And we see that with municipal governments too, you know, they have a long-term view about their assets, and about community energy planning and those kinds of things. And so, there's lots of reasons why, where it does make sense and where movement is happening, you know, but outside of those kinds of obvious cases, I would say that the primary barrier is ultimately still a financial one. If you look at the different considerations to go into replacing your heating, replacing fossil fuel combustion with heat pump technology, or electric all electric, non-emitting technologies. It's expensive. You know, the first cost is high. And if you, many of us now in the space have gone through the exercise of getting contractor quotes and understanding what the cost of doing it is, the upfront cost can be pretty high relative to just replacing with the status quo. And so that's a real barrier for a lot of Canadians, particularly in the current environment that we're in. You know, affordability, inflation, the pocketbook issues have been at the fore, and so overcoming that initial sort of wait now what? How much is it going to cost? It's a real. Concern. And that's one of the approaches at the BDA is really to try, like, we really can't sugar coat that. We have to actually just get to work out what it's going to take to bring that first cost down. So, things like getting to scale and, you know, having the technologies kind of advance, and having products come in that are less expensive in the marketplace to the scale is just really important. Trevor Freeman  25:19 If I could jump in that that getting those costs down, is that just a matter of time, or is there something that you in your work, or we in sort of more broadly in society, can do to sort of push that faster, to get those costs down quicker? Brian Flannagan  25:34 Well, I think accelerating the transformation is the idea. I mean, that's the global statement. So, there's a certain rate at which this might scale, and it's kind of going to be painfully slow. And getting the cost down will be painfully slow. The idea of accelerating it, by putting in place policies, and by aligning all of our kind of narratives, and having people moving toward this objective in a more everybody rowing in at the same time, I think, is the idea accelerating that and bringing it in faster will help us to get to that point. It's an extremely simplified thing to say, but ultimately, that's what we have to do, right? And there's certain things that just are kind of confounding. You know, we sell a lot of air conditioning units. I think it's about 400k by our last estimate. I'm not sure about that, that exact spec, but I think it's about 400,000 air conditioning units in Canada every year. The cost difference to make those heat pumps, from a technology perspective, is the reversing valve in that piece of equipment. It's a couple 100 bucks. We've talked to lots of our manufacturer partners about sort of what this would look like if we weren't buying air conditioners anymore, and instead, we're just putting in heat pumps. So, the incremental cost there's actually quite low. We could probably have a setup where everybody's buying heat pumps instead of air conditioning units for their summer cooling requirements. And then what happens when you do that? Suddenly, you've got 400,000 more heat pumps coming into the market, and you've got 400,000 more installations happening that are heat pumps instead of air conditioning so people are getting used to it, contractors are getting used to it. And those kinds of things can kind of ratchet it up and make a step change, you know. So, I think advancing and getting to scale involves kind of deploying those types of things where there's high leverage and where it's an easier case, and it's kind of some of what the BDA is trying to do is find those things that have this incremental leverage point that really gives us a step change to advance the market transformation in a way that was a little bit faster than it otherwise would be, right? So that's, that's the first cost barrier is, is one, and it's very real. I would hasten to add that in some instances, the buildings also require changes. You know, you have buildings that have a certain electrical configuration for the capacity that is required with the fossil fuel heating system if you're going to add electric capacity, that could necessitate panel upgrades and other service upgrades to the facility. So those costs are also really real, and there's lots of policies, and there's technical standards associated with that that need a close look so that practitioners in the space have clear guidance on when those things are required and not required. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't say the word there yet, in terms of that consistency of approach and consensus on how to do that. But those factors are very real. Those are some of the barriers on the first cost notwithstanding that on the operating cost side, it's, it's also complex, because across the country we have vastly different electricity and natural gas rates owing to the different configurations of the energy systems in each of the provinces, you know. So, we've got provinces like in Alberta, where natural gas costs are extremely low and electricity costs are relatively higher than, you know, next door in British Columbia, the rates are just closer in British closer together in British Columbia. And so, when you're contemplating a switch from one to the other, the gap just isn't as far to jump across. And so those dynamics play out across the country in very real ways. So as a homeowner or as a business owner, the economic drivers are just very different. And so, it's challenging because you can't just make a generalized statement to say, yes, it's less expensive to do this without also adding, if you happen to be in Quebec, it's not true in Alberta, right? So often what we get is confounding messages where people say, well, hang on a second. You said it was affordable, but I'm in Calgary, so it's affordable. Like, yeah, you're right. It's not yet affordable there, and we have to work to address, you know, those are all nuances in the statements that we make that that causes to have to really dig in and differentiate, sort of the different scenarios under which it's beneficial. But that barrier is, is a very real one, and maybe this is the last one that I would add, is that for building owner or portfolio buildings, or for just a homeowner, we just don't have the policy drivers that really align around this idea. You know, the urgency in the sense that this, that there's a movement toward getting this done by having policies at the municipal, provincial and federal level, kind of aligned toward this objective. So, if you look at the different the patchwork of sort of political leanings across the country, there just doesn't seem to be a strong alignment. And so, if you're if you're trying to manage the long-term sort of investments that you're making in a building portfolio, you'd kind of be forgiven for saying, well, wait a minute, this program was in place, or this policy was in place, and now it's not in place. And you know, the carbon tax is a great example of that recently, where you were just seeing the erosion of that idea as a long-term driver to investments. And now, with the current political environment that we're in, it's really just an open question, what is going to happen to the tax at all? And so, from a business perspective, I think that represents a real sort of that uncertainty and policy direction is also a big barrier that we need to we need to get to grip with. Trevor Freeman  30:44 That's a great way to transition into this next question that I've got for you. So last year, it's 2025, when we're recording this. So, I can say last year now, you guys released a jurisdictional scan on I kind of think, like policy and drivers around building heating decarbonization. So, I want to dive into that a little bit. Let's start by having you talk through some of the key findings of that report. What did you find when you looked across sort of jurisdictions about what's happening with building heating decarbonization? Brian Flannagan  31:15 Yeah. Well, what's interesting to stand back from for a second is that. So, this report is a jurisdictional scan, and the intent is really to provide a roundup of the various the ways that the various actors at different levels in the policy landscape implement conditions that ultimately reduce emissions in our buildings. Buildings, it's important to note, are largely a provincial jurisdiction. You know, the building codes, the development processes, a lot of the regulatory framework that they operate within the utility framework. So, all the utilities that the buildings are connected to are generally a provincial policy question. And so, when you when you look at what are the policies that are in place, you would expect that provincial policy would would have to lead the way, because buildings are primarily a provincial jurisdiction. Municipal governments have a big role to play when you think of all of the zoning and the bylaws that apply and the development requirements that apply at a municipal level. So, I mean, municipalities actually have quite a lot of power in with respect to buildings, but they are a subset of provincial governments and have to operate sort of at the best of the provincial requirements. And then when you think about the federal level, federal level really doesn't have a whole lot of jurisdictions on buildings. They can set equipment standards, and they can set environmental regulations through the environmental act, but so when you have to kind of stand back from it, and our goal with the report was to say, well, how does this all play it? What does it actually wind up looking like in terms of decarbonization policies? And what we can kind of look at is, how do you actually implement a policy that would reduce emissions? Well, you can focus on the energy source itself, and say, you're not allowed to have gas in your building. So, this is like a gas band. This is a pretty heavy stick that you would wield, which, which is one way to do it. You can focus on the equipment and say, hey, you're not allowed to have an oil system anymore. So, you're not focusing on the energy source, but you're focusing on the piece of technology itself. You can focus on the energy performance and say, you're building, given the size of your building, or the shape of your building, or what the building is for your building shouldn't use this much energy, or should use less than this much energy. So, you can put a line in the sand there, or you can focus on the emissions and say, similarly, for that size and shape of building, or type of building, your building shouldn't emit more than a certain amount. And what, what our findings are is that it's sort of all of the above out there, you know. And at the municipal level, we see quite a lot of action of different municipalities trying on different sort of approaches for size, and there's no clear trend as to which of those particular mechanisms seems to have favor. It's sort of a bit of a bit of a mix in terms of all of that. But at the highest level, you know, we have the federal government sort of setting a context, or setting the stage with national model energy codes, there's a commitment for them to release an emission-based code. And that's a welcome sort of direction. It's been in the works for quite a while. We have policy in terms of investments for, you know, low-income retrofits, and we have loan programs and those kinds of things that continue to be on the scene with the green building strategy, which is also welcome and really necessary. Actually, when you think about the kind of context that we're in around affordability, we also see some commitment to look at the idea of the equipment and regulating. There's a commitment to put in place a framework to look at regulating some of the equipment. So, there's a little bit of distance in terms of the direct action there, but at least there's some acknowledgement that the federal order can begin influencing the scene I mentioned at the provincial level, that you know, there's a certain that's where the jurisdiction really is for buildings, and this is where we kind of see quite an absence of real progressive policy. What we see in British Columbia, quite a lot of activity, and Quebec, quite a lot of activity, and Ontario, a couple of measures, most notably, I guess, the requirement to report on building energy. So, this is the idea of looking at the energy performance of the buildings. But outside of those three jurisdictions, we don't really see a lot of progressive policy to really act on the idea of carbon emissions directly from buildings. And then at the municipal level, we see in Ontario, the City of Toronto is trying to, is proposing to look at building performance standards, which would be a sort of an energy and emission sort of threshold mechanism. But then in British Columbia and Quebec, we see just a lot more activity, many more municipalities within those jurisdictions trying on different mechanisms for size. We have, like in Quebec, we have Laval in Montreal and Prevost and regional governments as well. So, the Metropolitan Community of Montreal putting in place various tools to try to curb emissions. And in in British Columbia, there's just way more activity. There's a different sort of setup there in terms of what municipalities are and aren't allowed to do. And so, we see like there's Saanich in Vancouver and North Vancouver and Victoria Whistler, all of these municipalities are putting in place various tools to try to direct what the future should hold in terms of building emissions, whether for new construction or for existing buildings. And notably, we also see some interesting, just interesting kind of mechanisms, like in in British Columbia, flight adjustment on taxation, tax relief for heat pump technologies, which isn't it's not a regulatory sort of approach in the true sense of that. But it's an economic lever that I think can be, can be helpful and sort of send the right cumulative signals to allow market actors to kind of act. Trevor Freeman  36:50 I think, I mean great answer. Thanks for that, Brian. It really does highlight kind of a theme, I guess, if you will, that comes up on the show often of there is no one solution, and you can take that statement and apply it to any part of the decarbonization ecosphere that you want. There's, there's no blueprint for how we're going to do this. It's going to be sort of a mix of a bunch of different policies and strategies and, you know, carrots and sticks and levers and whatever analogy you want to use that we're going to need. And it's interesting to see, as you highlighted different jurisdictions, different parts of the country, are at different spots, and some, you know, further down that journey than others, for different reasons. And again, coming back to your comment about building that analytical capability to really understand what is working and why, and is it, is it specific to this region or this, you know, whatever climate region or economic region, that that policy or that structure works, or is that something that can be applied across a broader swath of the economy or our society? So really interesting. I'm going to cherry pick something here and dive in and say, you know, we talked a little bit about heat pumps. So, heat pumps, obviously, are a super important technology for decarbonizing some aspects of building heating, specifically on the smaller scale. So residential homes are a great example. We really need to see more heat pumps that's going to be one of the main ways that we decarbonize home heating, looking at, sort of what's happening across the country at the various different levels of jurisdiction. Are there specific frameworks or strategies that you think are really essential to support heat pump adoption as an example that we can sort of look at? Brian Flannagan  38:39 I mean, I think, I think your, your lead into the question is actually the answer that I would have given you know, there is, there just isn't one sort of tool or approach that will universally drive this thing, certainly not when you talk at a national level. A lot of the discourse that we have internally at the BDA is that this is a regional issue. You know, it really is a, I think, at the end of the day, municipal by municipal approach to things, given the local conditions. And when we, you know, we talked about some of the barriers earlier around pricing. So notionally, anybody that's in a jurisdiction with provincial level utility like British Columbia or Quebec has the same pricing, right? But in Ontario, that's not the case. Like local distribution companies have different pricing structures. Just depends on if you're in Ottawa or Kingston, Cornwall or Toronto, it's just the pricing is just different. Now we have gas utilities that are more uniform across Ontario, so that pricing is similar. So, it really winds up being a regional question. And if I said, you know, Trevor, I want to I want to call a contractor and I live in Hamilton, that's a different question than saying, I want to call a contractor and I live in Saskatoon. Is the HVAC industry the same in both of those places? It's just not like the. Capacity of the industry to influence your decision and the knowledge that they have. And by the way, Saskatoon is a heck of a lot colder, right? So, the question of, you know, will this, will this heat pump actually work for me in my climate up in Saskatoon, is a different question than if you're sitting in Windsor, where your cooling load is probably more of a concern these days, right? And so, we have to, I think we have to get away from the idea that nationally, there's going to be one sort of thing that will really wind up driving the change the electricity system and the gas system. The energy systems in each of the jurisdictions are so different, and the local constraints on labor force, the local affordability considerations with the economics of a given industry, if you're in Alberta or if you're in Newfoundland, the socioeconomics are just very different. The affordability questions are more or less pressing across the country, and so I think there isn't one sort of tool or policy that could rule them all. We need a sort of a wide range of different options to look at that recognize those local and regional kind of considerations. And interestingly enough, going back to the transition accelerator and the kind of approach that we take, we actually have a different vertical. We call them verticals. So, the building vertical is one, but we have a different vertical called regional pathways, where we have a whole other team that's just out meeting with jurisdictions at a regional level to try to understand what exactly are those local constraints that impact on the different economic sectors, buildings being one of them, and we tap into that kind of stream all the time. I mean, that said, I don't think you'll let me get away without providing some kind of answer. I do. I do. I do. Really think that the ways that the utility systems are regulated are a big deal. You know, right now, I think it's fairly safe to say that we live in a utility regulatory environment that was geared to accelerate the expansion of the gas system several decades ago, and the pricing and how connections are made, and how that's reflected on the rate base versus the developer. There's a lot of things that are kind of baked in that where it's not really a level playing field. I think equalizing some of those policies across the country would be extremely helpful. I mentioned earlier that our past sort of energy efficiency retrofit environment has been advanced mostly on the idea that we want to avoid the cost of adding new generation. Well, clearly, if we're talking about electrifying our buildings, adding new generation is a given. We have to do that. And so obviously that paradigm doesn't work when we're talking about fuel switching rather than energy efficiency. And so, we need to have that regulatory space around utilities take a different approach to just looking at the avoided costs. And we see this. This is happening, but it's just it's painfully slow, because those sectors are cautious by definition, and they need to be. But we have to have a new set of programs and a new sort of set of economic tests and tool boxes that allow incentives to start flowing for these kinds of retrofit projects based on a new sort of set of business-as-usual scenarios. You know, if we decarbonize only with air source heat pumps, it's going to lead to a certain set of costs and certain set of investments. If we decarbonize with more ground source heat pumps, it's a different set. And there's a difference there in terms of the price and impact on the energy system and rate payers. And so, capturing that dynamic, I think, is really will be, will play an important long-term function outside of that, you know, any mechanism. And this is why that sort of patchwork of municipal tools that are being deployed is interesting. Any mechanism that just sends a signal to the market that emitting carbon from your buildings is going to have a pricing consequence or a consequence in terms of what you can and can't develop. Any of those market signals are helpful, even signals that those things may eventually come into play, like what the federal government has done, that sort of we commit to putting in place a framework to look at the eventual change of the structure. Even those kinds of statements can help influence the narrative around decision making for what future risk looks like to building owners and so, you know, building performance standards, I think, are really interesting. I've seen the difference that it makes in the discourses that we have with players that are in Vancouver, and it the idea that eventually we're going to have to pay more to emit it's a powerful motivator. But I have to hasten to add, you have to make sure that the market can respond. You don't want to have those kinds of policies in place without also making sure that you've got the HVAC industry ready, you've got the labor force to get the job done, because then you have policies that fail, right? So, any of those kinds of policies, I think, are interesting to see implemented and tested and understand the degree to which they actually drive the market. Trevor Freeman  44:58 Yeah, I think you've done a great job of, of really helping paint that picture of even a simple challenge, you know, simple in quotation marks, obviously, of getting more heat pumps into more buildings requires different roles at different levels. And so there's that sort of federal role to, you know, again, understand what, what are the levers that a federal government might have knowing that some of the specifics around buildings are not in their jurisdiction, but helping to support predictability when it comes to pricing signals, for example, like a price on carbon, or supporting sort of national workforce training to get more contractors out there to support installations, down to sort of the provincial energy policy level, down to the municipal level of how do municipalities support their citizens, their residents, and making these changes in their buildings and the levers that they have? And I think there's a role for all those levels to play. It's just understanding where are those sorts of sweet spots to put pressure on and to sort of push towards that, that action that ultimately is up to building owners and tenants to take. Great thanks for that. Brian. So, a couple last questions here. As we, as we near the end of our conversation, I do want to take a minute and just sort of put ourselves in the headspace of a building owner. So, someone that has a has a building, let's say, a commercial office building, and is looking to take steps towards phasing out fossil fuel use in their buildings. They want to decarbonize. What are some of the strategies that you've observed in your work that that really do work from that building owner perspective, what are some of those steps that they can take to move towards decarbonizing their building? Brian Flannagan  46:47 Yeah, it's a good question. I think it depends on who the building owner is. You know, as an if we're talking about a residential kind of homeowner, the idea, I think, is just to start getting start making long term plans and budgeting what this is going to look like, and taking it into a consideration when you're, you know, planning the various renovations that you're going to have at your home. Most people renovate for specific reasons that are outside of just, hey, I want to do the right thing by the environment right lots of my friends, of lots of people in our circles do that. They're the thin edge of the wedge of sort of early adopters that do it for truly altruistic reasons, right? But most homeowners don't operate in that way. And so, the idea is to, you know, really begin looking at, well, how old is my furnace, and when do I think, I might need to replace it? And to start putting in place the decision making early so that you're not caught off guard with a surprise replacement. I think the biggest tragedy right now is that a lot of people are replacing their furnaces because they're in an emergency situation. You know, the heating season is upon us, and you know, a contractor comes and just says, hey, listen, there's no time to start entertaining alternatives. We got to get your system in place. And they replaced within with a like for light gas furnace, and that thing is going to be in place for 1520, years, right? So, we're now at 2045, and so, you know, the urgency of the idea of avoiding those emergency replacements as much as possible is really, really critical. So, for a homeowner, I would say the steps to take are, you know, look at it from a long-term perspective. Where is the industry going in 10 years, if you want to sell your home, is it going to be better or you're going to be better off or worse off if you've got the most modern and best technology in place for your building, can you demonstrate that you've made investments that are in line with this idea? I think those kinds of things are important considerations to make and to begin budgeting forward appropriately. You know, because it is a little bit more expensive on the first cost, programs are difficult to navigate, so it takes time and energy to kind of understand what those program environments are and what you're eligible for grants. But it's sort of that doing that work up front before you get caught off guard is important. And I would say if anybody wants to add an air conditioner, if anybody's contemplating getting cooling to deal with our summer heat situation that's present in many parts of the country. It's really, really beneficial to strongly consider adding a heat pump in that moment, I think, for commercial building owners, you know, it's a similar thing, but it's but it's elevated to a higher sort of long term capital planning exercise, the idea of what we call decarbonization plans, building and portfolio decarbonization plans, this is a field that's really growing among consultants and architect and engineering firms to offer a service to help building owners understand how all these pieces fit together, and to be able to decarbonize their building stock in a logical, sort of sensible way, based on the current state of the building in its overall capital replacement needs, and especially looking for synergies between the bigger projects, like envelope upgrades and the bigger projects having to do with the end of equipment life, making sure that that end of. Life moment is again captured in a similar way to what we just talked about with homeowners, so that you're not in a situation where your choices are limited. And I think, you know, ultimately, a lot of it for bigger portfolio owners, has to, has to come back to some of the ESG kind of impetus. And really trying to understand, in addition to that, what that dream premium would look like for them, you know, and kind of how it aligns with their corporate values and the financial criteria that get baked into the project. And we know that there are a lot of projects, for example, when geothermal systems are put into place, where you're freeing up mechanical space that can then deliver revenue additional revenue streams. And so, the direct sort of cost comparison of before and after isn't necessarily obvious, and that's why having decarbonization plans that try to bring in those value streams as aggressively as possible can really be helpful. Trevor Freeman  50:57 Yeah, I think I mean, the main takeaway for me from that is, is plan. Think about this ahead of time, do your analysis. And it's something that I know in the work that that I'm involved in here at Hydro Ottawa. It's something we talk to our commercial customers, especially a lot about is spend the time to create the plan so you're not caught off guard. You know what you're going to do. You know what your strategy is, and you can implement it doesn't have to be done overnight, and the context will change, right? You know, new programs will come into play. Existing programs will leave. There will be different times where it makes sense to do different projects. But if you have that plan, if you know what the strategy is, then you're, you're well set up. So maybe one last quick question. You know, the idea of programs coming and going. It's not always a straight path when it comes to policy, and as much as there's been some exciting things happening in the last little while when it comes to policy and the regulatory framework around decarbonization, so we've had a price on carbon in Canada for a while. We know that things ebb and flow, and so we are likely looking at least a federal election this year here in Canada, likely a provincial election here in Ontario, where we're speaking from. And these things can change policy and policy can ebb and flow. How does the decarbonization effort handle changes in policy, changes in prioritization from the different levels of government that we talked about, you know what? What is the strategy when it comes to those changes as we move forward? Brian Flannagan  52:36 Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, especially, especially in the times that we're in for the listeners. You know, this is the day after Prime Minister Trudeau announced his resignation, and there's a lot that's happening. I think the strategy overall is, it's quite simple, but it's to recognize that this has always been the case. You know, municipal and provincial and federal governments across the country are changing on different timetables all the time, the alignment of sort of ideological approaches to dealing with the climate crisis are in flux, and have been in flux the whole time, you know, and so I think it's incumbent on us, and this is, this is part of the approach that will be saved. The BDA, the building decarbonization Alliance, is trying to take a different approach. I don't know that we're there in terms of truly embodying that Spirit just yet. It's a work in progress. We're still very new, but the idea of really embracing that we have to be able to work with an incumbent of any political stripe or leaning, including gas utilities, who are powerful incumbents here, who have every reason to want to continue what they're doing, we have to find logic and rationale to drive us, commonly toward a net zero objective for all of the international, global competitiveness positioning issues that we talked about earlier. Right? It's not easy to do that, because climate ideology has traditionally sort of been a left leaning ideology, and I think it's difficult to overcome that and work with different ideologies. But you know, when you have a populist sort of idea saying, hey, people can't afford a house, or people can't afford their energy bills, those are statements that resonate with people, and we have to. We can't come along and say, oh no, this is totally affordable, this is easy, this is a slam dunk. You just electrify your building, like spend $20,000 on a heat pump. You should be able to do that like that is not in touch with the reality of what a lot of people feel. So, I think it's the strategy for us is to recognize that we have to be able to truly address those concerns with evidence and with science and with technologies that actually deliver the goods, we think that there's a strong case for many of those things, like cold climate heat pumps work that question. I think that question is largely resolved, and if you don't have exactly the technology that you need put in a hybrid system for now. That's fine in 15 years when you replace it, the cold climate heat pumps then, or even going to be better, you know? So, there are things that we can put to bed, but we have to be able to if that isn't the case, if it's not actually affordable in a given jurisdiction, we can't walk in and say, hey, well, why aren't you guys doing this? This is affordable. It's not and I think those political ideologies often tap into those different elements where we don't have the narrative fully baked as powerfully as we should to counter, you know, whether it's questions of energy system reliability or energy choice is another sort of theme that comes out. You can't tell me which heating system I'm going to use. Well, I don't need to convince you if you already believed that it's just fundamentally better, you know. And we see this with electric vehicles, actually, the transition there has been interesting where the strategy is to say, hey, this electric car is like, way better than an internal combustion car, you know. Credit to Elon Musk for bringing out a vehicle that was just faster than anything else. Any piston head would just look at that and say, oh, my God, the performance is crazy. And sort of having, having those ready answers to really diffuse with conviction and based on actual evidence, to diffuse those messages, I think, is really, really important. And we have a lot of areas of study that are still left. We talked about the green premium earlier, for investments in commercial buildings. We don't really know, you know. And to say, well, if you invest your property value is going to go up, or the asset value is going to increase. It's just, we just don't know that. And so, following the evidence and being able to acknowledge where we don't, where we don't have all of the answers, I think, is important, and then finding the answers and stating them with conviction when it when it does make sense, you know. And I think in the cases that I mentioned earlier, if you're, if you're heating with fuel oil, the affordability question is solved. You should get all fuel oil because that will help you to pay your energy bills, right? And so those kinds of messages, I think, land with any political stripe, if it's back based, and if it actually follows from a logical thread. You know, it's hard to do, but I think it's necessary work if we're really going to get to where we need to go. Trevor Freeman  57:06 Yeah, and at the end of the day, I mean, the work doesn't stop just because the headwinds get a bit stronger. And you know, the like you said, we got to find those messages that resonate and that makes sense, and then are rooted in fact and rooted in things that really resonate with people. So, I think that's a great place to wrap up the conversation. Brian, I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for joining us. We do always end our chats here with a series of questions to our guests. So, I'm going to put you on the spot here with a few questions, starting with, what is a book that you've read that you think everybody should read. Brian Flannagan  57:40 Oh, my God, there's so many. I would go with. Outlive. The byline is the science of longevity, and it's by an author called Peter Ottawa, and it's, I think it's just pretty important reading about, you know, the major causes of illness in North America, and strategies that you might deploy to try to live healthier, longer. Pretty cool reading, lots of lots of stuff in there for everybody to take away, I think. Trevor Fre

In this bonus special episode of the Technology and Security podcast, host Dr Miah Hammond-Errey was joined in conversation by Dr. Simon Longstaff and Major General Paul Symon. It is a lightly edited panel conversation about ethics, technology and intelligence held at the ethics Centre in Sydney in February this year. Ostensibly to launch Miah's new book, the conversation was a great excuse to get the three of us together to have a fun chat about the intersections of technology intelligence and ethics.  Dr Miah Hammond-Errey outlined how the big data landscape –of data abundance, digital connectivity and ubiquitous technology – impacts intelligence production and national security. This includes where Australian intelligence leaders and practitioners see the ethical boundaries of data and technology use in intelligence as well as the broader concept of ‘ethics at scale.' The first 22 mins are the opening statements. Following on, Dr. Simon Longstaff and Major General Paul Symon  explored a wide range of  ethical implications of technology for intelligence, including the distinction between foreign and domestic intelligence,  trust and legitimacy of institutions and the role of humans in ethical decision-making. They then take questions from the audience.  Afterwards they co-published a short article about the idea of ethics at scale and how organisations can manage the increasing ethical conundrums technology brings. You can find the links below in the show notes. I hope you enjoy it! This is the second of a series of special episodes on intelligence. Given the intense interest in the role of technology in intelligence production and Security decision making, Technology & Security podcast will have occasional special additions with a purple logo highlighting intelligence specific episodes.Resources mentioned in the recording:Book: 29 Jan 2024, Big Data, Emerging Technology & Intelligence: National Security Disrupted, Routledge (30% off discount code: ADC24) Opinion: 18 Mar 2024 Why every organisation should have an ethical adviser, The Canberra Times, co-authors Dr Simon Longstaff, Paul Symon and Dr Miah Hammond-Errey) (https://ethics.org.au/access-to-ethical-advice-is-crucial/) This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people, and we pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge their continuing connection to land, sea and community, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Thanks to the talents of those involved. Music by Dr Paul Mac and production by Elliott Brennan. Panel Bios: Dr Simon Longstaff has been Executive Director of The Ethics Centre for 30 years, working across business, government and society. Dr Simon Longstaff began his working life on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory of Australia. He is proud of his kinship ties to the Anindilyakwa people. He has a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge University, is a Fellow of CPA Australia and of the Royal Society of NSW, and an Adjunct Professor of the AGSM at UNSW. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.” Simon is an Adjunct Professor of the Australian Graduate School of Management at UNSW, a Fellow of CPA Australia, the Royal Society of NSW and the Australian Risk Policy Institute.Major General Paul Symon (Retd), AO served as the 12th Director-General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) from 2017-2022, responsible for the collection of foreign human intelligence. During his tenure, he provided advice to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister on foreign intelligence, was a regular attendee of the National Security Committee of Cabinet and oversaw a high tempo of very sensitive and high-risk intelligence operations. Prior to this, his military career lasted 35 years across regions and distinguished appointments, including leading intelligence activities at the highest levels. He served overseas in the United Kingdom, Israel, Lebanon, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste and Baghdad. Paul was made an Officer in the Military Division of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service as Joint Task Force commander on operations in the Middle East in 2005/06. Paul is currently an independent non-executive board member and, separately, a strategic adviser to the University of Melbourne. Dr Miah Hammond-Errey, your host, is the CEO of Strat Futures and Adjunct Associate Professor at Deakin University. Dr Hammond-Errey spent eighteen years leading federal government analysis and communications activities in Australia, Europe, and Asia. She was awarded an Operations Medal. Miah has led and established technology and security programs for Australian think tanks and teaches, publishes and presents on national security, technology, cyber, intelligence and leadership. Her book is called Big Data, Emerging Technologies and Intelligence: National Security Disrupted.Hosted by:  The Ethics Centre 

Happy New Year!  This is our 2025 recap episode.  In this case, we actually are recapping a fair bit more than just the year, going over the previous evolution of the Yamato state up to the period of the Great Change, or Taika, which we covered this past year.  There's a lot more that we expect to get into this next year, and this will hopefully tee us up for what is to come. For more, including a full list of our previous references, check out: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-newyear2025   Rough Transcript Shinnen Akemashite!  Happy New Year and Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is the New Year's Recap episode for 2025! It's that time again:  we are going to look back at what happened in the episodes this year.  That was only episodes 101 to 117—we'll skip the travelogue episodes for the time being.  This covered the years of the early to mid-7th century, from roughly 613 to 659.  That is easily within the lifetime of a single individual, and yet a lot was going on. At the start of this year, we were at the height of Soga power. In 2023, we covered how back in 587, Soga no Umako had wrested power away from the powerful Mononobe clan, defeating Mononobe no Moriya.  As you may recall, the sovereign known to posterity as Jimmu Tennou was the descendant of the Heavenly Grandchild known as Ninigi no Mikoto, at least according to the Nihon Shoki.  The Mononobe clan claimed descent from none other than Nigi Hayahi, the Other Heavenly Grandchild, whose offspring were said to have been defeated by Jimmu. You may recall that scholars generally consider the story of Jimmu, and the nine sovereigns that immediately followed him, as almost certainly a later addition to the story of the royal lineage. So when did the story of Nigi no Hayahi's defeat enter the picture? And was its inclusion perhaps related to the defeat of the Mononobe by the Soga family?  A family that successfully intermarried with the Royal House, themselves, such that all later sovereigns would trace their ancestry back to the Soga house? Of course, under Soga dominance we saw the rise of figures like the Soga descended Kashikiya Hime, aka Suiko Tenno.  During her reign, major reforms were carried out, Buddhism became fully established by the State, and ties with the continent were strengthened.  Politics would continue to be dominated by Soga, even after the death of Soga no Umako and Kashikiya Hime, with Soga no Emishi taking up the mantle of Prime Minister, working closely with his son, Soga no Iruka.  The Soga family was so entwined with the politics of rulership that the main rivals of the Soga were… the Soga.  That is to say different Soga-descended lineages, like that of the Prince Umayado, aka Prince Shotoku. Rather than supporting Umayado's son, Prince Yamashiro no Oe, Soga no Emishi backed another candidate to the throne, Prince Tamura.  , of the royal Okinaga lineage. Tamura came to power as Jomei Tenno, but there is little doubt that Soga no Emishi was the one in control. Later, when Tamura passed away in 641, Yamashiro no Oe continued to be passed over.  In fact, Soga no Emishi supported the ascension of Tamura's wife, Takara hime, over Yamashiro no Oe, and there is evidence that he supported a prince known as Furubito no Oe as the Crown Prince and eventual successor.  All of the evidence—which, to be honest, is rather biased—suggests that the Soga family were setting up a series of puppet rulers who would do their bidding, or at least be pliable to their suggestions. There must have been some pushback, though, especially when one considers how strong the cult of Prince Shotoku, aka Umayado, would eventually become.  One imagines that Prince Yamashiro was another pole around which those who opposed the Soga family could rally.  After all, he was the son of Crown Prince Umayado, and likely had just as much of a claim as Tamura and his children.  And so, to counter this threat, Soga no Emishi's son and successor, Soga no Iruka, took matters into his own hands. In a brazen display of the violence of court politics, Soga no Iruka had Yamashiro no Oe accused of plotting against the throne and took an army to arrest him—no doubt in the hope that the prince would resist.  Eventually they cornered Yamashiro and his family, who committed suicide rather than submit. This attack was likely targeted to take out the rival to the Soga family's preferred Crown Prince, Prince Furubito no Oe, but rather than quell any dissent, the move seems to have enflamed the passions of those who wanted to see an end to the Soga house.  Those passions took particular root in none other than Furubito no Oe's younger brother, Prince Naka no Oe.  Together with the support of his uncle, Prince Karu; the head of the Nakatomi house, Nakatomi no Kamatari; as well as another scion of the Soga house, Soga no Kuroyamada, Prince Naka no Oe staged a coup d'etat.  Using the death of Prince Yamashiro no Oe as an excuse, they engineered a plot to assassinate Soga no Iruka in court, in front of Naka no Oe's own mother, Takara Hime no Oho-kimi.  After Iruka's death, Naka no Oe and his supporters then took the fight to Soga no Emishi, who committed suicide and set his own house on fire in what came to be known as the Isshi Incident. This shocking assassination caused Takara hime to step down.  The Soga-backed Prince Furubito no Oe, rather than stepping up and taking the throne, retreated to a Buddhist temple and took holy orders, effectively retiring and theoretically taking himself out of court politics.  That left Prince Naka no Oe and his uncle, Prince Karu, as possible candidates. We are told that Prince Naka no Oe declined to take the throne himself, instead supporting his uncle, Prince Karu.  Prince Karu took the throne, and is known to us as Kotoku Tenno, today.  Prince Naka no Oe stepped up as the Crown Prince, and with the help of his co-conspirators, such as Nakatomi no Kamatari, Soga no Kurayamada, and others, they began a project to remake the Yamato government, using continental models—specifically the Sui and Tang courts, which were also influencing the governments of the Korean peninsula, such as those of Baekje and Silla. This is known as the Taika, or Great Change, era.    There had been previous movements to adopt some of the continental trends, but nothing to this extent, which culminated in a tremendous palace complex built in Naniwa—modern Ohosaka.  Governors were sent out to the east of the country. The old, decentralized system was being replaced by a centralized bureaucracy. And yet this wasn't entirely a smooth transition.  Early on there was a threat by supporters of the previous Crown Prince, Furubito no Oe.  He was killed to put down any possible revolt.  Later, Naka no Oe was hoodwinked into going after his own co-conspirator, Soga no Kurayamada, resulting in Kurayamada's death and the punishment of his entire family.  A few years later, Naka no Oe moved back to Asuka, taking most of the royal family and the court with him, abandoning the grand government complex that they had built in Naniwa for reasons that remain unclear. Shortly thereafter, Karu, aka Kotoku Tenno, passed away.  But rather than Naka no Oe taking the throne—or even Karu's son, Prince Arima—the throne went back to Naka no Oe's mother, Takara Hime.  This is the only case we have of a single sovereign reigning twice, and the Chroniclers gave her two separate regnal names—Kogyoku Tenno to refer to her first reign and Saimei Tenno to refer to her second. And this is the reign that we are going to start the new year with. Beyond what was going on on the archipelago, there was also plenty that we covered on the continent.  We started the year with the Sui dynasty having consolidated control and working to continue to expand their territory north, south, and west, while also connecting the economic areas of the Yangzi and Yellow rivers. Unfortunately, through their wars and public works projects they overextended themselves, and the dynasty fell, replaced, in 619, with the Tang dynasty.  The Tang continued to expand, taking control of important points on the Silk Road and becoming a hub of trade and commerce.  At the same time, they were contesting their borders with the Goguryeo, who, themselves, had come under the control of Yeon Gaesomun, an infamous noble and anti-Tang hard-liner, who had staged a coup, murdered the Goguryeo king and any who stood against him, and who had installed a puppet king on the throne.  It is little wonder that the Tang dynasty was courting Goguryeo's enemy, Silla, to pressure them from the other side.  This eventually kicked off the Tang-Goguryeo war, with the loosely allied Tang and Silla fighting on and off with Goguryeo and their ally, Baekje, who was also invested in stifling Silla's ambitions on the peninsula. So that's where we are:  The Korean peninsula is currently embroiled in conflict between the three kingdoms on the peninsula and the nearby superpower, the Tang Dynasty.  Meanwhile, Yamato, on the archipelago, is going through a whole… thing.  What that is, we'll try to get into over the next year. Given all of this, let's go over some of the themes from the past year.  To start with, let's talk about expanding Yamato influence. From what we can tell, Yamato's influence in the archipelago had peaked around the 5th century, between the creation of giant Daisen Ryo kofun and the reign of Wakatake no Ohokimi, aka Yuryaku Tenno.  Wakatake no Ohokimi had courtiers from as far away as Kyushu and the Kanto plain.  However, from what I can tell, Yamato's influence appears to have temporarily waned, possibly coinciding with the end of Wakatake's own dynasty, with a new dynasty coming to power in the 6th century. It is possible that Wakatake was simply never quite as powerful as the Chronicles make out, but there are a few other things that make me think that the end of the 5th and early half of the 6th century were a low point in Yamato's power.  For one thing, we see a drop off in interactions with the continent after 479—or at least anything beyond the tip of the Korean peninsula.  In addition, we see smaller rooms built in the region of the Nara Basin and the Kawachi plain, while more “royal” tombs continue to appear elsewhere in the archipelago.  It isn't that they stopped, but the size decreased, suggesting that Yamato didn't have the same labor pool it used to. On top of that, we have the dynastic change.  We are told that the line related to Wakatake died out and they had to bring in someone from Afumi and Koshi, who traced their lineage back to the legendary Homuda-wake, aka Ōjin tennō, some five generations back.  Many scholars suggest that this connection was a later merging of the lineages, suggesting that, in reality, an entirely new branch of sovereigns had come to power. Finally, we can see the Chronicles focusing more and more on the areas near to Yamato, the area known as the Home Provinces, possibly because Yamato only held direct control over these areas, while control beyond that was only nominal.  Local elites in those regions had a lot of autonomy, and if Yamato did not have anything in particular to offer them, they would not have a reason to necessarily go along with Yamato's requests. This may have even been part of the impetus for the so-called “rebellion” by Iwai, in Kyushu.  As you may recall, in the early 6th century Iwai attempted to ally with Silla against Yamato and Baekje, with the idea of cutting off Yamato's access to the continent.  This ultimately failed, and Yamato ended up creating what would become the Dazaifu near modern Fukuoka, but the fact that Iwai could contemplate it and gather such support would suggest that Yamato was at least perceived as vulnerable. Now up to this point, we see several different policies that were used for increasing the court's control.  Early on, this was done by doling out various elite goods.  We also see Yamato soft power in the form of spiritual authority and the expansion of local Yamato cultic practices out into the other lands of the archipelago.  There was also the tradition of monumental tombs, and especially the royal keyhole style tombs, which spread out from Yamato and was likely as much an indication that those regions saw Yamato practices as worthy of emulation, at the least, and perhaps saw Yamato as a cultural nexus on the archipelago. To all of this, they eventually added the “Be” system.  This appears to have been copied from systems being used on the Korean peninsula, and it focused on creating familial units to organize various industries, with family heads responsible for reporting and funneling necessary goods up to the court.  This eventually included the noble “uji” clans, with their power bases in various geographic regions. Yamato extended its influence through a variety of methods, including various public works projects.  These included things like the building of ponds, or reservoirs, which would have been critical to the wet-rice paddy agriculture that was the economic backbone of the Yamato government.  Another means of extending government control was the “miyake”, or Royal Granaries.  Originally we see these set up in the Nara basin, but during the current dynasty they had been extended all the way out to Kyushu. Ostensibly, they were there to collect rice for taxes, but they appear to have acted as government offices, providing a presence for Yamato even out in the hinterlands.  Eventually they would turn the area in Kyushu, the Dazai, into its own, semi-autonomous extension of the Yamato government, as well. In the past year of the podcast, we've seen many of those older forms of government control replaced with a new bureaucratic system.  This included an upgrade to the rank system, which was a way for the government to both organize the bureaucracy while also creating a means to award individuals.  Early rank systems had initially been granted at the family level, but following a continental model meant that the new system was based solely on the individual.  Thus they could hand out rank to various kings and chieftains across the archipelago and entice them into the Yamato orbit, a trick they had been doing previously as well with various types of recognition.  Those that took the titles and rank that Yamato handed out gained a certain amount of legitimacy, locally, but since that legitimacy was tied to the Yamato court, it also helped solidify Yamato's own influence on those areas. That doesn't mean that all expansion was peaceful.  Yamato contested on their eastern and northern border with the people referred to as the Emishi, which eventually included contests as far north as the island of Hokkaido with the Mishihase people. There was another form of soft power used by the court in the way that it supported Buddhism, which was still a new religion at this point, having arrived in the early part of the 6th century.  Patronage of Buddhism would lead to the building of temples and otherwise claiming some authority in the spiritual realm, beyond simply the court's control of the Mt. Miwa site.  Furthermore, the state itself took particular interest in Buddhist institutions, and cracked down heavily on the clergy, ensuring that they reported up to the court, formally solidifying the connection between temples and the State. But then they went a bit further and instituted actual governors.  They were appointed by the Yamato government, and they were particularly installed in the Eastern lands—referred to as provinces.  These governors reported to the court, and appear to have initially been separate from locally recognized elites, who were known as the Kuni no Miyatsuko.  The governors were to take stock of the areas under their authority and report up information such as a summary of the lands and local census information.  This meant that Yamato did not need to rely on local elites to administer an area, they would have greater insight into what was actually going on. This was all combined with the institution of new laws on taxes, corvee labor, and more, while eliminating traditional practices such as the Miyake and even royal tomb-building.  The latter was likely affected by the various public works projects, but also the fact that more work was going into the building of things like Buddhist temples. As we noted back in the previous year, Buddhist temple building appears to have had a hand in the end of the prolific kofun building, at least in Yamato proper.  Kofun were memorials—meant to carry on the memory of an individuals well after their death.  They were ritual sites, and families were set up to care for them. Temples, likewise, were erected with certain memorial qualities.  Donating to build a temple was thought to increase one's karma, and thus do wonders for your next life.  Temple patrons would be remembered, and services were carried out, but temples also had a certain public aspect to them, as well.  On top of that, they were new, and no doubt exotic, with their tiled rooves, intricate carvings, and colorful buildings.  Much of the labor that would have built tombs appears to have been co-opted, instead, to build temples. Some of the temples founded in this period include Asuka dera, aka Hokoji, built on or near the Soga family compound, as well as other Asuka temples, such as Yamadadera, Kawaradera, Toyouradera, and Kudaradera.  There was also Houryuji, erected by Prince Umayado near his house, and the ancient temple of Shitennouji, erected in Naniwa.  Of these, both Horyuji and Shitennoji continue, today, at or near their original with some of the oldest extant buildings in Japan.  Asukadera was moved to its modern site of Gangoji, in Nara city proper, but there is still a smaller Asukadera on the original site, with what may be one of the original images, though the buildings have been rebuilt after numerous fires and disasters over the years. Of course, a big part of all of these foreign ideas, such as Buddhism but also Confucian thought as well, was the growing influence of the continent, whether in the form of Baekje, Silla, Goguryeo, or beyond.  While there had been influence ever since the Yayoi period—and arguably even during the Jomon, in some instances—there seems to have been an acceleration once Yamato began to import Buddhism, which was likely connected with all of the learning and texts that were also being imported around that time.  Then, during the Sui and Tang dynasties—both of which the Chronicles simply label as the “Great Tang”—the court sent several embassies to the Sui and Tang emperors, bringing back individuals with actual experience in the way things were happening outside of the archipelago. And we should not discount the various embassies to and from the Korean peninsula.  Yamato was increasing its involvement in peninsular affairs.  They continued to be concerned with the state of Nimna, also known as Imna or Mimana, which had been assimilated by Silla, along with the rest of Gaya, or Kara, by the early to mid-6th century, with many accounts dealing with attempts to reinstate Nimna as a separate and sovereign entity. Along with this, Yamato continued their relationship with Baekje, who sent Prince Pung to reside at the Yamato court.  This continued a long-standing tradition that is portrayed as a type of diplomatic hostage, though there have been several times that princes at the Yamato court came back to Baekje to rule after the king died or was killed.  All of this to say that not only did ambassadors from Yamato go to these countries, but ambassadors also traveled to Yamato, while various immigrants from these areas of Baekje, Silla, and even Goguryeo occasionally settled in Yamato.  This further increased the number of individuals with knowledge and experience of continental concepts and technology, and we can see their influence in numerous different ways. This was all part of what led to the Yamato government's adoption of Tang style law codes, though it should be noted that the law codes were not taken wholecloth.  Rather, they were adapted specifically to the issues of the archipelago.  This was the beginning of what came to be known as the Ritsuryo system, literally the system of laws and punishments. Under this system, the government went from a single Oho-omi, or great minister, to two Great ministers, one of the left and one of the right.  These would come to be known as the Sadaijin and the Udaijin.  Nakatomi no Kamatari was afforded a special place as the third minister, the minister of the center, or Naidaijin, possibly referring to his responsibilities with the interior of the royal household, while the ministers of the left and right would have had particular ministries beneath them - eight ministries in total, with various departments underneath them.  They would be assigned to report either to the Minister of the Left or the Minister of the Right, each one overseeing, effectively, half of the government portfolio. This system, combined with the governors and the Tomo no Miyatsuko in the provinces, meant that Yamato had much more granular control over the workers and the means of production.  They organized households into villages, and villages into districts.  There were lower level officials who reported up the chain all the way to the great ministers, the Daijin, or Oho-omi.  This meant that they effectively abolished the Be and Uji system, at least as it had been set up.  These familial groups continued to operate as families, or perhaps more appropriately as “clans”, given how the groups had come to be. These officials were granted rank and, more importantly, stipends from the government.  A portion of taxes, which were paid in rice, went to various officials.  This meant that officials not only relied on the government for their status, but for their incomes as well. This went along with an attempt to implement something known as the “equal field system”, imported, again, from the continent.  This determined who would work what fields, and was another way that the government was involved down to the actual labor producing the rice that was the economic engine of the State. And that covers most of what we've been up to this past year.  There have been individual accomplishments that we didn't get into, but there is plenty there if you want to listen to it. So that covers the past year in the podcast—a little over half of the 7th century.  It really was a time of dramatic change—whether or not “Taika” was the name given to part of it, it certainly feels appropriate.  Even though the court eventually moved to Naniwa, this is the height of the Asuka period, and the start of the Ritsuryo state.  It would form the foundations for what was to come, and themes from this period will continue to show up again and again. In this next year, we are going to continue to look at Takara Hime's reign and beyond.  We'll see the resolution of the Tang-Goguryeo war, and the impact of all the continental fighting on the archipelago.  We'll also see continued developments within the archipelago itself, hopefully getting through to the end of the 7th century. We are actually reaching the end of the material in the Nihon Shoki.  This does not mean that we are running out of material, though.  The Chronicles end in 697—less than 40 years out from our current place in the Chronicles.  From there, we have the Shoku Nihongi, which covers 95 years, until 797 CE.  Translation of much of the Shoku Nihongi is available through the work of Dr. Ross Bender, and you can find his work online if you want to get a leg up on the reading, though that is a ways out.  For now, we can still comfortably continue with the Nihon Shoki, at least through the reign of Temmu Tennou. Until then, Happy New Year!  As usual, thank you for listening and for all of your support.  Thanks also to my lovely wife, Ellen, for her continued work at helping to edit these episodes! Remember, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

Yaakov says in Parshat Vayetze, “If God…will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear…” Ostensibly, there is no other reason to have bread than to eat it; no other reason to have clothes than to wear them, so why did Yaakov spell out ‘bread to eat' and ‘clothes to wear?' In 1972, Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair opened SARM Studios the first 24-track recording studio in Europe where Queen mixed “Bohemian Rhapsody”. His music publishing company, Druidcrest Music published the music for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1973) and as a record producer, he co-produced the quadruple-platinum debut album by American band “Foreigner” (1976). American Top ten singles from this album included, “Feels Like The First Time”, “Cold as Ice” and “Long, Long Way from Home”. Other production work included “The Enid – In the Region of the Summer Stars”, “The Curves”, and “Nutz” as well as singles based on The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy with Douglas Adams and Richard O'Brien. Other artists who used SARM included: ABC, Alison Moyet, Art of Noise, Brian May, The Buggles, The Clash, Dina Carroll, Dollar, Flintlock, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Grace Jones, It Bites, Malcolm McLaren, Nik Kershaw, Propaganda, Rush, Rik Mayall, Stephen Duffy, and Yes. In 1987, he settled in Jerusalem to immerse himself in the study of Torah. His two Torah books The Color of Heaven, on the weekly Torah portion, and Seasons of the Moon met with great critical acclaim. Seasons of the Moon, a unique fine-art black-and-white photography book combining poetry and Torah essays, has now sold out and is much sought as a collector's item fetching up to $250 for a mint copy. He is much in demand as an inspirational speaker both in Israel, Great Britain and the United States. He was Plenary Keynote Speaker at the Agudas Yisrael Convention, and Keynote Speaker at Project Inspire in 2018. Rabbi Sinclair lectures in Talmud and Jewish Philosophy at Ohr Somayach/Tannenbaum College of Judaic studies in Jerusalem and is a senior staff writer of the Torah internet publications Ohrnet and Torah Weekly. His articles have been published in The Jewish Observer, American Jewish Spirit, AJOP Newsletter, Zurich's Die Jüdische Zeitung, South African Jewish Report and many others. Rabbi Sinclair was born in London, and lives with his family in Jerusalem. He was educated at St. Anthony's Preparatory School in Hampstead, Clifton College, and Bristol University. A Project Of Ohr.Edu Questions? Comments? We'd Love To Hear From You At: Podcasts@Ohr.Edu https://podcasts.ohr.edu/

Today's Rosebud is an enormously entertaining talk given by Gyles at the Henley Literary Festival. Ostensibly about Gyles's books - Prose and Cons, a History of the English Language in Just a Minute, and Breaking the Code: Gyles's diaries from his days as an MP - this talk is actually much more than that. In true Gyles style, it is full of amazing anecdotes, beginning with some brilliant stories about Dame Maggie Smith, who died the day before this talk was given. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this fun hour with the master raconteur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's Rosebud is an enormously entertaining talk given by Gyles at the Henley Literary Festival. Ostensibly about Gyles's books - Prose and Cons, a History of the English Language in Just a Minute, and Breaking the Code: Gyles's diaries from his days as an MP - this talk is actually much more than that. In true Gyles style, it is full of amazing anecdotes, beginning with some brilliant stories about Dame Maggie Smith, who died the day before this talk was given. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this fun hour with the master raconteur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cardinals in red dresses! Isabella Rossellini as the nun who knows all! This week Izzy and Murtada discuss Edward Berger's Oscar tipped "Conclave." Ostensibly about choosing a new pope and the machinations that goes behind the scenes of that process, the film proves to be a crowd pleaser. But does it have much on its mind beyond that? And more importantly, is Ralph Fiennes still fuckable?Follow the show on Twitter and Instagram: @IMPictureShow.To hear more from Izzy and Murtada check them out on social media: Izzy (Twitter: @bkrewind, IG: @bk_rewind); Murtada (Twitter: @ME_Says, IG: murtada_e).See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Justice Warrior Ben Clarkson returns to discuss the 1997 action thriller The Jackal, starring Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, and Sidney Poitier in his final film role. Ostensibly a remake of the the 1973 Fred Zinneman film The Day of the Jackal (itself an adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's 1971 debut novel of the same name), the film attempts to update the story of lethal methodology and intrigue to a contemporaneous post-Cold War, "End of History" milieu that sees a collaboration between US intelligence, Russian police, and a former IRA sniper to stop Bruce Willis's titular shapeshifting hitman from assassinating (spoilers) an analogue of Hillary Clinton. While there are some fun bells and whistles, and a heaping of Bruce Willis disguises, the movie ultimately represents diminishing returns on the promise of this type of movie, forsaking procedural thrills for something far more rote and predictable. We begin with an extended discussion of form and film language, why it's meaningful in the context of our current media landscape, and what an illiteracy toward formalism suggests about the way culture engages with everything we see via a screen. Then, we discuss the distinctions between Fred Zinneman's 1973 thriller and its 90s update: what it does well, and where it goes very, very wrong. Finally, we expound on the film's sociopolitcal moment, and what its moralizing of its most compelling character says about the broader cultural trends of nationalism in the mid-90s.Justice Warriors Vol. 2: Vote Harder is out now. Find your copy HERE.Follow Ben Clarkson on Twitter. Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

Part 21 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

Part 22 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

Part 23 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

Part 24 (Final) of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

Part 17 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.  

Part 18 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.  

Part 19 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.  

Part 20 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.  

Part 14 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

Part 15 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

Part 16 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

My guest today is Bella Mackie. Until her mid-30s Bella was a journalist, then she wrote a book called Jog On and her trajectory changed - dramatically. Ostensibly a book about running, Jog On was actually a soul-baring account of Bella's battle with anxiety, OCD and depression and how, ultimately, running saved her. It was one of a wave of books that blended memoir with motivation and was a big and unexpected hit. Then, a couple of years ago she wrote the brilliantly titled How To Kill Your Family. TikTok fell on it. Cue 47 weeks in the top 10 and a Netflix series. Not jealous at all.  Now she's back with the equally twisted What A Way To Go. In which more highly unlikeable people get their comeuppance. Well, some of them. Truly Bella can come up with ways to kill a loved one you hadn't even dreamed of! Bella joined me to talk about being child-free and building your own roadmap to ageing without kids in the equation. We also discussed her childhood obsession with true crime, how there's not a top trumps of mental health and why she still has a long way to go to fight her way out of the good girl box. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including What A Way To Go by Bella Mackie and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com. • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 11 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.  

Part 12 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.  

Part 13 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.  

We conclude Art House August with a look at Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. Ostensibly a film about the French Resistance in World War II, the film stars Lino Ventura as Phillipe Gerbier, one of four main Resistance fighters we meet as we travel through the underworld, striking out at the German occupiers and those loyal to the Vichy government.Andrew Leavold and Samm Dieghan join Mike for an insightful conversation while special guest Ginette Vincendeau discusses Melville's career at the time and the reaction to the film.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

We conclude Art House August with a look at Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. Ostensibly a film about the French Resistance in World War II, the film stars Lino Ventura as Phillipe Gerbier, one of four main Resistance fighters we meet as we travel through the underworld, striking out at the German occupiers and those loyal to the Vichy government.Andrew Leavold and Samm Dieghan join Mike for an insightful conversation while special guest Ginette Vincendeau discusses Melville's career at the time and the reaction to the film.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

In this episode we trace many of the mistakes that an athlete makes at the midpoint of their training for a big command performance. Ostensibly, it is about dialing your strategies in way before race day: pacing for your race, dialing a specific strategy, fine tuning nutrition, getting your shit straight NOW!  Don't make the mistake of waiting until your taper phase to be planning your work & working your plan. Godspeed, my friends, godspeed. 

If we are fortunate enough to die of old age, perhaps we'll be patiently or eagerly awaiting what is on the other side, but one thing we can do right now is have faith. God has not called us to live in fear of anything else but Him, and even that biblical fear is a reverential attitude towards the Lord. Loving, acknowledging, and trusting in His majesty.  SUBSCRIBE to our sister podcasts:Your Daily Prayer: https://www.lifeaudio.com/your-daily-prayer/Your Daily Bible Verse: https://www.lifeaudio.com/your-daily-bible-verse/ Full Transcript Below: Are You Afraid of Dying? By Aaron D'Anthony Brown“In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2) The Greatest Fear I've been told that public speaking is a greater fear than death for most people. Perhaps that is true, but if you told someone they had to speak to a crowd or die at that very moment, my guess is that most people would stomach their discomfort and talk. They may fumble their way through the speech, but they would be alive. So many people enjoy being alive in the physical sense. But that enjoyment is fueled by a fear of what comes afterward. Does that describe you? Are you afraid of dying? I had a chat with a friend recently, and he spoke about his fear of death. Since he doesn't believe in Christ or an afterlife, he talked about how after we die, we cease to exist. Imagine that. It's true that most of us won't go down in history books. The people we know and love will also eventually pass away. Any memory of us will fade. Ostensibly, we vanish into nothingness. This image of death is rather bleak, and I imagine that's the case for anyone who doesn't believe in something more. For them, this life is all there is. Once it's gone, nothing awaits. However, the thoughts shared by my friend are not exactly unique. I know Christians who have been fearful of death. They avoid thinking about it as much as possible and focus on living life. Similarly, I, too, have, at different points in my existence, been afraid of death. However, God has not called us to live a life of fear. Not to death. In fact, God has given us reason not to fear death at all. Intersecting Faith & Life: Jesus conquered the grave. Perhaps the main reason believers should not fear death is the victory Jesus has claimed on our behalf. He died and was punished for our iniquities. The damnation that would have found us no longer will because of the sacrifice Christ made. If you believe in that sacrifice, then reaffirm your confidence that Christ has taken care of you. Death will find you, but Hell will not claim you. You are one of God's children. Scripture talks about Heaven. I remember talking to my mechanic about his near-death experience. He told me that he actually did technically die, but was brought back. Before that happened, he spoke of a field that he was standing in. He said he had never felt so much peace and that he didn't want to come back. That experience reassured him that Heaven is real. Now, I can't advocate for believing in people who talk about coming back from the dead and recount experiences Of Heaven or Hell. Maybe some of them are telling the truth. What we can say with certainty, however, is that the Bible makes mention of Heaven a few times. We don't get the full picture, but we definitely get hints. Jesus Himself talked about His father's house having “many rooms.” He's preparing a place for you and me. Maybe death will catch us by surprise, but not Jesus. God has not given you a spirit of fear. Whether you fear death, public speaking, or something else, God has not called us to live a life of fear. There's a reason that Scripture tells us over and over again not to be afraid. Two reasons, actually. One, fear is a natural part of our sinful nature. It's a consequence of not accepting what we can't control or understand. The second reason is that God wants us to know that he is bigger than our fears. Any fear. We stop panicking when we start trusting. Fear the Lord, not death. If we are fortunate enough to die of old age, perhaps we'll be patiently or eagerly awaiting what is on the other side, but one thing we can do right now is have faith. God has not called us to live in fear of anything else but Him, and even that biblical fear is a reverential attitude towards the Lord. Loving, acknowledging, and trusting in His majesty. When we do that, we realize that this life is meant to be enjoyed, but this enjoyment is but a fraction of what's to come. Heaven is real, and it is so much greater than this life. Further Reading: Revelation 21:4 Isaiah 41:10 2 Timothy 1:7 Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Part 8 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

Part 9 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

Part 10 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.

This enigmatic month is called in Hebrew "Menachem Av,' which means 'The Consoling Father.' Ostensibly the name doesn't fit the reality of these days leading up to the fast day of Tisha B'Av, observed next week, which marks the destruction of the Holy Temple. Yet the vision of this month is the secret of the absolute Oneness of God, the vision of true reality: a loving Father calling His children back to Him with kindness and compassion. Jim Long and Rabbi Chaim Richman explore the inner meaning of the cycles of our lives that lead from destruction to rebuilding. _________ Rabbi Chaim Richman Jerusalem Lights | Torah for Everyone Please support the work of Jerusalem Lights, Inc., a USA recognized 501 ( c ) 3 non-profit organization to enable these productions to continue and grow: PayPal: infojerusalemlights@gmail.com or: https://paypal.me/JerusalemLights?loc... In the USA: Jerusalem Lights Inc. Post Office Box 16886 Lubbock Texas 79490 In Israel: Tel. 972 54 7000395 Mail: PO Box 23808, Jerusalem Israel Subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.rabbirichman.com Subscribe to our YouTube channel:    / jerusalemlightsrabbichaimrichman   Follow us on Facebook:   / rabbichaimrichman  

Part 7 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.  

We recently welcomed Catherine Lacey to the bookshop to discuss her vertiginous latest novel Biography of X.Ostensibly the quest of a journalist, C.M. Lucca, to discover more about the life of her late wife—an artist who went by many names, but who she knew only as X—it quickly becomes clear that, in Biography of X, it's not just one life being called into question, but a genre of literature, a method of reading, a manner of telling stories, a concept of history, perhaps even truth itself.Buy Biography of X here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/biography-of-x-5*Catherine Lacey is the author of four books: Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Certain American States, Pew, and Biography of X. Her work has appeared in Harper's, Vogue, the New York Times and elsewhere. She is a Granta Best of Young American Novelist, a Guggenheim Fellow and the winner of the 2021 New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille comes a suspenseful new novel featuring Detective John Corey and an all-too-plausible conspiracy to detonate a nuclear bomb in two major American cities. Michael talks to him about "Wild Fire (A John Corey Novel, 4)". Welcome to the Custer Hill Club--an informal men's club set in a luxurious Adirondack hunting lodge whose members include some of America's most powerful business leaders, military men, and government officials. Ostensibly, the club is a place to gather with old friends, hunt, eat, drink, and talk off-the-record about war, life, death, sex and politics. But one Fall weekend, the Executive Board of the Custer Hill Club gathers to talk about the tragedy of 9/11 and what America must do to retaliate. Their plan is finalized and set into motion. Original air date 27 November 2006. The book was published on 6 November 2006.

Part 6 of our continuing series on the Emerald Tablet from my book The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation. The book can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Tablet-Alchemy-Personal-Transformation/dp/0140195718 The Emerald Tablet—an ancient document that contains the essence of the alchemical teachings—has had an important influence on many Western spiritual and religious traditions. Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.  

[School of Movies 2024] After many years of thinking about how to tackle these two absolute idiots, we found the best angle for us. Ostensibly this is about the 1996 movie, which still holds up today and makes for an appealing, surprisingly general-audience-friendly and brisk hour and 21-minute comedy. This is an achievement, considering their extremely sketchy first incarnation as a pair of cruelly observed Texas teenagers being horrible to frogs. What Sharon and I do here is fill out the absence of texture in this rare 2D American-animated adult(ish) film by delving into who the boys are, and their pitiful background, as portrayed in various key episodes of the original show, which ran for only four years, but made two comebacks -both solid- with the current one still ongoing on Paramount Plus (which means most people can't see it, or the 2022 sequel movie which propels them into the 21st Century). If you HATE Beavis & Butt-Head this podcast probably won't change your mind, but if you have never delved into this grubby world or indeed have some fond memories from their mid-90s heyday we may bring you a persistent giggle.   10 Recommended Beavis & Butt-Head Episodes to Watch No Laughing (S2E12) The Great Cornholio (S4E31) Prank Call (S6E13) Walkathon (S5E7) Butt Flambé (S7E28) Candy Sale (S5E23) Werewolves of Highland (S8E1) Dumb Design (S8E12) It's a Miserable Life (S6E8) Choke (S5E4)

Orson Welles made F for Fake in the early seventies, while still bobbing in the wake of a Pauline Kael essay accusing him of being cinema's greatest fraud. Ostensibly a documentary on the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving (a talented faker in his own right), the film blurs the line between fact and fiction in an effort to explore art's weird entanglement with illusion, magic, and ultimately, the search for truth. This is a film unlike any other, and it is arguably Welles's most important contribution to the evolution and theory of film aesthetics. Join the Weirdosphere online learning community by enrolling in Phil and J.F.'s inaugural course, THE BEAUTY AND THE HORROR (www.weirdosphere.org), starting June 20th. Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies). Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1) and 2 (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2), on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp (https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com) page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia (https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/). Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies) Find us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp) Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau (https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s)! RERERENCES Orson Welles, F for Fake (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072962/) Gilles Deleuze Cinema 2 (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780816616770) Elmyr de Hory, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmyr_de_Hory) art forger Clifford Irving, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Irving) American writer Howard Hughes, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes) American aerospace engineer David Thomson, Biographical Dictionary of Film (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/178394/the-new-biographical-dictionary-of-film-by-david-thomson/) David Thomson, Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679772835) Pauline Kael, [Raising Kane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaisingKane)_ “War of the Worlds” radio drama (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)) The Farm Podcast, “Horror Hosts, Films & Other Strange Realities w/ David Metcalfe, Conspirinormal & Recluse” (https://shows.acast.com/exclusive-subscribers-shows/episodes/horror-hosts-films-other-strange-realities-w-david-metcalfe-) Orson Welles - Interview with Michael Parkinson (BBC 1974) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dAGcorF1Vo&ab_channel=FilmKunst) Geoffrey Cornelius, Cornelius (https://mythcosmologysacred.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/G.-Cornelius-Chicane.pdf) Victoria Nelson, Secret Life of Puppets (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780674012448) Lionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780904311242) Sokal affair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair), hoax Werner Herzog, “Minnesota Declaration” (https://designmanifestos.org/werner-herzog-the-minnesota-declaration/)

“But one thing the whole “Karen” thing did, which I think was very good, was that it pointed out the existence of spaces Ostensibly open to everyone, but not, and then patrolled often by white women saying you don't belong here. And she got a name, and people with that name wince and rightfully so, but without that wince-worthy kind of situation, I don't think large numbers of Americans would realize that there really is a sort of silent apartheid in our public spaces.” So says Nell Irvin Painter, who Henry Louis Gates Jr. refers to as “one of the towering Black intellects of the last century.” I first heard Nell on Scene On Radio with John Biewen in his series “Seeing White,” and have been biding my time for an opportunity to interview her ever since. I got my chance, with her latest endeavor, an essay collection called I Just Keep Talking, which is a collection of her writing from the past several decades, about art, politics, and race along with many pieces of her own art. Now retired, Nell is a New York Times bestseller and was the Edwards Professor of American History Emerita at Princeton, where she published many, many books about the evolution of Black political thought and race as a concept. She's one of the preeminent scholars on the life of Sojourner Truth—and is working on another book about her right now—and is also the author of The History of White People. Today's conversation touches on everything from Sojourner Truth—and how she actually never said “Ain't I a Woman?”—to the capitalization of Black and White.  MORE FROM NELL IRVIN PAINTER: I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays The History of White People Old in Art School Nell's Website Follow Nell on Instagram Scene On Radio: “Seeing White” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ostensibly, this episode reviews Fanny's - an Italian restaurant in the blossoming food hub of Bloomfield. But when Don starts speaking to how he orders for groups, we realize this episode is actually a glimpse into the mind of a mad man. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.