Podcasts about paradoxically

It is the lot of the infantry to hold ground and get shot at. This is the mundane history of the infantry, not the story you hear during training at Catterick or Brecon. But our social media feeds show us the reality. Soldiers in Ukraine are repeatedly filmed sitting in trenches waiting to be mortared, attacked by artillery or chased by a suicide FPV drone. Encounters involving small infantry units engaging each other are rare; instead, remote firepower remains the dominant killer on the 21st century battlefield. Despite this, however, we are once again considering changes to small arms and small arms ammunition. This is being driven by discussions of lethal effect against body armour at over 600 metres. In this short commentary piece, I want to put the selection of a new rifle and ammunition into its wider societal, historical and organisational context. In the process I hope to persuade readers that the Army should not put new ammunition at the top of its priority list. Although relative to the specific environment and type of conflict, comparatively speaking, the infantry is the least lethal branch of the armed forces.1 Paradoxically, however, the infantry sits at the heart of the army's identity and purpose. As representatives of the polity, infantry soldiers embody the social contract between the citizen and the nation. As I argue in Weapon of Choice this contract is underwritten by the engineer and the rifles they create.2 Framed this way, the rifle is more than a weapon. It becomes the tangible symbol of the bond between the state and its soldiers. If the state cannot provide a reliable and effective rifle, then it has failed at upholding its side of this foundational bargain. Getting small arms acquisition wrong not only jeopardises military effectiveness but it also risks the legitimacy of the sovereign state. The stakes are therefore far greater than the practicalities of small arms calibre or the frailties of weapon design. They touch on the very principles of governance and trust between the nation and its defenders. If the state cannot provide a reliable and effective rifle, then it has failed at upholding its side of this foundational bargain. Unfortunately, since at least the middle of the 19th century, the introduction of every new service rifle with the British Army has been associated with controversy of some sort. The Martini Henry failed in the Sudan in 1884. The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield heralded arguments about the utility of the cavalry. The introduction of Fabrique Nationale's Self-Loading Rifle occurred only because the Americans rejected an intermediate calibre in the 1950s. And of course, the SA80 failed in the desert during the First Gulf War and was subsequently suspended - at the request of the UK's NATO delegate on small arms - from the Alliance's Nominated Weapon List.3 Rifle failure Given the symbolism and significance of the rifle and the long history of failure associated with its introduction into the Army, buying a new design of small arms and ammunition needs to be done with considerable care. In part this is because the UK no longer has the industrial capacity to produce a large fleet of weapons and will need to recalibrate existing ammunition production for a new calibre. Buying small batches of bespoke ammunition and specialist weapons does not necessarily create problems. However, buying a new fleet of rifles to fill the requirements of an entire Army brings with it unique practical challenges associated with introducing a new system, a new ammunition and the development of a new production line. Take, for example, the Enfield Weapon System (EWS). The EWS was the pre-cursor to the SA80. Initially designed for a 4.85mm round, the weapon was specifically intended to allow the infantry to fight from an armoured fighting vehicle and be used in close quarters. The small calibre was selected primarily because 7.62mm ammunition was completely inappropriate for use in Northern Ireland wher...

BUFFALO, NY — June 10, 2025 — A new #research perspective was #published in Aging (Aging-US) Volume 17, Issue 5, on May 5, 2025, titled “Methylation clocks for evaluation of anti-aging interventions.” In this perspective article, Dr. Josh Mitteldorf explores how current epigenetic clocks—used to estimate biological age—might mislead scientists trying to evaluate anti-aging therapies. The paper challenges a widespread assumption: that all changes in DNA methylation with age are equally valid for measuring biological decline. Dr. Mitteldorf proposes that failing to distinguish between different types of epigenetic changes could lead to inaccurate conclusions, potentially even favoring treatments that reduce repair processes rather than extend healthy lifespan. Methylation clocks have become a popular tool in aging research. These clocks use patterns of DNA methylation, a form of gene regulation that changes over time, to predict a person's biological age. Because human aging trials are long and expensive, these clocks offer a faster way to evaluate whether a therapy slows or reverses aging. However, this article warns that not all methylation changes are equal in meaning or effect. The perspective identifies two main categories of methylation changes that occur with age. One type, called 'Type 1,' seems to support the idea that aging may be programmed, with gene activity changing in ways that could cause damage, such as more inflammation or increased cell loss. The second type, “Type 2,” involves increased gene activity aimed at repairing age-related damage. If a therapy reduces the activity of Type 2 genes, it may appear to slow aging while actually interfering with the body's repair response. “Paradoxically, an intervention that “sets back” the body's methylation clock to a younger state is shutting off vital repair mechanisms, so it is likely inimical to health and longevity.” This distinction is important because most methylation clocks, including popular models like GrimAge, do not separate these two types. As a result, they may incorrectly suggest that a treatment is reversing aging when it is only suppressing beneficial repair mechanisms. According to Dr. Mitteldorf, this could lead researchers to draw the wrong conclusions and unintentionally slow down progress in anti-aging research. The author also addresses a growing trend in the scientific community that aims to explain age-related methylation as random drift rather than directed change. In a pilot analysis using publicly available data, Dr. Mitteldorf attempted to construct a clock based purely on stochastic, or random, changes. The results showed a weak correlation with age, suggesting that random drift is an unreliable basis for assessing biological aging. Dr. Mitteldorf argues that most age-related methylation changes are likely intentional and regulated, rather than random. If so, epigenetic clocks must be refined to reflect the biological purpose behind methylation shifts. Without distinguishing between changes that indicate damage and those that indicate repair, current clocks may not only mismeasure age but also misguide intervention strategies. This article highlights the urgent need to improve how methylation data are interpreted before such clocks can reliably assess anti-aging therapies. A clearer understanding of these molecular patterns could help reshape the future of aging research and therapy evaluation. DOI - https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.206245 Corresponding author - Josh Mitteldorf - aging.advice@gmail.com To learn more about the journal, please visit our website at https://www.Aging-US.com. MEDIA@IMPACTJOURNALS.COM

There are so many microscopic things which happen which tend to change our lives - not in cataclysmic ways, but in infinitesimal ways making us the persons we become. A word said in passing, a kindness shown when not expected, a smile out of the blue, a touch when unexpected.   And when a person opens up to you with all her vulnerabilities, bare to her soul, regardless of consequences, regardless of the delicate position which she places herself in, is the time when something inside us shifts. We learn of the preciousness of trust, how simple keepsakes can be life-changing, how devastating and life-affirming can a peek into someone else's truths can be.   Paradoxically, our complex journey through our lives is made richer when our choices become simpler. To pause to see, to stop to listen, to go silent to let the noise subside, to acknowledge presence, to reach out, to reach in. Each person we meet is actually a cornucopia of dreams, actualities, hopes and compulsions. To breath with them is to travel with clear eyes and a pellucid heart.   To know that to know a truth of another is just another way to find our own truths.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on life and its infinite mysteries -  Elegante Solitude I Come With Mud Assisted Suicide Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Gracias by Sascha Ende Kathrin by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Gracias Link: https://filmmusic.io.en/song/Kathrin Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The race to secure critical minerals is accelerating—but so is the urgency to reduce their carbon footprint. Mining, refining, and processing are energy-intensive, often reliant on fossil fuels, and responsible for significant emissions. Paradoxically, as the demand for net-zero metals grows, so too does their footprint. This webinar explores the practical pathways for decarbonising critical minerals supply. Our panelists share tangible insights, from electrifying operations and adopting renewable energy sources, to using low carbon mining technologies. The panel: Urishani Govender, chief sustainability officer, Harmony Gold Mining Company Arend Van Der Goes, senior sustainability manager, Eramet Reza Rahmaditio, critical minerals project lead, WRI Indonesia Moderator: Ian Welsh, publishing director, Innovation Forum

In three of the four nations of the UK, abortion remains a crime under legislation passed in 1861, subject to the exemptions from criminal liability in the Abortion Act 1967.  Paradoxically, abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland in 2019, so that it is now seen as a matter of healthcare rather than the criminal law. Recent prosecutions in England under section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 have reignited debate over whether abortion belongs in the criminal courts at all – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/13/i-hate-sitting-in-silence-now-nicola-packer-on-clearing-her-name-after-the-trauma-of-her-abortion-trial   https://doctorsforchoiceuk.com/abortionlaw#:~:text=UK%20abortion%20law%3A%20Overview&text=In%201967%2C%20Parliament%20passed%20the,if%20authorised%20by%20two%20doctors.   In this special 100th episode of Double Jeopardy, Ken Macdonald KC and Tim Owen KC are joined by two leading voices in the campaign for reform: Rachael Clarke, Head of Advocacy at BPAS (the British Pregnancy Advisory Service) and Trustee of Compassion in Dying; and Jonathan Lord, NHS Consultant Gynaecologist and Co-Chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' Abortion Taskforce. Together, they explore the rise in criminal investigations into pregnancy loss and self-managed abortion, the implications of recent cases like Carla Foster (https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/20231018-R-v-FOSTER-final-approved-1.pdfand) and Sarah Catt, and the human cost of criminalising desperate women. They unpack new national policy guidance issued by the National Police Chiefs' Council on investigating stillbirths and miscarriages; the troubling use of digital surveillance in reproductive cases, and the proposed cross-party amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that would finally remove women from the scope of the criminal law, thereby eliminating the bizarre distinction between the law of Northern Ireland and the other nations of the UK. What is the justification for threatening a woman with life imprisonment for ending a pregnancy? And why has Parliament decriminalised abortion in Northern Ireland, but not in the rest of the UK? This episode offers insider legal and medical perspectives on one of the most polarising and poorly understood areas of UK law—at a moment when calls for reform are louder than ever. ------ Double Jeopardy is presented by Ken Macdonald KC, former Director of Public Prosecutions, and Tim Owen KC, as they break down the legal and political issues in Britain. From high-profile legal cases to the evolving state of British democracy, Double Jeopardy offers expert legal commentary on the most pressing topics in UK law, politics, and human rights. Ken Macdonald KC served as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2003-2008, shaping modern prosecutorial policy and advocating for the rule of law. He is a former Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, a crossbench member of the House of Lords, and a leading writer, commentator and broadcaster on politics and the rule of law.  Tim Owen KC has been involved in many of the most significant public, criminal and human rights law cases over the past four decades. Both bring unparalleled experience from the frontline of Britain's legal and political landscape. If you like The Rest Is Politics, Talking Politics, Law Pod UK and Today in Focus, you'll love Double Jeopardy.

Welcome to another edition of The Way Out Podcast! I'm your host, Charlie, and in this rendition of The Way Out, we have something truly special lined up for you. You might know Edwin McCain as the voice behind timeless hits like 'I'll Be' and 'I Could Not Ask for More,' but beyond the music, he's got a deeply personal story that embodies recovery, resilience, and transformation.  For those of you who've been listening to The Way Out from the start, you'll recognize this as the original format of the show, where I would deliver the introduction to the interview that followed. We're going old school on this one with Edwin because once our chat got started, there was no stopping for nothin. In this conversation, Edwin opens up about his journey to and through Recovery to this point—the highs, the struggles, and the lessons that have shaped him not just as an artist, but as a human being. His insights into addiction, healing, and finding purpose beyond fame are powerful and deeply relatable. All of this he takes into his new album, Lucky for which he embarks on Tour to support starting in our back yard in Minneapolis tomorrow, Cinco De Mayo of all days. Perhaps the most profound and resonant piece of spiritual and Recovery wisdom to come from our recovery rap session is that Nothing is the hardest thing to do on our path to and through Recovery. This strikes at the very core of mine and so many that I've come to knows experience. Boredom and idle time was untenable and it felt impossible not to react to most everything.Paradoxically, when I'm spiritually centered, Nothing is too hard in Recovery or life. So whether you're doing something or nothing as you listen, I am certain you'll enjoy kicking it old school with Edwin and I waxing poetic on all things Recovery so Listen Up.  TakeawaysRecovery is a personal journey that requires understandingone's triggers.The loss of an addict can lead to others finding their pathto sobriety.Mindfulness can help individuals separate their thoughtsfrom their actions.Harm reduction strategies can be effective for someindividuals in recovery.Community support is crucial in the recovery process.Every recovery journey is unique and requires tailoredapproaches.Understanding brain chemistry can aid in addressingaddiction.Families must also engage in the recovery process to breakthe cycle. It's hard to bring people to the realization of their challenges.Family dynamics can complicate recovery.Emotional responses can be overwhelming in early recovery.Altruism is a key component of recovery support.Recovery is about becoming a dependable person.Balance is essential for a fulfilling life.Creativity can flourish when addiction is removed.Recovery allows for deeper emotional connections.The stigma around addiction can hinder treatment.Recovery can lead to unexpected moments of clarity.Connection is everything for me.You can't rush the process.Be the best example of recovery.I'm not looking for an attaboy.Gratitude list is usually way up there.Living Sober had the biggest impact.The hardest thing in the world to do is nothing. Learn more about Edwin McCain and his music - https://edwin.com/ Recovery literature (quit-lit) recommendation: Living Sober:Practical Methods Alcoholics Have Used for Living Without Drinking - https://a.co/d/dpoxlCW Best piece of Recovery advice: The hardest thing in the worldis to do nothing Song that symbolizes Recovery to Edwin: The Lucky One by AndersOsborne - https://youtu.be/pJOoKWwjj5A Don't forget to check out “The Way Out Playlist” available onlyon Spotify. Curated by all our wonderful guests on the podcast! https://open.spotify.com?episode/07lvzwUq1L6VQGnZuH6OLz?si=3eyd3PxVRWCKz4pTurLcmA (c) 2015 - 2025 The Way Out Podcast | All Rights Reserved.Theme Music: “all clear”(⁠https://ketsa.uk/browse-music/)byKetsa(https://ketsa.uk⁠)licensedunder CCBY-NC-ND4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd) 

Paradoxically, emptiness is not a void within us. It's the space that can give rise to our most profound experiences. When we let go and create room in our lives, new and deeply meaningful connections can take shape. Spring in New York has been a reminder of this and an inspiration for today's show. Winter cleared the slate for the overwhelming natural beauty that's been blooming here lately. We can learn so much from the examples of the natural world around us; it's our best teacher. Tune in today to hear more! Thanks, as always, for listening and remember: you can find more resources to support your healing journey at: marywelch.com

In this Metabolic Classroom lecture, Dr. Ben Bikman explores the critical yet often overlooked role of fat tissue as an endocrine organ, not just a passive energy storage site.Fat secretes dozens of bioactive hormones, collectively called adipokines, that influence everything from appetite and insulin sensitivity to inflammation and cardiovascular risk. He focuses primarily on leptin, adiponectin, and PAI-1 (plasminogen activator inhibitor-1), detailing how each one affects whole-body metabolism and health.Leptin, produced by fat cells, signals the brain about the body's energy stores, affecting long-term appetite and fertility more than immediate satiety. Paradoxically, individuals with obesity often have high leptin levels but suffer from leptin resistance, leading to persistent hunger and metabolic dysfunction. In contrast, adiponectin levels decrease as fat mass increases. Adiponectin plays a powerful protective role by enhancing insulin sensitivity, reducing inflammation, and promoting fat metabolism, making it a key marker of good metabolic health.Ben also highlights PAI-1, a lesser-known adipokine secreted mainly by visceral fat, which inhibits the breakdown of blood clots, thereby raising cardiovascular disease risk. He further discusses other adipokines such as resistin, TNF-alpha, and angiotensinogen, which link excess fat mass to insulin resistance, inflammation, and hypertension.Finally, he contrasts subcutaneous fat (more benign) with visceral fat (more harmful) and explains how brown fat offers unique metabolic benefits by promoting thermogenesis and thyroid hormone activation. The location and health of fat tissue matter just as much as its quantity.Show Notes/References:For complete show notes and references, we invite you to become a Ben Bikman Insider subscriber. As a subscriber, you'll enjoy real-time, livestream Metabolic Classroom access which includes live Q&A after the lecture with Ben, ad-free podcast episodes, show notes and references, Ben's Research Reviews Podcast, and a searchable archive that includes all Metabolic Classroom episodes and Research Reviews. Learn more: https://www.benbikman.com#FatHormones #Leptin #Adiponectin #PAI1 #MetabolicHealth #FatLoss #InsulinResistance #Endocrinology #ObesityScience #SubcutaneousFat #VisceralFat #BrownFat #CardiovascularHealth #Inflammation #GlucoseControl #Ceramides #HormoneHealth #FatStorage #DrBenBikman #KetoScience Ben's favorite yerba maté and fiber supplement: https://ufeelgreat.com/usa/en/c/1BA884Ben's favorite meal-replacement shake: https://gethlth.com (discount: BEN10)Ben's favorite electrolytes (and more): https://redmond.life (discount: BEN15)Ben's favorite allulose source: https://rxsugar.com (discount: BEN20)Ben's favorite health check-up for women: https://choosejoi.co/drben15 (discount: DRBEN15)Ben's favorite health check-up for men: https://blokes.co/drben15 (discount: DRBEN15)Ben's favorite exogenous ketone: https://www.americanketone.com (discount: BEN10)Ben's favorite dress shirts and pants: https://toughapparel.com/?ref=40 (use BEN10 for 10% off)Other products Ben likes: https://www.amazon.com/shop/benbikmanphd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Performing sold-out shows and starring in an Oscar-winning movie… to helping catch a serial killer, Patton Oswalt has one of the most eclectic careers of anyone working today.  Paradoxically known for his wholesome characters and his provocative stand-up, Patton speaks with Dan about what it was like forging his comedy career and falling into acting without intending to make a living off of it. Patton's also no stranger to grief and recovery. He speaks about dealing with his vast anxiety surrounding his wife's passing, raising their young daughter alone, and explores the joys of finding new love and building a life after the unimaginable. For upcoming shows and tickets to see Patton live, go to PattonOswalt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this dharma talk I share my latest understanding of the Practice Principles, originally formulated by Joko Beck and as interpreted by my teacher Barry Magid. The practice principles give us a condensed way of understanding ordinary mind zen practice. However, they do miss out some important aspects of practice, such as the importance of supportive relationships and mutual recognition. This talk covers how they are a re-working of the four noble truths and the four great vows. The two couplets represent the Two Truths, the absolute or ultimate truth and the relative or conventional truth. The first two lines focus on how suffering arises in our everyday lives of problems and relationships. They also give us a clue to the ending of suffering. The final two lines emphasise the koan aspect of zen embodied in our zazen practice of just-sitting. Paradoxically, the end of suffering is the end of the resistance to suffering.

Golden spikes are not golden, nor are they generally spikes. So what are they, and, more importantly, what exactly do they represent? In the podcast, Joeri Witteveen explains how we arrived at our present system of defining the boundaries of stages in the rock record with a single marker. Paradoxically, it turns out that the best place for a golden spike is where “nothing happens.” Listen and find out why.Witteveen is Associate Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Copenhagen.

This emphasis on self is one strongly encouraged by the society today. We're challenged to focus singularly on our personal lives and our individual versions of happiness. Paradoxically, it's in letting go of our self-centered desires that we find serenity. It's in faithfully keeping our hearts open to serving others – even sometimes having them broken by those we love – that the meaning, joy and real peace we seek is gradually revealed. Let me explain.

Taking the positive personality traits you have for granted, you don't always consider ways to develop and improve your own character. Some strong personality traits require consistent effort before they really become a part of who you are. If you're ready for some hard work, you can start your way to a better and more successful self! A psychological study has been conducted recently at Ohio State University. It has been found out that your career plans are influenced by the level of your self-esteem! 67 undergraduate students with majors in psychology or business participated in this research. It has turned out that the more confident and encouraged by professors students were, the bigger dreams about the future they had. People who are always ready to help don't always get gratitude from others. Paradoxically, this feature is rarely appreciated, and any help is most often perceived as a normal thing. Moreover, any situation where you give more than you receive or share something that you lack provokes stress. People like those who have fun personalities and can laugh at themselves and their failures. Laughter helps to cope with stress, see positivity, and communicate with others. Despite a common misconception, the highest-performing employees don't overwork, as studies show. Music: https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/... TIMESTAMPS Self-confidence 0:50 The ability to say "No" 2:02 Sense of humor 3:37 Hard-working 4:40 The ability to read other people 5:51 The ability to attract people 6:52 The ability to control the reactions of your body 7:54 SUMMARY -A great way to feel more confident is to do physical exercise! What is more, stop perceiving the reactions of other people as the rules that you need to follow. -Remember that it's possible to say "no" at any moment. Don't be afraid to offend a person by your refusal since it's likely that you aren't the only person who can help. -Watch how other people reply to comments with a joke that gets met by even more jokes. Don't get offended at the slightest thing and learn to laugh at yourself. -For better results and performance, turn off any messengers, put your phone on vibrate, and don't listen to music if it distracts you. Immerse yourself in the task that you need to complete. -In order to understand the motives of other people and to see the reasons behind their behavior, it's necessary to pay attention to what they are saying and doing, where they are looking, and who makes them smile. Combine the clues and you'll see the truth. -When talking to someone, try to make an eye contact, look at the companion in a calm and relaxed way. Don't forget to smile. -To develop this ability, you need to learn to determine and understand your emotions. A fast heartbeat, tense muscles, and a lack or excess of energy or appetite are all signs of anxiety. It's possible to calm yourself down with the help of breathing exercises and meditation. Subscribe to Bright Side : https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook:   / brightside   Instagram:   / brightgram   5-Minute Crafts Youtube: https://www.goo.gl/8JVmuC ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wake Up to Love, and pray the Holy Rosary, pray the LOVE with us LIVE every weekday morning at 4:44 am ET

In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop reconnects with Eric Fisher, one of the show's earliest guests. Their conversation weaves through profound topics like the evolution of AI, the potential consequences of large language models (LLMs), and how AI might reshape both spirituality and education. Eric shares reflections from his time at Facebook, offering behind-the-scenes insight into the creation of algorithmic feeds and how those decisions echo into today's world of AI-driven interactions. Together, Stewart and Eric explore the nature of human attention, the future of work, and the potential divide between tech-driven living and a return to nature. Their discussion raises essential questions about where humanity is headed in the face of exponential technological change and how people can retain their sense of agency and spirit along the way. If you want to learn more about Eric visit his website mindfulimprov.com.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversation!Timestamps00:00 Introduction and Reunion00:44 Reflecting on Past Interviews01:18 Spiritual Understandings and AI01:32 The Dual Nature of AI02:43 The Evolution of Facebook's News Feed05:32 AI's Role in Future Technologies13:47 AI in Education and Synthetic Data16:58 The Future of AI and Society21:54 Spirituality and Technology27:58 Humanoid Robots: Beyond Sex Dolls28:28 The Role of Robots in Agriculture and Home29:07 Industrial Robots vs. Home Robots29:44 The Philosophy Behind Technological Advancements30:22 The Vision of the Future: Post-Steve Jobs Era31:17 The Impact of AI and Automation on Society32:55 Accelerationism vs. Degrowth: The Tech Debate40:41 Demographic Crisis and the Future of Humanity45:18 Economic Inequality and the Common Man46:39 The Evolution of Political Ideologies52:09 The Future of Work and Society54:14 Concluding Thoughts and Future DiscussionsKey Insights1. The Dual Nature of AI: Promise and PerilEric Fisher highlights the dual potential of AI as both a tool for human advancement and a source of unforeseen challenges. Drawing from his experience at Facebook, he explains how algorithmic feeds designed to increase engagement eventually led to widespread issues like polarization and misinformation. This echoes in today's world of LLMs (Large Language Models), where AI's utility as a tool for learning, troubleshooting, and content creation exists alongside the risk of biased or manipulative outputs. The key takeaway is that technology, like a rock, is neutral — its impact depends on how it is used and who is using it.2. The Evolution of Attention as a ResourceAttention has become a central currency in the modern economy, and Fisher points out that the concept of "attention economy" wasn't even part of public discourse a few decades ago. Today, with the rise of LLM-driven AI companions and algorithmic feeds, attention is being sliced and sold with increasing precision. This shift raises questions about how much of human autonomy is being traded away in favor of frictionless convenience. As AI becomes more adept at predicting and shaping user behavior, the concept of "free will" within an attention-driven economy becomes murkier.3. The Next Phase of Education: Self-Directed Learning with AI TutorsBoth Stewart Alsop and Eric Fisher recognize the potential for AI to revolutionize education. Instead of the traditional classroom model, self-directed learning with AI-driven tutors could allow for personalized, one-on-one learning experiences for every student. Fisher notes that tools like ChatGPT have already enabled him to troubleshoot complex home systems, like his geothermal cooling system, without needing to call a specialist. This self-sufficiency could be mirrored in education, where AI assistants offer instant, tailored guidance to students across a range of subjects.4. The Blurring of Reality: Personalized AI-Generated WorldsA provocative idea discussed in the episode is the possibility of AI-generated personalized realities. Through augmented reality (AR) glasses or VR headsets, individuals could project and experience personalized versions of reality. Fisher points out that, in many ways, people already live in "personalized mental realities" shaped by language, perception, and cultural narratives. AI could make this more literal, with each person living in a bespoke, algorithmically generated world. While this concept sounds thrilling, it also hints at a future where shared consensus reality — the "real world" — becomes more fragmented than ever.5. Economic Shifts: From Worker-Centric to Business-Centric SystemsTracing the legacy of figures like FDR and LBJ, Fisher reflects on how America shifted from a society that valued the working class to one that prioritizes business interests. While earlier eras emphasized worker rights, health care, and public welfare, today's economy is focused on empowering small businesses and startups. Everyone is now expected to be a "business of one," as independent creators, gig workers, and personal brands become the dominant paradigm. The result is a world where individual workers act like micro-businesses, managing their own healthcare, retirement, and financial stability — often with no safety net.6. The Threat of Decentralized AI and the Loss of TruthWith Meta and OpenAI releasing LLMs and synthetic AI models into the open-source community, Fisher expresses concern about the fragmentation of "truth." As more people train and deploy their own AI models, the risk of misinformation rises. Just as search engines can prioritize certain content over others, decentralized AI models may be subtly — or overtly — biased. This issue becomes even more concerning if companies start inserting ad-driven recommendations into AI responses, giving users the illusion of objectivity when, in fact, they're being guided toward a commercial end.7. The Coming Collapse and the Chance for RenewalThe episode touches on a cyclical view of history, where moments of collapse often lead to periods of rebirth. Fisher compares this to the aftermath of the bubonic plague, which killed half of Europe's population but led to the Renaissance and an era of cultural flourishing. He speculates that a similar phenomenon could play out today. Whether through demographic decline, AI-driven disruption, or a collapse of old economic models, humanity could experience a dramatic contraction. Paradoxically, such a collapse might bring about an "age of spaciousness" where fewer people, better technology, and renewed humanism create a richer and more thoughtful way of life.

Full Text of ReadingsWednesday of the First Week of Advent Lectionary: 177The Saint of the day is Saint John DamasceneSaint John Damascene's Story John spent most of his life in the Monastery of Saint Sabas near Jerusalem, and all of his life under Muslim rule, indeed protected by it. He was born in Damascus, received a classical and theological education, and followed his father in a government position under the Arabs. After a few years, he resigned and went to the Monastery of Saint Sabas. He is famous in three areas: First, he is known for his writings against the iconoclasts, who opposed the veneration of images. Paradoxically, it was the Eastern Christian emperor Leo who forbade the practice, and it was because John lived in Muslim territory that his enemies could not silence him. Second, he is famous for his treatise, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, a summary of the Greek Fathers, of which he became the last. It is said that this book is for Eastern schools what the Summa of Aquinas became for the West. Third, he is known as a poet, one of the two greatest of the Eastern Church, the other being Romanus the Melodist. His devotion to the Blessed Mother and his sermons on her feasts are well known. Saint John Damascene’s liturgical feast is celebrated on April 30. Reflection John defended the Church's understanding of the veneration of images and explained the faith of the Church in several other controversies. For over 30 years, he combined a life of prayer with these defenses and his other writings. His holiness expressed itself in putting his literary and preaching talents at the service of the Lord. Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Episode 461 - Susan E. Schwartz, Ph.D. - A licensed clinical psychologist, Jungian Analytical PsychologySusan E. Schwartz, Ph.D. is a Jungian analyst educated in Zurich, Switzerland and is a licensed clinical psychologist. For many years Susan has been giving workshops and presentations at numerous local, national, community and professional organizations, and lectures worldwide on various aspects of Jungian analytical psychology. She has written several journal articles and book chapters on daughters and fathers, Puella, Sylvia Plath and has co-authored a couple of books.She is a member of the International Association of Analytical Psychology and the American Psychological Association. Susan maintains a private practice in Paradise Valley, Arizona serving people in the greater Phoenix area, Tuscon, Prescott and Cottonwood, West Valley, Scottsdale and Tempe.Jungian Analytical PsychologyEach of us harbors within our inner universe a number of characters, parts of ourselves that can cause conflict and distress when not understood. We seem to be relatively unacquainted with these players and their roles and yet they are constantly seeking a stage on which to perform their tragedies and comedies personally, relationally and collectively.A life challenge, crisis or change of any form may feel overwhelming and leave us bewildered, confused, even shattered. The current world with its uncertainty can make us feel isolated and confused. How we coped before works no longer and the former attitudes, beliefs or ways we perceived ourselves are now proving inadequate. The problems reflect what is discordant and unassimilated in our personality. Paradoxically, these very obstacles can also become the incentives and openings to development.The approach of Jungian Analytical Psychology addresses a broad range of emotional and relational situations and conflicts in the service of psychological growth. At the heart of the Jungian process is a realignment of conscious and unconscious energies so the psyche gains balance. Jungian Analytical Psychology is very much experience driven, keeping one foot in the outer world and the other in the realm of dreams, synchronistic events, fantasies, and symbols. Knowing oneself entails a journey so the unconscious, repressed or unknown elements are released, not merely for symptom relief but to transform and become concious. The psychological work involves connecting the past and the present, personal and collective, spiritual and mundane, and thereby creating an embodied and meaningful life. This is a process that is individual and collective, personal and relational and the work occurs in a sensitive and therapeutic atmosphere oriented to becoming all one is meant to be.https://susanschwartzphd.com/Support the show___https://livingthenextchapter.com/podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!https://buymeacoffee.com/truemediaca

Walk by the Spirit Galatians 5:13-26 by William Klock Freedom is a funny thing.  We often think of freedom as being able to do whatever we want, but people who find themselves free to do whatever they want—and who follow through on it—pretty universally end up being the most miserable people on the planet—because that kind of selfish freedom is nothing more than the sinful human heart gone wild.  It's rebellion unchained.  Think of the tycoon or movie stars who look like they've got everything, but end up miserable, friendless, and addicted to drugs having found out their freedom has only made them and the people and world around them worse.  The sinful human heart, the flesh as Paul puts it, can simply never be truly free on its own. Paul understood this all too well himself.  The Lord had delivered his people from slavery and set them free, but he also gave them his law in order to guard that freedom.  Even then, they became enslaved all over again and were no better off than the pagans enslaved to idols and evil powers.  And that's because, as Paul has said, the law was given by God to magnify sin—to concentrate it, to pile it up all in one place so that God, in Jesus the Messiah, could deal with it once and for all.  But that's just it.  Jesus has dealt with sin.  So Paul's been warning the Galatian believers: You can't go back to the law.  You've got to keep moving forward in the Messiah towards God's new world.  To do anything else—even to go back to the good, God-given law—to do anything else is to abandon the new life of the Spirit and to go back to the flesh.  This is where Paul starts in the second half of Galatians 5.  Look with me at Chapter 5, verse 13: When you were called, Brothers [and Sisters], you were called to freedom.   You were called to freedom.  Paul's deliberate evoking the memory of Israel being called by the Lord out of Egypt—taken from “slavery” to the “free slavery” of the gospel as he puts it in Romans 6.  Because, he goes on: You mustn't use that freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.  Rather, you must become each other's servants through love.   As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians, “all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful”.  At the heart of the human problem are idolatry and selfishness.  We've become enslaved to them and Jesus has set us free.  In fact, Jesus has come to set creation itself free from its slavery to our idolatry and selfishness.  That's where God's plan has been headed from the beginning.  What does God's new world look like when everything has been set to rights?  Well, it looks like the cross of Jesus.  It looks like this Messiah-shaped love that gives of itself for the sake of others.  The Galatian believers knew this once.  It's what drew them to the gospel in the first place, but now they're starting to turn on each other, so Paul reminds them: “you've got to become each other's servants through love.”  They're thinking about going back to torah, to the law, so Paul reminds them in verse 14: For the whole law is summed up in one word, namely this: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”   Israel longed for the day when the covenant curses of Deuteronomy would be lifted and the promise would be fulfilled—that day when God's people would finally be able to really and truly “do the law”.  Think of that rabbinic saying that if all Israel would keep the law in full for just a single day the Messiah would come and set everything right.  Think of Paul and the Pharisees trying and trying and trying so hard to keep the law and no matter how hard they tried, they failed.  Now, in Jesus and the Spirit it's finally happened.  In Jesus and the Spirit the Lord has renewed his covenant with his people.  The Spirit has transformed their hearts, causing love for God and for each other to well up like it never had before.  Paradoxically, as they've been set free from the law, they're suddenly finding that they're keeping it.  Or they were until this controversy over circumcision came up.  In turning back to the law, all the old evils of the flesh were coming back.  So verse 15 comes like a slap in the face: But if you bite each other and devour each other, watch out!  You may end up being destroyed by each other.   Paul knew that the divisions making their way into the Galatian churches as a result of these false teachers, weren't just leading to anger and resentment.  It was going to—if it hadn't already—turn into actual violence.  We don't know exactly what was going on in these churches, but for Paul to talk about them biting and devouring each other means that this had escalated way beyond these folks just giving each other angry looks when they passed in the street.  It makes sense.  We who have never faced persecution and who live two thousand years distant from the pagan world of the Greeks and Romans and of Caesar's “Jewish exemption”—we don't really have any idea how high the stakes were for these people.  The Jews and the circumcision folks could very well have been on the verge of bringing it to blows if they thought the gentile believers were going to bring the Roman officials down on them.  The danger was real.  When you consider the things that cause church fights and even splits today, it's hard to blame the Galatians.  I've seen church fights and people leave over really petty things like the colour of the carpet, chairs versus pews, hymns versus choruses, modern language versus traditional language, masks versus no masks.  They were facing real, actual danger. It happens.  Some pressure is applied to the church and we forget the Spirit and let the flesh take control and pretty soon we're biting and devouring each other.  Brothers and Sisters, when we do that we destroy our unified, Messiah-shaped gospel witness to the watching world.  Instead of displaying the sacrificing and reconciling love of Jesus, we simply hold up a mirror and show the world it's fallen, sinful, selfish self—and why would anyone be attracted to that?  Remember what we're about.  The church is called to live the gospel, to live the life of the Spirit so that the watching world can see God's glory and his new creation in us. But how do we do it?  We fail often enough that we have to ask.  How do we live this Messiah-shaped love, because it obviously takes more than just a head knowledge of the gospel.  Paul is clear that we can't go back to the law.  Going back to living by rules might seem like the easy answer, but as he's been saying, that's just another form of slavery.  It was good for the old evil age, but Jesus has inaugurated the age to come and everything has changed.  And we know that freedom isn't just doing whatever we want or whatever feels good, because that just makes us slaves to the very flesh that has corrupted creation.  Here's what Paul writes in verse 16: Let me say this to you: Walk by the Spirit, and you won't do what the flesh wants you to.  For the flesh wants to go against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.  They are opposed to each other, so that you can't do what you want.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.   You can almost hear Paul taking a deep breath as he gets ready to give us this fresh imperative.  This is what he's been building towards: Walk by the Spirit.  Don't just live by the Spirit.  That kind of sounds like something you could do by osmosis.  No, walk by the Spirit.  Make a choice with every step you take, with every distraction, with every possible turn that presents itself to you, make the choice to walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh.  At this point we might get into trouble if we misunderstand and think that by “flesh” Paul is talking about the material world or our physical bodies and that by “Spirit” he means our “souls” or some kind of “spiritual” existence apart from the flesh.  The Greeks thought this way.  The material world and the physical body, they thought, were evil—dead weight keeping us down—and so they aspired to a spiritual existence free from the material world and the physical body.  Brothers and Sisters, that's pagan thinking, not Christian (or, for that matter, Jewish) thinking.  God created the world and our bodies and he called them good.  They don't need to be done away with.  In our rebellion against God, we have corrupted ourselves and the world.  What the world and our selves need is his redemption, his renewal.  That's what this biblical language of new creation and resurrection look forward to.  What God has done for Jesus in raising him from the dead, he will one day do for us—and for the whole world.  The gift of his Spirit is the down payment on that hope.  One day God will raise us as he raised Jesus, to the kind of life he intended for us in the beginning, but in the meantime, he's poured out his Spirit on us and his Spirit “fixes”—at least in part—what our rebellion once broke.  And so, Paul would say, on the one hand is our flesh, which represents our rebellion against God, our sin, our self-centred and dehumanising way of life, and on the other stands the Spirit who, if we will only walk with him, will lead us into God's new creation. I think Paul had in mind Moses' exhortation to Israel as they were ready to enter the promised land: I set before you death and life; choose life!  But that's impossible to do, Paul warns, if you turn back to the law.  To turn back to the law is to turn aside from the gospel, to turn aside from the crucified and risen Messiah, and that means that to turn back to the law is to reject the very Spirit given to lead us into God's new creation.  You can't walk backwards into the kingdom of God, Brothers and Sisters.  But, he says, if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.  I think Paul's being deliberately provocative, because he's using the imagery of the Israelites being led through the wilderness by the pillar of cloud and fire—what many would say was a manifestation of God's Spirit all the way back in the exodus.  And here he says, if you are led by that same Spirit who led Israel back then—remember how Jesus has changed everything—if you are led by that Spirit today, he will not lead you back to the law. At this point Paul contrasts what these two sorts of lives look like, the flesh on the one hand and the Spirit on the other.  Look at verses 19-21: Now the works of the flesh are obvious.   In other words, everyone knows these things—not just Jews, who have the law as a standard of good behaviour—but even the pagans know these things aren't good.  Everyone knows the world is not the way it should be and everyone knows that these are the sorts of “works” that have made it the way it is, the sorts of “works” that hurt others, that destroy our relationships—even that destroy ourselves.  And so Paul launches into a litany of human evils: They are such things as fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, bursts of rage, selfish ambition, factiousness, divisions, moods of envy, drunkenness, wild partying, and similar things.   Paul starts with a trio of words for sexual sins, maybe because sexual sins are so often the worst when it comes to the selfish use and harm of others for our own pleasure or maybe because they're so often bound up with idolatry, which is what he mentions next: idolatry—the root of all of our sin—and sorcery—which is often the way pagans try to set the world to rights by the invocation of false gods and powers instead of turning to the living God.  From there, Paul gives us a list of eight words that pretty well cover the whole gamut of antisocial behaviour and they do it so densely that it's actually hard to differentiate between some of them: hostilities, strife, jealousy, bursts of rage, selfish ambition, factiousness, divisions, and moods of envy.  Paul could easily have summed it all up in two or three, but he wanted to emphasise just how wrong the situation in Galatia was.  They'd become focused on the flesh and it was playing out in a whole host of fleshly evils that were threatening to tear the churches apart as they demonised each other. And then there are two final fleshy works.  There's drunkenness, to which today we could easily add all sorts of drug use—both legal and illegal—that deaden our senses, dull our intellect, and that make it impossible to follow the leading of the Spirit.  And, finally, wild partying—orgies—that were common throughout the pagan world and were often the places where the other works of the flesh were celebrated and cultivated.  And Paul says in verse 21: I told you before and I tell you again: people who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.   “People who do such things” is in the present tense, which is Paul's way of stressing that he's talking about people who make these things a way of life, not necessarily people who occasionally lapse into sin and repent.  His point is that if these are the things that characterise your life, if you make a habit of selfishness, of idolatry, and of using and abusing others for your own pleasure or ambition, you will not inherit the kingdom of God.  Why?  Because these are the sorts of behaviours, the sorts of sins, that have made the world the mess it is.  The gospel is about God, through Jesus, setting this broken world to rights and about his people having a part in that setting to rights.  It's simply impossible for those who are set on defacing God's creation to have a place in the age to come.  When the day comes for God to finally bring to completion what Jesus has begun, to finally bring that life of which the Spirit is the down-payment and foretaste, the works of the flesh and all those who practise them will be destroyed, will be purged from creation as part of its finally being set to rights.  That doesn't mean there's no chance for repentance in the meantime.  That, of course, is a major part of the good news about Jesus.  Trust in him and your past is forgiven and his Spirit is poured into you so that you can bear his fruit and be part of God's new creation, which Paul describes in verses 22-23: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  There is no law that opposes things like that!   The two lists speak for themselves.  Imagine two communities, one characterized by the works of the flesh and the other by the fruit of the Spirit and you know right away which one you want to live in.  Where the works of the flesh are all about “me”, the fruit of the Spirit are all about others.  Most of these virtues require another person as an object in order for them to be lived out.  And that's the way of the kingdom.  To love others is the way of a Messiah-shaped people.  And he writes: Against such things there is no law.   Whether it's the people wanting to go back to torah or the local Roman officials or pagan neighbours angry that these new believers in Jesus have abandoned the pagan temples and rites, Paul's saying: If you walk by the Spirit and bear this kind of fruit, no one's going to be able to complain about you.  In fact, you might just make them constructively curious about the gospel!  But now, in verse 24, here's the really crucial point: And those who belong to the Messiah, Jesus, crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.   Through faith and baptism into the Messiah, the flesh—and all its disordered passions and desires—has been crucified.  As surely as Jesus was dead and buried, so has your old self and my old self.  And as surely as Jesus was raised to new life, God has poured his Spirit into us and set us walking straight into his new creation.  The factionalism and divisions, the biting and devouring had no place in those Galatian churches.  It was nailed to the cross with Jesus.  The same goes for any works of the flesh that threaten the witness and unity of the church today.  If we belong to the Messiah, we have crucified the flesh—past tense, done deal—and we're now filled with God's own Spirit.  So…verse 25: If we live by the Spirit, let's line up with the Spirit.  We shouldn't be conceited, vying with one another, and jealous of each other.   Back in Chapter 3 Paul asked, “Are you who began with the Spirit going to end with the flesh?”  No.  If we live by the Spirit, we need to line up with the Spirit.  When he says “live”, Paul doesn't just mean to go on existing; he means that through the Spirit, we who were dead in sin are now alive to God.  Again, the life of the Spirit is the anticipation of the day when God will raise us to new life as he did Jesus.  Brothers and Sisters, God has given us his Spirit to lead us through the wilderness and into the promised land, into God's new world set to rights.  That's why Paul says that to live by the Spirit is to line-up with the Spirit—like using your compass to draw a line on a map to your destination.  Follow the line—follow the Spirit, and he will see you through to God's future.  Don't stray into conceit or jealousy or factions, just make the conscious decision to follow the Spirit. What does that mean for us?  Well, I think in our highly individualistic culture we tend to read this as little more than pursuing personal holiness.  But when I read this familiar passage in context, what really jumps out at me is that Paul's main focus here is on the unity of the church and the witness to Jesus and the gospel that grow out of that loving unity.  The fruit of the Spirit, again, are virtues that shape a whole community into the image of Jesus and that show the world what God's new age is going to look like.  Paul's overarching theme in Galatians is the unity of the church as a witness to the power of the gospel and the age to come.  Even if the specifics have changed, the problems remain.  I think, actually, that the Jew-gentile problem of the Galatian churches pales in comparison to the failures of the modern church.  There have been times in history when Christians have been forced to separate from one another over serious matters of doctrine and practice—following Paul when he says to cast out the false teachers.  But in the last couple of hundred years we've begun to divide over increasingly trivial issues.  And then, for the last fifty or sixty years, as our culture has become obsessed with commercialism, we've carried that same consumer mindset into the church.  Pair that with our tendency to separate over trivialities and it's been a disaster.  Christians flit from place to place, hardly ever thinking of what they bring or what they might contribute, but always looking for what they can take or what new experience they can have and, in return, churches have begun treating not only our fellowship and worship, but even the gospel itself as a commodity to be marketed, not to family members, not to brothers and sisters, but to religious and spiritual consumers—churches competing with each other for members who are themselves self-absorbed—the very opposite of the sort of communities Paul envisioned being shaped by the Spirit. A Spirit-filled church is made up of brothers and sisters who give and who forgive.  It's a church full of diversity as people who ordinarily would have nothing in common are drawn together by the good news about Jesus, people who have made Jesus—not their interests or ethnicities or social class—their identity.  A Spirit-filled church is a community that models not the old age of every man for himself, not the old age of divisions and factions, but that models God's new creation in the midst of and for the sake of the old.  A Spirit-filled church, bearing fruit, will offend as in its light the works of the flesh—idolatry, sexual immorality, drunkenness, and strife—are exposed for what they are, but at the same time a Spirit-fill church, bearing fruit, is the community of light and love everyone in this dark world is looking for.  They ought to see it in us.  Our life together ought to make the world constructively curious.  People ought to be asking what makes us different.  And then, Brothers and Sisters, we have our chance to tell them about Jesus and about the love of God for sinners.  But we don't have this community—not the way we should.  So what do we do instead?  We market our programs or the production values of our worship experience or our preaching or our politics.  One church advertises, “We ain't your grandma's church!” and on the other side we traditionalists advertise, “We are literally your grandma's church”.  And, Brothers and Sisters, all the world sees are factions and divisions.  Thanks be to God that in his grace, that's not entirely true.  Even with our failures and disunity, the world still sees the gospel in us—but not the way it should. Think again of those Christians in Galatia.  Their trust in Jesus and the gospel brought them into this new community of the Spirit and they turned away from, they withdrew from the pagan rituals and the false gods that permeated their society.  Their neighbours, their families, the officials—Caesar—didn't like it.  Suspicion turned to opposition turned to persecution and eventually martyrdom.  And yet little communities like this conquered that pagan empire with the gospel even as that empire did its best to stomp them out.  Why?  Because they lined up with the Spirit and bore his fruit, because that loving, self-giving fruit—particularly as it came under fire—bore witness to the glory of the cross and the love of a God unlike any god the pagans had ever known.  Because those little Spirit-filled communities were full of a gospel hope in the world set to rights by a God who loves so much that he will give his own life.  That hope drew them close together, it concentrated the light they bore, and that lit up the darkness.  I pray, Brothers and Sisters, that that same light would shine from us to lighten the darkness as we, by God's grace, walk by his Spirit. Let's pray: Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people; that we may produce abundantly the fruit of good works, and receive your abundant reward, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

My First Million Key Takeaways  Paradoxically, life gets easier when you choose to do hard things Have a goal that you can strive towards, but be cognizant of how you feel along the way in pursuit of that goal One of the hardest things in life is figuring out what you want “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.” – Jim Carey You have emotional sovereignty in how you choose to react to everything that happens in life; exercise and develop that sovereignty so that you can live the fullest life possible How Cheap is Your Happiness: Don't let the smallest inconvenience take you out of the beautiful state of being that is happiness“I just do what's cool to me, and sometimes the whole world agrees.” – Mike Posner Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgEpisode 640: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP )sits down with Mike Posner ( https://x.com/MikePosner ) about his insane hustle, fame, loss and reinvention. — Show Notes:  (0:00) iTunesU Story (14:41) Going back to school, famous (21:40) Getting on the radio (26:40) “I just do what's cool to me and sometimes the whole world agrees” (30:06) One true sentence / Writing Process (39:50) Money, fame and Survivor (46:52) Advice to my younger self (48:10) Missed flight story (58:00) The making of a hit song (1:04:31) Walking Across America (1:11:09) "How cheap is your happiness?" (1:14:17) Beautiful States v Suffering States — Links: • Mike Posner - https://mikeposner.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it's called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam's List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

We had a long talk about the Terrfier franchise and Art the Clown last week. Based on the surprising box office receipts from this past weekend, it would seem we are in the minority. When did that ever change our opinions? Plus, everybody dies. And that's fucked up.Has there ever been an internet challenge that isn't stupid? Ghost Game offers up possibly the dumbest one yet. Those who do the challenge are tasked to break into a house and live with the inhabitant without getting caught. Bad idea for a prank; great premise for a horror movie.Along with a great premise, Ghost Game boasts a near perfect setting. It takes place in a home that looks just like you think a haunted house should. The grounded story gives a different feel to what is otherwise a very traditional horror story. It operates on many levels.It is a shame that the writing is unable to keep up. The characters lack motivation and much of the plot feels directionless. We do not expect much from any haunted house movie; we just want to have a good time. For everything it does right, Ghost Game does even more wrong.Falling Stars is a modern folk horror tale about witches. Putting the story in the isolated American southwest is a wise decision. There is a sense of loneliness and fear that goes beyond the supernatural. Paradoxically, the idea of togetherness is a very strong theme.The film is a patient one that builds tension through strong storytelling. The performances are fantastic and there is great chemistry between the three leads. It is a slow burn, but it is something to put on your radar. Falling Stars tells a beautiful and frightening story that works for any time of year. Adventures in Movies! is a part of the Morbidly Beautiful Podcast Network. Morbidly Beautiful is your one stop shop for all your horror needs. From the latest news and reviews to interviews and old favorites, it can be found at Morbidly Beautiful.Adventures in Movies! is hosted by Nathaniel and Blake. You can find Nathaniel on Instagram at nathaninpoortaste. Blake can be found on Twitter @foureyedhorror and on Instagram at foureyedhorror. You can reach us personally or on Twitter @AdventuresinMo1.Music in the background from https://www.FesliyanStudios.com

Measured by distance and speed, today North Americans move more than ever. Movement, however, is but a means to an end; more movement is not in itself beneficial. Movement is a cost of meeting daily needs, and provided these needs are met, less movement is generally advantageous. Nevertheless, since the 1930s traffic engineers have pursued movement maximization in North American cities as if movement is an end in itself, and even as if movement is in itself freedom. The human costs have included unbearable burdens measurable as financial, health, safety, equitability, livability and environmental costs. Together these burdens impair human autonomy; that is, by constraining people's choices about where and how to live, they diminish freedom. Automobility, promoted as a deliverer of freedom, has instead imposed car dependency, a kind of unfreedom. Paradoxically, many engineers now pursue so-called “autonomous” (robotic) driving, promising thereby to sustain unsustainable quantities of movement, when the sole worthy end of movement is not machine but human autonomy. To escape the traps that these errors set for us, we must trace them to their origins. Though engineering is defined as applied science, history reveals that the origins and persistence of prevailing traffic engineering principles lie not in scientific research but in power politics, and that such principles have more in common with religious dogmas than with natural laws. Far more practical possibilities await us when we escape the confines these dogmas impose on us and recognize movement as a secondary good that serves us only as it contributes to human autonomy. Peter Norton is an associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. He is a member of the University of Virginia's Center for Transportation Studies and has been a visiting faculty member at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Norton is the author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, and of Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving. He is a winner of the Usher Prize of the Society for the History of Technology, and a frequent speaker on the subject of sustainable and equitable urban mobility. In addition to this audio, you can watch the video and read the full transcript of the conversation on Shareable.net – while you're there get caught up on past lectures. Cities@Tufts Lectures explores the impact of urban planning on our communities and the opportunities to design for greater equity and justice with professor Julian Agyeman.  Cities@Tufts Lectures is produced by Tufts University and Shareable.net with support from Barr Foundation, Lectures are moderated by Professor Julian Agyeman and organized in partnership with research assistants Amelia Morton and Grant Perry. Paige Kelly is our co-producer and audio editor, the original portrait of Karin Bradley was illustrated by Anke Dregnet, and the series is co-produced and hosted by Tom Llewellyn.  “Light Without Dark” by Cultivate Beats is our theme song.

Firebrand speaker and author of “Killing Sacred Cows”, Garrett Gunderson, joins us to discuss wealth mindset and value creation. Also, Keith touches on the impact of falling interest rates on various loans and the economy noting that lower rates can benefit savers and investors. Historical data shows that home prices have only fallen 6 times in the last 83 years, signaling the rarity of significant price declines.  Learn about the Rockefeller method, which involves using trusts and whole life insurance to preserve and grow wealth. Garrett advocates for investing in real estate, businesses, and intellectual property rather than mutual funds or ETFs. DM Garrett on Instagram to receive a free copy of his book on the Rockefeller method. Resources: GarrettGunderson.com or  Alon Instagram @garrettbgunderson Join our upcoming GRE live event right here! - ‘New Turnkey Properties with ZERO Money Down' on Thursday 10/24. Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/522 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai     Keith Weinhold  00:01 Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, talking about what falling interest rates really mean to you. 10 years of the GRE podcast, politics are overrated. How often do home prices fall? The latest in AI generated podcasting and then wealth mindset and wealth preservation all today on get rich education.   00:27 Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests and key top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki, get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com   Corey Coates  01:12 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  01:28 Welcome to GRE from Evansville, Indiana to Victorville, California and across 488 nations worldwide for an entire decade of your life now, this is Get Rich Education. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, what does it mean that we're in an era of falling interest rates from the recent peaks, rates of all types have fallen. Mortgage rates have fallen. The Fed funds rate has fallen, and that prime rate has fallen too. I mean the prime rate that you pay, that's basically the Fed funds rate plus 3% and why the prime rate matters to you is that can affect credit cards, home equity loans, automobile loans and small business loans, every one of them down, down, down. So to any savvy investor that knows what's going on in the 21st century? This can mean celebration for your wallet, for your finances. And look in old days, lower rates, that would be bad news, not good news. And why is this? Well, in olden days, and some people still have an outdated mindset, lower rates are bad because savings accounts used to make sense back in the day, and lower interest rates means lower rates for savers on their bank, savings accounts. Yeah, those 5% online only savings accounts are going to four and a half with the Fed's half point rate cut last month. Well, 100 years ago, you could be a saver. That made some sense, because their interest rates could reliably beat inflation over time, but not today. Today, since inflation transfers wealth from lenders to borrowers and inflation redistributes wealth from savers to debtors. For those like us that understand this and act accordingly, we are indeed the beneficiaries of lower interest rates. Now, there are other effects out there in the economy. Cheaper loans could lead to more m&a activity, more mergers and acquisitions that can benefit investment banks like your Goldman Sachs that facilitates those transactions. Well, what happens to real estate prices amidst lower interest rates? What happens is that they tend to rise now here on the show, you remember that since 2022 I have discussed what has surprised a lot of people. Amidst rising interest rates, the environment that we used to have, home prices tend to rise. And it has happened again. When mortgage rates tripled, prices kept right on rising. So you might wonder, well, wait a second, which is it or I'm confused, amidst rising interest rates, home prices rise and amidst falling interest rates, home prices rise too. And the answer is yes, look at history over hunches. To our newsletter readers, I recently sent you that great chart, a table, I guess it showed the national home price, rate of appreciation or depreciation for every single year, going back to World War Two and from 1942 until today, those 83 years, how many times do you think that home prices fell over the last 83 years? There were exactly six, six of the last 83 years, only six where home prices fell. Paradoxically, interest rates don't have much to do with home prices, and this is all per Case Shiller statistics. Over the last 83 years, there were only six down years. 72 were up. Five were even. And of those six down years in the last 83 five of the six down years were tied up in a once. I mean, it took a once in several generations confluence, a cataclysm of events to occur during the global financial crisis, 2007 to 2011 all at once. Back then, it was a housing supply, surplus, disgustingly lawless mortgage market, cheap credit and a preponderance of debt in the banking system since World War 2, 83 years ago, there was only one other year when home prices fell, that was 1990 when they fell by 1%. If you're waiting for Home prices to fall substantially, it is super unlikely that that is going to happen. Just look at history, and today's market has more than the housing shortage in loads of protective homeowner equity, which means low delinquency rates, and we have permanently inflated higher prices baked into replacement costs of all kinds, land, architecture, engineering, permitting, regulation, labor, building, equipment, construction materials all over the place, but us, you know, as real estate investors, we might be more interested in rent appreciation than prices just four years ago, you know, just then to pay $2,000 to rent a single family home. I mean, that was quite a nice place in the Midwest and South. And today I have modest single family rentals built 50 years ago that are about 1200 square feet, and now they rent for $2,000 $2,000 a month's rent that is common today, and we are rooting for rents to appreciate faster than home prices. And if you want to get our newsletter, you're probably on that list by now, and reading it, I just send some of the best charts in real estate maps to you. You can sign up free right now. Just do it while it's on your mind. Text GRE to 66866, that's text GRE to 66866, for our Don't quit your Daydream Letter. Political season is heating up. We are at a time where we are one month from a general election, and that means we're electing a new president, vice president, 1/3 of the Senate, the entire house of representatives and various state and local officials. Yes, politics matter. Politics affect real estate. So why don't I discuss this more here on the show. Well, I explained that to you a while ago. It gets divisive, and it rarely affects people as much as they think. And as you know, I avoid even using words like Democrat, Republican, left, right, conservative and liberal. And why do I do that? Because they are divisive terms. The problem isn't so much politics. It's when people get infected with the partisan mind virus. Yes, they put party over country. For example, a partisan political instigator will swear to god that the economy is great now, but as soon as, say, a different party wins an election, even if the economy is the same, although now say that that same economy is awful. In fact, a couple years ago, I quit my job as a writer for a publication that you've heard of before. I no longer contribute to them. They put party before country, in my opinion, I wrote an article for them about two years ago, and my article made it sound like an eminent recession was a question, not a foregone conclusion. Well, the editor let me know that their consensus of writers feels like a recession is eminent and that I need to change my article to reflect that that's because they don't like the administration that's in power, so I quit rather than edit my article. I mean, if you just ask an American the question, this question, do you wish that America were less divided? Well. Any sane person would answer that question, yes. Well, then why would you go attach divisive labels to the other side and attack them? It makes no sense. That's where the division comes from. So really, it ought to be about solutions and ideologies and not political parties. So this is another reason why, during political season, I don't play those games, and we stick to investing the economy and wealth mindset. I mean, virtually no other country in the world drags out their presidential election cycle this long. I mean, it's like a year and a half. Remember all those debates last year and names like Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy that were in the news all the time. I mean, other countries get this entire process over with in six weeks. Let's take a page from them, and that way we can have more constructive things in our news cycle.  Well, I am coming to you from the makeshift mobile GRE studio today, like I do some weeks, because this morning, I woke up in reading Pennsylvania. Reading is, in fact, my birthplace, and besides being the pretzel capital of the United States, one way that you know about reading is from the Reading Railroad property in the board game Monopoly. Yeah, it's one of the properties that you can buy and, I guess, collect rent on. And, you know, here we are a real estate show. So maybe it's appropriate that the namesake of my birthplace is immortalized as a property on America's best known real estate game. And it also might be appropriate that I'm back here because the 10th anniversary of the launch of this show is nigh this coming Thursday, on October 10, 1010, it will be 10 years since episode one of this show. And yes, the math, I suppose, checks out, because there are about 52 weeks in a year, and you are listening to episode 522, right now. Well, listen to this. This could blow your mind. Have you heard an AI generated podcast? And I don't just mean sort of where a robot reads a blog in monotone and then you listen to that audio file that's embedded in the article. No, that's not what I'm talking about. Here's what I mean. A few weeks ago, I learned that macroeconomist Richard Duncan, who was the first ever guest on this show back in 2014 Gosh, all these tie ins to GRE 's origins today? Well, Richard published some PDF charts, and he uploaded them to notebooklm.google.com, that's how you find this. And he clicked generate audio overview, and within three minutes, it had created a podcast with two virtual people having this pretty intelligent, engaging and even humorous conversation about his presentation on interest rates. I mean, wow, just listen to the first minute or minute and a half of this AI generated podcast here. And again, this is from about a month ago. So they're talking about the upcoming Fed rate cut that did indeed happen.   13:23 All right, ready to dive in. Today, we're tackling the big question everyone wants to know, will the Fed actually cut rates on September 18? It's the question on everyone's mind, for sure, and more importantly, for our listeners, what's it going to mean for them to help us unpack this whole thing. We're looking at this report. It's by economist Richard Duncan, called why the Fed will cut September 12, 2024. Duncan always brings unique perspective. He cuts right to the chase, which I appreciate. right! So let's jump right in. Duncan starts by talking about inflation, which, let's face it, we've all been feeling the heat from this past year. Yeah, it's been a wild ride. Inflation hit a pretty brutal 9% last year. I think my grocery bills are still recovering. Oh yeah, tell me about it. But the latest number shows down to 2.5% that's both by the CPI and importantly, the PCE Price Index, right? And that PCE is the one the Fed really keeps their eye on, exactly, which is why I wanted to ask you about that. Why is the PCE like the golden child for the Fed, why not just stick with the CPI? Everyone knows that one. well, It's all about getting the most accurate picture of inflation. Think of it like this. The CPI is like taking a quick glance at prices. You know, just a snapshot in time. Okay with you, but the PCE, that's more like a movie. It captures how our spending habits change as prices change, and that gives the fed a better look at those underlying trends driving inflation. So it's like the CPI with a little bit of a crystal ball. It's trying to anticipate what's going to happen. It's got it okay? So inflation seems to be cooling down, which is good news, right?   Keith Weinhold  14:56 Gosh, that's just really good, a totally realistic sounding AI generated podcast just from some PDF files. The macro economist Richard Duncan uploaded remarkable and you know that the quality of that is only going to get better. That's probably about as bad as it's ever going to be right there. And in fact, in another 10 years, listeners could find it rather cute or quaint that we find this remarkable today. A big thanks to Richard Duncan for allowing us to play that and also expect Richard to be back here with us on the show again before the year ends, and here on the 10th anniversary week of the GRE podcast, you know, it makes me wonder how expendable my job as podcast host is going to be. I hope that I'm here with you in another 10 years, and I completely plan to be.  Well  episode number one of the get rich education podcast back from 2014 is called your abundance mindset. So it's apropos to visit a mindset topic today I'm going to do that with firebrand Speaker This week's guest, Garrett Gunderson. Here shortly, do you want to live a life that is small and safe and sheltered? I doubt that you really do, but you know, safe decision after safe decision, that's what most people end up doing. Do you want your kids to live a small, safe, sheltered life? I mean, most parents want safety for their children, but they're going to have an outsized impact on others when they study and then take the right risks. We're discussing those types of wealth creation mindsets with Garrett. He's a really talented guy. He was last with us six years ago. He's done some stand up comedy. Many have remarked that Garrett looks like Jesus Christ. He's the author of some popular books, including killing sacred cows. Let's talk to Garrett. This week's guest is a pretty well known author and speaker. He helps you make, keep and grow your money to help you live your best life. He's an especially dynamic speaker, public speaker, and I'm confident that you'll be able to hear that on the show today, because he has a great knowledge base, and he speaks with this conviction on topics that make him so compelling. Hey, it's been a few years. Welcome back to GRE Garrett Gunderson.   Garrett Gunderson  17:38 good to be back. I thought that was a very honest, like, pretty well known, like, I'm not really well known pretty well. That's just enough to annoy my wife. Like, I'll be going through an airport and someone come over and talk to me, and she's like, ah, but I love it, dude. I love conversations with people that I don't know, and I just get to meet because if they engage in my work, it gives us a chance to connect. And sometimes it makes me look cool to my kids, which is always a good thing. You know what I'm saying, like my son will be with me and someone say, hey, love killing sacred cows, or, Hey, are you that guy on YouTube? I'm like, it could be me, or you might be thinking, I'm Jesus. You know what I'm saying. I look familiar, though.   Keith Weinhold  18:14 Yeah. Now you can tell your kids that I said you are pretty well known. And you know, Garrett, you're also a really keen and perceptive person. You can tell if somebody's poor within 60 seconds of what they say. Tell us about that.   Garrett Gunderson  18:31 Oh, man, that video has so much hate. Man. I put that out like it was my son's filming, and I'm just sitting in our kitchen, and I was just thinking about a conversation I had earlier that day, and in the conversation, it was like, more about complaining about the world, saying that they couldn't afford things, saying they didn't have the time, blaming everyone for their situation. And I was like, man, it's pretty easy to tell. And 60 seconds, I mean, I guess maybe is a rash statement, because maybe it takes three minutes or 300 seconds, like five minutes, and get deep enough, but you just find that there's a certain language to poverty, and whether that's just poor in spirit, whether it's poor in mind, or whether it's poor in the bank account, typically it's devoid of personal responsibility. It's leading the levels of inspiration. And this isn't to say that if you're wealthy, that you only speak inspiring conversations. I mean, I complain sometimes that happens. I get frustrated. I get disappointed in myself for not being nicer to a customer service person and like, have to really manage that sometimes. But ultimately, it's this language that is almost like a Marxist type of language, you know, that comes from a place of like, I want this. I'm owed that we deserve this. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, like, who's going to produce that? And so it's something that's a fairly easy thing to detect with just a few questions. Like, if I'm given one question, I can tell in 60 seconds for sure.   Keith Weinhold  19:57 Yeah. I think a lot of times people start complaining. About something. People find money a scarce resource when they start, you know, complaining about gas prices or something like that, I think that's just really a classic one. It tells me where they're coming from. I mean, it tells me what their mind is occupying.   Garrett Gunderson  20:12 Right.  And if we're not excited about our future, if we're not developing our skill sets, if we're not really engaged in the world of value creation, it's easy to get frustrated about tax it's easier to get frustrated about inflation. It's easier to get complaining about interest rates or loan rates and all those kind of things. But what I find is the best way to outpace inflation is through skill set, and if we truly invest in ourselves and invest in other people so that we increase our quality of life and our enjoyment of it along the way, we increase all the skill sets that matter. You've mentioned that I'm a decent public speaker and that I'm articulate. That comes from going through writing courses and hiring speaking coaches and just getting the reps and doing comedy and the things that will help me to become a more effective communicator. And then it's really about becoming a better cash flow investor. I know that you teach people a lot around, you know, real estate and investing, and that's one of the big three assets in my mind, that helps people generate and create cash flow. But most people are trapped in this indoctrination where they set money aside and forget it. They wait for 30 years and hope for the best. They're very one dimensional of just paying off a loan and then hoping the retirement plan is going to get them there. And that's why they end up in this mindset where they're like, oh, I don't feel in control, because the outcome of my income is something that's dictated by the economy and not my own willpower, not my own skill set, not my own value creation. And I think that's why retirement is such a bad and faulty notion. My main statement in life is create the life you don't want to retire from. Now, I get it. In the industrial age, people need to retire because they were being worked to death and they weren't living for very long. It was an immensely valuable concept back then, a blue to collar world back then? Yeah, right. But in today's world, what if people just invested more time in selecting your career that mattered or had enough faith and took a leap on themselves to start becoming a better investor or start a business or be an entrepreneur where they get upside potential, instead of just begging for safety and security, instead of just wanting the entitlement of benefits, instead of just trading time for money, like that's an industrial age concept that we watched, whether it's our parents or grandparents, go through trading time for money, but we're in a world where that's not required any longer, because we do have technology, we do have artificial intelligence, we do have these things that are starting to displace The jobs that no one really wants to do because it beats down the body, and there's a lot of opportunity for those that are willing to grasp it and go for it, but it comes down to one key thing, value creation. And if we're going to be devoid of value creation, it's easy to tell in 60 seconds whether someone's poor because value creation was not part of their concept or their purview.   Keith Weinhold  22:40 And value creation is about expanding that upside. And a lot of poverty mindsets just complain about the downside their expenses. And you can't really do that much about your expenses. You can only lower them so much. Anytime you do, you're probably diminishing your quality of life anyway. And really, I think a lot of this mindset of lack Garrett comes back to the fact that, simply, most believe that money itself is a scarce resource. I probably believe that at one time, when I was younger, maybe you did too. And as I like to say, although I wasn't the first person that said it, the only place that you get money is from other people. So most people, which tend to be employees, think their way to increase their income is only if their employer gives them a raise, or maybe if they find a new employer that pays them maybe 10% more, or something like that. So they're limiting their upside over there because they think money's a scarce resource, because it's got to come from an employer. Somehow they're not thinking about, why don't you really expand your upside and start an Amazon business, or rent cars through Turo or Airbnb rentals, or what we do here at get risk education, help people with long term housing rentals. So it just kind of comes back to the fact that, you know, people's mind is closed off, and they just simply want to believe that money is a scarce resource.   Garrett Gunderson  23:57 They're adding to computer screens as we talk about this, you know, I mean, there's never been more money in the world than there is today. It's the most money there's ever been. We keep adding it. There's, you know, so much of it out there. But even if they stopped printing it, or they stopped adding it to balance sheets, there's an infinite number of times they can exchange hands. So if we use it to buy computers and clothes or food and shelter or entertainment like comedy and concerts, the more times money exchanges hands, the more values created. It's exchange that facilitates and creates wealth in the way that we create exchanges, serving others, solving problems and adding value. And here's the deal, we can have two parties do exchange with one another and both end up wealthier. It doesn't need to be a win, lose transaction. As a matter of fact, when people transact, they agree that what they bought was worth more than their money, or if they sold it, they agree that the money was more than what they sold. Otherwise they would have kept it. We don't do equal exchange. I wouldn't give you $1 for $1 right? There's no reason to exchange. It's unequal, which means, if you can provide something more efficiently than. I can for myself. I can pay you, which frees up my time to do what I most efficiently and effectively can do. I did triathlons because I was an idiot back in the day. Sorry for those triathletes, which is like a lot of work, man. And I don't love swimming, but I remember going to buy a triathlon bike. I just bought, like, a road bike. It was a big upgrade from having a huffy from Walmart, you know, like, oh, this $4,700 this is a while back, but it was carbon fiber. It was, like, amazing. And I thought, you know, I could never build this. So this $4,700 is actually really cheap, because I'm giving him $4,700 to build something that I can then go build something like write a book or do some consulting or do a speech that can inspire someone. And so that exchange was valuable. It's like if you bought killing cigarette cows. For me, you're saying that it was worth more than $20 I'm saying it was worth less because I already have the knowledge in my head, and so we both can end up wealthier. Unequal exchange is what facilitates wealth. What it lets us do is tap into our best abilities and tap into other people's best abilities. And that exchange ends up growing over time, and the more times money circulates because of Good Services and experiences, the more output there is. So look at today. Hundreds of years ago, if you wanted to listen to music, you had to hire a quartet. Now it's free for almost anyone, if you have any device of any sort, if you're willing to listen to a commercial here or there, you can listen to anything that you want. For the most part, you don't even have to pay for it. So think about that advancement. If you want to be anywhere in the world, you could be there in almost 24 hours or less, back in the day, that would have taken, you know, years for that matter. I mean, we have so much more wealth because we keep building upon previous wealth, previous ideas, and those blueprints we continue to grow from with new innovation and ingenuity. Therefore, the quality of life for someone that's middle class today is infinitely more than the middle class of hundreds of years ago, the amount of people that are hungry today versus years ago, even though we have more than 8 billion people on the planet, has gone down as a percentage, not up as a percentage. That's because of velocity and exchange. It's because of this notion that money's not scarce and resources have the way to be replenished, as long as we're stewards. Now, if the bison, if we kill too many of them, then they can't replenish, right? But if we manage that properly, you could actually eat the bison, use the skins, do all that kind of stuff, and still have that exist in the future. These people that don't believe in that believe that there's like a finite pie, that if one thing's gone, it's gone forever, not understanding value exchange, reproduction, apparently, and basic science either. And again, we can overdo those things and damage an ecosystem. So there is a balance.   Keith Weinhold  27:36 Yeah, that's right, when you talk about value creation, then you're really not talking about a person going out and trying to get their piece of the pie. Really more accurately what you're talking about. Here are ideas for expanding the entire pie.   Garrett Gunderson  27:51 Spam the pie. Expand your means you can budget and reduce. You said it eloquently. You said, Hey, there's only so much you can do in reduction of expenses before it just starts infringing and taking away from things that you value in life. There's a finite game there, but the expansion gain through co creation, through collaboration, instead of through competition, is absolutely an infinite pie that continues to grow as we add more value, as we serve more people, as we solve bigger problems, as we more deeply impact the people that we impact as we reach more people, these are things that can lead to more dollars. So I have this thing called the value equation. It's our mental capital, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, insights, strategies and tools multiplied by our relationship capital, people, networks, organizations, communities, friends, family, mentors, equals our financial capital. So financial capital is a byproduct of our stewardship of our mental and relationship capital. And the bridge between mental relationship capital is what we call business, or we call investing. So ultimately, Money Follows value. How do we add more value? Have a better idea. Impact more people. More more deeply. Impact the people you currently serve. Collaborate and offer more like it's an infinite pie and an infinite game. If we play it that way.  We're talking with speaker and author Garrett Gunderson, about the mindset of wealth creation. More. We come back with Garrett. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold.   Keith Weinhold  29:01 hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine at Ridge lending group NMLS, 42056, they've provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. You can start your pre qualification and chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. Start Now while it's on your mind at ridgelendinggroup.com That's ridgelendinggroup.com. Your bank is getting rich off of you. The national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings if your money isn't making 4% Percent, you're losing your hard earned cash to inflation. Let the liquidity fund help you put your money to work. With minimum risk, your cash generates up to an 8% return with compound interest, year in and year out. Instead of earning less than 1% sitting in your bank account, the minimum investment is just 25k you keep getting paid until you decide you want your money back. Their decade plus track record proves they've always paid their investors 100% in full and on time. And I would know, because I'm an investor too. Earn 8% hundreds of others are text family 266, 866, learn more about freedom. Family investments, liquidity fund, on your journey to financial freedom through passive income. Text, family 266, 866,   Hal Elrod  30:54 this is Hal Elrod author of The Miracle Morning and listen to get it rich. Education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your Daydream.     Keith Weinhold  31:10 welcome back to get rich education. We're talking with firebrand speaker and author Garrett Gunderson. You can learn more about him at Garrettgunderson.com. Garrett before the break, we were talking about the mindset in opening up one in order to create more wealth over time. Here, a lot of times, one way we talk about that is, don't just get your money to work for you. Get other people's money to work for you. You could actually use other people's money ethically three ways at the same time, in real estate, using the tenant's money for the income stream the government's money for generous tax incentives, and then the bank's money for the leverage, which is actually a greater wealth building force than compound interest. That's one example of how we do that here. But when one has become successful, oftentimes they want to make sure that that's lasting. They want to build a legacy, something that they can carry on. And I know you articulate that through the Rockefeller method. So do you want to tell us more about that?   Garrett Gunderson  32:05 I wrote this book. What would the Rockefellers do back in 2016 this study between really wealthy families versus their wealth lasted, versus wealthy families that decimated it, and the best study was really the Vanderbilt because they had more money than the US Treasury. One the railroad family, yeah, transportation. And you know what? They destroyed that Cornelius died, and then his eldest son doubled the estate nine years and then he died, and that was the last time their estate grew. It started to decrease after that. And 54 years later, the first Vanderbilt died broke, and so the last Vanderbilt family union didn't have any millionaires at it. I know everybody knows about like Vanderbilt University. They donated like, a million dollars to get that started. But, you know, that was pretty inconsequential compared to their overall net worth. But they didn't have a formula or format to create sustainable wealth. They own 10 mansions in in Manhattan. They don't own those anymore. They own the breakers in Rhode Island. The state of Rhode Island owns that now. So they lost this massive amount of wealth where the Rockefellers are just entering their seventh generation of passing on, well, seven generations, wow. And people that worked for the rock bellers, like the executives, they're still passing on, well, for this generation after generation. And most people don't make it past the third generation. And we could look at, you know, people like Walt Disney. We could look at people like JCPenney. We could look at people, you know, like the the Kennedy family and so many others that have used these two things to really create sustainable wealth. Number one is they use trust. The Rockefellers coined the term own nothing and control everything, whether that's a revocable living trust for people who are just starting out and don't have a substantial amount of wealth, or a domestic asset protection trust for those that have a decent amount of wealth, those are the two main popular ones. There are some offshore trusts. It gets onerous and complicated once you go offshore, but it does protect your assets. The second piece is using whole life insurance, so they have this death benefit that's on the insured, and they put that on their heirs, so that every time an heir dies, it replenishes the trust, and potentially even grows it, because there's these threats to the family wealth, there's taxes, there's inflation, there's interest rate fluctuations or market, you know, economic turmoil. So what they're doing is they're creating that level of stability, and they give them preferred interest rates to borrow from the trust versus a bank. So now your family can actually earn interest instead of paying interest. And yes, if your family is paying interest, they're paying it back to their future generation at Preferred rates. And so you could be one generation away from never needing a bank again and actually being able to capitalize on deals a whole lot faster. Specifically, we use whole life, because it transfers the risk to the insurance company. There's six or seven companies that are participating, mutual companies that have been around for over 150 years, always paid dividends. It protects your cash value from taxes. It protects it from liability and bankruptcy in over 40 states, fully and partially in every state. So what happens is, for an asset allocation decision. You can start moving some of your fixed income portfolio to this and have a better, more robust benefits type of situation, and then actually start to implement this Rockefeller method so that you can create generational wealth.   Keith Weinhold  35:12 All right, so the Rockefeller method using trusts and whole life insurance to preserve and grow your wealth, so as one's building their portfolio, amassing wealth, increasing income streams as they go along in their investor journey. Is there anything that they should keep in mind as they try to integrate some of these things from the Rockefellers?   Garrett Gunderson  35:12 Yeah, a lot of other insurance people try to sell these index universal life policies, but those won't work because they have too many levers of risk, and especially when you're building cash value, you might use that cash value to buy real estate. Then you might use the rental income to put the money back into the policy so you can buy more real estate in the future. So it becomes like a medium storage shed or unit for your cash that's protected, but now it comes with the death benefit, which, here's one example, for a real estate investor, instead of just, you know, rolling it over to the next property and rolling it over to the next property when you eventually sell, you can use a charitable trust. And a charitable trust, you can donate that highly appreciated piece of real estate, get a partial tax deduction, sell it and fund the trust and pay zero tax on your gains. No matter what your basis is, there's no tax on the gains. You're the first beneficiary of the trust, meaning you can take an income between 5% and 50% from the trust while you're alive, depending on the underlying assets, and then when you die, the charity keeps whatever's left over. But if you have a life insurance policy that will replenish what that donation was, therefore giving you 20 30% or more increased cash flow with an asset by making a synergistic allocation. Now, that's a lot of information in a short period of time, but it's more about planting seeds. And don't worry, I'll give everybody a copy of the book at no charge, so they can kind of read it at their own pace, or you can listen to it at their own pace, versus me condensing it into just a couple minutes.   Keith Weinhold  36:56 Oh, thanks. All right, well, we'll learn more about that resource at the end that sounds like that can be really helpful to a lot of people. And I guess Garrett, even though you're not as real estate ish as me, as we wind down here, you know, I think the place that you and I find the most common ground is we often say and help people with the things that sort of fly in the face of conventional guidance. I mean, you really just don't have to think about it that much more than if you just do normal stuff, average, mediocre stuff, you're only going to have a normal, average, mediocre outcome. So can you tell us about any last things that can help get people thinking differently and debunk some of this conventional guidance that really will never help get you much above lower middle class?   Garrett Gunderson  37:40 Yeah, if you're putting your money in mutual funds and ETFs, you're making a bunch of other people money. I mean, the big three is you want to focus on generating cash flow so you can create financial independence. Because if you have enough cash flow from assets to cover your expenses, every active dollar can build more assets. That's an exponential benefit to you. So now that you don't have to be forced to work, you've got a lot more freedom. And the big three for me are real estate businesses or intellectual property, which is kind of, you know, something that is part of business to a degree, but I consider a different asset class. Those are the big three. I have no money in the stock market. I have money in my businesses. I invest in myself. I invest in my vision. I invest in a team, instead of investing in things that I have no control over and I don't get cash flow from and that the economy can change, or that Wall Street's making money on whether I make money or not. So that's just one notion that I think we could probably, you know, agree, flies in the face of what everybody's teaching. That's the masses. But when you look at the wealthiest people, it's how they're implementing and what they're doing.   Keith Weinhold  38:39 And I think another place that conventional guidance really tells people to prioritize is paying down debt or paying off debt. I mean, making your debt free scream at age 34 you know, maybe that's not so bad, but maybe not. I mean, did paying down low to moderate interest rate debt and making that priority sacrifice your lifestyle and your family's lifestyle the entire time while you were doing it, and did it have a steeper opportunity cost, because you were not investing those dollars in things that can earn a greater return than their interest rates were they're using some of the vehicles that you talked about. So, you know, I guess what I'm getting at Garrett philosophically, one way I said it, is that the risk of delayed gratification is denied gratification?   Garrett Gunderson  39:23 Yeah, I mean, if we become sacrifice, how do we ever overcome that habit? I'm I'm scrimping, I'm sacrificing, yeah, I'm deferring. And then one day, what you're supposed to flip the switch be like, Okay, now I'm abundant. I'm gonna enjoy this money that doesn't happen. So that habitual notion of reduce, cut, eliminate, no one shrinks their way to wealth. It's a game of expansion and production. Yes, be efficient, be intelligent, be a steward, but don't become a miser, because misers, no matter how much money they have, never get to feel what it's like to live their richest life. It's always about elimination. Instead of enjoyment and utilization.   Keith Weinhold  40:02 Oh, that is just beautifully stated. I really can't say it any better than that, and that really brings it back full circle as to the best personal finance is probably growing your means rather than practicing living below your means for decades, and then you'll never get that time back. Well, Garrett, you've generated so many good educational resources. Why you've been the successful author and speaker. Tell us more about that.   Garrett Gunderson  40:26 Garrettgunderson.com is where a lot of those resources are. I write a blog like it's 2006 because I love to write and just get information out there. I've created a money persona quiz. So if you go forward slash tools on Garrettgunderson.com you can figure out what's the success or sabotage that happens subconsciously with how you deal with money. It's very informative and useful. I've written 10 books. I offered that if people DM me on Instagram, Garrett B, Gunderson, two R's, two T's, middle initial B and just say, Keith, get rich. Keith get rich. So I know it was on this program, I'll hook you up with the audio and a PDF of the book on me, so that you can hopefully just understand this Rockefeller method and improve your life and start building a legacy right now. Because if you're already doing real estate, that's great, let's make sure to preserve, protect and even perpetuate that wealth with some of the structures that could be integrated.   Keith Weinhold  41:17 Well Garrett, yeah, you have a lot of great resources and just a really wide spectrum of understanding of concepts all across a personal finance field. Is there any last thing you'd like to let our audience know about?   Garrett Gunderson  41:28 Just create the life you don't want to retire from. Design a life that you love. Create enough cash flow from assets to have that economic independence so you have choice and freedom daily of what you do and swing for the fences in that purpose, you know, that's probably the best advice that I could give.   Keith Weinhold  41:43 Why would you want to live your life any other way? Garrett Gunderson, it's been valuable as expected. Thanks so much for coming on to the show.   Garrett Gunderson  41:51 Thanks for having me.   Keith Weinhold  41:58 Yeah, a lot on both mindset and long term wealth preservation with Garrett Gunderson today, now, 15 weeks ago, on episode 507 you'll remember that episode called compound interest is weak, where I made a takedown about how compound Interest actually is not serving people. Leverage does serve people. Garrett also makes a takedown and critiques this myth about how people think compound interest builds wealth. A little review. There some comprehension from 15 weeks ago, compound interest has most people counting on the average annual return when they should be focused on the compound annual growth rate. A little review. Remember the average annual return means if you're up 10% one year and then down 10% next year that you broke even. That's the arithmetic thing. But that is a lie. The reality is in this CAGR, the compound annual growth rate, it reflects, if you're up 10% one year and then down 10% the next year, you're at minus 1% the geometric thing. And that's the reality, and that makes a retirement lifestyles worth of difference, and a retirement ages worth of difference like I thoroughly broke down for you in episode 507 coming up on the show here in future weeks, a familiar name like Tom wheelwright returns, and then new guests, like a former NFL player here on the show, if you want to reach out to Garrett Gunderson on Instagram for his best free resources, even the audio and pdf of his Rockefeller method of generational wealth preservation, again on Instagram, you can DM him at Garrett B Gunderson, he let me know later, all you have to do is send him my first name, Keith, and he will hook you up there. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, and I am supremely grateful and even in awe of your devoted listenership for an entire decade of your life and mine, here's to another 10 years. Don't quit your Daydream.   44:21 Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively,   Keith Weinhold  44:49 The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth. Building, get rich, education.com, you.

Chris, Ade and Jeremiah explore the ways new technology can help you make fantastic photos.

Paradoxically, the pursuit of pleasure or chasing comfort can itself can provide a type of meaning, though deep down, we know we're not meant for perpetual ease. Investing, even when not strictly necessary, can be about creating a meaningful struggle, and finding purpose by placing your resource at risk. On the other hand, too much action without a chance of ever ‘arriving' is equally dangerous. Read more.______________________Online courses:The Home Buyers Blueprint: Get a better home; Get a better mortgage.The KiwiSaver Millionaire Roadmap: From 6 figures to 7; Get a Rockstar Retirement!New Wealth Foundations: Personal finance from a wealth-builder's perspective.Take the free, 5-part online course Crypto 101: Crypto with Confidence (In partnership with Easy Crypto)Book in a free 15-min phone call with Darcy Ungaro (financial adviser)- click on this link.Get SocialSign up to the newsletter!Check out the most watched/downloaded episodes hereFollow on YouTube , Instagram, TikTok: @theeverydayinvestor, X (@UngaroDarcy), LinkedIn.Learn more about Ungaro & Co Financial Advice: www.ungaro.co.nz________________________Affiliate Links!I may receive a financial benefit if you click on these links.HatchSharesiesEasy CryptoSharesight: (Get 5 months free)

Many fears keep women and men single and alone. Did you know that fear of being alone and single throughout life is one of the greatest fears of Christian single women and men? Paradoxically, many single women and men who yearn to get married often allow fears and phobias to keep them from entering into a relationship. Furthermore, instead of meeting the love of their lives, they end up battling feelings of loneliness and frustration. So just what are some […] The post Fears That Keep Women And Men Single appeared first on Christian Singles Advice | Christian Dating Advice Tips. Related posts: Christian Dating Tips for Men and Women Dating a Fearful-Avoidant Christian Woman Signs Dealing With Corona Fears and Social Distancing as Singles Sexual Feelings of Christian Single Women Single Again: 12 Tips for Recently Single Christian Women and Men

It's time for A History of England to take a short break, until 15 September. So this episode is a brief review of where we've got to, after the defeat of the General Strike. That defeat showed the poor in Britain, and workers in particular, that there was little hope of improvement in their conditions through union action alone. Instead political action would be needed, by a government disposed to adopt measures to help them. Which meant progress wasn't likely to happen soon. That left the majority in Britain in a sorry state, with poor and falling wages combined with high unemployment. Paradoxically, its Empire was at its peak, rather underlining the truth that imperial power didn't necessarily mean prosperity. What's more, even that Empire was under pressure. Decline was already under way, but not everybody had yet recognised the fact. Illustration: A sunset in Ireland (my own photo) Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

This week, Nathan, Gita, and Riley gather to reflect on the legacy of Game Informer, a magazine whose 33-year run unexpectedly came to an end late last week when GameStop unceremoniously laid off its entire staff and took down its website's archive. Then we discuss the parasocial pivots of both the Trump and Harris campaigns, with the former appearing on the broadcast of sycophantic Kick streamer Adin Ross and the latter embracing Brat Summer, a social media phenomenon born of resurgent popstar Charli XCX. After that, we welcome Borderlands into the pantheon of bafflingly bad video game movies by talking about all the other ones, of which there have been approximately one million. Paradoxically, though, there has been one good Borderlands movie: Tales from the Borderlands, a cinematic narrative game that came out years ago. Go watch/play that instead.    Credits - Hosts: Nathan Grayson, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson - Podcast Production & Ads: Multitude - Subscribe to Aftermath!   About The Show Aftermath Hours is the flagship podcast of Aftermath, a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet, and everything that comes after from journalists who previously worked at Kotaku, Vice, and The Washington Post. Each week, games journalism veterans Luke Plunkett, Nathan Grayson, Chris Person, Riley MacLeod, and Gita Jackson – though not always all at once, because that's too many people for a podcast – break down video game news, Remember Some Games, and learn about Chris' frankly incredible number of special interests. Sometimes we even bring on guests from both inside and outside the video game industry! I don't know what else to tell you; it's a great time. Simply by reading this description, you're already wasting time that you could be spending listening to the show. Head to aftermath.site for more info.

What, exactly, is apathy? In a sense, it's something like falling in love. You can describe it all you want, but until you've experienced it, you can only guess what it feels like. Paradoxically, what makes the feeling of apathy unique is that it's essentially the feeling of not feeling. It's something that at some point in your existence you've encountered. Whenever you feel that something vital is missing from your life, yet lack the drive to pursue it, you're afflicted with this curiously “emotionless” emotion. Tuen in and learn how to identify and work through the weight of apathy!

"Your lack of ability to make decisions will kill you." In this episode, which was originally delivered to an audience at an Acquisition.com Scaling Workshop, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares a lesson that he's had to learn repeatedly - focus. A lack of ability to focus is the Kryptonite to many entrepreneurs, and chasing shiny objects will keep your business smaller than almost anything else. Paradoxically, leaning into new opportunities is what got many first time entrepreneurs their first success, but focus is what will take you to $10M, $100M, and beyond.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you'll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(0:09) My Business Backstory / How I Learned The Importance of Focus(2:40) You Have To Learn To Say “No” / My Definition of Focus / What Focus Means / What Is Focus?(3:42) Justine Musk Quote(4:25) $B Opportunities(5:22) Steve Jobs Quote / The Juicy “No's”(7:02) The Greatest Superpower of Entrepreneurs / Volume Negates Luck / The Perfect Clay Pot(10:05) The Perfect Competitor(11:15) Why Do We (I) Say “Yes”?(13:02) Fighting The Same Boss(14:51) Hiring My First Sales Director(17:06) Why I Document My Journey(19:38) World class Results(21:12) People Will Always Make Room For WinnersFollow Alex Hormozi's Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

"Breathing Under Water" is a new series (based on a book by Richard Rohr) that explores Christian spirituality and the 12-Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. In this first message, we explore the link between addiction and sin, revealing how these dynamics often trap individuals in self-destructive cycles. Paradoxically, it's by acknowledging our powerlessness that we find the strength to seek solutions beyond ourselves. Whether you or a loved one grapple with addiction or some kind of unwanted behavior, join us on this transformative journey toward healing and recovery.Video, "Nuggets" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUngLgGRJpo. Book: Richard Rohr, "Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps" (Franciscan Media 2011).Ego in Contemplative Christianity: In the Christian contemplative tradition, the term ego describes a way of thinking and being in the world that is driven by a compulsion to control. It is a false self that sees everything through the lens of its own personal hurts, needs, and memories, making it self-centered, defensive, judgmental, and easily wounded. When ego is in charge, we take things personally, and when offended we feel driven to retaliate tit-for-tat. It construes life as a zero-sum game in which there are winners and losers, then strives for superiority, obsessing over achievement and public perception. Ego is dualistic, painting the world in black and white extremes. As such, it is arrogant, riddled with illusions, and blinded to deep truth. Ego causes us to constantly compare ourselves with others, is neurotically self-reliant, and must always be in control. I must control my thinking and feeling, as well as my actions, my image, and how other people see me. I must also control the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. I must control my environment to feel safe. I must control every aspect of life to meet my own needs, fix my own problems, and secure my own future. If this message is a blessing, you can support our ministries by donating at www.fumccb.com.  Speaker: Pastor Mark Reynolds Venue: First United Methodist Church (Cocoa Beach, FL) Connect with Pastor Mark:www.revmarkreynolds.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PastorMarkReynolds 

Filmmaker, Roger Corman, died peacefully at the ripe old age of 98, this May.  Known as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", or "The King of Schlock", he was a trailblazer in the world of independent film. Among the hundreds of features directed/produced by Corman, many were ultra-low budget films that later attracted a cult following, such as “The Little Shop of Horrors”  and “Death Race 2000”. Paradoxically, he simultaneously introduced prestige foreign “art” directors to US audiences like: Bergmann, Fellini, Kurasawa, Truffaut, and others. He gave many house hold name directors their first jobs: Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, John Sayles, and James Cameron. He also launched actors like: Jack Nicolson, Robert DeNiro, Sylvestor Stallone, Peter Fonda, and many more. We dive deep into a remarkable 54 year career that dramatically shaped the global movie industry more than any other single person. If you wish to reach our regular guest, multi-year NYC Super Lawyer - David Grover, for personal injury, including auto accidents and slip and fall, free consultations: 212-527-7575, DGrover@GroverFen.com. Mention this podcast for additional discounts. Regular guest, Dylan Cuellar, is a co-host of the popular podcast “Unburied Books” with Kassia Oset, which interviews authors and examines book selections from the New York Review of Books. A teaser to their recent episode on JRR Tolkien's (often forgotten) prequel to the iconic “Lord of The Rings” trilogy, “Silmarillion” is here https://bit.ly/3RGkkar . Published posthumously by JRR's son, “Silmarillion”, describes the origin of the entire Tolkien universe. It also sets the stage for “The Hobbit” and LOR. It provided material for the very popular Amazon LOR TV series, “Rings of Power” (2022). Season 2 of the series will premiere in August 2024. Check out the “Unburied Books” pod to get up to speed on Tolkien and LOR! Please reach out to us at contact@scandalsheetpod.com or find us on Facebook as 'Scandal Sheet' or on X (formerly twitter) at @scandal_sheet. We'd love to hear from you.

Send in a question or comment via text.HELP! My panic attacks come totally out of the blue! I don't know how to handle that!For an anxious person struggling with the process of anxiety disorder recovery, it can sometimes seem like panic attacks strike completely randomly and "out of the blue", where no clear source of anxiety can be identified as triggering the attack.  This can be frustrating, especially if you've been working overtime to manage your anxiety and prevent panic from happening.But there is no such thing as an "out of the blue" panic attack.  In the context of disordered forms of anxiety, it is the resistance to panic and the urgent attempts to manage and prevent it that become the precipitating factors leading to future panic attacks. Trying hard to guarantee that you won't panic any more? Paradoxically, this is going to have the opposite effect, almost guaranteeing that you will likely experience more panic down the road.When one is anxious about being anxious, or afraid of being afraid, the trigger for the most recent "out of the blue" panic attack can be found in all the panic attacks that came previously.  The hidden trigger is in the checking, scanning, evaluating, and guarding against panic that allows a single sensation, thought, or feeling to trigger a rapid sequence of events that creates what appears to be a random, unexplainable instant panic attack.It's actually good news that there are no true "random" panic attacks. We can use that information to make adjustments and change direction toward where we want be in recovery and in life.For full show notes on this episode and other anxiety/recovery resources:https://theanxioustruth.com/294Support The Anxious Truth: If you find the podcast helpful and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. This is never required, but always appreciated!Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Recently, I've been increasingly conflicted by several dueling experiences and sensations:Reduced Stress: Since departing from the Standard Corporate Office Environment (SCOE), I've enjoyed decreased stress and anxiety levels. While stress has its upsides, reducing chronic stress is foundational to living a good life.Mounting pressure to be part of society. I've been working on this project for six years, but being a home-based blogger and podcaster isn't fully satisfying some of the key pillars of a meaningful life.Decreased Motivation: I'm finding it hard to engage tasks not entirely aligned with my vision of a good life. Paradoxically, a good life involves doing hard things.Here's the good news on how to maintain a strong financial base and do work you love. Support this project: Buy Me a CoffeeSubscribe to the newsletter: SUBSCRIBE ME!Show Notes and Links at Clippingchains.com

Money on the Left is joined by Grant Kester, professor of Art History at University of California, San Diego. We speak with Kester about his multi-decade career, researching and teaching the history of socially engaged art. Kester's scholarship underscores the limits and contradictions of the dominant modern Western tradition of aesthetics. Such aesthetics value “autonomy,” insisting that the artist, the artistic medium, or art as an institution ought to stand alone and outside of society and its corrupting influences. Paradoxically, autonomy in this tradition is supposed to secure art's political dimension by blunting and often deferring any claims to immediate social efficacy. Kester, by contrast, affirms what is variously called dialogical aesthetics or socially engaged art, a collaborative sensuous practice in public space, which aims to transform thought and action by forging complex relationships among artists and publics. Here, we focus on Kester's two recent books published by Duke University Press. In The Sovereign Self: Aesthetic Autonomy from the Enlightenment to the Avant-Garde (August 2023), Kester examines the evolving discourse of aesthetic autonomy from its origins in the Enlightenment through avant-garde projects and movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Beyond the Sovereign Self Aesthetic Autonomy from the Avant-Garde to Socially Engaged Art (December 2023), Kester then shows how socially engaged art provides an alternative aesthetic with greater possibilities for critical practice. Instead of grounding art in its distance from the social, Kester demonstrates how socially engaged art, developed in conjunction with forms of social or political resistance, encourages the creative capacity required for collective political transformation. Throughout our conversation, we tease out affinities between Kester's scholarship and heterodox theories of public money and provisioning. Problematizing unquestioned desires to cordon off aesthetics from political economy, we call on artists and activists to contest, reconstruct, and build anew the forms of mediation that heterogeneously shape a shared sensuous life.  Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructureMusic by Nahneen Kula: www.nahneenkula.com

A recent poll by Morning Consult reveals an interesting turn of events hinting at a possible change in political tide. It appears that Donald Trump, the previous leader of the nation and potential candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, takes a lead over incumbent President Biden in six pivotal states. The resulting shift in support seems to stem from public sentiment about the current economic circumstances under Biden's administration. The poll, a joint venture of Morning Consult and Bloomberg News carried out in April, puts Biden ahead in just a solitary state amongst the seven thought most decisively game-changing for the Biden-Trump face-off – Michigan, where he leads by a margin of 2 percentage points. The results depict Biden falling slightly behind in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, the gap appears to escalate in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina. This return to form, in essence, mirrors the pre-State of the Union address scenario in the presidential race, when Trump seemingly had the upper hand. It appears that Biden's robust address in March, indeed, gave him a temporary surge in the polls, his most favorable outcome since the beginning of the monthly poll in October. However, recent results underline a reversion to the previous landscape. The U-turn in fortunes is echoed by voters' dour forecast of the economy's outlook – an issue that has routinely figured as their prime factor when casting their votes. A significant portion of voters in so-called 'swing-states' anticipate further deterioration in economic conditions in the near future. Less than twenty percent of those interviewed foresee conclusions such as lower inflation rates and borrowing costs by the time we turn the calendar to a new year. In the backdrop of a resilient job market, only a paltry 23% expect an improvement in employment rates during the same period. Paradoxically, this prognosis comes smack dab in the midst of a strong economy continuing to post new jobs. These poll results, to an extent, illuminate public skepticism surrounding the incumbent administration's handling of the economy. This seems further compounded by the collective apprehension about future economic conditions, as inferred from public sentiment. While Trump's inferred lead in six out of the seven contested states could be seen as a substantiation of unfulfilled economic expectations under the current administration, it equally highlights the perpetual flux that characterizes the political landscapes of these swing states. The slight lead that President Biden maintains in Michigan could indicate that not all hope is lost for the administration, with potential room for turnaround. A consistent and successful demonstration of sound economic policy-making and implementation is critical for Biden in the coming months. However, the overall picture painted by these latest polling statistics presents an uphill struggle for Biden. The public's prevailing unease about the forthcoming state of the economy could potentially make the run-up to the next presidential election increasingly challenging for the present White House. It's noteworthy that despite a resilient employment market signaling room for optimism, public sentiment does not mirror these economic indicators. This discord underscores the importance of assessing both quantitative measures and the qualitative sentiment of the population when planning for the road ahead. As the political temperature heats up, these factors underscore the potential fluidity of electoral outcomes. Historically, economic issues have considerable sway over public opinion and could be pivotal in shaping the 2024 Presidential race in these battleground states. While current poll results tilt favorably towards Trump, it is crucial to bear in mind the dynamics at play. With substantial time yet to go before the 2024 elections, the pendulum of political fortunes can, and likely will, swing back and forth. Ultimately, the contest may come down to how both potential candidates address the issues most important to voters: security, prosperity, and a positive outlook for the American economy. Real News Now Website Connect with Real News Now on Social Media Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealNewsNowApp/ X Twitter: https://twitter.com/realnewsapp Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realnews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realnewsnowapp Threads: https://www.threads.net/@realnews/ Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/realnewsnow Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@RealNews YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@realnewsnowapp End Wokeness: https://endthewokeness.com #realnewsnowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied important roles in mediaeval English society. England's Jews revisits this neglected chapter of English history—one whose remembrance is more important than ever today, as antisemitism and other forms of racism are on the rise. In England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Dr. John Tolan tells the story of the thousands of Jews who lived in mediaeval England. Protected by the Crown and granted the exclusive right to loan money with interest, Jews financed building projects, provided loans to students, and bought and rented out housing. Historical texts show that they shared meals and beer, celebrated at weddings, and sometimes even ended up in bed with Christians. Yet Church authorities feared the consequences of Jewish contact with Christians and tried to limit it, though to little avail. Royal protection also proved to be a double-edged sword: when revolts broke out against the unpopular king Henry III, some of the rebels, in debt to Jewish creditors, killed Jews and destroyed loan records. Vicious rumours circulated that Jews secretly plotted against Christians and crucified Christian children. All of these factors led Edward I to expel the Jews from England in 1290. Paradoxically, Dr. Tolan shows, thirteenth-century England was both the theatre of fruitful interreligious exchange and a crucible of European antisemitism.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied important roles in mediaeval English society. England's Jews revisits this neglected chapter of English history—one whose remembrance is more important than ever today, as antisemitism and other forms of racism are on the rise. In England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Dr. John Tolan tells the story of the thousands of Jews who lived in mediaeval England. Protected by the Crown and granted the exclusive right to loan money with interest, Jews financed building projects, provided loans to students, and bought and rented out housing. Historical texts show that they shared meals and beer, celebrated at weddings, and sometimes even ended up in bed with Christians. Yet Church authorities feared the consequences of Jewish contact with Christians and tried to limit it, though to little avail. Royal protection also proved to be a double-edged sword: when revolts broke out against the unpopular king Henry III, some of the rebels, in debt to Jewish creditors, killed Jews and destroyed loan records. Vicious rumours circulated that Jews secretly plotted against Christians and crucified Christian children. All of these factors led Edward I to expel the Jews from England in 1290. Paradoxically, Dr. Tolan shows, thirteenth-century England was both the theatre of fruitful interreligious exchange and a crucible of European antisemitism.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied important roles in mediaeval English society. England's Jews revisits this neglected chapter of English history—one whose remembrance is more important than ever today, as antisemitism and other forms of racism are on the rise. In England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Dr. John Tolan tells the story of the thousands of Jews who lived in mediaeval England. Protected by the Crown and granted the exclusive right to loan money with interest, Jews financed building projects, provided loans to students, and bought and rented out housing. Historical texts show that they shared meals and beer, celebrated at weddings, and sometimes even ended up in bed with Christians. Yet Church authorities feared the consequences of Jewish contact with Christians and tried to limit it, though to little avail. Royal protection also proved to be a double-edged sword: when revolts broke out against the unpopular king Henry III, some of the rebels, in debt to Jewish creditors, killed Jews and destroyed loan records. Vicious rumours circulated that Jews secretly plotted against Christians and crucified Christian children. All of these factors led Edward I to expel the Jews from England in 1290. Paradoxically, Dr. Tolan shows, thirteenth-century England was both the theatre of fruitful interreligious exchange and a crucible of European antisemitism.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

What does loneliness mean?According to Brené Brown, acclaimed author of "Atlas of the Heart," loneliness is not merely about being alone but rather the absence of meaningful social connections. It's the lack of intimate relationships, friendships, family gatherings, and community or work group ties that leaves one feeling isolated.In our current world, there's a visible trend of increasing disconnection among people, with divides widening across various lines such as race, gender, ethnicity, political beliefs, religions, and philosophies. Paradoxically, this disconnect is also fostering movements that strive to bring people together in solidarity, driven by a shared humanity and a collective yearning for a better world.However, navigating this landscape requires immense strength and vulnerability. Remaining open-hearted amidst the challenges of today's world is daunting yet essential for survival. Loneliness, therefore, is more than just physical solitude; it's a state of disconnection that can affect anyone, even when surrounded by others, as exemplified by Tia's experience of profound loneliness following her sister's passing.In this episode, Tia and Julie explore the nuances of loneliness, its link to disconnection, and strategies for overcoming it. They share personal insights and stories, shedding light on the journey from loneliness and disconnection towards rebuilding connections and finding belonging.This episode is dedicated to Shelby Sandahl, Tia's beloved sister, whose impact on others' lives is remembered with love and gratitude.Key takeaways from this episode include:Understanding the distinction between loneliness and solitude.Recognizing loneliness as a symptom of disconnection.Navigating the depths of despair and self-compassion.Cultivating self-awareness to confront loneliness.Embracing the inevitability of change and its impact on relationships.Developing emotional resilience as a shield against pain.Engaging in the process of rebuilding and reconnecting with one's community.For further exploration, resources mentioned in the episode include Brené Brown's insights on core emotions and her book "Atlas of the Heart," along with the podcast episode "Obsessed with Leaning into Grief" featuring Heidi Dunstan.We want to know who you are obsessed with--Watch Us LIVE on YouTube Every Monday - @obsessedpodcastJoin us as we interview thought leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk, Evan Carmichael, Dr. Laura Berman and MORE!And learn about how we are changing the world every day: THE WOMEN OF OBSESSEDGet Obsessed with us. Collectively we are a nutritionist, a master certified life coach, an attorney, and a self-esteem expert. We dive into topics that uncover the essence of the human experience. Our stories are one of kicking fear in the face and taking a leap of faith. We are equally obsessed with the works of Brene Brown and are inspired to study and understand the 30 core emotions. Each week we will explore another emotion, talk to experts in their field and inspire you to live the life you are meant to be living. We are Julie Lokun, JD, Tia Morell Walden, Certified Holistic Nutritionist, and Mika Altidor, Certified Life Coach. Join us for the conversation, and more importantly be a part of the conversation. Reach out with a question or comment about an episode or suggest a personal development topic you are obsessed with. After all, the Obsessed Podcast is for you and about you. Learn More About Your Hosts: HereFor More About Julie Lokun Check Her Out: Here

Darkness Radio presents: Bram Stoker: Father Of Dracula with Researcher/Author/Filmmaker, Dacre Stoker! Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of the most successful novels in history. The tale of the evil Count has thrilled and fascinated people since its publication in 1897.  The novel has never been out of print and has been translated into thirty languages and sold in over a hundred and twenty countries worldwide. Count Dracula is now regarded as one of the most famous fictional characters in history.  The image of the undead vampire as a symbol of evil is now firmly embedded in our collective consciousness, thanks to Stoker. Paradoxically, Dracula has also become a symbol of forbidden lust thanks to the later portrayals of the character by Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, and Frank Langella.  But what of Bram Stoker, the man behind the creation? Sadly, he left no autobiography and precious little first-hand source material for us to better understand his life and inspirations for his writing of Dracula.  However, by examining his private journals, notes, and the memories of those who knew him we can piece together an account of his life and learn much about the man who became the father of Dracula. Dacre Stoker Joins Darkness Radio today to describe how he, filmmaker Jason Figgis. and author and screenwriter, John West are putting together that documentary of Bram Stoker's life titled, "Father Of Dracula". Stoker also tells us how we can help get  it to the finish line through a 60 day crowdsourcing campaign through  Indiegogo! Find out more about Dacre Stoker here:  http://dacrestoker.com/about/ Find out how you can help get "Father Of Dracula" over the finish line through Indigogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bram-stoker-father-of-dracula#/ The Stokerverse is on Facebook!  Check out the different merch here: https://www.facebook.com/StokerMcAuley Dacre Stoker will be at Michigan Paracon! Get your tickets while you can! Click here to learn more:  https://saultstemarie.com/events-calendar/michigan-paranormal-convention/ #paranormal #supernatural #paranormalpodcasts #darknessradio #timdennis #dracula #vampires #bramstoker #dacrestoker #jasonfiggis #johnwest #fatherofdracula #documentary #crowdsourcing #crowdfunding #buffalobillcody #oscrwilde #ladyjanewilde #vladtheimplaer #secondsight #stokerverse #thevoyageofthedemeter #comicbook #graphicnovel #RPG #draculavideogame #draculatabletopgame #Dracul  #freemasonry 

The other day while having fun dancing in my living room, I thought to myself– what a gift feminine energy is.  Playful energy IS Feminine energy that opens you to be more Self-connected, confident, and creative.  Paradoxically, it's what keeps my EDGE sharp.  Harmonizing masculine and feminine dance is a favorite topic of mine, and this new episode is a deep dive into how to embody more harmony with your Feminine and playful energy.  In this episode I share… How to ACTIVATE the benefits of feminine energy + become more emotionally agile Rituals that will TURN YOU ON and fully immerse you in the present moment Ways to harness this potent, magnetic energy to embody more JOY and release rigidity Why Self-judgment is the thief of true Feminine Energy + how to become more compassionate with yourself How to perceive the messy parts of life as an invitation to become more PLAYFUL + discover creative solutions Let me know how this episode impacted you via IG in the comments, DMs + story shares, and tag @roxylook + @blackbeltbeauty  -- I LOVE connecting with you.  Are you loving The Roxanne Show? We would LOVE your support!  Subscribe, share + give our podcast a 5 Star rating, and review HERE My team and I deeply appreciate your support! Enjoy!  xRx   STAY CONNECTED WITH ROXANNE SAFFAIE  ️INSTAGRAM: @roxylook @blackbeltbeauty  TWITTER: @roxylook THREADS: @roxylook YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/blackbeltbeauty RESOURCES Download my FREE GUIDED FUTURE-SELF MEDITATION + DIGITAL JOURNAL to start powerfully activating a clear connection with your highest + Future Self NOW. QUEEN, TRYING HARD BIG BUT FEELING STUCK? Let's unleash that potent reality you've been fantasizing about or trying hard to achieve but can't seem to make it happen. Your Future Self isn't just a far-off idea—it's your unclaimed power, Queen. My Future Self digital course is your KEY to Self-Empowerment, Reality Creation, and unshakable Wholeness. This course isn't about temporary fixes; it's about lasting transformation. LEARN MORE ON THE COURSE HERE  Join Queendom: A Sisterhood of Empowerment and Growth. Dive into this exclusive + FREE community where Self-discovery, authentic connections, and personal evolution are celebrated daily, guided by the wisdom and warmth of Roxanne. Download my FREE SELF-LOVE Masterclass + take your SELF-LOVE to UNCONDITIONAL levels! Click HERE to join my INSIDER list for monthly emails that serve empowering support laced with FEMININE fire. Purchase my guided + illustrated journal, YOU ARE THE PATH HERE

Featured Photo is Dr. Amy Huberman The Amy Story Part 1: True Confessions of a “Fraud” and a “Failure” Part 2: The Joys of Doing the Laundry Amy and her exuberant son, Sasha, and husband, Poppy Today's podcast, and next week's podcast, include a single, two-hour session with Amy Huberman, MD. Amy is a psychiatrist in private practice in Baltimore, MD. She also serves on the volunteer faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Amy specializes in brief, intensive psychotherapy to help people overcome struggles with anxiety, OCD, and trauma, but today comes to us to get some help with her own anxiety. Often doing our own work can be a vitally important part of our training and growth as mental health professionals. Amy has been upset because she is stuck with two of her patients, and she's telling herself that she's a “fraud” and a “failure.” Although her life is undoubtedly very different from yours, the root cause of her problem might be very similar to the source of your unhappiness, especially if you sometimes get down in the dumps and tell yourself that you're just not good enough. My co-therapist for this session is Jill Levitt, Ph.D. co-founder and Director of Clinical Training at the Feeling Good Institute in Mt. View California. Jill also serves on the Adjunct Faculty at the Stanford Medical School and is co-leader of my weekly TEAM Therapy training group at Stanford, Tuesdays from 5-7:00 pm pst.  If you are interested in joining David and Jill's Tuesday group, please contact Ed Walton, edwalton100@gmail.com. That group is now virtual and therapists from the Bay Area and around the world are welcome to attend. It is free of charge. Rhonda Barovsky also runs a free weekly training group with Richard Lam, on Wednesdays, from 9-11:00 am pst, which is also free of charge. If you are interested in joining the Wednesday group, please contact Ana Teresa Silva, ateresasilva6@gmail.com.  Because the groups are virtual, they are open to therapists from around the world. Amy has been a member of our Tuesday training group, and is a highly skilled, certified TEAM therapist. Like nearly all the mental health professionals who come for training every Tuesday, Amy has incredibly high standards and is sometimes harshly self-critical when she feels she is not living up to them. At the same time, those high standards can be strongly motivating, and this can create strong feelings of ambivalence when it's time to change. Sound familiar? If you're struggling with perfectionism, you might want to check out these two podcasts! Part 1. The True Confessions of a “Fraud” and a “Failure” Amy opened by saying she was anxious and telling herself: I'm about to reveal my weaknesses and my inner self—This is something I've never done before in such a public setting. . . I also have to confess that I'm struggling with social anxiety right now. I'm afraid that my patients might see this and think, “I don't want to work with her! I want to work with a competent psychiatrist.” I Included that because I am hoping you will appreciate Amy's incredible courage and gift of sharing her true inner self today! Amy described the problem that's been bothering her for several weeks. Although she specializes in the short-term treatment of anxiety, she has been struggling with two patients with OCD symptoms who have been stuck and not making significant progress for a long time. This has triggered feelings of shame and intense anxiety which have invaded Amy's every moment when she's NOT seeing patients, and has even prevented her from getting restful sleep at night. She keeps ruminating and beating up on herself. You can see Amy's  Daily Mood Log Amy here.. As you can see, she was feeling intensely sad, panicky and ashamed, and rated these three feelings as 80% on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 100 (the most severe). She was also feeling worthless and defective which she rated at 100%, as well as hopeless (90%) and stuck (80%). As you know, feelings do not result from the events in our lives (in Amy's case, the fact that two of her patients were stuck), but rather from her thoughts, or interpretations, of those events. You can see on her Daily Mood Log that she was being intensely self-critical, telling herself that she was failing her patients, that she should refund their money, that she was not competent to practice psychotherapy and should find a new career, that she “should” know how to get them unstuck, and more, and finally that she was a fraud and a failure. Her belief in all of these thoughts was super high, ranging from 80% to 100%. And if you've ever felt down or inadequate, I'm sure you recognize the same types of thoughts in your own thinking, telling yourself that you're a failure, or not good enough, and so forth. During the session, Jill and David went through the TEAM acronym: T = Testing We measured her negative feelings at the start of the session so we could measure them again at the end to see how we did. E = Empathy We listened and supported Amy without trying to “help” or “save” her. The goal was to understand her thoughts and feelings accurately, while providing a sense of compassion, warmth, and acceptance. This phase of the two-hour session lasted about 30 minutes, and Amy told us how she constantly ruminated about those two patients, asking herself “What am I doing wrong, what am I missing, what should I be doing differently?” She described these thoughts as a relentless “broken record in my brain.” She confessed that her deepest fear was, “What if they kill themselves and I was responsible for their deaths?” She said this fear was almost unbearable!” I pointed out that was also my deepest fear when I was in private practice—I was never upset by treating large numbers of severely depressed patients in back-to-back sessions, and it always made me happy, since I felt I had something to offer. But if I said something that hurt someone's feelings, I found that pain almost unbearable until I saw the patient again the next week, and could talk things over and get back on a positive track. Jill pointed out that Amy's ruminations showed that she was a highly responsible psychiatrist who cared deeply about her patients! And while that is certainly a positive thing, the intensity of her fears had invaded every minute of her life, making her life miserable, even when she was with her family. Amy said her fears have intensified since 2020, when she transitioned away from a traditional psychiatric practice involving long-term weekly psychotherapy and med-management, to focusing on short-term intensive psychotherapy using the TEAM model. Then we asked her to grade us at the end, thinking about three categories of Empathy: Did we understand how she was thinking? Did we understand how she was feeling? Did she feel cared about and accepted? She gave us an A, which triggered our move to the next phase of our work with Amy. A = Assessment of Resistance In this phase of the session, we pinpointed Amy's goals for our session and  melted away her potential resistance to her stated goal of learning to give up that self-critical voice in her brain. We asked her to imagine we had a Magic Button, and if she pushed it, all of her negative thoughts and feelings would instantly disappear, with no effort on her part, and she'd feel jubilant and happy. She said she wasn't so sure she'd do that. Most patients say YES, but Amy is familiar with the TEAM approach and knows that negative thoughts and feelings often result from some of our positive qualities. Our strategy at this phase of the session was paradoxical: Instead of trying to help, save, or rescue Amy, and instead of trying to persuade her to change, we took the role of her subconscious resistance to change. With her help, we listed some of the many positives in her negative thoughts and feelings by asking these two questions. What does this negative thought or feeling show about you and your core values that's positive and awesome? How might this this negative thought or feeling be helping you and your patients? Here are just a few of the positives we found in her negative thoughts and feelings: The Positives in Amy's Negative Feelings Feeling What this Shows Inadequacy Keeps me from being overconfident   Keeps me humble, so I'm open to what I may be missing   Shows I care about constant growth and learning   Shows I'm listening   Shows I care about my patients Anxiety Motivates me to think about things from other perspectives   Motivates me to work hard   Keeps me honest   Shows that I have high standards   My high standards have motivated me to learn a lot. You can do the same kind of Positive Reframing with all Amy's negative thoughts and feelings, as well as your own. The list of positives would be long and impressive! After listing these positives, we asked Amy these three questions: Are these positives real? Are they important? Are they powerful? How would YOU answer these questions if you were Amy? She gave a strong yes to all three questions. At the end we pointed out that it might not be such a great idea to push the Magic Button to eliminate the negative voice in her brain, because then all these positives would also disappear. Instead, she decided to use the Magic Dial to reduce her negative feelings to some lower level where she could keep all the positives but suffer much less. Here you can see her goals for how she wanted to feel at the end of her session.   Emotions % Now % Goal % After Sad, blue, depressed, down, unhappy 80 25   Anxious, worried, panicky, nervous, frightened 80 20   Guilty, remorseful, bad, ashamed 90 5   Worthless, inadequate, defective, incompetent 100 15   Lonely, unloved, unwanted, rejected, alone       Embarrassed, foolish, humiliated, self-conscious       Hopeless, discouraged, pessimistic, despairing 90 5   Frustrated, stuck, thwarted, defeated 80 5   Angry, mad, resentful, annoyed, irritated, upset, furious       Other         As you can see, she decided to aim for fairly large reductions in all six of her negative feelings. These goals are not guarantees she will be able to reduce her feelings. In addition, the goals are not rigid, since she may be able to reduce them even further once she begins to challenge her negative thoughts. Our real aim at this phase of our work was to reduce her feelings of shame and failure so she could see that her “symptoms” were NOT the expression of what was WRONG with her, but the expression of what was RIGHT with her. Paradoxically, this often reduces the resistance to change and vastly enhances the possibility of rapid and dramatic change during the final, M = Methods portion of the session that you'll hear next week, along with some follow-up information. The important thing we've hopefully accomplished is reducing Amy's resistance so she can learn how to challenge and defeat the relentless and hostile voice in her brain that constantly puts her down whenever she fails to live up to her extremely high, and arguably perfectionistic, standards. End of Part 1 Thanks for listening today. Be sure to tune in to the exciting conclusion of the work with Amy next week! Rhonda, Amy, Jill, and David

Discussing boundaries can be challenging, yet it is crucial for our mental well-being and the pursuit of a fulfilling life. Paradoxically, those who stand to gain the most from establishing boundaries are often those who struggle the most to communicate these limits.In this episode of "Leading with Heart," I sit down with Sharon Arana, a mother, wife, and seasoned Air Force major. Sharon opens up about her unique journey as a woman, a single parent, and a first-generation Latina in the military. We are talking about the crucial role of setting healthy boundaries for work-life integration, self-care, and burnout prevention, particularly in high-stress environments like the military. Sharon also advocates for equitable military policies and offers practical advice on introspection, mentorship, and valuable resources for boundary setting, including Melissa Urban's "The Book of Boundaries." This episode is full of wisdom for anyone looking to understand and improve their boundary-setting skills in both personal and professional life.RESOURCES:Connect with Sharon:SHOW NOTES: https://www.christinamattisonyoga.com/blog/episode36Connect with me in the Strong and Resilient Woman Community on Facebook HERE (https://www.facebook.com/groups/yogaformilitarywomen), or on Instagram @themilitaryyogiMore about Christina Mattison and the Leading with Heart PodcastHey there! I'm Christina Mattison, an Air Force Officer, yoga teacher, dedicated wife, and proud mother of two. But most importantly, I'm here as a wellness and leadership coach for women in the military. I want you to know something: It doesn't have to be this way.I've walked in your combat boots, and I understand the chaos that often accompanies military life. But I'm here to share a powerful truth with you: You have the innate ability to transform your own life. I've personally experienced this transformation, and I've witnessed it in the lives of countless clients I've had the privilege to guide.Welcome to the Leading With Heart podcast — your ultimate resource for discovering how to infuse joy, peace, and true success into every facet of military life.**The views and opinions expressed within this podcast episode are those of the individual, and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of Defense or its components.

Gary Vaynerchuk and Steve Jobs both became the face of their brand, but could this marketing strategy cost you when it's time to sell your agency?  How can you avoid becoming the brand to build a ‘sellable' agency? Today's guest is an entrepreneur who has successfully started and sold four businesses. He discusses the value of personal brands in relation to company success and delves into the challenges faced by service companies in building assets compared to tech or SaaS startups. Tune in to learn about common mistakes made by agency owners when considering selling their businesses and the pitfalls of an obsession with scale. John Warrillow is the founder and CEO of The Value Builder System, a sales and marketing software for business advisors to find, win and keep their best clients. In addition to having started and exited four companies, John is the best-selling author, Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You. In this episode, we discuss: How to add value to your agency. Build a ‘sellable' agency. Equity rolls vs. earn-outs. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources Copper: This episode of Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Copper, a CRM solution built specifically for agencies that use Google Workspace. Its CRM integration works seamlessly with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Drive, so you never have to switch tabs to add leads, track email conversations, find files, or manage tasks in your marketing or sales process. Head over to Copper.com/agencies to get a free trial just for Jason's listeners! How Businesses Fall into the Revenue Pitfall Agency owners and service-based businesses often fall into the trap of overvaluing their companies when considering selling them. This common mistake is rooted in their relentless pursuit of growth and expansion. As a public, we tend to idolize big companies as opposed to good companies. This can turn into an obsession that leads agency owners to focus solely on increasing revenue, rather than building systems and processes that can make the business less dependent on the owners and founders. This fixation on growth typically results in rainmakers focusing predominantly on their sales expertise, which, while driving business growth, also increases dependence on the founders. Paradoxically, this dependence diminishes the overall value of the business. For John, the obsession with growth does agencies a great disservice by creating a culture of focusing solely on revenue. Consequently, businesses become so intertwined with the owner's presence that they essentially create a job for themselves rather than an asset that can thrive independently. This realization can be a bitter pill to swallow for many agency owners, especially when they recognize that their ego often drives these attitudes. By subscribing to the notion portrayed in "Mad Men" that their primary role is that of the charismatic pitchperson, they inadvertently create successful jobs rather than valuable assets. An Easy Method to Add Value to Your Agency So how can you avoid the revenue pitfall? John recommends agency owners take their CEO hat off from time to time and replace it with that of the parent of the business. In this sense, rather than micromanaging employees to hit revenue goals, empower them to take ownership of their work. They will feel greater pride and engagement, enabling the agency to thrive with or without you. By prioritizing long-term sustainability you can increase your agency's value and make it more attractive to potential buyers. It's not just about winning big clients or receiving accolades, but about creating a valuable asset that can stand the test of time. John also introduces the concept of assessing agency services according to how "teachable, valuable, repeatable" (TVR) they are to make strategic business decisions based on this. The TVR framework encourages agency owners to assess each service based on how teachable it is to their team, how valuable it is in terms of differentiation from competitors, and how repeatable it is in terms of recurring revenue. According to John, aency owners should focus on services that score high on all three criteria, as these are the services that will ultimately lead to a more sustainable and scalable business. This is not necessarily easy. Getting rid of some low-scoring services may mean walking away from 90% of your revenue. If this is your case, you can jettison the lowest-scoring services at least once a year. Striking the Right Balance as an Agency CEO Building a business that can run without you and that you can eventually sell will also require you to make the transition from agency owner to CEO. This means assuming different roles like setting the vision for the agency, being the face of the organization, understanding the financials, and coaching and mentoring the leadership team. Personally, John disagrees with Peter Drucker's notion that the two key functions that a CEO should focus on are product development and sales/marketing. In the context of an agency, the CEO should prioritize activities that drive revenue and attract new clients. “If you're doing those two functions, your business is worthless without you” he argues. CEOs who are too public-facing and personally branded may undermine the value of their agency when it comes time to sell. This is because potential buyers may view a highly visible CEO as a risk factor, leading to a larger portion of the deal being tied to an earn-out agreement. Therefore, CEOS need to strike a balance between being the face of the organization and focusing on the core functions of sales and marketing. How to Avoid Becoming the Brand: Tips for Becoming a “Sellable” Agency Would VaynerMedia continue to thrive without Gary Vaynerchuk? Just like Apple continued to grow without Steve Jobs, the most important element of that business is Gary's framework and methodology. What people like Steve and Gary did very well in each case is that the brand supersedes the individual. In Gary's case, many people might not realize who he is as a creator or tie VaynerMedia to him. In any case, building a powerful brand that can grow even in your absence is all about branding processes and not just people. Of course, a strong personal brand can be beneficial but it is also essential to establish the processes that drive the business. By doing so, agencies can create value beyond the individual personalities of their founders or leaders. For agency owners who include their name in the agency name, John suggests branding the processes; for instance, “3 things we do before onboarding a new client”. Codify and brand these processes to create a more valuable and attractive asset for potential buyers. This way, agencies can demonstrate a level of consistency and professionalism that goes beyond any individual's involvement in the business. By establishing and branding the processes that drive the business, agencies can create value that is sustainable and transferable, ultimately leading to long-term growth and success. It's something you can do in stages and could take 2 or 3 years complete. It's an important element of reducing dependency on individual personalities and create a more valuable and attractive asset for potential buyers. Equity Rolls vs. Earnouts: One of these will cost you MILLIONS The classic way an agency is sold is you get approached by the buyer who says they're willing to pay X multiple for it. However, once you take a closer look at that price, it's really 40% upfront, with the other 60% tied to an elaborate earn-out component where you become an employee of another agency. Alternatively, John highlights how private equity companies are increasingly doing "roll-ups" to consolidate agencies, especially in ad tech and tech-enabled services. In an equity roll deal, the seller gets some cash upfront but rolls the remaining amount into an equity stake in the entity owning the agency. This provides pros and cons compared to an earn-out model and gives owners more control over the transition. Equity rolls like majority recapitalizations allow owners to sell just a portion of their shares to receive some liquidity. This payout offers financial stability to pay off debts or invest elsewhere while still having skin in the game to take risks growing the agency. However, selling a majority stake means giving up decision-making control. Owners must be comfortable with a new role and adapt to having outside stakeholders that may bring conflicting interests, especially regarding earn-outs or integrating services across divisions. For its part, an earn-out means you'll lose control of the agency, so be aware of the potential pitfalls of this structure. Instead, Jason suggests a different approach where the seller prioritizes receiving cash upfront and maintains control over the company until the earn-out or period of time is completed. This gives the seller more agency in the sale process and reduces the risk of losing control over their business. All in all, as a seller, be aware of what the acquirer is trying to do, their motivations, and how that aligns with what you want to determine whether or not an earn-out makes sense for you. Prepare Yourself Against the Potential Pitfalls of Acquisitions There are potential pitfalls in agency acquisitions and it's important to be cautious when considering selling or merging with another agency. Typically, as a seller, you have to be aware of the fact that you're becoming a minority shareholder and giving up entrepreneurship for a job. Just be vigilant and protect your interests. Do your due diligence when considering an acquisition and thoroughly evaluate the potential buyer and ensure that the terms of the deal are fair and beneficial to the agency. Furthermore, be wary of offers that may seem enticing on the surface but could ultimately result in a loss of control or value for the agency. The most important way you can protect yourself is to understand the true value of your agency before entering into any acquisition agreements. Don't allow yourself to be swayed by promises of high valuations or potential growth opportunities without thoroughly evaluating the risks and potential drawbacks of the deal and ensure that all parties involved in the acquisition are aligned in terms of goals, vision, and values to avoid potential conflicts down the line. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

(Host: Lucy) How much is it impossible to know about an icon? This episode investigates Tadeusz Kościuszko's place in historical memory. From the early 19th century onwards, myths coalesced around him and his role in the Polish struggle for independence. Paradoxically, his contemporary fame can make it harder for historians to find facts. As a disabled war veteran who fought for racial and religious equality, moreover, Kościuszko is a figure more complex than the heroic narratives that have often formed around him.

Between high labor costs, inflation, workforce shortages, and a host of other challenges, the past couple of years have been some of the most straining financial times for health systems in recent memory. Though the tides may be starting to turn, it is critical that health systems do not get complacent. How can health systems prepare to grow in the midst of an optimistic yet volatile landscape? Paradoxically, the growth path for health systems is actually to shrink. That's why, in this episode, host Rachel (Rae) Woods invites Advisory Board health systems expert Vidal Seegobin, and quantitative insights expert Larry Watts to discuss why heath systems might have to first shrink in order to grow and prepare themselves for the future. Throughout the conversation, they discuss why leaders need to look past the optimism of short term relief, and why hospital-based health systems need to start working smarter and not harder. Links: [Tool] Market Scenario Planner Ep. 147: Pursuing growth in today's financial landscape [Rerun] The dire state of hospital finances (Part 1: Hospital of the Future series) Survey insights: 6 priorities for health system strategists in 2024 Ep. 161: Unwavering purpose, the creation of Ballad Health 3 reasons to prioritize comprehensive sleep services Need a quick answer to a healthcare question? Ask Advisory! Whether it's about where the market is headed, or how to navigate our website our team of experts are just a call or email away. Visit ask.advisory.com or email ask@advisory.com to learn more. A transcript of this episode as well as more information and resources can be found on radioadvisory.advisory.com.

In tonight's Sleep Hypnosis with Jessica we're going to prioritise rest, and remember how great it is. The concept of rest is a funny one. It's so gentle… so nice. So NOT thrilling and speedy and workaholic. And yet rest may be the smartest, most effective, most invigorating thing we can do! Paradoxically, It is the workaholics best friend–making us even more productive– and yet we don't tend to give ourselves permission to rest. So let's do that tonight. As always, tonight's episode will start with a relaxing introduction from Jessica, before we sink into tonight's Sleep Hypnosis.  Want more Sleep Magic? Join Sleep Magic Premium ✨ Enjoy 2 bonus episodes a month plus all episodes ad-free, access to Jessica's complete back catalog of over 60 episodes, and show your support to Jessica.  To Subscribe 

In November of 1928, A.W. Tozer accepted a pastoral position at the Southside Alliance Church in Chicago, a move that launched a ministry career that would eventually impact thousands. A central theme of Tozer's work was recovering a sense of the holiness of God. In his book The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer wrote,  The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.   Tozer's best-known quote is a fundamental premise of a truly Christian worldview: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”  Years ago, Chuck Colson urged his friend, author and speaker Ken Boa, to write condensed, accessible introductions to the greatest works of literature and theology. Boa, one of the finest Christian thinkers of our generation, accepted the challenge.   In a Breakpoint commentary, Chuck commented on A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy, and Dr. Ken Boa's introduction:  Dr. Ken Boa speaks of A.W. Tozer as a man who “understood the ways of God.” That understanding is amply demonstrated in Tozer's classic book The Knowledge of the Holy.   “This is really a meditative and a devotional approach to the attributes of God,” Boa says. Those include more attributes than we're used to thinking about all at once. For instance, Tozer discusses God's omniscience and omnipotence as well as His love and mercy. But Tozer doesn't just show us the reality of those attributes; he also shows how they work together to form a harmonious whole. They are not contradictory, but complementary.   But our view of God, Tozer argues, is often “distorted” or “diminished” because we have embraced the prevailing mindset of our culture and imposed that mindset upon Scripture. So, we find ourselves unable even to begin to comprehend concepts like His holiness, power, and majesty. (Keep in mind, by the way, that Tozer wrote this nearly 50 years ago. The man wasn't called a prophet for nothing.)  Tozer's desire was to expand our vision and thus our capacity to worship God rightly. If we fail to do this, Boa says, that's when our understanding of God becomes distorted, and we move away from Him. “Imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God,” Tozer believed, are responsible for all our errors in doctrine and in faith. Thus, he defines idolatry as “assuming that God is other than He is.”   When you look at it that way, you can see just how widespread idolatry has become in our day and how much havoc it has created within the Church. Boa connects this kind of thinking to the modern prosperity gospel, which tends to turn our prayers into “strategy sessions” rather than true communication with God. Paradoxically, Tozer acknowledges the “incomprehensibility” of God, even as he is helping us to better understand His attributes. When we draw closer to God, you see, we begin to understand just how much greater He is than anything we can grasp.   Our instinct is to make God into something “manageable” and “controllable.” That was the sin of the Garden—to be like God. But if you could do that, you wouldn't need Him. So instead of trying to manage or control God, we must surrender ourselves and place our trust in Him even though we can't fully understand Him. And when we do this, we are not groping in the dark, for as Tozer tells us, “[God] in condescending love has by revelation declared certain things to be true of Himself. These we call His attributes.” He has provided enough knowledge of these, Tozer says, “to satisfy our intellects and ravish our hearts.”   For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. 

It's hard to hold onto information. Paradoxically, it can also be hard to get rid of it. In this episode, we look at why long-term data preservation is a challenge, and the lengths people will go to in order to clear out digital information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is going to be the most productive decade in the history of our species, says Mustafa Suleyman, author of “The Coming Wave,” CEO of Inflection AI, and founder of Google's DeepMind. But in order to truly reap the benefits of AI, we need to learn how to contain it. Paradoxically, part of that will mean collectively saying no to certain forms of progress. As an industry leader reckoning with a future that's about to be ‘turbocharged'  Mustafa says we can all play a role in shaping the technology in hands-on ways and by advocating for appropriate governance.RECOMMENDED MEDIA The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest DilemmaThis new book from Mustafa Suleyman is a must-read guide to the technological revolution just starting, and the transformed world it will createPartnership on AIPartnership on AI is bringing together diverse voices from across the AI community to create resources for advancing positive outcomes for people and societyPolicy Reforms Toolkit from the Center for Humane TechnologyDigital lawlessness has been normalized in the name of innovation. It's possible to craft policy that protects the conditions we need to thriveRECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES AI Myths and MisconceptionsCan We Govern AI? with Marietje SchaakeThe AI DilemmaYour Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_