Podcasts about paraphrasing

Riley, Taliyah and Dominique, oh my!Based on a post by FinalStand, in 13 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.Upstairs, at the same time.Pist; pist,' Taliyah hissed at Mikhail. ‘Wake up.'‘I'm awake,' he replied, though his eyes remained closed.‘I can't believe Vlad is cheating on Brandy.'‘Brandy keeps telling him that she's Darius' girl. How long is he supposed to hang around waiting for her to decide?' Mikhail questioned.‘I; I warned her; he had better not be fucking my Mother.'‘Do you want me to go find out?' he finally opened his eyes. Taliyah's head and shoulders were visible from his horizontal form as she looked from the bed. She was still dressed in her cheerleader's uniform.‘Don't be stupid,' she spat. ‘I'll go look.'‘Yeah; because that couldn't possibly turn out wrong,' he chided her.‘Damn it. Stop making sense. I prefer you being an insensitive jerk.'‘Default setting, gotchya,' he laughed softly. A few moment's passed.‘I can't hear anything,' Taliyah closed her eyes and strained her hearing. Mikhail rolled up into a sitting position then stood.‘I'll be right back.'‘I'm coming with you,' she slid off the bed as well. Mikhail took in the girl-becoming-a-woman before him. Taliyah Malik was taller than Brandy by a good three inches. Her skin was mocha with a dark birthmark under her right breast. Her eyes were dark, intelligent and sparkled when she was angry, as he could well attest.Her lips were full and very little acne scared her face. Her thick, kinky black hair was pulled back in a woven ponytail with beads on the last few inches. Her arms were firm and strong, as were her legs (she'd punched and kicked him with real force), her breasts were hemispherical and pert, with long thin nipples that poked through her clothes when she was aroused. Her stomach was soft to the touch, curvy yet tightly muscled beneath the surface. She was a true athlete.Her thighs and calves were muscular, as was her curvaceous ass which stuck out of its own accord and was sturdy to the touch. Mikhail knew. He'd played in depth with that ass just this afternoon; and loved it. Her full, rich lips were upturned in her normal sneer.‘Where did your clothes go?' she hissed. Mikhail was down to his boxers.‘I don't sleep in my clothes. It is uncomfortable. Besides, we've seen each other naked, so what's the big deal?' he countered.‘It will be a really big deal if Momma finds you like this, in my room.'‘I'll tell her you beat me up, took my clothes and made me sleep at the foot of your bed like a bad serf, or a good dog,' he chuckled. She smacked his chest.Together they went to her room door which had been left partially open when they fell asleep. Taliyah was still disappointed that she hadn't made more progress with the terribly annoying, yet definitely attractive youngest member of the Samsonov clan. He seemed immune to her status at school, or her mother's critical position in city government. He was the most exasperatingly independent man she'd ever met. She was also oddly drawn to his muscular frame, pale blonde hair and crystal blue eyes that reminded her of a raptor.Taliyah couldn't quite accept that she was also drawn to the man's brutality. There was a barely contained beast dwelling behind those crystal orbs; and she wanted to see more of it. She wanted to test it and she wanted to make that challenge because she sure that was exactly how he would see it, a one on one fight for dominance.She couldn't gain dominance in Darius' power structure. The whole cheer squad had been reduced to play toys for the football team. Being a girl meant she was a vagina and little more despite all her personal ambitions. Brandy barely cared, she was so far under Darius' spell. Mikhail was different though. She'd heard about how he treated Kaja; how Kaja was part of his team and was treated as if her ambitions mattered.It wasn't until the car ride home that Taliyah realized that Kaja hadn't hooked up with Mikhail yet. At first, she had thought Kaja was showing stunning wisdom for not dating one of the three most hated White boys in school. The hunting lodge had changed all that. He'd abused her, fought with her and taken control over her and she'd made him pay for every step; and it had been fun. He didn't belittle her efforts nor insinuate that his success was anything more than a temporary victory for either side.She'd verified that in the stables when she'd wailed on him good. Even his scary/crazy mother had thought Mikhail need a good thrashing. How he had ended up in her bedroom when the lights went out was still a mystery. Mikhail hadn't once looked at her funny, or tried anything. After their earlier tussle on the floor and the resulting make-out session, he'd rolled over and gone straight to bed. She'd heard Vlad come in, their whispered conversation and then they were alone.‘I'll go first,' he said.‘Why do you; ,' she got out before he interrupted.‘If I'm seen, I'll be dismissed. If you are seen, there could be a long explanation you don't want to hear,' he told her. ‘I go first.'This time she didn't fight him on the point.As they sneaked down the stairs, Taliyah could make out the noises were coming from the darkened kitchen. From the echoes, some serious screwing was going on.‘Red Wolf Bitch?' they heard Vlad taunt her followed by the sound of a hand slapping an ass hard.‘Yes-yes-yes,' she exhaled with glee. ‘I'm your bitch.'‘Bitch,' Taniyah whispered. ‘He's fucking Riley, that tramp.' She was relieved it wasn't her mother; it was the woman her dad had been cheating with now cheating with the man who was fucking Brandy silly; which was confusing.‘We can go back now,' Mikhail advised her. ‘Nothing to shock us, or make us want to stop them.'‘You like sex, don't you?' Vlad continued to tease her. He was also raining down more spanks. The sound of his cupped hand was a counterpoint to the sounds of her sweaty, meaty behind impacting his crotch.‘Love, love it,' Riley huff.‘What a slut,' Taliyah seethed. ‘I hope he fucks her so hard she can't go to work tomorrow. I hope it hurts.'‘Like it rough?' Vlad said.‘Of course she does, Bro,' Mikhail said quietly. ‘Listen to her howl.'‘Yes,' Riley exhaled.‘You were dressed to fuck Chine tonight, weren't you?' Vlad led her along.‘Yes; oh; no,' she gulped.‘Whore,' Taliyah hissed yet again.‘Did you fuck him today?'‘I bet she did,' Taliyah was getting steamed.‘No; No,' she howled.‘Lying cow,' Taliyah grumbled.‘Let's go back upstairs,' Mikhail gently tried to turn things around.‘I don't care,' Vlad chuckled. ‘I'm fucking you now. Come here,' I coaxed her along; out of sight of the two on the stairs.Reluctantly, Taliyah let herself be corralled and taken back to her room.‘Ga-ga-ga,' Riley choked. ‘God yes-yes-yes, give it to me.'Once inside, Taliyah began pacing angrily.‘He's fucking that sow,' she grumbled. ‘He's fucking her good and that shit belongs to Brandy, not that cheating whore.'‘He's fucking her so she won't be a BBC whore anymore,' Mikhail said casually. ‘In the same way Brandy isn't Darius's pet bitch, Vlad is going to rip Riley apart and fix what ails her on the sexual front. Trust me. That is how it will work out.'‘Trust you? You barely know anything about sex and women,' she blasted him.‘Mom was a far bigger slut than anyone in this burgh and she knows all the tricks, lies and deceptions; and she is confident that Vlad can get the job done.'‘She's crazier than you are and that's saying something,' she retorted.Mikhail went back to the blanket and pillow he had on the floor, making ready to go back to sleep.‘That's what you are going to do?' Taliyah sounded bitter.‘What I plan to do is shut you up, fuck you, curl your toes and make you scream out my name while I force you into climax after climax,' he said as he lowered himself to the pillow.‘I won't let you,' she snarled.‘'Letting' wasn't part of the program, remember? You'll do it because you want to put me in my place and you think you can.'‘Not likely,' she groused. ‘You are never having sex with me again.'‘That's okay. I'll have those precious memories to put me to sleep. The sweat pooling on your lower back, the muscles around your sphincter pulling back along my cock as I pulled out of you and then that sucking noise when I pushed back in. I owned your ass and that will never change.'‘Son of a bitch,' she snarled as she jumped on him. She was playing his game yet she was sure she could win it and shove her victory in his face. One of her knees hit the carpeted ground while the other drove painfully into his hip. Taliyah hauled back to slap his upraised left arm with her right. Her left hand landed on his right triceps, trying to keep him pinned down.'Smack', came the first blow. The second one, he caught by his wrist and held tight. She shifted to her left, only to have that one snatched too. Foolishly, Taliyah went for the head butt, learning rapidly Mikhail had a head as hard as stone.‘Ow,' she gasped. She was so distracted she missed him rising up and kissing her on the lips. He tried again, so she tried to bite him.Taliyah kept struggling, but couldn't stop Mikhail from rolling them over so that he was on top. He paid for that advantage as he felt her stabbing her manicured fingernails into his right hand.‘Hurr; ‘ he grumbled. He didn't let go, though. He tried to kiss her again and got a bitten lip for his troubles.‘Next time I'll bite off your tongue,' Taliyah promised. She was also keeping her voice low so that this fight would remain just between the two of them.‘I'm willing to test that promise,' he gave his best wolfish grin. Mikhail pressed his groin into hers. Taliyah had her legs around him, her ankles pressing into his ass. She was also dry humping his steel pole.‘Get the hell off of me,' she glowered.‘Make me,' he chuckled. Taliyah thrashed about, tried to bring his capturing hands within bite range and endeavored to buck him off with up thrusts of her hips, all to no avail. What she did accomplish was to get both of them very horny. Their quandary was Taliyah couldn't get him off of her and Mikhail couldn't further manipulate her unless he let go of an arm.He let go of her left arm. She immediately slapped him with it, but that allowed Mikhail to roll them back over to where the painful leverage caused her to let go of her leg-lock around his hips. Mikhail also had a free hand. He used it to land a resounding smack on her clad bottom. A slap-for-spank exchange erupted between the two with Taliyah getting more turned on by the second. She knew he was getting into it.She changed things up first, grabbing him by the chin.‘I am Not your bitch, Boy,' she taunted him. Mikhail's counter-ploy was to grab hold of one scrumptious ass cheek and give it a good squeeze.‘Yes you are,' he laughed.‘I'm on top,' she snarled.‘This gives me better access to your tits,' he kept chortling. ‘I'm enjoying the view.'‘I'm going to kill you,' she seethed. Her hand dropped from his chin to his throat as she tried to throttle him. Mikhail's throat muscles flexed, giving her poor purchases. Mikhail took the opportunity to move his hand between the two cheeks and probe her anus through her shorts and panties.‘No you don't,' she rumbled. ‘We are not doing that again,' but her insistence sounded a bit weak, even to her ears.‘What are you saying?' he grew serious. ‘That was the best sex I ever had.'‘I hope you enjoy the memories. That hurt and I'm; stop that,' she protested. Mikhail had moved his questing hand from outside the clothing to inside. He had a finger probing her sphincter in a flash.Taliyah's hand went back to his jaw.‘I said stop that,' she insisted at the same time she stopped trying to wiggle her ass away from the intrusion. Mik drew her higher up his body so that Taliyah's face was above his and her breasts were in his face. The real motive behind that action was revealed when he dipped his fingers further beneath her ass and penetrated her cunt with a finger.‘Oh, now you think you are going to get some of my cunt,' she sneered. ‘Ain't happening. You had your chance this afternoon.'‘Afraid you'll like it? Afraid you'll like it as much as you loved me forcing you this afternoon?' he teased her.‘Bitch; I'll make you my Bitch, Mik. I don't need your cock,' she countered.‘You know I like my Black Bitches quiet,' he snorted. ‘You talk; ‘ Taliyah pressed her lips down on his, shoved her tongue between his teeth and waged war with his tongue before pulling back.‘You talk too much,' she mocked him. Mikhail took his slick finger back to her puckered hole. This time he penetrated. Taliyah flinched, gasped then groaned.‘I hate you,' she panted.‘I'm not particularly fond of you either,' he grinned up at her.‘Liar,' she huffed. ‘You are getting off on my body. I know your brother does.'‘Vlad's got good taste in women,' he radiated masculine charm. ‘I think mine is better.'‘Damn right she is. This still doesn't mean I'm going to let you fuck me.'‘You had better step up your game if you plan to stop me,' he challenged her. Taliyah thrust down on his blood-filled tool and ground her vulva in. Mikhail could then switch up his hand so that his thumb was pressing into her bunghole and two fingers were pumping her twat. She was sticky-wet.‘Fuck you,' she growled. She let go of his jaw, supported her weight with her free arm and propped her midsection up. That forced her shorts and panties down since Mikhail wouldn't release his finger-holds in her nether regions. Mikhail, sensing the change in her stratagem, let go of her right hand. Taliyah smirked down at him at the same time she shimmied out of her clothing. Mikhail quickly shed his boxers.‘Right pants pocket, condoms,' he told her. Taliyah drew up short.‘When did you get them?'‘Vlad gave them to me,' he answered. ‘I guess he keeps a supply around in case Brandy gets frisky.' That was a carefully crafted lie. He knew they came from his mother. But telling Taliyah that would curtail his upcoming sexual romp.‘I'm on the pill.'‘Do you trust it?'‘Your sperms not that strong,' she countered.‘I'll have to give you a double; ‘ he got out.‘Shut up,' she taunted him. ‘You talk too much. I like my white boys doing something else with their tongues.'‘That's date three material,' he chuckled.‘I'm not going to give you the choice.'‘You talk too much. Less lip, more action.'She settled down on him, his cock pressed against his lower stomach while she wriggled over the base.‘I'm not sure I want to fuck you now,' her voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘I don't do White boys.' Mik shrugged. That flummoxed her, until he seized her lapse in caution to flip them back over, mounting her before she could push him off.‘Bastard,' she grumbled. He still wasn't inside of her because his hands were too busy keeping her hands pinned over her head. That didn't stop him from humping her. When he went in for a kiss, she decided to get fierce instead of resisting. She chewed on his lower lip, twisted and wrestled with his tongue against his palate. They exchanged a soulful kiss that caused her to shiver from neck to tailbone.Slowly, Taliyah's right leg worked its way up his left side until her knee passed her waist. She was now wide open and ready for some serious screwing. Mikhail released one of her hands and was promptly slapped. His hand went between them so he could line up his cock for penetration.‘I don't think so,' she teased him. ‘This isn't going to happen.'With that declaration, Mikhail's cockhead rubbed up against her labia, teasing it from hood to perineum.‘Not my ass, you bastard,' she glared.‘Fine, take off your shirt.'‘Why should I do; ah; anything for you?'‘Woman, is it going to kill you to show me your tits again?' he complained.‘What is the magic word?' she taunted him.‘You are a sexy bitch,' he rumbled.‘I was looking for 'please', but that will do,' she snorted. Mikhail let go of her other hand allowing Taliyah to take off her top and bra together.‘Damn, those are some sweet ta-tas,' he remarked.‘These?' she tantalized him by bringing her upper arms together, squeezing her bountiful mounds together and pushing them up.‘Yeah,' Mikhail studied them.‘Get to licking,' she demanded. Mikhail shot her a devilish look. He couldn't pump her and take in her boobies at the same time, so he had to slide down to take them both in. His suckling was ravenous, toothy and full of vigor. He not only lavished attention on her thick, dark brown nipples and areoles, he licked every inch of them, especially the bottom where she was salty with sweat.Quickly she was writhing beneath him. She released her breast augmentation to pull him in tighter by grabbing his ear and using it like a steering wheel. Her left hand went between them and began stroking his aching cock, giving it a brutal yank every time his teeth got too sharp against her tender flesh.‘Yeah; wo; yeah; nice. Rashaan won't do this for me,' she cooed.Mikhail took that insinuation of a comparison to smoothly transition his hand back to her flank, gripping and kneading her perfect, muscular buttock.‘Oh; ah; that's it; yes; this is; so wrong. I; hate you.'‘Hate, love, fucking is fucking, woman,' he answered. ‘You are sensual,' they maneuvered him into her molten, slippery folds, ‘and I'm hot for you. That's enough for me.'‘This isn't going; to become a; ah; habit,' she chuffed.‘I don't think so,' he rebounded. ‘I kind of like this and I'm faster than you.'‘Next time; oh yeah; I'll rip your nuts; ah; off,' she swore.‘I'll; ugh; take that under; (grunt); advisement,' he countered. ‘You feeling fucking awesome; I have to do this again.'‘No you won't,' she groaned. Mikhail began to delve deep into her depths, swiveling his crotch to make sure his cock rubbed as much of her vagina as possible. The more he fucked into her, the more Taliyah rebounded. She'd also finally shut up. She was having the best sex of her short life. None of the gang-bangs and private sessions with Rashaan could compare. She didn't know how to handle this.Slowly the looks Brandy gave Vlad made haunting sense. If Vlad could fuck as well as his brother; that would explain why she didn't want to give that White boy up. Taliyah feared she could get used to this. She already found Mikhail intriguing, strong, vicious and combative, fearless. He didn't give a fuck about what anyone thought. He wasn't even worried about what his brothers thought and did.She really liked that, him not giving a shit, living up to his own expectations and those alone. Even his scary/spooky crazy mother didn't hold him back. Mikhail's rod was caressing, massaging, loving every inch of her vaginal love box.‘You are being awful quiet,' he teased her.‘I thought you liked your Black bitches quiet, asshole,' she shot back.‘I want to hear you scream,' he laughed. Taliyah grabbed Mikhail's right shoulder and dug her fingernails in enough to cause him pain.‘How about you screaming, bastard?' she huffed. She was getting close and she took some of her erotic tension out on his flesh. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,' she covered her mouth and gave Mikhail the squirming and climax he wanted. He barely lasted seconds beyond her, his body tensing up as he drove into her harder and harder before his balls unleashed his torrents of cum.Four, five, six times he erupted. They lay coupled together, both struggling for breathe, sweaty and exhausted.‘Get off me,' she moaned. ‘You are heavy.'Mikhail snaked an arm underneath her then rolled over so that her weight was now on him.‘Oh, you think you are being clever,' she griped. ‘I still hate you.'‘I didn't fuck you to win you over. I fucked you because you are a cock-tease that I had to have. I could care less about your attitude,' he zinged. She hit him on the chest. He laughed, so she hit him again. Finally Taliyah propped herself up, her elbows on his pectorals and her chin supported by her linked hands.‘Are you ever not a jerk?'‘I aim for consistency,' he chuckled.‘I don't know how I'm going to put up with you,' she mused.‘I imagine you will be constantly kicking my ass when I piss you off. That works for my brothers,' he told her.‘Are you one of those masochist, a freaky jerk?'‘Not particularly. If you weren't so damn hot, I'd have dumped you by now.'‘You are an infuriating ass,' she sizzled. ‘Am I just a fuck toy for you?'‘I'm in your room in the middle of the night with your mother just down the hall; yeah; I'm so hard up for a screw that I'm putting up with all this fucked up shit,' he remarked.‘A simple 'no' would suffice,' she leaned in until they were nose to nose. Mikhail tilted his head slightly so he could lick her nose.‘Eew; now I have your slimy spit on my nose,' she complained.‘You have another form of my bodily fluids in your cunt, Taliyah,' he pointed out.‘You are about as romantic as a spittoon. Vlad gives a crap about Brandy. Why can't you give a damn about me?'‘Taliyah,' Mik hesitated. ‘I'm sleeping on your God-damn floor. We are having sex on your God-damn floor and not your far more comfortable bed. If you are expecting sappy words, you are fucking the wrong Samsonov. You should have picked Alexander. He'd treat you like a lady.'‘I would have, but he left,' she lied. Alexander did nothing to engage her spirit and Mikhail resonated with her soul. Mikhail shrugged, rolled onto his side and let his cock slip out of her sex sleeve. She could feel some of his seed leaking out so she moved up, grabbed a Kleenex and cleaned herself off. She even took the precaution of hiding it beneath some other trash. There was no sense in having a fight with her Mother over her raping Mikhail on her bedroom floor.She gathered up her panties and bra, putting them on while sitting on the edge of her bed. Mikhail took the break to retrieve his boxers. She wanted to lie down and try to order her thoughts about her Father, and Rashaan, and bitterly, about Mikhail. Mikhail took her by the hand and pulled her to his kneeling form.‘Lay down with me a bit,' he demanded. She wanted to resist, except she was both physically and mentally tired.Taliyah settled in by Mikhail's side. She rested in the crux of his arm, her head using his shoulder as a pillow. As sleep took her, she worried about what her Mother would say when she found them this way. She nodded off deciding she didn't care. Brandy had stolen her bit of happiness so why couldn't she seize some of her own?Dominique leaned her back against the wall next to Taliyah's door, controlling her own breathing and recalling much of what had passed between her daughter and her enemy/lover. Woken up by the same erotic noises made by that slut, Riley, fucking that Samsonov boy, Dominique had stepped out into the hall just in time to see Taliyah leading Mikhail back into her room.She had listened to most of their exchange, twice coming to the verge of storming in, acting offended and throwing Mikhail out on his ear. Both times, Taliyah's feisty retorts caused her to pull up short and silently urge her daughter on, to dominate the son of Gayle Fonteneau and make him perform. Instead, she and Mikhail had given as good as they each got, coupled like they belonged together and matched each other sexually.Now her daughter was cuddling on the floor with the son of her family's nemesis, softly snoring her way to post-coital bliss. Dominique was wet between the thighs and had an itch she couldn't scratch. Had she not been so furious with Chinedu, she would have called him. Instead, she was alone; and then the noise from downstairs picked up again.{Riley's Ass and Dominque's Pleasure}I had been working over Riley's labia and clitoris while she attempted to eat her plateful of ribs. She was huffing and puffing as she ripped through the last three.‘Let's go to the sofa,' I said then licked her fingers clean.‘I suppose it wouldn't hurt to do it one more time, as long as Dominique doesn't find out.'I led her to the sofa. She was expecting to recline on the furniture while I had other plans.I pushed her behind so that she fell over the arm rest. Riley giggled.‘You like my ass?'‘There is a lot of you to like and I have something special in mind,' I informed her. I knelt behind her, ran two fingers up her inner thigh and delved back into her sloppy cunt. I began kissing each ass cheek, working my way into her crack. With my left hand still working over her vaginal canal, I opened up her buttock with my right.Running my tongue from her sweet secretions to her anus brought forth wanton moaning and hip gyrations. I went back and forth for several minutes until I sensed her on the cusp. I rapidly pumped my fingers into her cunt, pressing up with all my dexterity while driving my tongue into her rectum. She jumped, groaned loudly then flopped back down on the sofa.‘Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh,' she labored on and on until her teeth clenched and she began grunting loudly. Her eruption caused her whole plump body to vibrate and quiver. I punctuated her latest outburst with a resounded pop to the ass. That spurred her on to greater vocalizations. I had her going for over a minute until she lay utterly helpless to my predations.I went back to her sphincter, drilling in one finger slowly to the second knuckle. When that became less constrained, I worked in a second. When I went for the third, she mumbled something I couldn't make out.‘What was that?' I inquired.‘I don't do anal,' she pleaded.‘Chinedu already told Dominique and me that he did; and you liked it,' I deceived her.‘He did?' she hesitated then, ‘Oh, okay,' and she submitted to my advances. I had to wonder why she lied to me. Did she not like it, or had she thought I would think less of her because of it? I worked her over with my three fingers until her anus relaxed. Next, I took it easy with my cock, tested her physical frontiers with my cock and her emotional waters with my efforts.‘Hmm,' I rumbled as I worked my full length in at a steady pace. As I pulled out, I saw Dominique looking at us from the foyer. She must have just come down the stairs. I drove my cock back into Riley's ass while keeping eye contact with Dominique. I was kind of curious why she wasn't ripping us both a new asshole.‘You want this cock, don't you?' I asked.‘Yes,' she gasped. ‘Yes; I'm a slut,' she sobbed.‘Hey, at least you are honest,' I allowed. ‘And you are good at it too.'‘Oh; umm; thank you,' she hiccupped.‘You're welcome,' I pounded her ass for a minute, silent except for Riley's gasps, grunts and moans. It was positively glove-like by this time and every thrust drove her farther into her own sensual euphoria. Hey, she really liked cock.‘So, what do you think of Dominique?' I surprised them both.‘I, huh, what?' she tried to order her thoughts.‘Is she a good boss?'‘Ya, yes,' she panted.‘You find her sexy, don't you?' I tossed out there. This was one of the lessons I was supposed to use on Brandy, except the recipient of the sexy was Taliyah.‘I; a little; ‘ she huffed. She was getting close so I slowed my pace.‘Have you ever brushed up against her ass, touched it?'‘Once; well, a few times.'‘Nice,' I stroked her tramp stamp. ‘I bet is it luscious and warm to the touch. I bet she knows you do it, too.'‘Really?' she gulped.‘Oh yeah,' I looked Dominique's way. ‘She's got to be a sexual volcano. I bet she's got great, silky thighs too. I bet you'd like touching them.'‘May, maybe; ‘‘I'd go down on her if I had half a chance, if she didn't despise me,' I led her on. ‘I bet she tastes like molasses.'‘I don't know. I guess so; I've done girls before; I kind of liked it,' she murmured.‘Good for you,' I gave her a light spank. ‘If you had to go down on Dominique to keep your job; and if you promised to nut Chinedu the next time he propositioned you, would you?'‘You mean eat her out?' Riley looked over her shoulder. I gave her three quick pummelings to get her back on track.‘Yeah, tongues and fingers, really tear her up, to keep your job?'‘Yes, yes,' she moaned.‘Yes, you'll fuck her, or yes, pound your asshole harder?' I teased her.‘Both!' she hissed loudly. ‘Tear me up!'‘Wish granted,' I murmured

Enjoy this preview of our first Ask Matt Anything (AMA).We are excited to introduce this special edition of Think Fast, Talk Smart, featuring a preview of our first-ever Ask Matt Anything (AMA) episode. Typically, these sessions are exclusive to our Think Fast, Talk Smart Premium members, where Matt Abrahams answers the most pressing communication questions submitted by our premium community. Think Fast, Talk Smart Premium was created to deepen our connection with you and support your growth as effective communicators. Premium members enjoy exclusive benefits like regular full-length AMA episodes, eQuips, or Essential Quick Insight Playlist, early access to events, and more. Beyond this, your membership helps us continue to build a global community dedicated to improving communication skills and advancing careers.If you find this episode helpful, we invite you to join our Think Fast, Talk Smart Premium community to unlock the full library of AMAs, submit your own questions, and gain access to even more tools and resources. Thank you for being part of our journey! You can learn more at fastersmarter.io/premium.Episode Reference Links:Ep.133 From Good to Super: How Supercommunicators Unlock the Language of ConnectionEp.137 When Words Aren't Enough: How to Excel at Nonverbal Communication Connect:Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart PremiumEmail Questions & Feedback >>> hello@fastersmarter.ioEpisode Transcripts >>> Think Fast Talk Smart WebsiteNewsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>> FasterSmarter.ioThink Fast Talk Smart >>> LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTubeMatt Abrahams >>> LinkedInChapters:(00:00) - Introduction (01:37) - Building Trust with Senior Leadership (03:59) - Engaging Large Virtual Audiences (07:47) - Managing Nonverbal Communication (09:57) - Balancing Emotions in Conversations (11:47) - Navigating Status Differences in Meetings (14:52) - Conclusion ********Become a Faster Smarter Supporter by joining TFTS Premium.

The show starts off with slow cooker mac n cheese. Can pasta cooked in a crockpot remain al dente? After that carb bomb, Jana and Mark discuss empathic paraphrasing. Is it the key to "fair fights? " Mark is sharing a song that you probably know, but he guesses you won't know which artist recorded it FIRST! And in Paranormal Corner, Jana has some voice recordings from the Manor... are they paranormal?

"What is really important you? Put another way, if you knew your time was short, on what or to whom would you focus your evaporating minutes? To what task would you give yourself? How would your priorities change? The truth is, your time is short, so these questions apply. "Your spirituality, faith, and overall wellbeing will grow stronger, deeper, livelier, and more vital as it becomes the more focused, more concentrated, and more simple. Don't go for more of anything. Go for less. Paraphrasing the words of Meister Eckhart, 'The way of Jesus has much more to do with subtraction, than it does addition.' Where this art of simplification really works, and you don't have to a mystic or uber-spiritual to experience this for yourself, is staying present in this one day that you have - today."

Now, for a moment— Do me a favor and imagine for a second— Just for a second, That someone, Anyone— Who? Haha Shut up. Had read your writing What writing. Any of it. Ok… —before you arrived at Rockerfeller Plaza. …which time. Any time. Oh. That's right…I had been writing for years before I ever even stepped foot inside The Rock, even one time. THE ROCK Let's just say “30 Rock” But is it technically like 24-58 Rockerfeller Plaza. RADIO CITY, MANHATTAN, NEW YORK, NEW YORK. So this is how many radio towers exactly? All of them. And how many satellites? All of them. And how many antennas. All of them. All of them. All of them—that matter. Which ones don't matter? EXT. THE ARCTIC CIRCLE. WHENEVER. AN IMPORTANT LOOKING BUSINESS MAN IN A SUIT ARRIVES CUT BACK TO CUT BACK TO A GROUP OF ESKIMOS HAVE DISCOVERED A LARGE RADIO TOWER HAS BEEN PLACED IN THE CENTER OF THE TUNDRA. The antenna begins to blink. >< >< >< >< >< CUT BACK TO: …was that a stupid question? I had fasted so long that l had begun to see ghosts, spirits dressed as Angeles, and, well… It was strange to think that this place, wherever weeks of fasting and praying and driving and climbing mountains living out of your car takes you to, was when this revelation occurred to me. Jimmy Fallon. I— what? Jimmy Fallon. It must have been about four weeks, because, it was by the end of this week that the layout of Los Angeles, California had completely changed and been altered. Nothing was where I left it. This is the labra tar pits. [actual tar pits] Not to mention I had somehow, from atop a perch at Elysian park, also witnessed the construction of Dodgers Stadium— If my body is here, then where is my mind? If this is the mind, then where actually is the body? Simply put, and by the end, nearly everyone and everyone on earth had vanished, besides myself— Jimmy Fallon. There was no Jimmy Fallon here— Just whispers of a name, Remnance of an idea. An idea's which might have once been a person, But now, Simply wasn't. It was just one, singular; never having been wasted on anything, Dollar bill. FUCK, man, how am I supposed to keep telling this story?! I don't know. I'm real pissed off I can't find the scene with the coffee mug. I'm pretty sure it's hot cocoa. Whatever. Cause why would it be coffee? Why would it not be malt liquor in a fucking coffee mug if we're talking about Jimmy Fallon? Why would it be malt liquor and not at the very least like a chocolate liqueur with a hint of baileys. Because we're talking about Jimmy Fallon . Are you sure he's an alcoholic!? For the record! So, just reiterating we'v established here that The real Jimmy Fallon The Actual Jimmy Fallon And The Regular Jimmy Fallon Are entirely certainly— Three seperate guys. Sure, for the record. Are you sure he's not. I hope he's not. Why! Cause I like him. WHY! Idk. He just keep showing up—randomly, and at very odd moments. So! So I got used to him—being around. Yikes. Not around—just. Oh, I get it, he's dead. He's not dead, he's downstairs. fuck. Well, I almost didn't think about it. No. There is no Jimmy Fallon. Meat. Waaaahhhhh???!!? It's an all meat sandwhich. What do you mean It's like an Italian BMT What. Without the— Bread. Yes, exactly. It's just meat. Gross. No, this is gross. What. You told me No fakies. You told me to come up with a sandwhich which embodied “The Jimmy Fallon Brand“ And—?! AND I DID THAT This is a VEGETARIAN EGG MCMUFFIN. It's NOT, ITS A JIMMY FALLON— But you just couldn't connect with that. Connect the dots. I gotta get out of town . So, you mean— This TV host thing is a full time job. Pretty much. Where are the models?! Whooooo neeeeds models, when you've got PAGES. Woah, hoes. Those are the 2024 NBC pages. Why are their skirts so short. I know. Why… are their shoes so ugly— To distract from the fact that they're allowed to wear those skirts! I guess. You're racist. No, I'm ugly but— WHY ARENT THERE ANY BLACK PAGES. Oh, there are. Oh yeah?! WHERE. 30 ROCKERFELLER PLAZA. OFFICES. DAY. Humdala-humdala-humdala-hmmmmmm— Humdala-humdala—hmmmmm Goddammit. What is this dude's pre show ritual. Yo. Give me the keys to the Hellicopter. No. Fine. I'll just take the push-to-start. Ok, I'm coming. (Eventually, we'll get back to Seth Meyers) Why is he important. Cause I— Let's just be honest, I don't understand this. Why. Ahem. Why is it that— No matter where I am, In the various multidimentional planes, I am reachable by Jimmy Fallon. I don't know. This has something to do with Jesus, doesn't it? Don't ask me about my brother. I don't know what he's into—or where he goes when he's not. Parasailing. Ah . Paraphrasing. Ok. Parasite. *ing. Wait. I am not a parasite. I'm not taking anything from Jimmy Fallon. …am I! what the fuck exactly just happened. What do you mean. The…propeller seems to have stopped working. Yes, it did. Why are we not free falling rapidly. Oh, we are. CUT TO: A HELLICOPTER FALLING RAPIDLY FROM THE SKY oh dear GOD— CUT BACK TO: A helicopter is suspended in midair, appearing to be frozen. I'm so fucked. I'm so fucked. I'm so fucked. I know what you did Fallon. No you don't! Sucks to be you! I so do know what you did. Even if you do—/ And I also did it. goddammit. “Suspension of Disbelief” WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?! look, I know how to be super skinny. I'm just not. WHY. Cause I like food! Pretty windows, Decent teachers— Learning lessons, Leaning in and, Recent intermissions Admissions to priestes, And alter boys, Insence smoke, And— I said I'd sign the prenuptial agreements! What's in the —? Prenuptual agreements. …but…you have nothing. I've always had nothing but, I've never had— him. What? Not until now. That's not a man, that's a God– (And) That's not a Dog, that's a friend Even if this is the end We're just gonna do it again (and again, and again) Tell me; What did you want?! Did you get it? Cause if not, you're gonna! That's not a watch, it's a gun (And it's going off!) Pull the trigger- You gotta. Did you want it? Did you wanna? Moderation: Marijuana I'm not a God. (I don't wanna) –But I got all that I wanted (I put the air in your lungs) Fuck/ That's not a coincidence, is it? That's not a coincidence. (It never it) Here's another one, For your records He's a writer She's a– I Liked him better off dead (He was better off dead) Pull the trigger– Pull the trigger! Well that's a Whole lotta luggage Lotta stuff that you bought at the –I was just onto a That's not a God, That's a Goddess (All locked up in the) (open the door:) That's not a God, It's your mother! ( I wanted it) I don't want anymore– I can't write anymore songs (But I got what I wanted) That was not a coincidence. If I look into your eyes, i'll die. I'm a dead person. I believe you. Please don't make that face at me. It's the only face i've got. “Oh well” With a shrug Is i've ive got on But there's no nonchaloncé It's a problem I don't wanna talk about it. I don't wanna talk about it. “In Retrospect, I should have lead with deportation.” An Ear for Innuendo {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2024 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © Weeeelllll This is about to make sense— Isn't it? Probably not. Oh well, roll the tape. L E G E N D S what tape? … …hello?! …. HELLO?

Now, for a moment— Do me a favor and imagine for a second— Just for a second, That someone, Anyone— Who? Haha Shut up. Had read your writing What writing. Any of it. Ok… —before you arrived at Rockerfeller Plaza. …which time. Any time. Oh. That's right…I had been writing for years before I ever even stepped foot inside The Rock, even one time. THE ROCK Let's just say “30 Rock” But is it technically like 24-58 Rockerfeller Plaza. RADIO CITY, MANHATTAN, NEW YORK, NEW YORK. So this is how many radio towers exactly? All of them. And how many satellites? All of them. And how many antennas. All of them. All of them. All of them—that matter. Which ones don't matter? EXT. THE ARCTIC CIRCLE. WHENEVER. AN IMPORTANT LOOKING BUSINESS MAN IN A SUIT ARRIVES CUT BACK TO CUT BACK TO A GROUP OF ESKIMOS HAVE DISCOVERED A LARGE RADIO TOWER HAS BEEN PLACED IN THE CENTER OF THE TUNDRA. The antenna begins to blink. >< >< >< >< >< CUT BACK TO: …was that a stupid question? I had fasted so long that l had begun to see ghosts, spirits dressed as Angeles, and, well… It was strange to think that this place, wherever weeks of fasting and praying and driving and climbing mountains living out of your car takes you to, was when this revelation occurred to me. Jimmy Fallon. I— what? Jimmy Fallon. It must have been about four weeks, because, it was by the end of this week that the layout of Los Angeles, California had completely changed and been altered. Nothing was where I left it. This is the labra tar pits. [actual tar pits] Not to mention I had somehow, from atop a perch at Elysian park, also witnessed the construction of Dodgers Stadium— If my body is here, then where is my mind? If this is the mind, then where actually is the body? Simply put, and by the end, nearly everyone and everyone on earth had vanished, besides myself— Jimmy Fallon. There was no Jimmy Fallon here— Just whispers of a name, Remnance of an idea. An idea's which might have once been a person, But now, Simply wasn't. It was just one, singular; never having been wasted on anything, Dollar bill. FUCK, man, how am I supposed to keep telling this story?! I don't know. I'm real pissed off I can't find the scene with the coffee mug. I'm pretty sure it's hot cocoa. Whatever. Cause why would it be coffee? Why would it not be malt liquor in a fucking coffee mug if we're talking about Jimmy Fallon? Why would it be malt liquor and not at the very least like a chocolate liqueur with a hint of baileys. Because we're talking about Jimmy Fallon . Are you sure he's an alcoholic!? For the record! So, just reiterating we'v established here that The real Jimmy Fallon The Actual Jimmy Fallon And The Regular Jimmy Fallon Are entirely certainly— Three seperate guys. Sure, for the record. Are you sure he's not. I hope he's not. Why! Cause I like him. WHY! Idk. He just keep showing up—randomly, and at very odd moments. So! So I got used to him—being around. Yikes. Not around—just. Oh, I get it, he's dead. He's not dead, he's downstairs. fuck. Well, I almost didn't think about it. No. There is no Jimmy Fallon. Meat. Waaaahhhhh???!!? It's an all meat sandwhich. What do you mean It's like an Italian BMT What. Without the— Bread. Yes, exactly. It's just meat. Gross. No, this is gross. What. You told me No fakies. You told me to come up with a sandwhich which embodied “The Jimmy Fallon Brand“ And—?! AND I DID THAT This is a VEGETARIAN EGG MCMUFFIN. It's NOT, ITS A JIMMY FALLON— But you just couldn't connect with that. Connect the dots. I gotta get out of town . So, you mean— This TV host thing is a full time job. Pretty much. Where are the models?! Whooooo neeeeds models, when you've got PAGES. Woah, hoes. Those are the 2024 NBC pages. Why are their skirts so short. I know. Why… are their shoes so ugly— To distract from the fact that they're allowed to wear those skirts! I guess. You're racist. No, I'm ugly but— WHY ARENT THERE ANY BLACK PAGES. Oh, there are. Oh yeah?! WHERE. 30 ROCKERFELLER PLAZA. OFFICES. DAY. Humdala-humdala-humdala-hmmmmmm— Humdala-humdala—hmmmmm Goddammit. What is this dude's pre show ritual. Yo. Give me the keys to the Hellicopter. No. Fine. I'll just take the push-to-start. Ok, I'm coming. (Eventually, we'll get back to Seth Meyers) Why is he important. Cause I— Let's just be honest, I don't understand this. Why. Ahem. Why is it that— No matter where I am, In the various multidimentional planes, I am reachable by Jimmy Fallon. I don't know. This has something to do with Jesus, doesn't it? Don't ask me about my brother. I don't know what he's into—or where he goes when he's not. Parasailing. Ah . Paraphrasing. Ok. Parasite. *ing. Wait. I am not a parasite. I'm not taking anything from Jimmy Fallon. …am I! what the fuck exactly just happened. What do you mean. The…propeller seems to have stopped working. Yes, it did. Why are we not free falling rapidly. Oh, we are. CUT TO: A HELLICOPTER FALLING RAPIDLY FROM THE SKY oh dear GOD— CUT BACK TO: A helicopter is suspended in midair, appearing to be frozen. I'm so fucked. I'm so fucked. I'm so fucked. I know what you did Fallon. No you don't! Sucks to be you! I so do know what you did. Even if you do—/ And I also did it. goddammit. “Suspension of Disbelief” WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?! look, I know how to be super skinny. I'm just not. WHY. Cause I like food! Pretty windows, Decent teachers— Learning lessons, Leaning in and, Recent intermissions Admissions to priestes, And alter boys, Insence smoke, And— I said I'd sign the prenuptial agreements! What's in the —? Prenuptual agreements. …but…you have nothing. I've always had nothing but, I've never had— him. What? Not until now. That's not a man, that's a God– (And) That's not a Dog, that's a friend Even if this is the end We're just gonna do it again (and again, and again) Tell me; What did you want?! Did you get it? Cause if not, you're gonna! That's not a watch, it's a gun (And it's going off!) Pull the trigger- You gotta. Did you want it? Did you wanna? Moderation: Marijuana I'm not a God. (I don't wanna) –But I got all that I wanted (I put the air in your lungs) Fuck/ That's not a coincidence, is it? That's not a coincidence. (It never it) Here's another one, For your records He's a writer She's a– I Liked him better off dead (He was better off dead) Pull the trigger– Pull the trigger! Well that's a Whole lotta luggage Lotta stuff that you bought at the –I was just onto a That's not a God, That's a Goddess (All locked up in the) (open the door:) That's not a God, It's your mother! ( I wanted it) I don't want anymore– I can't write anymore songs (But I got what I wanted) That was not a coincidence. If I look into your eyes, i'll die. I'm a dead person. I believe you. Please don't make that face at me. It's the only face i've got. “Oh well” With a shrug Is i've ive got on But there's no nonchaloncé It's a problem I don't wanna talk about it. I don't wanna talk about it. “In Retrospect, I should have lead with deportation.” An Ear for Innuendo {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2024 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © Weeeelllll This is about to make sense— Isn't it? Probably not. Oh well, roll the tape. L E G E N D S what tape? … …hello?! …. HELLO?

Now, for a moment— Do me a favor and imagine for a second— Just for a second, That someone, Anyone— Who? Haha Shut up. Had read your writing What writing. Any of it. Ok… —before you arrived at Rockerfeller Plaza. …which time. Any time. Oh. That's right…I had been writing for years before I ever even stepped foot inside The Rock, even one time. THE ROCK Let's just say “30 Rock” But is it technically like 24-58 Rockerfeller Plaza. RADIO CITY, MANHATTAN, NEW YORK, NEW YORK. So this is how many radio towers exactly? All of them. And how many satellites? All of them. And how many antennas. All of them. All of them. All of them—that matter. Which ones don't matter? EXT. THE ARCTIC CIRCLE. WHENEVER. AN IMPORTANT LOOKING BUSINESS MAN IN A SUIT ARRIVES CUT BACK TO CUT BACK TO A GROUP OF ESKIMOS HAVE DISCOVERED A LARGE RADIO TOWER HAS BEEN PLACED IN THE CENTER OF THE TUNDRA. The antenna begins to blink. >< >< >< >< >< CUT BACK TO: …was that a stupid question? I had fasted so long that l had begun to see ghosts, spirits dressed as Angeles, and, well… It was strange to think that this place, wherever weeks of fasting and praying and driving and climbing mountains living out of your car takes you to, was when this revelation occurred to me. Jimmy Fallon. I— what? Jimmy Fallon. It must have been about four weeks, because, it was by the end of this week that the layout of Los Angeles, California had completely changed and been altered. Nothing was where I left it. This is the labra tar pits. [actual tar pits] Not to mention I had somehow, from atop a perch at Elysian park, also witnessed the construction of Dodgers Stadium— If my body is here, then where is my mind? If this is the mind, then where actually is the body? Simply put, and by the end, nearly everyone and everyone on earth had vanished, besides myself— Jimmy Fallon. There was no Jimmy Fallon here— Just whispers of a name, Remnance of an idea. An idea's which might have once been a person, But now, Simply wasn't. It was just one, singular; never having been wasted on anything, Dollar bill. FUCK, man, how am I supposed to keep telling this story?! I don't know. I'm real pissed off I can't find the scene with the coffee mug. I'm pretty sure it's hot cocoa. Whatever. Cause why would it be coffee? Why would it not be malt liquor in a fucking coffee mug if we're talking about Jimmy Fallon? Why would it be malt liquor and not at the very least like a chocolate liqueur with a hint of baileys. Because we're talking about Jimmy Fallon . Are you sure he's an alcoholic!? For the record! So, just reiterating we'v established here that The real Jimmy Fallon The Actual Jimmy Fallon And The Regular Jimmy Fallon Are entirely certainly— Three seperate guys. Sure, for the record. Are you sure he's not. I hope he's not. Why! Cause I like him. WHY! Idk. He just keep showing up—randomly, and at very odd moments. So! So I got used to him—being around. Yikes. Not around—just. Oh, I get it, he's dead. He's not dead, he's downstairs. fuck. Well, I almost didn't think about it. No. There is no Jimmy Fallon. Meat. Waaaahhhhh???!!? It's an all meat sandwhich. What do you mean It's like an Italian BMT What. Without the— Bread. Yes, exactly. It's just meat. Gross. No, this is gross. What. You told me No fakies. You told me to come up with a sandwhich which embodied “The Jimmy Fallon Brand“ And—?! AND I DID THAT This is a VEGETARIAN EGG MCMUFFIN. It's NOT, ITS A JIMMY FALLON— But you just couldn't connect with that. Connect the dots. I gotta get out of town . So, you mean— This TV host thing is a full time job. Pretty much. Where are the models?! Whooooo neeeeds models, when you've got PAGES. Woah, hoes. Those are the 2024 NBC pages. Why are their skirts so short. I know. Why… are their shoes so ugly— To distract from the fact that they're allowed to wear those skirts! I guess. You're racist. No, I'm ugly but— WHY ARENT THERE ANY BLACK PAGES. Oh, there are. Oh yeah?! WHERE. 30 ROCKERFELLER PLAZA. OFFICES. DAY. Humdala-humdala-humdala-hmmmmmm— Humdala-humdala—hmmmmm Goddammit. What is this dude's pre show ritual. Yo. Give me the keys to the Hellicopter. No. Fine. I'll just take the push-to-start. Ok, I'm coming. (Eventually, we'll get back to Seth Meyers) Why is he important. Cause I— Let's just be honest, I don't understand this. Why. Ahem. Why is it that— No matter where I am, In the various multidimentional planes, I am reachable by Jimmy Fallon. I don't know. This has something to do with Jesus, doesn't it? Don't ask me about my brother. I don't know what he's into—or where he goes when he's not. Parasailing. Ah . Paraphrasing. Ok. Parasite. *ing. Wait. I am not a parasite. I'm not taking anything from Jimmy Fallon. …am I! what the fuck exactly just happened. What do you mean. The…propeller seems to have stopped working. Yes, it did. Why are we not free falling rapidly. Oh, we are. CUT TO: A HELLICOPTER FALLING RAPIDLY FROM THE SKY oh dear GOD— CUT BACK TO: A helicopter is suspended in midair, appearing to be frozen. I'm so fucked. I'm so fucked. I'm so fucked. I know what you did Fallon. No you don't! Sucks to be you! I so do know what you did. Even if you do—/ And I also did it. goddammit. “Suspension of Disbelief” WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?! look, I know how to be super skinny. I'm just not. WHY. Cause I like food! Pretty windows, Decent teachers— Learning lessons, Leaning in and, Recent intermissions Admissions to priestes, And alter boys, Insence smoke, And— I said I'd sign the prenuptial agreements! What's in the —? Prenuptual agreements. …but…you have nothing. I've always had nothing but, I've never had— him. What? Not until now. That's not a man, that's a God– (And) That's not a Dog, that's a friend Even if this is the end We're just gonna do it again (and again, and again) Tell me; What did you want?! Did you get it? Cause if not, you're gonna! That's not a watch, it's a gun (And it's going off!) Pull the trigger- You gotta. Did you want it? Did you wanna? Moderation: Marijuana I'm not a God. (I don't wanna) –But I got all that I wanted (I put the air in your lungs) Fuck/ That's not a coincidence, is it? That's not a coincidence. (It never it) Here's another one, For your records He's a writer She's a– I Liked him better off dead (He was better off dead) Pull the trigger– Pull the trigger! Well that's a Whole lotta luggage Lotta stuff that you bought at the –I was just onto a That's not a God, That's a Goddess (All locked up in the) (open the door:) That's not a God, It's your mother! ( I wanted it) I don't want anymore– I can't write anymore songs (But I got what I wanted) That was not a coincidence. If I look into your eyes, i'll die. I'm a dead person. I believe you. Please don't make that face at me. It's the only face i've got. “Oh well” With a shrug Is i've ive got on But there's no nonchaloncé It's a problem I don't wanna talk about it. I don't wanna talk about it. “In Retrospect, I should have lead with deportation.” An Ear for Innuendo {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2024 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © Weeeelllll This is about to make sense— Isn't it? Probably not. Oh well, roll the tape. L E G E N D S what tape? … …hello?! …. HELLO?

Here we go again with yet another special episode that we have relaunched as requested by many of our followers.It's a disease, stupid!Paraphrasing a famous political slogan from the US, this episode offers slam-dunk proof that addiction and alcoholism are disease states and that the addict has lost his power of choice when the disease compels him to inflict harm on himself and others.We cover these topics:Addiction and alcoholism are recognised by the leading scientists in the US as chronic, relapsing diseases of the brain, causing compulsive using behaviour and loss of control over intake, despite harmful long-term consequences.The main take-away is that addiction is compulsive so that when an addiction is activated, addicts lose the power of choice, that he will perform a harmful act over and over.There go all the theories of it being a moral failing or the power of will. Just say no is false promise.Saying that treatment or 12 –step programs don't work is like blaming the gym if you're out of shape. “You have to make the commitment and do the work for you to have any chance of long-term success.”Long term success in recovery is more about what the addict does AFTER he leaves treatment than the fact that he went into treatment. Recovery is a lifetime commitment.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Twitter thread on AI safety evals, published by Richard Ngo on July 31, 2024 on LessWrong. Epistemic status: raising concerns, rather than stating confident conclusions. I'm worried that a lot of work on AI safety evals matches the pattern of "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore this must be done." Or, to put it another way: I judge eval ideas on 4 criteria, and I often see proposals which fail all 4. The criteria: 1. Possible to measure with scientific rigor. Some things can be easily studied in a lab; others are entangled with a lot of real-world complexity. If you predict the latter (e.g. a model's economic or scientific impact) based on model-level evals, your results will often be BS. (This is why I dislike the term "transformative AI", by the way. Whether an AI has transformative effects on society will depend hugely on what the society is like, how the AI is deployed, etc. And that's a constantly moving target! So TAI a terrible thing to try to forecast.) Another angle on "scientific rigor": you're trying to make it obvious to onlookers that you couldn't have designed the eval to get your preferred results. This means making the eval as simple as possible: each arbitrary choice adds another avenue for p-hacking, and they add up fast. (Paraphrasing a different thread): I think of AI risk forecasts as basically guesses, and I dislike attempts to make them sound objective (e.g. many OpenPhil worldview investigations). There are always so many free parameters that you can get basically any result you want. And so, in practice, they often play the role of laundering vibes into credible-sounding headline numbers. I'm worried that AI safety evals will fall into the same trap. (I give Eliezer a lot of credit for making roughly this criticism of Ajeya's bio-anchors report. I think his critique has basically been proven right by how much people have updated away from 30-year timelines since then.) 2. Provides signal across scales. Evals are often designed around a binary threshold (e.g. the Turing Test). But this restricts the impact of the eval to a narrow time window around hitting it. Much better if we can measure (and extrapolate) orders-of-magnitude improvements. 3. Focuses on clearly worrying capabilities. Evals for hacking, deception, etc track widespread concerns. By contrast, evals for things like automated ML R&D are only worrying for people who already believe in AI xrisk. And even they don't think it's necessary for risk. 4. Motivates useful responses. Safety evals are for creating clear Schelling points at which action will be taken. But if you don't know what actions your evals should catalyze, it's often more valuable to focus on fleshing that out. Often nobody else will! In fact, I expect that things like model releases, demos, warning shots, etc, will by default be much better drivers of action than evals. Evals can still be valuable, but you should have some justification for why yours will actually matter, to avoid traps like the ones above. Ideally that justification would focus either on generating insight or being persuasive; optimizing for both at once seems like a good way to get neither. Lastly: even if you have a good eval idea, actually implementing it well can be very challenging Building evals is scientific research; and so we should expect eval quality to be heavy-tailed, like most other science. I worry that the fact that evals are an unusually easy type of research to get started with sometimes obscures this fact. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Twitter thread on AI safety evals, published by Richard Ngo on July 31, 2024 on LessWrong. Epistemic status: raising concerns, rather than stating confident conclusions. I'm worried that a lot of work on AI safety evals matches the pattern of "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore this must be done." Or, to put it another way: I judge eval ideas on 4 criteria, and I often see proposals which fail all 4. The criteria: 1. Possible to measure with scientific rigor. Some things can be easily studied in a lab; others are entangled with a lot of real-world complexity. If you predict the latter (e.g. a model's economic or scientific impact) based on model-level evals, your results will often be BS. (This is why I dislike the term "transformative AI", by the way. Whether an AI has transformative effects on society will depend hugely on what the society is like, how the AI is deployed, etc. And that's a constantly moving target! So TAI a terrible thing to try to forecast.) Another angle on "scientific rigor": you're trying to make it obvious to onlookers that you couldn't have designed the eval to get your preferred results. This means making the eval as simple as possible: each arbitrary choice adds another avenue for p-hacking, and they add up fast. (Paraphrasing a different thread): I think of AI risk forecasts as basically guesses, and I dislike attempts to make them sound objective (e.g. many OpenPhil worldview investigations). There are always so many free parameters that you can get basically any result you want. And so, in practice, they often play the role of laundering vibes into credible-sounding headline numbers. I'm worried that AI safety evals will fall into the same trap. (I give Eliezer a lot of credit for making roughly this criticism of Ajeya's bio-anchors report. I think his critique has basically been proven right by how much people have updated away from 30-year timelines since then.) 2. Provides signal across scales. Evals are often designed around a binary threshold (e.g. the Turing Test). But this restricts the impact of the eval to a narrow time window around hitting it. Much better if we can measure (and extrapolate) orders-of-magnitude improvements. 3. Focuses on clearly worrying capabilities. Evals for hacking, deception, etc track widespread concerns. By contrast, evals for things like automated ML R&D are only worrying for people who already believe in AI xrisk. And even they don't think it's necessary for risk. 4. Motivates useful responses. Safety evals are for creating clear Schelling points at which action will be taken. But if you don't know what actions your evals should catalyze, it's often more valuable to focus on fleshing that out. Often nobody else will! In fact, I expect that things like model releases, demos, warning shots, etc, will by default be much better drivers of action than evals. Evals can still be valuable, but you should have some justification for why yours will actually matter, to avoid traps like the ones above. Ideally that justification would focus either on generating insight or being persuasive; optimizing for both at once seems like a good way to get neither. Lastly: even if you have a good eval idea, actually implementing it well can be very challenging Building evals is scientific research; and so we should expect eval quality to be heavy-tailed, like most other science. I worry that the fact that evals are an unusually easy type of research to get started with sometimes obscures this fact. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

When it's the same operation over and over again, people catch on. Trying to make narrative building look fresh and new is hard. The agency is no longer writing scripts. Yes, it was even commercials too. The media are weapons of war. There's a division devoted to meme warfare. Harris has a VP list. Paraphrasing so as not to burn sources. It was a strategic Vance appointment. Focusing on Kamm's negative impact. Welcoming America brings in illegal migrants. City budges gravely corrupted. J6 was a media operation using familiar right and left assets. J13 was similar. We The People are now the news. Protecting the crypt of the old guard. Delegates are secured and Act Blue is making moves. It all started in 2004 with Karl Rove. No Kamala, no money. Don't get on her plane. FBI militia setups. When courts are used as weapons against citizens. Who controls the jury wheel selection software? Attorney's must abide by the bar rules. When states and feds team up to entrap citizens. Falsely accused and forced to face both Nessel and Whitmer. An interview with Eric J. Molitor. It's all about faith. We must wear it like armor.

Paraphrasing my most recent guest, Cathy Carroll:  coaches work to have all the right questions, not all the right answers.   But when this particular challenge is part of an ongoing relationship, it's wise to focus on questions before jumping to answers. Asking yourself,what really matters here? What are my interests? My priorities? Is this issue deeply important to me?   We often hear about the value of curiosity. Ask the other person. What are their ideas about this situation and how best to deal with it? Their priorities?Do you have comments or suggestions about a topic or guest? An idea or question about conflict management or conflict resolution? Let me know at jb@dovetailresolutions.com! And you can learn more about me and my work as a mediator and a Certified CINERGY® Conflict Coach at www.dovetailresolutions.com and https://www.linkedin.com/in/janebeddall/.Enjoy the show for free on your favorite podcast app or on the podcast website: https://craftingsolutionstoconflict.com/And you can follow us on Twitter @conflictsolving. 

Are you tired of players constantly metagaming and ruining the suspense in your tabletop role-playing games? Look no further, because in this episode of the RPGBOT.Podcast, we delve into the world of secret rolls and how they can add a new level of excitement and uncertainty to your game. Whether you're a Pathfinder 2 or Dungeons & Dragons 5e player, we've got you covered with tips and tricks on how to effectively use secret rolls in your game. So buckle up, and get ready to take your campaign to the next level with the power of secret rolls. Summary In this episode of the RPGBOT.Podcast, we discuss the use of secret rolls in tabletop role-playing games. We explore the mechanics of secret rolls in Pathfinder 2 and the lack of explicit rules for secret rolls in Dungeons & Dragons 5e. We highlight the benefits of secret rolls in preventing metagaming and creating suspense and uncertainty for players. We also provide practical advice for DMs on how to handle secret rolls, including paraphrasing information and lying when necessary. We discuss the use of secret rolls in knowledge checks and the potential for critical success and failure to reveal the outcome of the roll. Overall, the episode emphasizes the importance of secret rolls in enhancing gameplay and creating a more immersive experience. In this conversation, Tyler, Ash, and Randall discuss the use of secret rolls in tabletop role-playing games, specifically focusing on Pathfinder 2e and Dungeons & Dragons 5e. They explore the benefits and drawbacks of secret rolls in different aspects of the game, including knowledge checks, hide and sneak actions, and social interactions. They also provide tips for building a homebrew campaign, including using random tables for inspiration and creating encounters with multiple monsters, interesting terrain, and complications. Overall, they emphasize the flexibility and creativity that secret rolls can bring to the game. Links Cantrip Candles (Affiliate Link) DnD 3.5 via d20srd.org Sense Motive DnD 5e via DnDBeyond Deception Insight PF2 via Archives of Nethys “Secret” tag Previous Episodes 5-Room Dungeon RPGBOT.net Encounter Builder Other Stuff Asgard's Random World Generator Kobold Fight Club Wattaboo.itch.io Takeaways Secret rolls can prevent metagaming and create suspense and uncertainty for players. Paraphrasing information and lying when necessary can help DMs handle secret rolls effectively. Critical success and failure in knowledge checks can reveal additional information or lead to misinformation. Allowing players to metagame a little when they critically succeed can enhance the gaming experience. Secret rolls can enhance gameplay and create a more immersive experience. Secret rolls can add excitement and unpredictability to tabletop role-playing games Using secret rolls for knowledge checks can prevent metagaming and enhance the role-playing experience In hide and sneak actions, secret rolls can create tension and surprise for both players and GMs Social interactions can benefit from secret rolls, allowing players to make more nuanced decisions and adding an element of mystery When building a homebrew campaign, start with a setting or theme and gradually expand from there Encounters should include multiple monsters, interesting terrain, and complications to make them more engaging and challenging If you enjoy the show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. It's a quick, free way to support the podcast, and helps us reach new listeners. If you love the show, consider joining us on Patreon, where backers at the $5 and above tiers get ad free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT.Podcast, can chat directly to members of the RPGBOT team and community on the RPGBOT.Discord, and can join us for live-streamed recordings. Support us on Amazon.com when you purchase products recommended in the show at the following link: https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ How to Find Us: In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net Tyler Kamstra Twitter: @RPGBOTDOTNET Facebook: rpgbotbotdotnet Bluesky:rpgbot.bsky.social Ash Ely Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games Twitter: @GravenAshes YouTube@ashravenmedia Randall James @JackAmateur Amateurjack.com Producer Dan @Lzr_illuminati

Are you tired of players constantly metagaming and ruining the suspense in your tabletop role-playing games? Look no further, because in this episode of the RPGBOT.Podcast, we delve into the world of secret rolls and how they can add a new level of excitement and uncertainty to your game. Whether you're a Pathfinder 2 or Dungeons & Dragons 5e player, we've got you covered with tips and tricks on how to effectively use secret rolls in your game. So buckle up, and get ready to take your campaign to the next level with the power of secret rolls. Summary In this episode of the RPGBOT.Podcast, we discuss the use of secret rolls in tabletop role-playing games. We explore the mechanics of secret rolls in Pathfinder 2 and the lack of explicit rules for secret rolls in Dungeons & Dragons 5e. We highlight the benefits of secret rolls in preventing metagaming and creating suspense and uncertainty for players. We also provide practical advice for DMs on how to handle secret rolls, including paraphrasing information and lying when necessary. We discuss the use of secret rolls in knowledge checks and the potential for critical success and failure to reveal the outcome of the roll. Overall, the episode emphasizes the importance of secret rolls in enhancing gameplay and creating a more immersive experience. In this conversation, Tyler, Ash, and Randall discuss the use of secret rolls in tabletop role-playing games, specifically focusing on Pathfinder 2e and Dungeons & Dragons 5e. They explore the benefits and drawbacks of secret rolls in different aspects of the game, including knowledge checks, hide and sneak actions, and social interactions. They also provide tips for building a homebrew campaign, including using random tables for inspiration and creating encounters with multiple monsters, interesting terrain, and complications. Overall, they emphasize the flexibility and creativity that secret rolls can bring to the game. Links Cantrip Candles (Affiliate Link) DnD 3.5 via d20srd.org Sense Motive DnD 5e via DnDBeyond Deception Insight PF2 via Archives of Nethys “Secret” tag Previous Episodes 5-Room Dungeon RPGBOT.net Encounter Builder Other Stuff Asgard's Random World Generator Kobold Fight Club Wattaboo.itch.io Takeaways Secret rolls can prevent metagaming and create suspense and uncertainty for players. Paraphrasing information and lying when necessary can help DMs handle secret rolls effectively. Critical success and failure in knowledge checks can reveal additional information or lead to misinformation. Allowing players to metagame a little when they critically succeed can enhance the gaming experience. Secret rolls can enhance gameplay and create a more immersive experience. Secret rolls can add excitement and unpredictability to tabletop role-playing games Using secret rolls for knowledge checks can prevent metagaming and enhance the role-playing experience In hide and sneak actions, secret rolls can create tension and surprise for both players and GMs Social interactions can benefit from secret rolls, allowing players to make more nuanced decisions and adding an element of mystery When building a homebrew campaign, start with a setting or theme and gradually expand from there Encounters should include multiple monsters, interesting terrain, and complications to make them more engaging and challenging If you enjoy the show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. It's a quick, free way to support the podcast, and helps us reach new listeners. If you love the show, consider joining us on Patreon, where backers at the $5 and above tiers get ad free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT.Podcast, can chat directly to members of the RPGBOT team and community on the RPGBOT.Discord, and can join us for live-streamed recordings. Support us on Amazon.com when you purchase products recommended in the show at the following link: https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ How to Find Us: In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net Tyler Kamstra Twitter: @RPGBOTDOTNET Facebook: rpgbotbotdotnet Bluesky:rpgbot.bsky.social Ash Ely Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games Twitter: @GravenAshes YouTube@ashravenmedia Randall James @JackAmateur Amateurjack.com Producer Dan @Lzr_illuminati

Kevin Wright, vice president of production and development at Marvel Studios, has left the media giant to pursue producing his own original tv and film ideas. Notably, Wright was an executive producer for the MCU streaming series Loki, which was actually his pitch to Kevin Feige and series star Tom Hiddleston. Wright originally started at Marvel as a development assistant. Happy Hunger Games! At least certainly for fans of the franchise as author Suzanne Collins announced a new installment in her Hunger Games saga called Sunrise on the Reaping, which will release March 18, 2025. The book is another prequel like The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Alongside this announcement, Lionsgate shared that a film adaptation of the new book is already greenlit and currently set to premiere on November 20, 2026. At a panel for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim at the Annecy Animation Festival, 20 minutes of the film was shown to the audience. The footage was applauded by the crowd and by Andy Serkis, who was running the panel. Serkis also revealed at the event that Miranda Otto, who played Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy will serve as the story's narrator and that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh were executive producers on the film, which hits theaters in December. Maybe franchise fever still exists! One would think so after seeing that Will Smith and Martin Lawrence's latest team up, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, crushed its opening weekend projections, opening at $104.6 million globally. The film punished Furiosa's opening with a 58% higher box office. Abbott Elementary actor Tyler James Williams asked Anthony Mackie about the challenges he faced transitioning Sam Wilson from films to television. Paraphrasing, Mackie said “Bringing Falcon to that series, there was so much time to fill. It's literally so much story and so much exposition and so much character that it's a daunting task. Luckily it was just a great experience with great leadership.” Legendary has tapped Grant Sputore to direct the next theatrical outing in the Monsterverse franchise following March's Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Sputore most recently helmed the 2019 sci-fi movie I Am Mother. Kristen Stewart will make her TV series-starring debut in The Challenger, a limited series in which she'll play Sally Ride, the astronaut and physicist who became the first American woman to fly in space. Paul Giamatti has joined the cast of Paramount's Star Trek Starfleet Academy as a recurring guest star role and as the season's central villain. Set in the same era as The Acolyte, the next adult novel of Phase III of The High Republic from Star Wars releases on June 11. Stars of 1998's cult classic Practical Magic, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, are in talks to star in a sequel. Entertainment Weekly claims to confirm that Taylor Swift will not be appearing as Dazzler in July's Deadpool & Wolverine. Peacemaker Season 2 cast Picard actress Sol Rodiguez and The Office actor David Denman. The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke announced that the show will end after its fifth season. The Yahya Abdul-Mateen II-led Wonder Man series is rumored to be 10 episodes long. The Frasier revival on Paramount+ has added two Frasier alumni to the cast. Dan Butler, who played Bulldog, and Edward Hibbert, who played Gil Chesterton on the original show, will return to guest star in season two of the revival series. Zack Snyder's director's cuts of both Rebel Moon films will be released on Netflix on August 2nd. The rated R cuts also received new titles which are Chapter One: Chalice of Blood and Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness. Saturday Night Live actor Beck Bennett becomes the newest addition to the cast of James Gunn's Superman. Rumor has it Bennett will play a reporter of note in the movie. Last week Mikaela Hoover and Christopher McDonald were also added to the cast and will also play reporters in The Daily Planet newsroom.

Communications Coach Shweta Ramkumar shares insights into teaching active listening skills to healthcare professionals. In this episode, Shweta explains what active listening is, why it's important and how we can develop this skill in the ESL classroom.Click here to watch this episode with closed captions.KEY TALKING POINTSDefining Active ListeningShweta talks about being present in the moment, holding space, and empathising as just a few characteristics that differentiate active listening from other types. Shweta shares insights into working with healthcare professionals and how active listening is crucial to their work.Active Listening in the ClassroomShweta reflects on why active listening is so challenging to apply in teaching and other professions due to the multiple tasks we have to manage. Pulling on her own experience, Shweta shares the negative consequences of not practising active listening in our classrooms and workplaces.Active Listening TrainingShweta shares how she introduces active listening to her clients by getting them to reflect on what they miss in a conversation. By starting with a short warmer of sharing about herself, Shweta encourages her clients to reflect on what they can recall and what they missed as a first step.Paraphrasing as a ToolShweta suggests paraphrasing in the classroom to help learners feel seen and heard. Paraphrasing can be used to replace parroting and asking each other to repeat.ABOUTShweta Ramkumar is a communications coach for healthcare professionals. Her coaching sessions focus on developing her clients' language and skills so they can build stronger relationships, credibility and trust with their patients and the wider community. Shweta shares practical tips and insights on communication skills via her website, YouTube channel and social media channels where you can find her at Healthy Dynamics.Visit Shweta's website here to learn more.REFERENCESHealthy Dynamics (2023). The Do's and Don'ts of Active Listening. YouTube. Available here. Accessed on 04.06.2024Say thanks with coffeehttps://ko-fi.com/tesolpopCREDITSProducer Laura WilkesEditor Haven TsangThanks to our inspiring guest, Shweta Ramkumar. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speakers for AI Engineer World's Fair have been announced! See our Microsoft episode for more info and buy now with code LATENTSPACE — we've been studying the best ML research conferences so we can make the best AI industry conf! Note that this year there are 4 main tracks per day and dozens of workshops/expo sessions; the free livestream will air much less than half of the content this time.Apply for free/discounted Diversity Program and Scholarship tickets here. We hope to make this the definitive technical conference for ALL AI engineers.ICLR 2024 took place from May 6-11 in Vienna, Austria. Just like we did for our extremely popular NeurIPS 2023 coverage, we decided to pay the $900 ticket (thanks to all of you paying supporters!) and brave the 18 hour flight and 5 day grind to go on behalf of all of you. We now present the results of that work!This ICLR was the biggest one by far, with a marked change in the excitement trajectory for the conference:Of the 2260 accepted papers (31% acceptance rate), of the subset of those relevant to our shortlist of AI Engineering Topics, we found many, many LLM reasoning and agent related papers, which we will cover in the next episode. We will spend this episode with 14 papers covering other relevant ICLR topics, as below.As we did last year, we'll start with the Best Paper Awards. Unlike last year, we now group our paper selections by subjective topic area, and mix in both Outstanding Paper talks as well as editorially selected poster sessions. Where we were able to do a poster session interview, please scroll to the relevant show notes for images of their poster for discussion. To cap things off, Chris Ré's spot from last year now goes to Sasha Rush for the obligatory last word on the development and applications of State Space Models.We had a blast at ICLR 2024 and you can bet that we'll be back in 2025

Preparing to speak in front of a skeptical audience is more than thinking about objections beforehand – there are specific techniques you can use to respond to these challenging situations without sounding defensive, evasive, or dismissive. Here, we offer a few key tips for how to handle skepticism with aplomb.In this podcast, host Matt Abrahams and Stanford GSB lecturer Burt Alper share how to prepare for these challenges from your audience and discuss the importance of tactics like acknowledging audience input, reframing responses, and how to remain cool, collected, and credible.Episode Reference Links:Burt Alper: WebsiteStanford Profile: Website Ep.102 Create a Presence: How to Communicate in a Way Others Can Feel: Website / YouTube Ep.70 Keep 'Em Coming: Why Your First Ideas Aren't Always the Best: Website / YouTube Original Episode - Ep.5 From Monologue to Dialogue: How to Handle a Skeptical Audience: Website / YouTubeConnect:Email Questions & Feedback >>> thinkfast@stanford.eduEpisode Transcripts >>> Think Fast Talk Smart WebsiteNewsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>> FasterSmarter.ioThink Fast Talk Smart >>> LinkedIn Page, Instagram, YouTubeMatt Abrahams >>> LinkedInStanford GSB >>> LinkedIn & TwitterChapters:(00:00:00) IntroductionHost Matt Abrahams introduces the episode and guest Burt Alper, a fellow strategic communication lecturer at Stanford GSB(00:00:55) Handling Direct ObjectionsConfronting direct objections during presentations, particularly in professional settings like executive meetings or at the GSB.(00:02:37) Preparation for ObjectionsThe importance of preparation when anticipating objections and strategies for foreseeing potential pushbacks.(00:03:50) Emotional vs. Logical ObjectionsDistinctions between emotional and logical objections and how these types of objections manifest in conversations.(00:06:09) The Power of ReframingThe technique of reframing in objection handling and altering the context of a conversation to address concerns without conceding.(00:08:17) The Role of ParaphrasingParaphrasing as a critical skill for clarifying and addressing objections, with the benefits of accurately restating concerns to ensure mutual understanding.(00:12:11) The Final Three QuestionsBurt Alper shares the best communication advice he's received, a communicator he admires, and his ingredients for successful communication.(00:14:55) ConclusionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

CONQUER SHYNESS

Have you ever felt like you're speaking, but nobody is truly listening? This month on Do Good to Lead Well, I bring you the secrets to amplifying your listening skills, inspired by the wisdom shared in the bestselling book, ‘Crucial Conversations' by Kerry Patterson and their colleagues. As we wave goodbye to March and gear up to tackle the rest of the year, there's no better skill to polish than the art of active listening. In this episode, we unpack the AMPP model (yes, that is not a spelling mistake), and how it can transform the way you connect with others, solve problems, and foster positive team dynamics.  In our lives, both personal and professional, the simple yet profound act of listening holds the key to unlocking vast pools of knowledge. I'll guide you through crafting open-ended questions that invite expansive and enlightening dialogue, steering clear of those that lead to dead-end  ‘yes' or ‘no' answers. You'll also discover the power of mirroring, a simple yet profound technique that reflects understanding and empathy. You have likely seen it work wonders with infants, and I'll show you how it can have the same impact on adults in any setting. No guests this time around, just you and me exploring the profound impact of deep listening and how it can lead to more meaningful interactions and outcomes. These strategies are not just theoretical—they're backed by compelling research and real-world application, ready for you to apply in your daily interactions. Join me on this journey to elevate not only how you listen but how you can make the people you care about feel heard. What You'll Learn - Why active listening is so important and why so few of us do it effectively. - The art of strategic questioning and how it deepens relationships and accesses new insights. - How to employ mirroring to build rapport and show understanding. - How paraphrasing is the ultimate fail-safe tool to demonstrate active listening. - How to prime conversations for constructive outcomes, even in conflict Podcast Timestamps (0:00) - Introduction to the Episode (2:30) - The Importance of Active Listening and an Overview of the AMPP Model (5:12) – The Power of Asking Open-Ended Questions (8:57) - Mirroring in Conversations (14:29) - The Art of Paraphrasing (19:45) - Priming the Conversation (21:55) - Conclusion Key Topics Discussed Active Listening, Engaging Conversation, Meaningful Connection, Communication, Open-ended Questions, Mirroring, Ask Questions, Managing Relationships, Curiosity, Rapport, Empathy, Emotional Intelligence More of Do Good to Lead Well: Website: https://craigdowden.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigdowden/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/craig-dowden/message

Hello Interactors,It's been a while since we've been together. I took some time over the holiday break. We often think of parents spoiling kids upon their return from college, but I'm the one who feels spoiled.We're squarely in the winter season up north and that means I'll be exploring human behavior. With all the talk of AI, I thought I'd start with its root inspiration — the neuron. How did these come to be?Let's find out.As I stand here today, the earth's declination angle is slowly inching toward zero as its orbital tilt brings us closer to spring. This will trigger a host of biological and biochemical chain reactions. Plants awake, buds break, birds migrate, insects propagate, amphibians' mate, seeds germinate, furs abate, and soils emanate. Algae plumes bloom, and our own metabolism's resume.This shared sensing of environmental change makes common sense because we can sense it with our own senses. Less common is making sense of what we can't sense. That's what I'm trying to make sense of. Let's start with cells.Cells can also make sense of their environment, and of each other. Consensus belief says cellular life emerged nearly 3.7 billion years ago on a rotating and orbiting earth that had already been oscillating in a predictable pattern for 750 million years. Early cellular organisms learned to predict these patterns, as the theory goes, getting an evolutionary leg up on the competition. This knowledge was then stored in the cell. I was surprised to learn a cell can store information.Ricard Solé is a prominent researcher who applies complex systems concepts to biology. He explained in a recent podcast how cells perform associative learning through reactions to different external stimuli — a process fundamental to the evolution of cognition. This learning involves associating a specific signal with a stressor in a cell's environment. Over time, they learn to respond to the signal, even in the absence of the original stressor. A bit like a Pavlovian response.This information is then stored within the cell. Cells have complex signaling networks that gather information from the cell membrane and transmit it internally from the membrane to the genome or nucleus. These signals act as boolean "genetic switches." The switch involves pairs of genes that negatively regulate each other, creating a kind of memory storage system. As one gene tries to regulate the other, that gene is trying to do the same. Like two magnets competing to repel or attract. This leads to a binary outcome — the conflict produces a specific protein, or it does not. This process is akin to the binary electronic circuitry found in signaling networks used to process and store information on a computer. (more on that in future posts on this topic)Cells that can respond to the environment, or conditions within itself, can secrete something into their environment. But if there are no other cells to receive them as signals or with the intention to propagate their stored information, this operation serves no function. Over evolutionary time, however, cells began to form functionalities. For example, through expressions formed from their genetic circuitry, the cells that make up your liver and kidney evolved to conduct basic metabolic functions. Meanwhile, the cells that make up neurons in your brain evolved to send and receive information — to communicate with each other. A major step in evolution.Another major evolutionary step, according to Solé, came with interneurons. These are neurons that form connections between sensory neurons to process information between them. Many neurons connected by many interneurons form arrays of neural circuits capable of more complex information processing. Organisms that don't have interneurons, like plants, pose a real biological and evolutionary disadvantage among energy competing biological organisms. Though, they created their own biological functions that are so wondrous they induce jealousy, like photosynthesis. Imagine getting fed by lying in the sun with your feet in the sand. Did I mention it's winter in the gloomy northwest?Solé believes the invention of interneurons provided the critical step toward a key component in the evolution of complex organisms like us, but also organisms that came before us like jellyfish. Jellyfish are made of a distributed ‘nerve net' composed of sensory neurons, motor neurons, and interneurons similar to ours. This network conducts basic processing for various sensory and motor functions. For example, it can sense elements of its environment, like water currents and temperatures, which then trigger responses like swimming or eating.Directed locomotion in response to sensory information processing serves as another critical step on the path of evolution — predation. Not only is the jellyfish sensing the water around them, but they're also sensing the presence of predators and their nervous system conspires to act accordingly. As remarkable and complex a jellyfish is at storing information that allows it to predict and act to internal and external stimuli, it took another evolutionary leap to yield the kind of complex neural networks and biological systems we humans rely on.In the words of Ricard Solé, “we tend to think [we humans], unfortunately for our planet, [] have been very, very successful.” He considers humans ‘ecological engineers' because we can “transform the planet by changing flows of energy and matter at massive scales.” The question remains (as we transform the planet in ways that make it harder for us and the organisms we rely on to survive) is our evolutionary journey entering a phase transition? Are we teaching our cells a new lesson to be stored away for future generations, or another failed biological experiment nearing the end of the relentless and brutal path of evolutionary trial and error?Paraphrasing the esteemed biologist E. O. Wilson, Solé offers that “if humans were not here, there would be the planet of the ants”. Ants have a form of collective intelligence that also allow them to transform the planet at massive scales, but to also survive seemingly insurmountable odds. Is there something to be learned from ants? An ant, on its own, is as unremarkable as it is doomed. Can the same be said for us? Who are we without other humans? And even when we're alone, are we really? We host an entire ecosystem of microorganisms for which we are mutually dependent for survival. Some feed on us, some try to kill us, while others conspire with our cells in competition and collaboration to make sense of each other — including the cells that make neurons. What kind of intelligence will they we need to survive another trip around the sun? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How Would an Utopia-Maximizer Look Like?, published by Thane Ruthenis on December 20, 2023 on The AI Alignment Forum. When we talk of aiming for the good future for humanity - whether by aligning AGI or any other way - it's implicit that there are some futures that "humanity" as a whole would judge as good. That in some (perhaps very approximate) sense, humanity could be viewed as an agent with preferences, and that our aim is to satisfy said preferences. But is there a theoretical basis for this? Could there be? How would it look like? Is there a meaningful frame in which humanity be viewed as optimizing for its purported preferences across history? Is it possible or coherent to imagine a wrapper-mind set to the task of maximizing for the utopia, whose activity we'd actually endorse? This post aims to sketch out answers to these questions. In the process, it also outlines how my current models of basic value reflection and extrapolation work. Informal Explanation Basic Case Is an utopia that'd be perfect for everyone possible? The short and obvious answer is no. Our civilization contains omnicidal maniacs and true sadists, whose central preferences are directly at odds with the preferences of most other people. Their happiness is diametrically opposed to other people's. Less extremely, it's likely that most individuals' absolutely perfect world would fail to perfectly satisfy most others. As a safe example, we could imagine someone who loves pizza, yet really, really hates seafood, to such an extent that they're offended by the mere knowledge that seafood exists somewhere in the world. Their utopia would not have any seafood anywhere - and that would greatly disappoint seafood-lovers. If we now postulate the existence of a pizza-hating seafood-lover... Nevertheless, there are worlds that would make both of them happy enough. A world in which everyone is free to eat food that's tasty according to their preferences, and is never forced to interact with the food they hate. Both people would still dislike the fact that their hated dishes exist somewhere. But as long as food-hating is not their core value that's dominating their entire personality, they'd end up happy enough. Similarly, it intuitively feels that worlds which are strictly better according to most people's entire arrays of preferences are possible. Empowerment is one way to gesture at it - a world in which each individual is simply given more instrumental resources, a greater ability to satisfy whatever preferences they happen to have. (With some limitations on impacting other people, etc.) But is it possible to arrive at this idea from first principles? By looking at humanity and somehow "eliciting"/"agglomerating" its preferences formally? A process like CEV? A target to hit that's "objectively correct" according to humanity's own subjective values, rather than your subjective interpretation of its values? Paraphrasing, we're looking for an utility function such that the world-state maximizing it is ranked as very high by the standards of most humans' preferences; an utility function that's correlated with the "agglomeration" of most humans' preferences. Let's consider what we did in the foods example. We discovered two disparate preferences, and then we abstracted up from them - from concrete ideas like "seafood" and "pizza", to an abstraction over them: food-in-general. And we've discover that, although the individuals' preferences disagreed on the concrete level, they ended up basically the same at the higher level. Trivializing, it turned out that a seafood-optimizer and a pizza-optimizer could both be viewed as tasty-food-optimizers. The hypothesis, then, would go as follows: at some very high abstraction level, the level of global matters and fundamental philosophy, most humans' preferences converg...

To win friends and be more interesting to people, it is crucial to hone your active listening skills. Begin by giving your undivided attention to the speaker, maintaining eye contact, and eliminating distractions. Show your presence by resisting the urge to formulate responses prematurely, allowing the speaker to express themselves fully. Demonstrate empathy by acknowledging the speaker's feelings and perspectives. Utilize open-ended questions to encourage elaborate responses, fostering a deeper connection. Paraphrasing and summarizing what you've heard not only confirm your understanding but also convey a commitment to the conversation. Avoid interruptions and practice patience, allowing the speaker to share their thoughts without feeling rushed. Provide positive feedback and appreciation for their insights, creating a supportive and affirming atmosphere. Being non-judgmental and suspending immediate opinions fosters an open dialogue where individuals feel valued and understood. Remembering details from past conversations showcases your investment in the relationship, further strengthening the bond. By incorporating these elements, you can master the art of listening, ultimately winning friends and captivating people's interest through genuine and attentive communication. Free Course: The Assertiveness Accelerator Free Guide: The Ultimate Way to Start Conversations and Leave Them Wanting More Get on the waitlist and be the first notified when we open The School of Social Mastery Schedule  your: "Radiate Social Confidence Now" Chemistry Call   The Social Priming System: The #1 Way to create your desired social outcomes Social Confidence Pro  FREE Download: ---> Essential Business Etiquette Tips: The Definitive List of "Must-Know" social rules for success with co-workers, clients, and customers

State standards and state tests emphasize the importance of "main idea" in reading instruction. Many schools (and commercial programs) in response to this try to teach main idea by having students read texts and answer main idea questions. However, that neither improves students' ability to answer such questions or reading comprehension. This podcast explains why and provides practical advice about what kinds of teaching students should receive concerning the main idea. Listen to this podcast and you'll find out why the main idea is not the main idea when it comes to teaching reading comprehension.

CounselingExamHow often have you found yourself caught between paraphrasing and summarizing, unsure of the fine line that differentiates them? Don't fret! Stacy Frost and Dr. Linton Hutchinson are here to sweep away confusion and shed light on these two essential counseling skills in a way you've never encountered before. As hosts of Licensure Exams, they masterfully unpack the intricacies of paraphrasing and summarizing, demonstrating how paraphrasing involves capturing the crux of a client's specific message, while summarizing is about compacting the main points, problems, or themes over a session, or multiple sessions.As Stacy and Linton weave their unique perspectives into this enlightening conversation, you'll learn how effective paraphrasing can demonstrate understanding of a client's sentiment, and summarizing can aptly encapsulate an entire session into key points. Get ready to challenge yourself in an interactive session where they play a game of identifying whether a statement is a paraphrase or a summary. Plus, there's a contest for the listeners, with the first to correctly respond to a Facebook post winning a personal Zoom call with them. By the time you're done with this episode, you'll not only understand paraphrasing and summarizing like never before, but also be fully prepped to employ these skills in your practice. Ready to take your counseling skills up a notch? Tune in now!If you need to study for your NCMHCE narrative exam, try the free samplers at: CounselingExam.comThis podcast is not associated with the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC) or any state or governmental agency responsible for licensure.

NationalCounselingExamHow often have you found yourself caught between paraphrasing and summarizing, unsure of the fine line that differentiates them? Don't fret! Stacy Frost and Dr. Linton Hutchinson are here to sweep away confusion and shed light on these two essential counseling skills in a way you've never encountered before. As hosts of Licensure Exams, they masterfully unpack the intricacies of paraphrasing and summarizing, demonstrating how paraphrasing involves capturing the crux of a client's specific message while summarizing is about compacting the main points, problems, or themes over a session or multiple sessions.As Stacy and Linton weave their unique perspectives into this enlightening conversation, you'll learn how effective paraphrasing can demonstrate an understanding of a client's sentiment and how summarizing can aptly encapsulate an entire session into key points. Get ready to challenge yourself in an interactive session where they play a game of identifying whether a statement is a paraphrase or a summary. Plus, there's a contest for the listeners, with the first to correctly respond to a Facebook post winning a personal Zoom call with them. By the time you're done with this episode, you'll not only understand paraphrasing and summarizing like never before but also be fully prepared to employ these skills in your practice. Ready to take your counseling skills up a notch? Tune in now!If preparing for your National Counseling Exam visit NationalCounselingExam and try our samplers completely free of charge! It's a fantastic way to identify any areas you might want to review. and brush up on.This podcast is not associated with the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC) or any state or governmental agency responsible for licensure.

I feel so touched and honored to have Harvey Ruderian on this week's episode of the Voices of Wisdom podcast. A profoundly masterful bodyworker whose history of spiritual and political revolutionary work stretches back into the counterculture movements of the 60's and 70's, Harvey has precisely the kind of deep, elder wisdom transmission that this podcast was designed to share with the world. Although our conversation covers a wide range of topics, they all point back to the interrelationship between spirituality and politics. For Harvey, to be a healer is to be a revolutionary, committed to ending the war in the body. We discuss how it is just as courageous and revolutionary a move to face your core wounds and traumas as it is to face the negativity and institutionalized suffering in this world – for both moves ultimately arise from a desire for freedom, for liberation, and the continued evolution of consciousness.  Paraphrasing the depth psychologist James Hillman, Harvey reminds us that we can't just sit here and deny politics and just work on our inner child. Rather, by attending to our social and political environments, we can move from an ego-centric spirituality to a world-centric or even cosmic-centric spirituality, cultivating a love that extends both inwards to our deepest wounds and outwards to those around us who need it most. We also cover: The revolutionary teachings of Jesus, and how subversive they were for his society The art of surrender Using indigenous ritual to connect to the earth The role of eros and nature in facilitating deep healing The evolutionary biology of our chronic hyper-vigilance Aiming for a shift in consciousness, rather than a shift in technology, to liberate the world And so much more!   If you want to connect with me, shoot me an email at hello@vicky-aldana.com. And as always, you can find me on Instagram, @vickylizette.

In today's explosive episode, we're pulling back the curtain on Vivek Ramas Swami, the "golden boy" of next-gen politics. You know, the guy everyone and their grandma is singing praises about? Well, hold onto your hats, because this isn't your run-of-the-mill campaign fluff piece. We're diving deep, and I mean Mariana Trench deep, into the hidden corridors of Ramaswamy's life—from his George Soros-funded stint at Yale Law School to his oh-so-coincidental feature on the World Economic Forum website. But wait, there's more! We kick off this jam-packed episode with a bizarre tale you've got to hear to believe. Ever heard of the "Don't Tread on Me" flag? Of course you have. Well, some woke school district tried to ban a 12-year-old from sporting it on his backpack. Yep, apparently it's now "racist." But don't worry, we've got a happy ending to this madness, and it's one you'll want to hear. So before you blindly jump on the Ramaswamy hype-train, you might wanna know who's conducting it, right? Trust me, you don't want to miss this no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is episode. It's time to shake up the echo chamber, question the narrative, and expose the truth.   All links: https://linktr.ee/theaustinjadams Substack: https://austinadams.substack.com   ----more----  Full Transcription Hello, you beautiful people and welcome to the Adams Archive. My name is Austin Adams, and thank you so much for listening. Today. On today's episode, we are going to be doing a deep, deep dive into presidential candidate Vivek Ramas Swami. Now, you might be saying why we love this guy, and I get it. I've been singing his praises for quite some time now. Uh, I have, have had many, many times told many people about how excited I was for his candidacy, but I'm not just going to blindly follow what everybody else is doing, and I'm not just going to buy into the hype when I see some red flags. So that's what we'll going over today is just some of those red flags and I'll let you make your own decision. But by the end of this, I hope to have a conclusion for you from my perspective. Okay. So this episode will be going into all of the history of Avek Ramas Swami from his George Soros funded time at Yale Law School to his alleged, uh, mishap where he just so happened to find himself listed on the World Economic Forum website. Hmm. And then even deeper into his time in a fraternity at Yale until now. So we'll watch some of the clips. I'll tell you why I like the guy. I'll tell you why I think the guy could be a great candidate, but I'll also tell you why there's some red flags being waved in my book now. The only other topic that we will discuss before that is going to be that there was a 12 year old child going to school who was told, if you've ever seen the flag, the yellow flag, I know you've seen it with a snake on it that says, don't tread on me. Right. Everybody knows that flag. Most people like me correlate it with the United States Marine Corps, but we'll look at the history of that because it came into question during a school district telling a child that they could not walk around school with that patch on their backpack because it was allegedly racist. Hmm. But we do have a conclusion to this and one that I'm actually proud to share in a world of so much wokeness. So stick around for that. First, I need you to head over to the CK Austin Adams, do sub stack.com. Sign up for the podcast companion. Then I need you to subscribe and leave a five star review. Alright guys, I appreciate it a lot. We've been getting some great reviews recently. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. It's the only way that you can give back right now for all of the hard work that I'm putting into this. This is now the 84th episode, which means almost over a hundred hours that we've spent here together. And there's no way to pay me back other than just leaving a review. That's all I want. Just spread the message, send this video, send this out to two different people. The podcast, subscribe on YouTube, do whatever you can to get the message out. Uh, as you know, a lot of times on social media, I am either shadow banned. Or completely banned like TikTok. Uh, so there's only a few ways that I can get the message out, and that's through you guys sharing my stuff with people that you know and love. All right. So without further ado, today's deep dive on the Adams archive is on Vivek Ramas Swami, the Adams Archive. All right. In another win for freedom, a school has reinstated the 12 year old in Colorado who is kicked out of class for sporting the Don't Tread on me flag. Otherwise known as the Gadsden flag. I didn't actually know the name of that until now when this happened. I guess I should have. Uh, but I always just correlated this with the Marine Corps for some reason. I know that's a very, uh, consistent flag flown for the Marines. However, learning the history of this, I am a big fan of the history of this flag. So it actually dates back to the Revolutionary War, and it was something that was, came up with, and maybe we can go into the history of this just a little bit, um, but it has its place in history, right? It, it, it basically was a, a show of power against the British clergy to show that we will not stand idly while you strip us of our freedoms. That's the history. That's it. Revolutionary war. There's nothing other than that about it. Okay. Now there was a teacher who took that flag and decided that it was now going to be racist and went as far as to having a parent teacher meeting about it, and then even had somebody from her district back her up. So let's go ahead and watch this video. And again, you can always see it right here with me on the YouTube. All right, so here we go. Oh, okay. Hold on. Thank you.  Do they know what the Gadson flag is? That's a historical flag. So there, um, the reason that they do not want the flag, the reason we do not want the flag slave mm-hmm. Is due to its origins with the re slavery and slave tribe. That is what was, um, as the reasoning behind them. Not like the Gadsden blood, the don't tread on me. Okay. Which is the Gadsden blood. Okay. Um, okay. So he, he um, now this kid has the best smile on his face right now. What's happen if he doesn't take it off? He, I mean, he is able to go, I was actually just telling him like I was upset that he was missing so much school. I'm like, ah. So I asked if, can he just take his stuff out of his bag and go back to class? Like I just want him to go back to class. The bag can't go back. It's got patch on it. 'cause we can't have that in and around other kids. So that's what I was trying And then he said, you were close. So I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. It has nothing to do with slavery. That's like the Revolutionary War patch that was enslaved when they were fighting the British. Like that wasn't, that's the revolution. Maybe you're thinking of like the, um, the Confederate pe arm Confederate flag. Okay. I so. I'm just here to enforce, is there, tell me. No, I am here to enforce the policy that was provided Okay. By the district. Okay. And definitely you have every right to not agree with it. I mean, I, yeah, because the c u says that he's allowed to wear that if you like, go on their website, it's like, says in the big letters. So I all, I, all I'm saying is that unless there's like a ban on patches period, like if you said there's no patches allowed at the school, you cannot display what you think or anything like that or what cheer or anything like that. Um, I, I don't, I think it's like one sided, you know, because you allow some patches, but not other patches. Other kids have patches like other names and like these American flag backpacks. Yeah. That was like flown during the revolution with, um, yeah. I, I just don't wonder stand that at all. So what I can do is, and if you, if you go onto the ACLU's website, Yeah, let's, let's talk to someone speak, because I don't have a lawsuit. I really don't. I can speak, I can have you speak to our Jeff Yoko again. Okay. Um, and then he can refer you to our person at the district. Okay. Um, because like I said, we're following district policy. Okay. Is what we're doing. Okay. So the last thing I want is him out of class. Yeah. I know that. That's all my, the last thing I want takes his classes seriously. He studies, he does. He wants to get straight A's he did that he made honor roll when he was here before. He intends to do that again right now. But it's hard 'cause he keeps missing class for this. So I understand that. Yeah. And I mean, we teach him to always stick up for your beliefs and I mean, you're going over the revolution. This for seventh grade, I mean the founding fathers stood up for what they believed in against unjust laws.  This is unjust. 100%. Get it mama. We are upholding a policy that was provided to us, which we have to avoid. Okay. Can you show me where the policy. I absolutely applaud this mother for everything that she just did there, stood her ground, articulately stated her case, said, I don't understand why you guys would ever think that this is anything to do with slavery. This is a flag that was flown against the British during the Revolutionary War. Now what would happen if he didn't? So she did her research on this. She knew exactly what to say, and, and I applaud her even more so because she's sitting there with another child, like a baby sitting in a car seat in front of her while making this case. Um, and so here's the update on this. Alright, so they eventually, uh, sent a letter. To the district. So it says, meet 12 year old Jayden, who was kicked out of class yesterday in Colorado Springs for having a Gadsden flag patch, which the school claims has origins with slavery. The school's director via email, uh, said that the patch was disruptive to the classroom environment. Now, the receipts from this with the Jeff Yokum that was, uh, told in reference to this mother was about, uh, dress code. Now, this actually happened yesterday and this email back and forth from the Vanguard School District. The, uh, individuals is Jeff Do Yokum, Y O U, or Y O C U m@thevanguardschool.com said, Mrs. Rodriguez, I, as I discussed, I'm providing you the rationale for determining the Gadsden flag is considered an unacceptable symbol, first case when E E O C required the complaint to be reviewed. This was the Washington Post. Saying Wear don't wearing, don't tread on me. Insignia. Could be punishable. Racial harassment then posts the tied to the Confederate flag and other white supremacist groups, including Patriot groups. Huh? Patriot groups. How dare you. Uh, then there's additional photos. Let's see if we can get the bottom of this. No. Okay. So then basically what ended up happening with this, the, what they ended up citing on this was somebody who is a graphic design scholar from the conversation.com. Hmm. So it also says that rattlesnake imagery in the United States, or the American Revolution was hosted and fueled by Ben Franklin's papers and interest in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Franklin spent the latter part of his life petitioning Congress to free South slaves. But assistant Dean equity doesn't. Know that hmm many anx were quick to side with Jaden and his mother pointing out that the rattlesnake imagery of the gadson flag was inspired by Benjamin Franklin, who spent the latter part of his life petitioning Congress to free the South's slaves, the Epper Minutemen, who had also used the symbol Incorporated eight 14 black and native men in black flag bearer, a greater diversity than many other regimens, according to Tony Cannet, an investigative colonist of the Daily Signal. Uh, so the result of this was that the district reached out and had a message because this spread like wildfire. And it said yesterday, the student was returned. The student returned with the patch still visible on his backpack. Following the district's direction, Vanguard administration or administrators pulled the student aside so that they could speak with his parents in the district. Upon learning that they have these events to the today, the Vanguard School Board of Directors called an Emergency Meeting From Vanguard's founding, we have proudly supported our constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the ordered liberty that all Americans have enjoyed for almost 250 years. The Vanguard School recognizes the historical significant of the Gadsden flag in its place in history. This is incident is an occasion for us to reaffirm our deep commitment to a classical education in support of these American principals. At this time, the Vanguard School Board and the district have informed the student's family that he may attend school with the Gadsden flag patch visible on his pack, on his backpack. Sincerely, the va Vanguard School Board of Directors of. Good. Good. Finally, some decency and some, you know, reasonable conversations being happening now. There was actually a picture that came out of this child with his backpack standing in front of a teacher's car, which said, make America Green again. So the teachers were allowed to post these things on their vehicles and drive around with them, but a student can't wear this on his backpack. Very, very interesting. So chalk it up for another win for freedom, as I said earlier. Right. We've seen it with Target, we've seen it with, uh, all Bud Light. We've saw it with all of the things that we've seen pop up recently. All of the, the music that is topping the charts, the Richmond, north of Richmond, um, all of it has, has culminated to show that there is power in numbers. There is power in speaking out. I saw this. I saw this graphic the other day that showed a, like what looked like a, a authoritarian Egyptian slave bearer with a whip whipping a group of people. It was like a row of people. And then the next column was one person of that group standing up and the slave bear still, or owner, still whipping that person. And then the next group of people behind that, one person starts to stand up. There's a group of them now, and then the slave bear, the slave owner whips them again, and then everybody stands up and the the slave owner runs. And this is such a good graphic, such a good. Picture of what it means to go through what we all went through in the last three, four years, where we went from, nobody's standing up against this, nobody's speaking out against it, nobody. It wasn't cool to be, you know, talking out against C O V I and you know, it wasn't, it wasn't cool. We were getting banned and shadow banned and getting our accounts ripped away from us not led into airports and, and not allowed to get a job and or keep your job even if you had one already. We saw so many instances where nobody was standing up. There was very few of us, and that was the very precipice of when I started this podcast was because I saw that there was so few people standing up during this crazy time while the curtains were being pulled back of authoritarianism. Once we were learning what was really going on in these institutions, So little people were standing up, but now we're seeing there's a massive group standing up against these things. Standing up for freedom, standing up for liberty, standing up for the rights of our children and their schools to display their support for our constitution and what it stands for. So really happy to see this once again, another win. Alright, so with that, let's dive into our conversation about Vivek Ramis Swami. Now, I have been for a very long time, months now since he announced his candidacy almost, it seems like been saying how interested I was in Vivec as a candidate and there was really one thing for me. There was one thing for me about Vivec. Made me really question him. That has kind of made a little, it was the thread on the sweatshirt that started to unravel it for me. And again, I'm not coming to any conclusions on this yet. Uh, I still don't know how I feel about it fully, but I just wanna show you what, to me, has been the red flags. And maybe you've seen some of them, and maybe you haven't. And maybe because I mentioned him, you started to pay attention to him and support him. So, I, I just wanna be transparent here, guys. I don't know how to feel about Vivek. There's been several red flags, far more red flags than I would like to see about a candidate at this stage of the race. The biggest red flag for me of Vivek was his Obama opener at the debate stage. Now you must be wondering, who's this skinny guy with a funny last name doing, standing on a presidential debate stage? That, to me, started it all. I. And here it's, so first, lemme just address a question that is on everybody's mind at home tonight. Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name? And what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage, the hope of a mill worker's son who dares to defy the odds, the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name, who believes that America has a place for him too. So first, lemme just address a question that is on everybody's mind at home tonight. Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name? And what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage? The hope of a mill worker's son now dares to defy the odds there is the, there is the back to back between those sounds. Pretty familiar, huh? For a Republican candidate to verbatim, verbatim, Rip off. Barack Obama's just, this was one of the most famous statements in presidential history, right? That there's a reason that this was immediately followed up by, uh, Chris Christie on stage with him calling him out for it was because everybody knows this statement. This was a statement that everybody went wild for. Who is this skinny guy with a funny last name and what is he doing on this debate stage? I don't think anybody was asking that about Vivek. I think he was a little out of touch. And then to actually re I, I don't know if this was supposed to be a quirky, funny nod to that statement. Maybe that's the case. Maybe we can, we can attribute naivety or, uh, comedy where malice is being attributed instead. But it doesn't seem like, like that was the case here. To me, it seemed like he was legitimately using this as his opening as on, on the biggest floor that he's had so far next to podcasts, which is crazy that, you know, there's some podcasts that are far bigger than this debate stage. Uh, but that's how you open the debate for the Republican party. Now, I could see if he was a Democrat doing that, I could see him pulling that quote, but just to, to, there, there was no, the, the follow up to this was not, I bet you've heard somebody say that before, but I'm different and here's why. Now, Viva Ram Swami is more articulate than Barack Obama was, I think more presidential than Barack Obama. Was, which says a lot. Barack Obama was a great president in the way that he presented himself and presented our nation. Now you wanna get into policies and it completely unravels. But the ability that he had to speak on a stage to massive amounts of people, the, uh, intellectualism that he conveyed when he talked about certain topics was, was impressive. And that you can say the same for Vivek. And what we came to find out about Barack Obama was that he wasn't as genuine as he tried to appear to be. It was all an act. And I'm afraid that maybe just, maybe that's what Vivek is doing too. Now, I'm gonna be honest with you here, and you might, you might laugh at this, you might roll your eyes at it, but I was watching the debate. And I may or may not have had some t h c enter my system here. And I totally, in that moment, being a little bit high, watching the debates, uh, drinking a, drinking a beer. Um, I s I just felt it, the Vivek felt like a a, you know what it looks like to me for Vivek Ram Swami is that the big leagues, the BlackRocks, the Vanguards, the World Economic Forums said, wake the beast. We got 'em. Guys call in our ace of spades and Vivek just rises from like a cryo chamber and the water just drains out of his plastic, uh, surrounding his, his glass, that, uh, box that he's standing in. And, and he. Takes his first step out of the glass box into the real world to take over the next presidential race, right? It just seems all too good. He seems too good, he's too polished, he's too clean. Everything, everything he's saying is, is right spot on with how they know the disenfranchised feel on one side, everything that he's saying, his presentation is perfect. His teeth are white as can be. His smile is practiced to a t. It's all a little too perfect for me. It's not, it doesn't come off as authentic. And, and maybe I was just a little bit high, maybe that that just unraveled it for me, but it just seems a little unauthentic to me. It seems like a play. And obviously everybody on that debate stage is playing games and all of them are wearing a mask and he's just way out of everybody else's league on that stage. And guess what, Vivek, I would love to have a conversation with you and would love for you to convince me that you are not the second coming of Barack Obama drained from your cryo chamber by World Economic forum elites to come and take over the presidential race once they take down Donald Trump and be another puppet installed into our governmental system. I would love that. Come on, come on the show. We'll have a conversation. I'll even have a drink with you. And, and I would love to have that conversation with you. You're very articulate. I think, again, he's probably the most presidential candidate that I've ever seen, you know, next to John f Kennedy's speech patterns. There's nobody greater in history that I, that I've seen than the way that Vivek, uh, presents himself in, in the, the, the, the canned ness of his speeches, though the, the smiles on his face that are so practiced that articulateness, if that's a word, the, the, the way that he, how good, how clean, how perfect every response is, is just a little too on point for me. And there's a little bit, there's just a, and maybe I just don't know the guy, and maybe he's like that all the time, but he's just so, it's so salesy. Not a salesy in a bad way, but a great salesman, great salesman. And those are the most dangerous 'cause they'll talk you into anything, trust me. Um, so that, that's where this all started. To me, the Obama statement just irked me. And then it was just the way that he was just da da da. Like he knew every single question that they were gonna ask. He had the perfect response, every part of it. He's almost like a robot. And Chris Christie alluded to that. He said, uh, what did he say? Let me, let me pull up the Chris Christie, uh, response because it was just, it was just so spot on. Uh, let me go to the YouTubes here and I can show you. It actually follows up, uh, in, in retorts, vivex statement there. Uh, Christie, G P t I. It was just the, such a good retort. Here we go. I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like chat, G P T standing up here, and the last person in one of these debates, Brett, who stood in the middle of the stage and said, what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here was Barack Obama. And I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing in stage tonight. Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name, and what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage? The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name, who believes that America has a place for him too. I've had it. I'm just telling you, there's something about him, something about him that I just can't, I can't, there's a red flag and I can't get around it. And there's other red flags too. So let's dive in to those. So here is where, uh, there's, there's some other influencers calling this out, right? And we'll get to those in a second. Um, but let's, let's just start from the top here. Okay. Now let's vet Vive. I like that. Let's vet Vivek. Let's see if these red flags have it even merit to them. All right. So Ramas Swami was indeed nominated the sadness comes from dossier.today. Ramas Swami was indeed nominated and selected as a World Economic Forum, young global leader. In 2021, which is an obvious massive red flag. However, Ramis Swami claims an alibi explaining on his social media. Funny, you should bring this up because this all started with a tweet from Jack Poso who said, how strange. When you look at the World Economic Forum, young Global Leaders of 2021 page. Today, it appears a name has been scrubbed from the list. It'd be a shame if somebody had receipts of the original list, in which case Poso posts them. Now, Vivek retorts this and says, funny, you should bring this up. Vivek says, the first chapter of my upcoming book in April has the receipts of my exchanges with the World Economic Forum. Years ago when they repeatedly kept trying to get me to be named, I gave them a polite hell no reveals the games that the World Economic Forum plays. Now let's go to this tweet and actually read, said receipts. Uh, so there's actually the, the, uh, screenshots from the World Economic Forum. It says, meet the 2021 class of young global leaders under that, right under, uh, Terrance Kamal Vasu Vats. Achmad Zaki. Aditi Avanan is Vivek Ramas Swami. Hmm. Very interesting. And then the next day on the website, his name is Gone. Now, Vivek has come out and personally said that, yes, I had to sue them for them to take me off of their website. Now here's the better question. Why would they elect him in this way? Why would, why would that be on their website? Now, I'm not getting elected to be a World Economic Forum, young, global leader, I promise you that. But Vivek is, Vivek is clearly stated on their website until he says that, you know, nobody has been working to dismantle the Global World Economic Forum takeover more than me. You're right over the target. Stay on it. I'll send you a signal or signed book so you can learn more about it. It's worse than you can ever imagine. Jack responded and said, you've sent me like five books already, my dude, and interesting. So, What he has yet to explain is his longtime association with Soros Inc. Now, if Vivek is associated with the World Economic Forum as a global leader and he's been taking money from George Soros, maybe those are a couple red flags we should be at paying attention to. Maybe a G O P Presidential candidate is a literal Soros fellow directly on the Soros website. Right now it lists Vivek Ram Swami 2011, founder and c e O of Roy Van Sciences. Vivek is the child of immigrants from India. Fellowship awarded to support work towards a Juris doctorate in law at Yale University. Vivek Ramma Swami is the founder and c e o of Roy Van Sciences. Vivek was born in, uh, Cincinnati, the Indian parents in high school. He was a class fellow Victorian, a nationally ranked junior tennis player and accomplished pianist. Vivek graduated from Harvard College in 2007, Summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a major in biology. Later he entered Yale Law School well at Harder. Harvard, a preis of his senior thesis on the ethical questions raised by creating human animal kymera. Hmm. Was published in the Boston Globe in the New York Times. He was chairman of the Harvard Political Union and served as one of three undergraduates chosen for an advisory board for the selection of the current president of Harvard. I. Hmm. During his senior year, Vivek co-founded student businesses.com, a technology startup company, which connected entrepreneurs with the professional LI resources via the internet. And he led the company to its acquisition in 2009, after Harvard College, Vivek worked for three years in life sciences, investing in New York before pursuing his law degree. That's interesting. I didn't see that. Ethical questions raised by creating human animal chimes. That's an interesting topic. Alright. I could get behind 2007 Harvard Vivek writing that. So maybe that's a, a green check mark instead of a red flag for a second. Very interesting. Now another thing here, right on Vivex. soros.org website says, Paul and Daisy Soros fellow Vivek Ramma Swami's Rovan Sciences develops clinical stage antibody to prevent and treat acute respiratory distress syndrome in patients with C Ovid 19. So Vivek profited during COVID through creating these clinical stage antibodies. Another one is pursuing the potential of abandoned pharmaceuticals, and the other one is Havara. Swami's RO sciences stays innovative. So there's the articles from soros.com. He also showed support for George Soros in a recent, well, let's see if it's recent, a tweet from 2021. Pretty recent he said, well said, George Soros said, Vivek Rams Swami, I consider Mr. Z the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world. Well said Mr. Soros. Hmm. For reasons unknown. Ramas Swami's Wikipedia page has recently updated that deleted information about his religion and his association with Soros Inc. Now, if you don't know, Ramas Swami is a Hindu, was raised Hindu by his family, which no surprise, he's from Indian immigrants. Um, so I'm not sure why they would remove that. Who cares? It says writing on the Wall Street Journal. In 2020, Ramas Swami unveiled his opening salvo against the World Economic Forum in BlackRock stakeholder capitalism model. However, later in the piece he confusingly declared, I would love to have BlackRock as a shareholder if my company ever goes public, said Vivek. Now on China, Ramas Swami is known for his recent tough talk on China. On Tucker Carlson's show. Ramas Swami said that as president, he would have America reorient all of its supply chains away from China. Okay, I can get down with that. Vivek. However, Ramis Swami was a featured speaker at a Shanghai Investment Conference in 2018. Moreover, he has launched companies outta China and formed partnerships with Chinese firms in one such deal. Ramas Swami's Roivant partnered with the Civic Group, a state owned investment company of a Chinese government to launch an outfit called NT Sciences. And here's the article to back that up, which says Viva Ramma Swami Strikes again. This time launching a Beijing based biotech player with a pipeline. This morning, Rove unveiled NTT along with cpi, a Chinese private equity group. Now, this is where this gets a little important when we get to some of the videos that I'm gonna show you from other people who are talking about this, um, because this is where kind of the shift of money and the, the shift of patents come from, uh, a little bit later. So pay attention to that name SYN event as recently as 2020 2nd of February, February, 2022. Ram Swami's Roy event listed subsidiary companies in China, according to SS e c filings, which are the subsidiaries being site event biotechnology CO. In China site event sciences CO in China, Cynt Sciences Limited in Hong Kong Covid 19 in the mRNA gene, the biotech entrepreneur has repeatedly tried to find a niche in the game or in the gene therapy business, and therefore he unsurprisingly, A big proponent of mRNA shots. In January of 2022, Vivek wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal declaring that social distancing and cloth masks would work to stop viruses, but that it needed to stop so that people can avoid antigenic drift. He added the most important step in fighting the C Ovid 19 pandemic was the distribution of vaccines. But new variants aren't emerging in the US said Vivek. This was January 12th, 2022. But new variants aren't emerging in the us. They're emerging in places with a higher percentage of a vaccinated individuals. Those variants are the ones that have the greatest potential to drift and possibly shift away from the strain that initial vaccines were designed to. And then it goes on to the second tweet. Ramas Swami has extensive business ties to to, to Pfizer. Extensive business ties to Pfizer Rovan, which was founded by Ramas. Swami has partnered with the taxpayer looting pharma cartel boss on several occasions. Tiva, another subsidiary says, download our free ebook. Learn how Pfizer Rovan and m AMB X accelerate their process development strategy hashtag bioprocess. Now this, this is not a subsidiary. The subsidiary within that was Roivant. Um, so correct myself there. Tiva, C Y T I V A now, uh, from Reuters in 2022. December 1st at 11:21 PM posted Rovan Pfizer team up on inflammatory disease drug. Hmm. So Vivera Swami not only said that masks work, not only said that vaccines need to be rolled out as soon as possible. Paraphrasing, but also teamed up with Pfizer in several occasions with his own businesses. A brief search of his social media history found no evidence that Ramas Swami ever critiqued Pfizer. Roy vent has also, which again is not, that's not evidence. If you haven't ever critiqued somebody via your Twitter, doesn't mean it's evidence. Rovan has also sued Moderna claiming patent infringement re related to its disastrous lipid nanoparticle delivery system, which is shown to wreak havoc on the entire human body. So here's, here's the way that I would rank my presidential candies right here is my 2023 presidential candidacy ranking and why, and I think he moves down a step here. Okay? Now, I don't agree with many things, several things about the. Robert Kennedy, Jr. But I do agree with him on his stance on Covid and his stance on vaccines. And I do think that we are going into, which I did a whole breakdown in my last episode on pandemic season two, that we're going into another season where they're going to go after lockdowns. They're going to go after a new wave of authoritarian control. So I also think that of all the presidential candidates right now, Robert Kennedy Jr. Is the most authentic. He's the most genuine. He also has a blood tie to not one, but two people who have been assassinated, allegedly by the ccia A. So there's a very good case here to say that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has real reason to go after the Deep State, real reason to obliterate three letter agencies into the wind. I. A real reason, a foundationally, deep-seated reason to do so. Now, from what we've seen here, the evidence suggests not the words, don't pay attention to the words, pay attention to the evidence, the actions of Vivek, which shows that he not only teams up with Pfizer, not only that he wants to push vaccines, not only that he wants to push mask mandates, but that he's also associated somehow some way with the World Economic Forum and took money from George Soros. Those things to me, are enough to knock him down several notches, several, several notches, because at this point it's only his words. It's not his actions and his words. You can tell this man is just gifted when it comes to speech. He's a great salesman. He's a great politician in the making, but that's the scary part. Right. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has no skills whatsoever to convince you with his tonality, to, to take a point and, and paint it with color beautifully so that you can agree with him to, to he, he loses all of that in his cadence of speech. He loses all of it within, within the way that he has. His, his vocal chords are, are damaged, but vek almost essentially his entire campaign is, is surrounded by his ability to sell you to his ability to smile, his ability to quickly and perfectly articulate exactly what you want to hear when you want to hear it. But there's a lot of red flags here. So I would say right now, Robert F. Kennedy Jr's right up there for me. Now I know his stance on gun control. I know his stance on abortion. So those things I vehemently disagree with, with him. And I'd love to see a, a, a breakdown of every one of his beliefs and every one of the policies. And maybe I'm, maybe, you know, I'm pretty far off in, in, in several, several of those. But to me, the president is basically a figurehead who represents the people and is a display of where we're moving. Are we moving more towards the deep state? Are we moving more towards, uh, a nation of authoritarianism or are we moving more towards freedom and liberty? So I would love nothing more than to see a Trump Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Ticket would love nothing more. That would be my ideal candidacy. And I don't know who I would put in which position. Uh, but because you can clearly see that the deep state that the, the individuals in power are, are obviously a. Trying to put Trump in jail over and over and over and over again. There's been a concerted effort by big, big money to get him out. And we can also see clearly the same thing is happening with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Besides the indictments, but nothing is happening with Vivek. In fact, he's finding himself on all of the biggest shows, constantly being put on the BlackRock funded Fox News, and CNN's constantly being pushed in the public narrative, having the biggest clips from the debate stage constantly. So let's, let's keep going. Here it says, Ramis Swami has estimated to have a net worth of an impressive $500 million, though it's unclear how he accumulated these funds, or if that number, which is a bit outdated, currently stands. Perhaps it's from a series of business ventures through which he successfully cashed out, but the trail left behind leaves a lot to be desired. S o Gene Therapies, a company founded by Ramas Swami recently announced plans to dissolve after years of failing to advance any successful drug candidates once valued at billions of dollars. Millions. I o currently has a market cap of around 30 million, as it recently failed to find a buyer for the Troubled Corporation. Just so you know, this stock in 2018 plummeted from $200 a share, and then the same day it was at $200. It dropped down below 50 and then over the next three to four months or so, and over the next year, moved down to less than a dollar. It's currently sitting at 40 cents. Crazy. Roy Van Sciences founded by Ramos Swami. He was also the C e O until 2021, but remained on the board. Lost almost a billion dollars last year and has lost on average 650 million each year since 2019. According to the company's financial statements in 2018, the company has described as akin to a bloodbath efforts prized Alzheimer's drug, which formed the basis for the creation of Rovan failed clinical trials. Over the last quarter, Roivant brought in only 12 million in revenue and had a net income of negative $291 million. Remiss Swami stepped down from the board of Rovan after announcing his presidential run, according to a company statement. Crazy. How do you lead a company that loses almost $300 million? And then. Somehow make 500 million. The, the business world, once you get to that level is just pretty crazy. Ramos Swami's latest adventure is Strive Asset Management, which he founded in 2022 with the mission to combat the e s G agenda in corporate America, strive has set up a series of passively managed ETFs through which Strive takes an above average fee in order to purchase stock and Pro e s G woke companies Hmm. Promising to use customer's proxy voices to convince these corporations to depart from that agenda. Since its founding, strive has published forward letters to select companies asking them to change course. Hmm. So Ramas Swami's latest venture is Strive Management. So he founded a wealth management company, strive in a, in a hope to voice with people's funds. I. The, that we don't want them to be a part of the e s G and woke agendas. Cool. I like that. That's a very smart play. Vivek, especially if you're gonna run for office. But essentially he took in all of this money, right? Looks like many millions of dollars. And they held stock in all of these woke companies. What is that? Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Tesla, Nvidia, alphabet Inc. Or Google again. Um, UnitedHealthcare, Exxon, Johnson and Johnson. Wow. Critics of Ramos Swami have pointed out that Strive is effectively damaging its own mission right off the bat by first purchasing shares and proceeding to add value to these companies. Yeah. And later hoping to convince them by proxy letter or vote to change their behaviors. So what's the real agenda? This says it seems Vivek Ramma Swami knows full well that he will not actually be a serious contender for president. He has already spoken about wanting to merely be able to make the debate stage. His campaign website does not discuss his platform in any detail at all. It only shares clips of his media appearances and is largely nothing more than a donation page. What is Vivek actually running for? First? Maybe we can get some more clarity about who this man is and what he believes. So there's your breakdown, right? We'll watch some videos here. We'll get some other conversations going. But there's the overall breakdown of Vivek Pharma funded by BlackRocks and Vanguards World Economic Forum. Global leader, George Soros funded law degree. That is Vivek. That is his background. Those are, those are his actions that to me speak louder than his silver tongue. Now there's other people raising the flag about this, one of them being Matt Kim. Now, if you don't know Matt Kim, he's got a podcast. He's also a, a pro prominent figure on social media, and he posted this video that I will show you, uh, where he raised similar red flags. So let's pay attention to it, because he allegedly got some messages from Vivex people about his posts. So here it's when he supported Bob, let's restart it for you. Some of you won't like this, but hear me out. He seems to be everywhere. Clips of him giving it to the man and calling out the establishment All over social media skyrockets from unknown to top of the Republican polls, and I understand why. He says what we all want to hear. End the war. Secure the border during the swamp. Unity, freedom, truth, which outlets are considered untrustworthy? Propaganda Media. M S N B C, business Insider, AP Forbes, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Huffington Post, Axios, political, just to name a few, the mouthpiece of the establishment. Then why are they all so supportive of VI? Doesn't make sense. How is he considered anti-establishment when he's supported by the establishment? If you or I were to say some of the anti woke things, he says we would be shadow banned, but somehow he's trending on every single major social media platform. Hmm. Prior to politics, he was a hedge fund manager. His claim to fame was a pharmaceutical startup company called Rovan. In the nine years it's been in business, it has never been profitable or delivered a working product. Now that is where the only part of this that he was corrected with. So we'll look at that statement that he apologizes, um, quite sarcastically, rightfully, uh, about this. So let's watch it. Although RO continues to fail their clinical trials, they were able to find investors and raise money, making VI an extremely wealthy entrepreneur, good at convincing people to invest poor at delivering product and execution. Not a good sign. So what about the money? The media highlights that Vik has invested over $10 million of his own money to fund his campaign, an honorable fee. Vik announced his run for presidency in February, 2023. How long do you think it takes to make that decision and execute a plan? Six, eight months. July, 2022. The value of relevant stock is just over $3 per share. On February 21st, 2023, Vik announces his run for presidency, and on February 22, he sells 4 million shares for approximately $32 million million dollars at nearly $8 per share. Well over $15 million in profit in six months prior to him announcing presidency. Good for him, right? Make that money. Company is losing over $1 billion per year, but he got paid. Smart guy. But anytime things are just so coincidental, I'm forced to keep digging. Why did the stock price of an unprofitable failing company rise over 100%. How does it go from an all time low to nearly? Its all time high. Institutional money. You remember when Vik said the financial investment giants like BlackRock, state Street, and Vanguard represent arguably the most powerful cartel in human history? Well, guess who's on the list of institutional investment giants that started giving his company money one year ago? You wanna guess BlackRock, state Street and Vanguard. All three have added to their positions in the last quarter. And Rian, which Vik still owns 7% share in, is now up over 300% in the last year. Mm-hmm. Making it worth close to $1 billion during the Republican primary debate. Vik vowed to end the teacher's union. Guess who is also on this list of investors? California State Teacher's Retirement System. Look, his intentions may be pure, and this is all a coincidence. Maybe there's a great explanation, however, I am not a financial analyst, nor investigative reporter, but I was able to find all this out in a couple hours of sifting through publicly available data. Why is this connection to George Soros via scholarship and his involvement in the Ohio c Ovid 19 response team scrubbed from Wikipedia in 2021, he was named a young global leader by the World Economic Forum. Two years later, after using that title to raise investments for his company, he sued the W E F to remove his name from the list. Three months after that, he was able to settle with Klaus Schwas, W e f, and receive a formal letter of apology. How do you sue what many may consider evil, the World Economic Forum and win and get an apology letter in three months? He's either that good or I don't know. Any real journalist or news outlet could have easily found out all this info, but they didn't. Real question is why. Hmm. So there's the first video, right? That's one of the main reasons. Almost all of that is so suspect every single part of this journey for Vivek, everything but his words. If you didn't watch a single debate, if you didn't watch a single video of Vivek and you only looked at his actions, it paints a completely different story. If I told you there was a presidential candidate for the Republican party who was funded by George Soros, who is a World Economic Forum global leader, who went to Harvard Law School, founded a pharmaceutical company, which helped with C O V I D responses and was funded by BlackRock and Vanguard, would you vote for that person? Would that person be your number one pick? And again, I just wanna drive this point home for you. If you looked at nothing, Vivek said, if you watched none of his videos, none of the debates, and you only saw that he was a World economic forum, global leader up until the time that he decided to run, he was funded with all of his companies by BlackRock and Vanguard. He made his money in pharmaceutical companies during C O V I D. Is that the guy that you want running this country? Because I don't, that's not what I want. That's not who I want running the country. You know who I want running the country. The guy who says that you shouldn't get the vaccine, the guy who says that all of these institutions are corrupt and wants to obliterate the cia. Actually will do it if he finds office. You know why? Because two of his family members were assassinated by them. Or maybe the guy who's sitting and just got his mugshot taken three days ago from actually fighting the system, not just saying words on the debate stage. And you know, looking at, looking at you at the audience and nodding his head. And then as soon as BlackRock, Vanguard and World Economic Forum, look at him, they go, and then you look at him, right? Does that meme? But that, that's what you have to look at. What are the actions of the individual? Not just the words, because the words literally mean nothing on the debate stage. Here's the second video. Here's a second video about Vivic. I promise I need to move on to other pending social coincidences. I was wrong and I'll admit it. I said V's. Company. Rovin had no successful product, but I was mistaken. Kind of Rovin had a subsidiary called Myov Event that developed drugs with Pfizer. Myov is no longer a part of Rove's products because it was sold to Sumit, which Rovin also owned, which is sold to Sumitomo Pharma Japan, where the executives of Sumit Tovan hold bore seats. Two successful drugs are. Orvi, which is f d a, approved to treat advanced prostate cancer and mefe, which is f d a, approved to treat endometriosis severe period pain. What do the drugs actually do? Morgo. VX is a drug designed to lower your testosterone in mefe is the same drug but with estrogen mixed in. So I apologize to Vivek's campaign team. I was wrong. But please understand that since the drugs were within subsidiaries of subsidiaries, it was not easy to find. So I will formulate correct myself. Vikk has successfully manufactured with Pfizer, an estrogen filled testosterone suppressor. Hope that clears the air. What a great way to respond to that because I'm, I believe he said that, uh, he was asked, uh, for this correction by Vivex team. Uh, so masterfully done. Uh, just so you know, um, Matt Kim's Instagram account is Matt Attack 0 0 9, and he does some great work, uh, very, uh, concise and, uh, very, uh, un un, um, what's the word? Unex Explosive. Unostentatious. Unostentatious. I add a lot of color to our show folks. Um, so just like you heard him talking there, I guess is how he talks most of the time in almost every video. So there's very little color in his voice, but he does it very well and very tactfully, very dry, uh, just like he did there. So great stuff, Matt. You're doing a great job. Um, So found that to be interesting. Right? So here's uh, some other clips. Now I actually just have his Twitter account pulled up here. 'cause I think, you know, one thing we can do is just scroll the, the times of, uh, Vivex most recent posts here. Uh, but let's go the 20%. Let's go to some, let's go to some more, uh, organized stuff here. So here is Vivek Ramas Swami. Now you might ask what, what website is this? Austin. What website am I looking at with Vivek's name on it? Well, I'm glad you asked. That website is right here, which says Paul and Daisy's Soros Fellowships for New Americans. Hmm. So Vivek Swami was funded by the Soros family to attend Yale to get his Juris doctorate. Just 10 years ago. So he was what, 27 at the time? Now that's an interesting choice to move from biology to law and then not use your law degree at all. But he was a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree founder of Rovan Sciences, and we looked at that already, but I just think it's interesting to, to find his name right next to the Soros name. Now, the next thing we have here is, I'm not gonna go into that, um, is that Vivex. Ramis Swami paid Wikipedia editors to erase his Soros fellowship and his work on C O V I D. Now, this came from May. Of 2023. It's now August, June, July, August, three months Now it says he announced his 2024 presidential bid after making sure his Wikipedia page was edited. Vivek Rams Swami, this comes from new republic.com. Never heard of it. Uh, is like much of the Republican party, so pathetically desperate. This says, Ooh, the 2024 candidate who joins other elite educated Republicans in cosplaying is a truth telling populace, while offering no actual solutions to improve people's material conditions, has reportedly used some of his millions of dollars to pay a Wikipedia editor to scrub his past Mediate reports that Ramas Swami seems to have paid Wikipedia outta their Yerman to remove information from his page that he presumably thought would damage his candidacy in the Republican party. A few days later, he announced his 2024 bid. The editor scrubbed off information related to Ramos Swami receiving Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship from New Americans in 2011 during his time as a Yale law student. Paul Soros is the older brother of billionaire Democratic donor, George Soros, who has been the subject of perennial anti-Semitic conspiracy theories Pedaled by the right. The Fellowship Ramis Swami received is dedicated to helping immigrants and children of immigrants pursue graduate degrees. Prominent right-wing figures like Jack Poso have directed attention toward Ramis Swami's past fellowship, presumably in line with the aforementioned use of Soros as a catchall for anything suspicious. Also removed from Ramis Swami's page was his work serving in the Ohio's c Ovid 19 response team. The editor claimed that Ramis Swami had explicitly asked to remove the mention of his work on the Covid team while the editor himself deemed the fellowship to be extraneous material. After some back and forth with other Wikipedia contributors information, noting Ramis Swami Soros fellowship was later added back to the page. Ramis Swami announced his bid for presidency less than two weeks after he seemingly commissioned an editor to modify his Wikipedia page. So let's repeat that 'cause that is worth it. Ramis Swami announced his pre his bid for presidency just two weeks after he paid an editor to modify his Wikipedia page. To this day, Ramas Swami's Wikipedia page begins with a disclaimer that the article has multiple issues and the neutrality of this article is disputed. This article contains paid contributions. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content. Policy is particularly neutral point of view. Wikipedia warrants the episode is just another and a long series of Republicans Spinelessly refusing lead to stand by their past when facing Donald Trump, or to offer even a nugget of an argument as to why, Hey, maybe it's okay to care about problems like Covid. So this is a left wing company calling this out most remarkably is that any of the Republicans think their hungry embrace of conservatism. It's furthest right instincts will result in anything other than failure. Alright? So, so I would say too, I'm actually quite, I'm actually quite, uh, proud of our party. I'm, you know, and, and I say our party, I don't generally traditionally identify as strict conservative. I'm far more, I would say libertarian than I am conservative in many aspects. I believe our government should be basically utilized for a military to protect our borders and protect us against foreign enemies. Not to, you know, go to war with other countries and start proxy wars for billions of dollars. I also believe that we should have a police force which is used to, uh, enact law and order, um, under very limited circumstances. Uh, basically off of the golden rule, which is like if, hey, if you don't want that to happen to you, maybe you shouldn't do it to other people. And if you do it to other people, maybe there should be consequences if we all agree that this thing shouldn't happen. Uh, maybe some, some actually no. I wouldn't even say education systems. I think education systems in the modern day would do fairly well if it was a, a more capitalistic, uh, free, um, free market. Uh, there's very limited use cases for the government, um, very limited use cases, and it's literally just a pile of money for them to, uh, to extort you out of with the threat of violence and captivity. In order for them to be able to find how much money and to move out of that pile into their own pockets, through these little games of money laundering, that's about 86% of government spending to me. Right. You wanna talk about, um, social services? I, I think there should be some social services to be able to help people who are, uh, mentally disabled, who are physically disabled, who, uh, really need the help. Um, I, I, I don't see much other uses for the government other than those things. So traditionally probably not as Republican as many people who, uh, listen or who, uh, follow me or, you know, but that's where I'm at. That's what I think. I, I don't think the government's great at literally almost anything. I think the government's quite bad at almost everything. Um, I'll, I'll give you a story. Uh, when I was in the military, uh, I was at, uh, Biloxi, uh, Mississippi. Uh, I was going to tech school for air traffic control training. And uh, I was in the military from 18 to 22. And when I was at Air Traffic Control Tech School in Biloxi, Mississippi, we had a bowling alley. And at this bowling alley we would go there, you know, friends who would drink there and they'd get big pictures of beer and um, and it was like the shittiest bowling alley you had ever been to. And about maybe four months into my tech school, I was, I was at, at Keesler Air Force Base for eight or nine months, um, doing air traffic school. And maybe eight or nine months, three months after we got there, four months after we got there, the bowling alley closed down. The government had a monopoly on entertainment on base and could not run a business properly in order to be profitable enough, even with tax funding. It's like the most ridiculous circus show of a business being ran ever. Uh, it's unbelievably bad at literally everything it does ever. Right. The government is just horrific at every endeavor it sets out to do. There's so much red tape, there's so much bureaucracy. All the technology's super old. There's no innovation, there's, there's nothing happening from the traditional taxation based government services that is positive for the, for the people. Like maybe you can say firefighters. Police in very limited cases, I think I, I legitimately don't think there should be any traffic enforcement. Um, there's very few use cases besides violence and, um, mostly violence. Like there, there's just, there's so many things that are off about, you know, the government having its own, uh, imperialist army. So those are some of my beliefs on that. But, but so, so that's, when you hear me talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I'm not like, I, I am not a hard right or a hard left. I am like somewhere in the middle with mostly a belief that our government sucks at everything it does. And the less that we can have the government do, and the more that we can have the free market do, the better off we will all be. And when I say free market, it's not like the modern day free market that we have right now, because what we have right now is a, a monopolistic oligarchy of, of capitalistic institutions who own everything, right? We talk about the Black Rocks and the Vanguards. I. Uh, uh, we don't live in a capitalist society anymore. Capitalism is dead. We live in an oligarchy. Every institution that you know, is owned by a single one, two, maybe three investment wealth companies, every politician, you know, is owned by 1, 2, 3 of those same wealth management companies. Every politician, you know, every company that you know is owned by BlackRock and Vanguard. We do not live in a capitalistic society. We live in a oligarchy a we live in a, uh, a, um, a, a monopolistic based oligarchy where all of the politicians are bought and paid for, where all of the companies are bought and paid for, and they enact the policies through the politicians that they fund, through the corporations, that it's this big shit show mess, and we're just the ones at the bottom of it getting shit on. This is just how this whole thing plays out to me. Our entire system is just flawed to, its very core as of maybe the last 80 to a hundred years, 80 to a hundred years. The Industrial Revolution, world War II was all the, the shifting of power to these elite class, uh, the, the Berg Group, the World Economic Forums, the, the BlackRocks, the Vanguards, right? You guys, if you've been listening to me long enough, you know my beliefs on these things. You hear me talk about one-off topics, but you don't really hear me talk about the systemic governmental issues that I really, you know, what I truly believe about our government, mostly just that they suck at everything. It's a proxy for politicians and corporations to siphon off government or to siphon off tax dollars. Right. Taxes weren't even implemented until like two thou 1913, right? Something like that. Like 110 years. Uh, when, when federal income tax was, was started and federal income tax was started basically just to fund, uh, you know, it was like two per, they, they were gonna, they were gonna charge, uh, people who were extremely wealthy, like two to 3% of their income just to fund some certain small services. Right? Like, we left Great Britain because they were taxing us on fucking tea. Right. We were throwing barrels. Right. The, the Sons of Liberty and John Adams and or Sam Adams and, and the Sons of Liberty were just going off having secret meetings and cool bars or pubs like the, the Green Dragon. And they were having these underground meetings with, um, you know, the Freemasons and like, how are they gonna, you know, there was all this crazy shit happening. And a lot of it, the, all of the fed up. Thoughts about the, the British clergy? Were based on the, the, the people not wanting the government to take their money from them. Don't. Maybe we should have you for a couple things, and maybe it's, don't invade my country, don't, don't, uh, kill me, don't take my shit from my house. Right? Like, these, these are the things that the government should truly be focused on. But instead they're writing you traffic tickets via autonomous cameras for profit, and they're telling you that you have to get a mRNA gene therapy in order to get a job. Like we're so far off and it's just gonna get worse and worse and worse and worse unless we, we start to win this, this culture war even more than we are today. So anyways, long tangent. Next thing that says here is, um, uh, most remarkable, uh, is, uh, okay. Yeah, that's a stupid article coming from a left wing, but not wrong in like the first half of this. Um, so originally I looked up this article, uh, about who are the famous alumni of Yale's, uh, Phi Beta Kappa Phi, beta Kappa being the, uh, the, um, the fraternity that Vivek was a part of. And, um, I was looking at Yale and, uh, I, I was looking wrongfully at Yale, so he was a part of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard. So let's see if we can get the celebrity names of people who were a part of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard, because I misread that. Uh, and let's see, Harvard alumni. It's so crazy to me that people like go to Harvard, right? Like that there's just like this, this completely, this university that's just like completely made up of elite families who just put a hyper emphasis on their children for academics who fund it with $120,000 or whatever the fuck it is to get your kid to go to Harvard. And then, you know, all the scandals with like telling your, saying your kid was a bad gammon defenseman in order to get them into the university. Right. If you ever saw that documentary, I forget the name of it, but it was about the scandal at, uh, all of the elite universities where, um, it might've been a singular one where they were like basically saying that these kids were, uh, In sports that they weren't because they were paying off the, the admissions individual to get them in, uh, to the university on scholarship and stuff, like pretty crazy stuff. Um, so let's see if we can find the Phi Beta Kappa Harvard alumni. Go directly to the website, harvard.edu five. The Kappa of Massachusetts at Harvard is established under a charter dated December 4th, 19 or 17, sorry, 1779. Wow. The charter was granted along with one for Yale by the original society. Founded three years earlier, the College of William and Mary in Virginia. The charter was brought from there to Harvard by Alicia Parelli, who initiated four juniors of the day before commencement in 19. In 17. Wow. 19, uh, 1781. The first meeting of the new chapter was held in September 8th, 1781. That makes Harvard's chapter the oldest and continuous existence. Interesting. Let's see. Members, literary exercises, eligibility, and election members. Let's see if we can get some famous members. Class of 2020. Class of 2024. Let's just read the names of these people. Samar Bajaj, Suha Bot Rah, Bahari, Alexander Chen. Rah. Hari Ganesh. Jay Gar. Amen Haw. Kaylee Ek. Hari Iyer. James Jolan. Ja. Ana, Madeline Kitsch. Jeffrey Kwan, Clarence Naba. Will Nichols, that's the only white guy. Uh, Mitchell Minchi Park. Uh, Joel Sdo. Atlas Sgo. Trey Sullivan. Lucy two. Eleanor Wickstrom, Dora Woodruff. Vicki, you and Eric Zoo. No white people. Maybe one. Let's look at previous years. Uh, 1980s. 1990s. Let's look. What year did he graduate? I think he said 2007. He was a graduate. So let's look at 2007 and see who he was a part of this with. Maybe there's any names that pop out to us here, so we see, see if we can even find Vivek Bally. Aaron. Vadim. Alinsky. I'll save you the names here. Let's see if we can find anybody that sticks out to us that he was a part of this. With Mary, Brad, Eric, Brian, lots of more white people back in 2007. I don't exactly see Vivek, but there's so many people on this list. Let's see, is this, uh, okay alphabetical. So Ramis Swami, there he is. Okay. The Vek Ram Swami 2007. It's a pretty long list, so I'm not sure I know any more of these people just by looking at it without doing research. Peter b Zuckerman, interesting. Maybe that's a good deep dive we could do is like, who did he actually go to? These, who is he here with? Um, but anyways, I. Digress. Um, maybe we can look at the 1980s, but that would be the thing, right? Like maybe look back at like, who are the alumni at this be? Because the other one, when I was looking at Ya

Ever struggled to truly understand your client's perspective or find a way to transform those negative thoughts into ones that empower and encourage growth? Let me tell you, dear therapists, our newest episode will be a gamechanger for you. We dive deep into the art of paraphrasing, an essential technique that enhances our understanding and allows for a more empathic, engaged therapeutic relationship. We unravel the layers of this potent tool, highlighting how it aids in uncovering hidden meanings, sparks further elaboration, and assists clients in gaining a deeper understanding of their feelings. And that's not all. We then pivot our conversation to explore the transformative power of reframing. Imagine being able to reshape unhelpful narratives into more positive and adaptive ones. We delve into how this technique challenges assumptions, turns the spotlight on strengths, and discovers the silver lining in even the most challenging situations. Be prepared to witness the magic of reframing with real-life examples demonstrating how this technique can revolutionise a client's perspective, fostering empowerment and encouraging growth. This episode is chock full of practical advice, perfect for those preparing for their licensure exam or just wishing to sharpen their counseling skills. So, don't wait, tune in and take your practice to the next level!If you need to study for your NCMHCE narrative exam, try the free samplers at: CounselingExam.comThis podcast is not associated with the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC) or any state or governmental agency responsible for licensure.

Wait...Filip Hronek got destroyed from a Ryan Reaves Hit? Cause for Concern? And...how do Kuzmenko and Boeser help Petey centre the top line in Hockey? A lot of shots and a lot of pushups. Oh yeah, BONUS PROSPECT TALK courtesy of the Boys from the Locked On Prospects Podcast!!! Lastly, we gotta remind you that the entire episode was powered by Paraphrasing. CHECK OUT EXTRA EXTRA: CLICK HERE Follow us! https://twitter.com/kylebhawan https://twitter.com/trevbeggs Follow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms…

Wait...Filip Hronek got destroyed from a Ryan Reaves Hit? Cause for Concern?And...how do Kuzmenko and Boeser help Petey centre the top line in Hockey? A lot of shots and a lot of pushups.Oh yeah, BONUS PROSPECT TALK courtesy of the Boys from the Locked On Prospects Podcast!!!Lastly, we gotta remind you that the entire episode was powered by Paraphrasing.CHECK OUT EXTRA EXTRA:CLICK HEREFollow us!https://twitter.com/kylebhawanhttps://twitter.com/trevbeggsFollow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms…

I had the strangest phone call the other day. It was from someone I have known for a long time. I wouldn't call us friends, but our paths have crossed multiple times over the years so we are acquainted.  We chatted for a few minutes. He told me he had moved to Florida. I mentioned I sold my company and I am enjoying the slower pace. He barely acknowledged what I said and proceeded to launch into a pitch on his new venture. Unfortunately, I have no interest since, as I told him, I sold my agency. By the time I got off the phone I was annoyed, because he clearly had no interest in anything I had to say. Then I felt sorry for him. Not only had he failed to sell me, but he completely blew the chance to sell to my contacts. There was no way I was going to introduce him to anyone I actually liked.  So, before your hop on your next sales call, maybe you should brush up on your listening skills.  Pay attention to your body language. Make sure that you are facing your customer, making eye contact, and nodding your head. This shows that you are engaged and interested in what they have to say. Ask questions. Asking questions shows that you are interested in what your customer has to say and that you want to understand their needs. Listen without interrupting. It is important to give your customer your full attention. Do not interrupt them while they are speaking. Paraphrase what your customer has said. Paraphrasing shows that you have been listening and that you understand what your customer has said. Summarize what your customer has said. Summarizing shows that you have been listening and that you understand the key points that your customer has made.

Paraphrasing a notable American's thoughts on education “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people” and on this episode, L. Joy explains that we always have to recommit ourselves to the fight to provide and maintain quality public education while revisiting her interview with Dr. Lester Young. Then she revisits the impactful interview she had with Professor William Spriggs on the Farm Bill in the wake of his passing.

The impacts of artificial intelligence are everywhere and we spend a lot of time talking about those impacts but we also got to talk about some regular Googley stuff too. Jim Hedger and Kristine Schackinger did start off on a high note, noting the reports of the death of a US Air Force member testing an AI-operated drone were greatly and completely exaggerated as it was only a simulation. Paraphrasing the words of the commanding officer, "... it was just a simulation. Only a madman would do that for real." Fun times!We also talked a bit more about Sam Altman's fears of "... something really bad happening", but also talked about how Google is adding Implicit Code Execution to Bard and giving it the ability to export data to Google Sheets. Interesting times?Best of all, we got to talk about Google glitches, the delicate art of SERP Composition, and the expansive myth of Index Bloat, and we try to answer the age-old question, "Can security headers help with rankings?" Bizarre times indeed...Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Josh Luckens interviews Dr. Lisa Forbes and Dr. David Thomas, the co-founders of Professors at Play, an organization that invites professors to explore the transformative power of play in the higher education classroom. They are the co-editors of the Professors at Play PlayBook, an anthology of playful teaching techniques applicable across the disciplines, sourced from their network of nearly 1,000 professors from across the globe, and available as a free download. They discuss the complex ways that play creates relational safety in the classroom, how play can enliven content and spark more lasting learning, and why playful teaching brings them so much joy as professors. Dr. Lisa Forbes is a Professor of Counseling at the University of Colorado, Denver. Dr. David Thomas is an Architecture Professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, and the Executive Director of Online Programs at the University of Denver. Paraphrasing them:In the serious play of the course, students have to creatively figure out how to write new laws by applying real concepts in imaginary contexts, helping them to learn how to think like lawyers, rather than simply be imparted with information that lawyers should know...and genuinely enjoying the process of learning collaboratively.When we find joy in teaching, our passion is contagious. When we are genuinely curious and playful, when we model authenticity and vulnerability, when we allow ourselves to learn alongside our students in the play of teaching and learning, we not only transform our classrooms, we walk a path of redemption that touches the soul of our institutions.Editors: Sarah Walkowiak, Josh Luckens, Megan Hamilton Giebert, and LaToya Hinton(May, 2023)Additional resources:Professors at Play: Transforming Higher Education Though Play (website)Join the Professors at Play community's global listserv (website with link to join Google group)Professors at Play PlayBook: Real-world techniques from a more playful higher education classroom (book with free download)The Process of Play in Learning in Higher Education: A Phenomenological Study (article by Dr. Lisa Forbes)Playful Teaching Pyramid (infographic)

Will Page returns to the show for a “state of the industry” episode. In last year's appearance he correctly called out the slowdown in streaming subscriptions, bubbles in web3, and more.Will believes the value of copyrighted music could hit $45 billion annually when the 2022 numbers are calculated — up $5 billion from 2021, which is already an all-time high for the industry.  Another massive shift is glocalisation”: the trend of local music dominating the domestic charts, as opposed to Western artists. This phenomenon isn't just being felt in music, but across every industry, from film to education.We covered both these trends, plus many more. Here's all our talking points: 1:33 Why the music industry is actually worth $40+ billion annually7:03 Physical music sales on the up and up10:47 How publisher and labels split up copyright value16:59 The rise of “glocalisation” will impact every industry34:39 DSP carnivores vs. herbivores 40:23 Why video vs. music streaming isn't a perfect comparison 46:31 Music as a premium offering in the marketplace 51:38 How to improve streaming royalties  1:06:05 AI music benefits that goes overlooked 1:10:07 Will's latest mix pays homage to Carole KingGlocalisation report: https://www.lse.ac.uk/european-institute/Assets/Documents/LEQS-Discussion-Papers/EIQPaper182.pdfWill Page's 2023 Believe in Humanity:https://www.mixcloud.com/willpagesnc/2023-believe-in-humanity/Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuest: Will Page, @willpageauthorThis episode is sponsored by DICE. Learn more about why artists, venues, and promoters love to partner with DICE for their ticketing needs. Visit dice.fmTrapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop's biggest players by reading Trapital's free weekly memo. TRANSCRIPT[00:00:00] Will Page: I put so much emotional time and effort into making these mixes happen and going out for free.They get your DJ slots, but more importantly, it goes back to what makes me wanna work in music, which was a lyric from Mike G and the Jungle Brothers from that famous album done by the forties of Nature, where he said, it's about getting the music across. It's about getting the message across. It's about getting it across without crossing over.How can I get art across an audience without delegating its integrity? And it's such an honor to have this mixed drop in this Friday I mean, that's, made my year and we're not even into June yet.[00:00:30] Dan Runcie Intro: Hey, welcome to the Trapital Podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level.[00:00:56] Dan Runcie Guest Intro: Today's episode is all about the state of the music industry, and we're joined by the One and Only, Will Page. He is a fellow at the London School of Economics. He's an author of Tarzan Economics and Pivot, and he is the former chief economist at Spotify. Will's second time on the podcast. Now, the first time we talked all about the future of streaming and where things are going in music, and we picked that conversation, backed up.We talked about a bunch of trends including the glocalisation of music, which is from a new report that Will had recently put out. We also talked about why he values the music industry to be close to a 40 billion industry, which is much higher than a lot of the reports about recorded music itself.And we also talk about a bunch of the topics that are happening right now, whether it's ai, how streaming should be priced, the dynamic between record labels and streaming services, and a whole lot more love. This conversation will always brings it with these conversations, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here's our chat.[00:02:00] Dan Runcie: All right, today we have the one and only Will Page with us who is recording from a beautiful location. I don't know if you're listening to the pod you can't see, but will tell us where you are right now.[00:02:09] Will Page: So great to be back like a boomerang on Trapital. Dan, and I'm coming to you from the Platoon Studios. Part of the Apple Company Platoon is our label services company, which is owned by Apple. They're doing great stuff with the artists like Amapiano music from South Africa. And the best place I can describe to you here, it's like a Tardus.Have you've ever seen Dr. Who? There's a tiny door in this tall yard music complex in North London just behind Kings Cross. When you enter that tiny door, you enter this maze of the well class spatial audio recording studios of Apple. And it's an honor they've given me this location to come to Trapital today.[00:02:41] Dan Runcie: Well we're gonna make the best of it here and it's always great to have you on, cuz Last year, last year's episode felt like a state of the industry episode, and that's where I wanna start things off this year with this episode.A couple months ago, you put out your post in your Tarzan economics where you said that this industry is not a 2020 5 billion industry, the way others say. Mm-hmm. You say, no, this is almost a 40 billion industry. So let's break it down. How did you arrive there and what's the backstory?[00:03:12] Will Page: I get goosebumps when you say that you think like 10 years ago we were talking about a 14 billion business and now it's a 40, you know, skews a slurred Scottish pronunciation, but let's just be clear from one four to four zero, how did that happen?Well the origins of that work, and you've been a great champion of it, Dan, is for me to go into a cave around about October, November and calculate the global value of copyright and copyright is not just what the record labels publish, that famous IFPIGMR report that everyone refers to, but it's what collecting studies like ask F and BMI collect what publishers generates through direct licensing.You have to add A plus B plus C labels, plus collecting societies plus publishers together. Then the complex part, ripping out the double counting and doing all the add-backs, and you get to this figure of 39.6 billion, which as you say, you round it up, it begins with a four. And I think there's a few things that we can kind of get into on this front.I think firstly we should discuss the figure. I'll you a few insights there. Secondly, I think we should discuss the division. And then thirdly, I want to cover the physical aspect as well. So if you think about the figure, we've got 39.6 billion. We know it's growing. I think what's gonna be interesting when I go back into that cave later this year to redo that number, it's gonna be a lot bigger.Dan, I'll see it here on Trapital First. I think a 40 billion business in 2021 is gonna be closer to a 45 billion business in 2022. And one of the reasons why it's not labels and streaming, it's a combination of publishers are reporting record collections, essentially they're playing catch up with labels, booking deals that perhaps labels booked a year earlier.And collecting studies are gonna get back to normal after all the damage of the pandemic. And when you drive those factors in where you have a much bigger business than we had before. So for the people listening to your podcast who are investing in copyright, this party's got a waiter run. You know, don't jump off the train yet cause this thing is growing[00:05:18] Dan Runcie: And the piece I want to talk about there is the publishing side of this. If you look at the breakdown of the numbers you have, the publishing is nearly, publishing plus is nearly 13 billion itself. The major record labels own most of the largest publishers right now. Why isn't this number just automatically included? Wouldn't it be in everyone's advantage to include the fact that yes, Universal Music Group and Universal Music Publishing Group are together, part of the entity that make this, whether it's them, it's Warner Chapel, it's others. Why isn't this just the top line number that's shared in all of the other reports?[00:05:56] Will Page: It would be nice if it was, and indeed, I think the publishing industry around about 2001 used to do this. They haven't done it since. But it's like spaghetti. It's the best way I can describe it. I mean, how do you measure publisher income? You know, is it gross receipts by the publisher? Is it the publisher plus the collecting Saudi? That is money that went straight to the songwriter and didn't touch the publisher. So what the publisher holds onto what we call an industry, a net publisher, shares all these weird ways of measuring this industry that we have to be clear on.And it's, not easy. but I think what we do in the report is we try and make it bite size. We try and make it digestible to work out how much of that publisher's business came through, CMOs, the S gaps and BMIs this X over here PS music and how much do they bring in directly? And that allows you to understand a couple of things.Firstly, how do they compare vi to vis labels in terms of their overall income? And secondly, how do they compare when they go out to market directly, let's say putting a sync and a TV commercial or movie versus generating money through collective licensing that is radio or TV via ASCAP or bmr. So you get an interpretation of how these publishers are making those numbers work as well.[00:07:03] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And then when we are able to break it down, we see a few numbers that roll up into it. So from a high level, at least what you shared from 2021, we have that 25.8 billion number from the recorded side. So that does fall in line with what we see from what the IPIs and others share. 10 billion Sure.From the publishing. And then you do have, the next 3.5 and then a little sliver there for royalty free and for the publishers' direct revenue that doesn't come from the songwriters. The next piece though, within the elements of how all of the revenue flows into that. We've talked a lot about streaming and we've talked, we'll get into streaming in a little bit, but I wanna talk about the physical side cause that was the second piece that you mentioned.We've all talked about vinyl, but it's not just vinyl. So could you talk a bit about where the trends are right now with physical sales and why this is such a huge factor for this number?[00:07:56] Will Page: Who would've thought on a Trapital podcast in May, 2023. We'll be talking about physical as a second topic on the agenda, but it's worth it. I mean, it's not a rounding era anymore. It's not chump change. in America, physical revenues largely vinyl outpaced the growth of streaming for the second year straight. It's not as big as streaming, but it's growing faster and it has been growing faster for two years now. That's crazy. Here in the uk the value of physical revenues to the UK music industry has overtaken the value of physical to Germany.Quick bit of history. For years, decades, Germans used to buy CDs. that's fallen off a cliff. They've given up on CDs. Whereas over here in Britain, we've all started buying vinyl again. So the value of vinyl in Britain is worth more than the value of CDs to Germans, that type of stuff you didn't expect to see.And if you go out to Asia, you see the CD market still strong. You've still got people who buy more than one copy of the same cd, of the same band. Don't ask me to explain the rationale for that, but it happens and it moves numbers. But after all this, when the dust settles, I mean a couple of observations, all the data to me is suggesting that 55, 60% of vinyl buyers don't actually own a record player.So I think it was Peter Drucker who said, the seller really knows what they're selling, and I don't think you're selling intellectual property or music cop right here. What we're actually selling is merchandise, you know, Taylor Swift, I got an email from Taylor Swift team saying they've got a marble blue vinyl coming out this week.Now we're talking about vinyl in the same way we used to talk about stone wash jeans, marble blue. This is like the fourth version of the same 11 songs priced at 29 99. Let's just figure that out for a second. I'm willing to give you 10 bucks a month to, access a hundred million songs on streaming services, but I'm also, it's the same person.I'm also willing to give you 30 bucks to buy just 10 of them. This is expensive music and I might not even be listening to it cause I don't even have a record player.[00:09:55] Dan Runcie: This is the fascinating piece about how we're calculating this stuff because the vinyl sales and all of that has been reported widely as a great boom to the industry and it has been.We've seen the numbers and in a lot of ways it brings people back to the era of being able to sell the hard copy of the thing itself, but it's much closer to selling a t-shirt or selling a sweatshirt or selling some type of concert merchant. It actually is the actual physical medium itself. So it'll be fascinating to see how that continues to evolve, how that embraces as well. On your side though, as a personal listener, do you buy any vinyls yourself that you don't listen to, that you just keep on display or?[00:10:34] Will Page: It's like your shoe collection, isn't it? Yes, right. Is the answer to that. But no, I mean, I will say that I got 3000 fi funk records in the house and they're all in alphabetical chronological order.So if they haven't been listened to, at least I know where to find them.[00:10:48] Dan Runcie: That's fair. That makes sense. So let's talk about the third piece of this, and that's the division of this. So you have the B2C side and you have the B2B side. Can we dig into that?[00:10:59] Will Page: Sure. this is, I think the backdrop for a lot more of the sort of thorny conversations happening in the music industry is now, you may have heard that in the UK we've had a three year long government inquiry into our business.We had the regulator turn over the coals, and so there's a lot of interest in how you split up this 40 billion dollar piece of pie. who gets what? And the division I'm gonna talk about here is labels an artist on one side. Songwriters and publishers on the other side as it currently stands, I would keep it simple and say two thirds of that 40 billion dollars goes to the record label and the artist, one third goes to the publisher and the songwriter.Now, when I first did this exercise back in 2014, it was pretty much 50 50, and when you see things which are not 50 50 in life, you're entitled to say, is that fair? Is it fair that when a streaming service pays a record label a dollar, it pays the publisher and the songwriter around 29 cents? If you're a publisher, a songwriter, you might say, that's unfair, cuz I'm getting less than them.I have preferences, issues, and I have any issues with this division. Well, let's flip it around. If you look at how B2B world works, licensing at the wholesale level, let's say you're licensing the bbc, for example, if your song's played on the bbc, you're gonna get 150 pounds for a play. 90 pounds goes to the songwriter and the publisher, 60 pounds goes to the artist and a record label.Now, is that fair? Why does the publisher win in the B2B market? By the record, label wins in the B2C market. And the one, the lesson I want to give your listeners is one from economics, and it's rarely taught university these days, but back in 1938, 1939, in a small Polish town called la. Now part of the Ukraine, ironically, free Polish mathematicians sat in a place called a Scottish Cafe, ironic for me, and invented a concept called Fair Division.And the question they posed was, let's imagine there's a cake and there's two people looking at that cake getting hungry. There's Dan Runcie over in the Bay Area and there's Will page back in Edinburgh. What's the best way to divide that cake up? And the conclusion they came up with is you give Will page, the knife.Aha, I've got the power to cut the cake. But you give Dan Runcie the right to choose which half. Damn, I've gotta make that cut really even otherwise, Dan's gonna pick the bigger half and I'll lose out. And this divider two model gave birth to the subject of fair Division and it simply asked, what makes a fair division fairer?How can I solve a preference? How can I solve for envy? I want that slice, not that slice. I'm unhappy cause Dan got that slice and not that slice. There's a whole bunch of maths in this. We had a third person that gets more complex. But I just wanna sow that seed for your listeners, which is when we ask questions like, why is it the label gets a dollar and the publisher gets 29 cents?There's gotta be some rationale why you know who bets first? Is it the label that bets first or the publisher who commits most? Is it label that commits most marketing spend or the publisher? These types of questions do with risk, often help answer questions of fair division, or to quote the famous Gangstar song, who's gonna take the weight?Somebody's gotta take a risk when you play this game, and perhaps there's a risk reward trade off, which is telling us who gets what Share of the spoils.[00:14:15] Dan Runcie: Let's unpack this a little bit because it's easy to see. May not be fair, but it's easy to see why the record labels get preference on the B2C side because as I mentioned before, the record labels have acquired a lot of the publishers, and especially in the streaming era, they were prioritizing that slice of the pie, their top line, as opposed to what essentially is the subsid subsidiary of their business, the publishing side.Why is it flipped with sync? Well, how did that dynamic end up being that way?[00:14:47] Will Page: That's an anomaly, which is actually blatantly obvious. You just don't think about it. And the way it was taught to me is anyone can record a song, but only one person can own a song. So I think, let's give an example of, I don't know, a Beach Boy song where I could ask for the original recording of that Beach Boy song to be used in the sync.Or I could get a cover band. So let's say I got a hundred thousand dollars to clear the rights of that song, and the initial split should be 50 50. If a band is willing to do a version of it for 10,000, the publisher can claim 90,000 of the budget and get the option. If the record label objects and says, well, I wish you used a master.Well, you got a price under the 10,000 to get the master in. So this kind of weird thing of bargaining power, if you ever hear. Let me scratch that again. Let me start from the top. Let me give you a quick example, Dan, to show how this works. One of my favorite sort of movies to watch when you're Bored and killing Time is The Devil's Swear, Prada great film.And then that film is a song by Seal called Crazy, incredible song, timeless. That guy has, you know, timeless hits to his name, but it's not him recording it. Now, what might have happened in that instance is the film producer's got a hundred thousand to get the song in the movie, and he's looking to negotiate how much you pay for publishing, how much you pay for label.Now the label is getting, you know, argumentative, wanting more and more, and the publisher is happy with a certain fee. Well, the film producer's got an option. Pay the publisher of the a hundred thousand, pay him 90,000, given the lion share of the deal. And then just turn the label and say, screw you. I'm gonna get a covers bant and knock me out.A decent version of it. And this happens all the time in TV films, in commercials, you'll hear covers of famous songs. And quite often what's happening there is you gotta pay the publisher the lion share of your budget and then just cough up some small chains to the covers bant to knock out a version.And then, so just a great reminder, Dan of anyone can record a song, but only one person can own the song that is the author. And that's why negotiating and bargaining power favors publishes in sync over the record labels.[00:16:59] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And as you're saying that, I was thinking through five, six other examples of cover songs I've seen in many popular TV shows and movies.And this is exactly why?[00:17:08] Will Page: It's always car commercials. For some reason, every car commercial's got cover in a famous song. You think, remember that weird Scottish guy down Ronie Trapital? Yeah. That's what's happened. The publishers pool the rug from under the record label's feet at negotiation table.Another super important observation about the glocalisation trend, Dan, is I'm gonna take one of those 10 countries as our spotlight, Poland. Now the top 10 in Polands or Polish, the top 20 in Poland, or Polish. In fact, if you go to the top 40, it's pretty much all Polish bands performing in Polish, and you could say that's localization.But stop the bus. Most of those acts are performing hip hop, which is by itself a US genre. So perhaps we've got glocalisation of genre, but localization of language and artist. And that's a very important distinction for us to dissect. And perhaps it's for the anthropologist, the sociologist, to work out what's going on here.But it's not as straightforward as it's just local music. It's local music, but it's global genres, which is driving us forward.[00:18:08] Dan Runcie: And that's a great point for the people that work at record labels and other companies making decisions too, because there's been so much talk about hip hop's decline. But so much of that is focused on how this music is categorized and a lot of it's categorized solely on.What is considered American hip hop. But if you look at the rise of music in Latin America, which has been one of the fastest growing regions in the world, most of that music is hip hop. Bad Bunny considers himself a hip hop artist. You just brought up this example of Polish hip hop being one of the most popular genres there.So when we think about. How different genres get categorized, which genres get funding. Let's remember that key piece because hip hop is this culture and it's global, and that's gonna continue. So let's make sure that we are not taking away from a genre that is really one of the most impactful and still puts up numbers if we're categorizing it in the right way.[00:19:04] Will Page: Damn straight. I mean, I think genres are often like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and in a paper published by London School of Economics, I was honored to use that line that I think I said on trap last time, which is rap is something you do. Hip hop is something you live. Rap could be the genre, hip hop could be the lifestyle.Maybe what those Polish acts getting to the top of the charts of doing is representing a lifestyle, but they're doing it in their mother tongue.[00:19:28] Dan Runcie: Well said. Agreed. Well, let's switch gears a bit. One topic that I wanna talk about, and I actually gave a talk recently, and I referenced you from this term, and its of music, was the glocalisation of music and why this is happening and what it means for Western music specifically in the us. But first, if you could define that term and explain why this is so important in music right now.[00:19:53] Will Page: Well, I'm so excited to be on Trapital talking about this because we are now officially published by London School of Economics, so I'm gonna make my mom and dad proud of me. At last Backstory, paperback of my book, guitars in Economics, retitled to Pivot. Apparently WH Smith's Travel and Hudson Travel said books with economics in their titles Don't sell an airport.So we've rebranded the whole book to Pivot and it's in airports, which is a result. that book, that paperback came out on the 6th of February and that night I was on the BBC one show and they had this great happy, clappy family friendly story. They wanted to bounce off me. They said, Hey, will, Isn't it great that the top 10 songs in Britain last year were all British ex?For the first time in 60 years, Britain got a clean sweep of the top 10 in the music charts. And I said, curb your enthusiasm because we're seeing it elsewhere. The top 10 in Germany, were all German. Top 10 in Italy, all Italian, ditto France, deto Poland. And if you go to Spain, the top 10, there were all Spanish language, but largely Latin American.So it's not just a British thing that we've seen this rise of local music on global streaming platforms. We're seeing it everywhere, cue some gulps and embarrassments live in the TV studio. But I made my point and I came out of that interview thinking. Well that stunned them. It's gonna stu more people.And I said about working on a paper called glocalisation, which with a Scottish accent, it's hard to pronounce. Let's see how you get on with it. Not localization and not glocalisation. Emerging to by definition and by practice glocalisation. I teamed up with this wonderful author, Chris Riva, who'd be a great guest on your show.He did a wonderful blog piece you may have read, called Why is There No Key Changes in Music anymore? It's a really beautiful piece of music writing and there isn't. Nobody uses key changes in the conclusion of songs. And we set out to do this academic study to explain to the world what's been happening in music and why it's relevant to everyone else.And what we saw across 10 European countries was strong evidence of local music dominating the top of the charts in these local markets on global platforms. Now history matters here. We didn't see this with local High street retailers, America, British, Canadian music dominated those charts. We still don't see it in linear broadcast models like radio and television, you know, it's still English language repertoire dominating those charts. But when it comes to global streaming, unregulated free market, global streaming, we see this phenomenal effect where local music is topping the charts. And you know, you look at what does it mean for us English language countries like ourselves?It means things get a little bit tough. It means exporting English language repertoire into Europe becomes harder and harder. Maybe I'll just close off with this quite frightening thought, which is Britain is one of only three net exporters of music in the world. The other two being your country, United States and Sweden.Thanks to a phenomenal list of Swedish songwriters and artists. And I can't think of the last time this country's broken a global superstar act since Dua Lipa in 2017. Dan, we used to knock them out one, two a year. 2017 was a long time ago, and it's been pretty dry since.[00:23:13] Dan Runcie: And that's a great point for the people that work at record labels and other companies making decisions too, because there's been so much talk about hip hop's decline. But so much of that is focused on how this music is categorized and a lot of it's categorized solely on.What is considered American hip hop. But if you look at the rise of music in Latin America, which has been one of the fastest growing regions in the world, most of that music is hip hop. Bad Bunny considers himself a hip hop artist, you just brought up this example of Polish hip hop being one of the most popular genres there.So when we think about, how different genres get categorized, which genres get funding. Let's remember that key piece because hip hop is this culture and it's global, and that's gonna continue. So let's make sure that we are not taking away from a genre that is really one of the most impactful and still puts up numbers if we're categorizing it in the right way.[00:24:07] Will Page: Damn straight. I mean, I think genres are often like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and in a paper published by London School of Economics, I was honored to use that line that I think I said on trap last time, which is rap is something you do. Hip hop is something you live. Rap could be the genre, hip hop could be the lifestyle.Maybe what those Polish acts getting to the top of the charts of doing is representing a lifestyle, but they're doing it in their mother tongue.[00:24:32] Dan Runcie: Well said. Agreed. This is something that's been top of mind for me as well because technology in general has a way of making regions and making people in particular regions closer together than it does making the world bigger. It's like in, in a sense, technology can make the world seem bigger, but it actually makes it seem smaller, right? And I think that algorithms and bubbles that come from that are another symptom of this.But this is going to have huge implications for Western music. You mentioned it yourself. All of these markets that are used to being export markets, when they no longer have the strength to be able to have those exports, how does that then change the underlying product? How does that then change the budgets, the expectations of what you're able to make? Because if you're still trying to maintain that same top line revenue, you're still trying to maintain those airwaves you have, it's gonna cost you more money to do that, because you can't rely on the few Western superstars that you have to get, that you have to have equivalent of a superstar or at least a middle tier star in every region that you once had strong market share that you could export in.And it's gonna change cost structures. It's gonna change focus. And a lot of these expansions that we've seen of record labels, especially Western record labels, having strong footprints in different regions across the world, they're not just gonna need to have presence, they're gonna need to have strong results.And in many ways, try to rival the own companies that are in those comp, in those regions, the homegrown record labels, because every country is trying to do their own version of this and it's gonna be tight. This is one of the challenges that I think is only gonna continue to happen.[00:26:14] Will Page: You're opening up a real can of worms. I get it. Pardon to your listeners, we're getting excited here. Day of publication, first time we've been able to discuss it on air, but I know I'm onto something huge here and you've just illustrated why just a few remarks. One, some of the quotes that we have in the paper were just phenomenal. We have Apple included in the paper. We have Amazon, Steve Boom, the head of that media for Amazon in charge of not just music, but Twitch audio books, the whole thing. He's looking at all these media verticals. He makes this point where he says, as the world becomes more globalized, we become more tribal. Stop right there, as he just nailed it.What's happening here? It's The Economist can only explain so much. This is what's so deep about this topic. I wanna toss it to the anthropologist of sociologists to make sense of what I've uncovered, but it's massive. Now let's take a look at what's happening down on the street level with the record labels and the consumers. You know, the record labels are making more money and they're devolving more power to the local off seats. You know the headcount in the major labels, local off season, Germany, France, and Vietnam or wherever is doubled in the past five years. It hasn't doubled in the global headquarters. That's telling you something.If you look at how labels do their global priority list, maybe every month, here's 10 songs we want you to prioritize globally. So I had a look at how this is done, and across the year I saw maybe 8, 10, 12 artists in total, and there's 120 songs. There's not that many artists. You think about how many local artists are coming out the gate every week hitting their local labels or local streaming staff, up with ideas, with showcases and so on.Not a lot of global priority. Then you flip it and you think about the consumer, you know, they've had linear broadcast models for 70 years where you get what you're given. I'm gonna play this song at this time and you're gonna have to listen to it. FM radio, TV shows now they're empowered with choice and they don't want that anymore.They want what's familiar. What comforts them. They want their own stars performing in their own mother tongue topping those charts. So this has got way to go. Now, a couple of flips on this. Firstly, what does this mean for artists? And then I'm gonna take it out of media, but let's deal with artists.Let's imagine a huge festival in Germany. 80,000 people now festival can now sell out with just German X, no problem at all. So when the big American X or British X commanded like a million dollars a headlining fee, you wanna go play that festival. That promoter can turn around and say, sorry man, I can't generate any more money by having you on my bill.How much are you gonna pay me to get on stage? Price maker, price taker? You see what happens. And then the last thing, and there's so much more in this paper for your listeners to get to, and let's please link to it and you'll take, I'll take questions live on your blog about it as well, but. There's a great guy called Chris Deering, the father of the Sony PlayStation. Did you play the Sony PlayStation back in the day? Were you're a fan of the PlayStation.[00:29:08] Dan Runcie: Oh, yeah. PS one and PS two. Yeah. Okay.[00:29:11] Will Page: You, oh, so you, you're an OG PlayStation fella. So he's the father of the PlayStation and launching the PlayStation in the nineties and into the nineties. He offered us observation, which is when they launched a SingStar, which was karaoke challenge.In the PlayStation, he says, we always discussed why the Swedish version of SingStar was more popular in Sweden than the English version Science. Intuitive enough. Let me break it down. Gaming back then was interactive music was not, you interacted with your PlayStation, that's why you killed so much time with it. Music was just a CD and a plastic case that broke your fingernails when you tried to open it. That's how the world worked back then and gaming offered you choice. I could try and do karaoke with those huge global English language hits where I could go further down the chart and buy the Swedish version and sing along to less well known Swedish hits. And the consumer always picked the Swedish version. So as a bellwether, as a microcosm, what I think Chris Ding was teaching us was we saw this happening in gaming long before you started seeing it happen with music. 20 years ago when there was interactive content, which gaming was, music wasn't, and consumers had a choice, which gaming offered a music didn't.They went local. Today, Dan, we're dealing with music lists, A interactive, and B offers choice. And what we're seeing is local cream is rising to the top of the charts.[00:30:33] Dan Runcie: And we're seeing this across multimedia as well. We're seeing it in the film industry too. Even as recent as five, 10 years ago, you release any of the blockbuster movies that were successful in the us, almost all of them had some overseas footprint.Some of them definitely vary based on the genre, but they were always there. But now China specifically had been such a huge market for the Hollywood and Box office specifically, but now they're starting to release more of their own high ed movies and those are attracting much more audiences than our export content can one.Two, the Chinese government in general is just being very selective about what they allow and what they don't allow. And then three, with that, that's really only leaving certain fast and furious movies and Avatar. That's it. The Marvel movies are hit and missed depending on what they allow, what they don't allow, and how, and it's just crazy to see the implications that has had for Marvel Studios for everyone else in Hollywood as well.When you think about it, and we're seeing this across multimedia, I think there's a few trends here that makes me think about, one is. Population growth in general and just where those trends are and how different corporations can approach the opportunity. Because I look at Nigeria, you look at Ethiopia, these are some of the fastest growing countries in the world.And you look at the music that is rising more popular than ever, whether it's Amapiano or it's Afrobeats, that's only going to continue to grow. And that's only from a few regions in the huge continent of Africa. So when we're thinking about where success is gonna come from, where that lines up with infrastructure, people have been seeing it for years.But the reason that we're seeing the growth in Africa, the growth in Latin America, the growth in a lot of these markets is this trend of glocalisation and it's only going to increase. So if we're thinking about where we wanna invest dollars, where we wanna build infrastructure in the future, we not just being folks that live in the western world, but also elsewhere in the world, this is where things are heading.[00:32:37] Will Page: Let me come in down the middle and then throw it out to the side. So, Ralph Simon, a longtime mentor of mine, is quoted in the paper and where he's actually gonna moderate the address here at the Mad Festival here in London, which is for the marketing and advertising community here, where he says, what you've uncovered here that headwind of glocalisation is gonna affect the world of marketing and advertising this time next year.That's what will be the buzzword in their head. So if you think about, I don't know, a drinks company like Diagio, maybe they've got a globalized strategy and a globalized marketing budget. When they start seeing that you gotta go fishing where the fish are and the fish are localized, they're gonna devolve that budget and devolve that autonomy down to local offices. So the wheels of localization, this rise of local, over global, they've only just got started, if I've called it right. We're onto something way bigger than a 20 minute read LSE discussion paper. This goes deep, deep and far beyond economics. But then you mentioned as well China, I mean just one offshoot observation there, which is to look at education.If you look at the UK university system, about a third, if not more, of it is subsidized by the Chinese government and Chinese students here. Great for business, slightly dubious in its business, besties, charging one student more than another student for the same product. But that's what we do over here.And I recently, we made a fellow of Edmar University's Futures Institute, which is an honor to me, you know, gets me back home more often. Fine. And I was learning from them that. The quality of students coming from China to study here in Britain and across Europe is getting worse and worse. Why? Cuz the best students have got the best universities in China.They no longer need to travel. So there's a classic export import dilemma of, for the past 10, 15 years, universities have built a complete treasury coffer base of cash around selling higher education to the Chinese. And now the tables are turning. I don't need to send my students to you universities anymore.I'll educate them here. Thank you very much. So, like I say, this stuff is a microcosm. It's got a can of worms that can open in many different directions[00:34:39] Dan Runcie: And it's gonna touch every industry that we know of to some extent, especially as every industry watches to be global to some extent. This is going to be a big topic moving forward.Let's shift gears a bit. One of the terms that was really big for us. That came from our podcast we did last year. We talked about herbivores and we talked about carnivores, and we talked about them in relation to streaming. We haven't touched on streaming yet, and this will be our opportunity to dig down into it, but mm-hmm.For the listeners, can we revisit where that came from, what that means, and also where this is heading? What does this mean for music streaming right now as it relates to the services and competition?[00:35:24] Will Page: Well, when I first came on Trapital, that was in a small Spanish village of Cayo De Suria and I didn't think I'd come up with an expression that would go viral from a small village in Spain to be, you know, quoted from in Canada, in America.And Dan, this is quite hilarious. we have a new secretary of state of culture here in the UK. The right Honorable MP, Lucy Fraser KG, Smart as a whip. Brilliant. And when I first met her, you know what the first thing she said was, I listened to you on Trapital. I wanted to ask you about this thing you've got going called herbivores and carnivores.So right the way through to the corridors of power, this expression seems to have traveled. What are we talking about? Well, the way I framed it was for 20 years we've had these streaming services, which essentially grow without damaging anyone else. Amazon is up. Bigger subscriber numbers. Apple's got bigger subscriber numbers.YouTube and Nancy's bigger subscriber numbers. And then Spotify. Nancy's bigger subscriber numbers. Everyone's growing each other's gardens. That's fine. That's herbivores. What happens when you reach that saturation point where there's no more room to grow? The only way I can grow my business is stealing some of yours.That's carnivores. And the greatest example is simply telcos. We're all familiar with telcos. We all pay our broadband bills. How do telcos compete? Everybody in your town's got a broadband account, so the only way you can compete is by stealing someone else's business. The only way here in Britain Virgin Media can compete is by stealing some of skies.The only way that at and t competes is by stealing some of com. So that's carnival competition. Now, the key point for Trapital listeners is we don't know what this chapter is gonna read like cuz we've never had carus pronounce that word correctly. Carus behavior before. We've never seen a headline that said, Spotify's down 2 million subs and apple's up 2 million, or Amazon's up 3 million and you know, YouTube is down 3 million.We don't know what that looks like. So I think it's important for Trapital to start thinking about logical, plausible scenarios. You kick a one obvious one, which is again, a lesson from the telcos. When we do become carnivores, do we compete on price or do we compete on features? Let me wheel this back a second, you know, we'll get into pricing in more depth later. But downward competition on price tends to be how carnivores compete, and that'll be a fascinating development given that we've not seen much change in price in 22 years in counting or as we saw with Apple, they roll out spatial audio, they charge more for it, they've got a new feature, and they charge more for that feature.So do we see downward competition blood on the carpet price competition, or do we see. Upward competition based on features. I don't know which one it's gonna be. It's not for me to call it. I don't work for any of these companies. I've worked with these companies, but I don't work for any of them directly.But we have to start discussing these scenarios. How's this chapter gonna read when we start learning of net churn amongst the four horseman streaming services that's out there. It's gonna be a fascinating twist, and I'm beginning, Dan, I'm beginning to see signs of con behavior happening right now, to be honest with you.I can see switchers happening across the four, so I think we're getting there in the US and the UK. What are those signs you see? I'm just seeing that in terms of subscriber growth, it's a lot bumpier than before. Before it is just a clear trajectory. The intelligence I was getting was, everyone's up, no one needs to bother.Now I flag, you know, I signed the siren. I'm beginning to see, you know, turbulence in that subscriber growth. Someone could be down one month, up the next month. Maybe that's just a little bit of churn. The ending of a trial period, you don't know. But now for me, the smoke signals are some of those services are seeing their gross stutter.Others are growing, which means we could start having some switching. I can add to that as well. Cross usage is key here. I really hammered this home during my 10 years at Spotify, which is to start plotting grids saying, who's using your service? This person, that person, and next person now ask what other services are they using?And some data from America suggests that one in four people using Apple music are also using Spotify. And one in four people using Spotify are also using Apple Music. Cross usage confirmed. So if that was true, what do you make of that? With a public spending squeeze? With inflation, with people becoming more cost conscious in the economy with less disposable income, maybe they wanna wheel back from that and use just one, not two. And that's where we could start seeing some net churn effects taking place as well. So, you know, imagine a cross usage grid in whatever business you're working on. If your Trapital listeners and ask that question, I know who's using my stuff, what else are they using? Um, that's a really, really important question to ask to work out how this carnivore scenario is gonna play out.How are we gonna write this chapter?[00:40:23] Dan Runcie: This is interesting because it reminds me of the comparisons that people often make to video streaming and some of the dynamics there where prices have increased over the years. I know we've talked about it before to tend to a 12 years ago Netflix was cheaper than Spotify was from a monthly, US price group subscription.And now tough, tough. It's right. And now it's nearly twice the price of the current price point. That it is. The difference though, when we're talking about when you are in that carnival, when you're in that carnival market, what do you compete on? Features or price? Video streaming, you can compete on features essentially because the content is differentiated.If you want to watch Wednesday, that Netflix series is only one platform that you can watch it on. Yeah, you need to have that Netflix subscription, but in music it's different because if you wanna listen to SZA's SOS album, that's been dominating the charts. You can listen to it on any of these services.So because there are fewer and fewer limitations, at least, if your goal, main goal from a consumption perspective is to listen to the music, how do you then differentiate, which I do think can put more pressure on price, which is very interesting because there is this broader pricing debate that's happening right now about why prices should be higher.And we've seen in the past six plus months that Apple has at least raised its prices. Amazon has done the same, at least for new subscribers. Spotify has announced that it will but hasn't yet and this is part of that dynamic because on one hand you have these broader economic trends as you're calling them out, but on the other hand you do have the rights holders and others pushing on prices to increase.And then you have the dynamic between the rights holders and then the streaming services about who would then get the increased revenue that comes. So there's all of these fascinating dynamics that are intersecting with this her before shift to carnivores[00:42:23] Will Page: For sure. Let me just go around the block of those observations you offered us. All relevant, all valid and just, you know, pick off a few of them. If we go back to Netflix, I think Netflix has a, not a herbivore. I'm gonna talk about alcohol here cause it's late in the day in the UK. A gin and tonic relationship with its competitors. That is, if Dan Runcie doesn't pay for any video streaming service, and let's say Netflix gets you in and I'm the head of Disney plus, I say, well, thank you Netflix.That makes it easier for me to get Dan to pay for Disney Plus too. They compliment each other. They are genuine complimentary goods. They might compete for attention. You know who's got the best exclusive content, who's gonna renew the friends deal, whatever, you know, who's gonna get Fresh Prince of Bel Air on?That could be a switch or piece of content too, but when you step back from it, it's gin and tonic. It's not different brands of gin, that's really important technology, which is they've grown this market of video streaming. They've increased their prices and the same person's paying for 2, 3, 4 different packages.If I added up, I'm giving video streaming about 60 quid a month, and I'm giving music streaming 10 and the sixties going up and the music's staying flat. So it's bizarre what's happened in video streaming because the content is exclusive. Back to, how do music carnivores play out again? Could we see it play out in features?I listen to airport cause they've got classical and I listen to Spotify because it got discovered weekly. Is that plausible? Personally, I don't buy it, but you can sow that seed and see if it takes root, as well. I think just quick pause and Apple as well. I think two things there. They've launched Apple Classical. That's a very, very good example of differentiating a product because it's a standalone app like podcast as a standalone app. The way I look at that is you can go to the supermarket and buy all your shopping. You can get your Tropicana orange juice, you can get your bread, get your eggs, get your meat, get your fish or you could go to a specialist butcher and buy your meat there instead. Apple Classical for me is the specialist butcher as opposed to the supermarket, and they're offering both in the same ecosystem. It'd be incredible if they preload out the next iOS update and give 850 million people an Apple classical app.Imagine if they did that for Jazz, my friend. Imagine if they did that for jazz. Just if Apple's listening, repeat, do that for jazz. So there's one example. The other example from Apple is to go back to bundling. You know we talk about 9.99 a month. I chewed your ear off about this topic last time I was on your show.Just to remind your listeners, where did it come from? This price point in pound Sterling, in Euro in dollar that we still pay for on the 20th of May, 2023. It came from a Blockbuster video rental card that is when reps, he got its license on the 3rd of December, 2001. Not long after nine 11, a record label exec said if it cost nine 90 nines, rent movies from Blockbuster.That's what it should cost to rent music. And 22 years plus on, we're still there, ran over. But what does this mean for bumbling strategies? How much does Apple really charge? If I give $30 a month for Apple One, which is tv, music, gaming news, storage and fitness, all wrapped up into one price. Now, there's a famous Silicon Valley investi called James Barksdale.Dunno if you've heard of him from the Bay Area where you're based. And he had this famous quote where he said, gentlemen, there's only two ways to make money in business. Bundling and unbundling. What we've had for the past 10 years is herbivores. Unbundling. Pay for Netflix, don't pay for Comcast. Pay for Spotify. Don't pay for your CDs, fine. What we might have in the next 10 years is carnivores bundling, which is a pendulum, swings back towards convenience of the bundle and away from the individual items. So Apple, take 30 bucks a month off my bank balance. Please take 40. All I want is one direct debit. I don't care about the money, I just want the bundle.And I don't want to see 15 direct debits every month. I just wanna see one. I think that's a very plausible scenario for how the next 10 years it's gonna play out as we shift from herbivores to carnivores[00:46:31] Dan Runcie: And the bundle benefits, the companies that have the ability to do that, right? You can do that through Amazon Prime and get your video, your music, your free shipping or whatever is under that umbrella. You could do that through Apple. You mentioned all the elements under Apple one. Spotify has some element of this as well, whether it's exclusive podcasting and things like that. So you're starting to see these things happen, one thing that you mentioned though earlier, you're talking about going through the supermarket and all of the items that you could get there versus going to the specialty butcher.One of the unique aspects of the supermarket thing though, is that. You go into the supermarket, yes, you can get your high-end Tropicana, or you can get the generic store brand, but you're gonna pay more for that high-end Tropicana because you're paying for the brand, you're paying for everything else that isn't gonna necessarily be the same as the generic one.That may not necessarily be the same quality or the same taste. We're seeing this a bit in the streaming landscape now and some of the debates that were happening. You've heard the major record label executives talk about how they don't necessarily want their premium music. They see their content as HBO level and it's being in a playlist next to rain music, or it's next to your uncle that is playing some random song on the banjo and they're getting essentially the same price going to the rights holders for that song.And in the supermarket that's obviously very different, each item has its own differentiator there, or econ has its own price point there and its own cost, but that isn't necessarily the same thing in music. Of course, the cost of each of those tracks may be different, but the revenue isn't. So that's gonna be, or that already is a whole debate that's going on right now. Do you have thoughts on that?[00:48:21] Will Page: Well, you tossed top Tropicana, let me go grab that carton for a second. It's one of the best economic lessons I ever learned was visiting a supermarket in America cuz it's true to say that when you go into one of your American supermarkets, an entire aisle of that precious shelf space, it's dedicated to selling inferior brands of orange juice next to Tropicana.Just very quickly what's happening there, the undercover economist, if you want, is a bargaining power game. Tropicana knows The reason Dan Runcie pulled the car over, got the trolley, went into that supermarket is to get a staple item of Tropicana and other stuff. By the time it gets to the till, Tropicana could be $5.By the time he gets to till he spent $50. So here, subscriber acquisition cost contribution is really high. They're getting you into the mall. What you do once you're in the mall is anyone's business, but they got you in. Otherwise you would've gone to the deli across the street. So they could say to the supermarket, I'm gonna charge you $7 to sell that Tropicana for $5 in my supermarket.Supermarket knows this, they know that Tropicana's got the bargaining paris. They counter by saying, here's an entire shell space of awful brands of orange juice to curb your bargaining power to see if the consumer wants something different. Now is this Will Page taking a stupid pill and digressing down Tropicana Alley. No. Let's think about this for a second today, Dan, there's a hundred thousand songs being onboarded onto streaming services. Is there anybody what? Marching up and down Capitol Hill saying We want a hundred thousand songs. No, the floodgates have opened them. It's all this content. Two new podcasts being launched every minute.All this content, all of these alternative brands to Tropicana. But you just wanted one. And I think the record labels argument here is that one Cardinal Tropicana is worth more than everything else you're offering by its side. So we wanna rebalance the scales. Now this gets really tricky and very contentious, but what is interesting, if you wanna take a cool head on this topic, it's to learn from the collecting studies, which is not the sexiest thing to say on a Trapital podcast, but it's to look at your Scaps and your BMIs and understand how they distribute the value of money for music.Since their foundation in the 1930s, scap has never, ever treated music to have the same value. They have rules, qualifications, distribution, allocation practices, which change the value of music. And they don't have data scientists then. And to be honest, I don't think they have data scientists now, but they always have treated the value of music differently.When they were founded, they had a classical music distribution pot and a distribution pot for music that wasn't classical music. Ironically, their board was full of classical composers, and I think that's called embezzlement, but we'll leave that to the side. What we have here is a story of recognizing music as different value in the world of collecting Saudi.I call that Jurassic Park, but in the world of music streaming with all those software developers and engineers and data scientists, 22 years of 9.99 money coming in and the Prorata model, which means every song is worth the same for money going out, and that's your tension. That's your tension. How do you get off that?Tension is anyone's business. We got some ideas we can discuss. User-centric is one, autocentric is another. I've got a few ideas for my own, but I want your audience to appreciate. In straight no chaser language we call it. That's the undercurrent of what's going on here. How do you introduce Trapitalism to communism?[00:51:38] Dan Runcie: You mentioned there's artist centric, user-centric, but you mentioned some ideas you had of your own. What are those ideas?[00:51:44] Will Page: Can I bounce it off? Use my intellectual punch bag for a quick second. Yes, and I've worked 'em all. I've worked on the artist centric model. I've worked on artist growth models. That's up on YouTube. I've worked on user centric, but I'm just, I'm worried that these models, these propositions could collapse the royalty systems that these streaming services work under. The introduction of user centric or artist centric could become so complex, so burdensome, the royalty systems could break down.That's a genuine concern I have. It's not one you discuss when you talk about your aspirations and the land of milk and honey of our new streaming model that you envisage. Back in the engine room when you see how royalties are allocated and calculated and distributed out to right holders, I mean they're under stress anyway.Any more stress could snap it. So I come at this model, my proposition from the one that's least likely to break the system. I'm not saying it's the best model, but it's the least like least likely to have adverse impact on the system. And it came from my DCMS Select Committee performance in the UK Parliament, which your listeners can watch, we can give the link out, which is I said to the committee in terms of how you could change the model.What about thinking about duration? This wheel back since 1980s when B BBC radio plays, let's say Bohemian Rhapsody, it will pay for that song twice what it would pay for. You're my best friend, members of Queen wrote both songs, both released within three, four years of each other, but one lasts twice as long as another.So duration is not new. We factor in duration a lot in our music industry. We just never thought about it. If you look at Mexico, the Mexican collecting Saudi, which is so corrupt as an inside an army barracks, if you look there, they have sliding scales, duration. They factor in time, but they say the second minute is what?Less than the first. But I'm giving you more for more time just adding, decreasing scale. Germany, they have ranges in your country. America, mechanical licensing collective, the MLC in Nashville, they have overtime songs that last more than six minutes get a 1.2 multiplier. So I've been thinking about how could you introduce duration to this business?And the idea I've come up with is not to measure time. That'd be too complex, too burdensome. Every single song, measuring every second of consumption. How do you audit there? If you're an artist manager, but I wanna measure completion, then I think this is the answer. I want songs that are completed in full to receive a bonus and songs that are skipped before they end to receive a penalty.Not a huge bonus, not a huge penalty, but a tweak. A nudge that says, I value your attention. I value great songs, and you listen to these great songs and it captures my entire attention. You deserve something more. But if I skipped out after the first chorus, you deserve something less. I think that small nudge is a nudge in the right direction for this industry, and it wouldn't break the systems.So there it is. Tell me now, have I taken a stupid pill?[00:54:42] Dan Runcie: What I like about it, and I've heard other people in the industry mention this too, you're able to get something closer to what we do see in video streaming. I forget which app is specifically, but their threshold is 75%. So they acknowledge that yes, if you don't wanna watch the credits, you don't wanna listen to the closeout, that's fine.But if we at least get you for 75%, then we are gonna count that, and then that then can get used internally. That can then get used in different areas. But I think it provides everyone better data and analysis, much better data to be able to break down than. Whether or not you listen to the first 30 seconds, that's such a low threshold, but that's essentially where we are today.I think the biggest thing, regardless of what path is chosen, because as you and I both know, there's trade-offs to everyone. So instead of going through all the negative parts about it, I think it's probably more helpful to talk about it collectively, you accept the fact that there are trade-offs. You accept the fact that people are gonna try to game the system regardless of how you go about it.Because we have seen duration work elsewhere and it does get at that particular thing that we're trying to get at there is help there. And you mentioned other things such as, yes, if you're listening to the Bohemian Rhapsody, you, which I think is at least seven minutes and 15 seconds, most likely longer versus two minute song that is clearly idealized for the streaming era.There still should be maybe some slight difference there because listening to a minute and 30 seconds is very different than listening to five minute and 45 seconds to be able to hit that 75% threshold. So between that and then I've heard other topics such as which artists you start your session with should have some type of multiplier on there, and as opposed to someone that gets algorithmically recommended to you to be able to put some more onus on the on-demand nature of music streaming.The tough thing is that these things do get tough in general. Anytime there's any type of multiplier or factor in, there still is a zero sum pot that we're taking the money out of. So accepting the trade-offs, I like the direction, I think that there's a few ways to go about it that could make it more interesting, but in general, I do think that any of the proposed options I've seen at least, allow a bit more of a true economic reflection of where the reality is as opposed to where things are today.And I understand where things are today. It's easy. It's easy to report, it's easy to collect on and pay people out, relatively speaking. But like anything, there's trade offs.[00:57:14] Will Page: Yeah, it's really easy today. Even drummers can work out their royalties and no offense to drummers, but that's telling you something.But two points on my dura

In this bonus segment, Nate sits down with biblical counselor Austin Kropf to discuss the different methods he uses to study the Bible. -- Methods we discussed: - Paraphrasing scripture (04:47) - The Inductive Study Method (06:50) - Finding Key Words (12:53) - Reading Commentaries (19:23) --- Resources we mentioned:  - eSword (Download eSword here) - Blue Letter Bible - Bible Hub - Precept Upon Precept

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Moderation notes re: recent Said/Duncan threads, published by Raemon on April 14, 2023 on LessWrong. Recently there's been a series of posts and comment back-and-forth between Said Achmiz and Duncan Sabien, which escalated enough that it seemed like site moderators should weigh in. For context, a quick recap of recent relevant events as I'm aware of them are. (I'm glossing over many details that are relevant but getting everything exactly right is tricky) Duncan posts Basics of Rationalist Discourse. Said writes some comments in response. Zack posts "Rationalist Discourse" Is Like "Physicist Motors", which Duncan and Said argue some more and Duncan eventually says "goodbye" which I assume coincides with banning Said from commenting further on Duncan's posts. I publish LW Team is adjusting moderation policy. Lionhearted suggests "Basics of Rationalist Discourse" as a standard the site should uphold. Paraphrasing here, Said objects to a post being set as the site standards if not all non-banned users can discuss it. More discussion ensues. Duncan publishes Killing Socrates, a post about a general pattern of LW commenting that alludes to Said but doesn't reference him by name. Commenters other than Duncan do bring up Said by name, and the discussion gets into "is Said net positive/negative for LessWrong?" in a discussion section where Said can't comment. @gjm publishes On "aiming for convergence on truth", which further discusses/argues a principle from Basics of Rationalist Discourse that Said objected to. Duncan and Said argue further in the comments. I think it's a fair gloss to say "Said makes some comments about what Duncan did, which Duncan says are false enough that he'd describe Said as intentionally lying about them. Said objects to this characterization" (although exactly how to characterize this exchange is maybe a crux of discussion) LessWrong moderators got together for ~2 hours to discuss this overall situation, and how to think about it both as an object-level dispute and in terms of some high level "how do the culture/rules/moderation of LessWrong work?". I think we ended up with fairly similar takes, but, getting to the point that we all agree 100% on what happened and what to do next seemed like a longer project, and we each had subtly different frames about the situation. So, some of us (at least Vaniver and I, maybe others) are going to start by posting some top level comments here. People can weigh in the discussion. I'm not 100% sure what happens after that, but we'll reflect on the discussion and decide on whether to take any high-level mod actions. If you want to weigh in, I encourage you to take your time even if there's a lot of discussion going on. If you notice yourself in a rapid back and forth that feels like it's escalating, take at least a 10 minute break and ask yourself what you're actually trying to accomplish. I do note: the moderation team will be making an ultimate call on whether to take any mod actions based on our judgment. (I'll be the primary owner of the decision, although I expect if there's significant disagreement among the mod team we'll talk through it a lot). We'll take into account arguments various people post, but we aren't trying to reflect the wisdom of crowds. So if you may want to focus on engaging with our cruxes rather than what other random people in the comments think. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Paraphrasing from an article written by Dr. Fauci, where he says that we need a new infrastructure of human existence in which basically we get rid of cities, we get rid of birthday parties, we get rid of sports events, we get rid of bars, restaurants, and all the normal things we consider to be…

Hi Sandra, in this episode we really said “let's not prepare anything and then choose quantum physics to riff off of” and you know what, I think it worked for us. Join Quill & Audrey as they discuss what Bad Planning & Schrödinger's Cat have in common. It turns out it a LOT. CameosDelay. If you like audio delays, this episode is for you #riversideeatmydick #ipayforthisservice Doja Cat's rhinestone look giving a human body being processed through a meat grinder

“Hey Bart, I came across an article on Vox talking about the movement known as Effective Altruism, and the fall of one of its star advocates, cryptocurrency exchange owner Sam Bankman-Fried. The guy had lost at least a billion dollars of his clients' money after he secretly transferred it to a hedge fund he owned, he's now been arrested for it. But what's confusing is that his stated goal in life was to do good: he said wanted to make a lot of money in finance so he could give most of it away to good causes, specifically causes identified using Effective Altruism. Paraphrasing from the Vox article: 'Effective altruism is a social movement that's all about using reason and evidence to do the most good for the most people. … Yet it looks like Bankman-Fried has done a lot of BAD to a lot of people.' On top of this, Bart, I know there have been other criticisms of Effective Altruism, and I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on whether a good humanist - and maybe especially a Humanize Me listener - should be involved in Effective Altruism or whether it's a dubious proposition these days. Thanks!”

'Tis the Damn Season... You can call me babe for the weekend." ~ Taylor SwiftCuffing season as defined by Merriam Webster:"Refers to a period of time where single people begin looking for short term partnerships to pass the colder months of the year.' Cuffing season begins in October and lasts until just after Valentine's Day.Paraphrasing a  recent article from Today.com says that cuffing season is a seasonal phenomenon of single people ramping up their efforts to enter into relationships during the fall and winter months. Cuffing season falls into the category of situationship. For some people it's a serious relationship. For others it is merely someone to come over when you want company on cold winter nights.Loneliness is the ultimate driver of cuffing season.  The Cleveland Clinic explains that, " When the temperature drops and it gets cold earlier there is often a change of mood connected to the chemicals of serotonin and melatonin in your body. Cold nights can trigger intense feelings of loneliness and a drop in serotonin and there may even be a link between cuffing season and seasonal affective disorder.During cuffing season, you may inadvertently lock yourself in a relationship you don't really want to be in. If you're feeling sad, lonely, or desperate, it may not be the best way to start a relationship. Hallmark movies, holiday commercials, etc remind us that being with someone makes us feel cozy. There is a natural boost in serotonin when we're feeling romantic.I share my own experience of being in a "quasi" relationship during 1 of 4 cuffing seasons I've been through since being separated and divorced. I rebounded during my separation with a close friend. We dated through the fall and broke up on New Years Day. We went out on dates during the holidays, we exchanged gifts, and we were cozy. BUT shit got weird too... I was invited and then uninvited to an office Christmas party. The extra time I had during my holiday vacation time also exposed some underlying issues in our relationship. My boyfriend lied to me and declined an opportunity to spend time with me as well as an overnight invitation. He had family obligations that he wasn't truthful about. Because I didn't want to spend NYE alone, I stuck it out but broke up the next day. I don't regret this one cuffing season I participated in.I think we're way more prone to "submarining" during cuffing season. Be cautious reaching out and being receptive to attention from people you were once romantic with. Maybe it's a great time to reconnect, maybe not. Cuffing doesn't have to be for the whole season. Maybe it can be fun to go as a plus one to a holiday wedding or NYE party. You don't have to lock down. Personally, I don't miss getting pulled in many directions to attend a bunch of celebrations and buying gifts for so many people. I enjoy the simplicity of my holidays now when I share my energy and time with my close loved ones. I enjoy being a hermit when it's cold outside. I can cuddle with my puppy. For now, that's good enough for me. Support the show

As 2022 comes to a close, some rumination feels fitting. CoCo Loupe has created a lovely script that reflects on her dancing/learning life. There's a short introduction about the script by CoCo at 1:25. Embodied Paraphrasing starts at 7:00. Follow us on Instagram @benevolent_instruction or go to our website benevolentinstruction.com for updates and news. The Community Zoom events will resume on Jan. 7 at noon EST. See you in 2023!

The desire to create meaningful connections and relationships is at the core of what makes us human. Today's guest, Guy Sengstock is a master of profound communication. He is the founder and creator of the Circling Method which teaches deep listening techniques and reveals a person's true essence and helps cultivate deep connections. The effects of circling are literally mind and heart changing and the technique is an incredible tool for any charged or vulnerable conversation, be it with a loved one, a co-worker or a friend. Guy has been facilitating transformation for individuals, groups and corporations internationally for more than twenty years. He has a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is also an artist, philosopher, poet, body-worker and visionary. In our conversation Guy shares how to be comfortable with who we are and how magic happens when we begin to listen with intent and when we are not afraid to show our vulnerability. This episode provides what I believe to be one of the most valuable skills we as individuals can master, as communication is the basis for every human interaction. In this episode with Guy Sengstock, you'll discover: -The biggest issue regarding communication today according to Guy...03:20 -How "I" is the most fundamental element of human communication...07:40 -Listening stops when judgment begins...13:12 -The history and overview of "circling"...21:08 -How Circling affects conventional communication for the better...34:12 -Circling and "unlearning" our engrained thought patterns...39:42 -The space of the unknown is akin to the space of intimacy...47:13 -Ways to facilitate communication with relationships that appear to be hopelessly stuck...51:48 -How to know when we're truly listening to our counterparts...1:02:40 -Listening inside ourselves in the act of listening to others...1:11:25 -Paraphrasing as an act of true listening, allowing the other to feel heard...1:16:12 -The future of communication in the coming decades...1:23:02 -Guy's best personal practices...1:26:31 Resources mentioned: https://circlinginstitute.com/about/ (The Circling Institute) Guest's social handles: https://www.facebook.com/circlinginstitute (Facebook) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0XVjWQR0vY5pwteFhC2W0w (YouTube)

Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEm  Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Time Magazine takes virtue signaling to a whole new level by using and promoting so-called Neo-pronouns. At the same time they're also promoting a phonographic children's book, which is the real story. We'll discuss. Also, the White House declares that half of the country are dangerous extremists, a threat to democracy, and should be incinerated in a missile strike. Paraphrasing slightly. An important Daily Wire report reveals just who is benefiting from student loan forgiveness. Winnie The Pooh gets the horror movie treatment. And a Duke volleyball player says she was the victim of racist harassment during a match. You'll never guessed what happens next. Actually you will.  Stop giving your money to woke corporations that hate you. Get your Jeremy's Razors today at jeremysrazors.com.    Get the brand new Johnny the Walrus Plushie here: https://bit.ly/3CHeLlu    — Today's Sponsors:  40 Days for Life is one of the largest pro-life grassroots organizations in the world. “What to Say When: The Complete New Guide to Discussing Abortion” Available on Amazon OR at 40DaysforLife.com Bank On Yourself is a proven alternative to conventional retirement accounts that gives you guaranteed, predictable growth, unrestricted access to your money, plus tax-free retirement income. Get a FREE Report at BankOnYourself.com/WALSH Protect your identity with LifeLock. Save up to 25% OFF Your First Year at www.LifeLock.com/WALSH.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEm Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Time Magazine takes virtue signaling to a whole new level by using and promoting so-called Neo-pronouns. At the same time they're also promoting a phonographic children's book, which is the real story. We'll discuss. Also, the White House declares that half of the country are dangerous extremists, a threat to democracy, and should be incinerated in a missile strike. Paraphrasing slightly. An important Daily Wire report reveals just who is benefiting from student loan forgiveness. Winnie The Pooh gets the horror movie treatment. And a Duke volleyball player says she was the victim of racist harassment during a match. You'll never guessed what happens next. Actually you will. Stop giving your money to woke corporations that hate you. Get your Jeremy's Razors today at jeremysrazors.com.  Get the brand new Johnny the Walrus Plushie here: https://bit.ly/3CHeLlu  —Today's Sponsors: 40 Days for Life is one of the largest pro-life grassroots organizations in the world. “What to Say When: The Complete New Guide to Discussing Abortion” Available on Amazon OR at 40DaysforLife.comBank On Yourself is a proven alternative to conventional retirement accounts that gives you guaranteed, predictable growth, unrestricted access to your money, plus tax-free retirement income. Get a FREE Report at BankOnYourself.com/WALSHProtect your identity with LifeLock. Save up to 25% OFF Your First Year at www.LifeLock.com/WALSH.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jeremiah Valencia had a terrible childhood, and nearly every adult in his life failed him in some way. There. It feels good to rip the bandage off and get that out of the way.Sometimes bold, declarative statements like that can rub people the wrong way — they tend to think you're judging people too harshly. “Judge not,” they say. “Walk a mile in their shoes,” they say. If you know me, you know I've run a marathon in those shoes, listeners.“Surely there must have been a grandparent or uncle or someone who didn't fail Jeremiah Valencia, right?” A 13 year-old boy is dead. The fact alone means nobody is innocent, and our first, reflexive, knee-jerk reaction should not be one of aversion and defensive posturing.Guilt is good.We should feel guilty.It's our first step toward acknowledging that there's something we could have done better for Jeremiah Valencia.There's an old Buddhist passage that has been translated and interpreted with a different meaning than the original, but it is no less profound. Paraphrasing, it goes “Only three things cannot remain long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”In the case of Jeremiah Valencia, nobody has the moral high ground to say they did everything they could, so I'll say it again because it's the truth. Nearly every adult in Jeremiah Valencia's life failed him in some way, and it cost him his life.Our challenge now, as a community, is to accept our share of the blame and learn from it, so it never happens again. If Jeremiah's story can teach us how to do that, then his death will not have been in vain.Sources“Autopsy shows slain boy died of blunt force trauma.” Albuquerque Journal, 04 08 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102348142/autopsy-shows-slain-boy-died-of-blunt-fo/.“Corrections : Adult Correctional Facility : Inmate Lookup.” Santa Fe County, https://www.santafecountynm.gov/inmate_lookup.php. Accessed 23 May 2022.“Did Jeremiah fall through cracks?” Albuquerque Journal, 03 02 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102343145/.“Hands of a Monster.” Santa Fe New Mexican, 31 01 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102080967/hands-of-a-monster/.Haywood, Phaedra. “Police seemed unaware Ferguson wanted.” PressReader.com, 15 September 2018, https://www.pressreader.com/usa/santa-fe-new-mexican/20180915/281556586730023. Accessed 18 May 2022.“Man, woman face charges in the death of her teenage son.” Albuquerque Journal, 30 01 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102080854/man-woman-face-charges-in-the-death-of/.“Officials stay quiet on Ferguson's death.” Santa Fe New Mexican, 30 04 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102336107/officials-stay-quiet-on-fergusons-death/.“Plea deal taken in fatal child abuse case.” Albuquerque Journal, 21 03 2020, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102350666/plea-deal-taken-in-fatal-child-abuse-cas/.“Remember, Jeremiah is who matters.” Santa Fe New Mexican, 01 05 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102340867/remember-jeremiah-is-who-matters/.“Sheriff: Ferguson left letter claiming innocence in Jeremiah's death.” Las Cruces Sun, 02 05 2018, https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2018/05/02/sheriff-thomas-wayne-ferguson-left-letter-claiming-innocence-jeremiah-valencia-death/572822002/. Accessed 18 May 2022.“Slain boy was kept in kennel, SF County sheriff says.” Albuquerque Journal, 31 01 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102081665/slain-boy-was-kept-in-kennel-sf-county/.“This child had no one.” Santa Fe New Mexican, 01 02 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102081791/this-child-had-no-one/.“Vigil held for 13-year-old believed beaten to death.” Albuquerque Journal, 01 02 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102081987/vigil-held-for-13-year-old-believed-beat/.“Vigil held for victim of alleged torture.” Albuquerque Journal, 01 02 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102082321/vigil-held-for-victim-of-alleged-torture/https://youtu.be/rtPnpstnwG8https://youtu.be/sXC230-3wIAhttps://youtu.be/2k_Y0aMALp8https://youtu.be/2In4UXmMQcAhttps://youtu.be/C3WMX2gCwdQhttps://youtu.be/HBv5Ne1Oii0https://youtu.be/0N8ycvpL9Schttps://youtu.be/02OhWULZPOohttps://youtu.be/VH9bQVSZIU4https://youtu.be/r8FeGnohP7Mhttps://youtu.be/hZrf3jQjWa0https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/santa-fe-police-in-november-encounter-seemed-unaware-ferguson-was-wanted/article_f316fc6a-614d-52c0-b28e-a8d6ea069984.htmlhttps://www.abqjournal.com/1127848/new-documents-provide-more-detail-of-alleged-torture-of-13-year-old-boy.htmlhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10086421/PICTURED-Bloody-dog-crate-hammer-used-family-torture-13-year-old-boy-death.htmlhttps://nypost.com/2018/02/26/teens-school-absence-unnoticed-for-months-after-death-cops/https://youtu.be/OMRoExslM04https://youtu.be/TPs9EuftZ3Ahttps://youtu.be/dcSSKH_n3dEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwTzAP3Kod0https://youtu.be/Dp9WxOph8Akhttps://www.kob.com/kobtvimages/repository/cs/files/lawsuit(1).pdfhttps://www.pressreader.com/usa/santa-fe-new-mexican/20180915/281556586730023https://www.facebook.com/pg/Angel-Jeremiah-Valencia-508707769527071/posts/https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/facebook-messages-appear-to-discuss-killing-of-jeremiah-valencia/article_bb807c2c-3361-5b61-9b66-5cd6b3056452.htmlhttps://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2018/09/20/jeremiah-valencias-sister-tells-how-boy-died/1367877002/https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2018/05/02/sheriff-thomas-wayne-ferguson-left-letter-claiming-innocence-jeremiah-valencia-death/572822002/https://www.abqjournal.com/1194979/affidavit-jeremiah-valencia-reported-abuse-to-relative.htmlhttps://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2018/09/20/jeremiah-valencias-sister-tells-how-boy-died/1367877002/https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/nu-ez-pleads-guilty-in-death-of-jeremiah-valencia/article_b4e3170a-6ac7-11ea-b681-33f1403af86f.htmlhttps://www.ibtimes.co.uk/jeremiah-valencia-13-was-raped-burned-before-being-beaten-death-buried-1663632https://www.facebook.com/Angel-Jeremiah-Valencia-508707769527071/https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/mother-of-slain-namb-boy-sentenced-to-12-years-in-prison/article_46b2cdc4-d012-11ea-a805-cb290c6abe3b.html?fbclid=IwAR281dLJay3uoieCjWy-NRMhMol-CT7ZV5-hpcPitrhYQ0jmW4_ya-1xw_Qhttps://www.the-sun.com/news/572681/jordan-nunez-plead-guilty-abuse-tortue-death-jeremiah-valencia/https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/new-mexico/2018/09/05/prosecutors-believe-jordan-nunez-not-his-dad-killed-jeremiah-valencia/1202258002/https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-mexico/articles/2021-05-21/new-mexico-man-to-be-sentenced-in-fatal-beating-of-boyhttps://www.abqjournal.com/2393334/maximum-sentence-sought-in-boys-death.htmlhttps://www.the-sun.com/news/572681/jordan-nunez-plead-guilty-abuse-tortue-death-jeremiah-valencia/https://www.abqjournal.com/1384298/suit-negligent-police-agencies-prosecutors-liable-in-boys-death.html?fbclid=IwAR1G20htEF3OXs8juE9Psfxv_ngkj4Vd2gqJ1X--POVcW3bMdE3RNr2OrU0https://www.abqjournal.com/1360300/accused-jeremiah-valencia-killer-faces-new-abuse-charges.html?fbclid=IwAR2gncSvgKCWUvHYrXBHiOh_Mafl9XS7TCAFKhZ7Qg_0fkaQVbfDsej0nb0