Podcasts about parisians

Billi (@SGPSoccer) breaks down all of the FIFA Club World Cup matches happening on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The opening game of the FIFA Club World Cup takes place this evening, as Egyptian champions Al Ahly take on Leo Messi's Inter Miami.Sunday will see Paris St-Germain partake in their first match since inflicting a 5-0 hiding on Inter Milan in the Champions League final. They'll be hoping that their Club World Cup campaign can get off to a flyer with victory over chief Group B rivals Atletico Madrid— in what many feel is the biggest game of the group stage phase. The Parisians impressed with their energy and intensity throughout their Champions League campaign, which also featured knockout stage victories over Premier League outfits Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal. Many fancy them to add this FIFA Club World Cup to their trophy cabinet. Exclusive SGPN Bonuses And Linkshttp://linktr.ee/sportsgamblingpodcastFollow The Sports Gambling Podcast X/Twitter - https://x.com/GamblingPodcastInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/sportsgamblingpodcastTikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@gamblingpodcastFacebook - http://www.facebook.com/sportsgamblingpodcastFollow The Sports Gambling Podcast HostsSean Green - http://www.twitter.com/seantgreenRyan Kramer - http://www.twitter.com/kramercentricGambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER CO, DC, IL, IN, LA, MD, MS, NJ, OH, PA, TN, VA, WV, WY Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY) Call 1-800-327-5050 (MA)21+ to wager. Please Gamble Responsibly. Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (KS, NV), 1-800 BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-270-7117 for confidential help (MI)

Fluent Fiction - French: Balancing Act: A Paris Café's Tale of Structure and Innovation Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/fr/episode/2025-06-15-22-34-02-fr Story Transcript:Fr: Le soleil brillait fort au-dessus de Paris en ce jour d'été.En: The sun shone brightly above Paris on this summer day.Fr: Le petit café d'Émilie et Léon, niché non loin de la majestueuse Tour Eiffel, était en effervescence.En: The little café of Émilie and Léon, nestled not far from the majestic Tour Eiffel, was buzzing with activity.Fr: Les tables en terrasse étaient remplies de touristes curieux et de Parisiens détendus profitant de l'ambiance chaleureuse.En: The terrace tables were filled with curious tourists and relaxed Parisians enjoying the warm atmosphere.Fr: Des arômes de café et de croissants flottaient dans l'air, ajoutant une touche parfumée à l'atmosphère animée.En: Aromas of coffee and croissants floated in the air, adding a fragrant touch to the lively environment.Fr: Émilie s'activait derrière le comptoir, notant mentalement chaque commande, tout en jetant de temps à autre un regard préoccupé sur la caisse enregistreuse.En: Émilie was busy behind the counter, mentally noting each order, while occasionally casting a concerned glance at the cash register.Fr: Elle savait que l'été était crucial pour leur petit café.En: She knew that summer was crucial for their little café.Fr: Beaucoup de touristes signifiaient plus de clients, mais aussi des dépenses accrues.En: Many tourists meant more customers, but also increased expenses.Fr: Émilie était déterminée à ce que le café ne traverse pas de difficultés financières.En: Émilie was determined to ensure that the café didn't face financial difficulties.Fr: Léon, quant à lui, était dans son élément.En: Léon, meanwhile, was in his element.Fr: Il adorait créer des boissons originales et expérimenter avec des sandwichs innovants.En: He loved creating original drinks and experimenting with innovative sandwiches.Fr: Aujourd'hui encore, il avait créé une nouvelle recette : un croissant avocat-feta qui avait déjà séduit quelques clients fidèles.En: Today again, he had created a new recipe: an avocado-feta croissant that had already won over a few loyal customers.Fr: Pour Léon, l'ambiance et la créativité étaient le cœur du café.En: For Léon, the atmosphere and creativity were the heart of the café.Fr: Toutefois, il était souvent en décalage avec les préoccupations pratiques d'Émilie.En: However, he was often out of sync with Émilie's practical concerns.Fr: Un jour, épuisée par la tension entre ses craintes et les projets audacieux de Léon, Émilie convint qu'ils devaient se parler sérieusement.En: One day, exhausted by the tension between her worries and Léon's bold projects, Émilie decided they needed to have a serious talk.Fr: En fin de matinée, elle proposa à Léon de la rejoindre dans la petite salle à l'arrière du café pour une réunion.En: Late in the morning, she suggested to Léon that he join her in the small room at the back of the café for a meeting.Fr: Léon accepta, bien que réticent à laisser l'effervescence du café.En: Léon agreed, though reluctant to leave the café's buzz.Fr: La discussion fut intense.En: The discussion was intense.Fr: Émilie expliqua calmement ses inquiétudes financières.En: Émilie calmly explained her financial concerns.Fr: Elle parla de nécessité de structure et d'efficacité.En: She spoke of the need for structure and efficiency.Fr: Léon, amusé mais respectueux, écouta et défendit sa vision : l'importance d'attirer les clients avec des idées nouvelles.En: Amused but respectful, Léon listened and defended his vision: the importance of attracting customers with new ideas.Fr: Pour lui, l'innovation était la clé du succès.En: For him, innovation was the key to success.Fr: Leurs échanges furent soudain interrompus par un vacarme venant de la salle principale.En: Their exchange was suddenly interrupted by a commotion coming from the main room.Fr: Un grand groupe de touristes venait d'entrer.En: A large group of tourists had just entered.Fr: Le café se remplit en un instant de voix joyeuses et de sons de chaises que l'on déplace.En: The café filled instantly with joyful voices and the sounds of chairs being moved.Fr: Émilie et Léon échangèrent un regard complice et sans un mot se précipitèrent en salle.En: Émilie and Léon exchanged a knowing look and without a word rushed to the main room.Fr: L'équipe ne suffirait pas.En: The team wouldn't be enough.Fr: Émilie prit en charge les commandes avec une efficacité redoutable, tandis que Léon s'occupa de la préparation des plats avec son habituelle créativité.En: Émilie took charge of the orders with remarkable efficiency, while Léon handled the dish preparations with his usual creativity.Fr: C'était comme une danse chorégraphiée.En: It was like a choreographed dance.Fr: Malgré le stress de la situation, le duo parvint à satisfaire tous les clients.En: Despite the stress of the situation, the duo managed to satisfy all the customers.Fr: Les applaudissements de quelques touristes joyeux récompensèrent leurs efforts.En: The applause from some joyful tourists rewarded their efforts.Fr: Quand le dernier client quitta le café en fin d'après-midi, Émilie vérifia la caisse, satisfaite.En: When the last customer left the café by late afternoon, Émilie checked the cash register, satisfied.Fr: La journée lumineuse avait été très rentable.En: The bright day had been very profitable.Fr: Remplis d'une nouvelle compréhension, Émilie et Léon s'assirent enfin, éreintés mais heureux.En: Filled with a newfound understanding, Émilie and Léon finally sat down, exhausted but happy.Fr: Émilie remercia Léon pour son énergie et sa créativité.En: Émilie thanked Léon for his energy and creativity.Fr: Léon, de son côté, reconnut qu'un peu de structure ne faisait pas de mal à leur entreprise.En: In turn, Léon acknowledged that a bit of structure didn't hurt their business.Fr: Ce jour-là, sous le ciel estival de Paris, ils réalisèrent ensemble qu'un équilibre entre structure et imagination était essentiel.En: That day, under the summer sky of Paris, they realized together that a balance between structure and imagination was essential.Fr: Désormais, le petit café proche de la Tour Eiffel accueillait ses visiteurs non seulement avec de la discipline mais aussi avec une pincée de magie créative chaque jour.En: From now on, the little café near the Tour Eiffel greeted its visitors not only with discipline but also with a sprinkle of creative magic each day. Vocabulary Words:the atmosphere: l'ambiancethe aromas: les arômesthe terrace: la terrassebustling: en effervescencemajestic: majestueusethe concern: la préoccupationthe cash register: la caisse enregistreuseincreased: accruesthe creativity: la créativitéthe practical concerns: les préoccupations pratiquesexhausted: épuiséebold: audacieuxthe discussion: la discussioncalmly: calmementthe need: la nécessitéamused: amusérespectful: respectueuxinnovation: l'innovationthe exchange: les échangesabruptly: soudaincommotion: vacarmefilled: remplitcomplicit: complicerushed: précipitèrentremarkable: redoutablechoreographed: chorégraphiéesatisfy: satisfairethe applause: les applaudissementsprofitable: rentableunderstanding: compréhension

Billi (@SGPSoccer) breaks down all of the FIFA Club World Cup matches happening on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The opening game of the FIFA Club World Cup takes place this evening, as Egyptian champions Al Ahly take on Leo Messi's Inter Miami.Sunday will see Paris St-Germain partake in their first match since inflicting a 5-0 hiding on Inter Milan in the Champions League final. They'll be hoping that their Club World Cup campaign can get off to a flyer with victory over chief Group B rivals Atletico Madrid— in what many feel is the biggest game of the group stage phase. The Parisians impressed with their energy and intensity throughout their Champions League campaign, which also featured knockout stage victories over Premier League outfits Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal. Many fancy them to add this FIFA Club World Cup to their trophy cabinet. Exclusive SGPN Bonuses And Linkshttp://linktr.ee/sportsgamblingpodcast

NOTED. (RELENTLESSLY)—When a company publishes a magazine, or at least an “editorial” product, for whatever reason, it is called custom publishing. I have a long editorial background in custom. And custom has a surprisingly long history itself.How long?John Deere started publishing The Furrow in 1895. The Michelin Star started as a form of custom content: what better way to sell tires to monied Parisians than by enticing them to take a drive to the countryside to try a great restaurant?Amex Publishing famously published Travel + Leisure among other titles for decades. That in-flight magazine you once enjoyed on your flight overseas? That, too, is custom publishing.Now, after some down years, custom publishing is leaning waaaaay into print again. Henrybuilt is an industry leader in designing and constructing well-built products and furnishings for the home. Henrybuilt is not, however, a company that you would think is screaming for a magazine.But the qualities that make a great magazine—attention to detail and craft, the curation of ideas, hard work—are the very qualities that have made Untapped, a “design journal that looks back to look forward.” Led by editor-in-chief Tiffany Jow, Untapped is a smart, well-designed magazine that avoids the pitfalls of most design journals in being free of jargon and thus accessible.With an enviable level of editorial freedom, Jow has created an editorial product that richly explores livable spaces and champions “ideas-driven work.” The result is a growing media entity across platforms independent of Henrybuilt while hewing closely to its brand. It's good stuff.—This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

PSG finally achieved their dream of winning the Champions League last weekend as they stormed past Inter Milan in Munich. Are the Parisians a genuine global force to be reckoned with after lifting club football's greatest prize? Niall and Marley discuss what's next for PSG in terms of the football landscape after such an impressive display in the final and debate whether this provides a platform for players to secure bigger moves elsewhere, or whether the French capital is the summit of the mountain. Plus, take our survey about what FSD looks like in the future! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TX8PM3S Keep up to date with us on our socials here:Twitter: https://twitter.com/FSDPodTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@footballsocialdailyTelegram Group: https://t.me/FootballSocial Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, after years of persistence and a countless amount of money spent, PSG are finally champions of Europe! On this week's episode, we digest and review the absolute hammering of Inter Milan at the hands of the Parisians, who finished Top 6 in England (and why), along with a recap of Serie A!

PSG said they wanted to put on a show and indeed they did. Andrew and JJ relive the Parisians breathtaking performance in Munich against a totally overmatched Inter Milan side as we look back at their goals, their performances and their future.Plus, we wonder if Inter would've been better off losing a hard fought battle to Barcelona, Andrew takes us through his travel ordeals and we credit Simone Inzaghi for not walking off stage in the middle of his press conference.If you're looking for even more Caught Offside content, head on over to our premium channel, Caught Offside Plus!Just go to https://caughtoffside.supercast.com to sign up! Once you have access to the premium feed, be sure to go back and check out our special "welcome episode" from June 24th, 2024 (we don't think you'll be disappointed)!And for all the latest merch, get over to https://caughtoffsidepod.com/!---Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@caughtoffsidepod X: https://twitter.com/COsoccerpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/caughtoffsidepod/Email: CaughtOffsidePod@gmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No spoilers in the title or description...Until here!We review PSG's EMPHATIC win over Inter in the Champions League Final. How good were the Parisians and how poor were their Italian counterparts? How were PSG able to cause so many problems on both sides of the ball? What does this mean for the respective legacies of Luis Enrique and Simone Inzaghi? Can Graham pronounce the name Warren? All that and much, much more!WE HAVE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠We're posting all our episodes here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Smash the like and subscribe etc.!JOIN THE TSS+ PATREON!Check out our Patreon, which houses bonus podcasts, access to our exclusive Discord, blog posts, videos, and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A BETTER-BUILT MAGAZINE—When a company publishes a magazine, or at least an “editorial” product, for whatever reason, it is called custom publishing. I have a long editorial background in custom. And custom has a surprisingly long history itself.How long?John Deere started publishing The Furrow in 1895. The Michelin Star started as a form of custom content: what better way to sell tires to monied Parisians than by enticing them to take a drive to the countryside to try a great restaurant?Amex Publishing famously published Travel + Leisure among other titles for decades. That in-flight magazine you once enjoyed on your flight overseas? That, too, is custom publishing.Now, after some down years, custom publishing is leaning waaaaay into print again. Henrybuilt is an industry leader in designing and constructing well-built products and furnishings for the home. Henrybuilt is not, however, a company that you would think is screaming for a magazine.But the qualities that make a great magazine—attention to detail and craft, the curation of ideas, hard work—are the very qualities that have made Untapped, a “design journal that looks back to look forward.” Led by editor-in-chief Tiffany Jow, Untapped is a smart, well-designed magazine that avoids the pitfalls of most design journals in being free of jargon and thus accessible.With an enviable level of editorial freedom, Jow has created an editorial product that richly explores livable spaces and champions “ideas-driven work.” The result is a growing media entity across platforms independent of Henrybuilt while hewing closely to its brand. It's good stuff.—This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

The streets definitely won't forget 2025 PSG. The Parisians have built a serious team and they're now just one game away from a historic treble. But it hasn't been all smooth sailing this season.This week, we're kicking it with our guy David — a longtime PSG fan — who breaks down all the highs and lows from their wild season. We chatted about repping PSG since 2011, the Ligue 1 race, their Champions League run, and even looked ahead to the summer transfer window.You'll love this one, gang. Even if you're not really tapped into the foreign leagues, you might still pick up a thing or two.You can also watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gh8WNJmnzpIPlease like the video and subscribe to the channel.Follow us on social media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/97footyTwitter (X): https://x.com/97footyTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@97.footy

Fluent Fiction - French: Mystery in Montsouris: A Café's Secret Rendezvous Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/fr/episode/2025-05-20-22-34-01-fr Story Transcript:Fr: Le matin à Paris était doux, et l'air était rempli du parfum des fleurs et des croissants tout juste sortis du four.En: The morning in Paris was gentle, and the air was filled with the scent of flowers and freshly baked croissants.Fr: Le café de Luc s'animait, un petit coin de détente sur une rue animée.En: Luc's café was coming to life, a little corner of relaxation on a bustling street.Fr: Avec ses tables en fer forgé et ses chaises élégantes, c'était un endroit aimé des Parisiens en quête d'un moment de calme.En: With its wrought-iron tables and elegant chairs, it was a place beloved by Parisians seeking a moment of calm.Fr: Leur barista, Luc, observait la vie se dérouler.En: Their barista, Luc, watched life unfold.Fr: Un matin de printemps, alors que le soleil baignait les tables de sa lumière chaleureuse, Elise s'installa à sa place habituelle.En: One spring morning, as the sun bathed the tables in its warm light, Elise settled into her usual spot.Fr: Luc remarqua qu'elle était plus préoccupée que d'habitude, mais il garda ses pensées pour lui.En: Luc noticed that she was more preoccupied than usual, but he kept his thoughts to himself.Fr: Il aimait son rôle d'observateur, mais une part de lui aspirait à une aventure.En: He loved his role as an observer, but part of him longed for adventure.Fr: Tout changea lorsque Luc trouva un mystérieux mot sous une table.En: Everything changed when Luc found a mysterious note under a table.Fr: Intrigué, son cœur se mit à battre plus vite.En: Intrigued, his heart began to beat faster.Fr: Le mot disait : "Rendez-vous à minuit, au Parc Montsouris.En: The note said: "@fr{Rendez-vous à minuit, au Parc Montsouris.Fr: Discrétion nécessaire."En: Discrétion nécessaire.}"Fr: Qui avait laissé ce mot et pourquoi ici, dans son café ?En: Who had left this note, and why here, in his café?Fr: Luc se demandait s'il devait le lire.En: Luc wondered if he should read it.Fr: Finalement, la tentation était trop grande.En: Ultimately, the temptation was too great.Fr: Les jours suivants, Luc remarqua un homme qu'il n'avait jamais vu avant.En: In the days that followed, Luc noticed a man he had never seen before.Fr: Philippe, vêtu élégamment, semblait toujours garder un œil sur Elise.En: Philippe, elegantly dressed, always seemed to keep an eye on Elise.Fr: Sa curiosité piquée, Luc était déterminé à voir cela se résoudre.En: His curiosity piqued, Luc was determined to see this resolved.Fr: Devrait-il s'en mêler ?En: Should he get involved?Fr: C'était une question qui le hantait, mais plus il y pensait, plus il était attiré par le mystère.En: It was a question that haunted him, but the more he thought about it, the more he was drawn to the mystery.Fr: Le soir venu, Luc se rendit au Parc Montsouris.En: That evening, Luc went to Parc Montsouris.Fr: Caché derrière un arbre, il aperçut Elise et Philippe.En: Hidden behind a tree, he spotted Elise and Philippe.Fr: Ils discutaient à voix basse, et Luc eut juste le temps d'entendre Philippe parler d'un "plan" qui semblait dangereux.En: They were speaking in low voices, and Luc just had time to hear Philippe talk about a "plan" that seemed dangerous.Fr: Le cœur de Luc s'emballa.En: Luc's heart raced.Fr: Était-ce un piège ?En: Was it a trap?Fr: Alors qu'Elise s'éloignait, Luc prit une décision audacieuse.En: As Elise walked away, Luc made a bold decision.Fr: Il la rattrapa et l'avertit : "Soyez prudente, ce Philippe semble avoir d'autres intentions."En: He caught up with her and warned, "Be careful, this Philippe seems to have other intentions."Fr: Elise le regarda, les yeux remplis de gratitude et de surprise.En: Elise looked at him, her eyes filled with gratitude and surprise.Fr: Le lendemain, au café, Elise remercia Luc discrètement en lui glissant une enveloppe avec un mot : "Merci d'être mon ami vigilant."En: The next day at the café, Elise discreetly thanked Luc by slipping him an envelope with a note: "Thank you for being my vigilant friend."Fr: Luc sourit.En: Luc smiled.Fr: Il avait fait le bon choix, et pour la première fois, il ressentait un sentiment d'accomplissement.En: He had made the right choice, and for the first time, he felt a sense of accomplishment.Fr: Grâce à son audace, il avait pu aider Elise, et cela changea son quotidien.En: Thanks to his boldness, he had been able to help Elise, and it changed his daily life.Fr: Ainsi, dans le café baigné de soleil, Luc continuait à servir des cafés, mais désormais avec une assurance nouvelle.En: Thus, in the sun-drenched café, Luc continued to serve coffees, but now with a newfound confidence.Fr: Les mystères de la vie parisienne lui souriaient, et il accueillait chaque jour avec impatience, prêt pour de nouvelles aventures.En: The mysteries of Parisian life smiled upon him, and he welcomed each day with anticipation, ready for new adventures.Fr: Fin.En: The end. Vocabulary Words:the morning: le matingentle: douxthe street: la ruethe wrought-iron: le fer forgéelegant: élégantbeloved: aiméto unfold: se déroulerto long for: aspirer àmysterious: mystérieuxthe heart: le cœurdiscretion: la discrétionnecessary: nécessairetemptation: la tentationthe man: l'hommecuriosity: la curiositéto haunt: hanterto spot: apercevoirhidden: cachédangerous: dangereuxa trap: un piègebold: audacieuxintentions: les intentionsgratitude: la gratitudediscreetly: discrètementto slip: glisservigilant: vigilantaccomplishment: l'accomplissementboldness: l'audaceconfidence: l'assuranceanticipation: l'impatience

Dave looks at the Champions League semi-final between Arsenal and PSG as the Parisians beat the Gunners in London. He then looks at the final day of the domestic leagues and looks at the state of the European leagues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave looks at the Champions League semi-final between Arsenal and PSG as the Parisians beat the Gunners in London. He then looks at the final day of the domestic leagues and looks at the state of the European leagues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Catacombs of Paris, a subterranean ossuary extending beneath the bustling streets of the French capital, stand as a stark reminder of the city's past and a testament to the fragility of life. Originally established in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to address the critical issue of overcrowded cemeteries, this vast network of tunnels now holds the remains of over six million Parisians. Where to Find What Goes Bump In The Night YouTube: @whatgoesbumpinthenight Facebook: What Goes Bump In The Night Instagram: @Whatgoesbumppod X: @Whatgoesbumppod TikTok: @whatgoesbumppod Threads: @whatgoesbumppod GET YOU SELF SOME FIRE!!! MERCH!!! Shop What Goes Bump: https://what-goes-bump-in-the-night.m... $$$ Donations $$$ All donations are directly used to support the channel. Hosting a podcast on all streaming platforms is not free, and if you would like to support and help us keep our dream alive, we are forever grateful for our #NightCrew Family. These funds pay host site fees, investigations, giveaways, and so much more! CashApp #Whatgoesbump Venmo @Whatgoesbump #paranormalpodcast #ParanormalStories #SpookySeason #SpookySeasonAllTheTime #ghosthunting #ProjectFear #nightcrew #paranormalinvestigation #HauntedPlaces #HauntedUSA #ScaryPlaces #ScaryStories #NukesTop5 #SlappedHam #Chills #RealGhostHunting #RealParanormal

So what, exactly, was “The Enlightenment”? According to the Princeton historian David A. Bell, it was an intellectual movement roughly spanning the early 18th century through to the French Revolution. In his Spring 2025 Liberties Quarterly piece “The Enlightenment, Then and Now”, Bell charts the Enlightenment as a complex intellectual movement centered in Paris but with hubs across Europe and America. He highlights key figures like Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant, and Franklin, discussing their contributions to concepts of religious tolerance, free speech, and rationality. In our conversation, Bell addresses criticisms of the Enlightenment, including its complicated relationship with colonialism and slavery, while arguing that its principles of freedom and reason remain relevant today. 5 Key Takeaways* The Enlightenment emerged in the early 18th century (around 1720s) and was characterized by intellectual inquiry, skepticism toward religion, and a growing sense among thinkers that they were living in an "enlightened century."* While Paris was the central hub, the Enlightenment had multiple centers including Scotland, Germany, and America, with thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume, and Franklin contributing to its development.* The Enlightenment introduced the concept of "society" as a sphere of human existence separate from religion and politics, forming the basis of modern social sciences.* The movement had a complex relationship with colonialism and slavery - many Enlightenment thinkers criticized slavery, but some of their ideas about human progress were later used to justify imperialism.* According to Bell, rather than trying to "return to the Enlightenment," modern society should selectively adopt and adapt its valuable principles of free speech, religious tolerance, and education to create our "own Enlightenment."David Avrom Bell is a historian of early modern and modern Europe at Princeton University. His most recent book, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. Described in the Journal of Modern History as an "instant classic," it is available in paperback from Picador, in French translation from Fayard, and in Italian translation from Viella. A study of how new forms of political charisma arose in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the book shows that charismatic authoritarianism is as modern a political form as liberal democracy, and shares many of the same origins. Based on exhaustive research in original sources, the book includes case studies of the careers of George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture and Simon Bolivar. The book's Introduction can be read here. An online conversation about the book with Annette Gordon-Reed, hosted by the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, can be viewed here. Links to material about the book, including reviews in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues can be found here. Bell is also the author of six previous books. He has published academic articles in both English and French and contributes regularly to general interest publications on a variety of subjects, ranging from modern warfare, to contemporary French politics, to the impact of digital technology on learning and scholarship, and of course French history. A list of his publications from 2023 and 2024 can be found here. His Substack newsletter can be found here. His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hebrew, Swedish, Polish, Russian, German, Croatian, Italian, Turkish and Japanese. At the History Department at Princeton University, he holds the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Chair in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions, and offers courses on early modern Europe, on military history, and on the early modern French empire. Previously, he spent fourteen years at Johns Hopkins University, including three as Dean of Faculty in its School of Arts and Sciences. From 2020 to 2024 he served as Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Bell's new project is a history of the Enlightenment. A preliminary article from the project was published in early 2022 by Modern Intellectual History. Another is now out in French History.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, in these supposedly dark times, the E word comes up a lot, the Enlightenment. Are we at the end of the Enlightenment or the beginning? Was there even an Enlightenment? My guest today, David Bell, a professor of history, very distinguished professor of history at Princeton University, has an interesting piece in the spring issue of It is One of our, our favorite quarterlies here on Keen on America, Bell's piece is The Enlightenment Then and Now, and David is joining us from the home of the Enlightenment, perhaps Paris in France, where he's on sabbatical hard life. David being an academic these days, isn't it?David Bell: Very difficult. I'm having to suffer the Parisian bread and croissant. It's terrible.Andrew Keen: Yeah. Well, I won't keep you too long. Is Paris then, or France? Is it the home of the Enlightenment? I know there are many Enlightenments, the French, the Scottish, maybe even the English, perhaps even the American.David Bell: It's certainly one of the homes of the Enlightenment, and it's probably the closest that the Enlightened had to a center, absolutely. But as you say, there were Edinburgh, Glasgow, plenty of places in Germany, Philadelphia, all those places have good claims to being centers of the enlightenment as well.Andrew Keen: All the same David, is it like one of those sports games in California where everyone gets a medal?David Bell: Well, they're different metals, right, but I think certainly Paris is where everybody went. I mean, if you look at the figures from the German Enlightenment, from the Scottish Enlightenment from the American Enlightenment they all tended to congregate in Paris and the Parisians didn't tend to go anywhere else unless they were forced to. So that gives you a pretty good sense of where the most important center was.Andrew Keen: So David, before we get to specifics, map out for us, because everyone is perhaps as familiar or comfortable with the history of the Enlightenment, and certainly as you are. When did it happen? What years? And who are the leaders of this thing called the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, that's a big question. And I'm afraid, of course, that if you ask 10 historians, you'll get 10 different answers.Andrew Keen: Well, I'm only asking you, so I only want one answer.David Bell: So I would say that the Enlightenment really gets going around the first couple of decades of the 18th century. And that's when people really start to think that they are actually living in what they start to call an Enlightenment century. There are a lot of reasons for this. They are seeing what we now call the scientific revolution. They're looking at the progress that has been made with that. They are experiencing the changes in the religious sphere, including the end of religious wars, coming with a great deal of skepticism about religion. They are living in a relative period of peace where they're able to speculate much more broadly and daringly than before. But it's really in those first couple of decades that they start thinking of themselves as living in an enlightened century. They start defining themselves as something that would later be called the enlightenment. So I would say that it's, really, really there between maybe the end of the 17th century and 1720s that it really gets started.Andrew Keen: So let's have some names, David, of philosophers, I guess. I mean, if those are the right words. I know that there was a term in French. There is a term called philosoph. Were they the founders, the leaders of the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, there is a... Again, I don't want to descend into academic quibbling here, but there were lots of leaders. Let me give an example, though. So the year 1721 is a remarkable year. So in the year, 1721, two amazing events happened within a couple of months of each other. So in May, Montesquieu, one of the great philosophers by any definition, publishes his novel called Persian Letters. And this is an incredible novel. Still, I think one of greatest novels ever written, and it's very daring. It is the account, it is supposedly a an account written by two Persian travelers to Europe who are writing back to people in Isfahan about what they're seeing. And it is very critical of French society. It is very of religion. It is, as I said, very daring philosophically. It is a product in part of the increasing contact between Europe and the rest of the world that is also very central to the Enlightenment. So that novel comes out. So it's immediately, you know, the police try to suppress it. But they don't have much success because it's incredibly popular and Montesquieu doesn't suffer any particular problems because...Andrew Keen: And the French police have never been the most efficient police force in the world, have they?David Bell: Oh, they could be, but not in this case. And then two months later, after Montesquieu published this novel, there's a German philosopher much less well-known than Montesqiu, than Christian Bolz, who is a professor at the Universität Haller in Prussia, and he gives an oration in Latin, a very typical university oration for the time, about Chinese philosophy, in which he says that the Chinese have sort of proved to the world, particularly through the writings of Confucius and others, that you can have a virtuous society without religion. Obviously very controversial. Statement for the time it actually gets him fired from his job, he has to leave the Kingdom of Prussia within 48 hours on penalty of death, starts an enormous controversy. But here are two events, both of which involving non-European people, involving the way in which Europeans are starting to look out at the rest of the world and starting to imagine Europe as just one part of a larger humanity, and at the same time they are starting to speculate very daringly about whether you can have. You know, what it means to have a society, do you need to have religion in order to have morality in society? Do you need the proper, what kind of government do you need to to have virtuous conduct and a proper society? So all of these things get, you know, really crystallize, I think, around these two incidents as much as anything. So if I had to pick a single date for when the enlightenment starts, I'd probably pick that 1721.Andrew Keen: And when was, David, I thought you were going to tell me about the earthquake in Lisbon, when was that earthquake?David Bell: That earthquake comes quite a bit later. That comes, and now historians should be better with dates than I am. It's in the 1750s, I think it's the late 1750's. Again, this historian is proving he's getting a very bad grade for forgetting the exact date, but it's in 1750. So that's a different kind of event, which sparks off a great deal of commentary, because it's a terrible earthquake. It destroys most of the city of Lisbon, it destroys other cities throughout Portugal, and it leads a lot of the philosophy to philosophers at the time to be speculating very daringly again on whether there is any kind of real purpose to the universe and whether there's any kind divine purpose. Why would such a terrible thing happen? Why would God do such a thing to his followers? And certainly VoltaireAndrew Keen: Yeah, Votav, of course, comes to mind of questioning.David Bell: And Condit, Voltaire's novel Condit gives a very good description of the earthquake in Lisbon and uses that as a centerpiece. Voltair also read other things about the earthquake, a poem about Lisbon earthquake. But in Condit he gives a lasting, very scathing portrait of the Catholic Church in general and then of what happens in Portugal. And so the Lisbon Earthquake is certainly another one of the events, but it happens considerably later. Really in the middle of the end of life.Andrew Keen: So, David, you believe in this idea of the Enlightenment. I take your point that there are more than one Enlightenment in more than one center, but in broad historical terms, the 18th century could be defined at least in Western and Northern Europe as the period of the Enlightenment, would that be a fair generalization?David Bell: I think it's perfectly fair generalization. Of course, there are historians who say that it never happened. There's a conservative British historian, J.C.D. Clark, who published a book last summer, saying that the Enlightenment is a kind of myth, that there was a lot of intellectual activity in Europe, obviously, but that the idea that it formed a coherent Enlightenment was really invented in the 20th century by a bunch of progressive reformers who wanted to claim a kind of venerable and august pedigree for their own reform, liberal reform plans. I think that's an exaggeration. People in the 18th century defined very clearly what was going on, both people who were in favor of it and people who are against it. And while you can, if you look very closely at it, of course it gets a bit fuzzy. Of course it's gets, there's no single, you can't define a single enlightenment project or a single enlightened ideology. But then, I think people would be hard pressed to define any intellectual movement. You know, in perfect, incoherent terms. So the enlightenment is, you know by compared with almost any other intellectual movement certainly existed.Andrew Keen: In terms of a philosophy of the Enlightenment, the German thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to be often, and when you describe him as the conscience or the brain or a mixture of the conscience and brain of the enlightenment, why is Kant and Kantian thinking so important in the development of the Enlightenment.David Bell: Well, that's a really interesting question. And one reason is because most of the Enlightenment was not very rigorously philosophical. A lot of the major figures of the enlightenment before Kant tended to be writing for a general public. And they often were writing with a very specific agenda. We look at Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Now you look at Adam Smith in Scotland. We look David Hume or Adam Ferguson. You look at Benjamin Franklin in the United States. These people wrote in all sorts of different genres. They wrote in, they wrote all sorts of different kinds of books. They have many different purposes and very few of them did a lot of what we would call rigorous academic philosophy. And Kant was different. Kant was very much an academic philosopher. Kant was nothing if not rigorous. He came at the end of the enlightenment by most people's measure. He wrote these very, very difficult, very rigorous, very brilliant works, such as The Creek of Pure Reason. And so, it's certainly been the case that people who wanted to describe the Enlightenment as a philosophy have tended to look to Kant. So for example, there's a great German philosopher and intellectual historian of the early 20th century named Ernst Kassirer, who had to leave Germany because of the Nazis. And he wrote a great book called The Philosophy of the Enlightened. And that leads directly to Immanuel Kant. And of course, Casir himself was a Kantian, identified with Kant. And so he wanted to make Kant, in a sense, the telos, the end point, the culmination, the fulfillment of the Enlightenment. But so I think that's why Kant has such a particularly important position. You're defining it both ways.Andrew Keen: I've always struggled to understand what Kant was trying to say. I'm certainly not alone there. Might it be fair to say that he was trying to transform the universe and certainly traditional Christian notions into the Enlightenment, so the entire universe, the world, God, whatever that means, that they were all somehow according to Kant enlightened.David Bell: Well, I think that I'm certainly no expert on Immanuel Kant. And I would say that he is trying to, I mean, his major philosophical works are trying to put together a system of philosophical thinking which will justify why people have to act morally, why people act rationally, without the need for Christian revelation to bolster them. That's a very, very crude and reductionist way of putting it, but that's essentially at the heart of it. At the same time, Kant was very much aware of his own place in history. So Kant didn't simply write these very difficult, thick, dense philosophical works. He also wrote things that were more like journalism or like tablets. He wrote a famous essay called What is Enlightenment? And in that, he said that the 18th century was the period in which humankind was simply beginning to. Reach a period of enlightenment. And he said, he starts the essay by saying, this is the period when humankind is being released from its self-imposed tutelage. And we are still, and he said we do not yet live in the midst of a completely enlightened century, but we are getting there. We are living in a century that is enlightening.Andrew Keen: So the seeds, the seeds of Hegel and maybe even Marx are incant in that German thinking, that historical thinking.David Bell: In some ways, in some ways of course Hegel very much reacts against Kant and so and then Marx reacts against Hegel. So it's not exactly.Andrew Keen: Well, that's the dialectic, isn't it, David?David Bell: A simple easy path from one to the other, no, but Hegel is unimaginable without Kant of course and Marx is unimagineable without Hegel.Andrew Keen: You note that Kant represents a shift in some ways into the university and the walls of the universities were going up, and that some of the other figures associated with the the Enlightenment and Scottish Enlightenment, human and Smith and the French Enlightenment Voltaire and the others, they were more generalist writers. Should we be nostalgic for the pre-university period in the Enlightenment, or? Did things start getting serious once the heavyweights, the academic heavyweighs like Emmanuel Kant got into this thing?David Bell: I think it depends on where we're talking about. I mean, Adam Smith was a professor at Glasgow in Edinburgh, so Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment was definitely at least partly in the universities. The German Enlightenment took place very heavily in universities. Christian Vodafoy I just mentioned was the most important German philosopher of the 18th century before Kant, and he had positions in university. Even the French university system, for a while, what's interesting about the French University system, particularly the Sorbonne, which was the theology faculty, It was that. Throughout the first half of the 18th century, there were very vigorous, very interesting philosophical debates going on there, in which the people there, particularly even Jesuits there, were very open to a lot of the ideas we now call enlightenment. They were reading John Locke, they were reading Mel Pench, they were read Dekalb. What happened though in the French universities was that as more daring stuff was getting published elsewhere. Church, the Catholic Church, started to say, all right, these philosophers, these philosophies, these are our enemies, these are people we have to get at. And so at that point, anybody who was in the university, who was still in dialog with these people was basically purged. And the universities became much less interesting after that. But to come back to your question, I do think that I am very nostalgic for that period. I think that the Enlightenment was an extraordinary period, because if you look between. In the 17th century, not all, but a great deal of the most interesting intellectual work is happening in the so-called Republic of Letters. It's happening in Latin language. It is happening on a very small circle of RUD, of scholars. By the 19th century following Kant and Hegel and then the birth of the research university in Germany, which is copied everywhere, philosophy and the most advanced thinking goes back into the university. And the 18th century, particularly in France, I will say, is a time when the most advanced thought is being written for a general public. It is being in the form of novels, of dialogs, of stories, of reference works, and it is very, very accessible. The most profound thought of the West has never been as accessible overall as in the 18 century.Andrew Keen: Again, excuse this question, it might seem a bit naive, but there's a lot of pre-Enlightenment work, books, thinking that we read now that's very accessible from Erasmus and Thomas More to Machiavelli. Why weren't characters like, or are characters like Erasmuus, More's Utopia, Machiavell's prints and discourses, why aren't they considered part of the Enlightenment? What's the difference between? Enlightened thinkers or the supposedly enlightened thinkers of the 18th century and thinkers and writers of the 16th and 17th centuries.David Bell: That's a good question, you know, I think you have to, you, you know, again, one has to draw a line somewhere. That's not a very good answer, of course. All these people that you just mentioned are, in one way or another, predecessors to the Enlightenment. And of course, there were lots of people. I don't mean to say that nobody wrote in an accessible way before 1700. Obviously, lots of the people you mentioned did. Although a lot of them originally wrote in Latin, Erasmus, also Thomas More. But I think what makes the Enlightened different is that you have, again, you have a sense. These people have have a sense that they are themselves engaged in a collective project, that it is a collective project of enlightenment, of enlightening the world. They believe that they live in a century of progress. And there are certain principles. They don't agree on everything by any means. The philosophy of enlightenment is like nothing more than ripping each other to shreds, like any decent group of intellectuals. But that said, they generally did believe That people needed to have freedom of speech. They believed that you needed to have toleration of different religions. They believed in education and the need for a broadly educated public that could be as broad as possible. They generally believed in keeping religion out of the public sphere as much as possible, so all those principles came together into a program that we can consider at least a kind of... You know, not that everybody read it at every moment by any means, but there is an identifiable enlightenment program there, and in this case an identifiable enlightenment mindset. One other thing, I think, which is crucial to the Enlightenment, is that it was the attention they started to pay to something that we now take almost entirely for granted, which is the idea of society. The word society is so entirely ubiquitous, we assume it's always been there, and in one sense it has, because the word societas is a Latin word. But until... The 18th century, the word society generally had a much narrower meaning. It referred to, you know, particular institution most often, like when we talk about the society of, you know, the American philosophical society or something like that. And the idea that there exists something called society, which is the general sphere of human existence that is separate from religion and is separate from the political sphere, that's actually something which only really emerged at the end of the 1600s. And it became really the focus of you know, much, if not most, of enlightenment thinking. When you look at someone like Montesquieu and you look something, somebody like Rousseau or Voltaire or Adam Smith, probably above all, they were concerned with understanding how society works, not how government works only, but how society, what social interactions are like beginning of what we would now call social science. So that's yet another thing that distinguishes the enlightened from people like Machiavelli, often people like Thomas More, and people like bonuses.Andrew Keen: You noted earlier that the idea of progress is somehow baked in, in part, and certainly when it comes to Kant, certainly the French Enlightenment, although, of course, Rousseau challenged that. I'm not sure whether Rousseaut, as always, is both in and out of the Enlightenment and he seems to be in and out of everything. How did the Enlightement, though, make sense of itself in the context of antiquity, as it was, of Terms, it was the Renaissance that supposedly discovered or rediscovered antiquity. How did many of the leading Enlightenment thinkers, writers, how did they think of their own society in the context of not just antiquity, but even the idea of a European or Western society?David Bell: Well, there was a great book, one of the great histories of the Enlightenment was written about more than 50 years ago by the Yale professor named Peter Gay, and the first part of that book was called The Modern Paganism. So it was about the, you know, it was very much about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the ancient Greek synonyms. And certainly the writers of the enlightenment felt a great deal of kinship with the ancient Greek synonymous. They felt a common bond, particularly in the posing. Christianity and opposing what they believed the Christian Church had wrought on Europe in suppressing freedom and suppressing free thought and suppassing free inquiry. And so they felt that they were both recovering but also going beyond antiquity at the same time. And of course they were all, I mean everybody at the time, every single major figure of the Enlightenment, their education consisted in large part of what we would now call classics, right? I mean, there was an educational reformer in France in the 1760s who said, you know, our educational system is great if the purpose is to train Roman centurions, if it's to train modern people who are not doing both so well. And it's true. I mean they would spend, certainly, you know in Germany, in much of Europe, in the Netherlands, even in France, I mean people were trained not simply to read Latin, but to write in Latin. In Germany, university courses took part in the Latin language. So there's an enormous, you know, so they're certainly very, very conversant with the Greek and Roman classics, and they identify with them to a very great extent. Someone like Rousseau, I mean, and many others, and what's his first reading? How did he learn to read by reading Plutarch? In translation, but he learns to read reading Plutach. He sees from the beginning by this enormous admiration for the ancients that we get from Bhutan.Andrew Keen: Was Socrates relevant here? Was the Enlightenment somehow replacing Aristotle with Socrates and making him and his spirit of Enlightenment, of asking questions rather than answering questions, the symbol of a new way of thinking?David Bell: I would say to a certain extent, so I mean, much of the Enlightenment criticizes scholasticism, medieval scholastic, very, very sharply, and medieval scholasticism is founded philosophically very heavily upon Aristotle, so to that extent. And the spirit of skepticism that Socrates embodied, the idea of taking nothing for granted and asking questions about everything, including questions of oneself, yes, absolutely. That said, while the great figures of the Red Plato, you know, Socrates was generally I mean, it was not all that present as they come. But certainly have people with people with red play-doh in the entire virus.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Benjamin Franklin earlier, David. Most of the Enlightenment, of course, seems to be centered in France and Scotland, Germany, England. But America, many Europeans went to America then as a, what some people would call a settler colonial society, or certainly an offshoot of the European world. Was the settling of America and the American Revolution Was it the quintessential Enlightenment project?David Bell: Another very good question, and again, it depends a bit on who you talk to. I just mentioned this book by Peter Gay, and the last part of his book is called The Science of Freedom, and it's all about the American Revolution. So certainly a lot of interpreters of the Enlightenment have said that, yes, the American revolution represents in a sense the best possible outcome of the American Revolution, it was the best, possible outcome of the enlightened. Certainly there you look at the founding fathers of the United States and there's a great deal that they took from me like Certainly, they took a great great number of political ideas from Obviously Madison was very much inspired and drafting the edifice of the Constitution by Montesquieu to see himself Was happy to admit in addition most of the founding Fathers of the united states were you know had kind of you know We still had we were still definitely Christians, but we're also but we were also very much influenced by deism were very much against the idea of making the United States a kind of confessional country where Christianity was dominant. They wanted to believe in the enlightenment principles of free speech, religious toleration and so on and so forth. So in all those senses and very much the gun was probably more inspired than Franklin was somebody who was very conversant with the European Enlightenment. He spent a large part of his life in London. Where he was in contact with figures of the Enlightenment. He also, during the American Revolution, of course, he was mostly in France, where he is vetted by some of the surviving fellows and were very much in contact for them as well. So yes, I would say the American revolution is certainly... And then the American revolutionary scene, of course by the Europeans, very much as a kind of offshoot of the enlightenment. So one of the great books of the late Enlightenment is by Condor Say, which he wrote while he was hiding actually in the future evolution of the chariot. It's called a historical sketch of the progress of the human spirit, or the human mind, and you know he writes about the American Revolution as being, basically owing its existence to being like...Andrew Keen: Franklin is of course an example of your pre-academic enlightenment, a generalist, inventor, scientist, entrepreneur, political thinker. What about the role of science and indeed economics in the Enlightenment? David, we're going to talk of course about the Marxist interpretation, perhaps the Marxist interpretation which sees The Enlightenment is just a euphemism, perhaps, for exploitative capitalism. How central was the growth and development of the market, of economics, and innovation, and capitalism in your reading of The Enlightened?David Bell: Well, in my reading, it was very important, but not in the way that the Marxists used to say. So Friedrich Engels once said that the Enlightenment was basically the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie, and there was whole strain of Marxist thinking that followed the assumption that, and then Karl Marx himself argued that the documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which obviously were inspired by the Enlightment, were simply kind of the near, or kind of. Way that the bourgeoisie was able to advance itself ideologically, and I don't think that holds much water, which is very little indication that any particular economic class motivated the Enlightenment or was using the Enlightment in any way. That said, I think it's very difficult to imagine the Enlightement without the social and economic changes that come in with the 18th century. To begin with globalization. If you read the great works of the Enlightenment, it's remarkable just how open they are to talking about humanity in general. So one of Voltaire's largest works, one of his most important works, is something called Essay on Customs and the Spirit of Nations, which is actually History of the World, where he talks learnedly not simply about Europe, but about the Americas, about China, about Africa, about India. Montesquieu writes Persian letters. Christian Volpe writes about Chinese philosophy. You know, Rousseau writes about... You know, the earliest days of humankind talks about Africa. All the great figures of the Enlightenment are writing about the rest of the world, and this is a period in which contacts between Europe and the rest the world are exploding along with international trade. So by the end of the 18th century, there are 4,000 to 5,000 ships a year crossing the Atlantic. It's an enormous number. And that's one context in which the enlightenment takes place. Another is what we call the consumer revolution. So in the 18th century, certainly in the major cities of Western Europe, people of a wide range of social classes, including even artisans, sort of somewhat wealthy artisians, shopkeepers, are suddenly able to buy a much larger range of products than they were before. They're able to choose how to basically furnish their own lives, if you will, how they're gonna dress, what they're going to eat, what they gonna put on the walls of their apartments and so on and so forth. And so they become accustomed to exercising a great deal more personal choice than their ancestors have done. And the Enlightenment really develops in tandem with this. Most of the great works of the Enlightment, they're not really written to, they're treatises, they're like Kant, they're written to persuade you to think in a single way. Really written to make you ask questions yourself, to force you to ponder things. They're written in the form of puzzles and riddles. Voltaire had a great line there, he wrote that the best kind of books are the books that readers write half of themselves as they read, and that's sort of the quintessence of the Enlightenment as far as I'm concerned.Andrew Keen: Yeah, Voltaire might have been comfortable on YouTube or Facebook. David, you mentioned all those ships going from Europe across the Atlantic. Of course, many of those ships were filled with African slaves. You mentioned this in your piece. I mean, this is no secret, of course. You also mentioned a couple of times Montesquieu's Persian letters. To what extent is... The enlightenment then perhaps the birth of Western power, of Western colonialism, of going to Africa, seizing people, selling them in North America, the French, the English, Dutch colonization of the rest of the world. Of course, later more sophisticated Marxist thinkers from the Frankfurt School, you mentioned these in your essay, Odorno and Horkheimer in particular, See the Enlightenment as... A project, if you like, of Western domination. I remember reading many years ago when I was in graduate school, Edward Said, his analysis of books like The Persian Letters, which is a form of cultural Western power. How much of this is simply bound up in the profound, perhaps, injustice of the Western achievement? And of course, some of the justice as well. We haven't talked about Jefferson, but perhaps in Jefferson's life and his thinking and his enlightened principles and his... Life as a slave owner, these contradictions are most self-evident.David Bell: Well, there are certainly contradictions, and there's certainly... I think what's remarkable, if you think about it, is that if you read through works of the Enlightenment, you would be hard-pressed to find a justification for slavery. You do find a lot of critiques of slavery, and I think that's something very important to keep in mind. Obviously, the chattel slavery of Africans in the Americas began well before the Enlightment, it began in 1500. The Enlightenment doesn't have the credit for being the first movement to oppose slavery. That really goes back to various religious groups, especially the Fakers. But that said, you have in France, you had in Britain, in America even, you'd have a lot of figures associated with the Enlightenment who were pretty sure of becoming very forceful opponents of slavery very early. Now, when it comes to imperialism, that's a tricky issue. What I think you'd find in these light bulbs, you'd different sorts of tendencies and different sorts of writings. So there are certainly a lot of writers of the Enlightenment who are deeply opposed to European authorities. One of the most popular works of the late Enlightenment was a collective work edited by the man named the Abbe Rinal, which is called The History of the Two Indies. And that is a book which is deeply, deeply critical of European imperialism. At the same time, at the same of the enlightenment, a lot the works of history written during the Enlightment. Tended, such as Voltaire's essay on customs, which I just mentioned, tend to give a kind of very linear version of history. They suggest that all societies follow the same path, from sort of primitive savagery, hunter-gatherers, through early agriculture, feudal stages, and on into sort of modern commercial society and civilization. And so they're basically saying, okay, we, the Europeans, are the most advanced. People like the Africans and the Native Americans are the least advanced, and so perhaps we're justified in going and quote, bringing our civilization to them, what later generations would call the civilizing missions, or possibly just, you know, going over and exploiting them because we are stronger and we are more, and again, we are the best. And then there's another thing that the Enlightenment did. The Enlightenment tended to destroy an older Christian view of humankind, which in some ways militated against modern racism. Christians believed, of course, that everyone was the same from Adam and Eve, which meant that there was an essential similarity in the world. And the Enlightenment challenged this by challenging the biblical kind of creation. The Enlightenment challenges this. Voltaire, for instance, believed that there had actually been several different human species that had different origins, and that can very easily become a justification for racism. Buffon, one of the most Figures of the French Enlightenment, one of the early naturalists, was crucial for trying to show that in fact nature is not static, that nature is always changing, that species are changing, including human beings. And so again, that allowed people to think in terms of human beings at different stages of evolution, and perhaps this would be a justification for privileging the more advanced humans over the less advanced. In the 18th century itself, most of these things remain potential, rather than really being acted upon. But in the 19th century, figures of writers who would draw upon these things certainly went much further, and these became justifications for slavery, imperialism, and other things. So again, the Enlightenment is the source of a great deal of stuff here, and you can't simply put it into one box or more.Andrew Keen: You mentioned earlier, David, that Concorda wrote one of the later classics of the... Condorcet? Sorry, Condorcets, excuse my French. Condorcès wrote one the later Classics of the Enlightenment when he was hiding from the French Revolution. In your mind, was the revolution itself the natural conclusion, climax? Perhaps anti-climax of the Enlightenment. Certainly, it seems as if a lot of the critiques of the French Revolution, particularly the more conservative ones, Burke comes to mind, suggested that perhaps the principles of in the Enlightment inevitably led to the guillotine, or is that an unfair way of thinking of it?David Bell: Well, there are a lot of people who have thought like that. Edmund Burke already, writing in 1790, in his reflections on the revolution in France, he said that everything which was great in the old regime is being dissolved and, quoting, dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. And then he said about the French that in the groves of their academy at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing but the Gallows. So there, in 1780, he already seemed to be predicting the reign of terror and blaming it. A certain extent from the Enlightenment. That said, I think, you know, again, the French Revolution is incredibly complicated event. I mean, you certainly have, you know, an explosion of what we could call Enlightenment thinking all over the place. In France, it happened in France. What happened there was that you had a, you know, the collapse of an extraordinarily inefficient government and a very, you know, in a very antiquated, paralyzed system of government kind of collapsed, created a kind of political vacuum. Into that vacuum stepped a lot of figures who were definitely readers of the Enlightenment. Oh so um but again the Enlightment had I said I don't think you can call the Enlightement a single thing so to say that the Enlightiment inspired the French Revolution rather than the There you go.Andrew Keen: Although your essay on liberties is the Enlightenment then and now you probably didn't write is always these lazy editors who come up with inaccurate and inaccurate titles. So for you, there is no such thing as the Enlighten.David Bell: No, there is. There is. But still, it's a complex thing. It contains multitudes.Andrew Keen: So it's the Enlightenment rather than the United States.David Bell: Conflicting tendencies, it has contradictions within it. There's enough unity to refer to it as a singular noun, but it doesn't mean that it all went in one single direction.Andrew Keen: But in historical terms, did the failure of the French Revolution, its descent into Robespierre and then Bonaparte, did it mark the end in historical terms a kind of bookend of history? You began in 1720 by 1820. Was the age of the Enlightenment pretty much over?David Bell: I would say yes. I think that, again, one of the things about the French Revolution is that people who are reading these books and they're reading these ideas and they are discussing things really start to act on them in a very different way from what it did before the French revolution. You have a lot of absolute monarchs who are trying to bring certain enlightenment principles to bear in their form of government, but they're not. But it's difficult to talk about a full-fledged attempt to enact a kind of enlightenment program. Certainly a lot of the people in the French Revolution saw themselves as doing that. But as they did it, they ran into reality, I would say. I mean, now Tocqueville, when he writes his old regime in the revolution, talks about how the French philosophes were full of these abstract ideas that were divorced from reality. And while that's an exaggeration, there was a certain truth to them. And as soon as you start having the age of revolutions, as soon you start people having to devise systems of government that will actually last, and as you have people, democratic representative systems that will last, and as they start revising these systems under the pressure of actual events, then you're not simply talking about an intellectual movement anymore, you're talking about something very different. And so I would say that, well, obviously the ideas of the Enlightenment continue to inspire people, the books continue to be read, debated. They lead on to figures like Kant, and as we talked about earlier, Kant leads to Hegel, Hegel leads to Marx in a certain sense. Nonetheless, by the time you're getting into the 19th century, what you have, you know, has connections to the Enlightenment, but can we really still call it the Enlightment? I would sayAndrew Keen: And Tocqueville, of course, found democracy in America. Is democracy itself? I know it's a big question. But is it? Bound up in the Enlightenment. You've written extensively, David, both for liberties and elsewhere on liberalism. Is the promise of democracy, democratic systems, the one born in the American Revolution, promised in the French Revolution, not realized? Are they products of the Enlightment, or is the 19th century and the democratic systems that in the 19th century, is that just a separate historical track?David Bell: Again, I would say there are certain things in the Enlightenment that do lead in that direction. Certainly, I think most figures in the enlightenment in one general sense or another accepted the idea of a kind of general notion of popular sovereignty. It didn't mean that they always felt that this was going to be something that could necessarily be acted upon or implemented in their own day. And they didn't necessarily associate generalized popular sovereignty with what we would now call democracy with people being able to actually govern themselves. Would be certain figures, certainly Diderot and some of his essays, what we saw very much in the social contract, you know, were sketching out, you knows, models for possible democratic system. Condorcet, who actually lived into the French Revolution, wrote one of the most draft constitutions for France, that's one of most democratic documents ever proposed. But of course there were lots of figures in the Enlightenment, Voltaire, and others who actually believed much more in absolute monarchy, who believed that you just, you know, you should have. Freedom of speech and freedom of discussion, out of which the best ideas would emerge, but then you had to give those ideas to the prince who imposed them by poor sicknesses.Andrew Keen: And of course, Rousseau himself, his social contract, some historians have seen that as the foundations of totalitarian, modern totalitarianism. Finally, David, your wonderful essay in Liberties in the spring quarterly 2025 is The Enlightenment, Then and Now. What about now? You work at Princeton, your president has very bravely stood up to the new presidential regime in the United States, in defense of academic intellectual freedom. Does the word and the movement, does it have any relevance in the 2020s, particularly in an age of neo-authoritarianism around the world?David Bell: I think it does. I think we have to be careful about it. I always get a little nervous when people say, well, we should simply go back to the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenments is history. We don't go back the 18th century. I think what we need to do is to recover certain principles, certain ideals from the 18 century, the ones that matter to us, the ones we think are right, and make our own Enlightenment better. I don't think we need be governed by the 18 century. Thomas Paine once said that no generation should necessarily rule over every generation to come, and I think that's probably right. Unfortunately in the United States, we have a constitution which is now essentially unamendable, so we're doomed to live by a constitution largely from the 18th century. But are there many things in the Enlightenment that we should look back to, absolutely?Andrew Keen: Well, David, I am going to free you for your own French Enlightenment. You can go and have some croissant now in your local cafe in Paris. Thank you so much for a very, I excuse the pun, enlightening conversation on the Enlightenment then and now, Essential Essay in Liberties. I'd love to get you back on the show. Talk more history. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

We start this week by detailing Leicester City's struggles as Chad celebrates the Foxes' first goal since early February. The EPL Title race is all but over, but there is still plenty to play for in the European places in the League Table. Arsenal took care of business in Madrid, winning the second leg 2-1 and the overall tie 5-1. The Gunners are poised to take on PSG in the next round after the Parisians took down Aston Villa 5-4 on aggregate. Chad is very high on Inter Milan after their win over Bayern; he even has them as his UCL favorites. For more content follow @CrushTalksSports | @BrianTalksFootball | @HighKicksSports

Declan Rice turned into a set-piece master to score two fantastic free kicks as Arsenal dispatched Real Madrid 3-0 at the Emirates to take a huge step towards the Champions League semi-finals on Tuesday night. Mikel Merino also got on the scoresheet for the Gunners as Mikel Arteta looks to salvage something from a disappointing season. Elsewhere there was contrasting fortunes for Aston Villa, who succumbed to a powerful PSG side in the French capital. Morgan Rogers' goal gave the Villans hope, but sensational strikes from Desire Doue, Kvicha Kvaratshkelia and Nuno Mendes inspired the Parisians to the win. Niall and Marley discuss all that plus Liverpool preparing to hand two stars new deals and Nemanja Matic ruining Andre Onana in a war of words on today's Football Social Daily. Keep up to date with us on our socials here: Twitter: https://twitter.com/FSDPod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@footballsocialdaily Telegram Group: https://t.me/FootballSocial Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For our debut of Season 8 of Dressed, we bring you the first of our new ongoing series: Fashion Scandals. Today we whisk you into the scandal swirling around surrounding one of the most famous paintings in all of art history, John Singer Sargent's Madame X. We will meet the subject, the American-born Parisian It-Girl Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, and learn just how her appearance in Sargent's portrait shocked even the most jaded of Parisians when it was displayed at one of the world's most prestigious art exhibitions, the Salon de Paris, in 1884. Want more Dressed: The History of Fashion?  • Our website and classes • Our Instagram • Our bookshelf with over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Liverpool beat PSG 1-0 in the Champions League last sixteen despite the Parisians' dominance. Also, there's a new global women's tournament on the horizon and the World Cup is planning to introduce a half time show!This is Early Kick Off from the Men in Blazers media network and presented by our great friends of the pod STōK Cold Brew Coffee, all your global football stories straight from the back pages of Europe's newspapers in around 10 minutes.This episode was made in the UK for Men In Blazers by…Host: Sammy JamesProducer: George CooperAssistant producer: Elizabeth BarnardResearcher: Jack CollinsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dave Hendrick & Karl Matchett discuss the upcoming first leg against PSG in Paris. They look at the Parisians up and down form in this competition and what threat they pose to Liverpool. They also look at the weekend of FA Cup action, and the other games in the Champions League! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is with Paul Klein, founder of Browserbase. We talked about building browser infrastructure for AI agents, the future of agent authentication, and their open source framework Stagehand.* [00:00:00] Introductions* [00:04:46] AI-specific challenges in browser infrastructure* [00:07:05] Multimodality in AI-Powered Browsing* [00:12:26] Running headless browsers at scale* [00:18:46] Geolocation when proxying* [00:21:25] CAPTCHAs and Agent Auth* [00:28:21] Building “User take over” functionality* [00:33:43] Stagehand: AI web browsing framework* [00:38:58] OpenAI's Operator and computer use agents* [00:44:44] Surprising use cases of Browserbase* [00:47:18] Future of browser automation and market competition* [00:53:11] Being a solo founderTranscriptAlessio [00:00:04]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol.ai.swyx [00:00:12]: Hey, and today we are very blessed to have our friends, Paul Klein, for the fourth, the fourth, CEO of Browserbase. Welcome.Paul [00:00:21]: Thanks guys. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I've been lucky to know both of you for like a couple of years now, I think. So it's just like we're hanging out, you know, with three ginormous microphones in front of our face. It's totally normal hangout.swyx [00:00:34]: Yeah. We've actually mentioned you on the podcast, I think, more often than any other Solaris tenant. Just because like you're one of the, you know, best performing, I think, LLM tool companies that have started up in the last couple of years.Paul [00:00:50]: Yeah, I mean, it's been a whirlwind of a year, like Browserbase is actually pretty close to our first birthday. So we are one years old. And going from, you know, starting a company as a solo founder to... To, you know, having a team of 20 people, you know, a series A, but also being able to support hundreds of AI companies that are building AI applications that go out and automate the web. It's just been like, really cool. It's been happening a little too fast. I think like collectively as an AI industry, let's just take a week off together. I took my first vacation actually two weeks ago, and Operator came out on the first day, and then a week later, DeepSeat came out. And I'm like on vacation trying to chill. I'm like, we got to build with this stuff, right? So it's been a breakneck year. But I'm super happy to be here and like talk more about all the stuff we're seeing. And I'd love to hear kind of what you guys are excited about too, and share with it, you know?swyx [00:01:39]: Where to start? So people, you've done a bunch of podcasts. I think I strongly recommend Jack Bridger's Scaling DevTools, as well as Turner Novak's The Peel. And, you know, I'm sure there's others. So you covered your Twilio story in the past, talked about StreamClub, you got acquired to Mux, and then you left to start Browserbase. So maybe we just start with what is Browserbase? Yeah.Paul [00:02:02]: Browserbase is the web browser for your AI. We're building headless browser infrastructure, which are browsers that run in a server environment that's accessible to developers via APIs and SDKs. It's really hard to run a web browser in the cloud. You guys are probably running Chrome on your computers, and that's using a lot of resources, right? So if you want to run a web browser or thousands of web browsers, you can't just spin up a bunch of lambdas. You actually need to use a secure containerized environment. You have to scale it up and down. It's a stateful system. And that infrastructure is, like, super painful. And I know that firsthand, because at my last company, StreamClub, I was CTO, and I was building our own internal headless browser infrastructure. That's actually why we sold the company, is because Mux really wanted to buy our headless browser infrastructure that we'd built. And it's just a super hard problem. And I actually told my co-founders, I would never start another company unless it was a browser infrastructure company. And it turns out that's really necessary in the age of AI, when AI can actually go out and interact with websites, click on buttons, fill in forms. You need AI to do all of that work in an actual browser running somewhere on a server. And BrowserBase powers that.swyx [00:03:08]: While you're talking about it, it occurred to me, not that you're going to be acquired or anything, but it occurred to me that it would be really funny if you became the Nikita Beer of headless browser companies. You just have one trick, and you make browser companies that get acquired.Paul [00:03:23]: I truly do only have one trick. I'm screwed if it's not for headless browsers. I'm not a Go programmer. You know, I'm in AI grant. You know, browsers is an AI grant. But we were the only company in that AI grant batch that used zero dollars on AI spend. You know, we're purely an infrastructure company. So as much as people want to ask me about reinforcement learning, I might not be the best guy to talk about that. But if you want to ask about headless browser infrastructure at scale, I can talk your ear off. So that's really my area of expertise. And it's a pretty niche thing. Like, nobody has done what we're doing at scale before. So we're happy to be the experts.swyx [00:03:59]: You do have an AI thing, stagehand. We can talk about the sort of core of browser-based first, and then maybe stagehand. Yeah, stagehand is kind of the web browsing framework. Yeah.What is Browserbase? Headless Browser Infrastructure ExplainedAlessio [00:04:10]: Yeah. Yeah. And maybe how you got to browser-based and what problems you saw. So one of the first things I worked on as a software engineer was integration testing. Sauce Labs was kind of like the main thing at the time. And then we had Selenium, we had Playbrite, we had all these different browser things. But it's always been super hard to do. So obviously you've worked on this before. When you started browser-based, what were the challenges? What were the AI-specific challenges that you saw versus, there's kind of like all the usual running browser at scale in the cloud, which has been a problem for years. What are like the AI unique things that you saw that like traditional purchase just didn't cover? Yeah.AI-specific challenges in browser infrastructurePaul [00:04:46]: First and foremost, I think back to like the first thing I did as a developer, like as a kid when I was writing code, I wanted to write code that did stuff for me. You know, I wanted to write code to automate my life. And I do that probably by using curl or beautiful soup to fetch data from a web browser. And I think I still do that now that I'm in the cloud. And the other thing that I think is a huge challenge for me is that you can't just create a web site and parse that data. And we all know that now like, you know, taking HTML and plugging that into an LLM, you can extract insights, you can summarize. So it was very clear that now like dynamic web scraping became very possible with the rise of large language models or a lot easier. And that was like a clear reason why there's been more usage of headless browsers, which are necessary because a lot of modern websites don't expose all of their page content via a simple HTTP request. You know, they actually do require you to run this type of code for a specific time. JavaScript on the page to hydrate this. Airbnb is a great example. You go to airbnb.com. A lot of that content on the page isn't there until after they run the initial hydration. So you can't just scrape it with a curl. You need to have some JavaScript run. And a browser is that JavaScript engine that's going to actually run all those requests on the page. So web data retrieval was definitely one driver of starting BrowserBase and the rise of being able to summarize that within LLM. Also, I was familiar with if I wanted to automate a website, I could write one script and that would work for one website. It was very static and deterministic. But the web is non-deterministic. The web is always changing. And until we had LLMs, there was no way to write scripts that you could write once that would run on any website. That would change with the structure of the website. Click the login button. It could mean something different on many different websites. And LLMs allow us to generate code on the fly to actually control that. So I think that rise of writing the generic automation scripts that can work on many different websites, to me, made it clear that browsers are going to be a lot more useful because now you can automate a lot more things without writing. If you wanted to write a script to book a demo call on 100 websites, previously, you had to write 100 scripts. Now you write one script that uses LLMs to generate that script. That's why we built our web browsing framework, StageHand, which does a lot of that work for you. But those two things, web data collection and then enhanced automation of many different websites, it just felt like big drivers for more browser infrastructure that would be required to power these kinds of features.Alessio [00:07:05]: And was multimodality also a big thing?Paul [00:07:08]: Now you can use the LLMs to look, even though the text in the dome might not be as friendly. Maybe my hot take is I was always kind of like, I didn't think vision would be as big of a driver. For UI automation, I felt like, you know, HTML is structured text and large language models are good with structured text. But it's clear that these computer use models are often vision driven, and they've been really pushing things forward. So definitely being multimodal, like rendering the page is required to take a screenshot to give that to a computer use model to take actions on a website. And it's just another win for browser. But I'll be honest, that wasn't what I was thinking early on. I didn't even think that we'd get here so fast with multimodality. I think we're going to have to get back to multimodal and vision models.swyx [00:07:50]: This is one of those things where I forgot to mention in my intro that I'm an investor in Browserbase. And I remember that when you pitched to me, like a lot of the stuff that we have today, we like wasn't on the original conversation. But I did have my original thesis was something that we've talked about on the podcast before, which is take the GPT store, the custom GPT store, all the every single checkbox and plugin is effectively a startup. And this was the browser one. I think the main hesitation, I think I actually took a while to get back to you. The main hesitation was that there were others. Like you're not the first hit list browser startup. It's not even your first hit list browser startup. There's always a question of like, will you be the category winner in a place where there's a bunch of incumbents, to be honest, that are bigger than you? They're just not targeted at the AI space. They don't have the backing of Nat Friedman. And there's a bunch of like, you're here in Silicon Valley. They're not. I don't know.Paul [00:08:47]: I don't know if that's, that was it, but like, there was a, yeah, I mean, like, I think I tried all the other ones and I was like, really disappointed. Like my background is from working at great developer tools, companies, and nothing had like the Vercel like experience. Um, like our biggest competitor actually is partly owned by private equity and they just jacked up their prices quite a bit. And the dashboard hasn't changed in five years. And I actually used them at my last company and tried them and I was like, oh man, like there really just needs to be something that's like the experience of these great infrastructure companies, like Stripe, like clerk, like Vercel that I use in love, but oriented towards this kind of like more specific category, which is browser infrastructure, which is really technically complex. Like a lot of stuff can go wrong on the internet when you're running a browser. The internet is very vast. There's a lot of different configurations. Like there's still websites that only work with internet explorer out there. How do you handle that when you're running your own browser infrastructure? These are the problems that we have to think about and solve at BrowserBase. And it's, it's certainly a labor of love, but I built this for me, first and foremost, I know it's super cheesy and everyone says that for like their startups, but it really, truly was for me. If you look at like the talks I've done even before BrowserBase, and I'm just like really excited to try and build a category defining infrastructure company. And it's, it's rare to have a new category of infrastructure exists. We're here in the Chroma offices and like, you know, vector databases is a new category of infrastructure. Is it, is it, I mean, we can, we're in their office, so, you know, we can, we can debate that one later. That is one.Multimodality in AI-Powered Browsingswyx [00:10:16]: That's one of the industry debates.Paul [00:10:17]: I guess we go back to the LLMOS talk that Karpathy gave way long ago. And like the browser box was very clearly there and it seemed like the people who were building in this space also agreed that browsers are a core primitive of infrastructure for the LLMOS that's going to exist in the future. And nobody was building something there that I wanted to use. So I had to go build it myself.swyx [00:10:38]: Yeah. I mean, exactly that talk that, that honestly, that diagram, every box is a startup and there's the code box and then there's the. The browser box. I think at some point they will start clashing there. There's always the question of the, are you a point solution or are you the sort of all in one? And I think the point solutions tend to win quickly, but then the only ones have a very tight cohesive experience. Yeah. Let's talk about just the hard problems of browser base you have on your website, which is beautiful. Thank you. Was there an agency that you used for that? Yeah. Herb.paris.Paul [00:11:11]: They're amazing. Herb.paris. Yeah. It's H-E-R-V-E. I highly recommend for developers. Developer tools, founders to work with consumer agencies because they end up building beautiful things and the Parisians know how to build beautiful interfaces. So I got to give prep.swyx [00:11:24]: And chat apps, apparently are, they are very fast. Oh yeah. The Mistral chat. Yeah. Mistral. Yeah.Paul [00:11:31]: Late chat.swyx [00:11:31]: Late chat. And then your videos as well, it was professionally shot, right? The series A video. Yeah.Alessio [00:11:36]: Nico did the videos. He's amazing. Not the initial video that you shot at the new one. First one was Austin.Paul [00:11:41]: Another, another video pretty surprised. But yeah, I mean, like, I think when you think about how you talk about your company. You have to think about the way you present yourself. It's, you know, as a developer, you think you evaluate a company based on like the API reliability and the P 95, but a lot of developers say, is the website good? Is the message clear? Do I like trust this founder? I'm building my whole feature on. So I've tried to nail that as well as like the reliability of the infrastructure. You're right. It's very hard. And there's a lot of kind of foot guns that you run into when running headless browsers at scale. Right.Competing with Existing Headless Browser Solutionsswyx [00:12:10]: So let's pick one. You have eight features here. Seamless integration. Scalability. Fast or speed. Secure. Observable. Stealth. That's interesting. Extensible and developer first. What comes to your mind as like the top two, three hardest ones? Yeah.Running headless browsers at scalePaul [00:12:26]: I think just running headless browsers at scale is like the hardest one. And maybe can I nerd out for a second? Is that okay? I heard this is a technical audience, so I'll talk to the other nerds. Whoa. They were listening. Yeah. They're upset. They're ready. The AGI is angry. Okay. So. So how do you run a browser in the cloud? Let's start with that, right? So let's say you're using a popular browser automation framework like Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium. Maybe you've written a code, some code locally on your computer that opens up Google. It finds the search bar and then types in, you know, search for Latent Space and hits the search button. That script works great locally. You can see the little browser open up. You want to take that to production. You want to run the script in a cloud environment. So when your laptop is closed, your browser is doing something. The browser is doing something. Well, I, we use Amazon. You can see the little browser open up. You know, the first thing I'd reach for is probably like some sort of serverless infrastructure. I would probably try and deploy on a Lambda. But Chrome itself is too big to run on a Lambda. It's over 250 megabytes. So you can't easily start it on a Lambda. So you maybe have to use something like Lambda layers to squeeze it in there. Maybe use a different Chromium build that's lighter. And you get it on the Lambda. Great. It works. But it runs super slowly. It's because Lambdas are very like resource limited. They only run like with one vCPU. You can run one process at a time. Remember, Chromium is super beefy. It's barely running on my MacBook Air. I'm still downloading it from a pre-run. Yeah, from the test earlier, right? I'm joking. But it's big, you know? So like Lambda, it just won't work really well. Maybe it'll work, but you need something faster. Your users want something faster. Okay. Well, let's put it on a beefier instance. Let's get an EC2 server running. Let's throw Chromium on there. Great. Okay. I can, that works well with one user. But what if I want to run like 10 Chromium instances, one for each of my users? Okay. Well, I might need two EC2 instances. Maybe 10. All of a sudden, you have multiple EC2 instances. This sounds like a problem for Kubernetes and Docker, right? Now, all of a sudden, you're using ECS or EKS, the Kubernetes or container solutions by Amazon. You're spending up and down containers, and you're spending a whole engineer's time on kind of maintaining this stateful distributed system. Those are some of the worst systems to run because when it's a stateful distributed system, it means that you are bound by the connections to that thing. You have to keep the browser open while someone is working with it, right? That's just a painful architecture to run. And there's all this other little gotchas with Chromium, like Chromium, which is the open source version of Chrome, by the way. You have to install all these fonts. You want emojis working in your browsers because your vision model is looking for the emoji. You need to make sure you have the emoji fonts. You need to make sure you have all the right extensions configured, like, oh, do you want ad blocking? How do you configure that? How do you actually record all these browser sessions? Like it's a headless browser. You can't look at it. So you need to have some sort of observability. Maybe you're recording videos and storing those somewhere. It all kind of adds up to be this just giant monster piece of your project when all you wanted to do was run a lot of browsers in production for this little script to go to google.com and search. And when I see a complex distributed system, I see an opportunity to build a great infrastructure company. And we really abstract that away with Browserbase where our customers can use these existing frameworks, Playwright, Publisher, Selenium, or our own stagehand and connect to our browsers in a serverless-like way. And control them, and then just disconnect when they're done. And they don't have to think about the complex distributed system behind all of that. They just get a browser running anywhere, anytime. Really easy to connect to.swyx [00:15:55]: I'm sure you have questions. My standard question with anything, so essentially you're a serverless browser company, and there's been other serverless things that I'm familiar with in the past, serverless GPUs, serverless website hosting. That's where I come from with Netlify. One question is just like, you promised to spin up thousands of servers. You promised to spin up thousands of browsers in milliseconds. I feel like there's no real solution that does that yet. And I'm just kind of curious how. The only solution I know, which is to kind of keep a kind of warm pool of servers around, which is expensive, but maybe not so expensive because it's just CPUs. So I'm just like, you know. Yeah.Browsers as a Core Primitive in AI InfrastructurePaul [00:16:36]: You nailed it, right? I mean, how do you offer a serverless-like experience with something that is clearly not serverless, right? And the answer is, you need to be able to run... We run many browsers on single nodes. We use Kubernetes at browser base. So we have many pods that are being scheduled. We have to predictably schedule them up or down. Yes, thousands of browsers in milliseconds is the best case scenario. If you hit us with 10,000 requests, you may hit a slower cold start, right? So we've done a lot of work on predictive scaling and being able to kind of route stuff to different regions where we have multiple regions of browser base where we have different pools available. You can also pick the region you want to go to based on like lower latency, round trip, time latency. It's very important with these types of things. There's a lot of requests going over the wire. So for us, like having a VM like Firecracker powering everything under the hood allows us to be super nimble and spin things up or down really quickly with strong multi-tenancy. But in the end, this is like the complex infrastructural challenges that we have to kind of deal with at browser base. And we have a lot more stuff on our roadmap to allow customers to have more levers to pull to exchange, do you want really fast browser startup times or do you want really low costs? And if you're willing to be more flexible on that, we may be able to kind of like work better for your use cases.swyx [00:17:44]: Since you used Firecracker, shouldn't Fargate do that for you or did you have to go lower level than that? We had to go lower level than that.Paul [00:17:51]: I find this a lot with Fargate customers, which is alarming for Fargate. We used to be a giant Fargate customer. Actually, the first version of browser base was ECS and Fargate. And unfortunately, it's a great product. I think we were actually the largest Fargate customer in our region for a little while. No, what? Yeah, seriously. And unfortunately, it's a great product, but I think if you're an infrastructure company, you actually have to have a deeper level of control over these primitives. I think it's the same thing is true with databases. We've used other database providers and I think-swyx [00:18:21]: Yeah, serverless Postgres.Paul [00:18:23]: Shocker. When you're an infrastructure company, you're on the hook if any provider has an outage. And I can't tell my customers like, hey, we went down because so-and-so went down. That's not acceptable. So for us, we've really moved to bringing things internally. It's kind of opposite of what we preach. We tell our customers, don't build this in-house, but then we're like, we build a lot of stuff in-house. But I think it just really depends on what is in the critical path. We try and have deep ownership of that.Alessio [00:18:46]: On the distributed location side, how does that work for the web where you might get sort of different content in different locations, but the customer is expecting, you know, if you're in the US, I'm expecting the US version. But if you're spinning up my browser in France, I might get the French version. Yeah.Paul [00:19:02]: Yeah. That's a good question. Well, generally, like on the localization, there is a thing called locale in the browser. You can set like what your locale is. If you're like in the ENUS browser or not, but some things do IP, IP based routing. And in that case, you may want to have a proxy. Like let's say you're running something in the, in Europe, but you want to make sure you're showing up from the US. You may want to use one of our proxy features so you can turn on proxies to say like, make sure these connections always come from the United States, which is necessary too, because when you're browsing the web, you're coming from like a, you know, data center IP, and that can make things a lot harder to browse web. So we do have kind of like this proxy super network. Yeah. We have a proxy for you based on where you're going, so you can reliably automate the web. But if you get scheduled in Europe, that doesn't happen as much. We try and schedule you as close to, you know, your origin that you're trying to go to. But generally you have control over the regions you can put your browsers in. So you can specify West one or East one or Europe. We only have one region of Europe right now, actually. Yeah.Alessio [00:19:55]: What's harder, the browser or the proxy? I feel like to me, it feels like actually proxying reliably at scale. It's much harder than spending up browsers at scale. I'm curious. It's all hard.Paul [00:20:06]: It's layers of hard, right? Yeah. I think it's different levels of hard. I think the thing with the proxy infrastructure is that we work with many different web proxy providers and some are better than others. Some have good days, some have bad days. And our customers who've built browser infrastructure on their own, they have to go and deal with sketchy actors. Like first they figure out their own browser infrastructure and then they got to go buy a proxy. And it's like you can pay in Bitcoin and it just kind of feels a little sus, right? It's like you're buying drugs when you're trying to get a proxy online. We have like deep relationships with these counterparties. We're able to audit them and say, is this proxy being sourced ethically? Like it's not running on someone's TV somewhere. Is it free range? Yeah. Free range organic proxies, right? Right. We do a level of diligence. We're SOC 2. So we have to understand what is going on here. But then we're able to make sure that like we route around proxy providers not working. There's proxy providers who will just, the proxy will stop working all of a sudden. And then if you don't have redundant proxying on your own browsers, that's hard down for you or you may get some serious impacts there. With us, like we intelligently know, hey, this proxy is not working. Let's go to this one. And you can kind of build a network of multiple providers to really guarantee the best uptime for our customers. Yeah. So you don't own any proxies? We don't own any proxies. You're right. The team has been saying who wants to like take home a little proxy server, but not yet. We're not there yet. You know?swyx [00:21:25]: It's a very mature market. I don't think you should build that yourself. Like you should just be a super customer of them. Yeah. Scraping, I think, is the main use case for that. I guess. Well, that leads us into CAPTCHAs and also off, but let's talk about CAPTCHAs. You had a little spiel that you wanted to talk about CAPTCHA stuff.Challenges of Scaling Browser InfrastructurePaul [00:21:43]: Oh, yeah. I was just, I think a lot of people ask, if you're thinking about proxies, you're thinking about CAPTCHAs too. I think it's the same thing. You can go buy CAPTCHA solvers online, but it's the same buying experience. It's some sketchy website, you have to integrate it. It's not fun to buy these things and you can't really trust that the docs are bad. What Browserbase does is we integrate a bunch of different CAPTCHAs. We do some stuff in-house, but generally we just integrate with a bunch of known vendors and continually monitor and maintain these things and say, is this working or not? Can we route around it or not? These are CAPTCHA solvers. CAPTCHA solvers, yeah. Not CAPTCHA providers, CAPTCHA solvers. Yeah, sorry. CAPTCHA solvers. We really try and make sure all of that works for you. I think as a dev, if I'm buying infrastructure, I want it all to work all the time and it's important for us to provide that experience by making sure everything does work and monitoring it on our own. Yeah. Right now, the world of CAPTCHAs is tricky. I think AI agents in particular are very much ahead of the internet infrastructure. CAPTCHAs are designed to block all types of bots, but there are now good bots and bad bots. I think in the future, CAPTCHAs will be able to identify who a good bot is, hopefully via some sort of KYC. For us, we've been very lucky. We have very little to no known abuse of Browserbase because we really look into who we work with. And for certain types of CAPTCHA solving, we only allow them on certain types of plans because we want to make sure that we can know what people are doing, what their use cases are. And that's really allowed us to try and be an arbiter of good bots, which is our long term goal. I want to build great relationships with people like Cloudflare so we can agree, hey, here are these acceptable bots. We'll identify them for you and make sure we flag when they come to your website. This is a good bot, you know?Alessio [00:23:23]: I see. And Cloudflare said they want to do more of this. So they're going to set by default, if they think you're an AI bot, they're going to reject. I'm curious if you think this is something that is going to be at the browser level or I mean, the DNS level with Cloudflare seems more where it should belong. But I'm curious how you think about it.Paul [00:23:40]: I think the web's going to change. You know, I think that the Internet as we have it right now is going to change. And we all need to just accept that the cat is out of the bag. And instead of kind of like wishing the Internet was like it was in the 2000s, we can have free content line that wouldn't be scraped. It's just it's not going to happen. And instead, we should think about like, one, how can we change? How can we change the models of, you know, information being published online so people can adequately commercialize it? But two, how do we rebuild applications that expect that AI agents are going to log in on their behalf? Those are the things that are going to allow us to kind of like identify good and bad bots. And I think the team at Clerk has been doing a really good job with this on the authentication side. I actually think that auth is the biggest thing that will prevent agents from accessing stuff, not captchas. And I think there will be agent auth in the future. I don't know if it's going to happen from an individual company, but actually authentication providers that have a, you know, hidden login as agent feature, which will then you put in your email, you'll get a push notification, say like, hey, your browser-based agent wants to log into your Airbnb. You can approve that and then the agent can proceed. That really circumvents the need for captchas or logging in as you and sharing your password. I think agent auth is going to be one way we identify good bots going forward. And I think a lot of this captcha solving stuff is really short-term problems as the internet kind of reorients itself around how it's going to work with agents browsing the web, just like people do. Yeah.Managing Distributed Browser Locations and Proxiesswyx [00:24:59]: Stitch recently was on Hacker News for talking about agent experience, AX, which is a thing that Netlify is also trying to clone and coin and talk about. And we've talked about this on our previous episodes before in a sense that I actually think that's like maybe the only part of the tech stack that needs to be kind of reinvented for agents. Everything else can stay the same, CLIs, APIs, whatever. But auth, yeah, we need agent auth. And it's mostly like short-lived, like it should not, it should be a distinct, identity from the human, but paired. I almost think like in the same way that every social network should have your main profile and then your alt accounts or your Finsta, it's almost like, you know, every, every human token should be paired with the agent token and the agent token can go and do stuff on behalf of the human token, but not be presumed to be the human. Yeah.Paul [00:25:48]: It's like, it's, it's actually very similar to OAuth is what I'm thinking. And, you know, Thread from Stitch is an investor, Colin from Clerk, Octaventures, all investors in browser-based because like, I hope they solve this because they'll make browser-based submission more possible. So we don't have to overcome all these hurdles, but I think it will be an OAuth-like flow where an agent will ask to log in as you, you'll approve the scopes. Like it can book an apartment on Airbnb, but it can't like message anybody. And then, you know, the agent will have some sort of like role-based access control within an application. Yeah. I'm excited for that.swyx [00:26:16]: The tricky part is just, there's one, one layer of delegation here, which is like, you're authoring my user's user or something like that. I don't know if that's tricky or not. Does that make sense? Yeah.Paul [00:26:25]: You know, actually at Twilio, I worked on the login identity and access. Management teams, right? So like I built Twilio's login page.swyx [00:26:31]: You were an intern on that team and then you became the lead in two years? Yeah.Paul [00:26:34]: Yeah. I started as an intern in 2016 and then I was the tech lead of that team. How? That's not normal. I didn't have a life. He's not normal. Look at this guy. I didn't have a girlfriend. I just loved my job. I don't know. I applied to 500 internships for my first job and I got rejected from every single one of them except for Twilio and then eventually Amazon. And they took a shot on me and like, I was getting paid money to write code, which was my dream. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very lucky that like this coding thing worked out because I was going to be doing it regardless. And yeah, I was able to kind of spend a lot of time on a team that was growing at a company that was growing. So it informed a lot of this stuff here. I think these are problems that have been solved with like the SAML protocol with SSO. I think it's a really interesting stuff with like WebAuthn, like these different types of authentication, like schemes that you can use to authenticate people. The tooling is all there. It just needs to be tweaked a little bit to work for agents. And I think the fact that there are companies that are already. Providing authentication as a service really sets it up. Well, the thing that's hard is like reinventing the internet for agents. We don't want to rebuild the internet. That's an impossible task. And I think people often say like, well, we'll have this second layer of APIs built for agents. I'm like, we will for the top use cases, but instead of we can just tweak the internet as is, which is on the authentication side, I think we're going to be the dumb ones going forward. Unfortunately, I think AI is going to be able to do a lot of the tasks that we do online, which means that it will be able to go to websites, click buttons on our behalf and log in on our behalf too. So with this kind of like web agent future happening, I think with some small structural changes, like you said, it feels like it could all slot in really nicely with the existing internet.Handling CAPTCHAs and Agent Authenticationswyx [00:28:08]: There's one more thing, which is the, your live view iframe, which lets you take, take control. Yeah. Obviously very key for operator now, but like, was, is there anything interesting technically there or that the people like, well, people always want this.Paul [00:28:21]: It was really hard to build, you know, like, so, okay. Headless browsers, you don't see them, right. They're running. They're running in a cloud somewhere. You can't like look at them. And I just want to really make, it's a weird name. I wish we came up with a better name for this thing, but you can't see them. Right. But customers don't trust AI agents, right. At least the first pass. So what we do with our live view is that, you know, when you use browser base, you can actually embed a live view of the browser running in the cloud for your customer to see it working. And that's what the first reason is the build trust, like, okay, so I have this script. That's going to go automate a website. I can embed it into my web application via an iframe and my customer can watch. I think. And then we added two way communication. So now not only can you watch the browser kind of being operated by AI, if you want to pause and actually click around type within this iframe that's controlling a browser, that's also possible. And this is all thanks to some of the lower level protocol, which is called the Chrome DevTools protocol. It has a API called start screencast, and you can also send mouse clicks and button clicks to a remote browser. And this is all embeddable within iframes. You have a browser within a browser, yo. And then you simulate the screen, the click on the other side. Exactly. And this is really nice often for, like, let's say, a capture that can't be solved. You saw this with Operator, you know, Operator actually uses a different approach. They use VNC. So, you know, you're able to see, like, you're seeing the whole window here. What we're doing is something a little lower level with the Chrome DevTools protocol. It's just PNGs being streamed over the wire. But the same thing is true, right? Like, hey, I'm running a window. Pause. Can you do something in this window? Human. Okay, great. Resume. Like sometimes 2FA tokens. Like if you get that text message, you might need a person to type that in. Web agents need human-in-the-loop type workflows still. You still need a person to interact with the browser. And building a UI to proxy that is kind of hard. You may as well just show them the whole browser and say, hey, can you finish this up for me? And then let the AI proceed on afterwards. Is there a future where I stream my current desktop to browser base? I don't think so. I think we're very much cloud infrastructure. Yeah. You know, but I think a lot of the stuff we're doing, we do want to, like, build tools. Like, you know, we'll talk about the stage and, you know, web agent framework in a second. But, like, there's a case where a lot of people are going desktop first for, you know, consumer use. And I think cloud is doing a lot of this, where I expect to see, you know, MCPs really oriented around the cloud desktop app for a reason, right? Like, I think a lot of these tools are going to run on your computer because it makes... I think it's breaking out. People are putting it on a server. Oh, really? Okay. Well, sweet. We'll see. We'll see that. I was surprised, though, wasn't I? I think that the browser company, too, with Dia Browser, it runs on your machine. You know, it's going to be...swyx [00:30:50]: What is it?Paul [00:30:51]: So, Dia Browser, as far as I understand... I used to use Arc. Yeah. I haven't used Arc. But I'm a big fan of the browser company. I think they're doing a lot of cool stuff in consumer. As far as I understand, it's a browser where you have a sidebar where you can, like, chat with it and it can control the local browser on your machine. So, if you imagine, like, what a consumer web agent is, which it lives alongside your browser, I think Google Chrome has Project Marina, I think. I almost call it Project Marinara for some reason. I don't know why. It's...swyx [00:31:17]: No, I think it's someone really likes the Waterworld. Oh, I see. The classic Kevin Costner. Yeah.Paul [00:31:22]: Okay. Project Marinara is a similar thing to the Dia Browser, in my mind, as far as I understand it. You have a browser that has an AI interface that will take over your mouse and keyboard and control the browser for you. Great for consumer use cases. But if you're building applications that rely on a browser and it's more part of a greater, like, AI app experience, you probably need something that's more like infrastructure, not a consumer app.swyx [00:31:44]: Just because I have explored a little bit in this area, do people want branching? So, I have the state. Of whatever my browser's in. And then I want, like, 100 clones of this state. Do people do that? Or...Paul [00:31:56]: People don't do it currently. Yeah. But it's definitely something we're thinking about. I think the idea of forking a browser is really cool. Technically, kind of hard. We're starting to see this in code execution, where people are, like, forking some, like, code execution, like, processes or forking some tool calls or branching tool calls. Haven't seen it at the browser level yet. But it makes sense. Like, if an AI agent is, like, using a website and it's not sure what path it wants to take to crawl this website. To find the information it's looking for. It would make sense for it to explore both paths in parallel. And that'd be a very, like... A road not taken. Yeah. And hopefully find the right answer. And then say, okay, this was actually the right one. And memorize that. And go there in the future. On the roadmap. For sure. Don't make my roadmap, please. You know?Alessio [00:32:37]: How do you actually do that? Yeah. How do you fork? I feel like the browser is so stateful for so many things.swyx [00:32:42]: Serialize the state. Restore the state. I don't know.Paul [00:32:44]: So, it's one of the reasons why we haven't done it yet. It's hard. You know? Like, to truly fork, it's actually quite difficult. The naive way is to open the same page in a new tab and then, like, hope that it's at the same thing. But if you have a form halfway filled, you may have to, like, take the whole, you know, container. Pause it. All the memory. Duplicate it. Restart it from there. It could be very slow. So, we haven't found a thing. Like, the easy thing to fork is just, like, copy the page object. You know? But I think there needs to be something a little bit more robust there. Yeah.swyx [00:33:12]: So, MorphLabs has this infinite branch thing. Like, wrote a custom fork of Linux or something that let them save the system state and clone it. MorphLabs, hit me up. I'll be a customer. Yeah. That's the only. I think that's the only way to do it. Yeah. Like, unless Chrome has some special API for you. Yeah.Paul [00:33:29]: There's probably something we'll reverse engineer one day. I don't know. Yeah.Alessio [00:33:32]: Let's talk about StageHand, the AI web browsing framework. You have three core components, Observe, Extract, and Act. Pretty clean landing page. What was the idea behind making a framework? Yeah.Stagehand: AI web browsing frameworkPaul [00:33:43]: So, there's three frameworks that are very popular or already exist, right? Puppeteer, Playwright, Selenium. Those are for building hard-coded scripts to control websites. And as soon as I started to play with LLMs plus browsing, I caught myself, you know, code-genning Playwright code to control a website. I would, like, take the DOM. I'd pass it to an LLM. I'd say, can you generate the Playwright code to click the appropriate button here? And it would do that. And I was like, this really should be part of the frameworks themselves. And I became really obsessed with SDKs that take natural language as part of, like, the API input. And that's what StageHand is. StageHand exposes three APIs, and it's a super set of Playwright. So, if you go to a page, you may want to take an action, click on the button, fill in the form, etc. That's what the act command is for. You may want to extract some data. This one takes a natural language, like, extract the winner of the Super Bowl from this page. You can give it a Zod schema, so it returns a structured output. And then maybe you're building an API. You can do an agent loop, and you want to kind of see what actions are possible on this page before taking one. You can do observe. So, you can observe the actions on the page, and it will generate a list of actions. You can guide it, like, give me actions on this page related to buying an item. And you can, like, buy it now, add to cart, view shipping options, and pass that to an LLM, an agent loop, to say, what's the appropriate action given this high-level goal? So, StageHand isn't a web agent. It's a framework for building web agents. And we think that agent loops are actually pretty close to the application layer because every application probably has different goals or different ways it wants to take steps. I don't think I've seen a generic. Maybe you guys are the experts here. I haven't seen, like, a really good AI agent framework here. Everyone kind of has their own special sauce, right? I see a lot of developers building their own agent loops, and they're using tools. And I view StageHand as the browser tool. So, we expose act, extract, observe. Your agent can call these tools. And from that, you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about generating playwright code performantly. You don't have to worry about running it. You can kind of just integrate these three tool calls into your agent loop and reliably automate the web.swyx [00:35:48]: A special shout-out to Anirudh, who I met at your dinner, who I think listens to the pod. Yeah. Hey, Anirudh.Paul [00:35:54]: Anirudh's a man. He's a StageHand guy.swyx [00:35:56]: I mean, the interesting thing about each of these APIs is they're kind of each startup. Like, specifically extract, you know, Firecrawler is extract. There's, like, Expand AI. There's a whole bunch of, like, extract companies. They just focus on extract. I'm curious. Like, I feel like you guys are going to collide at some point. Like, right now, it's friendly. Everyone's in a blue ocean. At some point, it's going to be valuable enough that there's some turf battle here. I don't think you have a dog in a fight. I think you can mock extract to use an external service if they're better at it than you. But it's just an observation that, like, in the same way that I see each option, each checkbox in the side of custom GBTs becoming a startup or each box in the Karpathy chart being a startup. Like, this is also becoming a thing. Yeah.Paul [00:36:41]: I mean, like, so the way StageHand works is that it's MIT-licensed, completely open source. You bring your own API key to your LLM of choice. You could choose your LLM. We don't make any money off of the extract or really. We only really make money if you choose to run it with our browser. You don't have to. You can actually use your own browser, a local browser. You know, StageHand is completely open source for that reason. And, yeah, like, I think if you're building really complex web scraping workflows, I don't know if StageHand is the tool for you. I think it's really more if you're building an AI agent that needs a few general tools or if it's doing a lot of, like, web automation-intensive work. But if you're building a scraping company, StageHand is not your thing. You probably want something that's going to, like, get HTML content, you know, convert that to Markdown, query it. That's not what StageHand does. StageHand is more about reliability. I think we focus a lot on reliability and less so on cost optimization and speed at this point.swyx [00:37:33]: I actually feel like StageHand, so the way that StageHand works, it's like, you know, page.act, click on the quick start. Yeah. It's kind of the integration test for the code that you would have to write anyway, like the Puppeteer code that you have to write anyway. And when the page structure changes, because it always does, then this is still the test. This is still the test that I would have to write. Yeah. So it's kind of like a testing framework that doesn't need implementation detail.Paul [00:37:56]: Well, yeah. I mean, Puppeteer, Playwright, and Slenderman were all designed as testing frameworks, right? Yeah. And now people are, like, hacking them together to automate the web. I would say, and, like, maybe this is, like, me being too specific. But, like, when I write tests, if the page structure changes. Without me knowing, I want that test to fail. So I don't know if, like, AI, like, regenerating that. Like, people are using StageHand for testing. But it's more for, like, usability testing, not, like, testing of, like, does the front end, like, has it changed or not. Okay. But generally where we've seen people, like, really, like, take off is, like, if they're using, you know, something. If they want to build a feature in their application that's kind of like Operator or Deep Research, they're using StageHand to kind of power that tool calling in their own agent loop. Okay. Cool.swyx [00:38:37]: So let's go into Operator, the first big agent launch of the year from OpenAI. Seems like they have a whole bunch scheduled. You were on break and your phone blew up. What's your just general view of computer use agents is what they're calling it. The overall category before we go into Open Operator, just the overall promise of Operator. I will observe that I tried it once. It was okay. And I never tried it again.OpenAI's Operator and computer use agentsPaul [00:38:58]: That tracks with my experience, too. Like, I'm a huge fan of the OpenAI team. Like, I think that I do not view Operator as the company. I'm not a company killer for browser base at all. I think it actually shows people what's possible. I think, like, computer use models make a lot of sense. And I'm actually most excited about computer use models is, like, their ability to, like, really take screenshots and reasoning and output steps. I think that using mouse click or mouse coordinates, I've seen that proved to be less reliable than I would like. And I just wonder if that's the right form factor. What we've done with our framework is anchor it to the DOM itself, anchor it to the actual item. So, like, if it's clicking on something, it's clicking on that thing, you know? Like, it's more accurate. No matter where it is. Yeah, exactly. Because it really ties in nicely. And it can handle, like, the whole viewport in one go, whereas, like, Operator can only handle what it sees. Can you hover? Is hovering a thing that you can do? I don't know if we expose it as a tool directly, but I'm sure there's, like, an API for hovering. Like, move mouse to this position. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you can trigger hover, like, via, like, the JavaScript on the DOM itself. But, no, I think, like, when we saw computer use, everyone's eyes lit up because they realized, like, wow, like, AI is going to actually automate work for people. And I think seeing that kind of happen from both of the labs, and I'm sure we're going to see more labs launch computer use models, I'm excited to see all the stuff that people build with it. I think that I'd love to see computer use power, like, controlling a browser on browser base. And I think, like, Open Operator, which was, like, our open source version of OpenAI's Operator, was our first take on, like, how can we integrate these models into browser base? And we handle the infrastructure and let the labs do the models. I don't have a sense that Operator will be released as an API. I don't know. Maybe it will. I'm curious to see how well that works because I think it's going to be really hard for a company like OpenAI to do things like support CAPTCHA solving or, like, have proxies. Like, I think it's hard for them structurally. Imagine this New York Times headline, OpenAI CAPTCHA solving. Like, that would be a pretty bad headline, this New York Times headline. Browser base solves CAPTCHAs. No one cares. No one cares. And, like, our investors are bored. Like, we're all okay with this, you know? We're building this company knowing that the CAPTCHA solving is short-lived until we figure out how to authenticate good bots. I think it's really hard for a company like OpenAI, who has this brand that's so, so good, to balance with, like, the icky parts of web automation, which it can be kind of complex to solve. I'm sure OpenAI knows who to call whenever they need you. Yeah, right. I'm sure they'll have a great partnership.Alessio [00:41:23]: And is Open Operator just, like, a marketing thing for you? Like, how do you think about resource allocation? So, you can spin this up very quickly. And now there's all this, like, open deep research, just open all these things that people are building. We started it, you know. You're the original Open. We're the original Open operator, you know? Is it just, hey, look, this is a demo, but, like, we'll help you build out an actual product for yourself? Like, are you interested in going more of a product route? That's kind of the OpenAI way, right? They started as a model provider and then…Paul [00:41:53]: Yeah, we're not interested in going the product route yet. I view Open Operator as a model provider. It's a reference project, you know? Let's show people how to build these things using the infrastructure and models that are out there. And that's what it is. It's, like, Open Operator is very simple. It's an agent loop. It says, like, take a high-level goal, break it down into steps, use tool calling to accomplish those steps. It takes screenshots and feeds those screenshots into an LLM with the step to generate the right action. It uses stagehand under the hood to actually execute this action. It doesn't use a computer use model. And it, like, has a nice interface using the live view that we talked about, the iframe, to embed that into an application. So I felt like people on launch day wanted to figure out how to build their own version of this. And we turned that around really quickly to show them. And I hope we do that with other things like deep research. We don't have a deep research launch yet. I think David from AOMNI actually has an amazing open deep research that he launched. It has, like, 10K GitHub stars now. So he's crushing that. But I think if people want to build these features natively into their application, they need good reference projects. And I think Open Operator is a good example of that.swyx [00:42:52]: I don't know. Actually, I'm actually pretty bullish on API-driven operator. Because that's the only way that you can sort of, like, once it's reliable enough, obviously. And now we're nowhere near. But, like, give it five years. It'll happen, you know. And then you can sort of spin this up and browsers are working in the background and you don't necessarily have to know. And it just is booking restaurants for you, whatever. I can definitely see that future happening. I had this on the landing page here. This might be a slightly out of order. But, you know, you have, like, sort of three use cases for browser base. Open Operator. Or this is the operator sort of use case. It's kind of like the workflow automation use case. And it completes with UiPath in the sort of RPA category. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I would agree with that. And then there's Agents we talked about already. And web scraping, which I imagine would be the bulk of your workload right now, right?Paul [00:43:40]: No, not at all. I'd say actually, like, the majority is browser automation. We're kind of expensive for web scraping. Like, I think that if you're building a web scraping product, if you need to do occasional web scraping or you have to do web scraping that works every single time, you want to use browser automation. Yeah. You want to use browser-based. But if you're building web scraping workflows, what you should do is have a waterfall. You should have the first request is a curl to the website. See if you can get it without even using a browser. And then the second request may be, like, a scraping-specific API. There's, like, a thousand scraping APIs out there that you can use to try and get data. Scraping B. Scraping B is a great example, right? Yeah. And then, like, if those two don't work, bring out the heavy hitter. Like, browser-based will 100% work, right? It will load the page in a real browser, hydrate it. I see.swyx [00:44:21]: Because a lot of people don't render to JS.swyx [00:44:25]: Yeah, exactly.Paul [00:44:26]: So, I mean, the three big use cases, right? Like, you know, automation, web data collection, and then, you know, if you're building anything agentic that needs, like, a browser tool, you want to use browser-based.Alessio [00:44:35]: Is there any use case that, like, you were super surprised by that people might not even think about? Oh, yeah. Or is it, yeah, anything that you can share? The long tail is crazy. Yeah.Surprising use cases of BrowserbasePaul [00:44:44]: One of the case studies on our website that I think is the most interesting is this company called Benny. So, the way that it works is if you're on food stamps in the United States, you can actually get rebates if you buy certain things. Yeah. You buy some vegetables. You submit your receipt to the government. They'll give you a little rebate back. Say, hey, thanks for buying vegetables. It's good for you. That process of submitting that receipt is very painful. And the way Benny works is you use their app to take a photo of your receipt, and then Benny will go submit that receipt for you and then deposit the money into your account. That's actually using no AI at all. It's all, like, hard-coded scripts. They maintain the scripts. They've been doing a great job. And they build this amazing consumer app. But it's an example of, like, all these, like, tedious workflows that people have to do to kind of go about their business. And they're doing it for the sake of their day-to-day lives. And I had never known about, like, food stamp rebates or the complex forms you have to do to fill them. But the world is powered by millions and millions of tedious forms, visas. You know, Emirate Lighthouse is a customer, right? You know, they do the O1 visa. Millions and millions of forms are taking away humans' time. And I hope that Browserbase can help power software that automates away the web forms that we don't need anymore. Yeah.swyx [00:45:49]: I mean, I'm very supportive of that. I mean, forms. I do think, like, government itself is a big part of it. I think the government itself should embrace AI more to do more sort of human-friendly form filling. Mm-hmm. But I'm not optimistic. I'm not holding my breath. Yeah. We'll see. Okay. I think I'm about to zoom out. I have a little brief thing on computer use, and then we can talk about founder stuff, which is, I tend to think of developer tooling markets in impossible triangles, where everyone starts in a niche, and then they start to branch out. So I already hinted at a little bit of this, right? We mentioned more. We mentioned E2B. We mentioned Firecrawl. And then there's Browserbase. So there's, like, all this stuff of, like, have serverless virtual computer that you give to an agent and let them do stuff with it. And there's various ways of connecting it to the internet. You can just connect to a search API, like SERP API, whatever other, like, EXA is another one. That's what you're searching. You can also have a JSON markdown extractor, which is Firecrawl. Or you can have a virtual browser like Browserbase, or you can have a virtual machine like Morph. And then there's also maybe, like, a virtual sort of code environment, like Code Interpreter. So, like, there's just, like, a bunch of different ways to tackle the problem of give a computer to an agent. And I'm just kind of wondering if you see, like, everyone's just, like, happily coexisting in their respective niches. And as a developer, I just go and pick, like, a shopping basket of one of each. Or do you think that you eventually, people will collide?Future of browser automation and market competitionPaul [00:47:18]: I think that currently it's not a zero-sum market. Like, I think we're talking about... I think we're talking about all of knowledge work that people do that can be automated online. All of these, like, trillions of hours that happen online where people are working. And I think that there's so much software to be built that, like, I tend not to think about how these companies will collide. I just try to solve the problem as best as I can and make this specific piece of infrastructure, which I think is an important primitive, the best I possibly can. And yeah. I think there's players that are actually going to like it. I think there's players that are going to launch, like, over-the-top, you know, platforms, like agent platforms that have all these tools built in, right? Like, who's building the rippling for agent tools that has the search tool, the browser tool, the operating system tool, right? There are some. There are some. There are some, right? And I think in the end, what I have seen as my time as a developer, and I look at all the favorite tools that I have, is that, like, for tools and primitives with sufficient levels of complexity, you need to have a solution that's really bespoke to that primitive, you know? And I am sufficiently convinced that the browser is complex enough to deserve a primitive. Obviously, I have to. I'm the founder of BrowserBase, right? I'm talking my book. But, like, I think maybe I can give you one spicy take against, like, maybe just whole OS running. I think that when I look at computer use when it first came out, I saw that the majority of use cases for computer use were controlling a browser. And do we really need to run an entire operating system just to control a browser? I don't think so. I don't think that's necessary. You know, BrowserBase can run browsers for way cheaper than you can if you're running a full-fledged OS with a GUI, you know, operating system. And I think that's just an advantage of the browser. It is, like, browsers are little OSs, and you can run them very efficiently if you orchestrate it well. And I think that allows us to offer 90% of the, you know, functionality in the platform needed at 10% of the cost of running a full OS. Yeah.Open Operator: Browserbase's Open-Source Alternativeswyx [00:49:16]: I definitely see the logic in that. There's a Mark Andreessen quote. I don't know if you know this one. Where he basically observed that the browser is turning the operating system into a poorly debugged set of device drivers, because most of the apps are moved from the OS to the browser. So you can just run browsers.Paul [00:49:31]: There's a place for OSs, too. Like, I think that there are some applications that only run on Windows operating systems. And Eric from pig.dev in this upcoming YC batch, or last YC batch, like, he's building all run tons of Windows operating systems for you to control with your agent. And like, there's some legacy EHR systems that only run on Internet-controlled systems. Yeah.Paul [00:49:54]: I think that's it. I think, like, there are use cases for specific operating systems for specific legacy software. And like, I'm excited to see what he does with that. I just wanted to give a shout out to the pig.dev website.swyx [00:50:06]: The pigs jump when you click on them. Yeah. That's great.Paul [00:50:08]: Eric, he's the former co-founder of banana.dev, too.swyx [00:50:11]: Oh, that Eric. Yeah. That Eric. Okay. Well, he abandoned bananas for pigs. I hope he doesn't start going around with pigs now.Alessio [00:50:18]: Like he was going around with bananas. A little toy pig. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. What else are we missing? I think we covered a lot of, like, the browser-based product history, but. What do you wish people asked you? Yeah.Paul [00:50:29]: I wish people asked me more about, like, what will the future of software look like? Because I think that's really where I've spent a lot of time about why do browser-based. Like, for me, starting a company is like a means of last resort. Like, you shouldn't start a company unless you absolutely have to. And I remain convinced that the future of software is software that you're going to click a button and it's going to do stuff on your behalf. Right now, software. You click a button and it maybe, like, calls it back an API and, like, computes some numbers. It, like, modifies some text, whatever. But the future of software is software using software. So, I may log into my accounting website for my business, click a button, and it's going to go load up my Gmail, search my emails, find the thing, upload the receipt, and then comment it for me. Right? And it may use it using APIs, maybe a browser. I don't know. I think it's a little bit of both. But that's completely different from how we've built software so far. And that's. I think that future of software has different infrastructure requirements. It's going to require different UIs. It's going to require different pieces of infrastructure. I think the browser infrastructure is one piece that fits into that, along with all the other categories you mentioned. So, I think that it's going to require developers to think differently about how they've built software for, you know

Quincy and Justine recap their weeks, from navigating the ins and BIG outs of french doctors, to celebrating a friend's incredible 24-year sober anniversary and experiencing a real life ratatouille movie moment. The girls discuss 5-star hotel experiences in Paris and as the weather warms up and the sun shines brighter, they talk about how Paris (specifically Parisians) transform.

On 15 Oct 2024, a 27-year-old cyclist was killed in a bike lane in Paris. His name was Paul Varry. He was run over by a car after an argument with a driver. What happened to Paul was extreme, but it resonated with many Parisians. For Paris is undergoing a cycling revolution. The city has created a vast network of bike lanes, introduced new restrictions for cars. The number of cyclists has soared. But there have also been conflicts, as cars, bikes and pedestrians try to navigate the new balance of power. So is Paris's plan working? Is this transformation the future for other major cities? Anna Holligan goes to Paris for Assignment, to find out.

Thinking about traveling to France while pregnant? In Discovering Paris and Provins on a Babymoon Adventure, host Annie Sargent chats with Hannah Compton about her unforgettable trip at 30 weeks pregnant. From the bustling streets of Paris to the medieval charm of Provins, Hannah shares her insights, surprises, and tips for expectant travelers. Get the podcast ad-free Hannah and her husband spent eight days in France, splitting their time between Paris and Provins. In Paris, they explored iconic sights like Sainte-Chapelle, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Petit Palais. Hannah describes how friendly and accommodating Parisians were, from offering seats on the metro to helping her skip long lines at attractions. She also shares the joy of café culture, strolling through beautiful gardens, and enjoying a Michelin-star meal at Yam'Tcha. In Provins, they immersed themselves in medieval history, attended a lively dinner show, and discovered charming streets. Hannah explains why Provins is a great weekend destination, especially for families. She also reflects on the ease of train travel and the relaxing pace of their visit. If you're curious about how France accommodates pregnant travelers or want inspiration for your next trip, this episode is packed with useful advice. Tune in for a fun and informative conversation! Table of Contents for this Episode Today on the podcast Podcast supporters The Magazine segment Introduction and Greetings Planning the Trip to France Traveling While Pregnant Exploring Provins Medieval Attractions in Provins Experiencing Paris Navigating Paris with Ease Museum Visits and Cultural Insights  Saint Chapelle Lunch at Lulu's Cafe Dinner at Yamcha: A Culinary Delight Exploring the Champs Élysées and Arc de Triomphe Petit Palais: A Hidden Gem Saint-Sulpice: The Active Church Eiffel Tower at Night Traveling While Pregnant: Tips and Experiences Favorite Stay in Provins Final Thoughts and Recommendations Thank you Patrons Picard ChatGPT Next week on the podcast Copyright More episodes about day trips from Paris

On this episode we interview Gautier on the history of the brand, his inspiration, and his vision for the Company and why it is important to stick to the brand's core principles.

On Mon.'s No Dunks, the guys share their NBA weekend winners and losers. Winners include: the Magic getting their dynamic duo back, Harden's Clippers, the Rockets beating the East-leading Cavs again, Ant's three-point proficiency, Vince Carter's No. 15 jersey, and more. Losers include: the back-to-mid Hawks, the Mavericks' injury bug, and Parisians not picking up dog poo.--New No Dunks podcast live from The Classic Factory at 10 a.m. ET!

On Mon.'s No Dunks, the guys share their NBA weekend winners and losers. Winners include: the Magic getting their dynamic duo back, Harden's Clippers, the Rockets beating the East-leading Cavs again, Ant's three-point proficiency, Vince Carter's No. 15 jersey, and more. Losers include: the back-to-mid Hawks, the Mavericks' injury bug, and Parisians not picking up dog poo. -- New No Dunks podcast live from The Classic Factory at 10 a.m. ET!

The January Transfer Window's gears are now firmly in motion with clubs starting to make progress on assembling their squads for the rest of the season. So what can Manchester City fans expect from their prospective new signing Omar Marmoush? And is PSG really the right destination for Khvicha Kvaratskhelia when the Parisians look well-stocked in the wide positions?Plus, Naby Keïta's fall from grace, Brian Brobbey's difficult season at Ajax, and how to prepare for a game at the San Siro.Dotun, Andy & David Cartlidge are here with the answers.Ask us a question on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, and email us here: otc@footballramble.com.For ad-free shows, head over to our Patreon and subscribe: patreon.com/footballramble.***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!*** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sharon Gaffney talks to Parisians and other visitors about celebrating Christmas masses at the rpened Notre Dame in Paris for the first time in several years since it was damaged by fire.

Fluent Fiction - French: A Christmas Promise Fulfilled at Le Petit Coin de Paris Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/fr/episode/2024-12-17-23-34-02-fr Story Transcript:Fr: Le café de Lucien, "Le Petit Coin de Paris", était le refuge parfait pendant l'hiver glacial.En: Le café de Lucien, "Le Petit Coin de Paris", was the perfect refuge during the icy winter.Fr: La lumière dorée des guirlandes éclairait chaque recoin, et l'odeur du café frais se mélangeait aux notes de cannelle et de vanille des pâtisseries.En: The golden light of the garlands lit up every corner, and the smell of fresh coffee blended with the notes of cinnamon and vanilla from the pastries.Fr: Ce jour-là, le café était plein à craquer de Parisiens en quête de chaleur.En: That day, the café was packed with Parisians seeking warmth.Fr: Lucien se tenait derrière le comptoir, l'air préoccupé.En: Lucien stood behind the counter, looking concerned.Fr: Noël approchait et avec lui, le souvenir d'une promesse ancienne : retrouver l'heirloom familial, une montre de poche en or, avant la veille de Noël.En: Christmas was approaching, bringing with it the memory of an old promise: to find the family heirloom, a gold pocket watch, before Christmas Eve.Fr: Mais l'agitation du café rendait cette quête presque impossible.En: But the hustle and bustle of the café made this quest almost impossible.Fr: Sophie, une habituée, était assise près de la fenêtre, son regard scrutant les passants et les clients avec une attention particulière.En: Sophie, a regular, was sitting near the window, her gaze scrutinizing the passersby and customers with particular attention.Fr: Elle savait beaucoup de choses sur tout le monde, des secrets murmurés jusqu'aux mystères bien gardés du quartier.En: She knew a lot about everyone, from whispered secrets to well-kept mysteries of the neighborhood.Fr: Marc, le cousin de Lucien venu de Marseille, était là pour aider.En: Marc, Lucien's cousin from Marseille, was there to help.Fr: Mais il était maladroit, renversant sable et sucres, au grand dam de Lucien qui le regardait, impuissant.En: But he was clumsy, spilling sand and sugars, much to Lucien's dismay as he watched helplessly.Fr: Lucien, désespéré de retrouver la montre, prenait sur lui de parler à Sophie.En: Lucien, desperate to find the watch, took it upon himself to speak to Sophie.Fr: Elle détournait souvent le sujet, mais cette fois, Lucien devait savoir.En: She often changed the subject, but this time, Lucien had to know.Fr: — Sophie, dis-moi, tu sais quelque chose sur la montre de mon père, n'est-ce pas ?En: "Sophie, tell me, you know something about my father's watch, don't you?"Fr: lui demanda Lucien, la voix remplie d'espoir.En: Lucien asked her, his voice filled with hope.Fr: Sophie hésita, ses yeux cherchant Marc qui venait de renverser une tasse de café.En: Sophie hesitated, her eyes searching out Marc who had just knocked over a cup of coffee.Fr: — C'est bien amusant, Marc, dit-elle enfin.En: "It's quite amusing, Marc," she finally said.Fr: Il m'a dit vouloir te surprendre.En: "He told me he wanted to surprise you.Fr: Mais il a mal rangé la montre... pensant que ce serait drôle.En: But he misplaced the watch... thinking it would be funny."Fr: Lucien fut à la fois surpris et soulagé.En: Lucien was both surprised and relieved.Fr: Sophie avoua que Marc, dans son enthousiasme, avait caché la montre derrière une vieille horloge dans le coin de la salle.En: Sophie confessed that Marc, in his enthusiasm, had hidden the watch behind an old clock in the corner of the room.Fr: Lucien se précipita vers l'horloge et, avec un peu d'effort, trouva la montre précieuse là où Sophie avait dit.En: Lucien rushed to the clock and, with a bit of effort, found the precious watch where Sophie had indicated.Fr: Il l'attrapa, la pressant contre sa poitrine, reconnaissant.En: He grabbed it, pressing it to his chest, thankful.Fr: Avec un sourire, Lucien se tourna vers Marc, réalisant l'importance de la famille et des erreurs qui ne sont que des chemins vers la rédemption.En: With a smile, Lucien turned to Marc, realizing the importance of family and the mistakes that are just paths to redemption.Fr: Ce Noël, "Le Petit Coin de Paris" restait aussi accueillant qu'une maison familière, avec la chaleur d'une nouvelle compréhension entre cousins et clients.En: That Christmas, "Le Petit Coin de Paris" remained as welcoming as a familiar home, with the warmth of a new understanding between cousins and customers.Fr: En rendant la montre à sa place, Lucien avait récupéré bien plus qu'un simple héritage : une confiance renouvelée et une famille soudée.En: By returning the watch to its place, Lucien had recovered much more than just a simple heirloom: a renewed trust and a united family.Fr: Et dans l'air froid de Paris, les rires du café résonnaient, remplis de bonheur et d'une promesse tenue.En: And in the cold air of Paris, the laughter from the café echoed, filled with happiness and a promise fulfilled. Vocabulary Words:the refuge: le refugethe promise: la promessethe heirloom: l'héritagethe pocket watch: la montre de pochethe bustle: l'agitationthe secrets: les secretsthe mysteries: les mystèresthe cousin: le cousinthe dismay: le damthe relief: le soulagementthe chest: la poitrinethe redemption: la rédemptionthe trust: la confiancethe laughter: les riresthe garlands: les guirlandesthe corner: le recointhe warmth: la chaleurthe quest: la quêtethe counter: le comptoirthe attention: l'attentionthe gaze: le regardthe clock: l'horlogethe familiarity: la familiaritéthe understanding: la compréhensionthe effort: l'effortthe happiness: le bonheurthe promise: la promessethe surprise: la surprisethe enthusiasm: l'enthousiasmethe air: l'air

Kris chats with French legend David Chambre, the author of one of the best and most beautiful reference books out there for 90's climbing history, The 9th Grade. David's previous book, co-written with Jibe Tribout, The 8th Grade, is a treasure trove of French climbing history of the late 1970's and early to mid 1980's. They discuss the influence of Patrick Edlinger on both French and world climbing history.  Discussed in the episode: The difference between the two Patricks. The rivalry between the Parisians and Edlinger. Edlinger's influence on climbing culture. The effect of fame on Edlinger. Tribout's ability to provoke. French climbing history. Check out more here! Join the Secret Stoners Club for FREE. Get David's Book The 9th Grade ---------------------------------- Season Two is generously supported by Rab.  This episode is supported by Tension Climbing. Use code WRITTEN15 at checkout. Written in Stone is co-created with Power Company Climbing.

I've known Lindsey Tramuta almost as long as I've been in Paris. We live in the same arrondissement (go 11th!) and I occasionally see her out and about, when she's not busy writing books, or magazines and newspaper articles, which are featured in such publications as The New York Times, Bon Appétit, and Condé Nast Traveler.I arrived in Paris quite unprepared, not speaking French not knowing what to expect. Lindsey moved to France the opposite way (and in my opinion, the right way), with a background in French literature, studying in France, and having a boyfriend, who is now her husband. Even so, the move still presented some challenges.I thought it would be fun to talk to Lindsey about her journey—what motivated her to make the move (and how she answers the eternal question from visitors: Is it permanent?), what she loves about the city and living in France, as well as some of the downsides of living one's life abroad. In Lindsey's first book, The New Paris, she chronicled the last decade in Paris, during while time the city's food scene had lost some of its some of its luster, and showcased a new generation of young, engaged Parisians who changed the landscape, rebooting Paris' reputation as a thriving, world-class gastronomic destination, that continues to evolve.In The New Parisienne, Lindsey tackles the perception of the Parisian woman, profiling pastry chefs, creators, artists, activists, and even the mayor of city, who have changed the image of the French woman (rather than adhering to the stereotype), and who continue to shape the city today.Lindsey also just finished The Eater Guide to Paris, focusing on the bistros, wine bars, pastry shops, cafés, and cocktail bars in the city, which will be released in the spring of 2025. In addition to writing books and articles, Lindsey is the host of her own podcast, The New Paris podcast, and writes the newsletter, The New Paris Dispatch.We had a great time talking about our lives in Paris, including what's changed in the city since we arrived, if Paris really is a good place to live, what are some of the difficulties of living here (#paperwork), what are some of the cultural differences one must navigate, our thoughts on the French healthcare system, and why we've both ultimately chose to call Paris our home.I hope you enjoy our chat! -DavidLindsey Tramuta* Lindsey's website: Lindseytramuta.com* Instagram* The New Paris Podcast * Lindsey's Books * Paris Tours (customized Paris tours)* Subscribe and read The New Paris Dispatch newsletterSubscribe to get my newsletter sent right to your Inbox. Free subscribers get some posts, recipes, and stories, and paid subscribers get additional bonus content, full access to the recipe archives, and the ability to participate in the community of commenters. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlebovitz.substack.com/subscribe

Notre-Dame Cathedral is reopening to the public after a devastating fire nearly destroyed it in 2019. Much more than a place of worship or a popular tourist destination, Notre-Dame reflects the heart and soul of the capital and in many ways its history mirrors that of the capital. In this show, Florence Villeminot brings you some fun facts about what Parisians lovingly call “la vieille dame” or “the old lady”.

A fragile truce between Israel and Hezbollah is holding, but both sides are on alert. In the US, Donald Trump's incoming cabinet have received bomb threats. Also: will Parisians embrace Les Misérables in French?

Parisians go about the daily grind just like any other urban denizens. In Paris specifically, the expression metro-boulot-dodo – metro, work, sleep – is used to evoke the somewhat mind-numbing nature of that day-to-day. Author Andrew Martin's Metropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Metro delves into the reality of Paris' métropolitan, from its beginnings as an echo of London's Underground to a social and aesthetic touchstone of the City of Light. Join us on Patreon: patreon.com/parisundergroundradio Find Us OnlineWebsite: https://www.parisundergroundradio.com/navigatingthefrenchFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/parisundergroundradioInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/parisundergroundradio/Credits Host: Emily Monaco. @Emily_in_France; Website: http://www.tomatokumato.com and http://www.emilymmonaco.comProducer: Jennifer Geraghty. @jennyphoria; Website: http://jennyphoria.comMusic Credits Édith Piaf - La Vie en Rose (DeliFB Lofi Remix) 

An Ousmane Dembélé-less PSG suffered defeat to Arsenal on Tuesday, so does this prove the Parisians are better off with Dembélé in their side? Marco Rose described Juventus as one of the favourites to win the Champions League, but is that fair or is Rose getting overexcited? Plus, Robert Lewandowski keeps scoring, Pep Lijnders struggles with Salzburg, and should Andrea Pirlo call time on his managerial career?Join Dotun, Andy and Nicky Bandini for the answers.Ask us a question on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, and email us here: otc@footballramble.com.For ad-free shows, head over to our Patreon and subscribe: patreon.com/footballramble.***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!*** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Josef Najm, director of programmatic and partnerships at Thomson Reuters, and Mibbie Plouvier, head of global programmatic strategy at SAS, join The Current Podcast to describe how their partnership has evolved and how trust plays an important part in that evolution.  Episode TranscriptPlease note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio. [00:00:00] Ilyse: I'm Ilyse Liffreing, and welcome to this edition of The Current Podcast. This week, we're excited to be joined by two guests. Joseph Najim, Director of Programmatic and Partnerships at Reuters, And Mivi Plouvier, Head of Programmatic at software company SAS. [00:00:17] Ilyse: Together we'll explore the publisher and advertiser dynamic at a time when some advertisers remain cautious about appearing alongside certain types of news. The business model for news is under pressure and publishers are looking for better ways to monetize their journalism with effective ads. We'll dive into why things may be changing for the better. [00:00:36] Recent research indicates that it's safer for brands to advertise next to quality journalism, regardless of the news topic. Reuters, in 1851 and owned by Thomson Reuters, is one of the world's largest publishers, with journalists in over 200 locations writing in 16 different languages. SAS sits at the intersection of data [00:01:00] and AI. [00:01:01] Delivering analytical insights to brands. We kick off things with Joseph and Miby describing how they first met and how their partnership has evolved since then. [00:01:11] Ilyse: It's so great to have you here today. First off, how did you first meet and how would you describe how your partnership has evolved?  [00:01:20] Joseph: Great. Thank you so much for having us. It's a pleasure to be here. maybe and I met about five years ago when I joined Reuters coming from the buy side, I was just leaving a stint at Diageo and, coming in as the programmatic sales specialist at the time, maybe was working in Paris and she was, I believe, the global programmatic lead and everyone was just like, “Hey, programmatic guy, this is a programmatic person.” [00:01:41] I think you should connect with them. And at the time, we were doing some business with SAS, or maybe a little bit. And hearing that she was from Paris. and also knowing that I had worked at L'Oreal. I wanted to connect with her from like a French connection perspective and also knowing that she was American. [00:01:55] So I shot her an email reaching out and asking her some questions like how things were going.  [00:02:00] Mibbie: It was a fun connection. because I was new to Paris. And Joseph reached out and was telling me all these fun, French antidotes of how Parisians and French people are more like coconuts, and Americans are more like peaches. And it was a great analogy to start the intro, but we've had a great relationship [00:02:17] Joseph has been resilient and calling on our business and the more in trust we built up, the greater the partnership has become and we've been able to do some really great things together.  [00:02:27] Ilyse: guess it is like a pretty small world programmatic,  [00:02:33] Ilyse: so it's no secret that the publishing industry is under quite a lot of pressure along with the eventual death of cookies. One issue publishers continue to come across are brands avoiding advertising on news for concerns around brand safety. [00:02:49] Now, these concerns have been challenged as of a May study from Stagwell that found that even ads next to hot button topics performed as effectively as those appearing next to [00:03:00] news, like sports and entertainment. Can you give us some context around what you're seeing on this topic?  [00:03:07] Joseph: Yes, this is a very important topic, and being at Reuters now for five years, I've had the opportunity to see a lot of different brand briefs and questions that come in around [00:03:17] how can we partner together? And in 2020, this kind of all came to a head when COVID and the pandemic took place. So what we found was, a lot of advertisers turn to the solutions that they have around. Advertising, ad tech platform, blocking tools like keyword lists, pre bid filters, monitoring tags, blocking tags, blocking words like COVID, China, Wuhan. [00:03:38] And then it just precipitated after that. and almost The spiral effect because the news cycle and [00:03:42] the realities of that was happening continued. So, just in the year of 2020, so much happened. whether it was George Floyd's murder, the beginning of the Black Lives Matter. movement. the, the election, as well. A lot of people forget the election took place there, too. And now, four years later, history is continuing in this really [00:04:00] real time. Just to kind of put it into a global perspective, two thirds of the world's democratic populations are going to the polls. this year, not just the U S and a lot of people just think it's the U S, but really important countries like Taiwan, for example. and we're covering that. and we're also covering two global world conflicts. Israel and Gaza, as well as Russia and Ukraine. [00:04:18] when we're doing all this, it costs a lot of money and it's important to find brand partners that are willing, to support trusted journalism and at the same time understand that when they're partnering with news publishers, that audience that they're reaching is a really important audience, It's an attentive audience, an audience that's willing to engage. [00:04:37] I always like to think back, like, when the pandemic happened, where did we all turn? We turned to the news. And I'm really appreciative of a lot of these studies that are coming out with Stagwell, for example, but even going back to 2020, released this Trust HALO report, 84 percent of consumers had a positive or neutral impact when they saw an ad adjacent to a trusted source. And I fast forward to now and folks are talking about Gen z audience and trying to reach [00:05:00] that audience. Gen Z cares about the facts. They care about trust. So, finding partnership with SAS and being able to present this audience and showing that you can have ad adjacency next to the hard news and reach that audience has been leading to successful business outcomes for both of us. [00:05:14] And It's really been great partnering with Mibbie on those activations. [00:05:18] Mibbie: and then from our perspective, I'd say I think it's easy to find comfort in blocking certain words. but. What we like to do is partner with trusted news sources and award winning news sources because we know that no matter what news they're reporting upon, our brand is going to be safe around it. And we know that we're [00:05:35] going to be okay, no matter what the news is. And I think with the current news cycle and how constant it is, you could almost just go down a rabbit hole of blocking everything. So from our perspective, it was let's partner with key publishers, that we can trust and then we don't have to worry as much about trying to continue to block things or worry about. Being somewhere we don't want to be.  [00:05:55] Ilyse: and on that point though, even like the bad news, [00:05:59] I don't think it, [00:06:00] it doesn't hurt your brand as research has shown. and brands are still very fearful about that. Was that your original, like, hesitancy in advertising or? It Okay.  [00:06:12] Mibbie: it's, we take the security and knowing how, brands how we're going to be around the right kind of content and Reuters reports on the news in a very fair way. So for us, even if it's bad news, we're okay with being there. [00:06:26] it took a while to get there internally, but that was several years ago and I think it was around COVID when everybody was a little fearful of the news, but we're very confident with the partners we have. and for us, it was also how can we make these things happen programmatically. Because [00:06:43] we can buy things a lot easier. and more smoothly if it's through our platforms. So that was, Reuters was very good about helping us out in that sense too. Yeah,  [00:06:51] Joseph: I think, it goes back to the consultative approach. [00:06:53] when I first presented to SAS and to maybe, in team. It was always with the thinking of, okay, [00:07:00] culture. Just like Reuters. We have a history. They have a history of innovation too. And at the end of the day, as maybe said, the fairness of how we go to report that unbiased nature, it really creates, and fosters an environment for  [00:07:12] Trust with the audience, trust with the content. So when they have a trusted message, that they're really trying to deliver to that audience. we just knew that it was going to be a perfect synergy between the two. so I really never had. concerns, but I will say, and this is the importance of kind of stepping in and having that partnership with that publisher partner, that news publisher partner. [00:07:30] If the situation gets a little bit out of control, from a hard news perspective, it's important for the news publisher to step in and say, hey, maybe we don't run this campaign right now, but we will come back and we'll make sure that the creative message is appropriate to what's taking place, but also at the same time, hey, we're going to, we're going to protect your brand. [00:07:47] And I think in some cases, we're you know, it happened, for example, with Applebee's, running against the CNN, ad when, I think it was Russia and ukraine, combat was starting to happen. [00:07:57] And, what came from it was some rhetoric [00:08:00] around, you know, we don't want to be around that content. and why, could that have been shut off? And I don't know the full schema behind it, but I really do think it wasn't the intention for CNN to run an Applebee's ads there. [00:08:11] But that ad and went to supporting journalism and supporting that, that moment in time that if people a lot of people were looking at,  [00:08:16] And my hope is, like, a brand like Apple Lee's, we'll find a way to come back to running on news again and not say, Hey, we're gonna shut it down and continue not running there.  [00:08:25] Ilyse: saying, hey, we're to shut it down and continue. Yeah, I do think  [00:08:47] Joseph: Yeah, so I do think there's a little bit of foundation of a fear strategy here, and I think that strategy unfortunately comes from, the fear of the screenshot, [00:08:57] for example, and what that might lead to. [00:09:00] and, when it comes to exclusion lists, I think one of the funniest things I recently heard was a certain agency had an exclusion list Or their exclusion list, which kind of speaks to a problem in itself, where if you're applying words like people's beliefs, religions, communities, whole countries, et cetera, you really run into a situation where Is that appropriate? [00:09:21] For your media campaigns, and your paid campaigns? to me, understanding that brand, and like doing my research when I go to pitch, it's recognizing what is in your keywords doesn't really reflect what your brand is trying to promote from a communication style as well. but I think maybe he has some specifics if you want to share from your side. [00:09:38] we've been chatting about this a little bit, but they're pretty good. They're relevant to the French culture as well. [00:09:43] Mibbie: well. Yeah, I think it's, lose a lot of context when you block keywords. And at some point, when Notre Dame. you know, was on fire and burning. A lot of people were blocking Paris. [00:09:54] They were blocking fire. and now if you don't go back and revisit those lists and you continue to just have. [00:09:59] these long [00:10:00] lists of blocks, you're missing out on Olympics coverage. With the Olympic torch, with the flame, with even the Paris coverage. So there's a lot that if it's not completely maintained, I think it's a hard kind of road to continue to go down because you, there's a never ending way to go if you keep blocking and blocking. [00:10:17] So I think that's where you should go more, the curvation route. And that's the route we've gone is to. Curate our sites, curate who we're working with, and so then it's not as fearful, and you don't get that email to your CEO, which had happened, and it comes down to you, if you're at the screenshot, and then you have to say, that's a good point. [00:10:33] Why are we here? Why are we running there? [00:10:34] so it, sometimes it says hard lessons that make you rethink how you're blocking things. and the approach you're going to have [00:10:41] Joseph: want to bring up AI here because, in a sense, I feel like potentially it could help eventually with, something like keywords. Maybe with marketers, maybe it's a chance to like, actually use it to run through keywords really fast and see if it's, actually gonna [00:11:00] actually with terms that aren't like several years outdated or something like that. [00:11:05] Ilyse: what do you think?  [00:11:07] Mibbie: I think it's only going to help our business and help speed the process to your point of going through those massive lists and staying active with what's constantly changing like the news. So I only think it's going to benefit us, but I think AI in general across the programmatic landscape is going to be a benefit instead of more of a hindrance that some people might think it might be. [00:11:29] Joseph: Yeah, a AI is unique because there's generative AI and then there's AI. And I think in the programmatic space, we've been playing with AI a lot. like Machine learning, algorithms, the ability to, target the person, right place, right time, right message, [00:11:41] that's all AI. And I think the tools that publishers are now getting, that maybe they weren't always accustomed to having, or the ease of being able to, check things, or recategorize things or work with their product leads to say, Hey, what is happening here in the bid stream? That's going to come out more to make a cleaner path, [00:12:00] and make sure that the buy side is really saying, Okay, let's triage it, maybe. [00:12:03] Let's say, okay, if this is Reuters, and a trusted brand, and good to go. But okay, next word that pops up, Okay, maybe it's related to this, but because Reuters, still okay. I don't think those solutions exist. [00:12:14] They're A little bit more potential blankets, but with AI you have to understand the risks too. And I think in a gen AI world, working at a news publisher, it's also really important to understand like I sit on the commercial side. [00:12:25] So my uses of AI and generative AI are going to, be different than the editorial team. [00:12:30] And it's important to make sure this is anyone that's on the new side like what is your AI and gen AI policies because you don't want there to be conflict with your editorial team and commercial team. But you do want to promote. innovation at the same time.  [00:12:43] Ilyse: now I want to talk a little bit about the campaign that you actually ran, and that you pushed through all that hesitancy for, and then maybe if you could share some of the results you saw from that.  [00:12:56] Mibbie: so we've been doing a lot of great testing with Reuters, [00:13:00] so the baseball campaign was a great example because we owned all their coverage of the World Series, which was great for us as a brand to know that. We're there all the way through the end, and it was a good series. But then we've also been doing some testing with Reuters with linked in. So they've been contextually making videos for us around a I specifically in our ads are surrounding that, and we've seen, massive increase in our click through rate, exceeding benchmarks, great view through completion. So it's partnering, in very smart ways And being able to test together that I think we've seen. a lot of great success. and we're also running on their YouTube. channel. So another great way to keep our ads in a brand safe environment on Reuters YouTube instead of all over the place how YouTube can be. So that was a new strategy that we tested together as well. [00:13:45] And we also had audio with Alexa and Google Home. So, when you ask Google Home what the news is for the day. our ad would run before that. And that was a great, Great way of just getting our brand out there and getting some more awareness of who we are. And The great point of that too is [00:14:00] we were able to buy that programmatically. So a lot of these things that necessarily some publishers wouldn't let us buy programmatically. we were able to run with Reuters programmatically, so that made things a lot more smoother. [00:14:10] Joseph: Because of Miby's ad tech stack, we have the ability to front the costs via the impression delivery and the cost per day for an activation. And then, as a publisher, behind The scenes, you just have to work. through your finance team to how you're going to fund those projects and support the teams. But The LinkedIn Wire program. It's a really great success story of how you can combine really great content from a news publisher, and this is all editorial content. So nothing was created bespoke It was just around the same coverage that our editorial teams would be doing for AI. The message that maybe was trying to deliver and SAS team was trying to deliver plus the LinkedIn data that was tied to it as well And All of those things, and I think this also comes into Challenging your partner is It came to a pretty high CPM and costs, but It's the old adage, of kind of, what you get what you pay for And I think the return and what they [00:15:00] saw in the engagement And how it compared was really great. And What I also like about being at a publisher for five years but also having this ad tech background is the way I approach a partner like sass is, hey, we're omni channel. Like you think omni channel and, infinite places, but you could work with one partner in an omni channel approach, and this is very much that and some. So, it's been really great partnering with Vivian sass to really test these different things and be innovative. It's fun.  [00:15:24] Ilyse: finally, to both of you, are you optimistic that news publishers are on the right track to fund, oh, Are you optimistic that news publishers are on the right track to fund journalism at this moment? [00:15:42] Joseph: There's a lot That's being done in the right way in the smart way. But it's also [00:15:47] important to, take stock of all the different revenue streams. So, subscriptions is very big. Diversification for news publishers. is very big gamification, right? All these different platforms. whether it be integrating [00:16:00] new, Sports solutions. or Content that's, again, related to lifestyle. But not every news publisher is built And runs their business in the same way. So it's important to recognize even the local hub news publisher who's covering the beat of something that's taking place. They're at risk to their risk of funding. And there's like this slippery slope where when it hits them, those impacts might not be felt when I'm living in New York City or in [00:16:26] other places. But those local communities, So, I think the onus is on this industry of how we can get back out there. And There are definitely ad tech companies are trying to do that and funnel those dollars there. And You see even the promotion of like new technologies with that. Trade Desk and Adfuntus Media, which hopefully will drive those revenues to those smaller news publishers. [00:16:48] But, you know, at the same time, we're challenged. Whether it's ads, coming from brands, but then even certain algorithm changes that are impacting business lines that had seven figure revenue streams. You're seeing it across [00:17:00] the board. So, I think the stress is real. I think The stress is real for a lot of people. But it's important that, you know, we keep innovating and finding brand partners like SAS to come to the table to speak about how we can is good and you can find opportunity in hitting that audience and driving ROI and driving performance. [00:17:17] That will only help. and hopefully it trickles down to the small guys too.  [00:17:23] Ilyse: Joseph, what would you tell marketers who say it's not a brand issue? what would you tell marketers who say it's not a brand safety issue, but more that their audience just isn't there? [00:17:40] That's a lot of, young readers, Gen Z ears are finding their news on TikTok and only TikTok. what would you say to them? I know it like can lion, for instance, a few months ago, McDonald's CMO. for instance, said that,  [00:17:56] get our audience there and we'll bring [00:18:00] back the money. We'll put the money there.  [00:18:03] Joseph: No, it's a great question, and I don't think they're wrong. I do think, however, the communication is not there, and, the insight that the Gen Z audience, whether it be Gen Z adults or younger Gen Z, are getting their information. from TikTok is very accurate. we've done that same report, at the Reuters Institute, which partners with Oxford, released that same study last year, and the new results are going to come out soon, to see how those channels are resonating with younger audiences. [00:18:27] But, I asked a simple question, right? Like when the pandemic happened, where did people go? They went to news sites. They went to understand and get facts and information to inform the decisions that they were making, whether it be a mom who's worried about her children and going to school or the professional and the markets and how it's being affected. [00:18:45] Now, Gen Z, just because they go to TikTok first doesn't mean they stop there. I'm sure they have their trusted sources. And I think the challenge is Hey, brands. [00:18:53] You're only giving me 20 minutes to pitch, and it's very transactional right now when it comes to display ads [00:19:00] and video ads, audio ads, whatever it might be. Where's the opportunity to be consultative? Give us that platform. Let us have that. discourse. because Right now, the discourse that comes up is, we're just like, a no news. I don't think that's the case. If you ask any brand like, no, we support news. So how do we get them from saying, yes, we support news, but to, yes, we support news [00:19:19] and the end is that should be filled in by us. How are we going to do something that's a little bit more innovative more creative to get them back into supporting that platform, But we all have the data to show those audiences are there, do we have the platform, however, to share that insight with them? That's something that needs to be rebuilt a little bit. And I think it's coming. there, though. And I think the events that happened in Cannes and the different studies that came out and rolled out are only going to help. And I really do appreciate that, that feedback. But, sitting as a challenger in that room, it's important to challenge. [00:19:51] Joseph: It's very easy to say no, someone, no to someone who's like a friend. And getting that kind of feedback and going back and forth, that's good. That's where the discourse started. [00:19:59] Ilyse: [00:20:00] Now, when it comes to advertising on news, what is the approach when it comes to a B2B company like SAS versus B2C or even D2C? How is it different?  [00:20:12] Mibbie: I think we just have to look at what we're trying to advertise and get our, awareness out there about, and we're selling a very high end software and for us, that relationship of. premiumness with publishers. and having that there. We're not chasing cheap clicks because we have a very long sales cycle. So when it comes to B2C, that somebody's going to see those shoes and go buy them, it's very different than making a long term decision to purchase the software. [00:20:38] So for us, we want to have that consistency with the brands and longevity more so than being kind of all over the place searching those cheap clicks or cheap impressions. [00:20:47] so We pay a little more just to to get that consistency, consistency to get that frequency, but also, we have to think about sales cycles. And So ours is very long, nine months to a year. So long enough to have a baby. so we really have to have that consistency [00:21:00] right of being in the same place and having that consistent message. [00:21:04] Ilyse: And that's it for this edition of The Current Podcast. [00:21:06] Damian: We'll be back next week, so stay tuned. [00:21:09] Ilyse: The Current Podcast's theme is by Love Caliber. The current team includes Kat Vesce and Sydney Cairns. [00:21:16] Damian: And remember, I'm Damian. [00:21:18] Ilyse: I'm Ilyse. [00:21:19] Damian: And we'll see you next time. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave us a review. Also, tune in to our other podcast, The Current Report.

Full Text of ReadingsSaturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 436The Saint of the day is Blessed Frdric OzanamBlessed Frédéric Ozanam’s Story A man convinced of the inestimable worth of each human being, Frédéric served the poor of Paris well, and drew others into serving the poor of the world. Through the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, which he founded, his work continues to the present day. Frédéric was the fifth of Jean and Marie Ozanam's 14 children, one of only three to reach adulthood. As a teenager he began having doubts about his religion. Reading and prayer did not seem to help, but long walking discussions with Father Noirot of the Lyons College clarified matters a great deal. Frédéric wanted to study literature, although his father, a doctor, wanted him to become a lawyer. Frédéric yielded to his father's wishes and in 1831, arrived in Paris to study law at the University of the Sorbonne. When certain professors there mocked Catholic teachings in their lectures, Frédéric defended the Church. A discussion club which Frédéric organized sparked the turning point in his life. In this club, Catholics, atheists, and agnostics debated the issues of the day. Once, after Frédéric spoke about Christianity's role in civilization, a club member said: “Let us be frank, Mr. Ozanam; let us also be very particular. What do you do besides talk to prove the faith you claim is in you?” Frédéric was stung by the question. He soon decided that his words needed a grounding in action. He and a friend began visiting Paris tenements and offering assistance as best they could. Soon a group dedicated to helping individuals in need under the patronage of Saint Vincent de Paul formed around Frédéric. Feeling that the Catholic faith needed an excellent speaker to explain its teachings, Frédéric convinced the Archbishop of Paris to appoint Dominican Father Jean-Baptiste Lacordaire, the greatest preacher then in France, to preach a Lenten series in Notre Dame Cathedral. It was well-attended and became an annual tradition in Paris. After Frédéric earned his law degree at the Sorbonne, he taught law at the University of Lyons. He also earned a doctorate in literature. Soon after marrying Amelie Soulacroix on June 23, 1841, he returned to the Sorbonne to teach literature. A well-respected lecturer, Frédéric worked to bring out the best in each student. Meanwhile, the Saint Vincent de Paul Society was growing throughout Europe. Paris alone counted 25 conferences. In 1846, Frédéric, Amelie, and their daughter Marie went to Italy; there he hoped to restore his poor health. They returned the next year. The revolution of 1848 left many Parisians in need of the services of the Saint Vincent de Paul conferences. The unemployed numbered 275,000. The government asked Frédéric and his coworkers to supervise the government aid to the poor. Vincentians throughout Europe came to the aid of Paris. Frédéric then started a newspaper, The New Era, dedicated to securing justice for the poor and the working classes. Fellow Catholics were often unhappy with what Frédéric wrote. Referring to the poor man as “the nation's priest,” Frédéric said that the hunger and sweat of the poor formed a sacrifice that could redeem the people's humanity. In 1852, poor health again forced Frédéric to return to Italy with his wife and daughter. He died on September 8, 1853. In his sermon at Frédéric's funeral, Fr. Lacordaire described his friend as “one of those privileged creatures who came direct from the hand of God in whom God joins tenderness to genius in order to enkindle the world.” Frédéric was beatified in 1997. Since Frédéric wrote an excellent book entitled Franciscan Poets of the Thirteenth Century, and since his sense of the dignity of each poor person was so close to the thinking of Saint Francis, it seemed appropriate to include him among Franciscan “greats.” His liturgical feast is celebrated on September 9. Reflection Frédéric Ozanam always respected the poor while offering whatever service he could. Each man, woman, and child was too precious to live in poverty. Serving the poor taught Frédéric something about God that he could not have learned elsewhere. Learn more about the legacy of Frédéric Ozanam!  Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Get the worksheets & complete show notes for this episode at https://cariocaconnection.comIn this episode of Carioca Connection, Alexia and Foster dive into the excitement of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Recording outside, Alexia and Foster bring the Olympic spirit to life while sharing their thoughts on the upcoming games.Key points discussed:Comparison between the Rio 2016 and Paris 2024 OlympicsBrazilian athletes to watch and favorite Olympic sportsUnique reactions of Parisians to hosting the gamesCultural insights into how Brazilians and French approach major eventsTips for Portuguese learners to enhance their vocabulary through Olympic coverageJoin Alexia and Foster as they blend sports enthusiasm with language learning, offering a fun and insightful look into Brazilian Portuguese through the lens of the Olympic Games. Whether you're a sports fan or just looking to improve your Portuguese, this episode promises engaging content and valuable linguistic insights. As always, this fun & engaging conversation is full of real-life Brazilian Portuguese vocabulary & idiomatic expressions that you won't find in textbooks or apps. Click play to listen & learn!E agora em português...Neste episódio do Carioca Connection, Alexia e Foster mergulham na empolgação das Olimpíadas de Paris 2024. Gravando ao ar livre, nossos apresentadores trazem o espírito olímpico à vida enquanto compartilham seus pensamentos sobre os próximos jogos.Principais pontos discutidos:Comparação entre as Olimpíadas do Rio 2016 e Paris 2024Atletas brasileiros para ficar de olho e esportes olímpicos favoritosReações únicas dos parisienses em sediar os jogosInsights culturais sobre como brasileiros e franceses abordam grandes eventosDicas para estudantes de português aprimorarem seu vocabulário através da cobertura olímpicaJunte-se a Alexia e Foster enquanto eles misturam entusiasmo esportivo com aprendizado de idiomas, oferecendo uma visão divertida e perspicaz do português brasileiro através das lentes dos Jogos Olímpicos. Seja você um fã de esportes ou apenas alguém querendo melhorar seu português, este episódio promete conteúdo divertido e muitos insights linguísticos. Ready to massively improve your Brazilian Portuguese in 2024?

Hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games can be a great catalyst for urban transformation. This week we report from the French capital as it plays host to the world to find out more about its green initiatives, housing policies and sustainable architecture. Plus: what sort of city will be left for Parisians once the Games leave town?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kate Adie presents stories from Venezuela, Israel, Zimbabwe, Turkey and France.Thousands of Venezuelans are protesting against the results of the presidential election last weekend in which the incumbent Nicolas Maduro claimed victory. The US said there is overwhelming evidence the opposition leader, Edmundo Gonzalez won the election. Since the election, several hundred people have been detained. Ione Wells has been in Caracas.Hopes for a ceasefire deal between Israel and the militant group Hamas were dealt a serious blow this week with the assassination in Iran of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas. He was targeted only hours after Israel killed a senior commander of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement. Barbara Plett Usher spoke to the people most desperate for a Gaza truce.Zimbabwe's government has launched public hearings into a period of ethnic killings in the 1980s when former president Robert Mugabe moved to dismantle the strongholds of his arch-rival. The killings laid the foundation for lingering ethnic tensions. Shingai Nyoka spoke to some of the survivors and victim's families.Turkish society is fiercely divided over stray dogs and a new law aims to remove an estimated four million from the streets. A controversial provision of that law that requires euthanasia for dogs deemed ill or dangerous has further galvanized Turkish citizens, says Victoria Craig.In Paris, residents had serious reservations in the lead up to the Olympics: ranging from the E. coli risk posed to triathletes in the Seine, to the impending deluge of tourists taking over the capital. But has the event itself succeeded in winning over Parisians, asks Andrew Harding.Series Producer: Serena Tarling Editor: Tom Bigwood Production Coordinator: Katie Morrison

The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 4: 6:05pm- According to Reuters, more than 160,000 people joined a “white women for Kamala Harris” Zoom call on Monday. Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger notes, “I thought this was a joke at first but it's not: Kamala Harris' campaign is segregating its volunteers by race. These are the people who spent decades smearing their opponents as racists. Why do people tolerate this degrading treatment?” The Harris campaign bizarrely doubled-down on Tuesday—hosting a “White Dudes for Kamala” event. You can read the initial Reuters report here: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/more-than-160000-people-join-white-women-kamala-harris-zoom-call-2024-07-26/. And you can find Shellenberger's reaction here: https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1817568474832752928 6:20pm- Please Pick Me! While speaking on behalf of Kamala Harris' presidential campaign, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro exclaimed: “I've got a message to Donald Trump—stop sh** talking America.” In recent days, Shapiro has seemingly swung wildly to the left in attempting to appeal to Harris as a Vice Presidential pick. If he isn't ultimately selected, will his perception as a “moderate” be irreversibly damaged? Interestingly, of the Vice Presidential contenders, Mark Kelly enjoys the highest net favorability rating—is it a coincidence that he's also the only contender not regularly appearing on television and at rally's saying outlandish things to appease Harris' campaign? 6:30pm- Behind Closed Doors, Democrats Anxious About Harris: Alexander Bolton of The Hill writes: “Behind the public jubilation over Vice President Harris's swift rise to become their party's likely nominee for president, Democratic lawmakers are privately anxious about her prospects of defeating former President Trump, acknowledging she is largely untested as a candidate and faces serious challenges. The anxiety, for the most part, has been set aside out of a deep sense of relief that President Biden decided to drop his reelection bid. After months of unease over the 81-year-old incumbent, Democratic lawmakers are glad to rally behind Harris in hopes she will rev up Democratic donors along with young and minority voters. But concerns are already bubbling up over Harris's ability to connect as well as Biden did in 2020 with white working-class and union voters in three states that were critical to defeating Trump: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” You can read the full article here: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4795432-kamala-harris-democratic-anxiety/ 6:45pm- Olympics: Is the River Seine safe to swim in? Joshua Robinson of The Wall Street Journal writes: “Are they really going to make Olympians—real live human beings—swim in the rancid, bacteria-infested waters of the River Seine?...Only in recent weeks have organizers confirmed that their ambitious, $1.5 billion plan to reduce the levels of harmful bacteria in the water is actually working. On a warm morning last week, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo underlined the point by delivering on her promise to go for a dip—and ignoring a social media campaign that urged grumpy Parisians to defecate in the water upstream.” You can read the full article here: https://www.wsj.com/sports/olympics/river-seine-paris-games-swimming-04397f56?mod=hp_lead_pos11

The Rich Zeoli Show- Full Episode (07/30/2024): 3:05pm- Newsom Pledges to Outlaw Parody: Earlier in the week, billionaire Elon Musk reposted a satirical campaign advertisement for presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris—where she calls herself a diversity hire as well as a “deep state puppet.” In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom outrageously responded to Musk: "Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad' like this one should be illegal. I'll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.” Musk quickly shot back: "I checked with renowned world authority, Professor Suggon Deeznutz, and he said parody is legal in America.” Will Newsom ban artificial intelligence generated parody in California? 3:30pm- On Tuesday, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe testified before the United States Senate—as part of the Senate's investigation into the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13th. During his opening statement, Rowe said he “cannot defend” the rally's security failures. He explained: “What I saw made me ashamed.” In one notable exchange, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MI) grilled Rowe and expressed confusion as to how no one—despite the agency's failures—was fired. Hawley exclaimed: "The former President was shot! Just fire somebody!...We have people who are dead!" 4:05pm- Behind Closed Doors, Democrats Anxious About Harris: Alexander Bolton of The Hill writes: “Behind the public jubilation over Vice President Harris's swift rise to become their party's likely nominee for president, Democratic lawmakers are privately anxious about her prospects of defeating former President Trump, acknowledging she is largely untested as a candidate and faces serious challenges. The anxiety, for the most part, has been set aside out of a deep sense of relief that President Biden decided to drop his reelection bid. After months of unease over the 81-year-old incumbent, Democratic lawmakers are glad to rally behind Harris in hopes she will rev up Democratic donors along with young and minority voters. But concerns are already bubbling up over Harris's ability to connect as well as Biden did in 2020 with white working-class and union voters in three states that were critical to defeating Trump: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” You can read the full article here: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4795432-kamala-harris-democratic-anxiety/ 4:15pm- While speaking with Margaret Hoover of PBS, Democratic political strategist James Carville warned that Kamala Harris is likely “going to get slaughtered” when she is inevitably asked for policy specifics. 4:30pm- Rich tells Matt and Andrew that he will not be appearing on YouTube today because he recently had surgery for a deviated septum and can't stop blowing his nose! Gross! 4:40pm- On Tuesday, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe testified before the United States Senate—as part of the Senate's investigation into the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13th. During one exchange, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) stated: “I believe that the Secret Service leadership made a political decision to deny these requests. And I think the Biden administration has been suffused with partisan politics.” Meanwhile, in a post on X, Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) reacted to what he experienced in the hearing: “We are 17 days out from the assassination attempt on Trump. I don't want conversations and processes—I want answers and accountability. Hiding behind a vague, slow-moving investigation is not going to cut it. We need full reform to the Secret Service and FBI now.” 4:50pm- David Propper of The New York Post writes: “Former President Donald Trump was briefly delayed by Secret Service agents from taking the stage at a conference in Nashville Saturday because of another security lapse, The Post has learned. The holdup was caused by two individuals who made their way around metal detectors inside the Music City Center where the 2024 bitcoin conference was held shortly after 3:30 p.m., according to law enforcement sources.” You can read the full article here: https://nypost.com/2024/07/29/us-news/secret-service-delayed-trump-from-taking-stage-at-nashville-conference-after-security-lapse-sources/ 5:05pm- Hank Berrien of The Daily Wire writes: “Anti-Israel demonstrators brandishing Palestinian flags and a sign that read ‘Genocide Olympics' reportedly chanted ‘Heil Hitler' and did the Nazi salute while the Israeli national anthem was played before the Israeli men's soccer team played Paraguay at the Paris Olympics on Saturday night.” You can read the full article here: https://www.dailywire.com/news/anti-israel-demonstrators-chant-heil-hitler-do-nazi-salute-taunting-israeli-olympic-team 5:10pm- Kamala Pledged to Keep Transgender Criminals Out of Prison: Spencer Lindquist of The Daily Wire writes: “During her 2020 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged that she would work to keep transgender criminals out of jail, archived campaign materials reviewed by The Daily Wire reveal. Harris' now-inactive campaign website claims that ‘the LGBTQ+ community is exposed to higher rates of violence and assault in prison, and it is even more so with transgender individuals.' Harris, it says, would work as president to ‘reduce incarceration of LGBTQ+ individuals. Kamala understands the best way to address the issue is to seek alternatives to incarceration to prevent trans individuals from being incarcerated in the first place,' the site reads. ‘Kamala would also push to significantly reform our sentencing laws to further reduce sentences.'” You can read the full article here: https://www.dailywire.com/news/kamala-harris-once-pledged-to-keep-transgender-people-out-of-prison-as-president?topStoryPosition=1 5:15pm- Please Pick Me! While speaking on behalf of Kamala Harris' presidential campaign, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro exclaimed: “I've got a message to Donald Trump—stop sh** talking America.” In recent days, Shapiro has seemingly swung wildly to the left in attempting to appeal to Harris as a Vice Presidential pick. If he isn't ultimately selected, will his perception as a “moderate” be irreversibly damaged? Interestingly, of the Vice Presidential contenders, Mark Kelly enjoys the highest net favorability rating—is it a coincidence that he's also the only contender not regularly appearing on television or at rally's saying outlandish things to appease Harris' campaign? 5:40pm- Senator Roger Marshall—United States Senator from Kansas & a Member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss today's Senate hearing with Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate regarding the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump in Butler, PA on July 13th. Sen. Marshall explains, “I'm pretty frustrated” with the answers they provided provided—“we need to bring in a crisis intervention team” and “clean house.” Plus, Sen. Marshall reacts to the U.S. national debt surpassing $35 trillion—with interest payments on that debt quickly approaching $1 trillion annually. 6:05pm- According to Reuters, more than 160,000 people joined a “white women for Kamala Harris” Zoom call on Monday. Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger notes, “I thought this was a joke at first but it's not: Kamala Harris' campaign is segregating its volunteers by race. These are the people who spent decades smearing their opponents as racists. Why do people tolerate this degrading treatment?” The Harris campaign bizarrely doubled-down on Tuesday—hosting a “White Dudes for Kamala” event. You can read the initial Reuters report here: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/more-than-160000-people-join-white-women-kamala-harris-zoom-call-2024-07-26/. And you can find Shellenberger's reaction here: https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1817568474832752928 6:20pm- Please Pick Me! While speaking on behalf of Kamala Harris' presidential campaign, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro exclaimed: “I've got a message to Donald Trump—stop sh** talking America.” In recent days, Shapiro has seemingly swung wildly to the left in attempting to appeal to Harris as a Vice Presidential pick. If he isn't ultimately selected, will his perception as a “moderate” be irreversibly damaged? Interestingly, of the Vice Presidential contenders, Mark Kelly enjoys the highest net favorability rating—is it a coincidence that he's also the only contender not regularly appearing on television and at rally's saying outlandish things to appease Harris' campaign? 6:30pm- Behind Closed Doors, Democrats Anxious About Harris: Alexander Bolton of The Hill writes: “Behind the public jubilation over Vice President Harris's swift rise to become their party's likely nominee for president, Democratic lawmakers are privately anxious about her prospects of defeating former President Trump, acknowledging she is largely untested as a candidate and faces serious challenges. The anxiety, for the most part, has been set aside out of a deep sense of relief that President Biden decided to drop his reelection bid. After months of unease over the 81-year-old incumbent, Democratic lawmakers are glad to rally behind Harris in hopes she will rev up Democratic donors along with young and minority voters. But concerns are already bubbling up over Harris's ability to connect as well as Biden did in 2020 with white working-class and union voters in three states that were critical to defeating Trump: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” You can read the full article here: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4795432-kamala-harris-democratic-anxiety/ 6:45pm- Olympics: Is the River Seine safe to swim in? Joshua Robinson of The Wall Street Journal writes: “Are they really going to make Olympians—real live human beings—swim in the rancid, bacteria-infested waters of the River Seine?...Only in recent weeks have organizers confirmed that their ambitious, $1.5 billion plan to reduce the levels of harmful bacteria in the water is actually working. On a warm morning last week, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo underlined the point by delivering on her promise to go for a dip—and ignoring a social media campaign that urged grumpy Parisians to defecate in the water upstream.” You can read the full article here: https://www.wsj.com/sports/olympics/river-seine-paris-games-swimming-04397f56?mod=hp_lead_pos11

THIS WEEK: What is Olympic sex like? Why Simone Biles is the GOAT! Andrew's hack to get Parisians to like you, Learning how to be okay being by yourself, Cody's love of a naked dance party, The guys' thoughts on green circle content, Hygiene tips for people in OR out of relationships, Cody's full list of mandatory skin care items, AND a Woodstock 99 version of ON THIS DAY!

Here's a chat with Ariel Weil, the mayor of Paris Centre (arrondissements 1-4). He talks about the challenges of hosting the Olympics, especially security hassles that have come with the openening Ceremony on the Seine River. The Opening Ceremony, perhaps the most ambitious part of the whole games, has turned Ariel's districts into what he compares to a warzone.  Meanwhile, Ariel and some of his fellow mayors in Paris just took a historic dip in the Seine river, which is now clean enough to host the Triatholon swimming! It was all part of giving the river back to the Parisians, he explains.  He also chats about the future of Paris after these "once in a lifetime" Olympics. ******* The Earful Tower exists thanks to support from its Patreon members. From $10 a month you can unlock almost endless extras including bonus podcast episodes, live video replays, special event invites, and our annually updated PDF guide to Paris.  Membership takes only a minute to set up. Thank you for keeping this channel independent.  For more from the Earful Tower, here are some handy links: Website  Weekly newsletter 

Kurt and Scotty talk about Parisians threatening to poop in the Seine to protest sewage in river, missing hiker found alive after spending 10 days in Santa Cruz mountains, how a fish became prison currency, and how an Only Fans model saved a customer's life! Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/4a61tMk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China's Chang'e 6 return capsule landed in Mongolia, carrying samples from the far side of the moon. Also, Paris has invested $1.5B in cleaning up the Seine for open-water swimming events, but recent tests indicate it's not yet safe.A Sample From The Far Side Of The Moon Lands On EarthThis week, the return capsule from China's Chang'e 6 lunar mission returned to Earth, touching down in a remote part of Inner Mongolia. Inside were dust and rock samples collected from the far side of the moon. Researchers hope that the samples could shed light on both the moon's formation, and conditions in the ancient solar system.Rachel Feltman, host of the podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” joins guest host Anna Rothschild to talk about the mission and other stories form the week in science, including a CDC warning about dengue fever, a trans-oceanic butterfly flight, and the possibility of seeing a stellar nova in the coming weeks.Will The Seine Be Clean Enough For Olympic Swimmers?The Paris Summer Olympics are fast approaching. Opening ceremonies for the games kick off on July 26. And all eyes are on the notoriously polluted River Seine. Due to aging infrastructure, sewage has sometimes flowed directly into it. For the past 100 years swimming in the river was banned. Now, the French government has spent roughly $1.5 billion to upgrade sewage treatment in Paris in order for athletes to be able to swim in the Seine.Earlier this week, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo was set to take a dip in the river to prove its cleanliness. In protest some Parisians threatened to poop in the Seine to show their dislike of the disruptions and high price tag of the Games.The dip was postponed until after upcoming elections, but recent water quality tests indicate that the river is not yet safe to swim in.Guest host Anna Rothschild talks about the current state of the river with Dr. Dan Angelescu, founder and CEO of Fluidion, a water testing company based in Paris, France.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Welcome back to The Snack – a lighter serving of Girls Gotta Eat. This week, we're talking about:Parisians pooping in the SeineMen raw-dogging flightsRayna recaps Taylor Swift's third London show Taylor hard-launching Travis on IGThe Beyonce IG avocado (IYKYK)Kaitlyn Bristowe speaks on her breakupWTF is a Chamoy Pickle Hawk Tuah girl Follow us on Instagram @girlsgottaeatpodcast, Ashley @ashhess, and Rayna @rayna.greenberg. Visit girlsgottaeat.com for tour dates, merchandise, and more.Thank you to Hungryroot: Get 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life at .See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Stop doxxing cops...sometimes! Taylor Swift takes on UK! Princess of Wales update! The Parisians have the grossest protests! Pay the Cowboys cheerleaders! Bill Belichik's girlfriend has an old soul! JJ Reddick probably said the N word! AND a dark and full of spoilers House of the Dragon recap! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/therealityispod/message

In this episode we discuss why Parisians are shitting in the river, how all of our balls are filled with microplastics, we figure out who the friend of the court is, and Tyler's night out to see Rhett and Link's slumber party tour. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices