Podcasts about Poland

Fiona Hill is one of the most authoritative voices on the forces reshaping global politics today. Born in County Durham, from 2017 to 2019 she was a senior adviser on European and Russian Affairs at the White House and in October 2019 she was a key witness in President Trump's first impeachment inquiry. In 2024 and 2025 she co-led the British Government's Strategic Defence Review, which sets out how the UK should scale up its response to risks from an emboldened Russia and a less predictable United States.  Hill cautions that we are not in a second Cold War, but in a more volatile era of asymmetric threats. She warns that Trump's engagement with autocratic leaders such as Putin and Xi is strengthening authoritarian regimes and eroding long‑standing alliances, and highlights sabotage and disinformation – the kind of threats seen in recent incidents such as the Russian spy‑ship Yantar encroaching on UK waters and the rail explosion in Poland.  Hill came to the Intelligence Squared stage in February 2026 where, in conversation with journalist Jon Sopel, she set out the practical steps she believes the West must take to bolster its resilience and safeguard security and stability. --- If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events  ...  Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosts Ania and Roy talk about International Womens Day (March 8), comparing Polish and Irish traditions, gift ideas like flowers and jewelry, and what the day means in modern life. Hear personal stories, thoughts on gender roles and equality, and warm wishes for women learning Polish. Find episodes and show notes at learnpolishpodcast.com.   "Dzień Kobiet" means "Women's Day," and in this micro-lesson you'll say it like you're handing flowers to every woman you know. First you hear the phrase at native speed, then slowed down so you can master the soft "Dzień" and the flowing "Kobiet." We drop it into three celebration-ready sentences: – "Wszystkiego najlepszego w Dzień Kobiet!" (All the best on Women's Day!) – "Kupiłem kwiaty na Dzień Kobiet." (I bought flowers for Women's Day.) – "To ważne święto w Polsce." (It's an important holiday in Poland.) Repeat-along track included—perfect while you pick tulips or write a card. Challenge: record yourself saying "Dzień Kobiet" and tag us @learnpolishpodcast—we'll repost the sweetest ones! Key Words: English → Polish Table Copy English Polish Women's Day Dzień Kobiet flowers kwiaty tulips tulipany best wishes wszystkiego najlepszego March 8th ósmy marca gift prezent chocolate czekolada celebrate świętować important ważny / ważna holiday święto mother matka wife żona girlfriend dziewczyna colleague koleżanka respect szacunek love miłość  

Fiona Hill is one of the most authoritative voices on the forces reshaping global politics today. Born in County Durham, from 2017 to 2019 she was a senior adviser on European and Russian Affairs at the White House and in October 2019 she was a key witness in President Trump's first impeachment inquiry. In 2024 and 2025 she co-led the British Government's Strategic Defence Review, which sets out how the UK should scale up its response to risks from an emboldened Russia and a less predictable United States.  Hill cautions that we are not in a second Cold War, but in a more volatile era of asymmetric threats. She warns that Trump's engagement with autocratic leaders such as Putin and Xi is strengthening authoritarian regimes and eroding long‑standing alliances, and highlights sabotage and disinformation – the kind of threats seen in recent incidents such as the Russian spy‑ship Yantar encroaching on UK waters and the rail explosion in Poland.  Hill came to the Intelligence Squared stage in February 2026 where, in conversation with journalist Jon Sopel, she set out the practical steps she believes the West must take to bolster its resilience and safeguard security and stability. --- This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events  ...  Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

'Winter Light — A Daughter of Holocaust Survivors' tells Her Story.  On this episode of The Avrum Rosensweig Show, we are honored to welcome Grace Feuerverger — Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto, award-winning author, and a scholar whose work explores identity, culture, language, and peace education. Grace's powerful memoir, 'Winter Light: Memoir of a Child of Holocaust' Survivors, tells the story of growing up in Montréal as the daughter of parents who survived Nazi persecution in Poland. In this deeply moving conversation, Grace reflects on the legacy of trauma passed down through generations, the search for inner refuge, and the surprising moments of grace that shaped her life. Praised for its lyrical writing and profound humanity, Winter Light explores how a child of survivors navigates the shadows of history while moving toward healing, meaning, and hope. In this episode, we discuss the legacy of the Holocaust, the resilience of survivor families, Grace's journey through many cultures and languages, and the enduring power of education and human connection. Join us for a thoughtful and inspiring conversation about memory, identity, and the courage to keep walking toward the light. #GraceFeuerverger #WinterLight #HolocaustLegacy #ChildOfSurvivors #HolocaustMemory #JewishHistory #HolocaustEducation #AvrumRosensweigShow #HolocaustStories #JewishPodcast #HolocaustSurvivors #Resilience #HumanSpirit #JewishAuthors #HistoryAndMemory ——

Winter Light — A Daughter of Holocaust Survivors Tells Her Story On this episode of The Avrum Rosensweig Show, we are honored to welcome Grace Feuerverger — Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto, award-winning author, and a scholar whose work explores identity, culture, language, and peace education. Grace's powerful memoir, Winter Light: Memoir of a Child of Holocaust Survivors, tells the story of growing up in Montréal as the daughter of parents who survived Nazi persecution in Poland. In this deeply moving conversation, Grace reflects on the legacy of trauma passed down through generations, the search for inner refuge, and the surprising moments of grace that shaped her life. Praised for its lyrical writing and profound humanity, Winter Light explores how a child of survivors navigates the shadows of history while moving toward healing, meaning, and hope. In this episode, we discuss the legacy of the Holocaust, the resilience of survivor families, Grace's journey through many cultures and languages, and the enduring power of education and human connection. Join us for a thoughtful and inspiring conversation about memory, identity, and the courage to keep walking toward the light. #GraceFeuerverger #WinterLight #HolocaustLegacy #ChildOfSurvivors #HolocaustMemory #JewishHistory #HolocaustEducation #AvrumRosensweigShow #HolocaustStories #JewishPodcast #HolocaustSurvivors #Resilience #HumanSpirit #JewishAuthors #HistoryAndMemory ——

Although not as well known as some of his contemporaries, Rav Efraim Fishel of Strikov (1745-1825) served in a crucial role during the formative stages of the chassidic movement. Like his father before him he was a student of the Maggid of Mezritch. He later was a pioneer in establishing one of the first formal chassidic courts in Congress or central Poland. As a charismatic holy figure, as well as a rabbinical scholar serving as a communal rabbi, he gained followers, some of whom went on to emerge as some of the greatest leaders of 19th century Polish chassidus. Among his many descendants was Rav Shmuel Abba, who established the Zichlin chassidic dynasty which flourished until its decimation in the Holocaust.  Subscribe to Jewish History Soundbites Podcast on: PodBean: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/ or your favorite podcast platform Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram at @Jsoundbites For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history or feedback contact Yehuda at: yehuda@yehudageberer.com

Welcome to another riveting episode of Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu, where navigating the complexities of our ever-changing world is front and center. In this episode, Tom Bilyeu and co-host DREW dive headfirst into the turbulence of our current global landscape—covering everything from intensifying conflicts in Iran and shifting U.S. military strategies, to the surprising moves of countries like Poland pursuing nuclear weapons, and the intricate economic warfare playing out beneath the headlines. Together, they unravel the “narrative warfare” shaping public perception and challenge the official stories behind major decisions. You'll hear candid analysis of the recent U.S. and Israeli military operations, the economic underpinnings driving geopolitical clashes, the hidden power of sovereign wealth funds, and how insurance, oil, and investment dollars are quietly influencing the course of world events. Beyond the headlines, Tom Bilyeu lays out his perspective on why economics—not just ideology or politics—is at the core of these dramatic moves, and why the survival and prosperity of entire regions might depend on who controls capital flows in the age of AI. It's an unflinching look at the real motivations behind international power plays and the very human narratives built along the way. Whether you're here for insights on global economics, political chess, or just want to better understand how world leaders spin the truth, this episode promises a thought-provoking, transparent conversation you won't want to miss. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business: join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER:  https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business: see if you qualify here.:  https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox: sign up here.: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast, Tom Bilyeu's Mindset Playbook —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription orderShopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impactSumm: code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20Blocktrust IRA: get up to $2,500 funding bonus to kickstart your account at https://tomcryptoira.comQuo: Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impactQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpod Duck.Ai: Protect your privacy at https://duck.ai/impact Monetary Metals: Future-proof your wealth at https://monetarymetals.com/impact Plaud: Get 10% off with code TOM10 at https://plaud.ai/tom Iran war, Khamenei succession, US military strategy, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, South Korea stock market, oil prices, narrative warfare, Trump Genius Act, crypto industry, US-Ecuador military operation, insurance companies, Strait of Hormuz, Middle East conflict, air superiority, B-2 bombers, B-52 bombers, economic drivers of war, City of London, UK-US relations, AI investments, sovereign wealth funds, US-Navy escorts, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Israel-Iran tensions, Netanyahu, political narratives, private equity, Amazon Web Services, Epstein files. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's very rare for me to demand that the readers of my #AmReading substack pre-order something. And the bar to be my “Just One Book” is high. But here we go: The book is The Fountain—debut speculative fiction from Casey Scieszka—and you'll want to read it, but even more, you'll want to hear us talk about what it took to pull this big, beautiful novel from her Tuck-Everlasting-loving soul. And here's the question her agent asked her that is now stuck on a post-it on my computer and may be my next tattoo: How can you reveal these things in action?Casey is reading:Open Throat by Henry Hoke (“It's funny and deeply tender and unlike anything I've ever read.”Follow Casey on Instagram and Substack: Spruceton Inn.Transcript Below!EPISODE TRANSCRIPTKJ Dell'AntoniaThis is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, and today we're talking with Casey Scieszka. And I meant to ask Casey how to pronounce her last name before we started. How'd I do?Casey ScieszkaI think you did great. Especially over in Poland, we say “SHESH-kah” over here, but I've been corrected many times. I think it's supposed to be more like what you said. So… bravo!KJ Dell'AntoniaOkay… SHESH-skah… SHESH-kah… all right, off we go. Y'all, you're going to want to know how to spell it, because you're going to want to order Casey's debut novel, The Fountain, and it is spelled S-C-I-E-S-Z-K-A. But to carry on with my introduction, Casey is a ridiculously well-traveled innkeeper in upstate New York, and we are just going to let that fantasy sit there for a minute without talking about the amount of snow she's going to be shoveling tomorrow, because we're recording this in January and are talking about the fact that I can see her and she is wearing a full-on puffer. So… romance, Hallmark, innkeeper, debut novel—all the things—and also a puffer and snow shovels and pipes and, yeah. You will hear this episode just as Casey's first book, The Fountain,, comes out, and that is what we're here to talk about, because I happened to have gotten an advanced copy of it, and I happen to actually have read it—which does not always happen—and even more relevantly, loved it. Therefore, here we are. And Casey, welcome to Hashtag AmWriting.Casey ScieszkaThank you so much. I am so thrilled. I'm like really just beyond that you enjoyed it so much.KJ Dell'AntoniaAh, I'm so—I'm, I really did. I will be encouraging everyone to pick it up. It's mind-boggling that it's not… and it is your debut. So I'm going to go ahead and—is it, is it really? Like, I mean, I know it's your debut, but like, is it the first book you've written? Oh no, you've, you've got a kind of a memoirs situation out, right?Casey ScieszkaI wrote like a young adult travelogue with my now husband that he illustrated about when we lived like in China and West Africa and wound up literally out in Timbuktu. So I had some experience that way, but that was nonfiction and for a totally different audience. All that said, this novel is my first published one, but you better believe I have a bin in the drawer.KJ Dell'AntoniaThat's what I meant.Casey ScieszkaDrawer. (laughing)KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah. Yeah. So, The Fountain, is—just as briefly as possible—it's the story of an immortal woman who really would like to die, for excellent reasons, because immortality is a weight that is really, really heavy, and you convey that beautifully and wonderfully in this book. And so I want to just start right off—I maybe should let you describe the book—and then I'll just warn you that my next question is going to be, “Man, how did you have the guts to swing for the fences like this?”Casey ScieszkaWell, I think it probably began when I read Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting as a fifth grader in English class, which is about a family that—or a little girl who comes across a magical spring that an immortal family is guarding, and then she has to decide, ultimately, throughout the book, what she's going to do with this information and this knowledge while other people are hunting it down as well. And those questions just haunted and delighted me for decades, and I kept returning to them, and at some point I was working on a novel, had a whole manuscript going, was deeply frustrated, and I started a little something on the side where I was like, this will just be a short story. We'll see where this goes. This is nothing, and I think, because… I don't know, maybe you've experienced this before too, where if you're not looking it directly in the eye, sometimes it can just take off, and it all of a sudden had a life of its own. Essentially, this grown-up version of Tuck Everlasting, where it's about a woman who has come back to her small hometown in the Catskill Mountains, where she was born in the 1800s, 214 years later, to figure out what did this to her so she can reverse it and finally be released.KJ Dell'AntoniaWow, you really have the… the short pitch. What's your book about? Down! Congratulations! That's a tough one. Yeah, you, you nailed it. That is what it is about. And I will say that it took—one of the things that I loved about it, and that I like in a book—is that not only was I not sure at some points what the protagonist wanted for herself, I was not sure what I wanted for her. All I knew was that I wanted “something” for her. And that makes for a really interesting reading experience. Because normally, you know, you find yourself sitting there going, well, just, you know, just tell the person, or just, you know, kiss them or accept your reality, or you'd normally—you know what you want—like, take the ring, Frodo, or whatever. Or don't take the ring, Frodo. And now there's no book. But, and in this one, we didn't. How hard was—was that for you to write—sort of, I don't know… did you know what you wanted the protagonist—or what you wanted the reader to want for her? Or…?Casey ScieszkaYes and no.KJ Dell'AntoniaHow did you feel about that?Casey ScieszkaRight. Yes and no, and yes and no. I think when you're writing, ultimately, later on in draft, you have to be very clear about what your character wants. But in the early process, I had no idea. The whole thing, like I said, began as a short story, and that's really just the first chapter or two, and then I was essentially hunting with her. When I was writing that first draft, I was like, what are we looking for? What has happened in the past 200 years in your life that would make you feel one way or another? And then every time I had a different little angel or devil on my shoulder, whatever you will, who was the—well, what about this point of view? What if? Wouldn't this type of—wouldn't someone say, well, living forever would be amazing, because you could share that type of science with other people, and you could, you know, have these wonderful medical advances or, you know, things like that? I could then have other characters essentially embody those, those other points of view as well. Although, I'm really glad that you say that in your reading experience, you still weren't quite sure what she wanted, because I definitely didn't want, you know—I mean, no, no author wants characters to just be symbols for points of view.KJ Dell'AntoniaOh yeah, no, absolutely not. And I should say that I know that she wants to reverse this. That's never in question. But this sort of—there—you're always aware of the question of what does she really want? Because that's kind of only part of it to want…Casey ScieszkaRight.KJ Dell'AntoniaAn end to this pain, but, but why and what other alternatives there are. And then, of course, I just—I did not know how you were going to end it. I could not imagine how you were going to land that plane. It must have been a tough one. Did you always know where you were going? We will not in any way spoil this.Casey ScieszkaRight. No spoilers.KJ Dell'AntoniaNo, no spoilers.Casey ScieszkaI'd say that about halfway through my first draft, I just saw the ending. I was like, “Oh, this is…”KJ Dell'AntoniaThat's amazing.Casey ScieszkaThis is like that very last moment. I was like, this is where I need to get. And those handful of chapters before the penultimate one, whoa, boy, those were the ones that are like I wrote, like seven different books, you know?KJ Dell'AntoniaOh yeah.Casey ScieszkaCompletely different versions to actually get there.KJ Dell'AntoniaSo what was your… what's your hope for the reader experience of this book? Besides, you know vast entertainment and pressing it into the hands of their friends.Casey ScieszkaRight. Naturally.KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah…Casey ScieszkaBeyond that…KJ Dell'AntoniaWe love that.Casey ScieszkaUm, I mean, I love books that essentially look at what it means to be human and what makes a life worth living. And those are the type of questions that I hope someone would then linger on in their own life after putting down the book. Even in between chapters, you know? That you would be able to reflect on the choices that each character is making and think, like, oh, I would do this. I wouldn't do that. Or, you know, to kind of just bring that back into your own life that way. Because… I don't know. Time is perspective, like ever—what is—what does it mean to live forever? What is a long life? Is it? You know, when you're when you're little, a summer lasts an eternity. I guess what I'm saying is like our perspective of time is always bendy, and that was an interesting challenge in trying to write a 214 year old woman, where it was very tempting to just turn her into a superhero, where I'd be like, “Oh, well, she'd know 10 language.”KJ Dell'AntoniaShe'd know things, yeah.Casey ScieszkaAnd she'd be like, amazing at all these things. And I had to be like, Casey, you have a lot of time on your hands as well. Like, you're, you know, you're 40 years old. And do you know 10 languages? Do you know five languages? Like, what are, like what are we talking about here?KJ Dell'AntoniaOn that ratio you should at least know two. (laughing) Uh, maybe three. If we're going to say 200 is 10… you know you got, yeah, you should have at least two.Casey ScieszkaExactly. So just kind of examining, like, why would I—why would I have expectation, different expectations for someone simply because they've lived longer, and, you know, those types of things?KJ Dell'AntoniaSo you mentioned that you had a bunch of books in a drawer. So what's bigger about this project than maybe the thing that you put aside to focus on it? Is it bigger?Casey ScieszkaI don't know if it's bigger. I think I just had, I had better tools in my toolbox at this point. Like I might return to that other one, but I didn't have the full heart of the question I was getting at there. I think I had more of a premise, or something like that. Whereas this one, when I was writing, I felt like the problem was I had own—like in the writing was like I had too much meat, I had so many questions, I had so much I was wrestling with. And then it also really helped that, I mean, it's, its set in a small town in the Catskills, and, spoiler alert, that's the type of place that I now live.KJ Dell'AntoniaRight.Casey ScieszkaAnd knew. People always tell you like, write what you know. I am, I am not, secretly, 214 years old. I know you can't see me on camera, guys.Multiple Speakers(both laughing)Casey ScieszkaMy skin's not that great for a… you know? But, but I do know what small-town life is in the Catskills. I do—there are some characters who are opening up a business. I know what it's like to open a business. Like, it was really fun for me. I felt like I had this endless well of inspiration to keep pulling from that way. And that was something I couldn't have written 10 years before. You know?KJ Dell'AntoniaYou also handled the depth of the questions that you're dealing with remarkably tightly. Did you have to clear away a lot of like… asking for a friend…(laughing). Did you have to clear away a lot of mulling over these questions by people or? I guess what I'm getting at is these are really deep and big questions, like you said, but I don't feel—you did not Atlas Shrugged these. You know, there's not like a 20-page dissertation by John Galt in the middle of it. How hard was it to keep that from happening? Or did it come a little more easily for you?Casey ScieszkaI think, nothing, nothing, none of it comes easily. We know this.KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah.Casey ScieszkaI mean, sometimes you reach the flow state, you know? And it is funny to even think back on these things, because I have a, like, a willful blindness, almost in the same way that, like, I have given birth to two children, and, like, I can't believe I did it a second time, you know? But it's by, you know, it's by design, some—perhaps similar with writing. Once you know how the sausage is made, sometimes it can be hard to do again. But anyway, all of this is to go back and actually answer your question. I was very wary of doing the… this is how I feel about something info dump. And one of the things that my agent as an editor has been helpful with from early drafts was, how can you reveal these things in action? So anytime I was tempted to just start explaining things, I was like, Casey, is this happening in action? Like, is this a character actually finding something out? Like from another character in a natural way. So that…KJ Dell'AntoniaThat's a great question.Casey ScieszkaRight. That really, that really helped me. And then also sometimes with the writing I did, just let myself write a whole bunch, you know, because sometimes, especially if you know it's the beginning of your writing day, maybe it's, it's that equivalent of the throat clearing—you're just or the dog who's doing circles before they sit down, like you're, you're getting around to the thing that you actually want to say. And then when you re read it, you're like, “Oh, well, those first four paragraphs can go, and here's where I actually start to say…”KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah, here's what i meant to say.Casey ScieszkaYeah. Yeah.KJ Dell'AntoniaTake this. Put it up at the front— delayed all this. Yeah. No. I get it. So how long did this take you?Casey ScieszkaWell, I started the short story in 2021 and then it comes out now. I will say we had, like; everything was in the can, if you will, at least, like a year and a half ago, just kind of waiting for this springtime pub date. But, yeah, it's a journey. That's a—I feel, you know, like another thing you don't want to hear when you're like, 25 and are like, I'm going to write a book, and you hear an interview with someone who's like, it took me 10 years, and I was like, my god. And I'm like, well, girl.KJ Dell'AntoniaI can do it faster than that.Casey ScieszkaThis one is five years. But…KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah, yeah, no, it takes, it takes a long time, and it's hard, and it takes a lot of painful thinking, and yeah, all of those things are true. So now, now that you can look back at this project with hopefully a little bit of distance, and you're about to be talking about it a lot, I suspect. What do you love most about it?Casey ScieszkaOoh. I love most that these characters feel so real to me still that I sometimes catch myself wondering, like, what they're doing. You know?KJ Dell'AntoniaThat's amazing.Casey ScieszkaLike I lived with them, and I just, I'm so excited that I actually, like made—was able to make that for, you know, not just myself, though, that I surely entertained myself in the process. But it is such a humbling dream that this story is now existing in other people's brains, that these are characters who have felt real to other people as well.KJ Dell'AntoniaWhat, as you look back, what would you say was the hardest part of the process?Casey ScieszkaAside from all of the waiting?!KJ Dell'AntoniaAll of it! Aside from all of it.Casey ScieszkaWhich felt like…KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah I was going to say aside from…Casey ScieszkaIt felt eternal.KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah. Yeah.Multiple Speakers(both laughing)Casey ScieszkaI think the very hardest part is early on, when you don't know—well, the earliest, earliest is delightful, because you're in just your little creative cocoon, and you're having these wonderful ideas, and you don't have to solve any of the plot problems yet, or things like that. You know, you're just like being your own little creative genius for yourself. But then it's I feel like that, that first real revision phase when you don't know fully if this is actually going to become a book where you're—and time, you know, to talk about time again, is precious, like I, you know, I run this other hotel. It's open half the year. But when I began it, it was open seven days a week, all year long; I had two children under the age of four at the time. Like, time was precious. I was writing during nap time, like things were being sacrificed in order for me to do this. And it is. It just feels audacious and possibly insane to be doing it when you're in it, and when you're on the other side, you're like, oh, but the road was always pointing here, and you just, you just don't know that when you're in it.KJ Dell'AntoniaNo.Casey ScieszkaYeah.KJ Dell'AntoniaYou could easily have, really think, you know, you could easily still be sitting on this going, well, I'm going to finish this…Casey ScieszkaExactly. And, you know…KJ Dell'AntoniaWhen the kids are… you know… or whatever.Casey ScieszkaYeah, exactly I have these other, you know, unfinished or manuscripts that haven't seen the light of day. But, at this point, I tell myself, and I 99.9999% believe it that those were necessary to write in order to write this.KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah, I sure hope so.Multiple Speakers(both laughing)Casey ScieszkaThere's just that other point 0.0001 that's like—KJ Dell'AntoniaWhat?!Casey ScieszkaYeah, it's like, no, no, it really was necessary.KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah, no, you have to. You have to do it. Well, I hate to be, you know, not trying to raise the bar here, but, but what is next after, you know, a topic like this and a big book like, like this? Do you know yet? Are you, are you thinking about it? Where are you in your process?Casey ScieszkaI have been working on something else which is fun. And I definitely have, like, you know, while as much as I know how, how wild it is with how the sausage is made and what I'm, you know, the many revisions and things I'm looking down the barrel at, I also have another level of excitement, because I know, like, wow, I have an agent this time who's actually excited to read it, and I have a working relationship with an editor. Like, I'm trying to appreciate that…KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah, because it's what you wanted before.Casey ScieszkaAnd it can be so easy to just, you know, slip back into the like; you know, I don't know, the chaos feelings. But, I will say, I'm not going to say much about the project, other than historically, for everything I've ever been drawn to, and including stuff I love to read. I always love when character, when there's a character who knows like way too much or way too little, like in their situation.KJ Dell'AntoniaThat's a very like tempting pitch without having anything you'd like to put your fingers in.Casey ScieszkaWithout…KJ Dell'AntoniaThat's good. That's good, that's clever.Casey ScieszkaI told you nothing.KJ Dell'AntoniaYou told me nothing, and yet I'm like, ooh yeah, that does sound… that does sound interesting. Well, I as I've as I've said I wholeheartedly enjoyed this. It was twisty. You had me thinking things that were not what was so at many, many points of the book.Casey ScieszkaI love to hear this. Love to hear.KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah and when we are off, off recording, I'll tell you some of them, because that is always kind of fun. I really feel like this book is such an achievement. For someone who's just getting started, it's great. I can't wait to see what you do next. And I guess, on that note, what's something you have read recently where you also felt like the writer was, was really big, really playing big. Is there anything that you would like to press on into people's hands the way I want to press The Fountain, into their hands?Casey ScieszkaI've loved this. Thank you again. One book I keep pressing into many people's hands is Open Throat by Henry Hoke.KJ Dell'AntoniaOkay.Casey ScieszkaIt's very slim. You can read it in like a day, although I recommend taking a little bit longer, because you'll want to enjoy it. It is told from the point of view of a mountain lion who lives under the Hollywood sign.KJ Dell'AntoniaOh, I—I think I've heard the description, even if I don't remember the—okay.Casey ScieszkaIt's so funny and so deeply tender, like and just unlike anything I've read recently, and I just really felt like, like he was swinging for the fences with this, like it's from the point of view of an animal, which should be ridiculous, but after…KJ Dell'AntoniaAnd not just an animal, but an animal that lives under the Hollywood sign.Casey ScieszkaYeah, like that's a mountain lion who's—it open up or he's overhearing like you know hikers discussing therapist, you know? It's just, it's so silly, but it's also so deep and kind of truly experimental, but still so accessible and I just feel like it's the type of thing that I don't know. Maybe when he sat down to write it, he was like, this, someone's going to tell me, I'm nuts, but I just connected with it so much.KJ Dell'AntoniaI…yeah. Alright I love that then, and that is a great response to the question, because that really is somebody else swinging for the fences, and that's what we're just trying to talk about here for everyone. So where? Well, listeners can find you, obviously they can, they can buy The Fountain,, and they should. You're inn is called?Casey ScieszkaThe Spruceton Inn, a Catskills Bed & Bar. We're a little nine-room hotel.KJ Dell'Antonia(laughing) Bed and bar. That's awesome.Casey ScieszkaYeah. I mean, I don't, I don't really mess with breakfast. I mean, you get very nice coffee and some pop tarts. I love a good highbrow, lowbrow, and we are five miles down a seven mile dead end road in the middle of the mountains.KJ Dell'AntoniaOkay, I love this for everyone. And is there any particular social media where you are fun and joyful?Casey ScieszkaYeah, you can find us on Instagram at sprucetoninn. That's also like some writing stuff and same with Substack. Only other thing I'll say about the inn is we also run an artist residency program, an annual one. So every August we open it up to folks, writers, 2D artists. Basically, if you can make it in a motel room without disturbing your neighbors, come on and make it with us, and you get, you get, like, a week-long stay. No cost, in the month of November.KJ Dell'AntoniaThat is so fun and so cool. And I bet you're going to get a lot more applications than you can handle this time around. Alright, well, thank you so much for spending this time with me.Casey ScieszkaThank you so much for chatting.KJ Dell'AntoniaAnd amazing best of luck with the book, which I loved. All right, kids, I'm signing this off with our new sign off. Until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.NarratorThe Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled, Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

In these uncertain times of historic geopolitical tensions, it is all the more important to understand the nature and elements of the relationship of two of the world's most influential powers: China and Russia.Three researchers that investigate the relationship of these two countries join Johannes Heller-John in this episode: Minna Ålander, Analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI), Filip Rudnik Senior Specialist at the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) in Poland and Eva Seiwert, Senior Analyst at MERICS.All three of them contribute to the China-Russia Dashboard, which aims to foster a better understanding by tracking and analyzing the economic, political, security, and societal dimensions of China-Russia relations and their changing quality over time. The Dashboard is a collaboration of MERICS, OSW and UI, which also includes the Swedish National China Centre.

5 Hours and 22 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Here are the first 5 episodes of the World War 2 series with Thomas777 in one audio file.Episode 1: The Rise of the National Socialists in the Weimar Republic/Germany w/ Thomas777Episode 2: The Invasion of Poland and the U.S. Enters the War w/ Thomas777Episode 3: FDR and The New Dealers Push For War w/ Thomas777Episode 4: The Origins and Rise of Winston Churchill Pt. 1 w/ Thomas777Episode 5: The Origin and Rise of Winston Churchill Pt. 2 - The 1930s w/ Thomas777Thomas' SubstackThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

In this recap episode, guest co-host Clare Solly joins Lesley Logan to unpack one of the most uncomfortable topics for women: money. They revisit Tess Waresmith's powerful reminder that money is just a tool, and good people should not be afraid to build wealth if they want to create real impact. From talking openly with friends about finances to knowing exactly where your money is going, this conversation makes financial independence feel less intimidating and far more actionable. If you've been avoiding your numbers, this is your nudge to start. If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co mailto:beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/#follow-subscribe-free.In this episode you will learn about:The importance of good people actively seeking wealth for causes.Overcoming the fear of discussing money openly with your friends. Tracking where your money goes to gain true financial independence. Separating short-term cash savings from long-term market investments. Finding trusted financial help and utilizing free educational resources. Episode References/Links:Poland Contrology Pilates Conference - xxll.co/poland Vintage Friends & Contrology Brussels - xxll.co/brussels Pilates On Tour® London - https://xxll.co/pot OPC Spring Training - https://opc.me/events Wealth With Tess – https://wealthwithtess.com/savvyWealth with Tess Substack - https://wealthwithtess.substack.com/Ep 352: Tess Waresmith - https://beitpod.com/tesswaresmithClare Solly Website - https://www.claresolly.com/Ep 19: Clare Solly - https://beitpod.com/ep19Rocket Money - https://www.rocketmoney.comAcorns - https://www.acorns.comSubmit your wins or questions - https://beitpod.com/questions If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gLesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQProfitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gFacebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilatesLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Clare Solly 0:00  We should be in control of our money because nobody else cares. Lesley Logan 0:04  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. Lesley Logan 0:43  All right. Welcome back to the Be It Till You See It interview recap where my co-host, Clare Solly, is joining us today to dig into the money-savvy convo I have with Tess Waresmith in our last episode. If you haven't yet listened to that one, you missed out. You missed the fuck out. I'm just gonna say it right now. She's amazing. We had her back. We're having Clare back. Clare, just in case people don't remember you being part of the recaps, like, a year and a half ago, and from your amazing episode. Who are you? What do you rock at?Clare Solly 1:10  I am Clare Solly, I feel like I rock at being me right now.Lesley Logan 1:14  That's the best answer no one ever gives that.Clare Solly 1:16  You know, I feel it's funny. I feel like I'm like, I have nothing super exciting, like, like, publicly going on, but I've got a lot of, like, internal stuff happening. I rock, just being a general cheerleader for anybody I come across and feeling free to talk about money widely. So I'm actually, like, this podcast, or this, this episode really got me excited. So I'm excited to be here and talk about it. And I'm, bonus, I'm here in Vegas with you recording in like, I'm across the desk from you.Lesley Logan 1:43  I know it's really fun. That's why she's got Brad's lovely, masculine background. That's true. So, you guys, Clare is here, you're visiting, and we have these recaps to do, because I was in Sacramento on Tuesday, and I was like, hey, I have to do a little bit of work. Do you want to work with me? And that is the, like, just the testament to her, and also, like, my amazing skills, (inaudible) to work alongside me, but.Clare Solly 2:07  It was a total arm twist. I'm like, not gonna lie. I was like, walking in through the door. Like, can I see the studio? Lesley Logan 2:13  Well, but also, like, but the divine timing of these two episodes that we're recording together, this one and next week. Because, like, there are topics I think that you'd actually really be interested in, not that Brad wouldn't be interested in the money one, he absolutely wants, he loves Tess, but also the skincare one. Clare Solly 2:27  I mean, two more perfect episodes for me. There were not so. Lesley Logan 2:31  Yeah, I agree. Well, today, you guys, is March 5th, 2026, and it's Name Tag Day. So on the first Thursday in March, which is on March 5th this year, duh. You guessed it, wearing name tags. On this day people become more human and pay more attention to the people who pass by them or who they pass by every day, with over 7 billion people in the world, it can be easy to feel alone and small. Name Tag Day allows everyone to be in the spotlight a little. On Name Tag Day, you're not a nameless Joe passing by in the neighborhood. Instead, when you pass by, everyone knows your name and connects with you, which is the whole aim of Name Tag Day. So Clare, are you gonna wear a name tag today? Clare Solly 3:07  I love this. I actually, absolutely will. I feel like I'm horrible at names. I feel like that's my like, negative superpower. I try really hard to remember people's names. And I mean, in our society, you like, tell people your name once when you introduce yourself to them, and then you don't know it again. I've called people by the wrong name so many times. But the tricky thing is, like, where do you wear your name tag? Lesley Logan 3:27  Oh, I love where do you wear it? Clare Solly 3:29  I like to wear mine, like, down on my hip. I mean, I'm like, a giant so my hip is, like, everyone's eyeline, but I feel like it messes up, like, unless you have, like, a really cute one, like the Hello, my name is, sticker, like, messes up. Like, your your top hat, it gets in your hair.Lesley Logan 3:43  So many top, oh, my hair is all over. It just peels it right off. And then also, like, depending on the material of your top, ladies, I mean, so I kind of wish that like this, maybe I should have a name tag that's magnet, and I can just put it any like, you know what I mean, so it's one I can use every year. But I am someone who is like, oh, I'm gonna put it down my hip. But then when you, if you're sitting for the meeting, you know, like that's a problem. So I ended up putting it on my bag as if that's helpful. And it's not because it's now that I think about it. So I probably am the reason why this name tag digs is because I'm really good at remembering faces of people. I can remember like when we worked together on retail. I can remember what people bought, I can remember when we saw them last. I remember who they bought the gift for, and I cannot remember their name, like, it takes a few times. And so I I'm very aware of this. And people like, it's a choice. And I'm like, I don't think you understand that like, the fact that I can remember everything you said to me, like, I'll say people, I'm like, oh, I remember you, but I don't remember your name. And they're like, oh, it's this one. Like, we met two years ago at this thing. I'm like, oh, that's right, it was in DC, you had so and so with you, and they look at me like I'm a crazy person, because I can remember the details of the event, but not your name. So maybe this is my day. Clare Solly 4:47  Maybe it's your day. Lesley Logan 4:48  Yeah, so it's not too late, if you're listening to this in the evening, go put your name tag on before you go to the bar. Why not, you know? Clare Solly 4:52  Why not. Lesley Logan 4:53  All right, so you guys, we are days away from going to Poland, so we'll be in Poland for a few days. I guess it's like the 20, 20th of the 22nd so you should come with Karen Frischmann, and I don't know when I'm coming back, as I was talking to my friend Clare, like I'm really aiming to travel, like I combine the travels and it might be like 2028 so xxll.co/poland that I'm gonna go to, technically, I'll be in Bruges, but we've been saying Brussels. So, you know, same country, just a difference, but it's at Els Studio. Pilatels we with Karen Frischmann, Els and my friend Ignacio. We all study with Jay Grimes together. That one's almost sold out. It's xxll.co/brussels but yes, we'll be in Bruges, and then after a second honeymoon in France, Brad and I will be at POT London. That is almost sold out, and at the time that this episode is dropping, you can still get the 10% off that ends like literally next week. So xxll.co/pot, at the time we're recording, I have a few spots left in my Sunday workshop, and just because London is different than Poland, doesn't mean that I'll get there any sooner. So you're gonna want to go. And then when we come back, we have spring training. So if you are Pi-curious, Pilates curious, or you're advanced practitioner who's just struggling with some exercises, you're going to want to be in that week long training. You want to go to opc.me/events is where you want to go, because that is where we are having a lot of fun. And if you're on the events list and you get you'll never miss the early bird. You'll miss you'll get all the bonuses. So go there. Lesley Logan 6:18  Okay, before we get into this recap, Clare, you're taking over the questions the next two weeks. So what do you want to ask me?Clare Solly 6:24  I am. So, you know, I noticed that we're at 650 episodes like, wow, how did that happen? That's not the question, sorry. And that was too easy. But since this is the Be It Pod, what is your next big Be It item, Lesley? Lesley Logan 6:40  Oh my God, there's a few I can't tell you guys just yet, or kind of like they're not public yet. But what I'll tell you that is public, and you'll actually experience on the show, I am being it till I see it as a solo podcast. Clare Solly 6:52  Oh. Lesley Logan 6:53  So don't worry, the interviews are not going away. I just want to reduce how many we have. We did a habit series, which was a longer series, and it was combined with guest episode. And then I did a week about burnout, and then a week about self-love. The self love one was the week of Valentine's Day. I think that's appropriate. And so I want your topics that you want me to nerd out about. You guys, you can go to beitpod.com/questions, and just so topics for Lesley to talk about. And so basically, like, I want to take a topic and then do two episodes on it, so Tuesday, Thursday. So we're not going to change your cadence of when your episodes come, but I feel like you couldn't have, like, I would have been too stressed out to do a solo episode ever when we first started the pod, and now that we're 600 something episodes in, and I do all these FYFs, I'm like, I think I'm ready to, like, take on maybe one one week or two weeks a month, of just like, owning the podcast myself and giving you the information from my perspective and and hopefully holding space for topics you want to know about. And that's a little scary for me, because I won't be able to let someone else's light shine and then, like, bounce off of them. I have to, like, shine it myself. Clare Solly 7:59  I just kind of want to reiterate what you're saying, because I think it's really, really important for all your listeners, especially this is the Be It Pod, and it's something you and I have talked about incessantly in our lives. So you've done 650 episodes, five, I want to say it's like been five and a half years, almost six years, that you've been doing this, and you're just now ready to start out on your own. So everybody who's listening. You don't have to take that long, but you also can take that long. And then just want to reiterate, too. If you have a question, text us at 1-310-905-5534, or submit it at beitpod.com/questions.Lesley Logan 8:36  That's what, I want your topics. I want your questions, I want your wins. They all go in the same place. I know that's weird, because it's just questions. But like, maybe the questions will inspire a podcast series. But I just, I know, I think I was probably ready sooner than before. But like, it's a big deal to change the how you run your show. Like, it means I have to, like, tell everyone on the team what I want to do, and then they have to, like, adjust everything. And like, you know, it used to be a little like tugboat that I was doing this business, and now it's kind of more like a yacht, and I have to, like, it's harder to turn a yacht around. Clare Solly 9:04  It's harder to turn a yacht around. Lesley Logan 9:06  It's not a cruise ship. We're not that big yet, but it is a you have to be a little bit more cautious about how you turn. There's little tug boats out there. All right.Clare Solly 9:18  Well, should we talk about Tess Waresmith now? Lesley Logan 9:20  I think we should. Tess is an accredited financial counselor, trademark, and the founder of Wealth with Tess, a platform dedicated to financial education for women, she teaches an approachable investing and money fundamentals that support independence and long term security. Tess's work centers on helping women build enough financial stability, to have options later in life, including the ability to step back from work and retire with confidence.Lesley Logan 9:49  I really am so glad she's in my life. I we've had her on the pod before, and I was just like obsessed with her. I've done her course actually, and I just think that like, we need more women like her talking about money, because she does it in such an honest way. And she's vocal about what's going on in our world and how it's affecting, like, your money, not rich people's money. And we've been, like, kind of conditioned. I think that, like, rich people know what to do when they get money. And so she said on the pod that I really love she's like, money is a tool. It's not either good or bad or evil, it's just a tool. And she really made the argument that, like, good people should actively seek to acquire more money because they make a bigger impact and donate to causes that you care about. I couldn't agree more, because, like, look, there's a lot going on, and we're like, what's my $20 going to do? But you know, if you have money that you are able to, like, have extra of, you're more likely to give it to local causes that inspire you based on your own life experiences. Maybe you donate to a local cause, like, we donate to the SPCA because I want to adopt all the rescue dogs, and I cannot, and they're here, and my money goes farther with them here. You know, there's people right now who are needing, like, rent help or health care support, and like, if you have an extra $100 you can give it to people and so I think we should, those of us who have a heart actually should be the ones with the money. Clare Solly 11:06  I agree. I agree. And I think to, sort of to, like, piggyback onto that thought, too, giving money, you have to decide if you want to see it in action or not. Like you you give locally because you want to see it in action. But some people want their money to go farther, and they don't need to see it in action. So figure out what you care about. I love that.Lesley Logan 11:23  What a great point, Clare, because I do think that sometimes we go, oh my god, what are people going to think that I'm not giving to like the environment or like the home, like, there I had someone on early in the podcast who talked about, like, if you can take what you care about and you can give to that, whether it's time or money, you will see change. And if someone else cares about something different, and they focus on that, I think we, as especially as women, feel this pressure that we have to, like, care about all the cares. And, and you should have some empathy for all the cares, but also you'll you're you'll exhaust yourself and your mind, and then you'll be too busy to actually like, go and acquire the wealth that gives you the independence and freedom to choose how you spend your money and who gets that money. And I do think that, like, we'd be in a different place right now if more people had some independence be due to finances. I think some people don't leave terrible jobs because of money, and that means bosses can be abusive and they can't, you know, there's just different things that if we if the. Clare Solly 12:21  I was one of them. Lesley Logan 12:22  Yes, oh my gosh, yes. I know. So, like, I don't know. I just, I really, but I think we need to continue to remind ourselves that money is a tool. Clare Solly 12:31  Yeah, well, in my podcast with you, way, way, way back when, I'm sure your team will put it in the show notes, I want to say it's episode 19, single, double digits, baby. I was early on, but I was the woowoo side of this. Like money is energy, and it is a measure on the energy you as a human put into something that your company gives back to you so you can use, you know, because we're not in the days of of goats trading, you know, the goat that you farm for the milk that I need. So go back and listen to that podcast, everybody. That's your homework. But one thing I loved, and actually, I kind of want to, I have two things. I'm gonna I'm gonna take it. I love that she said, we're afraid as women, especially, to talk with our friends about money, and I think we need to like because we are afraid of money, because we've been trained to be afraid of money and not spending it or spending it when we have it, and then, you know, so we as women kind of are trained to go between feast and famine, because we don't talk about what people have. And bonus, we're all so used to the Instagram version of everybody, so like, I, you know, I'm jealous of like and like, you're one of my best friends. And I tell you, I'm like, I'm jealous of your lifestyle, and you're like, girl, you were seeing the tip of the iceberg. And but like, well, and then we'll talk about things, and we'll talk about a minute, and it's sometimes not directly bank account related, but we'll talk about things like you just mentioned you found this great person you've been wanting, and you, you know, you bargain chopped for it because you wanted this purse and. Lesley Logan 14:04  Yeah. I wanted this purse. It's not cheap. And I was like, well, I don't want to spend that much, but I want to, I want to buy it. So I'm just gonna wait and be patient. And I think, like, I do think I had, I have had friends who are like, because they care. They're like, well, how much was it? I'm like, I'll tell you, because if you want this bag, you should know, don't pay more than I paid. You can get it.Clare Solly 14:23  Yeah, yeah. And it's all like, what we value versus how much we have and, and I think one thing too, that she said was, like, don't overspend what you make. And I think that, you know, I think there's a little bit of gappage in there, but if you're really trying to control yourself, like, yeah, make sure that you can, you can pay close to what your credit cards are. Lesley Logan 14:42  Well and there's so many tools now, like, there's and I think that are different than what we had when we were growing up, which was just like a piece of paper and a budget, you know, like a checkbook. Do you remember, doing the checkbook and doing the math. And I think that, like, you know, it's true, especially because in our lifetimes, our moms finally had permission to get their own bank account, their own loans, you know, and their own credit cards. I'm like, that's crazy, that in our lifetimes. So it's, it's, it's clear that the education about that. But I, if people ask me, you know, about different things, like, I'm very honest, like, you know, we got, you didn't know I had a new car, and it's a car that I've wanted for over 10 years. And I literally said, you know, like, this is a write off.Clare Solly 15:22  And I totally thought you borrowed a car from a friend. When you picked me at the airport, I was like, how did you borrow your dream car from a friend? That's amazing.Lesley Logan 15:29  Yeah, well, I mean, like, because I don't, like, I don't put a ton of of the stuff on the internet, because people will make up a different story about it. And, like, I but I am really honest with in our coaching business, we'll tell people like, this is why you should set your business up this way, because these things are write offs, and you'll get these kinds of things. And, like, the reality is the rich got richer because they know how the loopholes are right. And like, am I a fan of, like, a flat tax for everybody so there's no write offs, but yeah, because I think the world of Pilates is a better place, and there will still be someone who finds a loophole for it. But like, I actually do want my tax dollars to work for the people that do have less. Like, I actually want to be like, yeah, this my tax money goes to the health care and the housing and the education of the people coming because, like, like, it's this funny joke that I'm very much stuck on. But like, I don't, I don't have children, so who is going to take care of me when I am older, right? Like. Clare Solly 16:17  You now is going to take care of you when you're older, right? Lesley Logan 16:19  Yeah, right. So like, you know, I need to have money for that. And I also want people who are not me to be educated in a way that they could support me when I'm in need. I don't want someone who, you know what I mean. So I think, like, I wish more people thought like that. I do think that anyone listening to this podcast does care about how others are, and so, you know, yes, it's voting, and yes, it's all these different things. But also, until the government actually works for the people, we women are more likely to spend our money in our communities and support other people. And so we need to understand how the game is played and use it. And maybe it means, like, figuring out, you know, maybe it's using, like, something like a Rocket Money to figure out where your money is going. I don't know. They don't sponsor the show, but if someone knows them, I'll take a commercial ad from them, I'll take that money and I'll give it to the SPCA. But like, I think if you don't know where your money is going yet, that's the first place to start, you know.Clare Solly 17:14  Yeah and to, like, to start the conversation. This kind of goes into my second point, or my second you know, love it Be It item from this. I think, like, one of the conversation starters that you can have with your friends, it's easier than, hey, Lesley, how much do you make annually? Because, like, that's also a touchy subject, and sometimes we don't want to share that, but maybe start talking about the economy and the stock market being different things, and talk to your friends about, like, what they're interested in and if they invest, and how they invest, because she mentioned a whole bunch of things, 401(K), Roth IRA, a regular IRAM. She also said the thing about investing for her, her niece, you can do that for yourself. You can throw $100 in a Rocket Money account, an Acorns account, just a regular savings account, a CD like start talking to your friends about how they make their money work for them. And if they're not, like, find a buddy. And like, start going down and share things. Like Lesley and I, we shuttle things back and forth to each other all the time about, like, business and how to invest and things like that. And like, it's not mind blowing, earth shattering, and sometimes it's a reiteration, but we do talk about money, and I'm so glad I have you to be able to talk about money openly. It's so great.Lesley Logan 18:29  Well, I agree same. I mean, like, the thing is, you who told me, because, like, I work for Equinox, and they told me, in my benefits package, there's a 401(K), right? And there's a program, and they did, like, some sort of matching up to some amount of money. And my male trainer was like, Do you are you doing the 401(K)? And I was like, Oh no, I don't really know what to do. And he's like, you just say you want it, like, and they'll just take the money out. And like, I didn't know. No female around me had told me to do it. And I'm not saying that they're at fault. Like, I could have done the research. But like, sometimes we all have so much going on, and so like, making sure that our friends know these things, or at least your colleagues, like, hey, yeah, did you hear that they're doing a match on the 401? K, I upped my like, announce that. Because everyone wins, by the way, everyone wins whenever, when you're, when, when that happens. And retirement does affect us all. Like, it's just going to if you're, if your family members don't, aren't set up for retirement, it's going to negatively affect you in some way. Either they're gonna need more from you, or they're gonna be working forever and you're gonna have less time with them. So I think that's important. So that happened, and then, because I have friends and clients like my business of just teaching people who obviously people have private session Pilates, they have a little bit more money, I let them talk about what they were doing when they were talking about investing, or they're talking about their stocks are down, I would go tell me like, tell me more how that works. Like, I just got curious, and I learned from them. I learned how one of my friends borrowed money from her parents, and she did it the right way so that she'd like pay a loan back, and then she was able to use that in her taxes to write some stuff off. Like, you, people will share with you, but sometimes we're not asking the questions. We just hear them talk about, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm buying this house, or, like, I got, like, I had a friend who was like, Oh yeah, I'm doing, I'm doing a remodel. And I was like, oh, that must be, like, I didn't, like, how long did you save up money for that? Right? She's like, Oh, I did this HELOC. And I was like, Oh, my God, what's a HELOC, right? I don't know these things. I'm a first time homeowner. I don't know anything. What I know is everything fucking is on, on us to fix. But guess what? It's not because we had the AC go down and because our neighbors mentioned something they had, we had checked the right box when it came to our homeowner's insurance. When our AC broke, that motor's $3,000 and Brad was able to do X, Y and Z with the homeowner insurance. And guess what? It's and so we would have been out $3,000 that we didn't need to be. And I think this is where, like talking with your friends, talking with your neighbors, asking what they're doing, if they don't want to tell you, you'll find out. Their body language will shift. They'll get really weird, and then you'll know interesting they don't want to talk about that. I don't have to have a judgment towards it, but I'll find someone else. Yeah, no, I agree. Women, let's talk about money more. Clare Solly 20:58  Let's talk about money more. Okay, all right, so let's talk about those Be It Action Items. What bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted action items can we take away from your convo in preparing or weathering volatility, stock market crashes and building substantial wealth? She advised, money invested in the stock market should be funds you do not need for the next three to five years. It's your fund money, guys. Organize finances by their intended timeline and purpose. Clearly separate short term needs, cash savings from long term goals and keep more money in cash, such as high yield savings account during the uncertain times. This serves two purposes. It provides a safety net to cover expenses without being forced to sell investments, and it prevents emotional and panic-driven decisions. I mean, I have, like, a rule of thumb, because I live in New York City, I have two months of rent saved up, because you never know what's gonna happen.Lesley Logan 21:52  No, I think that that's wise. And thanks for sharing what you're doing. I think, like, you know, Tess was honestly on the pod. She's like, yeah, I'm having, I have, I actually have more cash on hand now. Yeah, it's a little more uncertain right now. And when we were recording this, we're like, it'll be interesting to see when this comes out. Like, what's going on. And I, I asked her, like, I DM-ed her, I said, Hey, your episodes coming out in March. Like, is there anything you want to add? And she's like, I really stand by. Like, the things that I said, and, and, and she and so one of the things that she said in the Be It Action Items is just like, no one cares about your money more than you do. Clare Solly 22:20  No one cares. Lesley Logan 22:21  No one cares about your money more than you do. So if you care about your money, she actually said to go, like, go, I want you to go with the show notes. She has a free guide, and it's been 20 minutes reading it. It takes 20 minutes, and just pick one next action step. Like, honestly, I think we overwhelm ourselves by all the different things that there is to do, the CDs, the 401(K)s. But like, if you start with like, one thing. And for those of you who are employed, like, is there a 401(K)? Are you maxing out it? I know that they've made changes to, like, how much you can max out. So are you maxing out to the new changes? You know, I believe everyone should just have an accountant, because these tax laws are so freaking ridiculous, and your accountant needs to know what your goals are. So you might need to sit down. Maybe your next action step is like, what are my money goals? Like, you know, I'm 43 so my goals now are different than my goals when I was 33 right? So what does that look like? Are they understanding? You know, Brad and I've been very vocal, like, we talked to our accountants all the time. When we bought went to buy our car. We were very specific about, like, Okay, if we buy it this week versus the next week, because it's at the end of the year versus the beginning of the year. Like, what are the risks and losses and pros and cons, and I think that that's important stuff. So obviously, we work for ourselves versus being employed. And, you know what? With chatGPT, you could literally ask it, hey, this is who I am, this is how much I make. This is what's going on. Like, what do you think? Like, I mean, obviously I would, I would research anything it says. But like, there's tools right now to take action so you can be educated one step at a time, you know?Clare Solly 23:40  Yeah, and to kind of piggyback on that. You guys didn't talk about this, but one thing that came to mind when you were talking is, if your gut is saying one thing, and your accountant or your investment person is telling you another, go get a second opinion. Just like a doctor, it's okay to get a second opinion. If you're not feeling like something might be off, like, in it, you don't have to invest with somebody to go do that. Just go, like, call somebody up and say, Hey, I got this advice. They may or may not be like, be able to help you. And so you try to, have to try a second, second opinion, but.Lesley Logan 24:09  You might, and also you should, because if they're like, if your gut is going, hmm, they seem a little shady, then move on. Like, listen to your gut with that. And in fact, Tess's first episode with us really talks about, like, finding those wealth people, or how to do it yourself. So it just depends on, like, you know, what your capabilities are. I will say, like, Brad and I do have someone that we trust helping us, because maybe it'll be different now that we're like, have help with the ADHD, but it just felt like a little bit more than we could take on in this particular moment. But they're very clear, very communicative. We checked with, you know, Tess's fees and all that stuff, so we're making sure that we're making sure that we're not getting screwed over like but so there's just different help out there. And you can also go to Tess as a certain a Substack that is free. Clare Solly 24:49  Really? Lesley Logan 24:50  Yes, it's free. Clare Solly 24:51  Oh I'm signing up. Lesley Logan 24:52  I know I know. Me too, because I like her honesty about everything. I like her attitude. I like she her, you guys, when she teaches you how to actually manage your own accounts, you can literally just do it like I'm just, I have just have a problem with, like, starting new things sometimes, and this is one of them. Obviously, therapy will help, but, and next year could be different, but where I am today, but you can do it like it's, I will. I watched it, I was like, I can do this right now. And I actually opened up my own high yield savings account without Brad did myself. Like, I'm so excited, because that money is what's taking us on our second honeymoon, his and mine. Like, we that was the goal of this particular account that we opened. But she's such good information. You're gonna go to wealthwithtess.substack.com and you can grab it for free. So I (inaudible).Clare Solly 25:36  And Tess is gonna be super proud of you. Like, that's amazing. Lesley Logan 25:39  I know. Clare Solly 25:40  Like, I mean, because we should, again, back to what we first said. We should be in control of our money, because nobody else cares.Lesley Logan 25:46  Yeah, I mean, that's very true. And so anyways, if we can live with anything, it's go take one piece of action on educating yourself about your money that Tess has for you. It's all free out there. And then there's ways to invest if you want to know more. I'm Lesley Logan. Clare Solly 25:58  And I'm Clare Solly. Lesley Logan 26:00  Thanks for joining us today. I hope you had fun with Claire and I if you miss Brad, he'll be back in a couple weeks. Don't worry, he's not going anywhere. But we are so grateful for you, and I can't think of a better episode to share with a friend than our money episodes with Tess and Clare. So you can listen to the woo one. You can listen to the legit one. You can listen to this update. Not that yours is not legit, but I guess how should I say it. You can listen to the dry one. What is it? What's the opposite of woo, like. Clare Solly 26:26  Grounded in fact. I don't know.Lesley Logan 26:29  Grounded. I don't know. It's not I, I think that like everything in moderation, including moderation, yeah. So well listen to both of them, and then go take some action steps that work for you. And until next time, Be It Till You See It. Clare Solly 26:39  Go do your homework. Lesley Logan 26:40  Do it. Lesley Logan 26:42  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.Brad Crowell 27:24  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 27:29  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.Brad Crowell 27:33  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 27:40  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.Brad Crowell 27:44  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Clare Solly 27:57  All right, so let's talk about, no, wait, we have to pause.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The reception to our recent post on Code Reviews has been strong. Catch up!Amid a maelstrom of discussion on whether or not AI is killing SaaS, one of the top publicly listed SaaS companies in the world has just reported record revenues, clearing well over $1.1B in ARR for the first time with a 28% margin. As we comment on the pod, Aaron Levie is the rare public company CEO equally at home in both worlds of Silicon Valley and Wall Street/Main Street, by day helping 70% of the Fortune 500 with their Enterprise Advanced Suite, and yet by night is often found in the basements of early startups and tweeting viral insights about the future of agents.Now that both Cursor, Cloudflare, Perplexity, Anthropic and more have made Filesystems and Sandboxes and various forms of “Just Give the Agent a Box” cool (not just cool; it is now one of the single hottest areas in AI infrastructure growing 100% MoM), we find it a delightfully appropriate time to do the episode with the OG CEO who has been giving humans and computers Boxes since he was a college dropout pitching VCs at a Michael Arrington house party.Enjoy our special pod, with fan favorite returning guest/guest cohost Jeff Huber!Note: We didn't directly discuss the AI vs SaaS debate - Aaron has done many, many, many other podcasts on that, and you should read his definitive essay on it. Most commentators do not understand SaaS businesses because they have never scaled one themselves, and deeply reflected on what the true value proposition of SaaS is.We also discuss Your Company is a Filesystem:We also shoutout CTO Ben Kus' and the AI team, who talked about the technical architecture and will return for AIE WF 2026.Full Video EpisodeTimestamps* 00:00 Adapting Work for Agents* 01:29 Why Every Agent Needs a Box* 04:38 Agent Governance and Identity* 11:28 Why Coding Agents Took Off First* 21:42 Context Engineering and Search Limits* 31:29 Inside Agent Evals* 33:23 Industries and Datasets* 35:22 Building the Agent Team* 38:50 Read Write Agent Workflows* 41:54 Docs Graphs and Founder Mode* 55:38 Token FOMO Culture* 56:31 Production Function Secrets* 01:01:08 Film Roots to Box* 01:03:38 AI Future of Movies* 01:06:47 Media DevRel and EngineeringTranscriptAdapting Work for AgentsAaron Levie: Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and does it for you, and you may be at best review it. That's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work.We basically adapted to how the agent works. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution. Right now, it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this ‘cause you'll see compounding returns. But that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: Welcome to the Lane Space Pod. We're back in the chroma studio with uh, chroma, CEO, Jeff Hoover. Welcome returning guest now guest host.Aaron Levie: It's a pleasure. Wow. How'd you get upgraded to, uh, to that?swyx: Because he's like the perfect guy to be guest those for you.Aaron Levie: That makes sense actually, for We love context. We, we both really love context le we really do.We really do.swyx: Uh, and we're here with, uh, Aaron Levy. Welcome.Aaron Levie: Thank you. Good to, uh, good to be [00:01:00] here.swyx: Uh, yeah. So we've all met offline and like chatted a little bit, but like, it's always nice to get these things in person and conversation. Yeah. You just started off with so much energy. You're, you're super excited about agents.I loveAaron Levie: agents.swyx: Yeah. Open claw. Just got by, got bought by OpenAI. No, not bought, but you know, you know what I mean?Aaron Levie: Some, some, you know, acquihire. Executiveswyx: hire.Aaron Levie: Executive hire. Okay. Executive hire. Say,swyx: hey, that's my term. Okay. Um, what are you pounding the table on on agents? You have so many insightful tweets.Why Every Agent Needs a BoxAaron Levie: Well, the thing that, that we get super excited by that I think is probably, you know, should be relatively obvious is we've, we've built a platform to help enterprises manage their files and their, their corporate files and the permissions of who has access to those files and the sharing collaboration of those files.All of those files contain really, really important information for the enterprise. It might have your contracts, it might have your research materials, it might have marketing information, it might have your memos. All that data obviously has, you know, predominantly been used by humans. [00:02:00] But there's been one really interesting problem, which is that, you know, humans only really work with their files during an active engagement with them, and they kind of go away and you don't really see them for a long time.And all of a sudden, uh, with the power of AI and AI agents, all of that data becomes extremely relevant as this ongoing source of, of answers to new questions of data that will transform into, into something else that, that produces value in your organization. It, it contains the answer to the new employee that's onboarding, that needs to ramp up on a project.Um, it contains the answer to the right thing to sell a customer when you're having a conversation to them, with them contains the roadmap information that's gonna produce the next feature. So all that data. That previously we've been just sort of storing and, and you know, occasionally forgetting about, ‘cause we're only working on the new active stuff.All of that information becomes valuable to the enterprise and it's gonna become extremely valuable to end users because now they can have agents go find what they're looking for and produce new, new [00:03:00] value and new data on that information. And it's gonna become incredibly valuable to agents because agents can roam around and do a bunch of work and they're gonna need access to that data as well.And um, and you know, sometimes that will be an agent that is sort of working on behalf of, of, of you and, and effectively as you as and, and they are kind of accessing all of the same information that you have access to and, and operating as you in the system. And then sometimes there's gonna be agents that are just.Effectively autonomous and kind of run on their own and, and you're gonna collaborate and work with them kind of like you did another person. Open Claw being the most recent and maybe first real sort of, you know, kind of, you know, up updating everybody's, you know, views of this landscape version of, of what that could look like, which is, okay, I have an agent.It's on its own system, it's on its own computer, it has access to its own tools. I probably don't give it access to my entire life. I probably communicate with it like I would an assistant or a colleague and then it, it sort of has this sandbox environment. So all of that has massive implications for a platform that manage that [00:04:00] enterprise data.We think it's gonna just transform how we work with all of the enterprise content that we work with, and we just have to make sure we're building the right platform to support that.swyx: The sort of shorthand I put it is as people build agents, everybody's just realizing that every agent needs a box. Yes.And it's nice to be called box and just give everyone a box.Aaron Levie: Hey, I if I, you know, if we can make that go viral, uh, like I, I think that that terminology, I, that's theswyx: tagline. Every agentAaron Levie: needs a box. Every agent needs a box. If we can make that the headline of this, I'm fine with this. And that's the billboard I wanna like Yeah, exactly.Every agent needs a box. Um, I like it. Can we ship this? Like,swyx: okay, let's do it. Yeah.Aaron Levie: Uh, my work here is done and I got the value I needed outta this podcast Drinks.swyx: Yeah.Agent Governance and IdentityAaron Levie: But, but, um, but, but, you know, so the thing that we, we kind of think about is, um, is, you know, whether you think the number 10 x or a hundred x or whatever the number is, we're gonna have some order of magnitude more agents than people.That's inevitable. It has to happen. So then the question is, what is the infrastructure that's needed to make all those agents effective in the enterprise? Make sure that they are well governed. Make sure they're only doing [00:05:00] safe things on your information. Make sure that they're not getting exposed. The data that they shouldn't have access to.There's gonna be just incredibly spectacularly crazy security incidents that will happen with agents because you'll prompt, inject an agent and sort of find your way through the CRM system and pull out data that you shouldn't have access to. Oh, weJeff Huber: have God,Aaron Levie: right? I mean, that's just gonna happen all over the place, right?So, so then the thing is, is how do you make sure you have the right security, the permissions, the access controls, the data governance. Um, we actually don't yet exactly know in many cases how we're gonna regulate some of these agents, right? If you think about an agent in financial services, does it have the exact same financial sort of, uh, requirements that a human did?Or is it, is the risk fully on the human that was interacting or created the agent? All open questions, but no matter what, there's gonna need to be a layer that manages the, the data they have access to, the workflows that they're involved in, pulling up data from multiple systems. This is the new infrastructure opportunity in the era of agents.swyx: You have a piece on agent identities, [00:06:00] which I think was today, um, which I think a lot of breaking news, the security, security people are talking about, right? Like you basically, I, I always think of this as like, well you need the human you and then there you need the agent. YouAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: And uh, well, I don't know if it's that simple, but is box going to have an opinion on that or you're just gonna be like, well we're just the sort of the, the source layer.Yeah. Let's Okta of zero handle that.Aaron Levie: I think we're gonna have an opinion and we will work with generally wherever the contours of the market end up. Um, and the reason that we're gonna have an opinion more than other topics probably is because one of the biggest use cases for why your agent might need it, an identity is for file system access.So thus we have to kind of think about this pretty deeply. And I think, uh, unless you're like in our world thinking about this particular problem all day long, it might be, you know, like, why is this such a big deal? And the reason why it's a really big deal is because sometimes sort of say, well just give the agent an, an account on the system and it just treats, treat it like every other type of user on the system.The [00:07:00] problem is, is that I as Aaron don't really have any responsibility over anybody else's box account in our organization. I can't see the box account of any other employee that I work with. I am not liable for anything that they do. And they have, I have, I have, you know, strict privacy requirements on everything that they're able to, you know, that, that, that they work on.Agents don't have that, you know, don't have those properties. The person who creates the agent probably is gonna, for the foreseeable future, take on a lot of the liability of what that agent does. That agent doesn't deserve any privacy because, because it's, you know, it can't fully be autonomously operated and it doesn't have any legal, you know, kind of, you know, responsibility.So thus you can't just be like, oh, well I'll just create a bunch of accounts and then I'll, I'll kind of work with that agent and I'll talk to it occasionally. Like you need oversight of that. And so then the question is, how do you have a world where the agent, sometimes you have oversight of, but what if that agent goes and works with other people?That person over there is collaborating with the agent on something you shouldn't have [00:08:00] access to what they're doing. So we have all of these new boundaries that we're gonna have to figure out of, of, you know, it's really, really easy. So far we've been in, in easy mode. We've hit the easy button with ai, which is the agent just is you.And when you're in quad code and you're in cursor, and you're in Codex, you're just, the agent is you. You're offing into your services. It can do everything you can do. That's the easy mode. The hard mode is agents are kind of running on their own. People check in with them occasionally, they're doing things autonomously.How do you give them access to resources in the enterprise and not dramatically increased the security risk and the risk that you might expose the wrong thing to somebody. These are all the new problems that we have to get solved. I like the identity layer and, and identity vendors as being a solution to that, but we'll, we'll need some opinions as well because so many of the use cases are these collaborative file system use cases, which is how do I give it an agent, a subset of my data?Give it its own workspace as well. ‘cause it's gonna need to store off its own information that would be relevant for it. And how do I have the right oversight into that? [00:09:00]Jeff Huber: One thing, which, um, I think is kind interesting, think about is that you know, how humans work, right? Like I may not also just like give you access to the whole file.I might like sit next to you and like scroll to this like one part of the file and just show you that like one part and like, you know,swyx: partial file access.Jeff Huber: I'm just saying I think like our, like RA does seem to be dead, right? Like you wanna say something is dead uhhuh probably RA is dead. And uh, like the auth story to me seems like incredibly unsolved and unaddressed by like the existing state of like AI vendors.ButAaron Levie: yeah, I think, um, we're, I mean you're taking obviously really to level limit that we probably need to solve for. Yeah. And we built an access control system that was, was kind of like, you know, its own little world for, for a long time. And um, and the idea was this, it's a many to many collaboration system where I can give you any part of the file system.And it's a waterfall model. So if I give you higher up in the, in the, in the system, you get everything below. And that, that kind of created immense flexibility because I can kind of point you to any layer in the, in the tree, but then you're gonna get access to everything kind of below it. And that [00:10:00] mostly is, is working in this, in this world.But you do have to manage this issue, which is how do I create an agent that has access to some of my stuff and somebody else's stuff as well. Mm-hmm. And which parts do I get to look at as the creator of the agent? And, and these are just brand new problems? Yeah. Crazy. And humans, when there was a human there that was really easy to do.Like, like if the three of us were all sharing, there'd be a Venn diagram where we'd have an overlapping set of things we've shared, but then we'd have our own ways that we shared with each other. In an agent world, somebody needs to take responsibility for what that agent has access to and what they're working on.These are like the, some of the most probably, you know, boring problems for 98% of people on, on the internet, but they will be the problems that are the difference between can you actually have autonomous agents in an enterprise contextswyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: That are not leaking your data constantly.swyx: No. Like, I mean, you know, I run a very, very small company for my conference and like we already have data sensitivity issues.Yes. And some of my team members cannot see Yes. Uh, the others and like, I can't imagine what it's like to run a Fortune 500 and like, you have to [00:11:00] worry about this. I'm just kinda curious, like you, you talked to a lot like, like 70, 80% of your cus uh, of the Fortune 500, your customers.Aaron Levie: Yep. 67%. Just so we're being verySEswyx: precise.So Yeah. I'm notAaron Levie: Okay. Okay.swyx: Something I'm rounding up. Yes. Round up. I'm projecting to, forAaron Levie: the government.swyx: I'm projecting to the end of the year.Aaron Levie: Okay.swyx: There you go.Aaron Levie: You do make it sound like, like we, we, well we've gotta be on this. Like we're, we're taking way too long to get to 80%. Well,swyx: no, I mean, so like. How are they approaching it?Right? Because you're, you don't have a, you don't have a final answer yet.Why Coding Agents Took Off FirstAaron Levie: Well, okay, so, so this is actually, this is the stark reality that like, unfortunately is the kinda like pouring the water on the party a little bit.swyx: Yes.Aaron Levie: We all in Silicon Valley are like, have the absolute best conditions possible for AI ever.And I think we all saw the dke, you know, kind of Dario podcast and this idea of AI coding. Why is that taken off? And, and we're not yet fully seeing it everywhere else. Well, look, if you just like enumerated the list of properties that AI coding has and then compared it to other [00:12:00] knowledge work, let's just, let's just go through a few of them.Generally speaking, you bring on a new engineer, they have access to a large swath of the code base. Like, there's like very, like you, just, like new engineer comes on, they can just go and find the, the, the stuff that they, they need to work with. It's a fully text in text out. Medium. It's only, it's just gonna be text at the end of the day.So it's like really great from a, from just a, uh, you know, kinda what the agent can work with. Obviously the models are super trained on that dataset. The labs themselves have a really strong, kind of self-reinforcing positive flywheel of why they need to do, you know, agent coding deeply. So then you get just better tooling, better services.The actual developers of the AI are daily users of the, of the thing that they're we're working on versus like the, you know, probably there's only like seven Claude Cowork legal plugin users at Anthropic any given day, but there's like a couple thousand Claude code and you know, users every single day.So just like, think about which one are they getting more feedback on. All day long. So you just go through this list. You have a, you know, everybody who's a [00:13:00] developer by definition is technical so they can go install the latest thing. We're all generally online, or at least, you know, kinda the weird ones are, and we're all talking to each other, sharing best practices, like that's like already eight differences.Versus the rest of the economy. Every other part of the economy has like, like six to seven headwinds relative to that list. You go into a company, you're a banker in financial services, you have access to like a, a tiny little subset of the total data that's gonna be relevant to do your job. And you're have to start to go and talk to a bunch of people to get the right data to do your job because Sally didn't add you to that deal room, you know, folder.And that that, you know, the information is actually in a completely different organization that you now have to go in and, and sort of run into. And it's like you have this endless list of access controls and security. As, as you talked about, you have a medium, which is not, it's not just text, right? You have, you have a zoom call that, that you're getting all of the requirements from the customer.You have a lot of in-person conversations and you're doing in-person sales and like how do you ever [00:14:00] digitize all of that information? Um, you know, I think a lot of people got upset with this idea that the code base has all the context, um, that I don't know if you follow, you know, did you follow some of that conversation that that went viral?Is like, you know, it's not that simple that, that the code base doesn't have all the knowledge, but like it's a lot, you're a lot better off than you are with other areas of knowledge work. Like you, we like, we like have documentation practices, you write specifications. Those things don't exist for like 80% of work that happens in the enterprise.That's the divide that we have, which is, which is AI coding has, has just fully, you know, where we've reached escape velocity of how powerful this stuff is, and then we're gonna have to find a way to bring that same energy and momentum, but to all these other areas of knowledge work. Where the tools aren't there, the data's not set up to be there.The access controls don't make it that easy. The context engineering is an incredibly hard problem because again, you have access control challenges, you have different data formats. You have end users that are gonna need to kind of be kind of trained through this as opposed to their adopting [00:15:00] these tools in their free time.That's where the Fortune 500 is. And so we, I think, you know, have to be prepared as an industry where we are gonna be on a multi-year march to, to be able to bring agents to the enterprise for these workflows. And I think probably the, the thing that we've learned most in coding that, that the rest of the world is not yet, I think ready for, I mean, we're, they'll, they'll have to be ready for it because it's just gonna inevitably happen is I think in coding.What, what's interesting is if you think about the practice of coding today versus two years ago. It's probably the most changed workflow in maybe the history of time from the amount of time it's changed, right? Yeah. Like, like has any, has any workflow in the entire economy changed that quickly in terms of the amount of change?I just, you know, at least in any knowledge worker workflow, there's like very rarely been an event where one piece of technology and work practice has so fundamentally, you know, changed, changed what you do. Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and [00:16:00] does it for you, and you may be at best review it.And even that's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work. We basically adapted to how the agent works. Mm-hmm. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution.The rest of the economy is gonna have to update its workflows to make agents effective. And to give agents the context that they need and to actually figure out what kind of prompting works and to figure out how do you ensure that the agent has the right access to information to be able to execute on its work.I, you know, this is not the panacea that people were hoping for, of the agent drops in, just automates your life. Like you have to basically re-engineer your workflow to get the most out of agents and, uh, and that, that's just gonna take, you know, multiple years across the economy. Right now it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this.‘cause [00:17:00] you'll see compounding returns, but that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: I love, I love pushing back. I think that. That is what a lot of technology consultants love to hear this sort of thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. First to, to embrace the ai. Yes. To get to the promised land, you must pay me so much money to a hundred percent to adopt the prescribed way of, uh, conforming to the agents.Yes. And I worry that you will be eclipsed by someone else who says, no, come as you are.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And we'll meet you where you are.Aaron Levie: And, and, and and what was the thing that went viral a week ago? OpenAI probably, uh, is hiring F Dees. Yeah. Uh, to go into the enterprise. Yeah. Yeah. And then philanthropic is embedded at Goldman Sachs.Yeah. So if the labs are having to do this, if, if the labs have decided that they need to hire FDE and professional services, then I think that's a pretty clear indication that this, there's no easy mode of workflow transformation. Yeah. Yeah. So, so to your point, I think actually this is a market opportunity for, you know, new professional services and consulting [00:18:00] firms that are like Agent Build and they, and they kind of, you know, go into organizations and they figure out how to re-engineer your workflows to make them more agent ready and get your data into the right format and, you know, reconstruct your business process.So you're, you're not doing most of the work. You're telling agents how to do the work and then you're reviewing it. But I haven't seen the thing that can just drop in and, and kinda let you not go through those changes.swyx: I don't know how that kind of sales pitch goes over. Yeah. You know, you're, you're saying things like, well, in my sort of nice beautiful walled garden, here's, there's, uh, because here's this, here's this beautiful box account that has everything.Yes. And I'm like, well, most, most real life is extremely messy. Sure. And like, poorly named and there duplicate this outdated s**tAaron Levie: a hundred percent. And so No, no, a hundred percent. And so this is actually No. So, so this is, I mean, we agree that, that getting to the beautiful garden is gonna be tough.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: There's also the other end of the spectrum where I, I just like, it's a technical impossibility to solve. The agent is, is truly cannot get enough context to make the right decision in, in the, in the incredibly messy land. Like there's [00:19:00] no a GI that will solve that. So, so we're gonna have to kind of land in somewhere in between, which is like we all collectively get better at.Documentation practices and, and having authoritative relatively up-to-date information and putting it in the right place like agents will, will certainly cause us to be much better organized around how we work with our information, simply because the severity of the agent pulling the wrong data will be too high and the productivity gain of that you'll miss out on by not doing this will be too high as well, that you, that your competition will just do it and they'll just have higher velocity.So, uh, and, and we, we see this a lot firsthand. So we, we build a series of agents internally that they can kind of have access to your full box account and go off and you give it a task and it can go find whatever information you're looking for and work with. And, you know, thank God for the model progress, but like, if, if you gave that task to an agent.Nine months ago, you're just gonna get lots of bogus answers because it's gonna, it's gonna say, Hey, here's, here are fi [00:20:00] five, you know, documents that all kind of smell like the right thing. And I'm gonna, but I, but you're, you're putting me on the clock. ‘cause my assistant prompt says like, you know, be pretty smart, but also try and respond to the user and it's gonna respond.And it's like, ah, it got the wrong document. And then you do that once or twice as a knowledge worker and you're just neverswyx: again,Aaron Levie: never again. You're just like done with the system.swyx: Yeah. It doesn't work.Aaron Levie: It doesn't work. And so, you know, Opus four six and Gemini three one Pro and you know, whatever the latest five 3G BT will be, like, those things are getting better and better and it's using better judgment.And this sort of like the, all of these updates to the agentic tool and search systems are, are, we're seeing, we're seeing very real progress where the agent. Kind of can, can almost smell some things a little bit fishy when it's getting, you know, we, we have this process where we, we have it go fan out, do a bunch of searches, pull up a bunch of data, and then it has to sort of do its own ranking of, you know, what are the right documents that, that it should be working with.And again, like, you know, the intelligence level of a model six months ago, [00:21:00] it'd be just throwing a dart at like, I'm just, I'm gonna grab these seven files and I, I pray, I hope that that's the right answer. And something like an opus first four five, and now four six is like, oh, it's like, no, that one doesn't seem right relative to this question because I'm seeing some signal that is making that, you know, that's contradicting the document where it would normally be in the tree and who should have access.Like it's doing all of that kind of work for you. But like, it still doesn't work if you just have a total wasteland of data. Like, it's just not, it's just not possible. Partly ‘cause a human wouldn't even be able to do it. So basically if a, if a really, really smart human. Could not do that task in five or 10 minutes for a search retrieval type task.Look, you know, your agent's not gonna be able to do it any better. You see this all day long. SoContext Engineering and Search Limitsswyx: this touches on a thing that just passionate about it was just context engineering. I, I'm just gonna let you ramble or riff on, on context engineering. If, if, if there's anything like he, he did really good work on context fraud, which has really taken over as like the term that people use and the referenceAaron Levie: a hundred percent.We, we all we think about is, is the context rob problem. [00:22:00]Jeff Huber: Yeah, there's certainly a lot of like ranking considerations. Gentech surgery think is incredibly promising. Um, yeah, I was trying to generate a question though. I think I have a question right now. Swyx.Aaron Levie: Yeah, no, but like, like I think there was this moment, um, you know, like, I don't know, two years ago before, before we knew like where the, the gotchas were gonna be in ai and I think someone was like, was like, well, infinite context windows will just solve all of these problems and ‘cause you'll just, you'll just give the context window like all the data and.It's just like, okay, I mean, maybe in 2035, like this is a viable solution. First of all, it, it would just, it would just simply cost too much. Like we just can't give the model like the 5,000 documents that might be relevant and it's gonna read them all. And I've seen enough to, to start believing in crazy stuff.So like, I'm willing to just say, sure. Like in, in 10 years from now,swyx: never say, never, never.Aaron Levie: In, in 10 years from now, we'll have infinite context windows at, at a thousandth of the price of today. Like, let's just like believe that that's possible, but Right. We're in reality today. So today we have a context engineering [00:23:00] problem, which is, I got, I got, you know, 200,000 tokens that I can work with, or prob, I don't even know what the latest graph is before, like massive degradation.16. Okay. I have 60,000 tokens that I get to work with where I'm gonna get accurate information. That's not a lot of tokens for a corpus of 10 million documents that a knowledge worker might have across all of the teams and all the projects and all the people they work with. I have, I have 10 million documents.Which, you know, maybe is times five pages per document or something like that. I'm at 50 million pages of information and I have 60,000 tokens. Like, holy s**t. Yeah. This is like, how do I bridge the 50 million pages of information with, you know, the couple hundred that I get to work with in that, in that token window.Yeah. This is like, this is like such an interesting problem and that's why actually so much work is actually like, just like search systems and the databases and that layer has to just get so locked in, but models getting better and importantly [00:24:00] knowing when they've done a search, they found the wrong thing, they go back, they check their work, they, they find a way to balance sort of appeasing the user versus double checking.We have this one, we have this one test case where we ask the agent to go find. 10 pieces of information.swyx: Is this the complex work eval?Aaron Levie: Uh, this is actually not in the eval. This is, this is sort of just like we have a bunch of different, we have a bunch of internal benchmark kind of scenarios. Every time we, we update our agent, we have one, which is, I ask it to find all of our office addresses, and I give it the list of 10 offices that we have.And there's not one document that has this, maybe there should be, that would be a great example of the kind of thing that like maybe over time companies start to, you know, have these sort of like, what are the canonical, you know, kind of key areas of knowledge that we need to have. We don't seem to have this one document that says, here are all of our offices.We have a bunch of documents that have like, here's the New York office and whatever. So you task this agent and you, you get, you say, I need the addresses for these 10 offices. Okay. And by the way, if you do this on any, you know, [00:25:00] public chat model, the same outcome is gonna happen. But for a different kind of query, you give it, you say, I need these 10 addresses.How many times should the agent go and do its search before it decides whether or not, there's just no answer to this question. Often, and especially the, the, let's say lower tier models, it'll come back and it'll give you six of the 10 addresses. And it'll, and I'll just say I couldn't find the otherswyx: four.It, it doesn't know what It doesn't know. ItAaron Levie: doesn't know what It doesn't know. Yeah. So the model is just like, like when should it stop? When should it stop doing? Like should it, should it do that task for literally an hour and just keep cranking through? Maybe I actually made up an office location and it doesn't know that I made it up and I didn't even know that I made it up.Like, should it just keep, re should it read every single file in your entire box account until it, until it should exhaust every single piece of information.swyx: Expensive.Aaron Levie: These are the new problems that we have. So, you know, something like, let's say a new opus model is sort of like, okay, I'm gonna try these types of queries.I didn't get exactly what I wanted. I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna, at [00:26:00] some point I'm gonna stop searching. ‘cause I've determined that that no amount of searching is gonna solve this problem. I'm just not able to do it. And that judgment is like a really new thing that the model needs to be able to have.It's like, when should it give up on a task? ‘cause, ‘cause you just don't, it's a can't find the thing. That's the real world of knowledge, work problems. And this is the stuff that the coding agents don't have to deal with. Because they, it just doesn't like, like you're not usually asking it about, you're, you're always creating net new information coming right outta the model for the most part.Obviously it has to know about your code base and your specs and your documentation, but, but when you deploy an agent on all of your data that now you have all of these new problems that you're dealing withJeff Huber: our, uh, follow follow-up research to context ride is actually on a genetic search. Ah. Um, and we've like right, sort of stress tested like frontier models and their ability to search.Um, and they're not actually that good at searching. Right. Uh, so you're sort of highlighting this like explore, exploit.swyx: You're just say, Debbie, Donna say everything doesn't work. Like,Aaron Levie: well,Jeff Huber: somebody has to be,Aaron Levie: um, can I just throw out one more thing? Yeah. That is different from coding and, and the rest [00:27:00] of the knowledge work that I, I failed to mention.So one other kind of key point is, is that, you know, at the end of the day. Whether you believe we're in a slop apocalypse or, or whatever. At the end of the day, if you, if you build a working product at the end of, if you, if you've built a working solution that is ultimately what the customer is paying for, like whether I have a lot of slop, a little slop or whatever, I'm sure there's lots of code bases we could go into in enterprise software companies where it's like just crazy slop that humans did over a 20 year period, but the end customer just gets this little interface.They can, they can type into it, it does its thing. Knowledge work, uh, doesn't have that property. If I have an AI model, go generate a contract and I generate a contract 20 times and, you know, all 20 times it's just 3% different and like that I, that, that kind of lop introduces all new kinds of risk for my organization that the code version of that LOP didn't, didn't introduce.These are, and so like, so how do you constrain these models to just the part that you want [00:28:00] them to work on and just do the thing that you want them to do? And, and, you know, in engineering, we don't, you can't be disbarred as an engineer, but you could be disbarred as a lawyer. Like you can do the wrong medical thing In healthcare, you, there's no, there's no equivalent to that of engineering.Like, doswyx: you want there to be, because I've considered softwareJeff Huber: engineer. What's that? Civil engineering there is, right? NotAaron Levie: software civil engineer. Sure. Oh yeah, for sure. But like in any of our companies, you like, you know, you'll be forgiven if you took down the site and, and we, we will do a rollback and you'll, you'll be in a meeting, but you have not been disbarred as an engineer.We don't, we don't change your, you know, your computer science, uh, blameJeff Huber: degree, this postmortem.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so, uh, now maybe we collectively as an industry need to figure out like, what are you liable for? Not legally, but like in a, in a management sense, uh, of these agents. All sorts of interesting problems that, that, that, uh, that have to come out.But in knowledge work, that's the real hostile environments that we're operating in. Hmm.swyx: I do think like, uh, a lot of the last year's, 2025 story was the rise of coding agents and I think [00:29:00] 2026 story is definitely knowledge work agents. Yes. A hundredAaron Levie: percent.swyx: Right. Like that would, and I think open claw core work are just the beginning.Yes. Like it's, the next one's gonna just gonna be absolute craziness.Aaron Levie: It it is. And, and, uh, and it's gonna be, I mean, again, like this is gonna be this, this wave where we, we are gonna try and bring as many of the practices from coding because that, that will clearly be the forefront, which is tell an agent to go do something and has an access to a set of resources.You need to be responsible for reviewing it at the end of the process. That to me is the, is the kind of template that I just think goes across knowledge, work and odd. Cowork is a great example. Open Closet's a great example. You can kind of, sort of see what Codex could become over time. These are some, some really interesting kind of platforms that are emerging.swyx: Okay. Um, I wanted to, we touched on evals a little bit. You had, you had the report that you're gonna go bring up and then I was gonna go into like, uh, boxes, evals, but uh, go ahead. Talk about your genetic search thing.Jeff Huber: Yeah. Mostly I think kinda a few of the insights. It's like number one frontier model is not good at search.Humans have this [00:30:00] natural explore, exploit trade off where we kinda understand like when to stop doing something. Also, humans are pretty good at like forgetting actually, and like pruning their own context, whereas agents are not, and actually an agent in their kind of context history, if they knew something was bad and they even, you could see in the trace the reason you trace, Hey, that probably wasn't a good idea.If it's still in the trace, still in the context, they'll still do it again. Uhhuh. Uh, and so like, I think pruning is also gonna be like, really, it's already becoming a thing, right? But like, letting self prune the con windowsswyx: be a big deal. Yeah. So, so don't leave the mistake. Don't leave the mistake in there.Cut out the mistake but tell it that you made a mistake in the past and so it doesn't repeat it.Jeff Huber: Yeah. But like cut it out so it doesn't get like distracted by it again. ‘cause really, you know, what is so, so it will repeat its mistake just because it's been, it's inswyx: theJeff Huber: context. It'sAaron Levie: in the context so much.That's a few shot example. Even if it, yeah.Jeff Huber: It's like oh thisAaron Levie: is a great thing to go try even ifJeff Huber: it didn't work.Aaron Levie: Yeah,Jeff Huber: exactly.Aaron Levie: SoJeff Huber: there's like a bunch of stuff there. JustAaron Levie: Groundhogs Day inside these models. Yeah. I'm gonna go keep doing the same wrongJeff Huber: thing. Covering sense. I feel like, you know, some creator analogy you're trying like fit a manifold in latent space, which kind is doing break program synthesis, which is kinda one we think about we're doing right.Like, you know, certain [00:31:00] facts might be like sort of overly pitting it. There are certain, you know, sec sectors of latent space and so like plug clean space. Yeah. And, uh, andswyx: so we have a bell, our editor as a bell every time you say that. SoJeff Huber: you have, you have to like remove those, likeswyx: you shoulda a gong like TPN or something.IfJeff Huber: we gong, you either remove those links to like kinda give it the freedom, kind of do what you need to do. So, but yeah. We'll, we'll release more soon. That'sAaron Levie: awesome.Jeff Huber: That'll, that'll be cool.swyx: We're a cerebral podcast that people listen to us and, and sort of think really deep. So yeah, we try to keep it subtle.Okay. We try to keep it.Aaron Levie: Okay, fine.Inside Agent Evalsswyx: Um, you, you guys do, you guys do have EVs, you talked about your, your office thing, but, uh, you've been also promoting APEX agents and complex work. Uh, yeah, whatever you, wherever you wanna take this just Yeah. How youAaron Levie: Apex is, is obviously me, core's, uh, uh, kind of, um, agent eval.We, we supported that by sort of. Opening up some data for them around how we kind of see these, um, data workspaces in, in the, you know, kind of regular economy. So how do lawyers have a workspace? How do investment bankers have a workspace? What kind of data goes into those? And so we, [00:32:00] we partner with them on their, their apex eval.Our own, um, eval is, it's actually relatively straightforward. We have a, a set of, of documents in a, in a range of industries. We give the agent previously did this as a one shot test of just purely the model. And then we just realized we, we need to, based on where everything's going, it's just gotta be more agentic.So now it's a bit more of a test of both our harness and the model. And we have a rubric of a set of things that has to get right and we score it. Um, and you're just seeing, you know, these incredible jumps in almost every single model in its own family of, you know, opus four, um, you know, sonnet four six versus sonnet four five.swyx: Yeah. We have this up on screen.Aaron Levie: Okay, cool. So some, you're seeing it somewhere like. I, I forget the to, it was like 15 point jump, I think on the main, on the overall,swyx: yes.Aaron Levie: And it's just like, you know, these incredible leaps that, that are starting to happen. Um,swyx: and OP doesn't know any, like any, it's completely held out from op.Aaron Levie: This is not in any, there's no public data which has, you know, Ben benefits and this is just a private eval that we [00:33:00] do, and then we just happen to show it to, to the world. Hmm. So you can't, you can't train against it. And I think it's just as representative of. It's obviously reasoning capabilities, what it's doing at, at, you know, kind of test time, compute capabilities, thinking levels, all like the context rot issues.So many interesting, you know, kind of, uh, uh, capabilities that are, that are now improvingswyx: one sector that you have. That's interesting.Industries and Datasetsswyx: Uh, people are roughly familiar with healthcare and legal, but you have public sector in there.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Uh, what's that? Like, what, what, what is that?Aaron Levie: Yeah, and, and we actually test against, I dunno, maybe 10 industries.We, we end up usually just cutting a few that we think have interesting gains. All extras, won a lot of like government type documents. Um,swyx: what is that? What is it? Government type documents?Aaron Levie: Government filings. Like a taxswyx: return, likeAaron Levie: a probably not tax returns. It would be more of what would go the government be using, uh, as data.So, okay. Um, so think about research that, that type of, of, of data sets. And then we have financial services for things like data rooms and what would be in an investment prospectus. Uhhuh,swyx: that one you can dog food.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes. [00:34:00] So, uh, so we, we run the models, um, in now, you know, more of an agent mode, but, but still with, with kinda limited capacity and just try and see like on a, like, for like basis, what are the improvements?And, and again, we just continue to be blown away by. How, how good these models are getting.swyx: Yeah, I mean, I think every serious AI company needs something like that where like, well, this is the work we do. Here's our company eval. Yeah. And if you don't have it, well, you're not a serious AI company.Aaron Levie: There's two dimensions, right?So there's, there's like, how are the models improving? And so which models should you either recommend a customer use, which one should you adopt? But then every single day, we're making changes to our agents. And you need to knowswyx: if you regressed,Aaron Levie: if you know. Yeah. You know, I've been fully convinced that the whole agent observability and eval space is gonna be a massive space.Um, super excited for what Braintrust is doing, excited for, you know, Lang Smith, all the things. And I think what you're going to, I mean, this is like every enter like literally every enterprise right now. It's like the AI companies are the customers of these tools. Every enterprise will have this. Yeah, you'll just [00:35:00] have to have an eval.Of all of your work and like, we'll, you'll have an eval of your RFP generation, you'll have an eval of your sales material creation. You'll have an eval of your, uh, invoice processing. And, and as you, you know, buy or use new agentic systems, you are gonna need to know like, what's the quality of your, of your pipeline.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: Um, so huge, huge market with agent evals.swyx: Yeah.Building the Agent Teamswyx: And, and you know, I'm gonna shout out your, your team a bit, uh, your CTO, Ben, uh, did a great talk with us last year. Awesome. And he's gonna come back again. Oh, cool. For World's Fair.Aaron Levie: Yep.swyx: Just talk about your team, like brag a little bit. I think I, I think people take these eval numbers in pretty charts for granted, but No, there, I mean, there's, there's lots of really smart people at work during all this.Aaron Levie: Biggest shout out, uh, is we have a, we have a couple folks at Dya, uh, Sidarth, uh, that, that kind of run this. They're like a, you know, kind of tag tag team duo on our evals, Ben, our CTO, heavily involved Yasha, head of ai, uh, you know, a bunch of folks. And, um, evals is one part of the story. And then just like the full, you know, kind of AI.An agent team [00:36:00] is, uh, is a, is a pretty, you know, is core to this whole effort. So there's probably, I don't know, like maybe a few dozen people that are like the epicenter. And then you just have like layers and layers of, of kind of concentric circles of okay, then there's a search team that supports them and an infrastructure team that supports them.And it's starting to ripple through the entire company. But there's that kind of core agent team, um, that's a pretty, pretty close, uh, close knit group.swyx: The search team is separate from the infra team.Aaron Levie: I mean, we have like every, every layer of the stack we have to kind of do, except for just pure public cloud.Um, but um, you know, we, we store, I don't even know what our public numbers are in, you know, but like, you can just think about it as like a lot of data is, is stored in box. And so we have, and you have every layer of the, of the stack of, you know, how do you manage the data, the file system, the metadata system, the search system, just all of those components.And then they all are having to understand that now you've got this new customer. Which is the agent, and they've been building for two types of customers in the past. They've been building for users and they've been building for like applications. [00:37:00] And now you've got this new agent user, and it comes in with a difference of it, of property sometimes, like, hey, maybe sometimes we should do embeddings, an embedding based, you know, kind of search versus, you know, your, your typical semantic search.Like, it's just like you have to build the, the capabilities to support all of this. And we're testing stuff, throwing things away, something doesn't work and, and not relevant. It's like just, you know, total chaos. But all of those teams are supporting the agent team that is kind of coming up with its requirements of what, what do we need?swyx: Yeah. No, uh, we just came from, uh, fireside chat where you did, and you, you talked about how you're doing this. It's, it's kind of like an internal startup. Yeah. Within the broader company. The broader company's like 3000 people. Yeah. But you know, there's, there's a, this is a core team of like, well, here's the innovation center.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And like that every company kind of is run this way.Aaron Levie: Yeah. I wanna be sensitive. I don't call it the innovation center. Yeah. Only because I think everybody has to do innovation. Um, there, there's a part of the, the, the company that is, is sort of do or die for the agent wave.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And it only happens to be more of my focus simply because it's existential that [00:38:00] we get it right.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: All of the supporting systems are necessary. All of the surrounding adjacent capabilities are necessary. Like the only reason we get to be a platform where you'd run an agent is because we have a security feature or a compliance feature, or a governance feature that, that some team is working on.But that's not gonna be the make or break of, of whether we get agents right. Like that already exists and we need to keep innovating there. I don't know what the right, exact precise number is, but it's not a thousand people and it's not 10 people. There's a number of people that are like the, the kind of like, you know, startup within the company that are the make or break on everything related to AI agents, you know, leveraging our platform and letting you work with your data.And that's where I spend a lot of my time, and Ben and Yosh and Diego and Teri, you know, these are just, you know, people that, that, you know, kind of across the team. Are working.swyx: Yeah. Amazing.Read Write Agent WorkflowsJeff Huber: How do you, how do you think about, I mean, you talked a lot about like kinda read workflows over your box data. Yep.Right. You know, gen search questions, queries, et cetera. But like, what about like, write or like authoring workflows?Aaron Levie: Yes. I've [00:39:00] already probably revealed too much actually now that I think about it. So, um, I've talked about whatever,Jeff Huber: whatever you can.Aaron Levie: Okay. It's just us. It's just us. Yeah. Okay. Of course, of course.So I, I guess I would just, uh, I'll make it a little bit conceptual, uh, because again, I've already, I've already said things that are not even ga but, but we've, we've kinda like danced around it publicly, so I, yeah, yeah. Okay. Just like, hopefully nobody watches this, um, episode. No.swyx: It's tidbits for the Heidi engaged to go figure out like what exactly, um, you know, is, is your sort of line of thinking.Sure. They can connect the dots.Aaron Levie: Yeah. So, so I would say that, that, uh, we, you know, as a, as a place where you have your enterprise content, there's a use case where I want to, you know, have an agent read that data and answer questions for me. And then there's a use case where I want the agent to create something.And use the file system to create something or store off data that it's working on, or be able to have, you know, various files that it's writing to about the work it's doing. So we do see it as a total read write. The harder problem has so far been the read only because, because again, you have that kind of like 10 [00:40:00] million to one ratio problem, whereas rights are a lot of, that's just gonna come from the model and, and we just like, we'll just put it in the file system and kinda use it.So it's a little bit of a technically easier problem, but the only part that's like, not necessarily technically hard, it is just like it's not yet perfected in the state of the ecosystem is, you know, building a beautiful PowerPoint presentation. It's still a hard problem for these models. Like, like we still, you know, like, like these formats are just, we're not built for.They'reswyx: working on it.Aaron Levie: They're, they're working on it. Everybody's working on it.swyx: Every launch is like, well, we do PowerPoint now.Aaron Levie: We're getting, yeah, getting a lot, getting a lot of better each time. But then you'll do this thing where you'll ask the update one slide and all of a sudden, like the fonts will be just like a little bit different, you know, on two of the slides, or it moved, you know, some shape over to the left a little bit.And again, these are the kind of things that, like in code, obviously you could really care about if you really care about, you know, how beautiful is the code, but at the end, user doesn't notice all those problems and file creation, the end user instantly sees it. You're [00:41:00] like, ah, like paragraph three, like, you literally just changed the font on me.Like it's a totally different font and like midway through the document. Mm-hmm. Those are the kind of things that you run into a lot of in the, in the content creation side. So, mm-hmm. We are gonna have native agents. That do all of those things, they'll be powered by the leading kind of models and labs.But the thing that I think is, is probably gonna be a much bigger idea over time is any agent on any system, again, using Box as a file system for its work, and in that kind of scenario, we don't necessarily care what it's putting in the file system. It could put its memory files, it could put its, you know, specification, you know, documents.It could put, you know, whatever its markdown files are, or it could, you know, generate PDFs. It's just like, it's a workspace that is, is sort of sandboxed off for its work. People can collaborate into it, it can share with other people. And, and so we, we were thinking a lot about what's the right, you know, kind of way to, to deliver that at scale.Docs Graphs and Founder Modeswyx: I wanted to come into sort of the sort of AI transformation or AI sort of, uh, operations things. [00:42:00] Um, one of the tweets that you, that you wanted to talk about, this is just me going through your tweets, by the way. Oh, okay. I mean, like, this is, you readAaron Levie: one by one,swyx: you're the, you're the easiest guest to prep for because you, you already have like, this is the, this is what I'm interested in.I'm like, okay, well, areAaron Levie: we gonna get to like, like February, January or something? Where are we in the, in the timelines? How far back are we going?swyx: Can you, can you describe boxes? A set of skills? Right? Like that, that's like, that's like one of the extremes of like, well if you, you just turn everything into a markdown file.Yeah. Then your agent can run your company. Uh, like you just have to write, find the right sequence of words toAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: To do it.Aaron Levie: Sorry, isthatswyx: the question? So I think the question is like, what if we documented everything? Yes. The way that you exactly said like,Aaron Levie: yes.swyx: Um, let's get all the Fortune five hundreds, uh, prepared for agents.Yes. And like, you know, everything's in golden and, and nicely filed away and everything. Yes. What's missing? Like, what's left, right? LikeAaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: You've, you've run your company for a decade. LikeAaron Levie: Yeah. I think the challenge is that, that that information changes a week later. And because something happened in the market for that [00:43:00] customer, or us as a company that now has to go get updated, and so these systems are living and breathing and they have to experience reality and updates to reality, which right now is probably gonna be humans, you know, kinda giving those, giving them the updates.And, you know, there is this piece about context graphs as as, uh, that kinda went very viral. Yeah. And I, I, I was like a, i, I, I thought it was super provocative. I agreed with many parts of it. I disagree with a few parts around. You know, it's not gonna be as easy as as just if we just had the agent traces, then we can finally do that work because there's just like, there's so much more other stuff that that's happening that, that we haven't been able to capture and digitize.And I think they actually represented that in the piece to be clear. But like there's just a lot of work, you know, that that has to, you just can't have only skills files, you know, for your company because it's just gonna be like, there's gonna be a lot of other stuff that happens. Yeah. Change over time.Yeah. Most companies are practically apprenticeships.swyx: Most companies are practically apprenticeships. LikeJeff Huber: every new employee who joins the team, [00:44:00] like you span one to three months. Like ramping them up.Aaron Levie: Yes. AllJeff Huber: that tat knowledgeAaron Levie: isJeff Huber: not written down.Aaron Levie: Yes.Jeff Huber: But like, it would have to be if you wanted to like give it to an Asian.Right. And so like that seems to me like to beAaron Levie: one is I think you're gonna see again a premium on companies that can document this. Mm-hmm. Much. There'll be a huge premium on that because, because you know, can you shorten that three month ramp cycle to a two week ramp cycle? That's an instant productivity gain.Can you re dramatically reduce rework in the organization because you've documented where all the stuff is and where the answers are. Can you make your average employee as good as your 90th percentile employee because you've captured the knowledge that's sort of in the heads of, of those top employees and make that available.So like you can see some very clear productivity benefits. Mm-hmm. If you had a company culture of making sure you know your information was captured, digitized, put in a format that was agent ready and then made available to agents to work with, and then you just, again, have this reality of like add a 10,000 person [00:45:00] company.Mapping that to the, you know, access structure of the company is just a hard problem. Is like, is like, yeah, well, you just, not every piece of information that's digitized can be shared to everybody. And so now you have to organize that in a way that actually works. There was a pretty good piece, um, this, this, uh, this piece called your company as a file is a file system.I, did you see that one?swyx: Nope.Aaron Levie: Uh, yes. You saw it. Yeah. And, and, uh, I actually be curious your thoughts on it. Um, like, like an interesting kind of like, we, we agree with it because, because that's how we see the world and, uh,swyx: okay. We, we have it up on screen. Oh,Aaron Levie: okay. Yeah. But, but it's all about basically like, you know, we've already, we, we, we already organized in this kind of like, you know, permission structure way.Uh, and, and these are the kind of, you know, natural ways that, that agents can now work with data. So it's kind of like this, this, you know, kind of interesting metaphor, but I do think companies will have to start to think about how they start to digitize more, more of that data. What was your take?Jeff Huber: Yeah, I mean, like the company's probably like an acid compliant file system.Aaron Levie: Uh,Jeff Huber: yeah. Which I'm guessing boxes, right? So, yeah. Yes.swyx: Yeah. [00:46:00]Jeff Huber: Which you have a great piece on, but,swyx: uh, yeah. Well, uh, I, I, my, my, my direction is a little bit like, I wanna rewind a little bit to the graph word you said that there, that's a magic trigger word for us. I always ask what's your take on knowledge graphs?Yeah. Uh, ‘cause every, especially at every data database person, I just wanna see what they think. There's been knowledge graphs, hype cycles, and you've seen it all. So.Aaron Levie: Hmm. I actually am not the expert in knowledge graphs, so, so that you might need toswyx: research, you don't need to be an expert. Yeah. I think it's just like, well, how, how seriously do people take it?Yeah. Like, is is, is there a lot of potential in the, in the HOVI?Aaron Levie: Uh, well, can I, can I, uh, understand first if it's, um, is this a loaded question in the sense of are you super pro, super con, super anti medium? Iswyx: see pro, I see pros and cons. Okay. Uh, but I, I think your opinion should be independent of mine.Aaron Levie: Yeah. No, no, totally. Yeah. I just want to see what I'm stepping into.swyx: No, I know. It's a, and it's a huge trigger word for a lot of people out Yeah. In our audience. And they're, they're trying to figure out why is that? Because whyAaron Levie: is this such aswyx: hot item for them? Because a lot of people get graph religion.And they're like, everything's a graph. Of course you have to represent it as a graph. Well, [00:47:00] how do you solve your knowledge? Um, changing over time? Well, it's a graph.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And, and I think there, there's that line of work and then there's, there's a lot of people who are like, well, you don't need it. And both are right.Aaron Levie: Yeah. And what do the people who say you don't need it, what are theyswyx: arguing for Mark down files. Oh, sure, sure. Simplicity.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Versus it's, it's structure versus less structure. Right. That's, that's all what it is. I do.Aaron Levie: I think the tricky thing is, um, is, is again, when this gets met with real humans, they're just going to their computer.They're just working with some people on Slack or teams. They're just sharing some data through a collaborative file system and Google Docs or Box or whatever. I certainly like the vision of most, most knowledge graph, you know, kind of futuristic kind of ways of thinking about it. Uh, it's just like, you know, it's 2026.We haven't seen it yet. Kind of play out as as, I mean, I remember. Do you remember the, um, in like, actually I don't, I don't even know how old you guys are, but I'll for, for to show my age. I remember 17 years ago, everybody thought enterprises would just run on [00:48:00] Wikis. Yeah. And, uh, confluence and, and not even, I mean, confluence actually took off for engineering for sure.Like unquestionably. But like, this was like everything would be in the w. And I think based on our, uh, our, uh, general style of, of, of what we were building, like we were just like, I don't know, people just like wanna workspace. They're gonna collaborate with other people.swyx: Exactly. Yeah. So you were, you were anti-knowledge graph.Aaron Levie: Not anti, not anti. Soswyx: not nonAaron Levie: I'm not, I'm not anti. ‘cause I think, I think your search system, I just think these are two systems that probably, but like, I'm, I'm not in any religious war. I don't want to be in anybody's YouTube comments on this. There's not a fight for me.swyx: We, we love YouTube comments. We're, we're, we're get into comments.Aaron Levie: Okay. Uh, but like, but I, I, it's mostly just a virtue of what we built. Yeah. And we just continued down that path. Yeah.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And, um, and that, that was what we pursued. But I'm not, this is not a, you know, kind of, this is not a, uh, it'sswyx: not existential for you. Great.Aaron Levie: We're happy to plug into somebody else's graph.We're happy to feed data into it. We're happy for [00:49:00] agents to, to talk to multiple systems. Not, not our fight.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: But I need your answer. Yeah. Graphs or nerd Snipes is very effective nerd.swyx: See this is, this is one, one opinion and then I've,Jeff Huber: and I think that the actual graph structure is emergent in the mind of the agent.Ah, in the same way it is in the mind of the human. And that's a more powerful graph ‘cause it actually involved over time.swyx: So don't tell me how to graph. I'll, I'll figure it out myself. Exactly. Okay. All right. AndJeff Huber: what's yours?swyx: I like the, the Wiki approach. Uh, my, I'm actually

A major thank you to Octavian for sponsoring today's stream. In this stream I dive into the life of Michael the Brave, a man who took on the Ottoman, Austrian, and Polish-Lithuanian Empires all to unite Romania for the first time in history. Make sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think. God Bless

1. It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine—a gun—which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished. Richard Gatling (1861) 2. In 1923, Hermann Oberth published The Rocket to Planetary Spaces, later expanded as Ways to Space Travel. This showed that it was possible to build machines that could leave Earth's atmosphere and reach orbit. He described the general principles of multiple-stage liquid-fueled rockets, solar sails, and even ion drives. He proposed sending humans into space, building space stations and satellites, and travelling to other planets. The idea of space travel became popular in Germany. Swept up by these ideas, in 1927, Johannes Winkler, Max Valier, and Willy Ley formed the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR) (Society for Space Travel) in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland). This group rapidly grew to several hundred members. Several participated as advisors of Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Moon, and the VfR even began publishing their own journal. In 1930, the VfR was granted permission to [...] ---Outline:(00:09) 1.(00:36) 2.(03:55) 3.(06:09) 4.(10:33) 5.(11:41) 6. --- First published: March 4th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TjcvjwaDsuea8bmbR/maybe-there-s-a-pattern-here --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

New sponsor alert! New sponsor alert... see the offer link below for ButcherBox! Wow... what a crazy weekend of running news and results! We start with Des's secret race as she ran the Disney Princess Half Marathon and WON. She talks about the early 5 am start, helping Ryan a little with his workout, and having a blast touring the park in this fashion. Kara shares her weekend of flying to NYC and calling USA Indoors. Then, they dig into the fiasco that was the women's race at the US Half Marathon Championships in Atlanta, where the lead vehicle led the top 3 women off-course. What a tough situation, and there are no good solutions. Des and Kara try to make sense of it all and give some potential options. We are left wondering... what will USATF and ATC do to try to rectify the mistake? UPDATE: Atlanta Track Club has decided to pay out prize money to both the official winners and to the 3 women that were led off course. In much better news, Des and Kara dig into the exciting results from the distance action at USA Indoors in NY. From the 800m to the 3000m, the US should be sending solid teams to the Indoor World Champs in Poland. Finally, they finish with a top 6 after announcing a new sponsor for the show. Now, go support that new sponsor! As an exclusive offer, our listeners get their choice of organic ground beef, chicken breast OR steaks added to every box for a year, PLUS $20 off on your first box when you go to ButcherBox.com/nobody. That's right - your choice of organic ground beef, chicken breast or steak in EVERY box for an entire year, PLUS $20 off your first box, and free shipping always! Check it out at the link above!

In this re-released episode, pianist and composer Marta Warelis, originally from Poland and now based in … The post ANFTD #127: Marta Warelis (Re-Release) first appeared on Greenleaf Music by Dave Douglas.

This week, we're stealing a couple hours of your time to discuss The Rats: A Witcher Tale, the prequel movie that dropped at the same time as Season 4 and is designed to be watched after it…despite taking place well before. (The Witcher's up to its timeline shenanigans again, it seems.) Paired with the perfectly-themed Master of the Thieves Guild Blended Bourbon by Quest's End Whiskey, we keep things loose, lively and liquidated as we unpack the plots—meaning both the film's narrative and the Rats' plot to steal loads of cash—and try to figure out just what happened to this thing behind the scenes. Also, we come out in favor of bathing with a drunken Dolph Lundgren, debate the role of cephalopods in sex dens and reveal why when it comes to spider women, most movies just like to tease.

On Wednesday's Football Daily, Phil Egan brings you news from the international game to the Premier League and beyond.The Republic of Ireland fall to a heart-breaking 2–1 defeat against France at Tallaght Stadium despite a spirited display.Katie McCabe gives Ireland the perfect start, finishing brilliantly after carving France open with Emily Murphy in front of a record crowd of 8,376.France's quality off the bench proves decisive as Melvine Malard comes on to score twice in eight minutes to snatch all three points.Ireland head coach Carla Ward reacts with pride post-match, praising her side's courage and performance.Player of the Match Emily Murphy reflects on testing one of the world's best teams right to the end.Elsewhere in qualifying, England women's national football team hammer Ukraine 6–1, Scotland win 5–0 in Luxembourg, Wales draw 2–2 in the Czech Republic, and Northern Ireland lose 2–0 to Switzerland.Attention turns to Ireland's next test away to Netherlands women's national football team in Utrecht this Saturday after the Dutch drew 2–2 with Poland.In the Premier League, Liverpool suffer a ninth league defeat of the season, beaten 2–1 by Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C., leaving them stuck in fifth.Arne Slot admits his side must improve at both ends, while Wolves boss Rob Edwards praises his team's response to a late equaliser.Everton secure their first home win in three months against Burnley, Brentford draw 0–0 at Bournemouth with Nathan Collins playing 90 minutes.Tonight's title race heats up as Manchester City F.C. face Nottingham Forest with Pep Guardiola insisting there's no margin for error, while leaders Arsenal F.C. travel to Brighton amid set-piece controversy surrounding Mikel Arteta.Manchester United look to continue strong form under Michael Carrick away to Newcastle United F.C., Celtic aim to keep their Scottish title hopes alive, Troy Parrott eyes a Dutch Cup semi-final start with AZ Alkmaar, and the latest Outside The Box podcast is available now.Become a member and sign up at offtheball.com/join 'This week our live commentary game comes from Tallaght Stadium as Shamrock Rovers look to get their season back on track as they welcome Derry City to the capital.Kick off is at 8 o'clock on Friday and Stephen Doyle will be joined by Richie Towell in the commentary booth for that one, with build-up starting on Off The Ball on Newstalk and the GoLoud App from 7pm.'

Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent Commemoration of St. Casimir, 1458-1484; son of the king of Poland; he practiced the Christian virtues with special regard to chastity and kindness to the poor and was zealous in the faith, particularly in his devotion to the holy eucharist and the Virgin Mary; he died of consumption Office of Readings and Morning Prayer for 3/4/26 Gospel: Matthew 20:17-28

Have you ever considered your profession as a ministry? Come to this session and hear about the biblical roots of nursing as ministry, your sacred calling to serve, and the importance of paying attention to those divine appointments. We will also talk about finding your passion and being persistent, all while drawing on the power of the Holy Spirit.

PJ talks to Peter who is part of the campaign to keep flights from Cork to Gdansk and Pozan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Victor Young, born in Chicago (August 8, 1899), started playing the violin at the age of six and was sent to live with his grandfather in Poland when he was ten. He attended the Warsaw Conservatory, and while still a teenager, embarked on a career as a concert violinist with the Warsaw Philharmonic. World War I kept him from returning to the United States until 1920, when he took a job performing with a Chicago theater orchestra. In the mid-1930s, he relocated to Hollywood and composed a number of songs for films that have become standards and embraced by jazz musicians for decades. Young won a posthumous Oscar for his score for Around the World in 80 Days in 1957. Jazz Evensong Schedule: https://stmichaelsbythesea.org/evensong

Full Text of Readings Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent Lectionary: 232 The Saint of the day is Saint Casimir Saint Casimir's Story Saint Casimir, born of kings and in line to be a king himself, was filled with exceptional values and learning by a great teacher, John Dlugosz. Even his critics could not say that his conscientious objection indicated softness. As a teenager, Casimir lived a highly disciplined, even severe life, sleeping on the ground, spending a great part of the night in prayer and dedicating himself to lifelong celibacy. When nobles in Hungary became dissatisfied with their king, they prevailed upon Casimir's father, the king of Poland, to send his son to take over the country. Casimir obeyed his father, as many young men over the centuries have obeyed their governments. The army he was supposed to lead was clearly outnumbered by the “enemy”; some of his troops were deserting because they were not paid. At the advice of his officers, Saint Casimir decided to return home. His father was irked at the failure of his plans, and confined his 15-year-old son for three months. The lad made up his mind never again to become involved in the wars of his day, and no amount of persuasion could change his mind. He returned to prayer and study, maintaining his decision to remain celibate even under pressure to marry the emperor's daughter. He reigned briefly as king of Poland during his father's absence. He died of lung trouble at 25 while visiting Lithuania, of which he was also Grand Duke. He was buried in Vilnius, Lithuania. Reflection For many years, Poland and Lithuania faded into the gray prison on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Despite repression, the Poles and Lithuanians remained firm in the faith which has become synonymous with their name. Their youthful patron reminds us: Peace is not won by war; sometimes a comfortable peace is not even won by virtue, but Christ's peace can penetrate every government repression of religion.Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

The semi-final era has not been kind to Poland. Though the country has done okay at Eurovision the last few years, they haven't reached the heights of their debut entry in 1994. We'll be doing a deep dive on what worked 30+ years ago and identify where Poland may secretly have its finger on the pulse of what does well at the Contest. Subscribe The EuroWhat? Podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts. Find your podcast app to subscribe here. Comments, questions, and episode topic suggestions are always welcome. You can shoot us an email or reach out on Bluesky @eurowhat.bsky.social. Join the EuroWhat AV Club! If you want even more EuroWhat? in your life, join the EuroWhat? AV Club on Patreon! You can join for free to get virtual high fives and a monthly newsletter featuring: previews of upcoming episodes, North America tour dates for Eurovision alumni National Selection dates Tidbits we can't get to on the main show We also have the EuroWhat? AV Club Podcast, a monthly bonus episode for paid members exploring Eurovision-adjacent TV, movies, books, and more. And if there is a season 2 of the American Song Contest... well... :::monkey's paw intensifies:::

99% of Poland's pre-war Jewish population, the largest in Europe, perished during the Holocaust.  Polish native and Canadian historian Jan Grabowski argues this death toll is inconceivable without the collusion of the general Polish population.  Yet for decades Polish authorities have denied all responsibility.  Instead, they have used the considerable resources of the state to posit that Poles suffered equally or even more than the nation's Jewish community.  In what Grabowski labels as Holocaust distortion, the memory of the past has been fundamentally divorced from reality, even at the most prominent Holocaust memorial sites.  A conversation with University of Ottawa historian Jan Grabowski about his book, Whitewash: Poland and the Jews, in this episode of Realms of Memory.

refurbed, the leading online marketplace for refurbished products in Ireland, has surpassed €3 billion in cumulative Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) and expanded into 12 new European markets, doubling its footprint and marking a major milestone in the mainstream adoption of refurbished products. The company reached €3 billion in the total value of goods sold through its marketplace less than 12 months after passing €2 billion, reflecting year-on-year GMV growth of over 40%. The milestone follows a €50 million investment round in November 2025 and profitability achieved earlier that year, providing a strong foundation for continued expansion across Europe. "Refurbished is no longer a niche – it's becoming the default for many customers across Europe." said Peter Windischhofer, co-founder and CEO of refurbed. "We've proven that a circular business model can scale profitably. Surpassing €3 billion in GMV and expanding into 12 new markets shows that." To date, refurbed has sold 10 million products across their European markets and over 50% of its customers have returned for additional purchases. Since entering the Irish market five years ago, refurbed has sold more than 400,000 products to over 200,000 customers, contributing over €146 million in GMV. Through the purchase of refurbished devices, Irish customers have saved almost 17 million kilograms of CO?, more than 5 billion litres of water and nearly 60,000 kilograms of electronic waste. Pan-European expansion at scale The company's new markets include Spain, France, the UK, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria and Luxembourg, bringing refurbed's addressable market to approximately 486 million consumers. Leading brands available on the platform include Dyson and Kärcher in home and garden, alongside Apple, Samsung and Google in consumer electronics. "This expansion is a deliberate next step," Windischhofer adds. "After reaching profitability and securing fresh investment, we are deploying capital where we see clear demand, strong supply infrastructure and long-term value creation. We scale where our model works – and we know it works." €3 Billion GMV: Refurbishment moves into the mainstream The acceleration from €2 billion to €3 billion in under a year highlights growing consumer trust in refurbished products and increasing competitive strength against new product sales. Premium supply is expanding rapidly, with the premium product share of order volume increasing by +113% and the premium share of GMV rising by +90% since the category launched in 2025. "We are witnessing a clear, structural shift in consumer behaviour," says Kilian Kaminski, co-founder of refurbed. "Smart and sustainable growth is no longer a trade-off. The circular economy is becoming mainstream, and Europe has the opportunity to lead globally by proving that profitability and sustainability go hand in hand." To date, refurbed has contributed to saving 445,000 tonnes of CO2 by offering refurbished instead of new products to consumers. See more stories here. More about Irish Tech News Irish Tech News are Ireland's No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland's No.1 Tech Podcast too. You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here: https://anchor.fm/irish-tech-news If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie now to discuss. Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at Info@IrishTechNews.ie now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience. You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

Last time we spoke about General Zhukov's armor offensives at Nomohan. Following heavy Japanese losses in May and June, General Georgy Zhukov arrives in June, reorganizes the Soviet 1st Army Group, and bolsters it with tanks, artillery, and reinforcements. The July offensive sees General Komatsubara's forces cross the Halha River undetected, achieving initial surprise. However, General Yasuoka's tank assault falters due to muddy terrain, inadequate infantry support, and superior Soviet firepower, resulting in heavy losses. Japanese doctrine emphasizing spiritual superiority clashes with material realities, undermining morale as intelligence underestimates Soviet strength. Zhukov learns key lessons in armored warfare, adapting tactics despite high casualties. Reinforcements pour in via massive truck convoys. Japanese night attacks and artillery duels fail, exposing logistical weaknesses. Internal command tensions, including gekokujo defiance, hinder responses. By August, Stalin, buoyed by European diplomacy and Sorge's intel, greenlights a major offensive. Zhukov employs deception for surprise. Warnings of Soviet buildup are ignored, setting the stage for a climactic encirclement on August 20.   #191 Zhukov Steel Ring of Fire at Nomohan Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. On the night of August 19–20, under cover of darkness, the bulk of the Soviet 1st Army Group crossed the Halha River into the expanded Soviet enclave on the east bank. Two weeks of nightly Soviet sound effects had paid off: Japanese perimeter troops failed to distinguish the real deployment from the frequently heard simulations. Zhukov's order of battle was as follows: "Northern force, commanded by Colonel Alekseenko—6th Mongolian Cavalry Division, 601st Infantry Regiment (82nd Division), 7th Armored Brigade, 2 battalions of the 11th Tank Brigade, 82nd Artillery Regiment, and 87th Anti-tank Brigade. Central force, where Zhukov was located, commanded by his deputy, Colonel Petrov—36th Motorized Infantry Division, 82nd Infantry Division (less one regiment), 5th Infantry Machine Gun Brigade. Southern force, commanded by Colonel Potapov—8th Mongolian Cavalry Division, 57th Infantry Division, 8th Armored Brigade, 6th Tank Brigade, 11th Tank Brigade (less two battalions), 185th Artillery Regiment, 37th Anti-tank Brigade, one independent tank company. A mobile strategic reserve built around the 212th Airborne Regiment, the 9th Mechanized Brigade, and a battalion of the 6th Tank Brigade was held west of the Halha River." The Soviet offensive was supported by massed artillery, a hallmark of Zhukov's operations in the war against Germany. In addition to nearly 300 antitank and rapid-fire guns, Zhukov deployed over 200 field and heavy artillery pieces on both sides of the Halha. Specific artillery batteries were assigned to provide supporting fire for each attacking infantry and armored unit at the battalion level and higher. In the early hours of August 20, the sky began to lighten over the semiarid plain, with the false promise of a quiet Sunday morning. The air was clear as the sun warmed the ground that had been chilled overnight. General Komatsubara's troops were in no special state of readiness when the first wave of more than 200 Soviet bombers crossed the Halha River at 5:45 a.m. and began pounding their positions. When the bombers withdrew, a thunderous artillery barrage began, continuing for 2 hours and 45 minutes. That was precisely the time needed for the bombers to refuel, rearm, and return for a second run over the Japanese positions. Finally, all the Soviet artillery unleashed an intensive 15-minute barrage at the forwardmost Japanese positions. Komatsubara's men huddled in their trenches under the heaviest bombardment to which they or any other Japanese force had ever been subjected. The devastation, both physical and psychological, was tremendous, especially in the forward positions. The shock and vibration of incoming bombs and artillery rounds also caused their radiotelegraph keys to chatter so uncontrollably that frontline troops could not communicate with the rear, compounding their confusion and helplessness. At 9:00 a.m., Soviet armor and infantry began to move out along the line while their cover fire continued. A dense morning fog near the river helped conceal their approach, bringing them in some sectors to within small-arms range before they were sighted by the enemy. The surprise and disarray on the Japanese side was so complete, and their communications so badly disrupted, that Japanese artillery did not begin firing in support of their frontline troops until about 10:15 a.m. By then, many forward positions were overrun. Japanese resistance stiffened at many points by midday, and fierce combat raged along the front, roughly 40 miles long. In the day's fighting, Colonel M. I. Potapov's southern force achieved the most striking success. The 8th MPR Cavalry Division routed the Manchukuoan cavalry holding Komatsubara's southern flank, and Potapov's armor and mechanized infantry bent the entire southern segment of the Japanese front inward by about 8 miles in a northwesterly direction. Zhukov's central force advanced only 500–1,500 yards in the face of furious resistance, but the frontal assault engaged the center of the Japanese line so heavily that Komatsubara could not reinforce his flanks. Two MPR cavalry regiments and supporting armor and mechanized infantry from Colonel Ilya Alekseenko's northern force easily overran two Manchukuoan cavalry units guarding the northern flank of the Japanese line, about 2 miles north of the Fui Heights. But the heights themselves formed a natural strong point, and Alekseenko's advance was halted at what became the northern anchor of the Japanese line. As the first phase of the Soviet offensive gathered momentum, General Ogisu, the 6th Army's new commander, assessed the situation. Still unaware of Zhukov's strength, he reassured KwAHQ that "the enemy intends to envelop us from our flanks, but his offensive effectiveness is weak… Our positions in other areas are being strengthened. Set your mind at ease." This optimistic report contributed to Kwantung Army's delay in reinforcing the 23rd Division. Some at KwAHQ suspected this might be another limited Soviet push, like Aug 7–8, that would soon end. Others worried it was a diversion prior to a larger offensive and were concerned but not alarmed about Komatsubara's position. On Aug 21–22, Potapov's southern force pierced the Japanese main defense line at several points, breaking the southern sector into segments that the attackers sealed off, encircled, and ground down. Soviet armor, mechanized infantry, and artillery moved swiftly and with deadly efficiency. Survivors described how each pocket of resistance experienced its own hellish period. After the Japanese heavy weapons in a pocket were neutralized, Soviet artillery and tanks gradually tightened the ring, firing at point-blank range over open sights. Flame-throwing tanks incinerated hastily constructed fortifications and underground shelters. Infantry mopped up with grenades, small arms, and bayonets. By the end of Aug 23, Potapov had dismembered the entire Japanese defensive position south of the Holsten River. Only one significant pocket of resistance remained. Meanwhile, Potapov's 8th Armored Brigade looped behind the Japanese, reaching southeast of Nomonhan, some 11 miles east of the river junction, on the boundary claimed by the MPR, and took up a blocking position there athwart the most likely line of retreat for Japanese units south of the Holsten. In those two days, the Japanese center yielded only a few yards, while the northern flank anchored at Fui Heights held firm. Air combat raged over the battlefield. Soviet air units provided tactical support for their armor and infantry, while Kwantung Army's 2nd Air Group strove to thwart that effort and hit the Soviet ground forces. Before Nomonhan, the Japanese air force had not faced a modern opponent. Japanese fliers had roamed largely unchallenged in Manchuria and China from 1931 to 1939. At Nomonhan, the Soviets enjoyed an advantage of roughly 2:1 in aircraft and pilots. This placed an increasingly heavy burden on Japanese air squadrons, which had to fly incessantly, often against heavy odds. Fatigue took its toll and losses mounted. Soviet and Japanese accounts give wildly different tallies of air victories and losses, but an official Japanese assessment after the battle stated, "Nomonhan brought out the bitter truths of the phenomenal rate at which war potential is sapped in the face of superior opposition." As with tank combat, the Soviet air superiority was qualitative as well as quantitative. In June–early July, the Soviet I-16 fighters did not fare well against the Japanese Type 97 fighter. However, in the lull before the August offensive, the Soviets introduced an improved I-16 with armor-plated fuselage and windshield, making it virtually impervious to the Type 97's light 7.7-mm guns. The Japanese countered by arming some planes with heavier 12.7-mm guns, which were somewhat more effective against the new I-16s. But the Soviet pilots discovered that the Type-97's unprotected fuel tank was an easy mark, and Japanese planes began to burn with horrendous regularity. On Aug 23, as Ribbentrop arrived in Moscow to seal the pact that would doom Poland and unleash war in Europe, the situation at Nomonhan was deemed serious enough by Kwantung Army to transfer the 7th Division to Hailar for support. Tsuji volunteered to fly to Nomonhan for a firsthand assessment. This move came too late, as Aug 23–24 proved the crucial phase of the battle. On Tue night, Aug 22, at Japanese 6th Army HQ, General Ogisu ordered a counterattack to push back the Soviet forces enveloping and crushing the Japanese southern flank. Komatsubara planned the counterattack in minute detail and entrusted its execution to his 71st and 72nd Regiments, led by General Kobayashi Koichi, and the 26th and 28th Regiments of the 7th Division, commanded by General Morita Norimasa. On paper this force looked like two infantry brigades. Only the 28th Regiment, however, was near full strength, though its troops were tired after marching about 25 miles to the front the day before. This regiment's peerless commander was Colonel Morita Toru (unrelated to General Morita). The chief kendo fencing master of the Imperial Army, Morita claimed to be invulnerable to bullets. The other three regiments were seriously understrength, partly due to combat attrition and partly because several of their battalions were deployed elsewhere on the front. The forces Kobayashi and Morita commanded that day totaled less than one regiment each. It was not until the night of Aug 23 that deployment and attack orders filtered down to the Japanese regiment, battalion, and company commanders. Due to insufficient truck transport and the trackless terrain, units were delayed reaching their assigned positions in the early morning of Aug 24, and some did not arrive at all. Two battalions of the 71st Regiment did not reach Kobayashi in time; his attack force that morning consisted of two battalions of the 72nd Regiment. Colonel Sumi's depleted 26th Regiment did not arrive in time, and General Morita's assault force consisted of two battalions of the 28th Regiment and a battalion-equivalent independent garrison unit newly arrived at the front. Because of these delays, the Japanese could not reconnoiter enemy positions adequately before the attack. What had been planned as a dawn assault would begin between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. in broad daylight. The light plane carrying Tsuji on the final leg of his flight from Hsinking-Hailar-Nomonhan was attacked by Soviet fighters and forced to land behind the 72nd Regiment's staging area. Tsuji managed to reach General Kobayashi's command post by truck and on foot, placing him closer to the fighting than he anticipated. Just before the counterattack began, a dense fog drifted across part of the battlefield, obscuring visibility and limiting artillery effectiveness. Using the fog to mask their movement, lead elements of the 72nd Regiment moved toward a distant stand of scrub pines. As they approached, the trees began to move away—the stand was a well-camouflaged Soviet tank force. The tanks then maneuvered to the south, jeopardizing further Japanese advance. As the fog cleared, the Japanese found themselves facing a much larger enemy force. A vastly heavier Soviet barrage answered their renewed artillery fire. Kobayashi and Morita discovered too late that their counterattack had walked into the teeth of far stronger Soviet forces. One account calls it "The Charge of Two Light Brigades."   Kobayashi's 72nd Regiment encountered the Soviet T-34, with its thick sloped armor and 76-mm gun—the most powerful tank in 1939. In addition, the improved Soviet BT-5/7 tanks, powered by diesel, were less prone to ignition. On gasoline-powered vehicles, the Soviets added wire netting over the ventilation grill and exhaust manifold, reducing the effectiveness of hand-thrown gasoline bombs. Japanese infantry regiments suffered near 50% casualties that day. Nearly every battalion and company commander was lost. Kobayashi was gravely wounded by a tank shell fragment and nearly trampled by fleeing troops. He survived the battle and the Pacific War but died in a Soviet POW camp in 1950. Morita's 28th Regiment fared little better. It was pinned down about 500 yards from the Soviet front lines by intense artillery. Unable to advance and not permitted to retreat, Morita's men dug into the loose sand and withstood the bombardment, but were cut to pieces. Shortly after sunset, the remnants were ordered to withdraw, but both regiments were shattered. Tsuji, a survivor, rejoined Komatsubara at his command post. Upon receiving combat reports from the 72nd and 28th Regiments, General Komatsubara "evinced deep anxiety." 6th Army chief of staff Major General Fujimoto Tetsukuma, at Komatsubara's command post, "appeared bewildered," and announced he was returning to headquarters, asking if Tsuji would accompany him. The major declined and later recalled that he and Komatsubara could barely conceal their astonishment at Fujimoto's abrupt departure at such a time. Meanwhile, at the northern end of the line, Colonel Alekseenko's force had been hammering at Fui Heights for 3 days without success. The position was held by about 800 defenders under Lieutenant Colonel Ioki Eiichiro, consisting of two infantry companies; one company each of cavalry, armored reconnaissance, and combat engineers; and three artillery batteries (37-mm and 75-mm guns). The defenders clung tenaciously to the strongpoint created by the heights and their bunkers, inflicting heavy losses on Alekseenko's force. The unexpectedly strong defense disrupted the timing of the entire Soviet offensive. By Aug 23, Zhukov was exasperated and losing patience with the pace in the north. Some of Zhukov's comrades recall a personable chief who played the accordion and urged singing during happier times. Under stress, his harshness and temper surfaced. Zhukov summoned Alekseenko to the telephone. When the northern commander expressed doubt about storming the heights immediately, Zhukov berated him, relieved him on the spot, and entrusted the attack to Alekseenko's chief of staff. After a few hours, Zhukov called again and, finding that the new commander was slow, fired him as well and sent a staff member to take charge. Accounts record that his tirades sometimes included the phrase "useless bag of shit," though others note harsher language was used toward generals who did not meet expectations. That night, reinforced by the 212th Airborne Regiment, heavier artillery, and a detachment of flame-throwing tanks, the northern force renewed its assault on Fui Heights. The battered Japanese defenders were thoroughly overmatched. Soviet artillery fired at two rounds per second. When the last Japanese artillery was knocked out, they no longer could defend against flame-throwing tanks. From several miles away, Colonel Sumi could see the heights shrouded in black smoke and red flames "spitting like the tongues of snakes."  After Aug 22, supply trucks could no longer reach Fui Heights. The next afternoon, Colonel Ioki's radio—the last link to the 23rd Division—was destroyed. His surviving men fought on with small arms and grenades, repelling Soviet infantry with bayonet charges that night. By the morning of Aug 24, Ioki had about 200 able-bodied men left of his original 800. Soviet tanks and infantry had penetrated defenses at several points, forcing him to constrict his perimeter. Red flags flew on the eastern edge of the heights. Ioki gathered his remaining officers to discuss last measures. With little ammunition and almost no food or water, their situation seemed hopeless. But Ioki insisted on holding Fui Heights to the last man, arguing that the defense should not be abandoned and that orders to break out should come only with reinforcements and supplies. Some subordinates urged retreat. Faced with two dire options, Ioki drew his pistol and attempted suicide, but a fellow officer restrained him. Rather than see his men blown to bits, Ioki decided to abandon Fui Heights and retreat east. Those unable to walk received hand grenades with the injunction to blow themselves up rather than be captured. On the night of Aug 24–25, after moonrise, the remaining resistance at the heights was quelled, and Soviet attention shifted south. Ioki's battered remnant slipped out and, the next morning, encountered a Manchukuoan cavalry patrol that summoned trucks to take them to Chaingchunmiao, forty miles away. Russians occupying Fui Heights on Aug 25 counted the corpses of over 600 Japanese officers and men. After securing Fui Heights, the Soviet northern force began to roll up the Japanese northern flank in a wide arc toward Nomonhan. A day after the fall of Fui Heights, elements of the northern force's 11th Tank Brigade linked up with the southern force's 8th Armored Brigade near Nomonhan. A steel ring had been forged around the Japanese 6th Army. As the Japanese northern and southern flanks dissolved under Zhukov's relentless assaults, Komatsubara's command ceased to exist as an integrated force. By Aug 25 the Japanese lines were completely cut, with resistance remaining only in three encircled pockets. The remnants of two battalions of General Morita's "brigade" attempted a renewed offensive on Aug 25, advancing about 150 yards before being hammered by Soviet artillery and tanks, suffering heavier casualties than the day before. The only hope for the surrounded Japanese troops lay in a relief force breaking through the Soviet encirclement from the outside. However, Kwantung Army was spread thin in Manchuria and, due to a truck shortage, could not transport the 7th Division from Hailar to the combat zone in time. By Aug 26 the encirclement had thickened, with three main pockets tightly invested, making a large-scale breakout nearly impossible. Potapov unleashed a two-pronged assault with his 6th Tank Brigade and 80th Infantry Regiment. Japanese artillery from the 28th Regiment temporarily checked the left wing of the armored attack, but the Soviet right wing overran elements of Sumi's 26th Regiment, forcing the Japanese to retreat into a tighter enclave. Morita, the fencing-master commander who claimed to be immune to bullets, was killed by machine-gun fire while standing atop a trench encouraging his men. The Japanese 120-mm howitzers overheated under the August sun; their breech mechanisms swelled and refused to eject spent casings. Gunners had to leap from behind shelter to ram wooden rods down the barrels, drastically reducing rate of fire and life expectancy. Komatsubara's artillery units suffered a bitter fate. Most were deployed well behind the front lines with their guns facing west toward the Halha. As the offensive developed, attackers often struck the batteries from the east, behind them. Even when crews could turn some guns to face east, they had not preregistered fields of fire there and were not very effective. Supporting infantry had already been drawn off for counterattacks and perimeter defense. One by one, Japanese batteries were smashed by Soviet artillery and tanks. Crews were expected to defend their guns to the last man; the guns themselves were treated as the unit's soul, to be destroyed if captured. In extremis, crews were to destroy sensitive parts like optics. Few survived. Among those who did was a PFC from an annihilated howitzer unit, ordered to drive one of the few surviving vehicles, a Dodge sedan loaded with seriously wounded men, eastward to safety during the night. Near a Holsten River bridge he encountered Soviet sentries. The driver hesitated, then honked his horn, and the guards saluted as the sedan sped past. With water supplies exhausted and unable to reach the Halha or Holsten Rivers, the commander of the easternmost enclave ordered his men to drain radiator water from their vehicles. Drinking the foul liquid, at the cost of immobilizing their remaining transport, signaled that the defenders believed their situation was hopeless. On Aug 27 the rest of the Japanese 7th Division, two fresh infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, and support units totaling barely 5,000 men—reached the northeastern segment of the ring around Komatsubara. One day of hard fighting revealed they lacked the strength to break the encirclement. General Ogisu ordered the 7th Division to pull back and redeploy near his own 6th Army headquarters, about 4 miles east of Nomonhan and the border claimed by the enemy. There would be no outside relief for Komatsubara's forces. Throughout Aug 27–28, Soviet aircraft, artillery, armor, and infantry pounded the three Japanese pockets, compressing them into ever-smaller pockets and grinding them down. The surrounded Japanese fought fiercely and inflicted heavy casualties, but the outcome was inevitable. After the remaining Japanese artillery batteries were silenced, Soviet tanks ruled the battlefield. One by one, major pockets were overrun. Some smaller groups managed to slip through Soviet lines and reach safety east of the border claimed by the MPR, where they were left unmolested by the Red Army. Elements of Potapov's 57th and 82nd Divisions eliminated the last remnants of resistance south of the Holsten by the evening of Aug 27. North of the Holsten, during the night of Aug 28–29, a group of about 400 Japanese tried to slip east through the Soviet lines along the riverbank. They were spotted by the 293rd Regiment (57th Division), which struck them. The fleeing Japanese refused to surrender and were wiped out attempting to recross the Holsten.   Japanese soldiers' refusal to surrender is well documented. Surrender was considered dishonorable; the Army Field Manual was silent on surrender. For officers, death was not merely preferable to surrender; it was expected, and in some cases required. The penal code (1908, not revised until 1942) stated that surrender was dereliction of duty; if a commander did his best to resist, imprisonment could follow; if not, death. Stemming from Bushido, regimental colors were treated as sacred. On the afternoon of Aug 28, with much of his 64th Regiment destroyed, Colonel Yamagata saw no alternative but to burn the regimental colors and then commit suicide. Part of the flagpole had been shattered; the chrysanthemum crest damaged. Yamagata, Colonel Ise (artillery regimental commander), an infantry captain, a medical lieutenant, and a foot soldier—the last survivors of the headquarters unit—faced east, shouted "banzai" for the emperor, drenched the pennant in gasoline, and lit it. Yamagata, Ise, and the captain then shot themselves. The flag and crest were not entirely consumed, and the unburned remnants were buried beneath Yamagata's unmarked body. The medical officer and the soldier escaped and reported these rites to 6th Army HQ, where the deaths of the two colonels were mourned, but there was concern over whether the regimental colors had been entirely destroyed. On Aug 29, Lieutenant Colonel Higashi Muneharu, who had taken command of the 71st Regiment, faced the same dilemma. The regimental standard was broken into four pieces and, with the flag and chrysanthemum crest, drenched with fuel and set on fire. The fire kept going out, and the tassels were especially hard to burn. It took 45 minutes to finish the job, all under enemy fire. Afterward, Higashi urged all able to join him in a suicide charge, and the severely wounded to "kill themselves bravely when the enemy approached." Soviet machine-gun fire and grenades felled Higashi and his followers within moments. When it became clear on Aug 29 that all hope was lost, Komatsubara resolved to share the fate of his 23rd Division. He prepared to commit suicide, entrusted his will to his aide, removed his epaulets, and burned his code books. General Ogisu ordered Komatsubara to save himself and lead as many of his men as possible out of the encirclement. Shortly before midnight on Aug 30, the bulk of the Soviet armor briefly pulled back to refuel and resupply. Some of the Soviet infantry also pulled back. Komatsubara and about 400 survivors of his command used the opportunity to slip through the Soviet lines, guiding wounded by starlight to safety at Chiangchunmiao on the morning of Aug 31. Tsuji was among the survivors. In transit, Komatsubara was so distraught he needed to be restrained from taking his own life. A fellow officer took his pistol, and two sturdy corporals helped to support him, preventing him from drawing his sword. On August 31, Zhukov declared the disputed territory between the Halha River and the boundary line through Nomonhan cleared of enemy troops. The Sixth Army had been annihilated, with between 18,000 and 23,000 men killed or wounded from May to September (not counting Manchukuoan losses). The casualty rate in Komatsubara's 23rd Division reached 76%, and Sumi's 26th Regiment (7th Division) suffered 91% casualties. Kwantung Army lost many of its tanks and heavy guns and nearly 150 aircraft. It was the worst military defeat in modern Japanese history up to that time. Soviet claims later put total Japanese casualties at over 50,000, though this figure is widely regarded as inflated. For years, Soviet-MPR authorities claimed 9,284 casualties, surely an underestimate. A detailed unit-by-unit accounting published in Moscow in 2002 put Soviet losses at 25,655 (9,703 killed, 15,952 wounded), plus 556 MPR casualties. While Soviet casualties may have exceeded Japanese losses, this reflects the fierceness of Japanese defense and questions Zhukov's expenditutre of blood. There was no denying, however, that the Red Army demonstrated substantial strength and that Kwantung Army suffered a serious defeat. Knowledgeable Japanese and Soviet sources agree that given the annihilation of Komatsubara's forces and the dominance of Soviet air power, if Zhukov had pressed beyond Nomonhan toward Hailar, local Japanese forces would have fallen into chaos, Hailar would have fallen, and western Manchuria would have been gravely threatened. But while that might have been militarily possible, Moscow did not intend it. Zhukov's First Army Group halted at the boundary line claimed by the MPR. A Japanese military historian notes that "Kwantung Army completely lost its head." KwAHQ was enraged by the battlefield developments. Beyond the mauling of the Sixth Army at Nomonhan, there was anxiety over regimental colors. It was feared that Colonel Yamagata might not have had time to destroy the imperial crest of the 64th Regiment's colors, which could have fallen into Soviet hands. Thousands of dead and wounded littered the field. To preserve "face" and regain leverage, a swift, decisive counterstroke was deemed necessary. At Hsinking, they decided on an all-out war against the USSR. They planned to throw the 7th, 2nd, 4th, and 8th Divisions into the Sixth Army, along with all heavy artillery in Manchukuo, to crush the enemy. Acknowledging shortages in armor, artillery, and air power, they drafted a plan for a series of successive night offenses beginning on September 10. This was viewed as ill-advised for several reasons: September 10 was an unrealistic target given Kwantung Army's limited logistical capacity; it was unclear what the Red Army would be doing by day, given its superiority in tanks, artillery, and air power; autumn would bring extreme cold that could immobilize forces; and Germany's alliance with the Soviet Union isolated Japan diplomatically. These factors were known at KwAHQ, yet the plan proceeded. Kwantung Army notified AGS to "utilize the winter months well," aiming to mobilize the entire Japanese Army for a decisive spring confrontation. However, the Nomonhan defeat coincided with the Hitler-Stalin pact's diplomatic fallout. The push for close military cooperation with Germany against the Soviet Union was discredited in a single week. Defeated and abandoned by Hitler, pro-German, anti-Soviet policy advocates in Tokyo were furious. Premier Hiranuma Kiichiro's government resigned on August 28. In response, more cautious voices in Tokyo asserted control. General Nakajima, deputy chief of AGS, went to Hsinking with Imperial Order 343, directing Kwantung Army to hold near the disputed frontier with "minimal strength" to enable a quick end to hostilities and a diplomatic settlement. But at KwAHQ, the staff pressed their case, and Nakajima eventually approved a general offensive to begin on September 10. The mood at KwAHQ was ebullient. Upon returning to Tokyo, Nakajima was sternly rebuked and ordered to stand down. General Ueda appealed to higher authority, requesting permission to clear the battlefield and recover the bodies of fallen soldiers. He was denied and later relieved of command on September 6. A reshuffle followed at KwAHQ, with several senior officers reassigned. The Japanese Foreign Ministry directed Ambassador Togo Shigenori to negotiate a settlement in Moscow. The Molotov-Togo agreement was reached on September 15–16, establishing a temporary frontier and a commission to redemarcate the boundary. The local cease-fire arrangements were formalized on September 18–19, and both sides agreed to exchange prisoners and corpses. In the aftermath, Kwantung Army leadership and the Red Army leadership maintained tight control over communications about the conflict. News of the defeat spread through Manchuria and Japan, but the scale of the battle was not fully suppressed. The Kwantung Army's reputation suffered further from subsequent punishments of officers deemed to have mishandled the Nomonhan engagement. Several officers were compelled to retire or commit suicide under pressure, and Ioki's fate became a particular symbol of the army's dishonor and the heavy costs of the campaign. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. In August 1939, Soviet General Georgy Zhukov launched a decisive offensive against Japanese forces at Nomonhan. Under cover of darkness, Soviet troops crossed the Halha River, unleashing massive air and artillery barrages on August 20. Fierce fighting ensued, with failed Japanese counterattacks, the fall of Fui Heights, and annihilation of encircled pockets by Soviet tanks and infantry. 

Born in Poland, raised in New Jersey, and now rooted in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, Ania Fiduccia is a storyteller, community builder, and champion for women in transition. She is a Wine Educator with ONEHOPE Wine, Managing Director of Polka Dot Powerhouse – Lehigh Valley, and the creator of The Bloom Project, where she guides women through life's shifts with compassion, courage, and connection. Whether she's leading retreats, facilitating workshops, or pouring a glass of wine, Ania creates spaces where people feel seen, supported, and inspired to grow. A proud mom to her son Ryan, she brings heart to everything she does, reminding us that we are allowed to change, to evolve, and to bloom into who we are becoming.Ania Fiduccia!Website – https://www.aniafiduccia.com/Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/aniafiducciaInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/ania_fiduccia/LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniafiduccia/The Bloom Project – https://www.amazon.com/BLOOM-PROJECT-Yourself-Healing-Becoming/dp/B0G54DFQ7XAnne Zuckerman! Website -- https://annezuckerman.com/ Website -- https://justwantedtoask.com/Facebook -- https://www.facebook.com/AnneInPinkInstagram -- https://www.instagram.com/annezuckerman/LinkedIn -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/annezuckerman/Bezi Woman -- https://beziwoman.com/ | https://www.beziwoman.shop/two-step-order1591558404525Bezi Bra Discs - Facebook -- https://www.facebook.com/bezibradiscs

Send a textStart with a helmet-required skyrace where five to six hours at altitude is just the warm-up, then jump to an Olympic mixed relay finish decided by seconds. That's the energy we ride as we unpack a month that felt like a full season: Four Refugios fireworks, Anna Gibson and Cam Smith nearly nabbing a medal, and a Black Canyon weekend that proved how fast trail running has become.We break down why Kelly McChrystal's course record matters beyond a single win—technical fluency, risk management, and South American depth are resetting expectations. Then we relive the Olympic sprint-to-relay arc and ask the big what-if: how would a vertical event tip the podium toward pure uphill specialists? Back in Arizona, we parse the 50K and 100K storylines—from late-race surges to course record composure—and talk honestly about why road stars can shake up the field yet still face a different sport on dirt: downhill economy, fueling on uneven terrain, and heat pacing.The business side hits just as hard. We map free agency moves—Grayson Murphy and Joseph Gray's open lanes, Arc'teryx landing Jane Moss and Kyle Richardson, Nike ACG adding Jennifer Lichter—and what they signal about team-building and athlete value. Then we translate the alphabet soup of series into plain English: Golden Trail now counts four best results plus a heavyweight final, adds segment points and team rankings; Skyrunner splits red vs white races to concentrate elite matchups; WRMA World Cup rewards volume and brings the strongest governance and testing. If you're choosing a calendar, we outline how travel, recovery, and points interact so you can peak where it pays.We also debut two fresh mountain tests: Cirque Series Jay Peak in Vermont and Mount Baldy in Southern California, creating a true coast-to-coast arc from June to October. Finally, we detail US selections for WRMA finals in Quebec and Poland, and how athletes can thread series goals with national team ambitions without burning matches too early. Tap play for strategy, results, and a candid look at where short trail running is headed this year—then tell us what you'd race and why. If you're into smart training, bold racing, and real talk on contracts and points, hit follow, share with a friend, and drop a review with your biggest takeaway.Follow Rachel on IG ! - @rachrunsworldFollow James on IG - @jameslauriello Follow the Steep Stuff Podcast on IG - @steepstuff_pod

Today on Beating Cancer Daily, Saranne unveils the heartwarming and creative concept of "Stones of Happiness." Having conquered Stage IV cancer, Saranne deeply values the power of spreading joy and positivity. Inspired by a unique initiative from a library in Poland, she explains how painting and sharing personalized stones can bring unexpected happiness to others. Listen as she details the therapeutic benefits of this project and offers rock-themed humor to lighten the mood. Get inspired to spread love and compassion one stone at a time as we continue our journey of beating cancer daily together.2025 People's Choice Podcast Awards Best Health Series FinalistRanked the Top 5 Best Cancer Podcasts by CancerCare News in 2024 & 2025,and #1 Rated Cancer Survivor Podcast by FeedSpot in 2024 to 2025. Beating Cancer Daily is listened to in 140 countries across 7 continents and features over 400 original daily episodes hosted by Stage IV survivor Saranne Rothberg. To learn more about Host Saranne Rothberg and The ComedyCures Foundation:https://www.comedycures.org/ To write to Saranne or a guest:https://www.comedycures.org/contact-8 To record a message to Saranne or a guest:https://www.speakpipe.com/BCD_Comments_Suggestions To sign up for the free Health Builder Series live on Zoom with Saranne and Jacqui, go to The ComedyCures Foundation's homepage:https://www.comedycures.org/ Please support the creation of more original episodes of Beating Cancer Daily and other free ComedyCures Foundation programs with a tax-deductible contribution:http://bit.ly/ComedyCuresDonate THANK YOU! Please tell a friend whom we may help, and please support us with a beautiful review. Have a blessed day! Saranne

A conversation with Dr. Dariusz Jaskólski

Send a textWe love to say, “If I'd been around in the 1930s, I would have stopped Hitler early.” We curse the people who appeased him, who let him tear up treaties, who watched him send a few battalions into the Rhineland in 1936 and did nothing while his army was still relatively weak. We sit here with perfect hindsight and ask, “Why didn't somebody move when the cost was still low, before the tanks rolled into Poland and France and Russia and the death camps lit up Europe?”Well, we have our own modern day similar decisions.  And Iran may be one.  It is complex.  I explore the decision to attack Iran with hindsight from Hitler, the Iraw wars, note that is plural, and Gunsmoke.

In this explosive Chicks on the Right interview, Jewish activist and PragerU host Shabbos Kestenbaum breaks down the controversy surrounding Carrie Prejean Boller (Candace Owens' close ally) at President Trump's White House Religious Liberties Commission. Kestenbaum, who testified on American religious discrimination, reveals how Boller derailed an antisemitism hearing by fixating on Israel, wearing a Palestine pin, and coordinating via text with a Palestinian activist—leading to her removal from the commission.He exposes "Israel Derangement Syndrome" in figures like Tucker Carlson, who obsesses over Gaza while ignoring U.S. domestic issues, and critiques how grifters profit from anti-Jewish narratives targeting young conservatives. Kestenbaum discusses rising antisemitism on campuses, the importance of prosecuting real crimes (not speech), his altruistic kidney donation to a stranger, potential future congressional run, and why true conservatism rejects conspiracy theories.Plus, heartfelt moments on faith, Poland as America's ally in Europe, and why religious liberty must focus on American lives—not foreign conflicts.Subscribe and stay tuned for new episodes every weekday!Follow us here for more daily clips, updates, and commentary:YoutubeFacebookInstagramTikTokXLocalsMore InfoWebsite

One of the most influential rabbinical and chassidic leaders of central Poland in the 19th century, Rav Avraham of Chechenov (1784-1875) served as a rabbi of Chechenov for 55 years, while also playing an important role in the development of the chassidic movement in Poland. His descendants founded the prominent Strikov dynasty, among others, and served in crucial roles during challenging times facing Polish Jewry. Subscribe to Jewish History Soundbites Podcast on: PodBean: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/ or your favorite podcast platform Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram at @Jsoundbites For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history or feedback contact Yehuda at: yehuda@yehudageberer.com

Adriana Ross was one of Jeffrey Epstein's key assistants, part of the so-called “inner circle” of women who helped manage his trafficking operation. A former model from Poland, Ross became deeply embedded in Epstein's day-to-day activities, reportedly handling logistics for his properties, coordinating travel, and preparing rooms at his Palm Beach estate before and after victim encounters. She was also known to have removed computers from Epstein's Florida home ahead of a 2005 police raid, suggesting a clear role in obstructing justice and covering Epstein's tracks.Despite her close involvement and the fact that she was repeatedly named in legal documents, Ross has never been criminally charged. She invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned under oath and has remained largely out of the public spotlight since. Her ability to disappear into private life while survivors continue to suffer underscores the broader failure of the justice system, which allowed Epstein's most loyal facilitators to slip through the cracks. Ross wasn't a bystander—she was an active participant in the machinery of exploitation. And like the rest of Epstein's inner circle, she was protected by a system that preferred silence over accountability.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:Epstein 'scheduler' Adriana Ross dodges questions about his sick past while fleeing Florida church | Daily Mail Online

What if the dream feels “too big” because you haven't built the capacity to hold it yet? What if success isn't missing you—but waiting for you to feel safe enough to receive it?  This week, Jessica sits down with actress Karolina Wydra (Pluribus, Sneaky Pete) to talk about the long game of manifestation. From growing up in communist Poland and internalizing scarcity and suppression, to stepping away from acting at 39 to become a mother, Karolina's story is one of surrender, self-trust, and divine timing. It's a true testimony to something central at TBM: what is meant for you will not miss you. After years of inner work, Karolina landed a life-changing role on Pluribus, fulfilling a longtime manifestation of working with Vince Gilligan. Through EMDR, nervous system regulation, Expanders, journaling, and radical honesty with herself, she shares how subconscious reprogramming helped her release the belief that her dreams were “too big” and instead expand her capacity to receive them. If you've ever feared success as much as failure, this conversation is a reminder that manifestation isn't about forcing—it's about becoming safe enough to hold what you've been calling in. Find the complete show notes here -> https://tobemagnetic.com/expanded-podcast   Resources:  Virtual NYC Speaking Tour + New DI & Journal Prompts Missed the speaking tour? We're bringing our NYC conversation straight to your screen—featuring an intimate dialogue with Lacy, Jessica, Jenna Zoë, and Elizabeth Orrigo, plus the Purpose & Soul Essence Deep Imagining and guided journal prompts.   Return to Magic - 15 Day Manifestation Challenge A 15-day guided journey to reparent your inner child, reconnect with your magic, and step into this new year as your most confident, regulated, and magnetic self yet. Join our membership to access! (It's not too late to join in. Start any time!) The Pathway Membership gives you unlimited access to all of our manifestation workshops—including How to Manifest, Unblocking Your Inner Child, Shadow, Love, Money, Rock Bottoms, Ruts, and Energetic Updates —plus 70+ self-hypnosis tracks designed to unlock your full potential. LEARN MORE HERE   Get the latest from TBM Join the Pathway now - Return to Magic Challenge available now!   New to TBM? Free Offerings to Get You Started Learn the Process! Expanded Podcast - How to Manifest Anything You Desire  Get Expanded! The Motivation - Testimonial Library Ready to find out what's holding you back? Try our Free Clarity Exercise   Be an EXPANDER! Share Your Manifestation Story Submit to Be a Process Guest What did you manifest during the Return to Magic Challenge? Share a voice note of your question, block, or Process to be featured in an episode!   This Episode Is Brought to You By:  Cozy Earth - go to cozyearth.com use code TBM for up to 20% off. Cuddle blanket Bamboo pajama set   In this episode we talk about: Why manifestation requires nervous system regulation Fear of success vs. fear of failure—and how both can block expansion Growing up in communist Poland and how scarcity imprints shape identity The first “expander” moment that reshaped her concept of possibility Why surrender cannot be faked—and what it actually feels like in the body EMDR as a tool for clearing subconscious blocks before big breakthroughs Divine timing and how past work (like working with Bryan Cranston) come full circle Walking away from acting at 39 to become a mother—and why that made space for more The importance of being “right-sized”—neither ego-driven nor self-diminishing Journaling and dreamwork as subconscious access points Playing a spiritually elevated character and how it healed her personally Why community and accountability partners accelerate manifestation   Mentioned In the Episode:  Expanded x Ep. 202 - EXPLAINED Unblocking with EMDR Therapist Janelle Nelson Expanded x Ep. 384 - How to Feel Safe, Trust, and Have Healthy Boundaries: Inner Child Healing Part 1 Expanded x Ep. 340 -  How To Find Pockets Of Safety When Things Feel Uncertain Watch our full-length video episodes on Youtube! Find our Return to Magic Challenge plus all our workshops and all workshops mentioned inside our Pathway Membership! (Including the Authentic Code Exercise, NYC Speaking Tour Session, Purpose And Soul's Essence DI)   Connect with Karolina! Karolina on IG   Connect with Janelle! Janelle Nelson, EMDR & MFT Therapist Book an Unblocking session or Intensive w Janelle HOW TO MANIFEST by Lacy Phillips (with exercises by Jessica Gill)Available now! The Expanded Podcast, from To Be Magnetic™ (TBM), is the leading manifestation podcast rooted in neuroscience, psychology, and energetics. Hosted by TBM's Chief Content Officer Jessica Gill, with monthly appearances from founder Lacy Phillips, Expanded is where science and the mystical meet to help you manifest in the most grounded, practical, and life-changing way.At TBM, we've redefined manifestation through Neural Manifestation™—our proven, science-backed method developed with neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart. This process helps you reprogram limiting beliefs at the subconscious level so you can create the life most aligned with your authenticity.Each week, we take you inside the TBM practice to help you expand your subconscious to believe what you desire is possible. Through expert interviews, thought leader conversations, TBM teachings, and real member success stories, you'll learn how to: – Rewire your subconscious mind and step into your worth – Heal your inner child and integrate shadow work – Set boundaries, strengthen intuition, and reclaim self-worth – Manifest relationships, careers, abundance, and experiences that align with your true selfWith over than 40 million downloads and a global community in over 100 countries, Expanded has become the gold standard in manifestation content. Think of it as your weekly practice for expanding your mind, believing what you want is possible, and manifesting the life you're meant to live.Past guests include leading voices such as Mel Robbins, Lewis Howes, Jenna Zoe, Martha Beck, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Gabor Maté, Mark Groves, and Brianna Wiest. Where To Find Us!@tobemagnetic (IG)@LacyannephillipsLacy Launched a Substack! - By Candlelight - Join Here@Jessicaashleygill@tobemagnetic (youtube)@expandedpodcast

In episode 256 of Talk Eastern Europe, hosts Adam,Alexander and Nina mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine with a heavy week of reflections – as well as some other news from the region. They discuss ongoing protest movements across the Balkans (includingfresh demonstrations in Bosnia and Herzegovina following a deadly tram derailment), tensions in Serbia, and what these cycles of civic anger say about corruption and accountability.The episode then features an interview with Nedim Useinow - a Crimean Tatar originally from Crimea and now a program manager with the German Marshall Fund. Adam and Nedim discuss where the war stands after four years, why current “peace talks” feel hollow, what occupation has meant for Crimea and Crimean Tatars, and how Ukrainians' resilience has shifted from shock to long-term adaptation. The conversation also touches on Poland's evolving public mood, disinformation, and why continued support for Ukraine still matters for European security.Read online: “Tortured into confession. The plight of Ukrainian prisoners of war” https://neweasterneurope.eu/2026/02/24/tortured-into-confession-the-plight-of-ukrainian-prisoners-of-war/Listen to Part 1 of this series here - https://talkeasterneurope.eu/episodes/ukraine-four-years-of-resistance-part-1-mobilizing-empathy-for-stolen-children

In EVN Report's news roundup for the week of February 27: The EU to deploy a rapid response team to Armenia to help counter Russian interference ahead of parliamentary elections; Armenia and Poland sign a new defense cooperation agreement; Armenia's Defense Minister meets senior Iranian officials as U.S.–Iran tensions rise and more.

Today is National Strawberry Day, and in Poland, one of the foods that goes best with strawberries is pasta. Plus: starting today in Wabasha, Minnesota, it's the Grumpy Old Men Festival. Strawberry Spaghetti Is The Sweet Polish Pasta You Need To Try (Mashed)GRUMPY OLD MEN FESTIVAL It would be sweet for you to join our community of supporters on Patreon

Five Eyes flags active exploitation of Cisco SD-WAN flaws. Ransomware incidents surge, but fewer victims are paying. The FTC eases its stance on COPPA to encourage age verification. Authorities in Poland and Germany charge 11 in a Facebook credential harvesting scheme. Top UK news outlets unite on AI licensing standards, as the UK touts gains in cyber resilience. Researchers say a hacker abused Anthropic's Claude to breach Mexican government networks. Gamers revolt over AI in game development. On our Industry Voices, we are joined by Linda Gray Martin, Chief of Staff and SVP, and Britta Glade, SVP of Content and Communities, from RSAC sharing what is new at RSAC 2026. In Moscow, a man is accused of impersonating an FSB officer to shake down the Conti ransomware gang.  Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Today on our Industry Voices, we are joined by Linda Gray Martin, Chief of Staff and SVP, and Britta Glade, SVP of Content and Communities, from RSAC sharing what is new at RSAC 2026. Selected Reading Cisco SD-WAN Is Actively Exploited by UAT-8616, Five Eyes Alliance Agencies Issue Warning (TechNadu) Ransomware payments dropped in 2025 as attack numbers reached record levels: Chainalysis (The Record) FTC Softens Enforcement of Rule Protecting Children Online, Ostensibly to Protect Children Online (Gizmodo) Poland Cybercrime Unit Uncovers Scheme Stealing 100,000 Facebook Logins (The 420) UK news giants form 'NATO for news' group to control AI scraping (Press Gazette) Government cuts cyber-attack fix times by 84% and launches new profession to protect public services (GOV.UK) Hacker Used Anthropic's Claude to Steal Sensitive Mexican Data (Bloomberg) AI Mistakes Are Infuriating Gamers as Developers Seek Savings (Bloomberg) Moscow man accused of posing as FSB officer to extort Conti ransomware gang (The Record) AIs can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations (New Scientist) Share your feedback. What do you think about CyberWire Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. Want to hear your company in the show? N2K CyberWire helps you reach the industry's most influential leaders and operators, while building visibility, authority, and connectivity across the cybersecurity community. Learn more at sponsor.thecyberwire.com. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[00:30] Germany Cozies Up to China (30 minutes) German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited China for the first time this week, focusing on developing a “strategic partnership” with the high-tech and economically powerful nation. [30:40] European Militarization (27 minutes) Germany is rapidly militarizing and pushing other nations to increase their defense spending. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland have formed the E6, a power bloc of EU member nations focused on quick action.

Lesley Logan and Brad Crowell unpack insights from Brad Walsh, founder of the Empowerography Podcast. In this recap, they reflect on the transformative power of boudoir photography and how seeing yourself in a new light can change how you think, feel, and show up. This conversation digs into resilience, authenticity, and why sharing your story might be the very thing that helps someone else keep going. If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co mailto:beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/#follow-subscribe-free.In this episode you will learn about:Boudoir photography helps women see themselves differently.Why resilience is the courage to keep rising.The importance of sharing experiences to inspire others.Why true authenticity requires dropping the mask of perfection.How trusting your path frees you from fear of missing out.Episode References/Links:Agency MINI Waitlist - https://prfit.biz/miniPoland Contrology Pilates Conference - xxll.co/polandVintage Friends & Contrology Brussels - xxll.co/brusselsPilates On Tour® London - https://xxll.co/potOPC Spring Training - How to Get Overhead - https://opc.me/eventsEmpowerography Podcast - https://empowerographypodcast.comEmpowerography Podcast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/empowerographypodcastBrad Walsh LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradwalsh70Brad Walsh Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/brad.walsh.56Empowerography Live Conference 2026 - https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1D7QAc3hFx If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gLesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQProfitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gFacebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilatesLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Lesley Logan 0:00  He said when they see who they truly are and how they're captured, they leave a completely different woman. And there's not enough words, he said, to encapsulate the power in that as a photographer. Lesley Logan 0:09  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.  Lesley Logan 0:53  Welcome back to the Be It Till You See It interview recap where my co-host in life, Brad, and I are going to dig into the powerful convo I have with another Brad. Brad Walsh. Brad Crowell 0:55  Another Brad. Lesley Logan 0:55  In our last episode. If you haven't yet listened to that interview, then actually listen to this one. You should go back and listen that one. It's pretty good. I liked it. Brad Crowell 1:05  That's a great interview. It was, I'm not gonna lie you, you spoke my thoughts out loud. Lesley Logan 1:10  I did? Brad Crowell 1:11  Yes. Like. Lesley Logan 1:12  Did I say that I have to say Brad's thoughts? Brad Crowell 1:14  No, but two. There's another comment I can't remember. It'll come back to me. But you know when, when I heard you introduce Brad Walsh as someone who is entirely devoted to platforming and empowering women, I was like, a man is doing that? Okay, okay. I was like, I guess, I guess I'm I didn't even know. I was dubious and a little curious and then encouraged and excited at by the end. So, yes, it's great.Lesley Logan 1:45  Turns out you can be really successful if you platform women. Turns out. Brad Crowell 1:50  How about that? Lesley Logan 1:51  Yeah, it turns out there's, there's things like, there's like, good things that happen when you do that.Brad Crowell 1:55  You did mention that you had similar thoughts to him, and I was laughing, because I was like, okay, I'm not alone. Lesley Logan 1:59  Yeah. I'm intrigued. Well, we'll get into that in just a second. But first today is February 26th 2026 and it's Black Lives Matter Day. Black Lives Matter Day is celebrated annually on February 26th in remembrance of Trayvon Martin, an African American teen who was killed by a white American out of hatred. The acquittal of the killer, George Zimmerman, from the murder charge and is roaming free, caused a wave of widespread anger, which led to nationwide campaigns centered around fairness and justice for black people. Black Lives Matter is a chant against systemic racial discrimination which has shaped and increased the risk of violence towards black people. Join in the movement to end discrimination, declare equality for all.Brad Crowell 2:39  Yeah. So one of the things that I wanted to address is we're obviously not black. However, we have heard a lot of people who are not black say, well, what about white people? Or what about other, you know, people as well? Shouldn't we be focusing on them as much as we are focusing on black people? And ultimately, I would say Black Lives Matter does not say other lives don't matter. But what Black Lives Matter is saying is that there is a historical, documented like systematic approach against that has not given the same opportunities in our society, in our in the United States of America, to black people, whereas it has favored, white people. Lesley Logan 3:37  Oh one thing and I heard that I heard this in 2020 and I'll share it here. It doesn't mean you didn't have to swim uphill, it just meant that you had a paddle, it just means that, like, you could have had a hard life but there, the research is there, even if your family came here like mine did in the 1912 all this stuff, the research is, is, is very much there, the status are there that because after slavery, we didn't, we did not treat black people the same as white people, the wealth that their families could pass down, which whether or not you got any money, because I didn't either whether doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that you that there was less opportunity for their generations of families to have options. And there's actually a black family, a guy who was able to buy slaves, the black man who was able to buy his family as slaves. And so then when when slavery ended, there was this whole, basically reparations for the slave owners. And so he was given money for the slaves that he lost, and you can see his family and the generations that came from his family, and how different their lives were compared to other black people and so especially as we're watching this right now where brown people are being targeted in an insane way, black and brown people, but we're seeing a lot of it with brown people because of ICE. I'm just gonna say who it is, because of that. The reality is, is because.Brad Crowell 5:02  Because of ICE directed it by, you know, Stephen Miller and our president.Lesley Logan 5:06  And our president and his vice president, we're gonna add in there. Because some people think if we just got rid of Trump at life would be better. No, you'll still have a shit sandwich. So the reality is, because we've never had Black Lives Matter, we are all being affected. All every other color is going to have a hard time. And by the way, white people, you are too, your life is not going to get easier because they got rid of some brown people, or they only pull over black people. You're this is a community.Brad Crowell 5:32  But I want to go back to this. I agree with the things that you're saying, but I want to go back to this by saying let white lives matter too. We're actually sidestepping the issue. And that's the problem. The problem is not that white lives don't matter. That's not what we're saying, and that's not what you know, that's not what, when someone says Black Lives Matter, they're not saying white lives don't matter too. But what they but when we say white lives matter too, we're we're just derailing the conversation away from the fact that there has been systemic oppression of people in our society for 400 years, right?Lesley Logan 6:05  And also, by the way, if you vote for the people of color who are different than you, you benefit too. By the way, if you've not, I'm not saying vote for people of color. I'm saying if you vote for the people who will represent the people of the least of these, you will benefit. You'll benefit in so many different ways.Brad Crowell 6:20  But here's the thing, that, yes, that you will absolutely benefit when there is, like, cultural and systemic racism against a particular group, it almost empowers violence towards that group, and that is where the that's where everyone got really, really frustrated with this murderer who was literally set free, you know, and, and I couldn't agree more, you know, it's, it's, it's wrong.Lesley Logan 6:50  It's just fucked up. I mean, to be honest, the whole thing that he stood on, that law that he stood on, is stupid, and it's in several different states, and people and like kids have been killed since then because they knocked on the wrong door. A black kid last year knocked on the wrong door looking to pick up his brothers, and they shot him because he's a black kid at their door. Like, what the, I'm sorry, that is infuriating. And we, we are not done. And I think, like, we got past 2020. Brad Crowell 7:18  It's like a mix of fear and racism and the fact that they're ever like. Lesley Logan 7:21  But they're, I won't even give them warrant over fear they're fucked up. Like, come on, I'm sorry.Brad Crowell 7:26  Like their bread fear is like, spued into their life.Lesley Logan 7:31  Right, I guess. But also like, we live in a world where you can curate your own algorithm and and these people are not taking the time to even, like, think about somebody else's experience at all, just their own, and they're so self-centered, and then they vote for people who lie to them and use them and use fear to use them. And now look where we're at. People are dying, and they're like, but my life still sucks. Yeah, it does. You voted for people who made sure it fucking sucked. And I am just like, the guns are the fucking problem. And then we have to. We voted we got rid of Trump the first time. We're like, oh, good. All this stuff is better. No, it's not. The Democrats didn't work fucking fast enough. And now we're here in this place of shit where black people still don't have the rights that white people do, and now brown people are being attacked in crazy ways. And by the way, like, if you're so concerned with, like, immigrants and crime. Like last year, immigrants killed three people, and ISIS killed 33 people from the stats that I just looked at. So like, I just think that, like, there's things that we could be taking into perspective, and it requires us to be more considerate of people who look different than us, and also fighting for their rights, because it will help yours. Anyways, end of rant. And by the way, that's a long conversation that we were like trying to get out. So if we like, that's something a little weird forgiveness, because we're all growing. We're all learning. You get amped up. Lesley Logan 8:50  So anyways, I want to get into what's going on. We just wrapped up Agency Mini last week, and so you missed it. Brad Crowell 9:02  Congratulations, it's over. Lesley Logan 8:57  Congratulations. You can't get on the waitlist, but you can get on the waitlist for the next one. We will do one more this year, prfit.biz/mini prfit.biz/mini that's profit without the O and it is for Pilates instructors and studio owners who work for themselves or want to so highly recommend it. Now we're getting up and we're gearing. We're gearing. We're gearing up and getting ready because we will be gone for an entire month in Europe. Brad and I, we're not taking Bayon on this trip. On this trip, and so we'll be first in Poland at the Controlology Conference to Contrology Pilates Conference in Wroclaw with Karen Frischmann, xxll.co/poland you can come from anywhere to go to that. Karen and I speak in English, and it will be translated into Polish. So if you can do either of those languages, that conference is for you. And then after that, Brad, Karen and I are going to go to the Contrology. We're going to Brussels to Pilatels like Vintage Pilates and friends. Ignacio is going to be there. El is the owner. She's going to be there. The four of us are gonna be teaching workshops and classes. It's gonna be a long, fun filled days. I promise these are something you don't wanna miss. Els really throws a party with these xxll.co/brussels, and I guess we're gonna be like in Bruges. So that's really cool. Don't quote me. It's all on the site. Just go there. Brad Crowell 9:02  Sounds fun. Lesley Logan 9:02  We have a lot of eLevate and other people that we know are going to that one. So it's gonna be a really fun party. And then after our second honeymoon, which your recommendations for things to do between Brussels and Paris that get us to London are welcomed, because we're going to take that train. I think, hopefully we can. That's the plan. We clearly haven't looked up anything. I just heard you can go from Paris to London, so that's what we're going to do. But you can join us at POT London. My Saturday workshop is filled, but there is a few spots left in the Sunday workshop that I'm teaching, but you should come to any of the workshops, because there's some excellent presenters at the POT in London, xxll.co/pot. By the way, that link will take you to all the POTs that Balanced Body is doing right now. Right now the only one on that schedule that I'm going to be at is POT London. We will have a booth at a couple others, but if you want to take workshop from me in Europe, you've got three weekend options, and that is it for at least a year, maybe two. So check it out xxll.co/pot, and then we come home, we're gonna get ready for spring training. Brad Crowell 11:16  Yeah, really looking forward to it. This year we're gonna change it up. Lesley Logan 11:19  How to get overhead. Brad Crowell 11:20  How to get overhead. So last year's spring training was so fun. We had people join us from all over the world. We had teachers join us from all over the globe, all the OPC teachers, and it was a big party. And we were digging into, well, each year we're digging into a different topic. So this year's topic is how to get overhead. And I know we kind of said this last week on the pod. But you don't have to be able to get overhead right to come learn. Lesley Logan 11:46  I don't like that. It's not have to get overhead, it's a how to. It's really finding your own version of overhead exercises. It's really just, you're here to find your own and that's what Pilates is making your own personal practice practice. It's called Contrology, the study of control. Not controlled.Brad Crowell 12:02  Yeah, not controlled. So come join us. Go to opc.me/events opc.me/events to grab a spot on the waitlist so that you're gonna be the first one to know when we do that in May. Before we get into this great interview with Brad, let's dig into this question. So on YouTube, @wanderlustonwheels asks, I would love to see recommendations for us perimenopausal ladies on the Cadillac. I am also hyper mobile, so I can't really do any mat work without fabricating and crunching my joints and pinching my nerves. I always end up with neck cranks that keep me from sleeping when I do mat work. So this is like multiple things rolled up into one. Lesley Logan 12:45  Yeah, I'm gonna keep it tight, because I appreciate your question about perimenopausal exercises on the Cadillac. And unfortunately, the way that Pilates has been changed, in some ways, is that people think I need to know this type of exercise for this piece of equipment, but really it's a system. And actually all Pilates is available to any perimenopausal woman on any piece of equipment. So what's cool about Pilates is it actually is a low cortisol producing workout, or it should be. And if yours is not, then you're probably not doing Pilates. It's a mind body connective work, and you're not moving super slow or super fast. There's some moments with zest and there's some moment with rhythm. But in in all honesty, most Pilates exercise classes session should actually be low cortisol producing really great for building strength and for getting that mind body connection, which will bring down that cortisol levels. And you should be able to sleep really, really well. So I'm not gonna say which exercises are great for perimenopause, because they all are, but depends on which ones your body needs right now. And that actually has nothing. That has very little to do with perimenopause, and more to do with like, what's going on with your body, the fact that you're hyper mobile, you didn't mention that you have EDS. So if you had EDS, this was a it's a different story, and you should definitely be working. You should really make sure to find an EDS teacher near you, trained teacher near you or online. Because the fact that when you do mat work your nerves are pinched and you have neck cranks makes me actually nervous that you're not doing actual Pilates exercises, and somebody is using the popularity of Pilates to entice you in, because if you're doing Pilates from your center on the mat as a hyper mobile person, the worst case scenario you're going to have is that it's easy. I'm a hyper mobile body, and so it would just feel easy to me because I was just locking my joints out and over stretching things and kind of hanging off of things. But the fact that you're actually having pinched nerves and neck cranks tells me that there's some sort of pressure that's being pulled to you in these exercises.Brad Crowell 14:46  Well, I think, I think, like, okay, so also hypermobile here. And did you know in like, super intense yoga for like, a long time before moving to Vegas and so now I do yoga differently, but before it was like, you know, 3, 4, 5 days a week doing yoga. And I definitely understand the idea of, like, crunching joints and pinching nerves, or I don't understand fabricating. That doesn't mean anything to me. But, you know, just because you can force your body into a shape doesn't mean you're doing it correctly. Lesley Logan 15:18  Well and also, I think that, like, something that you had to learn was that not every cue is for you. And I think sometimes in a class we hear them say something, so we do it in a hyper mobile people, we can keep going like, our end range isn't there, whereas a tighter person would be like, get stuck on something.Brad Crowell 15:35  I mean, look, I you know, I could put my head, my foot behind my head on the first day of class, the very first day, like, and they were like, your yoga practice is amazing. I was like, I'm brand new. What are you talking about? Right? So.Lesley Logan 15:46  And that teacher should have been like, oh, even though you can do that, you should not do that, because you don't know what you're doing.Brad Crowell 15:51  Right. You don't know how to engage your muscles, to protect your body. And that's what, to me, that's what it sounds like here, when you have crunching joints or pinching nerves, like in Pilates, we talk about the five spine shapes. And the spine shape that that you should focus on as a hyper mobile body is tall.Lesley Logan 16:07  Yeah, look at you, Brad. Brad Crowell 16:09  Oh yeah. Lesley Logan 16:10  Look at you. So so @wanderlustonwheels, like, here's the thing, if you were an OPC member and I was you sent in a video of you doing a couple of the mat exercises, just a couple reps, I don't want you to hurt anything, I could actually see what's going on. Without being able to see it just based off what I'm reading, it sounds to me that the person who's teaching the class is not teaching your body. They are teaching a class, and that is hard because it's more accessible for you to go to a class or to watch a YouTube video, but not everything is going to be for you. And so actually learning how to move from your center is going to be key, and that might mean investing in some time or some money to get either an OBC membership or a studio near you, where a teacher can actually look at you and go, oh, that's too high. Oh, that's too much. Or here are these exercises, because the mat work, like I said, as a hypermobile, it should just feel easy, and the fact you're getting hurt, really, like alarm bells are going off for me. Brad Crowell 17:03  There's a second thing I wanted to say on this, and I'm not a physical therapist, but also being a hypermobile body, the best thing that has that I've done for my body in the past five years is lifting weights.Lesley Logan 17:16  Well and, for perimenopausal women, you should be so people who actually do Pilates say I should lift weights. It's not an or it's an and I do both. I lift heavy weights and I do Pilates.Brad Crowell 17:27  Because, because the strength, here's here's where this has been weird for me, because I am, like, super competitive, the guy who wants to be the guy who can, you know, bend over backwards and and, like, you know, touch my toes backwards. I want to be that guy, because if they can do it, so can I. That's how my mentality has always been, and I could do a lot more flexibility things, maybe not properly, but with my hypermobility before I started becoming more strong, but with the strength added, which, you know, has been like, a process over multiple years. My body hurts way less, way less. I can still jack myself up, and I can still be like, oh man, I'm in my lower back right now. I can feel it, you know. But because my, because I've been like, my shoulders don't hurt anymore. They used to. My knees are hurting less they, you know, my back especially has been hurting less, and then, you know, I haven't had neck issues the way that you're describing them. But like, you know, if you strengthen your neck, imagine.Lesley Logan 18:31  Well, that's the thing that people, especially while we're doing that, going back to that spring training with overhead, I ask you, like, what they're nervous about and everyone's afraid of their neck. And I'm like, one, you should be on your neck. And two, your neck should be strong. Most people, like, are so afraid of hurting their neck that they're not actually strengthening their neck anymore, and their necks getting weaker. And so guess what? It's actually gonna you're gonna hurt it just sitting around. So I, I really, like, I feel for people because, like, what if? So what if @wanderlustonwheels, like, can't go to any place, right? What if she, like, doesn't have money or the time, and she like, I get that it's about listening to your body. And really true, like, sometimes you have to film yourself, because if you're looking at someone do something, and then you're trying to make yourself look like them. But then when you actually film yourself, you go, oh, wow, look at how hyperextended or look where my chin is like that could help you or if you can invest in even just some privates, going hey, I need to know these foundational exercises for my body. I need to know these foundational weight training exercises for my body. I'm hyper mobile, then you can I truly believe you can do Pilates on your own once you have those foundations. And that's I wouldn't have created OPC if I didn't think so, and you can train on your own. That's why gyms exist. So at any rate, like also, I just really wonder if the person teaching that mat class is actually teaching real mat Pilates or doing lots of extra reps or something. They might be doing Pilates exercises, but doing a ton of reps, or doing it too fast, or adding heavier weights. I say, like, what? I was like, oh, I want lightweights for a class, right? And I showed up and they're like, the lightest one's worth five pounds each. And I'm like, that's not Pilates. That like that should be in a gym, because Pilates is a one pound weight. So like, sometimes, you know, people want to fill the burn and so, and then studios lean towards that, because that's what I think, is there gonna be money, and what we're not doing is educating people, you know? (inaudible)Brad Crowell 20:12  Thanks for writing in that question. There's a lot there, but, but. Lesley Logan 20:17  We have a great workshop on OPC that Mindy Westfall did about Pilates for hypermobility, so I highly recommend taking a look at that.Brad Crowell 20:24  Yeah, that's a great point and and sorry for interrupting you there. But yes, if you have a question, we want to hear it, so text us 310-905-5534, or you can submit it through beitpod.com/questions beitpod.com/questions where you can leave either a win or a question. So send us some wins, people, we want to celebrate with you. Stick around. We'll be right back. We're going to talk about Brad Walsh. Brad Crowell 20:49  All right, let's talk about Brad Walsh. Brad is the host and founder of the Empower Podcast, a Toronto based platform dedicated to amplifying women's stories and strengthening their voices. A lifelong photographer. He discovered his passion in high school, and later transitioned from a 12 and a half year career as corporate audiovisual technician to full time photography, eventually specializing in boudoir work that helps women see their own strength and beauty. His commitment to women's empowerment is rooted in the example set by his mother and grandmother, whose courage shaped the values behind his work today. Lesley Logan 21:23  Yeah, and some cool women in his life. And we've had one photographer on before, and so I was, I was excited to talk a little bit about boudoir photography with him, because I grew up where a lot of women changed their bodies because of what they thought men would like, and then him being a male boudoir photographer who's like, literally loving everybody as it is and showing them how beautiful they are in their own bodies with these photos. And then then they can see how beautiful they are in those photos. It's fucking cool. I think it's great. Thanks, Brad, for not being a dick, you know, like there are some good men out there. Brad Crowell 21:56  If you haven't listened to his episode just yet, his you know, he shared his story a little bit. His dad left, or his mom left his dad, who was, you know, off cheating on her, basically, when he was 10, and they went through it like they were broke. They got an apartment. Mom slept on the couch, because he also has a brother, and he said, you know, her strength and courage to stand back up after 15 years of marriage and say, I'm done with this abuse. She left with nothing but the clothes on her back. And, you know, and then when she got a job because she needed to, after being out of the workforce for over a decade, grandma helped in, you know, stepped in to help. So, you know, very inspirational story there. And also, like, definitely lays the foundation for why he would be encouraging, you know, women and empowering women. So I appreciated hearing a little bit of that. But what are the what is one of the things that he talked about that you really loved?Lesley Logan 22:54  Well, he said, the gift of her seeing herself for the first time a light she's not used to seeing herself in. He said, like, it's so powerful to be able to give that to another human being and.Brad Crowell 23:03  You're specifically talking about his photography, yeah, boudoir photography.Lesley Logan 23:06  Yeah. He said when they see who they truly are and how they're captured, they leave a completely different woman. And there's not enough words, he said, to encapsulate the power in that as a photographer. I mean, I.Brad Crowell 23:19  His conviction, like, was, was so. Lesley Logan 23:21  Oh yeah, you have to hear it. Brad Crowell 23:22  Yeah, it was. It was very compelling. Because he's like, I don't, I don't have the words to say how much that has impacted me. Lesley Logan 23:28  Yeah. Well, I think, like, first of all, ladies, if you're like, I hate being on camera. I don't have (inaudible) you're the one who fucking needs to have your picture taken. Because, like, I was like, oh my God, we have a photo shoot tomorrow, and I love our photographer, and I love our makeup artist, and so I'm like, it's, I know it's going to be a great time, and it's a long day, like we talked about Brooks Tyler's book last week, and it's like, to be on an eight-hour shoot, you you have to have stamina, endurance, and I really think Adderall would have helped, like, just, just to stay focused right for that many hours. But when you see the photos at the end of the day, you're like, oh my God, I'm fucking stunning. And then you like, wake up the next day without hair and makeup, like, I'm fucking stunning. Like, it just keeps going. So, like, I highly recommend doing it, because it does change how you think about yourself. And when you change how you think about yourself, you change how you act, you change how you act, you change how you be it till you see it. I mean, there's no other way to say it. So what did you love?Brad Crowell 24:25  So I really dug when he was talking about resilience, right? And it stemmed from a conversation about being tired of the word resilient. You know, like, I've been told so many times you're so resilient. Well, I don't want to be resilient anymore. Why do I have to keep being resilient?Lesley Logan 24:37  My friends are like, you're the most resilient person, I know I'm like, over it pretty done.Brad Crowell 24:42  And he took a step back and paused, and he's like, well, this is how I see what resilience is. It's, it's courage and inner strength, specifically, when you you keep getting back up after being knocked down time after time, right? And he said, he said it's really important that women be resilient so they can share their experience, and inspire other women by being vulnerable, by sharing their experience. It's a permission slip for others. It shows them what is possible, right? And I thought that's totally relevant and important. And he said, while it can certainly be tiring, it serves a greater purpose, right? And it makes your efforts bigger than just you. You know, it makes your efforts towards whatever it is that you're working on. When you share those things and you continue to get back up, you know, you're giving permission for others to keep going on their journey, which we don't know what exactly what it is, but there's clearly going to be something relatable. He said, even if you're only influencing one person, right? It's worth it. He said, think about that impact, and how you know that you can have and how you can help. Maybe, you know, maybe by sharing your story, your struggles, it will prevent someone from having to go through something similar that you experience, because you know you're sharing how you got through it. So, I mean, that's honestly, like half the reason we do this podcast is hearing, you know, how did they get from A to B? How are they being it till they see, how they get to where they are today and, you know, it's inspirational. I hope you found it as well.Lesley Logan 26:08  I did. I really did. And I couldn't agree more. I mean, like, you're, you know, it's not a podcast I used to listen to before I was ever like when the first they just ended their first season, which is like, more like an ending of a show. I think they call the end of a season one, because they could always come back. But it was like 968, episodes. And I know. And I was just like, interesting. I wonder what it'd be like, like, well, how do you, how do you think about ending it? I read, like, their statement, which is, like, everything that we did worked, and like, look, we've inspired people. And I was like, there must have been a point where they, like, thought it wasn't adding anymore, you know, and but, and every time I'm like, is this podcast like helping anybody out? And then we go on tour, and someone's like, I loved this. And I'm like, well, fuck, we got to keep going because it's fucking hard work podcasting. But I know every stupid bro makes it look like it's the easiest thing you ever did in your life. This is a fucking hard thing that we do every week.Brad Crowell 27:00  Yeah, we're surrounded by a whole team to set us up to be able to even do this.Lesley Logan 27:03  Yes, and you just get to, like, vent or rant or like, I don't know what the fuck they think they're doing, but like, you actually have to, like, have structure and, like, think about these things and think about the people you're platforming. You know, I know that dickhead CEO podcast is like, I'm not platforming these people. I'm having a conversation. No, you're fucking platforming them, right? So, like, sometimes I'm like, oh, do I should I be platforming this person? Because I want to change lives for the better, right? So, and it's difficult because you're like, how do I know this person? How am I going to there's so many things to think about, but I do agree. It's like, if you can change one's person's life with it, like, then it's worth doing, worth all the effort. Brad Crowell 27:33  Yeah, well, stick around. We'll be right back. We're going to dig into those Be It Action Items that we got from your conversation with Brad Walsh. Brad Crowell 27:42  All right, welcome back. So finally, let's talk about those Be It Action Items. What bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted action items can we take away from your conversation with Brad Walsh? He said, you just have to be authentic. Don't try to be something that you're not. And the two of you went back and forth about we need to take back the word authentic, it's overused and overplayed, but there's still something to it. You know? He said, look, when we only show the happy, shiny, beautiful part of the thing that we went through, we're not being honest, and that's not being authentic, because there was definitely some shit we had to go through to get there too, right? And so I think it's fair to say that you can still be selective about all of the shit. You don't have to share everything. We're not airing our dirty laundry, but it's important to show that there's a struggle as well, and that that like contributes to that authenticity. It makes it actually authentic, right? So drill down, you know, be selective, but take that mask off and actually like, be genuine. So what about you?Lesley Logan 28:42  Oh, well, you know, I love this his father's wisdom, who said, what's meant for you will never go by you. And the mantra that I say, which means the same thing, is, like, what is for you will not pass you, or you will not pass you. And I think that that's a really important thing, because it's really easy to, like, hang on to something because we're afraid that something else won't come along. But like, if it's meant for you, will not go by you. And it's something that, like, as our career has taken off, as our business continues to grow, I have to say no to a lot of things, and that means worrying. Oh my god, am I letting something go? Am I saying no to something that could have, like, changed the trajectory? And it's like, I have to trust that what is meant for me will never go by you. What is for me will not pass me. So I hope that gives you something to think about, because it's not going to be all fucking rainbows and glitter, especially right now. Like, it's really hard right now. And I want to recognize every single one of you are listening like, you open up the news and it's fucked, and then you have to go to work and go, how are you? Well, all things considered, not shitty, but, like, it's hard, especially especially as people who have empathy and feelings and and caring. And so you have to keep getting up, doing the best you can. If you live somewhere where you can call someone who represents you and yell at them for what they need to step up, do that, it's part of a great day, and then keep going because if you can affect one person's life to make it better, it does matter. I love that. Brad Crowell 30:04  Yeah, me too. Lesley Logan 30:04  I'm Lesley Logan.Brad Crowell 30:06  Well, before we do that, we just wanted to shout out. Brad has an upcoming conference that's called Empowerography. It's a live conference for 2026 It is Friday, April 24th, through Sunday, April 26th, and I'm pretty sure it's a virtual. Lesley Logan 30:21  It's virtual so you can go. Brad Crowell 30:22  So you can find tickets and information about it on Facebook. Search for Empowerography. That's E-M power ography. You know, Empowerography Live Conference. Just search for Brad Walsh. Lesley Logan 30:33  We'll put the link in the show notes as well. That might be easier. Okay, go do that. And I'm Lesley Logan. Brad Crowell 30:38  And I'm Brad Crowell. Lesley Logan 30:39  Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for being you. Thanks for calling your congressman and your senators and laying on the peppy if you're American and if you are European or somewhere from anywhere else you there's ways to lay on our shit too. So you can, you can help make change in this world. I believe it. I believe you and you. And if you don't want to do any of that, then leave me a review, please. Thanks so much. Until next time, Be It Till You See It.Brad Crowell 31:01  Bye for now. Lesley Logan 31:03  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.Brad Crowell 31:45  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 31:50  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.Brad Crowell 31:54  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 32:01  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.Brad Crowell 32:04  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Last Dekrepitzer follows the life and spiritual quest of Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher a/k/a Sam Lightup, from his isolated shtetl in the mountains of southern Poland, where he is brought up to be the future rebbe, to the wharves in Naples, where he jams with Black soldiers waiting to ship home at the end of the war. Dressing him in the uniform and dog tags of an AWOL soldier, they smuggle him home to rural Mississippi. He lives for years among Blacks, speaks Black English, preaches and plays the blues with the Brown Sugar Ramblers trio. His marriage to a Black woman, Lula Curtin, results in a cross burning that forces them to flee to Manhattan. He plays on the streets of Harlem and Midtown with the Reverend Gary Davis, the great blind guitarist whose mission is saving souls for the next world. Through it all, Shmuel Meir fiddles his prayers in defiance of God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Last Dekrepitzer follows the life and spiritual quest of Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher a/k/a Sam Lightup, from his isolated shtetl in the mountains of southern Poland, where he is brought up to be the future rebbe, to the wharves in Naples, where he jams with Black soldiers waiting to ship home at the end of the war. Dressing him in the uniform and dog tags of an AWOL soldier, they smuggle him home to rural Mississippi. He lives for years among Blacks, speaks Black English, preaches and plays the blues with the Brown Sugar Ramblers trio. His marriage to a Black woman, Lula Curtin, results in a cross burning that forces them to flee to Manhattan. He plays on the streets of Harlem and Midtown with the Reverend Gary Davis, the great blind guitarist whose mission is saving souls for the next world. Through it all, Shmuel Meir fiddles his prayers in defiance of God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Beating an authoritarian regime at the ballot box is hard, but rolling back its changes is harder. Just look at Poland. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jolie Myers, fact checked by Andrea López-Cruzado, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King and Miles Bryan with special thanks to Grzegorz Sokol. It was supported by a grant from Protect Democracy. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, at a campaign rally in Krakow. Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Heroes of the Holocaust, CJ Burroughs shares the true stories of three heroes whose courage was expressed through art. The heroes we'll meet today were writers and performers. Artists who used their creativity to preserve truth, resist evil, and protect Jewish lives.You'll hear the story of Armin T. Wegner, a German writer who dared to confront Adolf Hitler by speaking out against the persecution of Jews—choosing truth even when it cost him everything.You'll also meet Franceska Mann, a Jewish ballerina from Warsaw whose final act of resistance took place not on a stage, but in Auschwitz.And finally, we'll stay in Poland to remember Aleksander and Helena Zelwerowicz, a father and daughter whose lives revolved around theater, and who helped Jews hide, escape, and survive.Their stories remind us that art is never just decoration—it is witness, memory, and light that refuses to be extinguished.To learn more about God's people—from the days of the Bible through the present day—visit The Fellowship's Learn Center.

For nearly 10 years, Poland's authoritarian government chipped away at the county's freedoms. Here's how Poles mobilized to get their democracy back before it was too late. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jolie Myers, fact checked by Andrea López-Cruzado, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King and Miles Bryan. It was supported by a grant from Protect Democracy. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting. A march in Krakow, Poland to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Luca, Firas, and Stelios discuss the cartels wreaking havoc in Mexico, the war on Restore Britain, and the cancellation of Poland's Theoden.

Last time we spoke about General Zhukov's arrival to the Nomohan incident. The Kwantung Army's inexperienced 23rd Division, under General Komatsubara, suffered heavy losses in failed offensives, including Colonel Yamagata's assault and the annihilation of Lieutenant Colonel Azuma's detachment, resulting in around 500 Japanese casualties. Tensions within the Japanese command intensified as Kwantung defied Tokyo's restraint, issuing aggressive orders like 1488 and launching a June 27 air raid on Soviet bases, destroying dozens of aircraft and securing temporary air superiority. This provoked Moscow's fury and rebukes from Emperor Hirohito. On June 1, Georgy Zhukov, a rising Red Army tactician and tank expert, was summoned from Minsk. Arriving June 5, he assessed the 57th Corps as inadequate, relieved Commander Feklenko, and took charge of the redesignated 1st Army Group. Reinforcements included mechanized brigades, tanks, and aircraft. Japanese intelligence misread Soviet supply convoys as retreats, underestimating Zhukov's 12,500 troops against their 15,000. By July, both sides poised for a massive clash, fueled by miscalculations and gekokujo defiance.   #190 Zhukov Unleashes Tanks at Nomohan Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. At 4:00 a.m. on July 1, 15,000 heavily laden Japanese troops began marching to their final assembly and jump-off points. The sun rose at 4:00 a.m. and set at 9:00 p.m. that day, but the Japanese advance went undetected by Soviet/MPR commanders, partly because the June 27 air raid had temporarily cleared Soviet reconnaissance from the skies. On the night of July 1, Komatsubara launched the first phase. The 23rd Division, with the Yasuoka Detachment, converged on Fui Heights, east of the Halha River, about eleven miles north of its confluence with the Holsten. The term "heights" is misleading here; a Japanese infantry colonel described Fui as a "raised pancake" roughly one to one-and-a-half miles across, about thirty to forty feet higher than the surrounding terrain. For reasons not fully explained, the small Soviet force stationed on the heights was withdrawn during the day on July 1, and that night Fui Heights was occupied by Komatsubara's forces almost unopposed. This caused little stir at Zhukov's headquarters. Komatsubara bided his time on July 2.   On the night of July 2–3, the Japanese achieved a brilliant tactical success. A battalion of the 71st Infantry Regiment silently crossed the Halha River on a moonless night and landed unopposed on the west bank opposite Fui Heights. Recent rains had swollen the river to 100–150 yards wide and six feet deep, making crossing difficult for men, horses, or vehicles. Combat engineers swiftly laid a pontoon bridge, completing it by 6:30 a.m. on July 3. The main body of Komatsubara's 71st and 72nd Infantry Regiments (23rd Division) and the 26th Regiment (7th Division) began a slow, arduous crossing. The pontoon bridge, less than eight feet wide, was a bottleneck, allowing only one truck at a time. The attackers could not cross with armored vehicles, but they did bring across their regimental artillery, 18 x 37-mm antitank guns, 12 x 75-mm mountain guns, 8 x 75-mm field guns, and 4 x 120-mm howitzers, disassembled, packed on pack animals, and reassembled on the west bank. The crossing took the entire day, and the Japanese were fortunate to go without interception. The Halha crossing was commanded personally by General Komatsubara and was supported by a small Kwantung Army contingent, including General Yano (deputy chief of staff), Colonel Hattori, and Major Tsuji from the Operations Section. Despite the big air raid having alerted Zhukov, the initial Japanese moves from July 1–3 achieved complete tactical surprise, aided by Tsuji's bold plan. The first indication of the major offensive came when General Yasuoka's tanks attacked predawn on July 3. Yasuoka suspected Soviet troops south of him attempting to retreat across the Halha to the west bank, and he ordered his tanks to attack immediately, with infantry not yet in position. The night's low clouds, no moon, and low visibility—along with a passing thunderstorm lighting the sky—made the scene dramatic. Seventy Japanese tanks roared forward, supported by infantry and artillery, and the Soviet 149th Infantry Regiment found itself overwhelmed. Zhukov, hearing of Yasuoka's assault but unaware that Komatsubara had crossed the Halha, ordered his armor to move northeast to Bain Tsagan to confront the initiative. There, Soviet armor clashed with Japanese forces in a chaotic, largely uncoordinated engagement. The Soviet counterattacks, supported by heavy artillery, halted much of the Japanese momentum, and by late afternoon Japanese infantry had to dig in west of the Halha. The crossing had been accomplished without Soviet reconnaissance detecting it in time, but Zhukov's counterattacks, the limits of Japanese armored mobility across the pontoon, and the heat and exhaustion of the troops constrained the Japanese effort. By the afternoon of July 3, Zhukov's forces were pressing hard, and the Japanese momentum began to stall. Yasuoka's tanks, supported by a lack of infantry and the fatigue and losses suffered by the infantry, could not close the gap to link with Komatsubara's forces. The Type 89 tanks, designed for infantry support, were ill-suited to penetrating Soviet armor, especially when faced with BT-5/BT-7 tanks and strong anti-tank guns. The Type 95 light tanks were faster but lightly armored, and suffered heavily from Soviet fire and air attacks. Infantry on the western bank struggled to catch up with tanks, shot through by Soviet artillery and armor, while the 64th Regiment could not keep pace with the tanks due to the infantry's lack of motorized transport. By late afternoon, Yasuoka's advance stalled far short of the river junction and the Soviet bridge. The infantry dug in to withstand Soviet bombardment, and the Japanese tank regiments withdrew to their jump-off points by nightfall. The Japanese suffered heavy losses in tanks, though some were recovered and repaired; by July 9, KwAHQ decided to withdraw its two tank regiments from the theater. Armor would play no further role in the Nomonhan conflict. The Soviets, by contrast, sustained heavier tank losses but began to replenish with new models. The July offensive, for Kwantung Army, proved a failure. Part of the failure stemmed from a difficult blend of terrain and logistics. Unusually heavy rains in late June had transformed the dirt roads between Hailar and Nomonhan into a mud-filled quagmire. Japanese truck transport, already limited, was so hampered by these conditions that combat effectiveness suffered significantly. Colonel Yamagata's 64th Infantry Regiment, proceeding on foot, could not keep pace with or support General Yasuoka's tanks on July 3–4. Komatsubara's infantry on the west bank of the Halha ran short of ammunition, food, and water. As in the May 28 battle, the main cause of the Kwantung Army's July offensive failure was wholly inadequate military intelligence. Once again, the enemy's strength had been seriously underestimated. Moreover, a troubling realization was dawning at KwAHQ and in the field: the intelligence error was not merely quantitative but qualitative. The Soviets were not only more numerous but also far more potent than anticipated. The attacking Japanese forces initially held a slight numerical edge and enjoyed tactical surprise, but the Red Army fought tenaciously, and the weight of Soviet firepower proved decisive. Japan, hampered by a relative lack of raw materials and industrial capacity, could not match the great powers in the quantitative production of military materiel. Consequently, Japanese military leaders traditionally emphasized the spiritual superiority of Japan's armed forces in doctrine and training, often underestimating the importance of material factors, including firepower. This was especially true of the army that had carried the tactic of the massed bayonet charge into World War II. This "spiritual" combat doctrine arose from necessity; admitting material superiority would have implied defeat. Japan's earlier victories in the Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, the Manchurian incident, and the China War, along with legendary medieval victories over the Mongol hordes, seemed to confirm the transcendent importance of fighting spirit. Only within such a doctrine could the Imperial Japanese Army muster inner strength and confidence to face formidable enemies. This was especially evident against Soviet Russia, whose vast geography, population, and resources loomed large. Yet what of its spirit? The Japanese military dismissed Bolshevism as a base, materialist philosophy utterly lacking spiritual power. Consequently, the Red Army was presumed to have low morale and weak fighting effectiveness. Stalin's purges only reinforced this belief. Kwantung Army's recent experiences at Nomonhan undermined this outlook. Among ordinary soldiers and officers alike, from the 23rd Division Staff to KwAHQ—grim questions formed: Had Soviet materiel and firepower proven superior to Japanese fighting spirit? If not, did the enemy possess a fighting spirit comparable to their own? To some in Kwantung Army, these questions were grotesque and almost unthinkable. To others, the implications were too painful to face. Perhaps May and July's combat results were an aberration caused by the 23rd Division's inexperience. Nevertheless, a belief took hold at KwAHQ that this situation required radical rectification. Zhukov's 1st Army Headquarters, evaluating recent events, was not immune to self-criticism and concern for the future. The enemy's success in transporting nearly 10,000 men across the Halha without detection—despite heightened Soviet alert after the June 27 air raid—revealed a level of carelessness and lack of foresight at Zhukov's level. Zhukov, however, did not fully capitalize on Komatsubara's precarious position on July 4–5. Conversely, Zhukov and his troops reacted calmly in the crisis's early hours. Although surprised and outnumbered, Zhukov immediately recognized that "our trump cards were the armored detachments, and we decided to use them immediately." He acted decisively, and the rapid deployment of armor proved pivotal. Some criticized the uncoordinated and clumsy Soviet assault on Komatsubara's infantry on July 3, but the Japanese were only a few hours' march from the river junction and the Soviet bridge. By hurling tanks at Komatsubara's advance with insufficient infantry support, Mikhail Yakovlev (11th Tank Brigade) and A. L. Lesovoi (7th Mechanized Brigade) incurred heavy losses. Nonetheless, they halted the Japanese southward advance, forcing Komatsubara onto the defensive, from which he never regained momentum. Zhukov did not flinch from heavy casualties to achieve his objectives. He later told General Dwight D. Eisenhower that if the enemy faced a minefield, their infantry attacked as if it did not exist, treating personnel mine losses as equal to those that would have occurred if the Germans defended the area with strong troops rather than minefields. Zhukov admitted losing 120 tanks and armored cars that day—a high price, but necessary to avert defeat. Years later, Zhukov defended his Nomonhan tactics, arguing he knew his armor would suffer heavy losses, but that was the only way to prevent the Japanese from seizing the bridge at the river confluence. Had Komatsubara's forces advanced unchecked for another two or three hours, they might have fought through to the Soviet bridge and linked with the Yasuoka detachment, endangering Zhukov's forces. Zhukov credited Yakovlev, Lesovoi, and their men with stabilizing the crisis through timely and self-sacrificing counterattacks. The armored car battalion of the 8th MPR Cavalry Division also distinguished itself in this action. Zhukov and his tankmen learned valuable lessons in those two days of brutal combat. A key takeaway was the successful use of large tank formations as an independent primary attack force, contrary to then-orthodox doctrine, which saw armor mainly as infantry support and favored integrating armor into every infantry regiment rather than maintaining large, autonomous armored units. The German blitzkrieg demonstrations in Poland and Western Europe soon followed, but, until then, few major armies had absorbed the tank-warfare theories championed by Basil Liddell-Hart and Charles de Gaulle. The Soviet high command's leading proponent of large-scale tank warfare had been Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. His execution in 1937 erased those ideas, and the Red Army subsequently disbanded armored divisions and dispersed tanks among infantry, misapplying battlefield lessons from the Spanish Civil War. Yet Zhukov was learning a different lesson on a different battlefield. The open terrain of eastern Mongolia favored tanks, and Zhukov was a rapid learner. The Russians also learned mundane, but crucial, lessons: Japanese infantry bravely clambering onto their vehicles taught Soviet tank crews to lock hatch lids from the inside. The BT-5 and BT-7 tanks were easily set aflame by primitive hand-thrown firebombs, and rear deck ventilation grills and exhaust manifolds were vulnerable and required shielding. Broadly, the battle suggested to future Red Army commander Zhukov that tank and motorized troops, coordinated with air power and mobile artillery, could decisively conduct rapid operations. Zhukov was not the first to envision combining mobile firepower with air and artillery, but he had rare opportunities to apply this formula in crucial tests. The July offensive confirmed to the Soviets that the Nomonhan incident was far from a border skirmish; it signaled intent for further aggression. Moscow's leadership, informed by Richard Sorge's Tokyo network, perceived Japan's renewed effort to draw Germany into an anti-Soviet alliance as a dangerous possibility. Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov began indicating to Joachim von Ribbentrop and Adolf Hitler that Berlin's stance on the Soviet–Japanese conflict would influence Soviet-German rapprochement considerations. Meanwhile, Moscow decided to reinforce Zhukov. Tens of thousands of troops and machines were ordered to Mongolia, with imports from European Russia. Foreign diplomats traveling the Trans-Siberian Railway reported eastbound trains jammed with personnel and matériel. The buildup faced a major bottleneck at Borzya, the easternmost railhead in the MPR, about 400 miles from the Halha. To prevent a logistics choke, a massive truck transport operation was needed. Thousands of trucks, half-tracks, gun-towing tractors, and other vehicles were organized into a continuous eight-hundred-mile, five-day shuttle run. The Trans-Baikal Military District, under General Shtern, supervised the effort. East of the Halha, many Japanese officers still refused to accept a failure verdict for the July offensive. General Komatsubara did not return to Hailar, instead establishing a temporary divisional HQ at Kanchuerhmiao, where his staff grappled with overcoming Soviet firepower. They concluded that night combat—long a staple of Japanese infantry tactics—could offset Soviet advantages. On July 7 at 9:30 p.m., a thirty-minute Japanese artillery barrage preceded a nighttime assault by elements of the 64th and 72nd Regiments. The Soviet 149th Infantry Regiment and supporting Mongolian cavalry were surprised and forced to fall back toward the Halha before counterattacking. Reinforcements arrived on both sides, and in brutal close-quarters combat the Japanese gained a partial local advantage, but were eventually pushed back; Major I. M. Remizov of the 149th Regiment was killed and later posthumously named a Hero of the Soviet Union. Since late May, Soviet engineers had built at least seven bridges across the Halha and Holsten Rivers to support operations. By July 7–8, Japanese demolition teams destroyed two Soviet bridges. Komatsubara believed that destroying bridges could disrupt Soviet operations east of the Halha and help secure the border. Night attacks continued from July 8 to July 12 against the Soviet perimeter, with Japanese assaults constricting Zhukov's bridgehead while Soviet artillery and counterattacks relentlessly pressed. Casualties mounted on both sides. The Japanese suffered heavy losses but gained some positions; Soviet artillery, supported by motorized infantry and armor, gradually pushed back the attackers. The biggest problem for Japan remained Soviet artillery superiority and the lack of a commensurate counter-battery capability. Japanese infantry had to withdraw to higher ground at night to avoid daytime exposure to artillery and tanks. On the nights of July 11–12, Yamagata's 64th Regiment and elements of Colonel Sakai Mikio's 72nd Regiment attempted a major assault on the Soviet bridgehead. Despite taking heavy casualties, the Japanese managed to push defenders back to the river on occasion, but Soviet counterattacks, supported by tiresome artillery and armor, prevented a decisive breakthrough. Brigade Commander Yakovlev of the 11th Armored, who led several counterattacks, was killed and later honored as a Hero of the Soviet Union; his gun stands today as a monument at the battlefield. The July 11–12 action marked the high-water mark of the Kwantung Army's attempt to expel Soviet/MPR forces east of the Halha. Komatsubara eventually suspended the costly night attacks; by that night, the 64th Regiment had suffered roughly 80–90 killed and about three times that number wounded. The decision proved controversial, with some arguing that he had not realized how close his forces had come to seizing the bridge. Others argued that broader strategic considerations justified the pause. Throughout the Nomonhan fighting, Soviet artillery superiority, both quantitative and qualitative, became painfully evident. The Soviet guns exacted heavy tolls and repeatedly forced Japanese infantry to withdraw from exposed positions. The Japanese artillery, in contrast, could not match the Red Army's scale. By July 25, Kwantung Army ended its artillery attack, a humiliating setback. Tokyo and Hsinking recognized the futility of achieving a decisive military victory at Nomonhan and shifted toward seeking a diplomatic settlement, even if concessions to the Soviet Union and the MPR were necessary. Kwantung Army, however, opposed negotiations, fearing it would echo the "Changkufeng debacle" and be read by enemies as weakness. Tsuji lamented that Kwantung Army's insistence on framing the second phase as a tie—despite heavy Soviet losses, revealed a reluctance to concede any territory. Differences in outlook and policy between AGS and Kwantung Army—and the central army's inability to impose its will on Manchukuo's field forces—became clear. The military establishment buzzed with stories of gekokujo (the superiority of the superior) within Kwantung Army and its relations with the General Staff. To enforce compliance, AGS ordered General Isogai to Tokyo for briefings, and KwAHQ's leadership occasionally distanced itself from AGS. On July 20, Isogai arrived at General Staff Headquarters and was presented with "Essentials for Settlement of the Nomonhan Incident," a formal document outlining a step-by-step plan for Kwantung Army to maintain its defensive position east of the Halha while diplomatic negotiations proceeded. If negotiations failed, Kwantung Army would withdraw to the boundary claimed by the Soviet Union by winter. Isogai, the most restrained member of the Kwantung Army circle, argued against accepting the Essentials, insisting on preserving Kwantung Army's honor and rejecting a unilateral east-bank withdrawal. A tense exchange followed, but General Nakajima ended the dispute by noting that international boundaries cannot be determined by the army alone. Isogai pledged to report the General Staff's views to his commander and take the Essentials back to KwAHQ for study. Technically, the General Staff's Essentials were not orders; in practice, however, they were treated as such. Kwantung Army tended to view them as suggestions and retained discretion in implementation. AGS hoped the Essentials would mollify Kwantung Army's wounded pride. The August 4 decision to create a 6 Army within Kwantung Army, led by General Ogisu Rippei, further complicated the command structure. Komatsubara's 23rd Division and nearby units were attached to the 6 Army, which also took responsibility for defending west-central Manchukuo, including the Nomonhan area. The 6 Army existed largely on paper, essentially a small headquarters to insulate KwAHQ from battlefield realities. AGS sought a more accountable layer of command between KwAHQ and the combat zone, but General Ueda and KwAHQ resented the move and offered little cooperation. In the final weeks before the last battles, General Ogisu and his small staff had limited influence on Nomonhan. Meanwhile, the European crisis over German demands on Poland intensified, moving into a configuration highly favorable to the Soviet Union. By the first week of August, it became evident in the Kremlin that both Anglo-French powers and the Germans were vying to secure an alliance with Moscow. Stalin knew now that he would likely have a free hand in the coming war in the West. At the same time, Richard Sorge, the Soviet master spy in Tokyo, correctly reported that Japan's top political and military leaders sought to prevent the escalation of the Nomonhan incident into an all-out war. These developments gave the cautious Soviet dictator the confidence to commit the Red Army to large-scale combat operations in eastern Mongolia. In early August, Stalin ordered preparations for a major offensive to clear the Nomonhan area of the "Japanese samurai who had violated the territory of the friendly Outer Mongolian people." The buildup of Zhukov's 1st Army Group accelerated still further. Its July strength was augmented by the 57th and 82nd Infantry Divisions, the 6th Tank Brigade, the 212th Airborne Brigade, numerous smaller infantry, armor, and artillery units, and two Mongolian cavalry divisions. Soviet air power in the area was also greatly strengthened. When this buildup was completed by mid-August, Zhukov commanded an infantry force equivalent to four divisions, supported by two cavalry divisions, 216 artillery pieces, 498 armored vehicles, and 581 aircraft. To bring in the supplies necessary for this force to launch an offensive, General Shtern's Trans-Baikal Military District Headquarters amassed a fleet of more than 4,200 vehicles, which trucked in about 55,000 tons of materiel from the distant railway depot at Borzya. The Japanese intelligence network in Outer Mongolia was weak, a problem that went unremedied throughout the Nomonhan incident. This deficiency, coupled with the curtailment of Kwantung Army's transborder air operations, helps explain why the Japanese remained ignorant of the scope of Zhukov's buildup. They were aware that some reinforcements were flowing eastward across the Trans-Siberian Railway toward the MPR but had no idea of the volume. Then, at the end of July, Kwantung Army Intelligence intercepted part of a Soviet telegraph transmission indicating that preparations were under way for some offensive operation in the middle of August. This caused a stir at KwAHQ. Generals Ueda and Yano suspected that the enemy planned to strike across the Halha River. Ueda's initial reaction was to reinforce the 23rd Division at Nomonhan with the rest of the highly regarded 7th Division. However, the 7th Division was Kwantung Army's sole strategic reserve, and the Operations Section was reluctant to commit it to extreme western Manchukuo, fearing mobilization of Soviet forces in the Maritime Province and a possible attack in the east near Changkufeng. The Kwantung Army commander again ignored his own better judgment and accepted the Operations Section's recommendation. The main strength of the 7th Division remained at its base near Tsitsihar, but another infantry regiment, the 28th, was dispatched to the Nomonhan area, as was an infantry battalion from the Mukden Garrison. Earlier, in mid-July, Kwantung Army had sent Komatsubara 1,160 individual replacements to make up for casualties from earlier fighting. All these reinforcements combined, however, did little more than replace losses: as of July 25, 1,400 killed (including 200 officers) and 3,000 wounded. Kwantung Army directed Komatsubara to dig in, construct fortifications, and adopt a defensive posture. Colonel Numazaki, who commanded the 23rd Division's Engineer Regiment, was unhappy with the defensive line he was ordered to fortify and urged a slight pullback to more easily defensible terrain. Komatsubara, however, refused to retreat from ground his men had bled to take. He and his line officers still nourished hope of a revenge offensive. As a result, the Japanese defensive positions proved to be as weak as Numazaki feared. As Zhukov's 1st Army Group prepared to strike, the effective Japanese strength at Nomonhan was less than 1.5 divisions. Major Tsuji and his colleagues in the Operations Section had little confidence in Kwantung Army's own Intelligence Section, which is part of the reason why Tsuji frequently conducted his own reconnaissance missions. Up to this time it was gospel in the Japanese army that the maximum range for large-scale infantry operations was 125–175 miles from a railway; anything beyond 200 miles from a railway was considered logistically impossible. Since Kwantung Army had only 800 trucks available in all of Manchukuo in 1939, the massive Soviet logistical effort involving more than 4,200 trucks was almost unimaginable to the Japanese. Consequently, the Operations Staff believed it had made the correct defensive deployments if a Soviet attack were to occur, which it doubted. If the enemy did strike at Nomonhan, it was believed that it could not marshal enough strength in that remote region to threaten the reinforced 23rd Division. Furthermore, the 7th Division, based at Tsitsihar on a major rail line, could be transported to any trouble spot on the eastern or western frontier in a few days. KwAHQ advised Komatsubara to maintain a defensive posture and prepare to meet a possible enemy attack around August 14 or 15. At this time, Kwantung Army also maintained a secret organization codenamed Unit 731, officially the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army. Unit 731 specialized in biological and chemical warfare, with main facilities and laboratories in Harbin, including a notorious prison-laboratory complex. During the early August lull at Nomonhan, a detachment from Unit 731 infected the Halha River with bacteria of an acute cholera-like strain. There are no reports in Soviet or Japanese accounts that this attempted biological warfare had any effect. In the war's final days, Unit 731 was disbanded, Harbin facilities demolished, and most personnel fled to Japan—but not before they gassed the surviving 150 human subjects and burned their corpses. The unit's commander, Lieutenant General Ishii Shiro, kept his men secret and threatened retaliation against informers. Ishii and his senior colleagues escaped prosecution at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials by trading the results of their experiments to U.S. authorities in exchange for immunity. The Japanese 6th Army exerted some half-hearted effort to construct defensive fortifications, but scarcity of building materials, wood had to be trucked in from far away—helped explain the lack of enthusiasm. More importantly, Japanese doctrine despised static defense and favored offense, so Kwantung Army waited to see how events would unfold. West of the Halha, Zhukov accelerated preparations. Due to tight perimeter security, few Japanese deserters, and a near-absence of civilian presence, Soviet intelligence found it hard to glean depth on Japanese defensive positions. Combat intelligence could only reveal the frontline disposition and closest mortar and artillery emplacements. Aerial reconnaissance showed photographs, but Japanese camouflage and mock-ups limited their usefulness. The new commander of the 149th Mechanized Infantry Regiment personally directed infiltration and intelligence gathering, penetrating Japanese lines on several nights and returning crucial data: Komatsubara's northern and southern flanks were held by Manchukuoan cavalry, and mobile reserves were lacking. With this information, Zhukov crafted a plan of attack. The main Japanese strength was concentrated a few miles east of the Halha, on both banks of the Holsten River. Their infantry lacked mobility and armor, and their flanks were weak. Zhukov decided to split the 1st Army Group into three strike forces: the central force would deliver a frontal assault to pin the main Japanese strength, while the northern and southern forces, carrying the bulk of the armor, would turn the Japanese flanks and drive the enemy into a pocket to be destroyed by the three-pronged effort. The plan depended on tactical surprise and overwhelming force at the points of attack. The offensive was to begin in the latter part of August, pending final approval from Moscow. To ensure tactical surprise, Zhukov and his staff devised an elaborate program of concealment and deception, disinformation. Units and materiel arriving at Tamsag Bulak toward the Halha were moved only at night with lights out. Noting that the Japanese were tapping telephone lines and intercepting radio messages, 1st Army Headquarters sent a series of false messages in an easily decipherable code about defensive preparations and autumn-winter campaigning. Thousands of leaflets titled "What the Infantryman Should Know about Defense" were distributed among troops. About two weeks before the attack, the Soviets brought in sound equipment to simulate tank and aircraft engines and heavy construction noises, staging long, loud performances nightly. At first, the Japanese mistook the sounds for large-scale enemy activity and fired toward the sounds. After a few nights, they realized it was only sound effects, and tried to ignore the "serenade." On the eve of the attack, the actual concentration and staging sounds went largely unnoticed by the Japanese. On August 7–8, Zhukov conducted minor attacks to expand the Halha bridgehead to a depth of two to three miles. These attacks, contained relatively easily by Komatsubara's troops, reinforced Kwantung Army's false sense of confidence. The Japanese military attaché in Moscow misread Soviet press coverage. In early August, the attaché advised that unlike the Changkufeng incident a year earlier, Soviet press was largely ignoring the conflict, implying low morale and a favorable prognosis for the Red Army. Kwantung Army leaders seized on this as confirmation to refrain from any display of restraint or doubt, misplaced confidence. There were, however, portents of danger. Three weeks before the Soviet attack, Colonel Isomura Takesuki, head of Kwantung Army's Intelligence Section, warned of the vulnerability of the 23rd Division's flanks. Tsuji and colleagues dismissed this, and General Kasahara Yukio of AGS also went unheeded. The "desk jockey" General Staff officers commanded little respect at KwAHQ. Around August 10, General Hata Yuzaburo, Komatsubara's successor as chief of the Special Services Agency at Harbin, warned that enemy strength in the Mongolian salient was very great and seriously underestimated at KwAHQ. Yet no decisive action followed before Zhukov's attack. Kwantung Army's inaction and unpreparedness prior to the Soviet offensive appear to reflect faulty intelligence compounded by hubris. But a more nuanced explanation suggests a fatalistic wishful thinking rooted in the Japanese military culture—the belief that their spiritual strength would prevail, leading them to assume enemy strength was not as great as reported, or that victory was inevitable regardless of resources. Meanwhile, in the rational West, the Nazi war machine faced the Polish frontier as Adolf Hitler pressed Stalin for a nonaggression pact. The German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact would neutralize the threat of a two-front war for Germany and clear the way for Hitler's invasion of Poland. If the pact was a green light, it signaled in both directions: it would also neutralize the German threat to Russia and clear the way for Zhukov's offensive at Nomonhan. On August 18–19, Hitler pressed Stalin to receive Ribbentrop in Moscow to seal the pact. Thus, reassured in the West, Stalin dared to act boldly against Japan. Zhukov supervised final preparations for his attack. Zhukov held back forward deployments until the last minute. By August 18, he had only four infantry regiments, a machine gun brigade, and Mongolian cavalry east of the Halha. Operational security was extremely tight: a week before the attack, Soviet radio traffic in the area virtually ceased. Only Zhukov and a few key officers worked on the plan, aided by a single typist. Line officers and service chiefs received information on a need-to-know basis. The date for the attack was shared with unit commanders one to four days in advance, depending on seniority. Noncommissioned officers and ordinary soldiers learned of the offensive one day in advance and received specific orders three hours before the attack.   Heavy rain grounded Japanese aerial reconnaissance from August 17 to midday on the 19th, but on August 19 Captain Oizumi Seisho in a Japanese scout plane observed the massing of Soviet forces near the west bank of the Halha. Enemy armor and troops were advancing toward the river in dispersed formations, with no new bridges but pontoon stocks spotted near the river. Oizumi sent a warning to a frontline unit and rushed back to report. The air group dispatched additional recon planes and discovered that the Japanese garrison on Fui Heights, near the northern end of Komatsubara's line, was being encircled by Soviet armor and mechanized infantry—observed by alarmed Japanese officers on and near the heights. These late discoveries on August 19 were not reported to KwAHQ and had no effect on the 6th Army and the 23rd Division's alertness on the eve of the storm. As is common in militaries, a fatal gap persisted between those gathering intelligence and those in a position to act on it. On the night of August 19–20, under cover of darkness, the bulk of the Soviet 1st Army Group crossed the Halha into the expanded Soviet enclave on the east bank.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. By August, European diplomacy left Moscow confident in a foothold against Germany and Britain, while Sorge's intelligence indicated Japan aimed to avoid a full-blown war. Stalin ordered a major offensive to clear Nomonhan, fueling Zhukov's buildup in eastern Mongolia. Kwantung Army, hampered by limited logistics, weak intelligence, and defensive posture, faced mounting pressure. 

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