Podcasts about Profound

A wide range of perinatal mental health topics come up in my therapy practice, including issues with conception, birth, postpartum, and much more. I frequently see people go through multiple rounds of IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies through years of struggles to have a child. Often overlooked in these attempts is the impact when these efforts do not result in a baby, and this experience needs to be acknowledged and discussed. Multiple attempts with unsuccessful outcomes can be the end of their journey to have a baby. Tough decisions have to be made when age, mental and physical health, and financial resources force an end to their hopes and dreams. Today's episode focuses on the intense grief and profound identity shifts that can occur when all of those best efforts do not result in a baby.  Show Highlights: There is no timeline for the grief and depression someone may feel when their motherhood dream ends. People go into the IVF process believing that persistence WILL result in a child. The relationship with your own body becomes complicated, especially when there are no answers. Dealing with well-intentioned people with unending advice adds to the pressure you feel. This kind of grief becomes invisible. Being a mother might be intertwined with your sense of purpose and identity in the world. Profound, life-altering grief can accompany your loss of identity. Therapy can be helpful and offer you a safe space. Grief does not have to be a hopeless process. It's okay to feel what you feel. Dr. Kat's words of hope to those who are grieving Resources: Call the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA or visit cdph.ca.gov Please find resources in English and Spanish at Postpartum Support International, or by phone/text at 1-800-944-4773. There are many free resources, like online support groups, peer mentors, a specialist provider directory, and perinatal mental health training for therapists, physicians, nurses, doulas, and anyone who wants to be more supportive in offering services.  You can also follow PSI on social media: Instagram, Facebook, and most other platforms Visit www.postpartum.net/professionals/certificate-trainings/ for information on the grief course.   Visit my website, www.wellmindperinatal.com, for more information, resources, and courses you can take today! If you are a California resident looking for a therapist in perinatal mental health, email me about openings for private pay clients! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Dr. Arun Menawat, Chairman and CEO of Profound Medical. Profound is commercializing the TULSA-PRO system, an alternative approach to prostate cancer treatment that uses MRI-guided thermal ultrasound to target and eliminate cancerous tissue without surgical incisions. Before joining Profound in 2016, Arun served as the Chairman and CEO of Novadaq Technologies for 13 years, guiding the company from a startup to one of the fastest-growing, NASDAQ-listed medical technology businesses with a market cap exceeding one billion USD. Earlier in his career, Arun served as President of Cedara Software, a company that developed the industry's first medical imaging software platform. Today, it's part of IBM's Watson Health.In this interview, Arun shares insights on building credibility with physicians, the strategic approach to clinical trials that led to their recent Medicare reimbursement coverage, and his vision for transforming the future of surgery beyond prostate cancer.Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you're into learning from medical device and health technology founders and CEOs, and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.Second, if you want to peek behind the curtain of the world's most successful startups, you should consider a Medsider premium membership. You'll learn the strategies and tactics that founders and CEOs use to build and grow companies like Silk Road Medical, AliveCor, Shockwave Medical, and hundreds more!We recently introduced some fantastic additions exclusively for Medsider premium members, including playbooks, which are curated collections of our top Medsider interviews on key topics like capital fundraising and risk mitigation, and 3 packages that will help you make use of our database of 750+ life science investors more efficiently for your fundraise and help you discover your next medical device or health technology investor!In addition to the entire back catalog of Medsider interviews over the past decade, premium members also get a copy of every volume of Medsider Mentors at no additional cost, including the latest Medsider Mentors Volume VII. If you're interested, go to medsider.com/subscribe to learn more.Lastly, if you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Arun Menawat.

ChatGPT now processes over 1 billion web searches weekly, and increasingly, it's becoming your customers' personal shopping assistant, creating unprecedented opportunities for forward-thinking marketersWhile still emerging in fashion and beauty categories, ChatGPT Shopping is fundamentally different from traditional advertising, offering a product-first experience that could revolutionise how your customers discover and purchase.For businesses targeting decision-makers with spending power, understanding ChatGPT Shopping mechanics isn't just smart — it's becoming essential.In this episode, I explain:• The hidden mechanics behind how ChatGPT selects which products to recommend (including why it's product-first, then retailer — unlike Google Shopping ads)• Why ChatGPT goes beyond product feeds to research across the entire web, including Reddit discussions and authority publications• Real strategies that got our client, Zugu Case, to the #1 position for several key searches• The exact steps to optimise your product pages for AI consumption (including schema markup techniques that increase visibility)• Why ChatGPT currently shows no paid placements and how this creates a golden opportunity before advertising arrivesI also share insights from our sentiment analysis work using tools like Profound, showing how brands like Vanguard can improve their AI recommendations by adjusting their positioning strategy.As I explain in the podcast:"ChatGPT is encouraging a bit of a price war. It's not necessarily the case that you have to be the cheapest, but understanding your value proposition and making sure these AI tools can communicate it clearly is crucial."If you're ready to position your business for this new era while competitors focus solely on traditional channels, this episode provides your complete action plan for succeeding in the AI shopping revolution.Get the show notes:https://exposureninja.com/podcast/354/Listen to these episodes next:How To Rank in ChatGPT (with Client Examples)⁠https://exposureninja.com/podcast/348/How ChatGPT Search Workshttps://exposureninja.com/podcast/339/Are AI Overviews Going to Impact Your Commercial Traffic?https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-48/

JOIN this channel to get access to perks and learn about my NEW book launch: Book Title: It's going to be Okay: - Journey to Peace and Comfort Finding strength and solace through life's challenges By Lauren Ostrowski Fenton JOIN HERE https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3lLvTjpAn9FXIxCR7nhfsQ/join Join Me on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8iR8NUZtQ1CLzWn5U0BoSQ. See my podcast https://podcast.feedspot.com/sleep_podcasts/ Subscribe to my channel, [Lauren Ostrowski Fenton](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8iR8NUZtQ1CLzWn5U0BoSQ), which is centred around meditation, reducing anxiety, and coping with grief. Here, I specialize in helping individuals navigate the challenges of anxiety and loneliness, guiding you on a transformative journey toward restful sleep and rejuvenating mornings. Through the power of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and sleep meditation techniques, I share insights on mindfulness that can significantly enhance your sleep quality. Explore strategies designed to address sleep troubles and discover how CBT can be a powerful tool for managing and overcoming sleep disorders. Join me for guided sleep meditations, where I combine relaxation techniques with my soothing voice to create a tranquil atmosphere conducive to deep rest. You'll learn how to manage anxiety for better sleep and harness the power of positive thinking to promote peaceful nights. Remember to subscribe and hit the notification bell to stay updated on the latest videos on sleep, mindfulness, strength training, and nutrition. For those seeking more in-depth support, I offer online counselling sessions as a certified counsellor with a Master's in Counselling. Book a session through my SimplyBook.me page: [Book a Session](https://laurenostrowskifenton.simplybook.me/v2/). (https://www.patreon.com/laurenostrowskifenton). Join me on patreon Make a donation via PayPal: [Donate Here](http://paypal.me/Laurenostrowski). Follow me on Instagram for daily inspiration and updates: [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/laurenostrowskifenton/). You can also check out my stories on Medium, where I share messages intertwined with life experiences: [Medium](https://medium.com/@laurenostrowskifenton). I have a book called 'Daily Rituals For Happiness', an instructional workbook designed to help you cultivate happiness every day. Please note that while my content is intended to provide support, it is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health guidance. Always consult with a healthcare provider before making decisions about your health. Thank you for joining me on this journey toward a more peaceful and rejuvenating life. My content helps you relax, find calm, and improve your overall well-being. Subscribe now, and let's embark on this transformative journey together! #fallasleepfast #personaldevelopment #guidedmeditation #sleepmeditation #deepsleep --- Original vocals and script by Lauren Ostrowski Fenton. All rights reserved © 2024.

Peace and Comfort Finding strength and solace through life's challenges By Lauren Ostrowski Fenton JOIN HERE https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3lLvTjpAn9FXIxCR7nhfsQ/join Join Me on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8iR8NUZtQ1CLzWn5U0BoSQ. See my podcast https://podcast.feedspot.com/sleep_podcasts/ Subscribe to my channel, [Lauren Ostrowski Fenton](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8iR8NUZtQ1CLzWn5U0BoSQ), which is centred around meditation, reducing anxiety, and coping with grief. Here, I specialize in helping individuals navigate the challenges of anxiety and loneliness, guiding you on a transformative journey toward restful sleep and rejuvenating mornings. Through the power of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and sleep meditation techniques, I share insights on mindfulness that can significantly enhance your sleep quality. Explore strategies designed to address sleep troubles and discover how CBT can be a powerful tool for managing and overcoming sleep disorders. Join me for guided sleep meditations, where I combine relaxation techniques with my soothing voice to create a tranquil atmosphere conducive to deep rest. You'll learn how to manage anxiety for better sleep and harness the power of positive thinking to promote peaceful nights. Remember to subscribe and hit the notification bell to stay updated on the latest videos on sleep, mindfulness, strength training, and nutrition. For those seeking more in-depth support, I offer online counselling sessions as a certified counsellor with a Master's in Counselling. Book a session through my SimplyBook.me page: [Book a Session](https://laurenostrowskifenton.simplybook.me/v2/). (https://www.patreon.com/laurenostrowskifenton). Join me on patreon   Make a donation via PayPal: [Donate Here](http://paypal.me/Laurenostrowski). Follow me on Instagram for daily inspiration and updates: [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/laurenostrowskifenton/). You can also check out my stories on Medium, where I share messages intertwined with life experiences: [Medium](https://medium.com/@laurenostrowskifenton). I have a book called 'Daily Rituals For Happiness', an instructional workbook designed to help you cultivate happiness every day. Please note that while my content is intended to provide support, it is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health guidance. Always consult with a healthcare provider before making decisions about your health. Thank you for joining me on this journey toward a more peaceful and rejuvenating life. My content helps you relax, find calm, and improve your overall well-being. Subscribe now, and let's embark on this transformative journey together! #fallasleepfast #personaldevelopment #guidedmeditation #sleepmeditation #deepsleep --- Original vocals and script by Lauren Ostrowski Fenton. All rights reserved © 2024.

A profound near-death experience (NDE) during a dental procedure,

The search landscape is evolving dramatically, with Apple potentially dropping Google as Safari's default search engine — which could redirect billions of daily searches to alternative platforms.During testimony in Google's antitrust case, Apple's Senior Vice President Eddie Cue revealed that Safari searches are declining for the first time in 20 years, suggesting Apple might end its long-standing partnership with Google.While sceptics point to the $20 billion annual deal that Google pays Apple, the underlying shift in search behaviour is undeniable:• AI Overviews now reach 1.5 billion monthly users• AI search traffic for some businesses has grown from 5% to 25% within six months• 13% of all monitored queries triggered AI overviews in March (doubled from January)In this episode, Exposure Ninja's Charlie Marchant (CEO) and Dale Davies (Head of Marketing) cover:• The real motivations behind Apple's potential move away from Google (including strategic acquisition possibilities)• Why traffic patterns are already shifting toward "zero-click" searches and how businesses like NerdWallet are adapting• How the rise of Perplexity, ChatGPT, and other AI search tools is changing visibility dynamics• A three-part framework for optimising your brand's presence across all AI search platforms• Tools like Profound and Semrush's AI Search for measuring your current AI search visibilityCharlie and Dale share real-world examples, including how qualified traffic from AI search is already converting for businesses in competitive sectors like mortgage lending.If you're concerned about maintaining visibility in this rapidly evolving search landscape, this episode provides a clear roadmap for measuring, tracking, and optimising for AI search while these platforms are still in their growth phase.Get the show notes:https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-50/Listen to these episodes next:Everything Marketers Should Know About ChatGPT's Shopping Updatehttps://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-49/Are AI Overviews Going to Impact Your Commercial Traffic?https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-48/How To Rank in ChatGPT (with Client Examples)https://exposureninja.com/podcast/348/

John Maytham speaks to Alex van den Heever, a renowned wildlife tracker, author, and speaker. Alongside Renias Mhlongo, he co-founded Kruger Untamed, a unique safari experience designed to fully immerse guests in the healing rhythms of the bush. With decades of experience on foot in the African wild, Alex shares powerful insights on how nature quiets the mind, calms the body, and reconnects us to what really matters.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Energetic Health Institute Radio with Dr. H – When you have, you know it in your heart. There is no belief required and no distinction to be made. You cannot intellectualize the connection or rationalize your feelings away; it is a knowing from deep within. Love just is. Intuition, much like love, also originates from this knowing deep within. It is our connection with the ancient, the sacred…our expression of our light...

The Guys Demonstrate a Profound Lack of Knowledge about Female Icons full 790 Wed, 07 May 2025 04:55:00 +0000 DDrzXFHPzwBtN2nLXjd6q6A0YunSEHXY sports The Fan After Dark sports The Guys Demonstrate a Profound Lack of Knowledge about Female Icons The Fan After Dark includes a rotation of hosts offering a truth-telling sports entertainment experience that gets listeners right on the biggest sports topics in and around DFW, across the country, and around the world. Focusing on the Cowboys, Rangers, Mavericks, etc., The Fan After Dark airs M-F from 7-11 PM and is the only live and local sports radio show in the MetroplexCome 'Get Right' with Reg on The Fan, and be prepared for sports talk on a whole new level. You can follow Reg on Twitter @regadetula © 2024 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://player.amperwave

Energetic Health Institute Radio with Dr. H – When you have, you know it in your heart. There is no belief required and no distinction to be made. You cannot intellectualize the connection or rationalize your feelings away; it is a knowing from deep within. Love just is. Intuition, much like love, also originates from this knowing deep within. It is our connection with the ancient, the sacred…our expression of our light...

From Cocaine Cowboy to Mindfulness Mentor: Transforming Lives Host John Duffin sits down with Bob Martin, a former high-profile defense attorney turned educator and mindfulness expert. Bob discusses his journey from being labeled the 'Cocaine Cowboy' during his time defending notorious criminals to finding redemption through mindfulness and meditation. The conversation covers the importance of finding your authentic voice, the transformative power of meditation, and practical approaches to overcoming emotional and moral conflicts. Bob also shares insights into how he uses his decades of experience in law and education to guide others towards a happier, more fulfilling life.Martin shares his own gritty journey, touching on his transformative experiences, including his time as a 'cocaine cowboy' lawyer in Miami and his eventual shift to mindful living after meeting a Daoist master. He highlights the fundamental principles of meditation and mindfulness, emphasizing the cultivation of positive attributes like loving-kindness and empathy. Through personal anecdotes and practical examples, Martin illustrates the power of mindfulness in overcoming negative narratives and achieving a balanced, fulfilling life. The episode also explores effective teaching methods for mindfulness, combining technological tools with personalized coaching to ensure sustained practice and profound transformation.When you want to learn more about Bob Martin, check out the links below. bob@awiseandhappylife.comhttps://www.awiseandhappylife.com/home/LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-martin-995b30127/When you are ready to share your story with me, on PodMatch, click the link to get "Your Message Received!"https://www.joinpodmatch.com/duffin_jd00:57 Meet Bob Martin: Mindfulness Leader01:49 Finding Your Authentic Voice07:06 The Role of a Defense Attorney12:51 A Life-Changing Encounter14:16 The Power of Mindfulness and Meditation22:30 Applying Mindfulness in Everyday Life32:03 The Power of Digital Meditation32:26 Understanding Meditation: It's Not About Quieting the Mind33:06 The Wandering Mind: Evolution and Modern Stress35:53 The Practice of Meditation: Returning and Beginning Again36:38 Building Mental Strength and Metacognition42:11 The Role of a Meditation Coach43:07 Combining App and Teacher for Effective Meditation46:02 Addressing Obstacles in Meditation Practice47:30 Emotional Awareness and Grounding Techniques54:38 The Importance of Listening and Authenticity58:39 Conclusion and Contact Information

Biblical marriage reflects Christ's love for the Church, offering hope and renewal for both married and unmarried hearts. Like a car needing an oil change, alignment, or new shocks, our marriages may need refreshing, realigning, or strengthening through humility, honesty, and support. Genesis shows how marriage mirrors Jesus' sacrificial love—leaving heaven to rescue His bride, the Church. Just as Adam called Eve bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh, Jesus followers are called the bride of Christ and the body of Christ. This deep, redemptive love is why marriage matters, and why all believers should study and honor it as a powerful picture of God's unchanging grace.

From organising events for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to teaching meditation practices that transform daily life, Michelle Eckles brings practical wisdom to those feeling overwhelmed by life's demands. In this captivating conversation, Michelle shares how meditation pulled her from a place of chronic pain, overwhelm, and burnout to a life of intention and calm. Her journey proves that even the busiest among us can find peace through simple, consistent practices that don't require hours of our day.Key TakeawaysStart with just 10 breathsThe journey to mindfulness begins with breathing. Place one hand on your chest, one on your belly, and take 10 conscious breaths through your nose. This simple practice activates your parasympathetic nervous system, sending signals to your brain to calm down—no special equipment or extended time commitment required.Single-tasking is more powerful than we realiseContrary to popular belief, multitasking creates more stress and less productivity. Michelle suggests practising "single-tasking"—giving your full attention to one activity at a time, whether waiting for the kettle to boil or enjoying a meal without distraction. This simple shift reduces mental load and increases presence.Integrate mindfulness into existing routinesYou don't need to find extra time for meditation—transform everyday moments instead. While walking, focus on one specific element (counting dogs, noticing tree colours). During meals, just eat. When waiting, just wait. These micro-moments of mindfulness accumulate into significant mental clarity.Allow emotions rather than fixing themOne of the most profound benefits of mindfulness is learning to recognise and sit with emotions without immediately trying to fix or analyse them. This practice of simply acknowledging feelings. Recognising them, naming them, and feeling where they live in your body, can transform how you respond to life's challenges.Consistency matters more than durationFive minutes of daily practice delivers more benefits than an hour-long session once a week. Start small and build the habit. The transformative power lies in making mindfulness a regular part of your life rather than an occasional intensive experience.Your Next StepsReady to experience the benefits of mindfulness in your own life? Begin with the simplest practice: those 10 mindful breaths whenever you feel overwhelmed. Notice how this small action changes your stress response. From there, choose one daily activity to transform into a mindful moment. Perhaps your morning coffee or evening walk.Remember Michelle's wisdom: "You don't need to sit on a pillow for half an hour every day" to reap the benefits of mindfulness. Start where you are, with what you have, and watch how these small practices ripple through your life, creating more space, calm, and clarity exactly when you need it most.Michelle is a member of the Meditation Association of Australia and mindful.org and a Veriditas-trained and certified labyrinth facilitator.Visit https://mindfulnessworksaustralia.com.au/  and https://meditationaustralia.org.au/ to find registered teachers in your area.Her book, Cultivating a Calm Mind provides a guide to reducing anxiety, improving sleep and managing thoughts and emotions using mindfulness and meditation techniques. It's available in hard copy (with free postage), downloadable PDF or audiobook athttps://www.meditationsunshinecoast.com.au/cultivating-a-calm-mindConnect with me:Join Better Than Before: joclarkcoaching.com/better Share your journey with me by sending me a message on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/joclarkcoaching/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joclarkcoaching/⁠Email me your success story at jo@joclarkcoaching.com. What you do today shapes your tomorrow. Your health matters because YOU matter.Here's to redefining midlife and making our next half of life even better than the first. 

May 3, 2025 Job 42:1-17; Ps. 46:1-7; Prov. 14:20-21; II Cor. 5:15-21

If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! — 2 Corinthians 5:17 Maybe you have heard some of the profound “I am” statements of Jesus: “I am the bread of life”; “I am the light of the world”; “I am the good shepherd” (John 6:35; 8:12; 10:11, 14). Jesus lived an effective, purposeful life because he knew his identity. With unwavering clarity, he knew he was the Son of God sent to redeem the world. As we explore the meaning of our identity this month, we'll find a number of ways to describe ourselves in light of the ways God has created us. We can think of it as a treasure hunt through the Scriptures to uncover our new identity in Christ Jesus. So often we cling to false notions about identity. We focus on things like athletic prowess, academic achievements, or career success. Or we highlight how funny, famous, or fit we are. Or even how good a parent we are. But what happens when the applause fades? Do we maintain a firm grasp of who we are? The apostle Paul explains that when a person comes to faith in Jesus, they undergo a profound transformation. In some ways like a caterpillar emerging as a butterfly, believers transform to become a new creation in Christ. This fundamentally alters the way we think and act. Our identity is no longer defined by fleeting ideas but, rather, by our relationship with Christ. Lord, thank you for making and remaking us in the image of Jesus. Help us to understand who you have made us to be. Give us the courage to live out our identity in Christ. Amen.

In this episode, the monthly series called “What Are the Sisters Reading?” continues. For the month of May, Sister Emily Beata Marsh, FSP, and Sister Kathryn James, FSP, share about a book called "Eucharistic Amazement: Experience the Wonder of the Mass," by Father Randy Stice, the director of the Office of Worship and Liturgy for the Diocese of Knoxville.  The book weaves together liturgy, catechesis, the Catholic mystical tradition, insights from the saints, and practical ways to grow in your Eucharistic faith and devotion. Reawaken to the power and wonder of the Mass with this journey through the treasures of the Church's sacramental and liturgical tradition, featuring stunning insights on the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist from Saints Teresa of Ávila, Faustina Kowalska, and John Chrysostom. Profound yet accessible, Eucharistic Amazement speaks to your mind, will, and heart to help you live a more vibrant Eucharistic life. To check out more books on the Catholic faith and religious items of interest at the Pauline Books and Media Center at 1025 King Street in Alexandria, please click here.    

Episode Summary:In this heartfelt and insightful episode, Tracy reconnects with long-time friend of the show, Gerry Friesen – also known as The Recovering Farmer. Gerry has spent years sharing his personal journey with mental health, and today, he joins us to discuss the profound impact of opening up, especially through his latest milestone: publishing his first book. A year after its release, Gerry reflects on what inspired the book, how readers have responded, and what it was like to put his life story into words. From emotional healing to personal growth, Gerry dives deep into the challenges and triumphs that came with this vulnerable and powerful step. What You'll Hear in This Episode: - Gerry introduces himself and shares his ongoing journey as a mental health advocate - The story behind publishing his book and what it means to him - Honest reflections on the writing process and emotional toll - How readers have connected with the book – and the chapters that resonate most - Tracy asks Gerry to choose a “favorite chapter” (like picking a favorite child!) - The personal wins, surprising feedback, and biggest lessons- Is there a magic bullet for mental health? Gerry shares what farmers—and everyone—need to hear - Why storytelling can be one of the most powerful tools in the healing process"When we share our stories, we not only heal ourselves—we give others permission to do the same." Resources & Mentions: The Recovering Farmer – Available now wherever you get your books Learn more about Gerry: https://www.gerryfriesen.ca =================================

RESOURCES- Join me in Premium Coaching at danettecoaching.com- Join my 30 Day Challenge to transform your body, mind, and soul—step into your most vibrant self today at danette30challenge.com!- Want to be text friends and receive weekly inspiration? You can send JOY at +1 833 217 2760CONNECT WITH DANETTEInstagram: @thedanettemayFacebook: Danette MayTikTok: @thedanettemayNEW TV Show on Youtube: @TheDanetteMayListen to The Danette May ShowRead my book: danettemay.com/embraceabundancebookGet The Rise book: therisebook.comWork with Danette: danettemay.comIn this powerful episode of The Danette May Show, I sit down with the extraordinary Robert Edward Grant—serial entrepreneur, prolific inventor, and thought leader whose genius bridges the worlds of science, spirituality, and innovation. With over 80 patents and expertise spanning cryptography, medical technology, sacred geometry, and music theory, Robert brings a profound depth of knowledge and heart to our conversation. We dive into the true nature of sacred geometry and how it works, explore the healing potential of sound frequencies, and even experience a live sound healing session that resonates on a soul level. Our intention was to open minds and hearts to the universal patterns that guide our lives.Robert also opens up about his personal journey—sharing moments from his childhood, a never-before-told dream he had in Mexico about sacred codes, and a spiritual calling to fast that deeply transformed him. We explore his connection to Orion, the energetic essence of crystal water, and the symbolism of dragonflies. He speaks about the places on Earth where he feels most alive and leaves us with a heartfelt message for humanity. If you're ready to expand your consciousness and tap into the deeper codes of the universe, this episode will ignite something powerful within you.IN THIS EPISODE:(2:45) Our intention for this discussion today(5:30) What is sacred geometry and how it works(11:25) How sound frequencies can heal your body(13:47) Robert plays us sound healing frequencies (24:39) Robert explains his childhood and how it led to where he is now(28:47) What part of the world does Robert feel the most alive(31:05) What does Orion mean to Robert?(33:24) Robert shares a dream he had in Mexico that he's never shared before about codes(42:47) How the universe told Robert he needed to fast and how long (45:41) The significance of dragonflies (49:22) Final words from Robert to...

Profound musician and thinker talks about when he first connected with Alex and Nels Cline and how he cultivated the Nine Winds roster of cats.

Donald Trump has failed to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, how frustrated is he with Russia's latest round of attacks on Kyiv? Ofcom published its news set of rules tech firms must comply with - or else. And how have the devastating attacks in Kashmir reignited tensions between India and Pakistan? Giles Whittell is joined by Rebecca Moore, Stephen Armstrong and Cat Neilan, as they battle to pitch the top story of the day.**Join us at the next edition of the News Meeting Live on Tuesday 29th April here: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/our-events/the-news-meeting-live-2 Get in touch and let us know what you think should lead the news. Send a voice note to newsmeeting@tortoisemedia.com Read more about the team's guilty pleasure news stories here:The ‘Profound' Experience of Seeing a New ColorA Roman Gladiator and a Lion Met in Combat. Only One Walked AwayFollow us on Social Media: @tortoise on IG and X, @tortoisemedia on tiktok @tortoisemedia.bsky.social on bluesky Host: Giles Whittell Email: newsmeeting@tortoisemedia.comProducer: Casey MagloireExecutive Producer: Jasper Corbett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

—  “Believe it or not, we have all fire walked before. Every single one of us. We have all gone through difficult times, life transitions, radical change. Fire transforms. If we remember each of our life's big challenges and the resulting change, then we all know fire, we've all walked through fire. The question is, was it done with intention or not? Was it a ceremony in your life or an utter mess? Community fire walking gives us an opportunity to re-wire some of those past transitions and to embrace a broader perspective. It allows each of us another chance to go through the fire, this time with clear intention and support, to make it to the other side.” Valeria interviews Jen Hudziec — She is the author of “Ancestral Healing: A Guided Journal for Observations, Reflections, and Connections With Your Ancestors.” Jennifer Hudziec is a Ritualist. Her whole life has been shaped by the transformative powers of ritual. As a child she was raised Roman Catholic but was an animist at heart spending all her waking hours outdoors communing with the natural world. Jen departed institutionalized religion when she was 18 and began a lifetime of exploring various spiritual paths. The common thread in each of these paths was ritual. It was through ritual, initiations, and rites of passage that she transformed her life and found her true calling as a Ritualist.  As a Ritualist, Jen holds a safe and tender space for ancestral healing, spiritual mentorship, and rites of passage including death & dying support. She also has a passion for teaching and passing on what she has gleaned from all her experiences and training. She is truly dedicated to being able to meet people where they are and therefore provide a spectrum of offerings from free online rituals to group work, and private sessions.  To learn more about Jen Hudziec and her work, please visit: https://jenhudziec.com/fire-walks-jen-hudziec-ancient-pathways-1 and https://jenhudziec.com/

In this episode of the Next Level Healing Podcast, Dr. Tara Perry interviews Dannion Brinkley, renowned author and New York Times bestseller, who shares his extraordinary journey from the brink of death to spiritual enlightenment. Struck by lightning in 1975 and declared clinically dead for 28 minutes, Danion returned with profound insights into the afterlife, including over a hundred future predictions, many of which have remarkably come true... Work with Dr. Tara PerryTune in every week for a new episode of Next Level Healing. Subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and never miss an episode!

In this episode, we're diving deep into the truth about beliefs—how they're not just things we have, but powerful forces that shape who we are and the reality we experience. We explore how the loop begins: you form a belief, your reality reflects it, and then you take that as proof that the belief is true. But what if you could break free from that cycle? Or better yet, use it to your advantage?God gifted you the power of belief—now it's time to use it intentionally to create the life you truly desire. Tune in for a perspective shift that just might change everything.❤️‍

In this episode of Behind the Genes, we explore how ethical preparedness can offer a more compassionate and collaborative approach to genomic medicine. Drawing on insights from the EPPiGen Project, our guests discuss how creative storytelling methods, like poetry, have helped families and professionals navigate the complex emotional, ethical and practical realities of genomics. Our guests reflect on the power of involving patients and families as equal partners in research, and how this can lead to more inclusive, empathetic, and effective care. The conversation explores how ethics can be a tool for support, not just regulation, and how creating space for people to share their stories can have a lasting impact on healthcare delivery. Our host for this episode, Dr Natalie Banner, Director of Ethics at Genomics England is joined by Professor Bobbie Farsides, Professor of Clinical and Biomedical Ethics and Dr Richard Gorman, Senior Research Fellow, both at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and Paul Arvidson, member of the Genomics England Participant Panel and the Dad's Representative for SWAN UK. Paul shares his poem 'Tap tap tap' from the Helix of Love poetry book and we also hear from Lisa Beaton and Jo Wright, both members of the Participant Panel. "The project gave us the tools to find a different way to get at all of those things inside of all of us who were going through that experience... It's almost like a different lens or a different filter to give us a way to look at all those things, almost like a magnifying lens; you can either hold it really close to your eye and it gives you like a blurry view of the world that goes on and you can relax behind that and find a way to explore things in a funny way or an interesting way, but you can also go really close into the subject and then you've got to deal with the things that are painful and the things that are difficult and the things that have had an impact." You can download the transcript, or read it below. Natalie: Welcome to Behind the Genes. Bobbie: In an earlier conversation with Paul, he used the word ‘extractive,' and he said that he's been involved in research before, and looking back on it he had felt at times it could be a little bit extractive. You come in, you ask questions, you take the data away and analyse it, and it might only be by chance that the participants ever know what became of things next. One of the real principles of this project was always going to be co-production and true collaboration with our participants. Our participants now have a variety of ways in which they can transport their voices into spaces that they previously found maybe alienating, challenging, and not particularly welcoming. Natalie: My name is Natalie Banner, I'm the Director of Ethics at Genomics England and your host on today's episode of Behind the Genes. Today I'll be joined by Paul Arvidson, a member of the participant panel at Genomics England, Professor Bobbie Farsides, Professor of Clinical and Biomedical Ethics at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and Dr Rich Gorman, Senior Research Fellow, also at Bright and Sussex Medical School.  Today, we'll be exploring the ethical preparedness in genomic medicine or EPPiGen Project. This project examined how the promise and challenges of genomic medicine are understood and experienced by the people at the heart of it, both the clinicians providing care and the patients and families involved.  A big part of the EPPiGen Project explored using creative methods of storytelling and poetry to explore the experiences of parents of children with rare genetic conditions.  We'll discuss why the idea of ethical preparedness is crucial in genomic medicine to acknowledge the challenges and uncertainties that often accompany the search for knowledge and treatment in genomic healthcare, and to help professionals develop the skills to navigate the complex ethical considerations.    If you enjoy today's episode we'd love your support. Please like, share and rate us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Is there a guest you'd really like to hear on a future episode?  Get in touch at podcast@genomicsengland.co.uk. So, I'm going to ask our fantastic guests to introduce themselves.  Paul, would you like to go first? Paul: Hi, I'm Paul Arvidson. As well as my Genomics England hat, I've got a SWAN hat as well, I'm the dads' rep for SWAN UK, and I'm on the poets from the EPPiGen Project.  Natalie: Brilliant to have you hear today. Thanks, Paul. Rich?  Rich: Hi, I'm Rich Gorman, I'm a Senior Research Fellow at Brighton and Sussex Medical School and I've been working on some of the research on the EPPiGen Project that looks at people's social and ethical experiences of genomic medicine, and particularly families' lived experiences of genomics.  Natalie: Brilliant. Really looking forward to hearing from you. And Bobbie?  Bobbie: Hello, I'm Bobbie Farsides, I'm Professor of Clinical and Biomedical Ethics at Brighton and Sussex Medical School and co-PI with Professor Anneke Lucasson of the Wellcome Trust funded EPPiGen Project, and it's been my pleasure and privilege to be involved in the work that we're going to talk about today.  Natalie: Really fantastic to have the 3 of you here today. So, we're going to take a slightly unusual approach to starting the podcast today and we're going to begin with Paul who's going to read us a poem from the book Helix of Love. Paul, over to you.  Paul: This is called Tap, Tap, Tap.  ‘Tap, tap, tap, I hold the egg to my ear. There it is again, tap, tap, tap. Run to get a torch and light through the shell, to see who's tapping from within. Chicken's home from work these days just for fun and the odd egg. Market stalls swapped for medicines, cash boxes for cough machines. We kept the apron though. Profound learning disability is our life now, most of it, learning about it, learning from it, surviving with it, despite. It's a subtle egg though, this. The shell is there, invisible, but there's a person inside, tap, tap, tap.  What are you trying to tell us about what the world's like for you? Are you bored? Do you hurt? Is your sister a love or a pain? Tap, tap, tap. I wish I could set you free.'  Natalie: Thank you, Paul. Such beautiful and powerful words. I wonder if you wouldn't mind telling us a little bit about that poem and your journey and maybe touch on what the EPPiGen Project has meant for you.  Paul: Wow, that's a lot to unpack in one go. I suppose the oddness of the metaphor is probably worth a mention. The way the project worked is that Bobbie and Rich collected together a proper poet, Dawn Gorman, and she led us through the process of kind of, she basically taught us all to be poets from scratch, it was… When you say it like that it was a hugely audacious project really to just collect all these randoms together in a room and throw a poet at them and see what happened.   And they trusted us, I suppose, and trusted Dawn that there was going to be something came out of this. But one of Dawn's techniques was that like each week we did… I think we did… Did we do 6 weeks, chaps? Which felt like a huge amount of time, but it went in milliseconds. But what she did every week was that she gave us either a poetic form to work with, like, you know, “This week we're going to learn how to do a haiku, or a sonnet,” or whatever, or she'd gone away and thought of a particular poem that she thought might resonate with us and then she'd bring that to the session. And she'd read a poem out and then say, “Right, what did you make of this? Go away and write what it inspires you to write.”    So, the poem that I wrote was, the inspiration for that session was a poem called The Egg by Richard Skinner. His poem was more about the form of the object itself, so, although that sounds really abstract, it really, really helped. So, every week it would be like Dawn threw this object into the group and said, “Right, okay, here's your new prompt, bosh, off you go.” And although that sounds like the most obscure way to deal with anything, because you get a structure around which to organise your thoughts it was just this like hugely powerful thing for everybody.    And so, the thing that came to mind for me was the metaphor of the egg rather than the egg itself and it just kind of chimed with all of us. Like we used to run the egg stall in Minehead farmers' market and so, I married into a country girl and so she had like 200 laying hens at one point, and so we had this whole market stall antics but also it spoke to so many things in one hit. So we gave up that part of our lives as our daughter Nenah's condition became more and more complex.    She was always, once we knew what her genetic condition was one of the few things that we knew from the get-go was that it was progressive. So we knew in advance that that was the case, but we didn't know what that meant. And so slowly but surely one of the things we had to do was give up our working life, you know, one week and one hour at a time, it felt. So part of the poem's about that as well, the shift in the poem from the comedy bit to the beginning to the more serious bits at the end, and it kind of felt like we gave those things up day by day but the poem kind of got to speak to that.   And then there's also the metaphor. Once you've got a good metaphor it's always good to run with it, you know? And so the idea of the metaphor of somebody who's got profound learning disabilities and can't speak being inside this shell and as parents you're always kind of peeking in from the outside to see what's going on within or to try and find ways, the idea of when you're checking to see if you've got a chick inside your shell, and you do this thing called ‘candle' where you hold the light to it, that I describe in the poem, and you like hold it to your ear and hear if there's movement going on inside. And you kind of, I don't know, I felt with a profoundly learning-disabled child that you always feel like you're doing that as a parent as well to see if what you're doing is, you know, if you're still communicating while you're trying to be a parent.  Natalie: Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Paul, both the poem and also your exploration of how you got to that point in writing that poem.  Tremendously powerful to kind of understand and hear about that experience.  Bobbie, if I can come to you. Paul referred to that project as kind of audacious, can you tell us a little bit about the origins of the Helix of Love but also why storytelling, especially through poetry, was so important for the EPPiGen Project?  Bobbie: Yes, of course, Natalie. But can I start by saying I was so pleased that you got Paul to speak for a while after because I always have to compose myself after hearing these poems because they really do hit so powerfully, however many times you hear them. And I think that is part of what we wanted to achieve with this project, we wanted to use innovative research methods, we wanted to be…  I love the word ‘audacious'; I'm going to borrow that.  We wanted to be audacious; we wanted to be courageous, and let me tell you, our Ethics Committee were a little bit worried about the sorts of things we told them we wanted to do. But we knew because we live and work in Brighton that the world is full of creative people and we'd already had such wonderful partnerships with people over the years, we knew that we could draw people into this project who would help us to work with this fabulous group of parents ,in a way that would give them, as Paul says, an opportunity to explore their own feelings and their own experience and share it as they wished.    In an earlier conversation with Paul, which he might find surprising that it's stuck with me so much, he used the word ‘extractive' and he said that he'd been involved in research before and looking back on it he had felt at times it could be a little bit extractive. You come in, you ask questions, you take the data away and analyse it and it might only be by chance that the participants ever know what became of things next. One of the real principles of this project was always going to be co-production and true collaboration with our participants, and the poetry project probably wouldn't have come about if it hadn't been for the passion of one of our participants who was sort of finding a love for poetry herself and said, “Can we try this next?” So, you know, it means so much to Rich and I that we ended up with this amazing book, but it's not our book, it's our poets', as we like to refer to them, book.   So, one of the things that we are so pleased about in this project is that our participants now have a variety of ways in which they can transport their voices into spaces that they previously found maybe alienating, challenging, and not particularly welcoming. And I think another wonderful upshot from this project has been how receptive people have been to the work. And it's a sort of commonly held myth that your average philosophy article has a readership of 3.4 people. Rich created a wonderful map to show how Helix has travelled round the world and touched thousands of people – I don't think that's an exaggeration – and we couldn't be more grateful for that as researchers because we feel as passionately about these subjects as our participants and it is they who have really got this project on the map. Paul, you were going to come in, I hope.  Paul: I feel like the one thing that this project really did was, I know PPIE is a phrase that's bandied round but this project kind of stripped that theme apart and took the ‘I' bit, this project is like built around inclusion and because it felt like, if we'd have just been jumping in a room with Dawn and told to get on with it, I don't think it would've worked as well. The idea that it was kind of curated by Bobbie and Rich, we very much felt like our hands were held through the process, and after them having had to kick down doors in the Ethics Department to be able to get the project through at all, it's like “What are you going to do to these poor parents?” having gone through that process themselves behind the scenes, then to kind of feel like we were guided through this process. And we were guided and held, and they were super-aware of all of us. And the fact that every time you tell these stories as a parent who's gone through them there's a cost. And we've had this discussion with the panel before and the communication group, about the fact that every time you come to a parent and say, “Tell us your story” there's a cost.   And so, they were aware of that, and they held that in both of their hands and so it couldn't have been anything other than this collaborative project by the time we'd finished.  Advert: The Genomics England Research Summit is fast approaching and registration is now open! Join us for this one day in-person event on Tuesday 17 June 2025. This year's agenda dives into rare condition diagnosis, cancer genomics, pharmacogenomics, therapeutic trials, and the impact of emerging technologies. Hear from leading experts and inspirational speakers as we explore the present and future of genomics and the latest research and technology from the Genomics England research community. Keep an eye on the website, genomicsresearchsummit.co.uk for all the details and to secure your spot. Spaces are limited, so don't miss out. We'll see you at the summit! Natalie: We're going to hear a clip from Lisa Beaton, a member of the participant panel at Genomics England, who shares what it has meant for her to take part in the project.  Lisa: It was an amazing opportunity. I had a huge sense of imposter syndrome actually when I as invited to join, because I was aware of some of the people who'd already taken part in the project and although I can bring lived experience to the table I don't really consider myself as a creative writer or anything like that, although I do enjoy it. When I first started in the group, we were just doing free-flowing writing. It was really cathartic, and I didn't expect that in any way, shape or form. To put pen to paper without necessarily having any strategy in mind, just letting the thoughts come out and ramble away, I didn't really know what was going to come blurting out onto my notepad, and reading some of it back was moving but it was frustrating. It was moving, it was everything really, that opportunity just as a safe space, knowing I didn't have to share it with anybody if I didn't want to but I could, and I could just, I suppose I would call it almost like a brain fart, it just rambled away and maybe it was a way of downloading some of the emotions that I was carrying.   As the project went on and we explored different creative mediums I really enjoyed that and found different skills that I wouldn't have thought about. And it was very thought-provoking, being able to go back and think about some of our very early experiences, which is, not that I've buried them but it's just you move on to deal with the here and now, and it brought me back to some of those very raw emotions of the first days which I think are, I hope, helpful to certainly the medical community in terms of thinking about how they talk to new parents going through similar situations. I was very grateful.  Natalie: Rich, I'd like to come to you now. As Bobbie and Paul have both mentioned, the outputs for this project have really spread far and wide and maybe beyond the kind of academic circles that you might typically think. I'd really like to hear from you about how you think the project has helped healthcare professionals, particularly really enabling them to understand a little bit more about what it means to be part of a genomic healthcare service and the journey that patients and families go through. Would you share a little bit about your experience in the project, particularly for healthcare professionals?  Rich: Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things that when Bobbie and I set out to do this, that was one of the real aims, was to sort of help healthcare professionals have a bit more of an insight into what it means to access genomic medicine services from a patient or family perspective. And, as Bobbie said, there were 2 ways we could have gone and done this; we could've done some sort of conventional social science interviews, written that up in a lovely social science or philosophy journal article and no one would've probably read it, but instead we thought about the power of the arts to actually change in terms of how we were sort of collecting and collating people's stories and then how we were sharing and disseminating those stories as well. And I think the medium by which stories are told affect the kind of stories that get told, as Paul was sort of hinting at earlier.    When we ask patients to tell us their story, you know, there's a level of expectation there about what people are being asked to say in a form in a way, and certainly we didn't get people in a room and say, “You must write about genomics.” So many of the poems in the collection aren't really about sequencing or big data, they're about these kind of much wider themes of everyday life. And I think that's been really powerful in allowing healthcare professionals to sort of understand for patients obviously genomics is really important but it's not the be all and end all of everything that's going on in their lives, you know, there are so many other pressures, so many other hopes and desires, and people want an opportunity to express some of those positive aspects of their life with their loved ones and it not just be medicalised all of the time.    Again, as Bobbie said, it's also opened up our research travelling really well and just become something that's really accessible for people to pick up and read through, and I've had conversations with healthcare professionals that have said, “Oh I read through the book of poetry and it's made me realise all of these things.” Language particularly has been a really prominent theme that people have reported, telling us they've learnt a lot about it, and thinking about how they write their letters and how they communicate with people. And obviously this isn't new, you know, bioethicists for years have been talking about the need to communicate very carefully, very precisely and in a caring way, but I think there's something about communicating those messages through a really powerful art form like poetry through patients' own words that allows clinicians and healthcare professionals to sort of really get the impact of that in a very, very powerful way.  Natalie: Thanks, Rich, really helpful insights there. I really want to pick up on your point about language and come back to Paul on that because I know that's a topic area that can often be, you know, hugely sensitive to families that the medicalisation, the terminology that's used, especially, you know, complex areas like genomics, coming back to this term we mentioned earlier about being sort of alienating. How have you found that the work through the EpiGen project and Helix of Love, has it potentially helped the way that families can think about the right sorts of language and enable health professionals to sort of approach some of these questions in a slightly more human way? Paul: Difficult to say. It's a very, very live topic all the time. There's like a backchat communications channel with the Genomics England panel where, because we all go along and do this thing, but we all share that genomics common thread in our lives. One parent was breaking their heart about the fact that they'd had sight of genetic science reports that basically described their child, and children like them as ‘lumped together' in a project, and she was gutted about it. And we all were as well, and we were all open-mouthed about it. The whole idea of kind of separating the science and the science language out from the people who are involved, it is our job, isn't it, you know, our job as the panel members is to remind people that those are people, not statistics. But it's a really live subject and the more people, the more professionals who can be reminded of that on a daily basis and the more we can find kind and open ways to deliver that message to professionals, and every single day that we do that makes a difference, I think. If one parent has to get less of a letter like that or one professional thinks more carefully about how they phrase stuff before it goes out the door, then that's one less parent who's got to go through that.  Natalie: Absolutely. And I'm thinking about that insight. I suppose the anticipation and the realisation to healthcare professionals about the impact of the way they approach things, the language they use, the kind of mindset they might adopt with parents and families, one really important aspect of the project was to do sort of preparedness and the idea that you should be able to anticipate and plan for and acknowledge some of the ethical challenges that might come through when you're dealing with questions of genomic healthcare where there may be lots of uncertainty, there may be a long journey to go through.   Bobbie, can I come to you to help us unpack this notion of ethical preparedness as a core theme for EPPiGen? Help us understand what that means in kind of simple terms and why does it matter for those who are working in the genomic medicine and healthcare space.  Bobbie: I think the way in which most people will have heard of this concept of preparedness is in relation to disaster planning. We know that some of the good things we try and do in life are also potentially fraught with challenges and difficulties just because of their complexity and because of the wide range of people and organisations that will be involved. Can we take this idea of preparedness and almost say, “You have a moral responsibility to be ethically prepared when, for example, you embark upon a really dramatic change in healthcare delivery or an introduction of fantastic new healthcare innovation”?    And genomics seemed to be the perfect case study for this. We then had to say, “What does that actually mean in practice?” And I think here we wanted to move away from the idea that you can ethically prepare people by putting a small albeit very expert and clever group of people in a room to write guidance and regulations, those things are needed and they're useful. But it's actually much more important to almost recruit everybody, to bring everybody up to speed, so that the ethical challenges aren't a complete shock to those who are delivering the service in the frontline, so that those who plan systems actually think whilst doing so of the ethical challenges that can be posed by the tasks they're attempting to achieve.    And I was a sort of founder member of the Ethics Advisory Committee at Genomics England, and it was so interesting in those early days because there were no patients, there were no participants. We were sitting alongside people whilst they designed and put in place basic processes, strategies and ethics was a part of that. And a really important part of that to me, at those meetings, was hearing what the potential participants had to say about it because, again, the Participant Panel was involved. And I found that those were my people, those were the people who were worrying about, concerned about the same things as I was.  So, I think to be prepared we have to take on the responsibility of giving people who work in ethically challenging areas opportunities to come together to acknowledge the complexity of the task, to share strategies and tools, but also, very importantly, to not become divorced from the people that they are attempting to serve, because in fact we feel that this part of our project, and our project is much bigger than this and we've done some fantastic things working with healthcare professionals, medical scientists, etc, etc, but this part of the project is an attempt to say, “We can better prepare families as well by ensuring that we tell them that their voices are valuable, that they're important, and they help rather than hinder healthcare professionals in doing their jobs.”  Natalie: That's a really important point around the idea that this approach can help, can be positive. Because I think sometimes you think about preparedness and, and quite often with ethics it's about risk, it's about, you know, “How do we avoid the risks?” but there's a very positive story to tell about taking a more preparedness-type approach to thinking through ethical complexities, challenges and so on, both for health professionals and, as you say, for families. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit more about the kind of positive aspects that that can bring to everyone in that genomics healthcare journey, both the health professionals and the families.  Because I think sometimes it's easy just to think that it's mostly about sort of avoiding the risks and the pitfalls, and that might be harder to engage with people if you take that sort of risk-based approach.  Bobbie: Yeah, it's an interesting one. I think the ability to confront risk and uncertainty is a sign of maturity. And we find medical students, for example, hate any sense of uncertainty; they want to be told how to do something and they want to know that they'll be able to do that thing and get it right. And our job is often to say, “Well it's not going to be as easy as that, in fact it might be impossible, and here's what you have to do instead and here's how you allow yourself to fail or to not achieve in the way that you want but still do something really meaningful for the people that you're caring for.”  So, I think there's that aspect of saying, “It's part of medical education, it's part of how we should think in organisations that wherever you take risks, wherever you try to push frontiers, blur boundaries…”  I mean, genomic medicine has done something really interesting in terms of blurring the boundary between scientific research and clinical care. Wherever you do these things there are going to be challenges but those challenges, they're fascinating, they're interesting, they can bring us together. If we've got a shared will to get through them, you know, to make things work, then it's enlivens what you're doing; it's not a barrier.   I sort of began teaching and working in the space of bioethics right back in the ‘80s, which is a shock to you, I'm sure, but in those days I'm afraid that ethics was seen as a block, a barrier, a hurdle that people had to get over or through. And I think there's still a sensitivity, and certainly, I myself have been sort of challenged on critiques that I have offered to say, “Oh that's a bit harsh.” But I think what ethics attempts to do now, and certainly through really putting a positive spin on this idea of working together to establish ethical preparedness in important spaces, is to show that actually ethics can be very facilitative, it can be very supportive, and it can help people. It's not a surveillance mechanism, it's actually another clinical tool and something that, you know, people should seek support around.  Advert: If you're enjoying what you've heard today and you'd like to hear some more great tales from the genomics coalface, why don't you join us on the Road to Genome podcast, where our host, Helen Bethell, chats to the professionals, experts and patients involved in genomics today. In our new series, Helen talks to a fantastic array of guests including the rapping consultant, clinical geneticist Professor Julian Barwell about Fragile X Syndrome, cancer genomics and the holistic approach to his practice. A genuine mic-drop of an interview. The Road to Genome is available wherever you get your podcasts. Natalie: Rich, if I could come to you thinking about that reframing, I suppose, in your own research practice as an early career researcher, whether you're seeing that maturity in approach in thinking about some of these really complex, knotty ethical questions in genomics, are you seeing a greater appreciation for those?  And where do you think you're going to take your research as a result of this project in that space?  Rich: Yeah, thanks, that's a great question. Yeah, I think so, and I think one of the things that's really been revealing in this is the appetite for this kind of work in the sort of genomics sector, an appetite for thinking about the sort of complex ethical issues, for engaging with kind of arts-based research, for sort of finding new language and new spaces to involve patient and family perspectives and stories and think about how we can learn from them.    I think in the highly scientific, highly technical space of genomics we often assume that everyone wants numbers and hard data but actually I think the way that this work has travelled, the amount of invitations we've had to sort of exhibit this work and talk to healthcare professionals and scientists about this work shows that there's this really rich appetite for thinking about this complexity and doing that work of ethical preparedness, as Bobbie's talked about, and I think it's fascinating. And I know a lot of the participants who joined in our project have also sort of had opportunities from being involved in our work and found that there are people that want to listen to their voices and hear from them and learn from them as well. So that's been really exciting, and I hope it will continue and I hope there's opportunities for much more interdisciplinary collaboration in the genomics space with philosophers, with social scientists with ethicists, with artists and, importantly, with patients.    Paul: You mentioned the idea that certainly the poetry at the very least has allowed those voices to get into different spaces, and I think when those things first started happening it was when we at least as the people who'd written the poems felt that there was a huge big impact from this stuff. And I wasn't the first one to read one of these poems out loud, and in a way the collection of poetry became bigger than the sum of its parts in a funny kind of a way. And I can't remember but somebody read one of the poems at a conference somewhere and they said at the end of it that you could've heard a pin drop, and it was just that thought that actually with a big audience expecting kind of quite dry subject matter about genetics, to have felt that moment where the poem got launched off the stage and then it impacted on the audience and then, the way they described it, you could almost kind of feel them describing the ripples of the poem just like spreading out amongst this kind of silent audience and everyone kind of taking this kind of mental sigh of like “Oh that's what it feels like.” And the idea of that happening was when, for me anyway, when we knew that what we'd created was bigger than the sum of its parts and had its own legs, Bobbie and Rich had been the Dr Frankensteins of this kind of amazing, beautiful monster. Natalie: Obviously the poetry's got into your soul, Paul, the metaphors are fantastic. But just to make sure we bring in even more participant voices and perspectives into this we're just going to hear now from Jo Wright, who's another member of the participant panel, who's going to share what the project and the participant in it has meant for her.  Jo: So being part of the EPPiGen Project, it helped me to find my voice in an area that was relatively new to me, and also it was a way to take control of my own experiences rather than feel like I'm being swept along by a lot of systems.    And there were things that I really value that I thought contributed to making the project so successful. One was that they asked the question “What is this experience like for you, the experience of being part of a research project, the 100,000 Genomes experience of waiting, the experience of having your data in the library?” And no one had asked that before. You go to your appointments and you're in the system and, you know, it's kind of, everyone was finding their way to some extent because it was new for all the clinicians as well, but the fact that they asked, because no one asked that before, I don't have an outlet for that.     And then the other thing was that it was completely open so there was no research interview or questionnaire to answer, no expectation about what it was going to look like at the end. And I think working that way really strengthened the connection between us as parents of children with rare conditions and then also our relationships with Bobbie and Rich as the researchers and with the wider clinical community when they started to see our work and respond to it. So it was a way to understand people's individual experiences but it also made us feel connected and empowered through sort of like shared human experience, and that could be between us as the participants but also shared experiences between us and the researchers or us and clinicians and scientists that were looking at what we've done.  Natalie: So we've heard lots about the experience of participating in this fantastic EPPiGen Project, the kind of creative storytelling methods, the audacious methods that have been used, and some fantastic impacts beyond the kind of typical what could be quite dry sort of academic circles that this kind of work has spread out to.  I'd be really interested to hear from each of you about the takeaways, what you've learned, what's changed for you and what you'd like our listeners to really understand about this project and the work, and the sort of outputs from it and the ways it might continue to have resonance and impact going into the future, so whether people are patients, families, clinicians, researchers. What would you like people to remember and what's affected you most about the project?    Bobbie, I might start with you.  Bobbie: I think we have to always be very careful when we get excited about something - and the ‘we' here are the people in the health community, the education community, etc - to remember. As Rich said earlier, that this is only ever going to be quite a small part of other people's lives. You know, we've all devoted big parts of our careers, our enthusiasm, to thinking about genomics, to working in this space. I would really like people to pick up the book and work to understand a bit better about the everyday lives, the hopes, the expectations, the fears of the families who may or may not get a diagnosis, may or may not get on a good treatment path, all of whom want the best for themselves and everybody else from this venture.    But, as Paul knows better than most, it won't come to everybody, and we don't want anybody to be forgotten along the way. The people that signed up for Genomics England as participants were pioneers alongside medics and the scientists, and in these early years we want their experience to be recognised, and their experience goes much beyond their interaction with Genomics England and, unfortunately, all the work that we've produced shows how many challenges families have to face to secure a good life for their children, and I just want us all to just keep that in mind.    Natalie: Incredibly important to maintain that focus, that awareness. And, as you say, Bobbie, there's an interesting balance where there is a need for the drive and the innovation and the ambition to help ensure that we are pushing at the forefront of medical research but not leaving people behind and not ever forgetting, as you say, the experience of people who are actually at the forefront of this research and of genomic healthcare.   Paul, could I ask for your perspectives on this, and particularly how you see patient voices being involved in the future of genomic medicine, especially in light of your experience in the EPPiGen Project?  Paul: I think the biggest surprise and biggest takeaway for me was the project gave me, I mean, I can't speak necessarily for all the other poets, but you only need the evidence in the book itself. They gave us the tools, the project gave us the tools to find a different way to get at all of those things inside of all of us who were going through that experience. So it gave us a way to talk about all of those things and a way that was I suppose slightly removed to start with. It's almost like a different lens or a different filter to give us a way to look at all those things, almost like a magnifying lens; you can either hold it really close to your eye and it gives you like a blurry view of the world that goes on and you can relax behind that and find a way to explore things in a funny way or an interesting way, but you can also go really close into the subject and then you've got to deal with the things that are painful and the things that are difficult and the things that have had an impact.    But, because you've got that tool and you're used to using it or you're familiar with using it, it then gives you that safety. That's how I felt about it anyway, it was a massive tool to be able to get behind all of these things that I didn't even know I was feeling, or I knew they were making me uncomfortable, but I didn't know what they were or what name to give them. So the poetry gave us a chance to get behind all of that. Having read the poems, it feels like it's that for everybody but obviously you'd have to speak to them to know, but it certainly felt like that for me.  Natalie: And, Rich, your perspective.  What are you taking forward from the project, so what would your sort of key takeaway be?  Rich: I think it shows what is possible under that PPIE acronym. And there are many ways to do that involvement and engagement, it doesn't have to be a sort of dry tick-box exercise, there are much more creative ways to bring people's lived experiences and perspectives into conversations with genomics. So really, I suppose it's a call for other people to explore working in this way as well and think about what other kind of creative outputs could work here. I mean, we've had huge success, and I think a really interesting impact from working in this way.    And certainly as an early career researcher it's been really formative in my sort of academic journey, you know, reaffirmed that this is the kind of work that I want to do, working in this really co-productive way. And I think it's possible, it can be done, and, you know, ultimately it's just been a real privilege to do this kind of research, to sort of be trusted to sort of hold a space together for sharing people's stories and give people a platform to share some really powerful profound stories. And going back to what Paul was saying earlier, I think he hit the nail on the head, as he very often does, this is about evoking people's experiences, not just explaining people's experiences, and allowing those stories to travel.  And we don't know where stories will travel, we don't know how stories will travel, we don't know how stories will be received, but we know that they do sort of travel and they do have legacy and they stay memorable to people, they have emotional resonance. So, the impact of this work can often be hard to sort of pin down really specifically, but we know those stories are out there and people are listening and changing their practice as a result.  Natalie: We'll wrap up there. I'd like to thank our guests, Paul Arvidson, Professor Bobbie Farsides and Dr Rich Gorman, for joining me today as we discuss the EPPiGen Project. We heard some powerful insights from patients and families about their experiences, and why ethical preparedness is so important in the context of genomic medicine. If you would like to hear more like this, please subscribe to Behind the Genes on your favourite podcast app. Thank you for listening. I've been your host, Natalie Banner. This podcast was edited by Bill Griffin at Ventoux Digital and produced by Naimah Callachand. 

Upfront summary: Why engage a prolonged fast of >24 hours?1. HUGE benefits – enormous change in your physiology. Too valuable to miss.2. EASE: Fasting is much easier than you think. The mythical ideas in your head are bad ideas and not facts. Yes, you can and should exercise while fasting. If you feel bad fasting this is simply more evidence that your physiology is in disarray and your need for fasting is greater. Anyone can train their body to burn fat. It's not a trick, it's basic physiology that your body owns and can execute.3. NOTHING: it requires you to do NOTHING. Having said that we will show you exactly how to do it.4. Personalize it – make it your own journey – how long and how often but include it in your overall life plan. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly.

Crystal Rivers | Open Book | Apr 22, 2025 Your journey into spiritual freedom isn't merely about casting out negative influences—it's about embracing the profound truth of who you are in Christ. You are a new creation, radiating the very fragrance of Christ to God Himself. This identity isn't something you strive toward; it's already yours to claim. When facing spiritual battles, remember that some challenges can't simply be cast away. They require you to wrestle through knowledge and understanding of God's word. The armor described in Ephesians 6—the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of peace, shield of faith, and helmet of salvation—isn't ceremonial gear but the spiritual reality of your new nature. True freedom comes through renewing your mind with light, not through constant external interventions. As you immerse yourself in God's word, make it fertile soil for transformation. Create space for quiet communion with God, away from distractions. Walk with those who strengthen your faith rather than diminish it. Don't be discouraged by setbacks or failures. Your salvation isn't earned through perfection but received through grace. God has delivered you, is delivering you, and will continue to deliver you. When you fall, don't resort to self-condemnation or repeated recommitments—instead, return to the truth of who you are in Christ and continue walking in the light. Remember that as a believer, you carry authority. Demons are subject to you, sickness is subject to you, and you have the right to use the name of Jesus. But beyond these benefits, pursue intimate friendship with Jesus above all else—even above ministry or service. It's in knowing Him deeply that you'll find the strength to stand firm against anything that opposes your true identity. Zoom every weekday : http://www.caveadullam.org/zoom Subscribe to our Podcast on iTunes : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Check us out on Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/show/02wUJ3W... or download the Podcast episodes for free : https://hearthis.at/caveadullam-hl/#t... Follow us on Facebook & Instagram Facebook Cave Adullam : / caveadullam.org Ministers Rest : / ministersrest Preparing His bride : / phbfellowship #STNG : / securingthenextgeneration Instagram Cave Adullam: / caveadullam #STNG : / securingthenextgeneration

   A day after meeting with Vice President JD Vance, Pope Francis has died at age 88.  We'll discuss what this means not only for the Catholic Church but global politics as well.    Trump's Easter post on Truth Social got all the headlines Sunday but a post later in the day is the one I want to focus on.  It could be the simplest and most brilliant thing he's every penned.    Representative Nancy Mace unloads on a voter in a retail store and it was a total embarrassment for her.  This is NOT the way to handle a liberal that lives in your own district.    The Royals beat Detroit in 10 innings, 4-3.  If you ask me, I think they just kept their season alive.  It wasn't easy, nothing is for this punchless lineup.  But at least we aren't throwing in the towel in April.   KU sweeps KSU in baseball, draft week is here, Justin Thomas has a dramatic win on the PGA Tour and John Daly cashed in at the Masters.

Betsy Petrie, founder of Betsy Petrie Consulting and author of RAILS-Talk: A Tough Conversations Workbook for Managers of People, believes human to human communication is the first and final frontier. If you're looking for better collaboration from yourself and/or others, or not sure what productivity problem you're trying to solve, this show is for you. Improve your storytelling immediately with my The ABTs of Agile Communications™ quick online course to learn the agile narrative framework that all influential business communication is built.  Grab your copy of The Narrative Gym for Business, a short guide on crafting ABTs for all of your communications.  Read Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System™ to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand.  #StoryOn! ≈Park

AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports protest letters from former Israeli soldiers reveal tensions.

In this episode, Sam Ashoo, MD and T.R. Eckler, MD discuss the April 2025 Emergency Medicine Practice article, Sodium Disorders in the Emergency Department: A Review of Hypernatremia and HyponatremiaHypernatremia (High Sodium Levels)Definition: Sodium level greater than 145 mEq/LBreakdown into three categories based on total body water statusHypovolemic HypernatremiaEuvolemic HypernatremiaHypervolemic HypernatremiaCommon causes and conditions associatedHyponatremia (Low Sodium Levels)Definitions: Mild (130-135 mEq/L), Moderate (125-129 mEq/L), Profound (< 125 mEq/L)Breakdown into three categoriesPseudo HyponatremiaHypovolemic HyponatremiaEuvolemic HyponatremiaHypervolemic HyponatremiaCommon causes and conditions associatedTreatment Guidelines and StrategiesEmphasizing slow correction to avoid complications like cerebral edema and osmotic demyelination syndromeSuggested treatment rates for acute and chronic conditionsSpecial ConsiderationsAddressing severe cases and the importance of proper diagnosticsPre-hospital care considerations and scenariosPediatrics and consideration of child abuse in sodium disordersFive Things That Will Change Your PracticeCentral lab sodium values over point-of-care for accuracyRectal temperature checks in endurance athletesLoop diuretics for hypervolemic hyponatremia (e.g., CHF patients)Enteral treatment for hypernatremia, if possibleConsidering COVID-19 as a possible cause for new onset SIADH 

In LONDON HAS FALLEN (2016), Gerard Butler has to save both the American President AND Great Britain from Middle Eastern terrorists... and ends up killing a lot of people who may or may not be cops! PLUS: Damn, it's a great time to be a Columbia University alum! PATREON-EXCLUSIVE EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/126894013

Send us a textHave you ever felt the pressure to experience everything, see it all, and constantly be in motion? Today's reflection on Proverbs 4:25-27 invites us into a counter-cultural wisdom that transforms our perspective on life's seemingly ordinary moments.Drawing from the simple pleasure of watching fish swim in an aquarium, we explore how quality experiences often outshine quantity, and how this principle applies to our spiritual journey. While the world pushes us toward constant stimulation and visible achievements, some of our most significant growth happens in the quiet, unwitnessed moments of life.These "mundane" seasons—when progress feels slow and excitement wanes—are precisely when character and integrity are forged most powerfully. When no one is watching except you and God, something profound happens: preparation for purpose. As we share in this episode, "Allowing Him to mold and make us in the secret place is what prepares us for the public space."God rarely speaks through spectacular displays or overwhelming experiences. Instead, transformation typically happens through that still, small voice that requires intentional listening. Learning to appreciate life's simple pleasures creates contentment that doesn't depend on constant stimulation or novelty. When we embrace this truth, we discover that Jesus truly is more than enough.Listen now and be encouraged that your seemingly insignificant moments matter deeply to God. What are you learning in your quiet seasons? Share your thoughts, and subscribe for more daily encouragement that helps you find God in every moment of your day.Support the show

Michael Venutolo-Mantovani is a writer based in Chapel Hill who has contributed to the New York Times, National Geographic, GQ, Wired, and many others. He writes the excellent newsletter, Being a Dad is Hard as F*ck.Practicing Freedom with Amanada Alexander ---Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Fill out the first-ever TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Jay Mohr (Jerry Maguire, SNL) joins us this week for an absolutely amazing conversation… one that'll make you self reflect on your life while cracking up at the same time. Jay talks about his earliest drug (approval) and how seeking it lead to success in comedy but difficulties in show business, ala SNL. We also talk about accepting responsibility for your own problems, his Wu-Tang fueled intervention story, and going toe to toe with Tom Cruise on Jerry Maguire. Thank you to our sponsors:

This Q&A episode offers a bold reminder: a deep and transformational spiritual experience isn't reserved for mystics in the mountains—it's available to you right now, anywhere. Kaustubha and guest Co-host Kishori Gopi unpack the Bhagavad-gītā's ancient key to overcoming seasonal depression, emotional heaviness, and the constant ups and downs of modern life: detachment from the shifting mind, and connection to the ever-radiant soul within. Learn how simply observing your thoughts and emotions—rather than identifying with them—is not just mindfulness, but a moment of true spiritual awakening. Also in this episode: * What the Gītā says about seasonal sadness and inner stability * The profound power of stepping back from the mind and witnessing the soul * How weather, darkness, and emotional struggle can become fuel for real growth * How to raise God-connected kids in challenging circumstances * Navigating Catholicism, Krishna bhakti  Whether your long winter is literal or emotional—this episode will help you rediscover your luminosity and find clarity on how to guide others, especially your children, toward the same.

This Q&A episode offers a bold reminder: a deep and transformational spiritual experience isn't reserved for mystics in the mountains—it's available to you right now, anywhere. Kaustubha and guest Co-host Kishori Gopi unpack the Bhagavad-gītā's ancient key to overcoming seasonal depression, emotional heaviness, and the constant ups and downs of modern life: detachment from the shifting mind, and connection to the ever-radiant soul within. Learn how simply observing your thoughts and emotions—rather than identifying with them—is not just mindfulness, but a moment of true spiritual awakening. Also in this episode: * What the Gītā says about seasonal sadness and inner stability * The profound power of stepping back from the mind and witnessing the soul * How weather, darkness, and emotional struggle can become fuel for real growth * How to raise God-connected kids in challenging circumstances * Navigating Catholicism, Krishna bhakti  Whether your long winter is literal or emotional—this episode will help you rediscover your luminosity and find clarity on how to guide others, especially your children, toward the same.

If possible, Aamir Khan has upped his game from 3 "Idiots". Aamir plays an alien who has landed on Earth and loses his only device with which to contact his mothership. He must try and figure out this Earth place from a position of complete naivete. Profound and extremely funny at the same time.

We look for wisdom in many places; our friends, philosophers, or even self-help books. But Scripture tells us that the wisdom of God is far beyond the wisdom of man. In fact, our wisdom is foolishness in comparison. In response, we should worship our wise God and get our wisdom from him. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/81/29

Jana Stern is a psychic, astrologer, and spiritual activator with over 15 years of expertise and a lifelong connection to her psychic lineage. Founder of The Resilience Revolution and host of "I'm Really Into 'That Stuff” podcast, she empowers clients through tailored spiritual practices. A certified Life Activation™ practitioner, Jana blends metaphysical knowledge with practical tools for transformation. Her mission: to integrate spirituality with mental health to create profound societal change - to learn more go to www.janastern.com

Notes and Links to Jon Hickey's Work        Jon Hickey is a writer from Minnesota. He earned an MFA from Cornell University and was a Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University. His short stories have appeared in numerous journals such as Virginia Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, and the Massachusetts Review, among other places. He is a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Chippewa Indians (Anishinaabe). He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two sons. Buy Big Chief   Jon Hickey's Website   Book Review for Big Chief in San Francisco Chronicle   At about 1:35, Jon talks about his mindset and early feedback for his novel as Pub Day approaches  At about 3:25, Jon gives out social media and contact info and talks about book events that are upcoming  At about 5:15, “Midwest/Minnesota Nice” is discussed  At about 8:45, Jon mentions exciting advance praise for Big Chief At about 9:45, Jon gives background on language loss in his family, as his grandparents were the “boarding school generation” At about 11:30, Jon talks about how Anishinaabe functions as a language, and how it is both in his DNA and “mysterious”  At about 13:15, John traces his childhood reading, including Stephen King as a transformative writer At about 17:20, John chronicles inspiring and thrilling writers and works and the wonderful writing programs he was part of At about 18:20, Jon charts the huge imprint that Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man has left on him At about 22:00, Kyle Edwards and his Small Ceremonies, as well as Kate Folk and her Sky Daddy , are mentioned as contemporary works/writers who thrill and challenge Jon At about 24:20, Pete lays out some of Big Chief's exposition At about 25:55, Jon responds to Pete asking about how Jon pictures the book's narrator and protagonist At about 29:00, Mack, the tribal president in the book, is described At about 30:00, Jon responds to Pete wondering about motivations for Mitch related to bullying and feelings of being an outsider from his childhood At about 32:15, Ideas of power in politics are discussed At about 34:10, Ideas of authenticity and genuineness and morality are discussed, in connection to politics and voting in the book and beyond, especially regarding Joe Beck At about 35:40, Jon riffs on what he kept in mind while writing the book, with regard to moralizing as an author At about 39:00, Jon responds to Pete's question about blood quantum and similar ideas and how the discourses have changed or not At about 42:40, Jon talks about tropes and irony and “outward signs” of being indigenous, and how that is reflected in his book's cover and in society at large At about 43:40, The title and its inspiration is discussed   At about 45:50, Jon reads a representative excerpt that speaks of themes of belonging, and Pete and Jon further discuss ideas of childhood's impacts on adulthood At about 47:15, Jon discusses the significance of Mack's protection of Mitch, and Mitch's self-esteem and power's connection to cynicism At about 51:10, Mack and his bearing and his motivations are discussed At about 52:00, a pivotal and tragic event-Mitch's mother's death-and the subsequent fire vigil is discussed  At about 55:45, The book's upcoming election and sabotage and Gloria are discussed, with a tip of the cat to Harvey Keitel in calling Mitch a “fixer” At about 1:00:20, Mitch and his cynicism and his work on the campaign are explored, with connections to current political climates  At about 1:02:15, the platforms of the two candidates and ideas of banishment from the tribe are considered  At about 1:05:50, Pete wonders if Mack is a Trump-ish figure, and Jon reflects on how he has tried to write about identity through tribal politics  At about 1:10:00, Pete and Jon ponder the “void” within Mitch and talk about the local political and larger political world collide  At about 1:12:05, Pete compliments the “beautiful” ending, and the two discuss the Sopranos ending, and Jon discusses his mindset in crafting his book's ending At about 1:14:40, Jon outlines changes in the book's previous permutations  At about 1:16:40, Jon defines what is what for him a “work of art” You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he's @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he's @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Episode 270 guest Jason De León is up on the website this week. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran. Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    This is a passion project of Pete's, a DIY operation, and he'd love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 280 with Jahmal Mayfield, who writes gritty crime novels that touch on large social issues. His stellar SMOKE KINGS was inspired by Kimberly Jones' passionate viral video, “How can we win?” The episode airs on April 15.  

Preview: Colleague Brett Arends of MarketWatch comments that POTUS Trump has long held that tariffs are profound tools of state. More later. 2907 NYSE IN THE PANIC OF 1907

Amanda Humberson kicks off Season 2 of the Podcast with some poetry for your soul.

Near-death experience guest 1332 is Evan Mecham, transpersonal psychologist, certified dream counselor and teacher of meditation. He had a near death experience due to head on collision with a semi truck which we talked about and more.Evan's email addressemecham@evanmecham.comCONTACT:Email: jeff@jeffmarapodcast.comTo donate crypto:Bitcoin -  bc1qk30j4n8xuusfcchyut5nef4wj3c263j4nw5wydDigibyte -  DMsrBPRJqMaVG8CdKWZtSnqRzCU7t92khEShiba -  0x0ffE1bdA5B6E3e6e5DA6490eaafB7a6E97DF7dEeDoge  -  D8ZgwmXgCBs9MX9DAxshzNDXPzkUmxEfAVEth. -   0x0ffE1bdA5B6E3e6e5DA6490eaafB7a6E97DF7dEeXRP -  rM6dp31r9HuCBDtjR4xB79U5KgnavCuwenWEBSITEwww.jeffmarapodcast.comSOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeffmarapodcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeffmarapodcast/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/jeffmaraP/JeffMara does not endorse any of his guests' products or services. The opinions of the guests may or may not reflect the opinions of the host.

Why would any leader choose to take on a transformation that requires rethinking how they lead, how their organization functions, and how they learn? In this episode, we dive deeper with Cliff Norman and David Williams, co-authors of Quality as an Organizational Strategy, exploring Chapter 11: “Getting Started.” They share powerful stories, practical steps, and the deep-rooted challenges leaders face when shifting from conventional methods to building true learning organizations grounded in Dr. Deming's philosophy. This conversation highlights why improvement cannot be delegated, why leadership transformation is essential, and how to begin the journey—with clarity, commitment, and courage. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.1 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today we are going to continue our conversation with Dave Williams and Cliff Norman about their book Quality as an Organizational Strategy. I found this book fascinating because I think it's addressing something where there's been a bit of a hole and that is how do we think about the strategy of our business? And so we already had our conversation in a prior episode about the overview of the book, but today we're going to be talking about specifically, now this is kind of funny because we're going to be talking about the back of the book and that is chapter 11, getting started. Dave, why don't you take it away?   0:00:53.3 Dave Williams: Well, thanks, Andrew. Thanks for having us back on the Deming podcast. So, as you mentioned, part of the way that the book is laid out is that it describes kind of the foundations that are behind quality as an organizational strategy and begins sort of with an introduction that explains a good bit about how Dr. Deming had this provocation of a need for leaders to transform the way that they approach leading organizations. And part of that was to move not just from process based improvement projects, but to start to think about major systems in the organization and to pursue quality as the overall strategy and create a continuous improvement organization or learning organization. And so the book lays some of the foundation behind the science of improvement or behind profound knowledge that underpin the thinking, walks through quality as an organizational strategy, as a method of five interdependent activities. Then at the end it comes back full circle to say, well, this is great, now you've learned about these theories and methods. But a natural question for any leader would be, how do I get started? And one of the first things that we talk about in that section actually is about why leaders would want to do this transformation.   0:02:30.9 Dave Williams: And this actually came from a conversation that Lloyd and Cliff and I had in 2020 where we were talking about getting on this journey of building the book. And we all kind of recognized that this was really, really hard work. And we were curious or we, we didn't have a good answer of what was our theory about why somebody would deviate from the way in which they work today and embark on a transformational change of the way that they approach leadership, the way that they approach organizations. And actually I ended up going on a journey of interviewing a whole host of leaders who had been influenced by Deming, who had been involved in improvement in healthcare, folks like Dr. Berwick and Paul Batalden and Brent James. I interviewed some folks in the UK and other places, like John Seddon, and asked them, oh and I should Blaine Godfrey, who had been the lead of the Durand Institute, and I posed the question, what causes somebody to want to embark on this change? And many people actually had a hard time articulating it. But the answer that emerged, or actually Blaine Godfrey was the one that kind of framed it the best, I think, for us, was a number of things.   0:03:57.7 Dave Williams: Sometimes it's something like a book like this comes out and people read it and it's interesting and new. Sometimes it's an event happens, a patient safety event or a major accident or something of which causes people to have to change or do something different. Sometimes it's a discouragement with a desire that you know you could do better, but you don't have methods or know how to. So there were a host of things that we listed, and those are some of a sample of them that might invite somebody to say, the way that we're working today is not getting us to the level that we want to. And now we want to embark on something different. And we might look to something like quality as an organizational strategy as a method for us to transform the way that we're working and build on the shoulders of Deming's philosophy and the science of improvement and do it differently.   0:04:56.0 Andrew Stotz: And when I look at the book, you guys are bringing together a lot of different stuff. It's not just a Deming book. It's Deming is a part of this, and that's fascinating. One of the questions I have is when we look at, let's say, a business owner, a business leader is looking for answers, as you said, maybe it's an event, maybe it's a discouragement, maybe it's a feeling like we can do better. Maybe it's just being beaten by competitors. They come to a point where they start looking for answers and they find some fantastic books, authors, ideas, consultants, all this and I think about whether that's Peter Drucker or whether that's the Lean movement or whether that's, let's say Taguchi or something like that is the teachings that you guys are talking about - and I'm going to specifically ask about the teachings of Dr. Deming. Is it more or is it more difficult or less difficult to implement than other books or styles or methods that someone's going to come across?   0:06:08.7 Cliff Norman: I have to quote one of my colleagues here who probably knew about more about Deming than anybody in API or all of us combined, that's Ron Moen, who did, I think it was 88 seminars, four-day seminars with Dr. Deming. Dr. Deming once told him, he said, Ron, I believe you've been to more of these and I've been to. And it's kind of a joke. He had a great sense of humor. But you know, Ron told me the problem with Deming is he's asking us to change. And there's all sorts of things out there that require the management and the leadership, they really don't have to do anything different. And there are several things out there. In fact, Philip Crosby, one of the three gurus during when they launched, he was more the evangelical and had a way of talking to management so that they understood it, which that was his contribution to all that. But when Six Sigma came up and black belts and all that, and Crosby looked at him and says, that's not going to change the system. He said, all you're doing is killing a bear for management, killing a bear for management, and then you'll get a black belt.   0:07:19.9 Cliff Norman: You know, And I thought, wow that's pretty profound. Because the management at that point doesn't have to do anything, just have the black belt ceremony. There's absolutely no change on their part. Where Deming, as Ron says, he's kind of a pain. You've got to learn about variation, you got to learn about Shewhart charts. You've got to be able to put together a family of measures for your organization. You've got to understand your organization's system. You need to understand psychology, you need to understand theory of knowledge and how people learn how they change. And nothing else out there puts that on leaders. And so that was a question that Dave was lending back to. Why would somebody do this to themselves? You know, why would they take on this whole extra thing to learn and all the rest of it. And for the people that I know that have made that, that bridge, the pure joy that they get and the rewards they get from people who are learning and that they're leading and that they're changing and they're able to go to other organizations and repeat this and call them up and say, thank you so much for helping me learn how to be a real leader.   0:08:35.8 Cliff Norman: I mean, that's the reward in it. But it requires a real change on the part of the leader. And I don't know of anything else, Andrew, that actually requires that kind of in depth change. And there was one of our leaders, Joe Balthazar, he had Jane and I do four years in a row with his leadership team, teach them the science of improvement. The same curriculum, same leaders, four years in a row. And the second year I was doing it, I said, don't we need... No, no, Cliff, I want you to do exactly what you did last year. He said, it takes years for people to understand this. And I thought, wow, this is unbelievable. But on the fourth year, the VP of sales walked up to me and he says, I think I figured it out. And I thought, wow. And it does it literally... Because you've got to depart from where you've been and start thinking about how you're going to change and let go of what's made you successful up to this point. And that's hard, that's hard for anybody to do.   0:09:47.2 Cliff Norman: And anybody's been through that four day seminar knows when they crossed that path that all of a sudden they had to say, you know what I've been doing, I can see where I've been, the problem and not the solution. And that's tough for us. That really is tough. And Deming says you have to give up that guilt trip. And once you understand the theory of variation, once you understand systems, once you understand psychology and theory of knowledge, it's time then for you to move on and let go of the guilt. I hope that makes sense. But that's the difficulty in this.   0:10:17.6 Andrew Stotz: It reminds me of two, it made me think about two things. I mean, I was just a 24 year old guy when I attended the seminars that I did, and they weren't even four day. I think they were two-day ones at Quality Enhancement Seminars in, what was it, George Washington, I think. But the point that I remember, as just a young guy who I was, I pretty much admired all these business leaders. And then to see Dr. Deming really nail em to the wall and say it's about you changing. And whether he was saying that directly or whether that he was implying that through the Red Bead experiment or other things, it's about you shaping the system. That really blew me away because I had already read some books and I was pretty excited. And then it also made me think about, let's say there's a really good book, I would say Good to Great by Jim Collins that highlights some things that you can do to succeed and make your business better. And you can just buy that book and hand it to your management team and go, hey, implement what you learned from this book.   0:11:20.8 Andrew Stotz: Whereas with the Deming book, it's like there's just so much more to it. So I guess the answer to this is it is more takes time. There's more thinking going on. And I think that's part of the whole point of what your book does, is to help us map it out. So why don't we go through and think about this and kind of maybe step by step through what is the starting point and how do we go?   0:11:45.4 Cliff Norman: Andrew, I just got to add to what you just said there and go back to Joe Balthazar at Hallmark Building Supplies. He shared with me that, and he's the one that said I want you to do these four year seminars dedicated Deming's idea of Profound knowledge. And he said, Cliff, the day I made it, I knew I'd made it. Is my son Joey spilled his milk. He's about three years old. And he said, I started to do my normal leap across the table and he said I was about mid air. And I thought, oh my, this is what they do. This is part of their system. This is common. And I'm treating this like it's special. And that was so profound for him. And when, when you move beyond the Shewhart chart and you see events in your life around you relative to the theory of variation, common and special cause variation at a deep way like that, that's the kind of transformation you want to see in a leader. And Joe will tell you he's forever grateful for Deming and everything he's learned, and I think that's the reward. But people need to be willing to go on that journey, as Dave was saying.   0:12:53.0 Andrew Stotz: So Dave, why don't you walk us through a little bit of what you guys are teaching in that chapter.   0:13:00.3 Dave Williams: Sure. Well, one of the next steps obviously is if somebody, if a leadership team thinks that they want to go on this journey, there's some considerations they got to think about. As we've already sort of alluded to or touched on, this is a leadership responsibility and a leadership change. And so there's got to be will amongst the leadership team in order to say we want to work together and work hard to do this work. That this is not something that, similar to Cliff's example of say, having black belts, that we can just hand it off, somebody else will do it, and we can just keep going about our business and hope. It's important that leaders spend time recognizing and thinking about the fact that this is going to involve them doing work, doing effort, changing the way that they think, changing the way that they practice. And I like to say it's good hard work. I mean it's going to be something that's deeply rewarding. But it does require them to have that will. And with will then it's going to come time and energy, right? They've got to make the space, they've got to create regular routines and opportunities for them to learn just in terms of content, learn in terms of practice or application and learn in the process of doing the improvement work and doing the change to the way that they work in the organization.   0:14:38.0 Dave Williams: So there's going to be a need to build in that ability. And then a third thing is to ask whether you think this is something that you can do on your own or whether it might be useful to have help. And help may be an internal, a consultant, but likely not to promote consulting it but, but there's a good chance that you're going to need somebody that has both experience in improvement and helping people do results-driven improvement as well as somebody who has experience doing system wide change through a lens like QOS. And, and the advantage of that often is it it gives you as a leadership team to focus in on your job of thinking and looking and learning and allow somebody else to be an external intervener, somebody who comes in and creates some of the support, some of the context, some of the ways that can make it easier for you to step back and look at your organization in a different way. And so many times those are some of the things that should be considered as teams working through it. Cliff, what would you add or improve upon.   0:16:07.3 Cliff Norman: The idea of external help. Deming was pretty black and white about that. I was kind of surprised. I went back and read one of his quotes. He said, "I should mention also the costly fallacy held by many people in management that a consultant must know all about a process in order to work on it. All evidence is exactly the contrary. Competent men in every position, from top management to the humblest worker know all there is to know about their work except how to improve it. Help towards improvement can come only from outside knowledge." And I was reflecting on that today with Jane who's been involved in this for 40 plus years also. I said Jane, when he said that, I think it was accurate because at that time she and I were going to Duran seminars. There's only two books out there with methods. One was Ishikawa's book on Guide to Quality Control. And the other was Feigenbaum's book. And then of course you had Duran's book on The Quality Handbook, which was a nice doorstop. But there wasn't that much knowledge about improvement. And the worst part where Deming was really getting to was there's very few people you'd run into that actually under the Shewhart methods and charts and understand the difference between special and common cause variation.   0:17:27.0 Cliff Norman: And so you had to bring that kind of knowledge in from the outside. And frankly, we've had people go off the rails here. You know, Dr. Deming in the teaching of statistics has identified analytic studies which is focused on looking at data over time and trying to understand that and simple methods and approaches and then what he calls enumerative statistics, which is use of T tests, F tests and all the rest of it, which assumes that under the IDD principle that data is independent and identically distributed. Well, if you have any special causes in the data set, it blows up both of those assumptions and the use of those methods doesn't offer any help in prediction. And as Dr. Deming often said, prediction is the problem. And then go back to Shewhart. And Shewhart said, things in nature are inherently stable, but man-made processes are inherently unstable. So when Dave and I first do a Shewhart chart for a client, we don't expect for it to be stable. We expect for to have special causes. And as Dr. Deming said and also Dr. Juran, that when you get a stable system, that in and of itself is an achievement, that means nobody's messing around with the system anymore.   0:18:43.0 Cliff Norman: And you see this in the simplest things, like in an office, somebody will walk in and they think that their body is the standard for what the internal temperature should be for that room. So then they walk up and they start tampering with the thermostat. And by the end of the day everybody's irritated because we've had so many bodies up there with their standard. Moving the funnel on us here, and just leaving it alone would probably all be better off. But you have to learn that. And I think that's what Dr. Deming was saying, is that that kind of knowledge is going to come from the outside. Now the good news is is that since he wrote that in 1986, we've got a lot of people out there and some of them are in organizations that do understand the Shewhart methods and can understand the difference between common and special cause variation. They do understand the difference between a new and analytic studies and statistics and they can be of help. So the Deming Institute has a room full of these people show up, but they're at their gatherings annually. So we're a lot further along than we were in 1986.   0:19:45.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. So let's go through that for just a second. Some considerations you've talked about. You know that it's a leadership change. Right. And you gotta ask yourself, are we ready to work on this? And you know, this is not a hands-off thing. The second thing you talked about is time and energy. Are we ready to make the space for this? We have to have regular meetings. You know, we've gotta really... There's some work involved here. And then the third part you've talked about is outside help. And you mentioned about this story of Joe Balthazar and how he asked you to do the same topic over and over for four years. And imagine if he was telling his team, let's meet and try to implement some of this stuff on our own. Everybody dig into a book and then let's try. It would be very difficult to make that kind of progress compared to bringing an outside person. Which also brings me to the last thing that you said, Cliff, which was the idea that Dr. Deming had mentioned, that you need an outside person to truly change something. Everybody's got the expertise on the inside.   0:20:44.5 Cliff Norman: I appreciate you summarizing that because my job and working with Joe and leadership team, I was meeting with him every month. But what the four years that Jane and I spent were the next levels of his leadership. You know, it wasn't the leadership team. And I'm glad you brought that up because it was the very next level that he wanted exposed to this and the VP of sales that came in, he was new, so he had to be part of this group because he wasn't there originally. And so there was that ongoing... He wanted that next generation that was going to take over for him and the others to really understand this. So I'm glad you summarized that for me to help.   0:21:30.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I think one of the starting points too, I mean, the body of work, not just this book, but the other books that you guys have been involved in and produced provide a lot of the starting points for this. So there's a lot there. Dave, where do we go after these considerations? And the people say, okay, yeah, leadership says, we want to make this change. We're ready to make some time for it. We're willing to get outside support and help. Where do we go next.   0:21:57.7 Dave Williams: Right. Well, one thing that we typically invite a leadership team to do is to take kind of a self assessment of where they sort of see their baseline in relation to the methods and activities of QOS. So in chapter one of the book, there's actually a table that is 10 different categories. And then each leader takes it independently and they rate their level of agreement with different definitions from 0 to 10. 0 being this really isn't present, and 10 is, I'm very, very far along on this journey that in the book that's out now, there's a summarized table, it's on a page. But actually in the QOS field guide that we're working on publishing this year, there's a much more detailed version that we use in practice that has deeper definitions, but basically it works its way through purpose and leadership and systems thinking and measurement and all the things that are tied into QOS and what... And as I mentioned, we have each individual member of the leadership team take it independently and then we bring those scores together to learn together.   0:23:32.5 Dave Williams: And there's different ways in which you can display it. In the book, we show an example of a leadership team's scatter plot where it shows the rating and then it also shows the standard deviation amongst that exists between the leadership team. It's very, very common for leaders to not be in agreement in terms of their score in each of the different areas. You know what I said, It's a 0 to 10 scale. Typically, in my experience using the tool, people tend to be between a 2 and a 6 and hovering around a 2 or a 4. But it sort of looks like a buckshot or shotgun blast where there's a very... If you were to put dots where everybody scores, where there's variation that exists. And that's good because it's useful for the team to pause and think about why they assess the organization the way that they did. Looking at it through this new lens, where are the places that there's agreement and also where are the places that there's variation? And that helps them to be able to think about the fact that through this process, they're likely to both improve their assessment of the organization, but also increase their agreement about where they are and what they need to do to move forward and what they need to do to improve.   0:25:05.2 Dave Williams: And so that's a useful starting point, gets everybody kind of on the same page, and it's something that we can use at intervals as one of the ways to continually come back and evaluate progress towards the destination of pursuing quality as an organizational strategy.   0:25:23.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I mean, I imagine that self assessment, it helps you too when you work with companies to be able to really understand, okay, here are starting point with this company is really, they just really don't know much about all of this stuff, whereas you'll have some other clients that basically, wow, okay, there's a lot of knowledge here about it, but how's the implementation and all that? So are we ready to change? Are we prepared to devote the time and energy? Are we going to get outside help? And where are we now? What's our starting point that's great to help us understand exactly how you step through it. What comes next?   0:26:03.5 Cliff Norman: Well, in that very first milestone, in that table, is it table three, Dave? Anyway, the very first milestone is to establish formal improvement efforts. And the reason for that is that unless people experience what it takes to develop, test and implement changes in the organizations, they really can't appreciate the structure that comes with quality as an organizational strategy. Because it's very difficult for many organizations to launch three or four improvement efforts and then bring them to fruition. And there's all sorts of stuff that happens. And then you find out very quickly whether you have managers or leaders, and organizations they've brought me in, they say, let's do some leadership training. I said, no, let's just do some improvement and then we'll find out if we have leaders or not. And one group, I won't mention who it was, but they had five people on their leadership team and they had to replace two of them because they found out they couldn't actually manage an improvement effort. And then the CEO was wondering how they actually manage their organization, which they weren't either. And so it's a rather, it's an important test in the front.   0:27:22.2 Cliff Norman: But as Dr. Juran says, it's real important to develop the habit of improvement. And if you don't know what that is, if you've never experienced it, then it's hard to say to people, gee, I need a purpose that aligns my improvement efforts. I need to understand my system so I know where those improvements are going on. I need to build an information system, get information from customers outside, people inside. I need to put together a strategic plan that actually makes improvements on purpose. That's a lot of work. And once you understand how complicated it can get in terms of just doing three or four improvement efforts and then all of a sudden you got a portfolio of 30 to do your strategic plan. Now that needs some structure, that needs some guidance and all the rest of it. But I'll just go back one step further. My own journey. I was sent by Halliburton at Otis Engineering to go see Dr. Deming 1982 in February. And coming back, I had an audience with the president of our organization, Purvis Thrash. And I went on and on about Dr. Deming. He said, Cliff, you know what I'd like to have? I said, what's up, Mr. Thrash?   0:28:27.5 Cliff Norman: He says, if you'll take this 50 million dollar raw material problem and solve this for me, I'll be a happy man and I'll give you all the quality you want. But go take care of that problem for me first and then come back to me and talk about Deming and Juran and anything else you want to talk about. So I put together four or five people and over about three months we solved his 50 million dollar raw material problem. And then he had a meeting of all executives and I was sitting with the managers in the back row and he called me to the front and he says, Cliff, will you sign this card right here? And I says, well Mr. Thrash, what is this? He says, well, I'm giving you authority to sign $50,000 anytime you need it to get all the quality we can stand here at Otis Engineering. One of the vice presidents said, well, I don't have that authority. He said, you didn't save me $50 million. You know, but once that happens, Andrew, once you do that, then you've got people that are willing to help you. And then once that takes place, I can't tell you how important, it allowed me then to bring in Lloyd Provost to help me.   0:29:36.2 Cliff Norman: And they weren't about to pay out money. They didn't like consultants, in fact, they were anti-consultant. But you saved us $50 million. I gave you $50,000. And Lloyd doesn't make that much. So get him in here, do whatever you need to go do. And I just think it's so critical that we have that demonstration project that people understand at the leadership level what we're talking about when we talk about design and redesign of the system.   0:30:00.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I mean, I appreciate in the book you're talking about this concept. I'm not going to call it quick wins, but the idea is we need to get results. You know, this isn't just about talking about stuff so that's one thing that as you just illustrated, that's one point. The second thing you mentioned, is this person a leader or a manager? You know, and I think for the listeners or viewers out there, they're probably... When they heard you say that, they're probably thinking. Okay, wait a minute. Are my team managers or leaders? How do I know? What would you say? What differentiates the two?   0:30:37.2 Cliff Norman: I was fortunate to hang around Dr. Maccabee, as Deming did, and I asked Dr. Maccabee that question. He said, Cliff it's actually pretty easy. He said leaders have followers, and if you have followers, you can be anywhere in the organization, be a leader, but if you don't have followers, you're not a leader. You might be a manager with authority. You're not a leader.   0:31:02.7 Andrew Stotz: Can I ask a little bit more on that? So I'm thinking about my own business, which is a coffee factory, and I have people that are running the business, but I also have people that are running departments like the roasting department. And that area when they're overseeing this and they're doing a very good job and they're keeping things up and all that. How do I understand in a sense you could say, are they followers? Well, not really. They're people working for them and they have a good time and so do I view that person as not necessarily a leader, but more of a manager, or how do I look at it in my own company?   0:31:35.5 Cliff Norman: It could be a manager, which is essential to the organization. And that's another big difference. You see, the leader can't delegate their relationship with the people who are followers. You can't do that any more than a teacher can dedicate her class to a substitute teacher. Anybody that's ever watched that knows that chaos is getting ready to break out here because that teacher has a relationship with those students. She knows them all in a big way. And when the substitute comes in is game time in most classrooms and so forth, the managers have skills and things that they're applying and they can actually delegate those. Like when I was a foreman, I could have somebody come in and take over my department and I say assign all my people tomorrow. And they could do that. Now, in terms of the people that I was leading that saw me as a leader in that department, they didn't have that relationship.   0:32:30.2 Cliff Norman: But management or skills and necessary things to make the organization run like you're talking about, the coffee is not going to get out the door unless I have people with subject matter knowledge and competent managers to make sure that the T's are getting crossed, the I's dotted and the rest of it. But the leadership of the organization that has followers, that's a whole different person. And I think it's important. That could be anywhere in the organization. Like I had at Halliburton, I had a VP of engineering. Everybody went to him, everybody. He had 110 patents. You know, he built that system. He built the whole organization. So the CEO did not have the followers that the VP of engineering had. And it was well earned. It's always earned, too.   0:33:16.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Okay, that's great. Leaders have followers. Leaders cannot delegate their authority. They have a different relationship.   0:33:24.0 Cliff Norman: They can't delegate the relationship.   0:33:25.8 Andrew Stotz: The relationship. Okay.   0:33:27.4 Cliff Norman: Yeah. Very important.   0:33:34.3 Andrew Stotz: So now let's go back to what, where we were. So we were saying some of the considerations. Are we ready to change? Are we prepared to devote the time and energy? Are we ready to get outside help and where are we now? And that self assessment that you talked about helps us to understand what's our starting point. I always tell a joke with my students about this when I talk about. I'd say, imagine you go to London and you're going to go visit your friend and you call your friend up, you say, I've arrived and I'm calling from a phone booth and just tell me how to get there. And the friend says, well, where are you? And you say, I'm not really sure. Well, do you see anything around you? Yeah, well, there's lots of buildings, but I don't really, you know. Well, do you see any names of any streets? No, I don't really see anything. But just tell me how to get there. There's something missing. If we don't know where we are, it's very difficult to get to where we're going. So now we understand where we are. We got that scatter plot that you guys have that you've talked about. Dave, where do we go next?   0:34:26.6 Dave Williams: Well, so Cliff already mentioned one of the fundamentals. And sometimes I think this is something that people struggle with because they want to jump into something new. But one of the best starting points is to focus in on improvement. And there's a number of different reasons for that. So one is that I don't know about you all, but in my experience, if I ask people, like, hey, I want to create some improvement projects and get started on improvement, I always tell people, like, if you remember the old Stephen Covey exercise where he put the rocks and the stones and the sand into a jar and poured water. And like you would do it in different orders. And I'm fascinated that people will stare at the big rocks or the things that are right in front of them, or the things that are on their agenda, or the things that are part of their strategy. And then they'll look to the side and grab some rare event or some extra thing that isn't related to that, but they've always wanted to work on. And where we try to focus people's attention is one, what are you already working on? Can you look through your and ask around, what are the things that are currently in play, projects that exist? And sometimes we won't ask, what improvement projects do you have? Because if you do that, you get a short list.   0:35:51.4 Dave Williams: Those are the things that people defined as an improvement effort, or maybe use some kind of framing to decide it was an improvement project. It may be better to in the beginning of the book, in the first chapter, we talk about different ways that you improve. And there's designing and redesigning a process. There's designing and redesigning a service or a product. There's changing a whole system. And so it can be useful to say, well, what are we doing in these areas? And that may actually create a bigger list of the various things where people are working on something that's about change to the system that may lend itself to be better activated through firing it up as an improvement project. And then, of course, there's a good chance that any organization, especially if they've done some kind of strategic planning, have some strategic objectives or some strategic priorities which they've committed to or already said, these are the things we're going to work on. So kind of crowdsourcing or bringing those together helps us to potentially find the early portfolio of projects without having to look much further, without having to say, what else do you want to work on.   0:37:07.0 Dave Williams: And then if we've got that, if we've got that list, a second thing that we can do is invite people to use the three questions of the model for improvement and reflect on can you answer these three questions? Do you know what you're trying to accomplish? Do you know how a change will result in improvement? Do you know what changes you'll make? What's your theory about how you'll get to improvement? And so having a list of the things that are already present or existing may be one first step. Another second step in the firing up a portfolio of improvement projects is asking the three questions for the model for improvement. And then a third one, if it's an active project is we have a project progress scale that you might use that can help you gauge. So I've got a project where is it on its journey towards achieving its aim or getting results? Those three can help us to sort of get a sense of the work that is at hand and that has already been sort of started in some fashion that is already in progress and maybe to get a sense of the level of definition and the progress that exists.   0:38:22.3 Dave Williams: They may not be the right projects, but that's a good place to start before trying to create new ones. And I'll hand it to you, Andrew.   0:38:30.4 Andrew Stotz: I find that interesting. Both the story that you told Cliff about fix my raw material problem and then, Dave, what you're talking about is as you talk in the book, focus first on improvement. What are we already working on? What's an improvement project we've got? What's a problem we've got? Because a lot of times, let's say in the teachings of Dr. Deming, it's like, no, get your mind right, read this stuff, read this, figure this out, think about this, go to a seminar, talk to other people before you do anything. I feel like that is oftentimes where people get caught is they get caught up in, I need a year to think about this. And can you explain a little bit more about why once we've done our self assessment and we're ready to go, that you focus on improvement rather than the thinking process?   0:39:21.7 Dave Williams: Well, because we want to... Well, one, we know that in order to get results or to get a different result than what we want, we got to change the system that we got. Right. So in order to do that, we've got to do improvement. The other thing is that there's already energy that's being expended here.   0:39:41.4 Andrew Stotz: That's a good point.   0:39:42.7 Dave Williams: The risk that often I find people run into is that they then add other projects that are not strategic into that bucket and take up more energy. I'll tell you an example. I was working with the health system here in the States and we crowdsource just the things that they were calling improvement projects. The health system had 25 active teams that were just the ones that were called out as improvement projects. When we looked at those 25 teams, the vast majority of them were not actually... They had been meeting for months and doing things for quite some time, but they actually weren't doing any changes and, or they've been testing changes for quite some time. So, now just this exercise alone by only asking, what improvement projects do you have? You realize you've got 25 teams that have been resourced or are spending energy or going to meetings or focused on something. They may not be the strategic thing that matters, but that's irrelevant right now. We just know that we already have invested some interest here. The second thing is these folks have been on this journey for quite some time and are not making progress.   0:41:01.7 Dave Williams: So that tells me something about maybe the way that they framed it. Did they charter it well? Did they have the right people in the room or the right team? Did they have the right tools and methods to be able to break down the problem and then figure out what to test and learn? So there may be some difficulty...   0:41:19.4 Andrew Stotz: Or did they even just dissipate their efforts across 25 projects too? Right in their resources, yeah.   0:41:26.1 Dave Williams: Yeah. Or there are overlaps? So there's a number of different factors. There's actually a paper that was published by a health system in the United Kingdom, and it was really interesting. They spent a lot of attention on generating will through training and getting people in the classroom and teaching them about improvement methods. And they fired up all this energy. They had a massive explosion of the number of projects that were started or where somebody went into their software. They had a software platform. Anybody could go and start a project. Well, something like 50% of those projects never actually got to PDSA testing where they changed anything. And then there were a slew of them that were stuck in PDSA testing but never saw any movement in their process measures or their outcome measures. And only a small number actually progressed in achieving their aim. And I asked the Chief Quality Officer about this, and and he admittedly said that it was very exciting that we we're generating will and getting things going, but that alone was only getting them to maybe some early design and some thinking, but they weren't getting them to results.                                                                         0:42:34.8 Dave Williams: And I said, well, what about the ones that were getting results? And he said, well, those are actually ones where we've got an improvement advisor who's got some skills and ability and improvement. There are things that are resourced, there are things that were prioritized. And man, when we did all those things, they moved from planning and organizing and thinking to testing changes and moving in a direction of goodness and getting at least results in their process measures, if not their outcome measures. And so in my mind, I was like, I appreciate you're trying to build this sort of culture, but it felt like a lot of burnt energy at the front end with all these teams getting into training and firing up their software and more energy might have been strategic in copying what was getting to results. And I think that's part of what we're trying to get to, is helping people learn. You've got if you don't have a method to figure out strategic projects, let's look at the ones you got. How are they going? Where are people at? And how effective is the capability that you have within your system right now? And the leaders want to be part of that, and they can learn within that to go, oh, wow, this is our current state.   0:43:47.2 Dave Williams: And so maybe we're going to agree to continue on with these projects. Maybe we're going to sunset some of them, but we're going to learn together about how do we get better at getting better, and how do we learn how to move projects forward and not to have them take two years. Let's try to get them down to four or six months, whether that's through scope or execution. But let's get better at getting better. And then as we're building... Developing the early activities of QOS, we'll eventually get to a point where we'll also be able to identify more strategic projects that are going to move us towards our aim or towards our purpose better. And this will help us as we're trying to build the capability to get there.   0:44:32.7 Cliff Norman: You know, Andrew, early on, when Dave went down this path, he said that we got to make sure that somebody's working on improvement. They're actually making changes. And Jane and I were working with a group, and the CEO said they've been meeting a long time. Could you down there and see what they're doing? Because nothing's happening. And we started looking through their agendas and they had everything well documented, and it was all about getting ready to get ready. And then they'd assign the dessert. Who's going to bring the dessert to the next meeting. And Jane looked at him and says this reminds me of something, Cliff. I said, what's that? Can I share my screen?   0:45:10.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Yep, go ahead.   0:45:13.7 Cliff Norman: I may send this to. You may know about it, but this is Dr. Deming's Diary of a Cat. And everyday...   0:45:20.6 Andrew Stotz: It hasn't come up yet. Hold on one second. Hopefully you've got permission now.   0:45:28.6 Cliff Norman: Let me go back and check here.   0:45:33.9 Andrew Stotz: Okay. It looks like it's coming up. One second.   0:45:38.4 Cliff Norman: It said every day is today. There's no theory days of the week. But today I got up some food in a bowl, it was great. Slept some too. Play with yarn, got some food in a bowl, had a good nap, slept, food, yarn, fun. Play with a shoelace. There's a big change right there. Went from yarn to a shoelace. Some people call that a job shop. And ate, slept, had a good day, slept, ate some food, yarn, so forth. So, and the team meeting looked just like that. But there's really no changes going on relative to improvement. So Dr. Deming would often share this into four days seminar to make sure that we weren't involved in the Diary of the Cat, but we were actually doing something useful in terms of making changes in the organization.   0:46:24.4 Andrew Stotz: That's a great one. And it helps us to understand that we could be busy all day long and not improve anything.   0:46:31.8 Cliff Norman: You know, or actually confuse that with improvement. In fact, we have an operational API that my team, we were embarrassed in our first, wait a second, our first improvement guide we wrote. And Dr. Adamir Pente, who's a professor at the university in Brazil, he sent us a note and he said, I know you guys and he said you're real big on operational definitions, but you've written this book on improvement and nowhere have you, you've defined what you mean by improvement. And then he put together a three part definition that there's a design and redesign system, there's system measures and the change is sustainable and lasting and so we put that definition in the second edition. But I was confronted at a university, I won't mention which one it was, but they had 30 Keystone projects for a advanced degree program for nursing and they were convinced they were doing improvement. And when I had them apply that definition, they came up out of the thirty. They only could find two projects out of the 30 where they were actually designing and redesigning the system, which, that's the first thing Dave said are we designing and redesigning and making real changes? And people think just showing up and going through motions and all the rest of it is improvement. No, it means...   0:48:07.8 Dave Williams: Looks like we've lost...   0:48:11.9 Andrew Stotz: We lost you at the last, the last statement you just made. People are going through all this stuff and thinking that they're improving, but they're...   0:48:22.8 Cliff Norman: Yeah, it's showing up and going through motions and you know, having the meetings and making sure we assign who's bringing dessert. But we're not really designing and changing the system. We're not getting measurable changes of improvement. In other words, we haven't tracked the data over time and we can't say that the changes that we've made are going to in fact be sustainable because we haven't known what we've done to the system to deserve a sustainable change.   0:48:51.4 Andrew Stotz: By the way, what a buzzword these days, sustainability, sustainable and all that. And you just think do people really think about how we're building something that's really lasting and sustainable?   0:49:04.8 Cliff Norman: Well, we have a checklist and actually Jane designed it for the first edition and it literally lays out what changes did you make, which processes did you change, what's going to change in the documentation, whose role statements have been changed in the organization because of this change. And once all that's answered on that checklist, which is in the book, then we can... But we're pretty certain that we've created the structure to make it easy for people to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing. But unless that structure's changed, probably not much going to happen.   0:49:40.8 Andrew Stotz: Just for the sake of time, because I think we want to wrap up in just a bit. But there's so many stuff, so much stuff that we've been through. But I know there's even more in this chapter, but how would you start to bring this together for the person who is a leader, himself or herself, and they're listening to this and they're thinking, okay, I'm ready to make a change and I'm prepared to devote the time and energy because I see the outcome and I'm open to help, whether that's through the book and other books, whether that's through a consultant, whatever that is. And I can even do a self assessment to some extent and know where our level is, which is very low. We don't know much about this type of stuff and that type of thing. We talked about the first focus on improvement. How do they pull this all together and start moving on it?   0:50:35.0 Dave Williams: There's three things that follow the self assessment. The first one is this focus on doing improvement work and setting up a portfolio of projects. And we just kind of talked about many of the different methods that go into that. And like I said, sometimes that when you say that out loud, leaders don't initially get excited by it because they think they have it. But actually it's a powerful opportunity for you to learn about what's currently going on in the organization and about where this opportunity is to reduce a lot of the noise and a lot of the friction that's getting in the way from you getting to results. The second thing that often happens in parallel is that the leaders need to build a learning system where they're going to be able to learn together both about these projects and what these projects are telling them about their organization, about their culture, about their people, and about their capacity to get results, but also that they can start to be learning about the science of improvement and profound knowledge and the activities of QOS that are going to be part of what they're going to work on developing over the course of the first year or two.   0:51:50.6 Dave Williams: And so that typically is, that's making that space and energy. It's a blend of book learning and application and practical. Trying and looking at things within the organization. It's a very applied approach, but it's an ongoing piece of their discovery. And I often argue that this is a real opportunity for leadership because they're going to be able to see their organization in a way that they haven't seen it before. And when we talk about profound knowledge, they're going to gain this profound understanding and expertise about what they're charged with and what they own and what they want to change in a way that they haven't been able to have it before. And so it's a hard work, but rewarding work. And then third is that typically where the, where we invite people to start is to focus in on the first activity, which is to develop or establish or develop their purpose. When this work was initially framed, not everybody was as... Not everybody had a mission, vision and value statement or a purpose statement that wasn't as common, but today people do. But the difference here, and you'll see this in the chapter on purpose, is that organizations that are pursuing quality as an organizational strategy are organizations that are systems that are built to constantly be trying to match a need that exists out in the world.   0:53:34.7 Dave Williams: And so often a learning for people is to step back and have to reflect on, well, what is the need in which we are creating these products and services to match? And if we're creating these things to match the need, how do we understand what's important, what are the quality characteristics that matter? And then how do we define what our mission is in that context? And being able to say, here's why we exist and the need that we're trying to serve, and in what way? And how do we set a vision for where we want to get into the future and what are the tenants or the practical values that exist in our organization, that we want to define how we work together in terms of building in that way. And so purpose is a big focus. It's that clarity of the need, the clarity of the quality characteristics that it takes to match that need. Understanding what are the products and services that we have. I know that sounds a little trivial, but you'd be stunned how hard it is, especially in service organizations, for people to actually describe what it is that they do, what are the actual services.   0:54:54.3 Dave Williams: They might have the name of the service or the class or the whatever, but to actually say this is what we deliver, and then really think about how do I use this as our organization's sort of North Star, our aim, so that everything else that follows is going to be about building a system that produces the results that we want and produces the services that match that need. So going forward, that's going to be very, very important in instructing the direction and instructing the way in which we're going to work as a community of professional people together.   0:55:30.8 Andrew Stotz: So after self assessment, we're talking about focusing on improvement. We're talking about building a learning system, and we're talking about revisiting or establishing or developing our purpose?   0:55:43.3 Cliff Norman: Yeah, I'll just add to what you just said there, Andrew. There's three basic things that have to happen when we start working. Number one is create the habit of improvement. Start improvement right away. Second thing, Dave just went through some detail on building a system of improvement. And Dave called that a learning system, which I thought was interesting because that's what Dr. Maccabee called it when he saw the five activities. Said, these are really methods for building a learning organization. And he said, I've never really seen them before, but this is what will come out of this, which is the essence of what you want. You want people continually learning, as Dr. Deming said, so they can continually improve. But the third thing that has to happen is we have to develop internal capability for them to carry this on, because we're not going to be around with them. We've never advertised. We don't advertise for clients, and we only get word of mouth. And we're only in there to do those three things, get them started on the habit of improvement, start building the system improvement so they can take it over.   0:56:43.4 Cliff Norman: And the third thing, start developing internal capability so they can continue it on into the future. So those three things basically take off on day one. And depending on the organization, I think this is critical. Dave, you asked this question the other day, if the context is such they've got things in front of them are so bad and so challenging that they just need to work on improvement. That's where we're going to be focused. But now if they can chew gum and walk at the same time, we're going to start building the system of improvement. And the first people I want on those initial teams, I want people on there who are going to be future improvement advisors. And more importantly, they perceive them as future leaders in the organization. I don't want a cadre of a whole bunch of improvement advisors. I want leaders in the future who actually understand the science of improvement, understand these methods, so when they go to the next department, the next organization, they can carry this on. So those three things start improving, start building a system of improvement. And the third thing, start developing internal capability. Those have got to take off almost simultaneously, depending on the situation, of course.   0:57:49.8 Andrew Stotz: Well, on that note, that's quite a discussion. I'm so happy that we can have this to go in a little bit deeper into the work that you guys have done. Again, the book is Quality As an Organizational Strategy. I got mine on Amazon and it sent it to me. But I wonder if you have any last words that you'd like to share about what we've talked about today in relation to getting started.   0:58:18.3 Cliff Norman: So, Dave, why don't you talk a little bit about. Because I think this is critical. We've just finished Andrew, the book that's going to be for the people who actually have to build this system. So Dave, just say a few things about that if you would, because you.   0:58:32.0 Dave Williams: About the field guide?   0:58:33.8 Cliff Norman: Yeah.   0:58:35.5 Dave Williams: Yeah. Well, so when this body of work was first created, there was the content of which you see in this book. And then there were also a lot of exercises and methods and applications and examples that existed as well. And it was a pretty thick binder. We have created two volumes. One, the book that you have, which is the description of the theory and the method and gives you some of the tools. And we're now in the process of pulling together what we call the QOS Field Guide, which is a guide that is supporting people that are going down this journey. It follows the same structure as the book, with the exception of the, the Getting started chapter that we had at the end is now at the beginning. And it walks through in great detail various ways in which you leaders and practitioners can approach getting started and building the capacity and then working through each of the activities. And it's equal in size, I mean, it's about the same thickness. But what we tried to do is to give people really pragmatic things to do.   1:00:01.1 Dave Williams: So there are exercises where people are simulating an idea or a concept or a particular piece. There are what we call QOS applications, which are where you're actually taking the theory or the method and applying it to your own organization. There are case studies and things that have been built that might allow you to practice. There's wonderful examples of just about everything from all, from people that we have worked with over the years across multiple different fields, from my background in emergency services and healthcare to education to manufacturing to elevator companies, all kinds of great stuff. And so that will be helpful as people are trying to think about pursuing this journey and working through that first phase of developing QOS and moving into using it. And we're in the stages of having it done to be available later this year.   1:01:08.6 Andrew Stotz: Exciting.   1:01:09.2 Cliff Norman: We've tried to make it useful, Andrew, that the people have to stay overnight with the management and actually get something done and build it without being run off. That everything is there for them to make sure that they make it successfully. That's the thing we kept in mind as we kept writing this second volume.   1:01:25.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I mean, I would say my experience with your guys's writing is that it's applicable.   1:01:34.1 Dave Williams: Well, Andrew, one thing I was going to add on you mentioned a lot of different examples. There are a lot of books in which people tell you a theory, but they don't tell you how to do it. Or they tell you about their own experience, but they don't actually convey the theory. The Quality as an Organizational Strategy book is laying out the theory and the methods of this approach built on the foundations of the science of improvement and profound knowledge and the Deming philosophy. The QOS Field Guide adds to that by giving you the methods and the tools and the things. It doesn't mean that that by itself you can't just go through like it's some kind of self guided tour and all of a sudden magic happens. There's a lot of work and learning and things that have to go into going through that process. But between these two volumes, a leadership team has the tools and methods that put them in position to be able to make this journey.   1:02:41.4 Andrew Stotz: Right. Well, let's wrap it up there. On behalf of everyone, I appreciate Dave and Cliff. All that you're doing and you're sharing with us and taking the time to do that. So from everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for joining this and bringing your discussion on these topics. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. And you can find this book, Quality as an Organizational Strategy at Amazon and other booksellers. Are there even booksellers these days? I don't even know. They're mainly online these days. So this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, which is "people are entitled to joy in work."  

Hear Joni share about a painting from a friend that moved her to tears. As much pain as you're in today, God will answer your deepest heartfelt longing with something far more precious than just relief.-------- Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible.   Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.   Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

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Vice President J.D. Vance recently gave a powerful and uplifting speech at the American Dynamism Summit.Our host, Mike Slater, dissects a TON of audio from this address over multiple show segments and explains why it's an important reminder that MAGA is not just about "destruction" as the lamestream media would tell you and shows that a brighter future is possible for this country if we make the right choices!