Podcasts about science science

Welcome to the Kaka Balli Punjabi Podcast, your go-to channel for insightful discussions on societal issues, cultural phenomena, and intriguing conspiracies. Hosted by Gagan (Kaka Balli) and Parvinder, this podcast delves deep into a variety of topics that are sure to spark your curiosity and broaden your perspective.In This Episode:

Science Extension enables students to pursue their passion for science. The NSW HSC subject requires students to engage with complex concepts and theories and to critically evaluate new ideas, discoveries and contemporary scientific research. We speak with Dr Lisa Cabral from the University of Technology Sydney to learn the opportunities for both students and mentors. Hosted by Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education About UTS Mentor Science+ Science Extension HSC Students are challenged to examine a scientific research question influenced by the study of one or more of the scientific disciplines. Uniquely for this HSC subject, students will produce a detailed scientific research report that reflects the standards generally required for publication in a scientific journal. Science Extension lays a foundation for students to pursue further study in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) based courses offered at the tertiary level, and to engage in new and emerging industries. UTS works with schools to place students together with mentors to do real scientific research. Learn more About Dr Lisa Cabral Lisa completed her undergraduate degree Bachelor of Science in 1989 at The Flinders University of SA, completed her PhD in 2003 at UNSW and completed her Graduate Diploma of Education in 2014. Lisa is an experienced researcher/educator, with 12 years teaching undergraduate, honours and PhD students in the School of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, 9 years teaching with CSIRO's Scientists in Schools partnership, 4 years as a Medical Ethics tutor to First- and Second-Year Medicine students and 9 years experience teaching Science to secondary school students. She has a strong partnership with the Science Teachers Association of NSW (STANSW), being a presenter and convenor for STANSW Meet the Marker Conferences and Professional Learning Communities and is currently editor of the journal Science Education News. Lisa is excited to be leading and delivering teaching activities within the Faculty of Science HSC Mentor Science+ Science Extension program to foster and build relationships with NSW High School Science communities. Learn more Hosted by Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education With interviews with leading science educators and STEM thought leaders, this science education podcast is about highlighting different ways of teaching kids within and beyond the classroom. It's not just about educational practice & pedagogy, it's about inspiring new ideas & challenging conventions of how students can learn about their world! https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/ Know an educator who'd love this STEM podcast episode?  Share it!The FizzicsEd podcast is a member of the Australian Educators Online Network (AEON )http://www.aeon.net.au/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Science Extension enables students to pursue their passion for science. The NSW HSC subject requires students to engage with complex concepts and theories and to critically evaluate new ideas, discoveries and contemporary scientific research. We speak with Dr Lisa Cabral from the University of Technology Sydney to learn the opportunities for both students and mentors. Hosted by Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education About UTS Mentor Science+ Science Extension HSC Students are challenged to examine a scientific research question influenced by the study of one or more of the scientific disciplines. Uniquely for this HSC subject, students will produce a detailed scientific research report that reflects the standards generally required for publication in a scientific journal. Science Extension lays a foundation for students to pursue further study in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) based courses offered at the tertiary level, and to engage in new and emerging industries. UTS works with schools to place students together with mentors to do real scientific research. Learn more About Dr Lisa Cabral Lisa completed her undergraduate degree Bachelor of Science in 1989 at The Flinders University of SA, completed her PhD in 2003 at UNSW and completed her Graduate Diploma of Education in 2014. Lisa is an experienced researcher/educator, with 12 years teaching undergraduate, honours and PhD students in the School of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, 9 years teaching with CSIRO's Scientists in Schools partnership, 4 years as a Medical Ethics tutor to First- and Second-Year Medicine students and 9 years experience teaching Science to secondary school students. She has a strong partnership with the Science Teachers Association of NSW (STANSW), being a presenter and convenor for STANSW Meet the Marker Conferences and Professional Learning Communities and is currently editor of the journal Science Education News. Lisa is excited to be leading and delivering teaching activities within the Faculty of Science HSC Mentor Science+ Science Extension program to foster and build relationships with NSW High School Science communities. Learn more Hosted by Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education With interviews with leading science educators and STEM thought leaders, this science education podcast is about highlighting different ways of teaching kids within and beyond the classroom. It's not just about educational practice & pedagogy, it's about inspiring new ideas & challenging conventions of how students can learn about their world! https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/ Know an educator who'd love this STEM podcast episode?  Share it!The FizzicsEd podcast is a member of the Australian Educators Online Network (AEON )http://www.aeon.net.au/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jason Lupardus, Director of Business Operations and Partnerships for Turkeys for Tomorrow, joins Marcus and Will to reveal TFT's vision, solution, and strategies for addressing some of the biggest challenges facing the wild turkey. Learn how you can get involved with Turkeys for Tomorrow's citizen-science land management today.   TFT: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter   Please help us by taking our (QUICK) listener survey - Thank you! https://ufl.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3VR10xcKOMTvZH0   Dr. Marcus Lashley (@DrDisturbance) (Academic Profile) Dr. Will Gulsby (@dr_will_gulsby) (Academic Profile) Turkeys for Tomorrow (@turkeysfortomorrow)  UF DEER Lab (@ufdeerlab) (YouTube)   Watch these podcasts on YouTube: Wild Turkey Science YouTube   Donate to wild turkey research: UF Turkey Donation Fund , Auburn Turkey Donation Fund  This podcast is made possible by Turkeys for Tomorrow, a grassroots organization dedicated to the wild turkey. To learn more about TFT, go to turkeysfortomorrow.org.  Help us help turkeys by rating this podcast and sharing it with your friends and family.    Music by Dr. David Mason & Artlist.io Produced & edited by Charlotte Nowak  

#441 Science Demystified with Dr. Joe Schwarcz: Science, Science, Everywhere by City of Côte Saint-Luc

A conversation with Tim Hwang about historical simulations, the interaction of policy and science, analogies between research ecosystems and the economy, and so much more.  Topics Historical Simulations Macroscience Macro-metrics for science Long science The interaction between science and policy Creative destruction in research “Regulation” for scientific markets Indicators for the health of a field or science as a whole “Metabolism of Science” Science rotation programs Clock speeds of Regulation vs Clock Speeds of Technology References Macroscience Substack Ada Palmer's Papal Simulation Think Tank Tycoon Universal Paperclips (Paperclip maximizer html game) Pitt Rivers Museum   Transcript [00:02:02] Ben: Wait, so tell me more about the historical LARP that you're doing. Oh, [00:02:07] Tim: yeah. So this comes from like something I've been thinking about for a really long time, which is You know in high school, I did model UN and model Congress, and you know, I really I actually, this is still on my to do list is to like look into the back history of like what it was in American history, where we're like, this is going to become an extracurricular, we're going to model the UN, like it has all the vibe of like, after World War II, the UN is a new thing, we got to teach kids about international institutions. Anyways, like, it started as a joke where I was telling my [00:02:35] friend, like, we should have, like, model administrative agency. You know, you should, like, kids should do, like, model EPA. Like, we're gonna do a rulemaking. Kids need to submit. And, like, you know, there'll be Chevron deference and you can challenge the rule. And, like, to do that whole thing. Anyways, it kind of led me down this idea that, like, our, our notion of simulation, particularly for institutions, is, like, Interestingly narrow, right? And particularly when it comes to historical simulation, where like, well we have civil war reenactors, they're kind of like a weird dying breed, but they're there, right? But we don't have like other types of historical reenactments, but like, it might be really valuable and interesting to create communities around that. And so like I was saying before we started recording, is I really want to do one that's a simulation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But like a serious, like you would like a historical reenactment, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's like everybody would really know their characters. You know, if you're McNamara, you really know what your motivations are and your background. And literally a dream would be a weekend simulation where you have three teams. One would be the Kennedy administration. The other would be, you know, Khrushchev [00:03:35] and the Presidium. And the final one would be the, the Cuban government. Yeah. And to really just blow by blow, simulate that entire thing. You know, the players would attempt to not blow up the world, would be the idea. [00:03:46] Ben: I guess that's actually the thing to poke, in contrast to Civil War reenactment. Sure, like you know how [00:03:51] Tim: that's gonna end. Right, [00:03:52] Ben: and it, I think it, that's the difference maybe between, in my head, a simulation and a reenactment, where I could imagine a simulation going [00:04:01] Tim: differently. Sure, right. [00:04:03] Ben: Right, and, and maybe like, is the goal to make sure the same thing happened that did happen, or is the goal to like, act? faithfully to [00:04:14] Tim: the character as possible. Yeah, I think that's right, and I think both are interesting and valuable, right? But I think one of the things I'm really interested in is, you know, I want to simulate all the characters, but like, I think one of the most interesting things reading, like, the historical record is just, like, operating under deep uncertainty about what's even going on, right? Like, for a period of time, the American [00:04:35] government is not even sure what's going on in Cuba, and, like, you know, this whole question of, like, well, do we preemptively bomb Cuba? Do we, we don't even know if the, like, the warheads on the island are active. And I think I would want to create, like, similar uncertainty, because I think that's where, like, that's where the strategic vision comes in, right? That, like, you have the full pressure of, like, Maybe there's bombs on the island. Maybe there's not even bombs on the island, right? And kind of like creating that dynamic. And so I think simulation is where there's a lot, but I think Even reenactment for some of these things is sort of interesting. Like, that we talk a lot about, like, oh, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Or like, the other joke I had was like, we should do the Manhattan Project, but the Manhattan Project as, like, historical reenactment, right? And it's kind of like, you know, we have these, like, very, like off the cuff or kind of, like, stereotype visions of how these historical events occur. And they're very stylized. Yeah, exactly, right. And so the benefit of a reenactment that is really in detail Yeah. is like, oh yeah, there's this one weird moment. You know, like that, that ends up being really revealing historical examples. And so even if [00:05:35] you can't change the outcome, I think there's also a lot of value in just doing the exercise. Yeah. Yeah. The, the thought of [00:05:40] Ben: in order to drive towards this outcome that I know. Actually happened I wouldn't as the character have needed to do X. That's right That's like weird nuanced unintuitive thing, [00:05:50] Tim: right? Right and there's something I think about even building into the game Right, which is at the very beginning the Russians team can make the decision on whether or not they've even actually deployed weapons into the cube at all, yeah, right and so like I love that kind of outcome right which is basically like And I think that's great because like, a lot of this happens on the background of like, we know the history. Yeah. Right? And so I think like, having the team, the US team put under some pressure of uncertainty. Yeah. About like, oh yeah, they could have made the decision at the very beginning of this game that this is all a bluff. Doesn't mean anything. Like it's potentially really interesting and powerful, so. [00:06:22] Ben: One precedent I know for this completely different historical era, but there's a historian, Ada Palmer, who runs [00:06:30] Tim: a simulation of a people election in her class every year. That's so good. [00:06:35] And [00:06:36] Ben: it's, there, you know, like, it is not a simulation. [00:06:40] Tim: Or, [00:06:41] Ben: sorry, excuse me, it is not a reenactment. In the sense that the outcome is indeterminate. [00:06:47] Tim: Like, the students [00:06:48] Ben: can determine the outcome. But... What tends to happen is like structural factors emerge in the sense that there's always a war. Huh. The question is who's on which sides of the war? Right, right. And what do the outcomes of the war actually entail? That's right. Who [00:07:05] Tim: dies? Yeah, yeah. And I [00:07:07] Ben: find that that's it's sort of Gets at the heart of the, the great [00:07:12] Tim: man theory versus the structural forces theory. That's right. Yeah. Like how much can these like structural forces actually be changed? Yeah. And I think that's one of the most interesting parts of the design that I'm thinking about right now is kind of like, what are the things that you want to randomize to impose different types of like structural factors that could have been in that event? Right? Yeah. So like one of the really big parts of the debate at XCOM in the [00:07:35] early phases of the Cuban Missile Crisis is You know, McNamara, who's like, right, he runs the Department of Defense at the time. His point is basically like, look, whether or not you have bombs in Cuba or you have bombs like in Russia, the situation has not changed from a military standpoint. Like you can fire an ICBM. It has exactly the same implications for the U. S. And so his, his basically his argument in the opening phases of the Cuban Missile Crisis is. Yeah. Which is actually pretty interesting, right? Because that's true. But like, Kennedy can't just go to the American people and say, well, we've already had missiles pointed at us. Some more missiles off, you know, the coast of Florida is not going to make a difference. Yeah. And so like that deep politics, and particularly the politics of the Kennedy administration being seen as like weak on communism. Yeah. Is like a huge pressure on all the activity that's going on. And so it's almost kind of interesting thinking about the Cuban Missile Crisis, not as like You know us about to blow up the world because of a truly strategic situation but more because of like the local politics make it so difficult to create like You know situations where both sides can back down [00:08:35] successfully. Basically. Yeah [00:08:36] Ben: The the one other thing that my mind goes to actually to your point about it model UN in schools. Huh, right is Okay, what if? You use this as a pilot, and then you get people to do these [00:08:49] Tim: simulations at [00:08:50] Ben: scale. Huh. And that's actually how we start doing historical counterfactuals. Huh. Where you look at, okay, you know, a thousand schools all did a simulation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In those, you know, 700 of them blew [00:09:05] Tim: up the world. Right, right. [00:09:07] Ben: And it's, it actually, I think it's, That's the closest [00:09:10] Tim: thing you can get to like running the tape again. Yeah. I think that's right. And yeah, so I think it's, I think it's a really underused medium in a lot of ways. And I think particularly as like you know, we just talk, talk like pedagogically, like it's interesting that like, it seems to me that there was a moment in American pedagogical history where like, this is a good way of teaching kids. Like, different types of institutions. And like, but it [00:09:35] hasn't really matured since that point, right? Of course, we live in all sorts of interesting institutions now. And, and under all sorts of different systems that we might really want to simulate. Yeah. And so, yeah, this kind of, at least a whole idea that there's lots of things you could teach if you, we like kind of opened up this way of kind of like, Thinking about kind of like educating for about institutions. Right? So [00:09:54] Ben: that is so cool. Yeah, I'm going to completely, [00:09:59] Tim: Change. Sure. Of course. [00:10:01] Ben: So I guess. And the answer could be no, but is, is there connections between this and your sort of newly launched macroscience [00:10:10] Tim: project? There is and there isn't. Yeah, you know, I think like the whole bid of macroscience which is this project that I'm doing as part of my IFP fellowship. Yeah. Is really the notion that like, okay, we have all these sort of like interesting results that have come out of metascience. That kind of give us like, kind of like the beginnings of a shape of like, okay, this is how science might work and how we might like get progress to happen. And you know, we've got [00:10:35] like a bunch of really compelling hypotheses. Yeah. And I guess my bit has been like, I kind of look at that and I squint and I'm like, we're, we're actually like kind of in the early days of like macro econ, but for science, right? Which is like, okay, well now we have some sense of like the dynamics of how the science thing works. What are the levers that we can start, like, pushing and pulling, and like, what are the dials we could be turning up and turning down? And, and, you know, I think there is this kind of transition that happens in macro econ, which is like, we have these interesting results and hypotheses, but there's almost another... Generation of work that needs to happen into being like, oh, you know, we're gonna have this thing called the interest rate Yeah, and then we have all these ways of manipulating the money supply and like this is a good way of managing like this economy Yeah, right and and I think that's what I'm chasing after with this kind of like sub stack but hopefully the idea is to build it up into like a more coherent kind of framework of ideas about like How do we make science policy work in a way that's better than just like more science now quicker, please? Yeah, right, which is I think we're like [00:11:35] we're very much at at the moment. Yeah, and in particular I'm really interested in the idea of chasing after science almost as like a Dynamic system, right? Which is that like the policy levers that you have You would want to, you know, tune up and tune down, strategically, at certain times, right? And just like the way we think about managing the economy, right? Where you're like, you don't want the economy to overheat. You don't want it to be moving too slow either, right? Like, I am interested in kind of like, those types of dynamics that need to be managed in science writ large. And so that's, that's kind of the intuition of the project. [00:12:04] Ben: Cool. I guess, like, looking at macro, how did we even decide, macro econ, [00:12:14] Tim: how did we even decide that the things that we're measuring are the right things to measure? Right? Like, [00:12:21] Ben: isn't it, it's like kind of a historical contingency that, you know, it's like we care about GDP [00:12:27] Tim: and the interest rate. Yeah. I think that's right. I mean in, in some ways there's a triumph of like. It's a normative triumph, [00:12:35] right, I think is the argument. And you know, I think a lot of people, you hear this argument, and it'll be like, And all econ is made up. But like, I don't actually think that like, that's the direction I'm moving in. It's like, it's true. Like, a lot of the things that we selected are arguably arbitrary. Yeah. Right, like we said, okay, we really value GDP because it's like a very imperfect but rough measure of like the economy, right? Yeah. Or like, oh, we focus on, you know, the money supply, right? And I think there's kind of two interesting things that come out of that. One of them is like, There's this normative question of like, okay, what are the building blocks that we think can really shift the financial economy writ large, right, of which money supply makes sense, right? But then the other one I think which is so interesting is like, there's a need to actually build all these institutions. that actually give you the lever to pull in the first place, right? Like, without a federal reserve, it becomes really hard to do monetary policy. Right. Right? Like, without a notion of, like, fiscal policy, it's really hard to do, like, Keynesian as, like, demand side stuff. Right. Right? And so, like, I think there's another project, which is a [00:13:35] political project, to say... Okay, can we do better than just grants? Like, can we think about this in a more, like, holistic way than simply we give money to the researchers to work on certain types of problems. And so this kind of leads to some of the stuff that I think we've talked about in the past, which is like, you know, so I'm obsessed right now with like, can we influence the time horizon of scientific institutions? Like, imagine for a moment we had a dial where we're like, On average, scientists are going to be thinking about a research agenda which is 10 years from now versus next quarter. Right. Like, and I think like there's, there's benefits and deficits to both of those settings. Yeah. But man, if I don't hope that we have a, a, a government system that allows us to kind of dial that up and dial that down as we need it. Right. Yeah. The, the, [00:14:16] Ben: perhaps, quite like, I guess a question of like where the analogy like holds and breaks down. That I, that I wonder about is, When you're talking about the interest rate for the economy, it kind of makes sense to say [00:14:35] what is the time horizon that we want financial institutions to be thinking on. That's like roughly what the interest rate is for, but it, and maybe this is, this is like, I'm too, [00:14:49] Tim: my note, like I'm too close to the macro, [00:14:51] Ben: but thinking about. The fact that you really want people doing science on like a whole spectrum of timescales. And, and like, this is a ill phrased question, [00:15:06] Tim: but like, I'm just trying to wrap my mind around it. Are you saying basically like, do uniform metrics make sense? Yeah, exactly. For [00:15:12] Ben: like timescale, I guess maybe it's just. is an aggregate thing. [00:15:16] Tim: Is that? That's right. Yeah, I think that's, that's, that's a good critique. And I think, like, again, I think there's definitely ways of taking the metaphor too far. Yeah. But I think one of the things I would say back to that is It's fine to imagine that we might not necessarily have an interest rate for all of science, right? So, like, you could imagine saying, [00:15:35] okay, for grants above a certain size, like, we want to incentivize certain types of activity. For grants below a certain size, we want different types of activity. Right, another way of slicing it is for this class of institutions, we want them to be thinking on these timescales versus those timescales. Yeah. The final one I've been thinking about is another way of slicing it is, let's abstract away institutions and just think about what is the flow of all the experiments that are occurring in a society? Yeah. And are there ways of manipulating, like, the relative timescales there, right? And that's almost like, kind of like a supply based way of looking at it, which is... All science is doing is producing experiments, which is like true macro, right? Like, I'm just like, it's almost offensively simplistic. And then I'm just saying like, okay, well then like, yeah, what are the tools that we have to actually influence that? Yeah, and I think there's lots of things you could think of. Yeah, in my mind. Yeah, absolutely. What are some, what are some that are your thinking of? Yeah, so I think like the two that I've been playing around with right now, one of them is like the idea of like, changing the flow of grants into the system. So, one of the things I wrote about in Microscience just the past week was to think [00:16:35] about, like sort of what I call long science, right? And so the notion here is that, like, if you look across the scientific economy, there's kind of this rough, like, correlation between size of grant and length of grant. Right, where so basically what it means is that like long science is synonymous with big science, right? You're gonna do a big ambitious project. Cool. You need lots and lots and lots of money Yeah and so my kind of like piece just briefly kind of argues like but we have these sort of interesting examples like the You know Like framing a heart study which are basically like low expense taking place over a long period of time and you're like We don't really have a whole lot of grants that have that Yeah. Right? And so the idea is like, could we encourage that? Like imagine if we could just increase the flow of those types of grants, that means we could incentivize more experiments that take place like at low cost over long term. Yeah. Right? Like, you know, and this kind of gets this sort of interesting question is like, okay, so what's the GDP here? Right? Like, or is that a good way of cracking some of the critical problems that we need to crack right now? Right? Yeah. And it's kind of where the normative part gets into [00:17:35] it is like, okay. So. You know, one way of looking at this is the national interest, right? We say, okay, well, we really want to win on AI. We really want to win on, like, bioengineering, right? Are there problems in that space where, like, really long term, really low cost is actually the kind of activity we want to be encouraging? The answer might be no, but I think, like, it's useful for us to have, like, that. Color in our palette of things that we could be doing Yeah. In like shaping the, the dynamics of science. Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:01] Ben: I, I mean, one of the things that I feel like is missing from the the meta science discussion Mm-Hmm. is, is even just, what are those colors? Mm-Hmm. like what, what are the, the different and almost parameters of [00:18:16] Tim: of research. Yeah. Right, right, right. And I think, I don't know, one of the things I've been thinking about, which I'm thinking about writing about at some point, right, is like this, this view is, this view is gonna piss people off in some ways, because where it ultimately goes is this idea that, like, like, the scientist or [00:18:35] science Is like a system that's subject to the government, or subject to a policy maker, or a strategist. Which like, it obviously is, right? But like, I think we have worked very hard to believe that like, The scientific market is its own independent thing, And like, that touching or messing with it is like, a not, not a thing you should do, right? But we already are. True, that's kind of my point of view, yeah exactly. I think we're in some ways like, yeah I know I've been reading a lot about Keynes, I mean it is sort of interesting that it does mirror... Like this kind of like Great Depression era economic thinking, where you're basically like the market takes care of itself, like don't intervene. In fact, intervening is like the worst possible thing you could do because you're only going to make this worse. And look, I think there's like definitely examples of like kind of like command economy science that like don't work. Yes. But like, you know, like I think most mature people who work in economics would say there's some room for like at least like Guiding the system. Right. And like keeping it like in balance is like [00:19:35] a thing that should be attempted and I think it's kind of like the, the, the argument that I'm making here. Yeah. Yeah. I [00:19:41] Ben: mean, I think that's, [00:19:42] Tim: that's like the meta meta thing. Right. Right. Is even [00:19:46] Ben: what, what level of intervention, like, like what are the ways in which you can like usefully intervene and which, and what are the things that are, that are foolish and kind of. crEate the, the, [00:20:01] Tim: Command economy. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Right. Right. And I think like, I think the way through is, is maybe in the way that I'm talking about, right? Which is like, you can imagine lots of bad things happen when you attempt to pick winners, right? Like maybe the policymaker whoever we want to think of that as like, is it the NSF or NIH or whatever? Like, you know, sitting, sitting in their government bureaucracy, right? Like, are they well positioned to make a choice about who's going to be the right solution to a problem? Maybe yes, maybe no. I think we can have a debate about that, right? But I think there's a totally reasonable position, which is they're not in it, so they're not well positioned to make that call. Yeah. [00:20:35] Right? But, are they well positioned to maybe say, like, if we gave them a dial that was like, we want researchers to be thinking about this time horizon versus that time horizon? Like, that's a control that they actually may be well positioned to inform on. Yeah. As an outsider, right? Yeah. Yeah. And some of this I think, like, I don't know, like, the piece I'm working on right now, which will be coming out probably Tuesday or Wednesday, is you know, some of this is also like encouraging creative destruction, right? Which is like, I'm really intrigued by the idea that like academic fields can get so big that they become they impede progress. Yes. Right? And so this is actually a form of like, I like, it's effectively an intellectual antitrust. Yeah. Where you're basically like, Basically, like the, the role of the scientific regulator is to basically say these fields have gotten so big that they are actively reducing our ability to have good dynamism in the marketplace of ideas. And in this case, we will, we will announce new grant policies that attempt to break this up. And I actually think that like, that is pretty spicy for a funder to do. But like actually maybe part of their role and maybe we should normalize that [00:21:35] being part of their role. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. [00:21:37] Ben: I I'm imagining a world where There are, where this, like, sort of the macro science is as divisive as [00:21:47] Tim: macroeconomics. [00:21:48] Ben: Right? Because you have, you have your like, your, your like, hardcore free market people. Yeah. Zero government intervention. Yeah, that's right. No antitrust. No like, you know, like abolish the Fed. Right, right. All of that. Yeah, yeah. And I look forward to the day. When there's there's people who are doing the same thing for research. [00:22:06] Tim: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah when I think that's actually I mean I thought part of a lot of meta science stuff I think is this kind of like interesting tension, which is that like look politically a lot of those people in the space are Pro free market, you know, like they're they're they're liberals in the little L sense. Yeah, like at the same time Like it is true that kind of like laissez faire science Has failed because we have all these examples of like progress slowing down Right? Like, I don't know. Like, I think [00:22:35] that there is actually this interesting tension, which is like, to what degree are we okay with intervening in science to get better outcomes? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Well, as, [00:22:43] Ben: as I, I might put on my hat and say, Yeah, yeah. Maybe, maybe this is, this is me saying true as a fair science has never been tried. Huh, right. Right? Like, that, that, that may be kind of my position. Huh. But anyways, I... And I would argue that, you know, since 1945, we have been, we haven't had laissez faire [00:23:03] Tim: science. Oh, interesting. [00:23:04] Ben: Huh. Right. And so I'm, yeah, I mean, it's like, this is in [00:23:09] Tim: the same way that I think [00:23:11] Ben: a very hard job for macroeconomics is to say, well, like, do we need [00:23:15] Tim: more or less intervention? Yeah. Yeah. [00:23:17] Ben: What is the case there? I think it's the same thing where. You know, a large amount of science funding does come from the government, and the government is opinionated about what sorts of things [00:23:30] Tim: it funds. Yeah, right. Right. And you [00:23:33] Ben: can go really deep into that. [00:23:35] So, so I [00:23:35] Tim: would. Yeah, that's actually interesting. That flips it. It's basically like the current state of science. is right now over regulated, is what you'd say, right? Or, or [00:23:44] Ben: badly regulated. Huh, sure. That is the argument I would say, very concretely, is that it's badly regulated. And, you know, I might almost argue that it is... It's both over and underregulated in the sense that, well, this is, this is my, my whole theory, but like, I think that there, we need like some pockets where it's like much less regulated. Yeah. Right. Where you're, and then some pockets where you're really sort of going to be like, no. You don't get to sort of tune this to whatever your, your project, your program is. Yeah, right, right. You're gonna be working with like [00:24:19] Tim: these people to do this thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think there actually is interesting analogies in like the, the kind of like economic regulation, economic governance world. Yeah. Where like the notion is markets generally work well, like it's a great tool. Yeah. Like let it run. [00:24:35] Right. But basically that there are certain failure states that actually require outside intervention. And I think what's kind of interesting in thinking about in like a macro scientific, if you will, context is like, what are those failure states for science? Like, and you could imagine a policy rule, which is the policymaker says, we don't intervene until we see the following signals emerging in a field or in a region. Right. And like, okay, that's, that's the trigger, right? Like we're now in recession mode, you know, like there's enough quarters of this problem of like more papers, but less results. You know, now we have to take action, right? Oh, that's cool. Yeah, yeah. That would be, that would be very interesting. And I think that's like, that's good, because I think like, we end up having to think about like, you know, and again, this is I think why this is a really exciting time, is like MetaScience has produced these really interesting results. Now we're in the mode of like, okay, well, you know, on that policymaker dashboard, Yeah. Right, like what's the meter that we're checking out to basically be like, Are we doing well? Are we doing poorly? Is this going well? Or is this going poorly? Right, like, I think that becomes the next question to like, make this something practicable Yeah. For, for [00:25:35] actual like, Right. Yeah. Yeah. One of my frustrations [00:25:38] Ben: with meta science [00:25:39] Tim: is that it, I [00:25:41] Ben: think is under theorized in the sense that people generally are doing these studies where they look at whatever data they can get. Huh. Right. As opposed to what data should we be looking at? What, what should we be looking for? Yeah. Right. Right. And so, so I would really like to have it sort of be flipped and say, okay, like this At least ideally what we would want to measure maybe there's like imperfect maybe then we find proxies for that Yeah, as opposed to just saying well, like here's what we can measure. It's a proxy for [00:26:17] Tim: okay. That's right, right Yeah, exactly. And I think a part of this is also like I mean, I think it is like Widening the Overton window, which I think like the meta science community has done a good job of is like trying to widen The Overton window of what funders are willing to do. Yeah. Or like what various existing incumbent actors are willing to [00:26:35] do. Because I think one way of getting that data is to run like interesting experiments in this space. Right? Like I think one of the things I'm really obsessed with right now is like, okay, imagine if you could change the overhead rate that universities charge on a national basis. Yeah. Right? Like, what's that do to the flow of money through science? And is that like one dial that's actually like On the shelf, right? Like, we actually have the ability to influence that if we wanted to. Like, is that something we should be running experiments against and seeing what the results are? Yeah, yeah. [00:27:00] Ben: Another would be earmarking. Like, how much money is actually earmarked [00:27:05] Tim: for different things. That's right, yeah, yeah. Like, how easy it is to move money around. That's right, yeah. I heard actually a wild story yesterday about, do you know this whole thing, what's his name? It's apparently a very wealthy donor. That has convinced the state of Washington's legislature to the UW CS department. it's like, it's written into law that there's a flow of money that goes directly to the CS department. I don't think CS departments need more money. I [00:27:35] know, I know, but it's like, this is a really, really kind of interesting, like, outcome. Yeah. Which is like a very clear case of basically just like... Direct subsidy to like, not, not just like a particular topic, but like a particular department, which I think is like interesting experiment. I don't like, I don't know what's been happening there, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Natural, natural experiment. [00:27:50] Ben: Totally. Has anybody written down, I assume the answer is no, but it would be very interesting if someone actually wrote down a list of sort of just all the things you [00:28:00] Tim: could possibly [00:28:00] Ben: want to pay attention to, right? Like, I mean, like. Speaking of CS, it'd be very interesting to see, like, okay, like, what fraction of the people who, like, get PhDs in an area, stay in this area, right? Like, going back to the, the [00:28:15] Tim: health of a field or something, right? Yeah, yeah. I think that's right. I, yeah. And I think that those, those types of indicators are interesting. And then I think also, I mean, in the spirit of like it being a dynamic system. Like, so a few years back I read this great bio by Sebastian Malaby called The Man Who Knew, which is, it's a bio of Alan Greenspan. So if you want to ever read, like, 800 pages about [00:28:35] Alan Greenspan, book for you. It's very good. But one of the most interesting parts about it is that, like, there's a battle when Alan Greenspan becomes head of the Fed, where basically he's, like, extremely old school. Like, what he wants to do is he literally wants to look at, like, Reams of data from like the steel industry. Yeah, because that's kind of got his start And he basically is at war with a bunch of kind of like career People at the Fed who much more rely on like statistical models for predicting the economy And I think what's really interesting is that like for a period of time actually Alan Greenspan has the edge Because he's able to realize really early on that like there's It's just changes actually in like the metabolism of the economy that mean that what it means to raise the interest rate or lower the interest rate has like very different effects than it did like 20 years ago before it got started. Yeah. And I think that's actually something that I'm also really quite interested in science is basically like When we say science, people often imagine, like, this kind of, like, amorphous blob. But, like, I think the metabolism is changing all the [00:29:35] time. And so, like, what we mean by science now means very different from, like, what we mean by science, like, even, like, 10 to 20 years ago. Yes. And, like, it also means that all of our tactics need to keep up with that change, right? And so, one of the things I'm interested in to your question about, like, has anyone compiled this list of, like, science health? Or the health of science, right? It's maybe the right way of thinking about it. is that, like, those indicators may mean very different things at different points in time, right? And so part of it is trying to understand, like, yeah, what is the state of the, what is the state of this economy of science that we're talking about? Yeah. You're kind of preaching [00:30:07] Ben: to the, to the choir. In the sense that I'm, I'm always, I'm frustrated with the level of nuance that I feel like many people who are discussing, like, science, quote, making air quotes, science and research, are, are talking about in the sense that. They very often have not actually like gone in and been part of the system. Huh, right. And I'm, I'm open to the fact that [00:30:35] you [00:30:35] Tim: don't need to have got like [00:30:36] Ben: done, been like a professional researcher to have an opinion [00:30:41] Tim: or, or come up with ideas about it. [00:30:43] Ben: Yeah. But at the same time, I feel like [00:30:46] Tim: there's, yeah, like, like, do you, do you think about that tension at all? Yeah. I think it's actually incredibly valuable. Like, I think So I think of like Death and Life of Great American Cities, right? Which is like, the, the, the really, one of the really, there's a lot of interesting things about that book. But like, one of the most interesting things is sort of the notion that like, you had a whole cabal of urban planners that had this like very specific vision about how to get cities to work right and it just turns out that like if you like are living in soho at a particular time and you like walk along the street and you like take a look at what's going on like there's always really actually super valuable things to know about yeah that like are only available because you're like at that like ultra ultra ultra ultra micro level and i do think that there's actually some potential value in there like one of the things i would love to be able to set up, like, in the community of MetaScience or whatever you want to call it, right, [00:31:35] is the idea that, like, yeah, you, you could afford to do, like, very short tours of duty, where it's, like, literally, you're just, like, spending a day in a lab, right, and, like, to have a bunch of people go through that, I think, is, like, really, really helpful and so I think, like, thinking about, like, what the rotation program for that looks like, I think would be cool, like, you, you should, you should do, like, a six month stint at the NSF just to see what it looks like. Cause I think that kind of stuff is just like, you know, well, A, I'm selfish, like I would want that, but I also think that like, it would also allow the community to like, I think be, be thinking about this in a much more applied way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:32:08] Ben: I think it's the, the meta question there for, for everything, right? Is how much in the weeds, like, like what am I trying to say? The. It is possible both to be like two in the weeds. Yeah, right and then also like too high level Yeah, that's right. And in almost like what what is the the right amount or like? Who, who should [00:32:31] Tim: be talking to whom in that? That's right. Yeah, I mean, it's like what you were saying earlier that like the [00:32:35] success of macro science will be whether or not it's as controversial as macroeconomics. It's like, I actually hope that that's the case. It's like people being like, this is all wrong. You're approaching it like from a too high level, too abstract of a level. Yeah. I mean, I think the other benefit of doing this outside of like the level of insight is I think one of the projects that I think I have is like We need to, we need to be like defeating meta science, like a love of meta science aesthetics versus like actual like meta science, right? Like then I think like a lot of people in meta science love science. That's why they're excited to not talk about the specific science, but like science in general. But like, I think that intuition also leads us to like have very romantic ideas of like what science is and how science should look and what kinds of science that we want. Yeah. Right. The mission is progress. The mission isn't science. And so I think, like, we have to be a lot more functional. And again, I think, like, the benefit of these types of, like, rotations, like, Oh, you just are in a lab for a month. Yeah. It's like, I mean, you get a lot more of a sense of, like, Oh, okay, this is, this is what it [00:33:35] looks like. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to do the same thing for manufacturing. Huh. Right. [00:33:39] Ben: Right. It's like, like, and I want, I want everybody to be rotating, right? Huh. Like, in the sense of, like, okay, like, have the scientists go and be, like, in a manufacturing lab. That's right. [00:33:47] Tim: Yeah. [00:33:48] Ben: And be like, okay, like, look. Like, you need to be thinking about getting this thing to work in, like, this giant, like, flow pipe instead of a [00:33:54] Tim: test tube. That's right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, [00:33:57] Ben: unfortunately, the problem is that we can't all spend our time, like, if everybody was rotating through all the [00:34:03] Tim: things they need to rotate, we'd never get anything done. Yeah, exactly. [00:34:06] Ben: ANd that's, that's, that's kind of [00:34:08] Tim: the problem. Well, and to bring it all the way back, I mean, I think you started this question on macroscience in the context of transitioning away from all of this like weird Cuban Missile Crisis simulation stuff. Like, I do think one way of thinking about this is like, okay, well, if we can't literally send you into a lab, right? Like the question is like, what are good simulations to give people good intuitions about the dynamics in the space? Yeah. And I think that's, that's potentially quite interesting. Yeah. Normalized weekend long simulation. That's right. Like I love the idea of basically [00:34:35] like like you, you get to reenact the publication of a prominent scientific paper. It's like kind of a funny idea. It's just like, you know, yeah. Or, or, or even trying to [00:34:44] Ben: get research funded, right? Like, it's like, okay, like you have this idea, you want yeah. [00:34:55] Tim: I mean, yeah, this is actually a project, I mean, I've been talking to Zach Graves about this, it's like, I really want to do one which is a game that we're calling Think Tank Tycoon, which is basically like, it's a, it's a, the idea would be for it to be a strategy board game that simulates what it's like to run a research center. But I think like to broaden that idea somewhat like it's kind of interesting to think about the idea of like model NSF Yeah, where you're like you you're in you're in the hot seat you get to decide how to do granting Yeah, you know give a grant [00:35:22] Ben: a stupid thing. Yeah, some some some congressperson's gonna come banging [00:35:26] Tim: on your door Yeah, like simulating those dynamics actually might be really really helpful Yeah I mean in the very least even if it's not like a one for one simulation of the real world just to get like some [00:35:35] common intuitions about like The pressures that are operating here. I [00:35:38] Ben: think you're, the bigger point is that simulations are maybe underrated [00:35:42] Tim: as a teaching tool. I think so, yeah. Do you remember the the paperclip maximizer? Huh. The HTML game? Yeah, yeah. [00:35:48] Ben: I'm, I'm kind of obsessed with it. Huh. Because, it, you've, like, somehow the human brain, like, really quickly, with just, like, you know, some numbers on the screen. Huh. Like, just like numbers that you can change. Right, right. And some, like, back end. Dynamic system, where it's like, okay, like based on these numbers, like here are the dynamics of the [00:36:07] Tim: system, and it'll give you an update. [00:36:09] Ben: Like, you start to really get an intuition for, for system dynamics. Yeah. And so, I, I, I want to see more just like plain HTML, like basically like spreadsheet [00:36:20] Tim: backend games. Right, right, like the most lo fi possible. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's helpful. I mean, I think, again, particularly in a world where you're thinking about, like, let's simulate these types of, like, weird new grant structures that we might try out, right? Like, you know, we've got a bunch [00:36:35] of hypotheses. It's kind of really expensive and difficult to try to get experiments done, right? Like, does a simulation with a couple people who are well informed give us some, at least, inclinations of, like, where it might go or, like, what are the unintentional consequences thereof? Yeah. [00:36:51] Ben: Disciplines besides the military that uses simulations [00:36:56] Tim: successfully. Not really. And I think what's kind of interesting is that like, I think it had a vogue that like has kind of dissipated. Yeah, I think like the notion of like a a game being the way you kind of do like understanding of a strategic situation, I think like. Has kind of disappeared, right? But like, I think a lot of it was driven, like, RAND actually had a huge influence, not just on the military. But like, there's a bunch of corporate games, right? That were like, kind of invented in the same period. Yeah. That are like, you determine how much your steel production is, right? And was like, used to teach MBAs. But yeah, I think it's, it's been like, relatively limited. Hm. [00:37:35] Yeah. It, yeah. Hm. [00:37:38] Ben: So. Other things. Huh. Like, just to, [00:37:41] Tim: to shift together. Sure, sure, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess another [00:37:44] Ben: thing that we haven't really talked about, but actually sort of plays into all of this, is thinking about better [00:37:50] Tim: ways of regulating technology. [00:37:52] Ben: I know that you've done a lot of thinking about that, and maybe this is another thing to simulate. [00:38:00] Tim: Yeah, it's a model OSTP. But [00:38:04] Ben: it's maybe a thing where, this is actually like a prime example where the particulars really matter, right? Where you can't just regulate. quote unquote technology. Yeah. Right. And it's like, there's, there's some technologies that you want to regulate very, very closely and very tightly and others that you want to regulate very [00:38:21] Tim: loosely. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that's actually, you know, I think it is tied to the kind of like macro scientific project, if you will. Right. Which is that I think we have often a notion of like science regulation being like. [00:38:35] literally the government comes in and is like, here are the kind of constraints that we want to put on the system. Right. And there's obviously like lots of different ways of doing that. And I think there's lots of contexts in which that's like appropriate. But I think for a lot of technologies that we confront right now, the change is so rapid that the obvious question always becomes, no matter what emerging technology talking about is like, how does your clock speed of regulation actually keep up with like the clock speed of technology? And the answer is frequently like. It doesn't, right? And like you run into these kind of like absurd situations where you're like, well, we have this thing, it's already out of date by the time it goes into force, everybody kind of creates some like notional compliance with that rule. Yeah. And like, in terms of improving, I don't know, safety outcomes, for instance, it like has not actually improved safety outcomes. And I think in that case, right, and I think I could actually make an argument that like, the problem is becoming more difficult with time. Right? Like, if you really believe that the pace of technological change is faster than it used to be, then it is possible that, like, there was a point at which, like, government was operating, and it could actually keep [00:39:35] pace effectively, or, like, a body like Congress could actually keep pace with society, or with technology successfully, to, like, make sure that it was conformant with, sort of, like, societal interests. Do you think that was [00:39:46] Ben: actually ever the case, or was it that we didn't, we just didn't [00:39:50] Tim: have as many regulations? I would say it was sort of twofold, right? Like, I think one of them was you had, at least, let's just talk about Congress, right? It's really hard to talk about, like, government as a whole, right? Like, I think, like, Congress was both better advised and was a more efficient institution, right? Which means it moved faster than it does today. Simultaneously, I also feel like for a couple reasons we can speculate on, right? Like, science, or in the very least, technology. Right, like move slower than it does today. Right, right. And so like actually what has happened is that both both dynamics have caused problems, right? Which is that like the organs of government are moving slower at the same time as science is moving faster And like I think we've passed some inflection [00:40:35] point now where like it seems really hard to craft You know, let's take the AI case like a sensible framework that would apply You know, in, in LLMs where like, I don't know, like I was doing a little recap of like recent interoperability research and I like took a step back and I was like, Oh, all these papers are from May, 2023. And I was like, these are all big results. This is all a big deal. Right. It's like very, very fast. Yeah. So that's kind of what I would say to that. Yeah. I don't know. Do you feel differently? You feel like Congress has never been able to keep up? Yeah. [00:41:04] Ben: Well, I. I wonder, I guess I'm almost, I'm, I'm perhaps an outlier in that I am skeptical of the claim that technology overall has sped up significantly, or the pace of technological change, the pace of software change, certainly. Sure. Right. And it's like maybe software as a, as a fraction of technology has spread up, sped up. And maybe like, this is, this is a thing where like to the point of, of regulations needing to, to. Go into particulars, [00:41:35] right? Mm-Hmm. . Right, right. Like tuning the regulation to the characteristic timescale of whatever talk [00:41:40] Tim: technology we're talking about. Mm-Hmm. , right? [00:41:42] Ben: But I don't know, but like, I feel like outside of software, if anything, technology, the pace of technological change [00:41:52] Tim: has slowed down. Mm hmm. Right. Right. Yeah. [00:41:55] Ben: This is me putting on my [00:41:57] Tim: stagnationist bias. And would, given the argument that I just made, would you say that that means that it should actually be easier than ever to regulate technology? Yeah, I get targets moving slower, right? Like, yeah, [00:42:12] Ben: yeah. Or it's the technology moving slowly because of the forms of [00:42:14] Tim: the regulator. I guess, yeah, there's like compounding variables. [00:42:16] Ben: Yeah, the easiest base case of regulating technology is saying, like, no, you can't have [00:42:20] Tim: any. Huh, right, right, right. Like, it can't change. Right, that's easy to regulate. Yeah, right, right. That's very easy to regulate. I buy that, I buy that. It's very easy to regulate well. Huh, right, right. I think that's [00:42:27] Ben: That's the question. It's like, what do we want to lock in and what don't we [00:42:31] Tim: want to lock in? Yeah, I think that's right and I think, you [00:42:35] know I guess what that moves me towards is like, I think some people, you know, will conclude the argument I'm making by saying, and so regulations are obsolete, right? Or like, oh, so we shouldn't regulate or like, let the companies take care of it. And I'm like, I think so, like, I think that that's, that's not the conclusion that I go to, right? Like part of it is like. Well, no, that just means we need, we need better ways of like regulating these systems, right? And I think they, they basically require government to kind of think about sort of like moving to different parts of the chain that they might've touched in the past. Yeah. So like, I don't know, we, Caleb and I over at IFP, we just submitted this RFI to DARPA. In part they, they were thinking about like how does DARPA play a role in dealing with like ethical considerations around emerging technologies. Yep. But the deeper point that we were making in our submission. was simply that like maybe actually science has changed in a way where like DARPA can't be the or it's harder for DARPA to be the originator of all these technologies. Yeah. So they're, they're almost, they're, they're placing the, the, the ecosystem, the [00:43:35] metabolism of technology has changed, which requires them to rethink like how they want to influence the system. Yeah. Right. And it may be more influence at the point of like. Things getting out to market, then it is things like, you know, basic research in the lab or something like that. Right. At least for some classes of technology where like a lot of it's happening in private industry, like AI. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. [00:43:55] Ben: No, I, I, I think the, the concept of, of like the metabolism of, of science and technology is like really powerful. I think in some sense it is, I'm not sure if you would, how would you map that to the idea of there being a [00:44:11] Tim: research ecosystem, right? Right. Is it, is it that there's like [00:44:17] Ben: the metabolic, this is, this is incredibly abstract. Okay. Like, is it like, I guess if you're looking at the metabolism, does, does the metabolism sort of say, we're going to ignore institutions for now and the metabolism is literally just the flow [00:44:34] Tim: of [00:44:35] like ideas and, and, and outcomes and then maybe like the ecosystem is [00:44:41] Ben: like, okay, then we like. Sort of add another layer and say there are institutions [00:44:46] Tim: that are sure interacting with this sort of like, yeah, I think like the metabolism view or, you know, you might even think about it as like a supply chain view, right? To move it away from, like, just kind of gesturing at bio for no reason, right? Is I think what's powerful about it is that, you know, particularly in foundation land, which I'm most familiar with. There's a notion of like we're going to field build and what that means is we're going to name a field and then researchers Are going to be under this tent that we call this field and then the field will exist Yeah, and then the proper critique of a lot of that stuff is like researchers are smart They just like go where the money is and they're like you want to call up like I can pretend to be nanotech for a Few years to get your money Like, that's no problem. I can do that. And so there's kind of a notion that, like, if you take the economy of science as, like, institutions at the very beginning, you actually miss the bigger [00:45:35] picture. Yes. Right? And so the metabolism view is more powerful because you literally think about, like, the movement of, like, an idea to an experiment to a practical technology to, like, something that's out in the world. Yeah. And then we basically say, how do we influence those incentives before we start talking about, like, oh, we announced some new policy that people just, like... Cosmetically align their agendas to yeah, and like if you really want to shape science It's actually maybe arguably less about like the institution and more about like Yeah, the individual. Yeah, exactly. Like I run a lab. What are my motivations? Right? And I think this is like, again, it's like micro macro, right? It's basically if we can understand that, then are there things that we could do to influence at that micro level? Yeah, right. Which is I think actually where a lot of Macro econ has moved. Right. Which is like, how do we influence like the individual firm's decisions Yeah. To get the overall aggregate change that we want in the economy. Yeah. And I think that's, that's potentially a better way of approaching it. Right. A thing that I desperately [00:46:30] Ben: want now is Uhhuh a. I'm not sure what they're, they're [00:46:35] actually called. Like the, you know, like the metal, like, like, like the [00:46:37] Tim: prep cycle. Yeah, exactly. Like, like, like the giant diagram of, of like metabolism, [00:46:43] Ben: right. I want that for, for research. Yeah, that would be incredible. Yeah. If, if only, I mean, one, I want to have it on [00:46:50] Tim: my wall and to, to just get across the idea that. [00:46:56] Ben: It is like, it's not you know, basic research, applied [00:47:01] Tim: research. Yeah, totally. Right, right, right. When it goes to like, and what I like about kind of metabolism as a way of thinking about it is that we can start thinking about like, okay, what's, what's the uptake for certain types of inputs, right? We're like, okay, you know like one, one example is like, okay, well, we want results in a field to become more searchable. Well what's really, if you want to frame that in metabolism terms, is like, what, you know, what are the carbs that go into the system that, like, the enzymes or the yeast can take up, and it's like, access to the proper results, right, and like, I think that there's, there's a nice way of flipping in it [00:47:35] that, like, starts to think about these things as, like, inputs, versus things that we do, again, because, like, we like the aesthetics of it, like, we like the aesthetics of being able to find research results instantaneously, but, like, the focus should be on, Like, okay, well, because it helps to drive, like, the next big idea that we think will be beneficial to me later on. Or like, even being [00:47:53] Ben: the question, like, is the actual blocker to the thing that you want to see, the thing that you think it is? Right. I've run into far more people than I can count who say, like, you know, we want more awesome technology in the world, therefore we are going to be working on Insert tool here that actually isn't addressing, at least my, [00:48:18] Tim: my view of why those things aren't happening. Yeah, right, right. And I think, I mean, again, like, part of the idea is we think about these as, like, frameworks for thinking about different situations in science. Yeah. Like, I actually do believe that there are certain fields because of, like, ideologically how they're set up, institutionally how [00:48:35] they're set up, funding wise how they're set up. that do resemble the block diagram you were talking about earlier, which is like, yeah, there actually is the, the basic research, like we can put, that's where the basic research happens. You could like point at a building, right? And you're like, that's where the, you know, commercialization happens. We pointed at another building, right? But I just happen to think that most science doesn't look like that. Right. And we might ask the question then, like, do we want it to resemble more of like the metabolism state than the block diagram state? Right. Like both are good. Yeah, I mean, I would [00:49:07] Ben: argue that putting them in different buildings is exactly what's causing [00:49:10] Tim: all the problems. Sure, right, exactly, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But then, again, like, then, then I think, again, this is why I think, like, the, the macro view is so powerful, at least to me, personally, is, like, we can ask the question, for what problems? Yeah. Right? Like, are there, are there situations where, like, that, that, like, very blocky way of doing it serves certain needs and certain demands? Yeah. And it's like, it's possible, like, one more argument I can make for you is, like, Progress might be [00:49:35] slower, but it's a lot more controllable. So if you are in the, you know, if you think national security is one of the most important things, you're willing to make those trade offs. But I think we just should be making those trade offs, like, much more consciously than we do. And [00:49:49] Ben: that's where politics, in the term, in the sense of, A compromise between people who have different priorities on something can actually come in where we can say, okay, like we're going to trade off, we're going to say like, okay, we're going to increase like national security a little bit, like in, in like this area to, in compromise with being able to like unblock this. [00:50:11] Tim: That's right. Yeah. And I think this is the benefit of like, you know, when I say lever, I literally mean lever, right. Which is basically like, we're in a period of time where we need this. Yeah. Right? We're willing to trade progress for security. Yeah. Okay, we're not in a period where we need this. Like, take the, take, ramp it down. Right? Like, we want science to have less of this, this kind of structure. Yeah. That's something we need to, like, have fine tuned controls over. Right? Yeah. And to be thinking about in, like, a, a comparative sense, [00:50:35] so. And, [00:50:36] Ben: to, to go [00:50:36] Tim: back to the metabolism example. Yeah, yeah. I'm really thinking about it. Yeah, yeah. [00:50:39] Ben: Is there an equivalent of macro for metabolism in the sense that like I'm thinking about like, like, is it someone's like blood, like, you know, they're like blood glucose level, [00:50:52] Tim: like obesity, right? Yeah, right. Kind of like our macro indicators for metabolism. Yeah, that's right. Right? Or like how you feel in the morning. That's right. Yeah, exactly. I'm less well versed in kind of like bio and medical, but I'm sure there is, right? Like, I mean, there is the same kind of like. Well, I study the cell. Well, I study, you know, like organisms, right? Like at different scales, which we're studying this stuff. Yeah. What's kind of interesting in the medical cases, like You know, it's like, do we have a Hippocratic, like oath for like our treatment of the science person, right? It's just like, first do no harm to the science person, you know? [00:51:32] Ben: Yeah, I mean, I wonder about that with like, [00:51:35] with research. Mm hmm. Is there, should we have more heuristics about how we're [00:51:42] Tim: Yeah, I mean, especially because I think, like, norms are so strong, right? Like, I do think that, like, one of the interesting things, this is one of the arguments I was making in the long science piece. It's like, well, in addition to funding certain types of experiments, if you proliferate the number of opportunities for these low scale projects to operate over a long period of time, there's actually a bunch of like norms that might be really good that they might foster in the scientific community. Right. Which is like you learn, like scientists learn the art of how to plan a project for 30 years. That's super important. Right. Regardless of the research results. That may be something that we want to put out into the open so there's more like your median scientist has more of those skills Yeah, right, like that's another reason that you might want to kind of like percolate this kind of behavior in the system Yeah, and so there's kind of like these emanating effects from like even one offs that I think are important to keep in mind [00:52:33] Ben: That's actually another [00:52:35] I think used for simulations. Yeah I'm just thinking like, well, it's very hard to get a tight feedback loop, right, about like whether you manage, you planned a project for 30 years [00:52:47] Tim: well, right, [00:52:48] Ben: right. But perhaps there's a better way of sort of simulating [00:52:51] Tim: that planning process. Yeah. Well, and I would love to, I mean, again, to the question that you had earlier about like what are the metrics here, right? Like I think for a lot of science metrics that we may end up on, they may have these interesting and really curious properties like we have for inflation rate. Right. We're like, the strange thing about inflation is that we, we kind of don't like, we have hypotheses for how it happens, but like, part of it is just like the psychology of the market. Yeah. Right. Like you anticipate prices will be higher next quarter. Inflation happens if enough people believe that. And part of what the Fed is doing is like, they're obviously making money harder to get to, but they're also like play acting, right? They're like. You know, trust me guys, we will continue to put pressure on the economy until you feel differently about this. And I think there's going to be some things in science that are worth [00:53:35] measuring that are like that, which is like researcher perceptions of the future state of the science economy are like things that we want to be able to influence in the space. And so one of the things that we do when we try to influence like the long termism or the short termism of science It's like, there's lots of kind of like material things we do, but ultimately the idea is like, what does that researcher in the lab think is going to happen, right? Do they think that, you know, grant funding is going to become a lot less available in the next six months or a lot more available in the next six months? Like influencing those might have huge repercussions on what happens in science. And like, yeah, like that's a tool that policymakers should have access to. Yeah. Yeah. [00:54:11] Ben: And the parallels between the. The how beliefs affect the economy, [00:54:18] Tim: and how beliefs [00:54:19] Ben: affect science, I think may also be a [00:54:21] Tim: little bit underrated. Yeah. In the sense that, [00:54:24] Ben: I, I feel like some people think that It's a fairly deterministic system where it's like, ah, yes, this idea's time has come. And like once, once all the things that are in place, like [00:54:35] once, once all, then, then it will happen. And like, [00:54:38] Tim: that is, that's like how it works. [00:54:40] Ben: Which I, I mean, I have, I wish there was more evidence to my point or to disagree with me. But like, I, I think that's, that's really not how it works. And I'm like very often. a field or, or like an idea will, like a technology will happen because people think that it's time for that technology to happen. Right. Right. Yeah. Obviously, obviously that isn't always the case. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's, there's hype [00:55:06] Tim: cycles. And I think you want, like, eventually, like. You know, if I have my druthers, right, like macro science should have like it's Chicago school, right? Which is basically like the idea arrives exactly when it should arrive. Scientists will discover it on exactly their time. And like your only role as a regulator is to ensure the stability of scientific institutions. I think actually that that is a, that's not a position I agree with, but you can craft a totally, Reasonable, coherent, coherent governance framework that's based around that concept, right? Yes. Yeah. I think [00:55:35] like [00:55:35] Ben: you'll, yes. I, I, I think like that's actually the criteria for success of meta science as a field uhhuh, because like once there's schools , then, then, then it will have made it, [00:55:46] Tim: because [00:55:47] Ben: there aren't schools right now. Mm-Hmm. , like, I, I feel , I almost feel I, I, I now want there to b

I was recently reading the April 2023 issue of “Connected Science Learning” a publication of the National Science Teaching Association.  In this issue, I read the editorial section written by Beth Murphy.  She wrote an article entitled, “Science, Science, Everywhere.” If we look to the history of science and engineering, it all begins with phenomena-observations of the natural and human-made worlds that cause one to ask questions and identify problems worth answering and solving.  In her editorial she looks at how the formal science education system as we know it came to be.

#427 Science Demystified with Dr. Joe Schwarcz: Science, Science Everywhere! by City of Côte Saint-Luc

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Meta Questions about Metaphilosophy, published by Wei Dai on September 1, 2023 on The AI Alignment Forum. To quickly recap my main intellectual journey so far (omitting a lengthy side trip into cryptography and Cypherpunk land), with the approximate age that I became interested in each topic in parentheses: (10) Science - Science is cool! (15) Philosophy of Science - The scientific method is cool! Oh look, there's a whole field studying it called "philosophy of science"! (20) Probability Theory - Bayesian subjective probability and the universal prior seem to constitute an elegant solution to the philosophy of science. Hmm, there are some curious probability puzzles involving things like indexical uncertainty, copying, forgetting... I and others make some progress on this but fully solving anthropic reasoning seems really hard. (Lots of people have worked on this for a while and have failed, at least according to my judgement.) (25) Decision Theory - Where does probability theory come from anyway? Maybe I can find some clues that way? Well according to von Neumann and Morgenstern, it comes from decision theory. And hey, maybe it will be really important that we get decision theory right for AI? I and others make some progress but fully solving decision theory turns out to be pretty hard too. (A number of people have worked on this for a while and haven't succeeded yet.) (35) Metaphilosophy - Where does decision theory come from? It seems to come from philosophers trying to do philosophy. What is that about? Plus, maybe it will be really important that the AIs we build will be philosophically competent? (45) Meta Questions about Metaphilosophy - Not sure how hard solving metaphilosophy really is, but I'm not making much progress on it by myself. Meta questions once again start to appear in my mind: Why is there virtually nobody else interested in metaphilosophy or ensuring AI philosophical competence (or that of future civilization as a whole), even as we get ever closer to AGI, and other areas of AI safety start attracting more money and talent? Tractability may be a concern but shouldn't more people still be talking about these problems if only to raise the alarm (about an additional reason that the AI transition may go badly)? (I've listened to all the recent podcasts on AI risk that I could find, and nobody brought it up even once.) How can I better recruit attention and resources to this topic? For example, should I draw on my crypto-related fame, or start a prize or grant program with my own money? I'm currently not inclined to do either, out of inertia, unfamiliarity, uncertainty of getting any return, fear of drawing too much attention from people who don't have the highest caliber of thinking, and signaling wrong things (having to promote ideas with one's own money instead of attracting attention based on their merits). But I'm open to having my mind changed if anyone has good arguments about this. What does it imply that so few people are working on this at such a late stage? For example, what are the implications for the outcome of the human-AI transition, and on the distribution of philosophical competence (and hence the distribution of values, decision theories, and other philosophical views) among civilizations in the universe/multiverse? At each stage of this journey, I took what seemed to be the obvious next step (often up a meta ladder), but in retrospect each step left behind something like 90-99% of fellow travelers. From my current position, it looks like "all roads lead to metaphilosophy" (i.e., one would end up here starting with an interest in any nontrivial problem that incentivizes asking meta questions) and yet there's almost nobody here with me. What gives? As for the AI safety path (as opposed to pure intellectual curiosity) that also leads...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Jayshree Seth, chief science advocate and corporate scientist for global manufacturing company 3M. Seth's role at the company is two-pronged. As a corporate scientist, she uses her engineering skills to solve complex problems and, in her words, "find solutions that stick." (It is 3M after all!) As the chief science advocate, she works with people of all ages – including young girls and women and individuals from underrepresented populations – to help them develop a passion for science, one that might lead to a career and help fill a global skills gap especially in the skilled trades. She says there is a negative perception of the skilled trades that is hurting recruiting efforts despite the fact the majority of these jobs demand some kind science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) skills. "Skilled jobs are STEM jobs The advances are so rapid that the skills needed also evolved. But whether it's chip making or ship building or solar panels or wind blades or EVs to 5G, the role of STEM skills is there in all of them. Whether it is with associate degrees in skilled trades or whether it is advanced degrees and all the way to graduate degrees, they're highly skilled in science and engineering and they're needed," explains Seth. "Our entire STEM advocacy platform is about creating a solid pipeline of STEM talent. We are active across the entire ecosystem, which is from early encouragement, exposure, empowerment, education, economics, and equity across the spectrum. It's important because we also want to make sure that we are getting enough diversity. Without that diversity, we are not gonna be able to solve the problems that we face, not just our company but our country." Seth says she hopes to install a passion for STEM in the young people she reaches out to through 3M's STEM awareness programs. Although her parents expected her to go into engineering, like her father, she didn't develop her own passion for it under she was deep into her training. "Believe it or not, it was in graduate school. I never quite appreciated why I was doing it, because I always thought, I want to help people, I want to improve lives, I want to make a difference. And I wasn't sure how I would do that. Then I was working on my Ph.D. project and I saw the human context in it and I realized I could make a difference," she tells me. "You need to make sure people see the passion and in other people having a satisfying career in these fields. That's why when I'm talking to students. We want to show that your potential is exponential. You can blaze trails, you can shape your careers, you can bring your interest. "I talk about bringing my interest in humanities and social sciences into STEM. And that's the whole idea of breaking these preconceived notions and dismantling the stereotypes and archetypes that people have of these certain fields. It is so important. "The reason why it's important is that science needs that diversity. Science needs you to be you. Our world requires innovation. Innovation needs science. Science demands diversity and diversity warrants equity." You can hear more of how Jayshree Seth and 3M are encouraging young people to follow a STEM career pathway in the podcast. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts. Episode 280: Jayshree Seth, Chief Science Officer & Corporate Scientist, 3MHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlExecutive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa PanzerTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Download the transcript for this podcast here.You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Jayshree Seth, chief science advocate and corporate scientist for global manufacturing company 3M. Seth's role at the company is two-pronged. As a corporate scientist, she uses her engineering skills to solve complex problems and, in her words, "find solutions that stick." (It is 3M after all!) As the chief science advocate, she works with people of all ages – including young girls and women and individuals from underrepresented populations – to help them develop a passion for science, one that might lead to a career and help fill a global skills gap especially in the skilled trades. She says there is a negative perception of the skilled trades that is hurting recruiting efforts despite the fact the majority of these jobs demand some kind science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) skills. "Skilled jobs are STEM jobs The advances are so rapid that the skills needed also evolved. But whether it's chip making or ship building or solar panels or wind blades or EVs to 5G, the role of STEM skills is there in all of them. Whether it is with associate degrees in skilled trades or whether it is advanced degrees and all the way to graduate degrees, they're highly skilled in science and engineering and they're needed," explains Seth. "Our entire STEM advocacy platform is about creating a solid pipeline of STEM talent. We are active across the entire ecosystem, which is from early encouragement, exposure, empowerment, education, economics, and equity across the spectrum. It's important because we also want to make sure that we are getting enough diversity. Without that diversity, we are not gonna be able to solve the problems that we face, not just our company but our country." Seth says she hopes to install a passion for STEM in the young people she reaches out to through 3M's STEM awareness programs. Although her parents expected her to go into engineering, like her father, she didn't develop her own passion for it under she was deep into her training. "Believe it or not, it was in graduate school. I never quite appreciated why I was doing it, because I always thought, I want to help people, I want to improve lives, I want to make a difference. And I wasn't sure how I would do that. Then I was working on my Ph.D. project and I saw the human context in it and I realized I could make a difference," she tells me. "You need to make sure people see the passion and in other people having a satisfying career in these fields. That's why when I'm talking to students. We want to show that your potential is exponential. You can blaze trails, you can shape your careers, you can bring your interest. "I talk about bringing my interest in humanities and social sciences into STEM. And that's the whole idea of breaking these preconceived notions and dismantling the stereotypes and archetypes that people have of these certain fields. It is so important. "The reason why it's important is that science needs that diversity. Science needs you to be you. Our world requires innovation. Innovation needs science. Science demands diversity and diversity warrants equity." You can hear more of how Jayshree Seth and 3M are encouraging young people to follow a STEM career pathway in the podcast. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts. Episode 280: Jayshree Seth, Chief Science Officer & Corporate Scientist, 3MHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlExecutive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa PanzerTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Download the transcript for this podcast here.You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, discuses why he declined Joe Rogan's challenge to debate Robert F. Kennedy, the state of the anti-vaccine movement and whether he's leaving Twitter for Threads. American Medical Association CXO Todd Unger hosts.

Dr. Aries Arugay is the Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science of the University of the Philippines Diliman. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Asian Politics & Policy, an international Scopus-indexed journal on regional affairs. In 2020, he was the sole social scientist to receive the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the National Academy of Science & Technology, for his contributions to the “study of democratization processes and consolidation, security sector reform, and strategic studies in the Philippines and Asia.” We talked about the current state of Philippine democracy, why disinformation spreads so easily and can be so convincing, how the public reacts to scientists giving opinions on national issues, misconceptions about the social sciences, and more. How to contact Dr. Aries: Website: polisci.upd.edu.ph Twitter: @ariesarugay Facebook: fb.com/wargod

Ella es LADY SCIENCE, Doctora e investigadora en Bioquímica y Biomedicina, licenciada en Farmacia y en Óptica y Optometría y divulgadora científica que durante el evento SCIENCE FEST nos presentó la siguiente conferencia.¿Por qué las células deben responder a su whatsapp? Lady Science acaparó un importante protagonismo durante el evento gracias a la manera de compartir conocimiento con el público, no te pierdas su conferencia gracias a este podcast.Muchas gracias por compartir nuestros contenidos en tus redes sociales.Suscríbete a MUY HISTORIA con un descuento del 50% usando el código especial para podcast - PODCAST1936https://bit.ly/3TYwx9aComparte nuestro podcast en tus redes sociales, puedes realizar una valoración de 5 estrellas en Apple Podcast o Spotify.Suscríbete a la revista MUY INTERESANTE y recíbela en tu casa.https://suscripciones.zinetmedia.es/mz/divulgacion/muy-interesanteGracias por escuchar nuestros 'Grandes reportajes de Muy Interesante'Dirección, locución y producción: Iván Patxi Gómez GallegoContacto de publicidad en podcast: podcast@zinetmedia.es

Renaissance month begins next week. I thought it would be a good introduction to discuss the way we look at the physical world and how it can either defeat or reinforce faith, depending on how much faith we had to start with.This week we will discuss the scientific facts found in the Bible and which ones are more persuasive than others; Charles Darwin's argument regarding human suffering, which has lived far longer than he did; the testimony of 1.5 million airborne Austinites; and a form of evolution I can embrace and have fun with. Hal Hammons is the preacher for the Lakewoods Drive church of Christ in Georgetown, Texas. He is the host of the Citizen of Heaven podcast. You are encouraged to seek him and the Lakewoods Drive church through Facebook and other social media. Lakewoods Drive is an autonomous group of Christians dedicated to praising God, teaching the gospel to all who will hear, training Christians in righteousness, and serving our God and one another faithfully. We believe the Bible is God's word, that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, that heaven is our home, and that we have work to do here while we wait. Regular topics of discussion and conversation include: Christians, Jesus, obedience, faith, grace, baptism, New Testament, Old Testament, authority, gospel, fellowship, justice, mercy, faithfulness, forgiveness, Twenty Pages a Week, Bible reading, heaven, hell, virtues, character, denominations, submission, service, character, COVID-19, assembly, Lord's Supper, online, social media, YouTube, Facebook.  

The Religion of medicine requires faith in drugs and injections that have a miriad of effects on your health and life! People are waking up to the propoganda of "Listen to the Science" "Science" is always questioning their results, "Science" is Never settled! One drug, one injection forced on all is not "Science " and a violation of the God given rights of your freedom to choose what is done to your body and the bodies of your children. This system will end and we are seeing the end of a disasterous and deadly system! This episode we will empower you with the new Health Care System that will retake our world! Don't miss this life changing episode!

Over the past two decades, our view of the ideals for science in society has changed. Discussions of the roles for values in science and changes in the views on the responsibilities in science have shifted the understanding of science from ideally value-free to properly value-laden. This shift, however, seems to remove a key difference between science and politics, as now both science and politics are value-laden, and disputes in both can arise from value disagreements. If science is not value-free (nor should it be), what differentiates science from politics? Heather Douglas lays out norms for scientific inquiry that make it distinct in practice from politics and argues that understanding and defending these differences help to protect science from abuses of power.Heather Douglas is a philosopher of science who works on the relationships among science, values, and democratic publics. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh (2021-2022), and a AAAS fellow. She is the author of "Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal" (2009), "The Rightful Place of Science: Science, Values, and Democracy" (2021), and editor of the book series "Science, Values, and the Public" for University of Pittsburgh Press.Justyna Bandola-Gill, a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, offers a response. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode Summary1. Dr. Soso is a badass. She has traveled the world using STEM as her guide. Her road is unlike anyone I've heard so far. From the zoo to the jungles of India. But that just goes to show you the power and reach of being in the world of STEM. 2. There is still a need for STEM exposure and opportunities in communities of color. We have to be invested in ensuring that our children have the same opportunities as all other children. 3. We know our children are brilliant and need the opportunity to showcase it. 4. We still need to provide opportunities for our college graduates. We have to hold companies accountable for the still dismal numbers of minorities on the payroll at ALL levels of the leadership pipeline. Dr. Simone Soso Bio.Dr. Soso is a Program Manager and Research Associate at the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network. At QEM, she performs project management leadership of grants, development of grant proposals, outreach and recruitment of STEM experts to engage in workshop implementation for Minority Serving Institution (MSI) STEM faculty proposal development and training, and capacity building. Prior to joining QEM, she was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (Science and Technology Policy) Fellow at the National Science Foundation for two years. She had a placement with the NSF ADVANCE program where she was responsible for evaluating programs in the Education and Human Resources Directorate and presenting findings to policymakers, scientific professionals, and other stakeholders. Dr. Soso is the developer and former project manager of the National Science Foundation's STEM Diversity and Inclusion Video Exhibition Challenge (STEM DIVE). This NSF-wide initiative showcased the work of NSF-funded projects that focused on diversifying the STEM workforce. Dr. Soso has over ten years of experience in the development, implementation, evaluation, and data analysis of scientific-educational programs and research projects. Dr. Soso has worked on many projects focused on enhancing the recruitment, retention, sustainability, and career development of students traditionally underrepresented in STEM. Dr. Soso is a trained animal ecologist with expertise in lion and tiger scent-marking communication. She earned her B.S. degree in Animal Science from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, an M.S. degree in Animal Health Science from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Iowa State University.Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonebsosophd Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show

In this episode, Dr. Ryan Bixenmann from the California Council of Science and Technology talks with students from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about the importance of careers in science policy. About Dr. Ryan Bixenmann: Ryan Bixenmann, Ph.D. is a Senior Science Officer at the California Council of Science and Technology (CCST). In this role, Ryan connects relevant experts to decision-makers that request additional technical information to carry out their mission and better serve Californians. Learn more about Dr. Ryan Bixenmann via https://ccst.us/people/staff/ryan-bixenmann/ Podcast Highlights: “I knew I wanted to do something outside of just research-I wanted to have an impact on society.” - Dr. Ryan Bixenmann on the topic of science careers focused on policy, not research. “Knowing that people who are doing the cool stuff you want to do had help getting there and they talked to someone...” - Dr. Ryan Bixenmann on the topic of advancing your career through networking. “When you're sitting there with the power to make decisions, it's really difficult when you have a bunch of diverse stakeholders because they all have different perspectives, priorities, and needs.” - Dr. Ryan Bixenmann on the challenges of decision-making and the vast factors that need to be considered. Guest: Dr. Ryan Bixenmann (Senior Officer at CCST) Interviewers: Kevin Karami (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean's Chief Ambassador) Johanna Arias (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean's Ambassador) Music by: C Codaine https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Xylo-Ziko/Minimal_1625 https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Xylo-Ziko/Phase Commercial Links: https://spp.ucr.edu/ba-mpp https://spp.ucr.edu/mpp This is a production of the UCR School of Public Policy: https://spp.ucr.edu/ Subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. Learn more about the series and other episodes via https://spp.ucr.edu/podcast.

We're working on a new project, indeed a new additional podcast!  Let us know what you think of the idea.  Thanks.

Science | Definition Meaning and Branches of Science. What is Science ? Science Definition Meaning of Science Branches of Science Science is branch of Knowledge and deals with study of facts. Involves scientific methods and principles to prove truth. #Science #WhatisScience #ScienceDefinition #MeaningofScience #BranchesofScience #PhysicalScience #BiologicalScience #SocialScience #ChemistryNotesInfo

In this episode of my weekly podcast: • How build community among my YouTube viewers? ? World news: • Rising Fuel costs – can I go bike/public transport-only? ? Movies/TV: • Superstore (Prime) ? Faith: • Church building as communication ? Books: • The Appendices – Tolkien ? Science: • Science and alternative energy. https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/4/22917801/emissions-new-cars-record-low-uk-electric-vehiclesContinue reading "Superstore; Church Architecture; Tolkien's Appendices; Car Technology" The post Superstore; Church Architecture; Tolkien's Appendices; Car Technology appeared first on Father Roderick.

In this episode of my weekly podcast: • How build community among my YouTube viewers? ? World news: • Rising Fuel costs – can I go bike/public transport-only? ? Movies/TV: • Superstore (Prime) ? Faith: • Church building as communication ? Books: • The Appendices – Tolkien ? Science: • Science and alternative energy. https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/4/22917801/emissions-new-cars-record-low-uk-electric-vehiclesContinue reading "Superstore; Church Architecture; Tolkien's Appendices; Car Technology" The post Superstore; Church Architecture; Tolkien's Appendices; Car Technology appeared first on Father Roderick.

Science Soundtrack #6I cannot teach science.-->With the right materials in hand, I can teach science.For season 8, we are taking these negative soundtracks, or beliefs, and turning the volume dial down. Then, we are turning the dial up on a new soundtrack – one that will help us share science with our kiddos.Key TakeawaysThere are endless possibilities and options, but the basic idea is to find materials that will make it possible for you to DO science, READ about science, and WRITE down science each week.Those materials could be a full science program, an eclectic mix of resources, or an outsourced class. Whatever you choose as your support materials, I want you to know that you can teach science to your kids. Links MentionedSoundtracks by Jon Acuff 3 Common Misconceptions about Science Do you have to love science to teach it? The Fully Stocked Home Science LaboratoryThe Three Keys to Teaching ScienceFull Transcript

Science Soundtrack #4I MUST teach science.-->I GET to teach science in a way that works for us.For season 8, we are taking these negative soundtracks, or beliefs, and turning the volume dial down. Then, we are turning the dial up on a new soundtrack – one that will help us share science with our kiddos.Key TakeawaysLet's stop saying that we must teach science or that we have to teach science. Just the switch from “must” to “get to” takes a load of pressure off our shoulders, but then when you add in the idea that you can teach science in a way that works for you and your unique family, well that just opens a world of possibilities.  The point is to have the three keys present in your science plans each week in a way that works for you. Links MentionedSoundtracks by Jon Acuff The Three Keys to Teaching ScienceFull Transcript

00:00.00 Max Shank Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to Monday mornings with max and Mike Hope you're having a great start to your week so far and we're going to get going with drugs. This week we're going to talk about drugs drugs inside your body drugs outside your body when to use them how to use them and let's just start with the fact that you're probably using all kinds of drugs every day and the word drugs is almost a little bit taboo. But we're gonna break it down step by step and go through what the most common drugs are and how to use them to your advantage rather than have them use you mike thanks for joining me here. 00:46.78 mikebledsoe Yeah I was yeah, thanks for having? Oh yeah I didn't have I had you or do you have me? we have each other. Okay I always find it interesting I I remember one of my favorite people. Ah, he's like 50 years sober and you know when I first found out he's like ah I've never had a beer I've never had a cigarette I've never had like I limit my coffee all this stuff and I was like he's like yeah I'm sober I don't do anything I'm like oh you so full of shit like year quick. It's just so funny where like people want to draw the line of like you're ah you're using chemicals all the time to change your state and a lot of people use something like sugar as a drug or whatever to say that you've never done that. 01:33.75 Max Shank Oh. 01:44.36 mikebledsoe Is is really ridiculous, but your state is always shifting the chemicals in your body are always shifting and ah some of these chemicals are going to have a much more noticeable effect than others and and it's good to just be paying attention. To what's happening in the body and I think some people just are drawn to more intense state changes than others and there's nothing wrong with that. So yeah, I'm excited to talk about this today because I think that even people who've never done. Quote unquote drugs would get a lot of benefit from this conversation. 02:24.35 Max Shank Well we got to start with a little definition then because what's what's a drug are we saying any substance that changes your state set is that a truck Aspirin's a jut. 02:30.60 mikebledsoe Um, do. 02:37.49 mikebledsoe Yeah I would for me like um. 02:42.17 Max Shank Aspirin's a drug does it really change your state though very much I mean it has an effect. No question that is the most used like if if it meets our definition I believe that's the most commonly used drug unless you start including coffee and then I think that might be. 02:45.98 mikebledsoe Yeah, it does. 02:57.39 mikebledsoe Yeah I think coffee is probably the most widely used drug. It's got psychoactive properties. Some drugs are not as psychoactive but even Advil is psychoactive just to a degree in which is not noticeable the average person if I take something like an Advil. 02:59.15 Max Shank Even more popular. Ah. 03:16.40 mikebledsoe I May note I'll I'll probably notice something whereas somebody most people just would never notice that and some people are gonna hear that and go you're crazy. No not like that. But I noticed well it's like um, it's like all these people that are taking you know they they. 03:21.00 Max Shank So you take so you take Aspirin and you see purple dragons start flying around the room. 03:35.38 mikebledsoe They take pain killers or whatever and it's like they don't realize how much of it's inhibiting their mental state their their cognitive ability. You know I'm just killing the pain. It's like now you're killing the pain and your cognitive ability right now. So ah yeah, so like there's there's. 03:41.49 Max Shank Moon. 03:48.71 Max Shank Yeah. 03:55.11 mikebledsoe 1 thing I want to point out too is there's no such thing as side effects like this whole like ha but side effect the idea of a side effect is such propaganda. It's such. It's such a great marketing tool to make you believe that. 03:57.69 Max Shank Oh I was just gonna say that go on go on. 04:13.14 mikebledsoe We don't want this to happen and it probably won't happen but it could happen. It's some fucking liability deal. It's not true. It's like and if you go into Science Science people. Love talking about science but like in science there really is no side effects. There is they're just effects. 04:19.60 Max Shank Well, it's marketing. 04:28.23 Max Shank There are just effects well look at look at Viagra Viagra was heart medicine the side effect was hard cock now that's the main effect. 04:33.30 mikebledsoe Had a side effect. It's an effect. 04:40.11 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, so. 04:46.10 Max Shank The marketing department got hold of this and we're like this ain't heart Medicine guys. This is our golden ticket out of here. 04:53.11 mikebledsoe Ah, yeah, so ah so I think that and then there's people's perception of drugs is very interesting like I was saying in the beginning is there's like this line that gets drawn and of course there's the the personal line that gets drawn but it. It's always influenced by society's standard and so we have like this Fda thing the food and drug administration who ah the people there are responsible for telling doctors and and stores people who retail. But they can and cannot sell and also what kind of claims you can and cannot make and so a lot of times we go. Oh you know when it gets to the point where the Fda has to be involved now that's a drug or if it's a pharmaceutical now that's a drug or if it's illegal if the Dea which said. Different administration. The drug enforcement administration. But by the way was highly underfunded for decades and the only way they could make money was by stealing drug dealers money. But so their incentives for busting is a little going back to what you always talk about. 05:48.78 Max Shank Oh. 06:08.30 mikebledsoe The incentive set up so the Dea is in charge of putting certain drugs on a with on the schedule or schedule 1 schedule 2 schedule 3 so they're in charge of and there none of them are voted into office. They're all. Ah. 06:26.43 Max Shank Oh. 06:26.87 mikebledsoe Appointed and so you have this random group of people that are saying these are the drugs that are okay and these are the drugs that are not okay and the drugs that are okay aren't really viewed by the public at large as drugs and so people who are like oh I'm sober. Pretty much. It basically said I don't do the drugs that the Dea says not to do. But I'll drink my coffee. All you know this and that. 06:56.50 Max Shank It's really interesting because the laws of the land or crime and punishment to certainly influence the culture to a certain effect right? and. 07:06.69 mikebledsoe Well, some would say that that law is culture like it's It's the it's the basis of culture because it's it's using language to tell you what you do and don't do. 07:14.40 Max Shank I Mean the chapter I mean isn't that kind of what religion is too. That's why that separation of church and State is so damn important right? because it's all what we inherited from the last guy you know it's this. It's this long chain. 07:24.23 mikebledsoe Um, yeah. 07:33.76 Max Shank Of parents and parents can be like ah a preacher ah Pope or a president and they're like this is good. This is bad behave yourself. We won't get mad kind of thing like and that's basically how it works right. 07:49.33 mikebledsoe Right. 07:51.41 Max Shank So we have this idea that there are some good drugs and some bad drugs and the best example because you got to know that there's a lot of things that are done in a very short-sighted fashion and it's really hard to. Calculate all the costs of certain things like I live in California and I believe up until like 3 to four years ago marijuana was like totally illegal right? something like that. Let's say within the last five years right 08:26.77 mikebledsoe What was medical it was medical was it but it's been recreational flight maybe 3 4 5 years but before that was was like medical in the late 2000 yeah Yeah, 50 years 08:28.16 Max Shank My friend who is a bouncer for. Yeah, okay, but let's say illegal for a long time and and like yeah and like a and like a pretty bad punishment I think too like you would go to Jail Yeah, that's whack yo. 08:49.65 mikebledsoe There's people still doing time. 08:53.94 Max Shank Ah, but my friend who was a bouncer at a bar. He said when there was a reggae concert. They would be full capacity and people would just be in a cloud of smoke and there would be no violence. There would be no car accidents and then when there was a country music band This is a guy who is bouncer there for 20 years at this local bar country music goes. Ah the bouncers are. Running around all evening. There's fights breaking out everywhere. People are beating each other up. There's drunk driving and it's like you gotta you gotta check reality a little bit because what is causing more immediate problems alcohol or Marijuana Now. That's what I'm saying. It's so hard to calculate right? because it's not.. It's not about the substance. It's about the behavior and I think that would be like a good thing to just remember regardless of whether it is a drug that daddy says is good or a drug that daddy says is bad right. 10:01.57 mikebledsoe But but I yeah totally agree and I think that people and there's just a big problem in our society today is people. 10:04.10 Max Shank It's more about the behavior than the substance itself. 10:16.80 mikebledsoe Are more likely to judge something as good or bad based on what some authority figure has has to say than witnessing the results for themselves right? when it comes down to how much violence happens in regard to alcohol versus weed. It's it's incredible. The. 10:20.24 Max Shank Of course. 10:35.59 mikebledsoe The violent the aggression goes up with alcohol with we to go it tends to go down and ah you know I'll I'll take a high driver over a drunk driver any day of the week so I don't I don't drive I don't drive either way. But I'll tell you what. 10:46.74 Max Shank Right? And both are fun. Um, right. 10:54.64 mikebledsoe I'm pretty athletic when I'm high I'm not very athletic when I'm drinking and I'm pretty sure that carries over to you know maneuvering a vehicle. 11:05.70 Max Shank Here's another here's another quotable phrase though. The devil is in the dosage if you want to do some endurance Work. You get a little high if you want to lift something real heavy. You just get a little bit drunk, not not over the top. But there's going to be a different effect. You're going to go sympathetic nervous System. You're going to go. You know, get ratcheted up into more fight or flight mode with a little booze in you a little liquid courage and if you light up. 11:32.60 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 11:38.62 Max Shank The cannabinoid system by ingesting inhaling whatever some thccbd you're going to be able to push through those normal endurance plateaus that you would hit psychologically. So. There's a big difference between a. Using drugs and using drugs and that can be a fine line for some people but you know along with the devil is in the dosage and the substance is less important than the behavior you got to reconsider. Ah. Labeling some is good and some is bad and like does it really make sense to throw like a drug addict in jail or a drug user in jail I mean part of the reason you know I'm kind of switching topics here a little bit but a lot of reason that gangs have power is because. Certain special drugs are illegal and if they were legal there would they wouldn't have any there would be no incentive to go buy drugs from a you know a thug with a machine gun if you can go get it at Cvs like you got to imagine the. 12:39.83 mikebledsoe No. 12:55.91 Max Shank Benefit to society would be much better. 12:57.34 mikebledsoe Yeah, people don't really think about that I I think a lot of people miss that and that making a product black market making it Illegal. You're gonna get arrested for it. It's hard to make that actually creates some some interesting variables. But. 1 of the things that it creates is it creates violence because now now you have to be secretive about It. You have to form gangs to protect Yourself. You've you've got to do all these things and then in addition to that The ah the. 13:26.74 Max Shank 4 13:36.58 mikebledsoe Dosage starts getting really concentrated like cocaine becoming illegal. They were trying to figure out how do we? How do we make it more potent so that we can because shipping right? We got to hide it and ship it and so we got to make it more potent. The same thing is happening with weed over the years is an ounce today is not what an ounce was twenty thirty years ago because we can. We can you know, go further with this. So 1 thing I've noticed is when something's on the black market just becomes more concentrated a huge example of this right now. Which is in the news which is fentanyl and fentanyl I think is whether like the number one killer of ah of americans right now the number 1 or number 4 in certain age group. Okay, but it's it's in which is incredibly high but it's. 14:19.98 Max Shank Ah, in a certain in a certain age group in a certain age group. Yeah, which is insane. No no one is thinking like I want to do some fentanyl today like. 14:31.50 mikebledsoe It's probably because no one's thinking that but it's cheaper than heroin at this point right? So and heroin exists because Opium was yeah but. 14:37.40 Max Shank Well and remember heroin is bad but diamorphine the prescription grade heroin totally fine, right? So it just like depends on the context huh. 14:49.70 mikebledsoe But smoking opium was became illegal and so they had to concentrate it and make heroin and then just keeps getting more further and further concentrated because it's black market or or it's tightly controlled. 14:58.25 Max Shank And that black market creates a lot of wealth too I mean look what happened I mean I I'm so skeptical of almost any of the history I read now because I just feel like it's ah it's a huge. It's probably a huge web of lies. 15:11.20 mikebledsoe As you should be. 15:17.54 Max Shank But I remember all these things that I've read anyway. So I'll just throw that caveat out there but the Kennedys weren't they huge bootleggers of alcohol. 15:24.96 mikebledsoe Huge yeah, they were well. They were responsible for bringing from Ireland they they were like importing their big importers of ah I forget you know whiskey or whatever, whatever it is. They're they're bringing it from ah I think it was Ireland so yeah there. 15:35.10 Max Shank That's what I'm saying. 15:41.25 Max Shank I Mean one one. 15:44.10 mikebledsoe And they had a they had like a a monopoly on it. So yeah, it built Ah ah, a lot of wealth. 15:49.41 Max Shank Well and something about human nature people. Love booze that's been in our history for thousands of thousands of years we've been drinking booze and smoking different herbs tobacco ah hashish. 15:57.12 mikebledsoe Oh yeah. 16:07.96 Max Shank All these different things. So it's not like it's inherently good or evil it's it's what you do with it. It's not about the substance not about the behavior and if you have that kind of compassion for people who use drugs that you may be thought before are evil. Then you'll also be able to have more compassion for yourself when you start recognizing how many drugs you might be using that are like the good drugs or the okay drugs because frankly, if you give a 12 year old a 15 year old or a thirty year old ah, tiktok and they do a few hours of that every day that's probably more destructive than getting a little high and doing some yoga or something you know I'm saying so it's all it's more about the the context. 16:56.14 mikebledsoe Yeah, well I think we're talking about there too is the difference between exogenous and endogenous substances right? So a behavior driven as an but it's not a substance. There's an external event. 17:05.94 Max Shank Um, well it's still an external. Yeah, that right. 17:14.83 mikebledsoe That's causing your body to create a substance if you sit there on Tiktok for 3 hours your your blood chemistry is likely looking very different 3 hours into it than beforehand. 17:24.29 Max Shank There's serotonin. There's like a dopamine on and off you're just in this and oh like I call it story time roulette basically because it's 1 screen at a time you shut out the whole rest of the world you develop hardcore tunnel vision. 17:30.58 mikebledsoe Yeah. 17:41.19 Max Shank Your vision gets where vision like is going into the fucking basement because people are looking at stuff that is less than twenty four inches away from them a lot and look I'm I'm not one to say that's right or wrong. But if you don't start. Looking at things farther away and going on walks and taking in long distances your eyes will completely deteriorate anyway to your point. Yes, if you're consuming media and the hormone cascade is the result of that I would still call the. Scrolling media the drug that is initiating the production of endogenous compounds. 18:26.50 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, and the same for the the runners high. It's like when those things where I meet someone's like oh I've been sober I'm like but you run like ten twenty miles every other day or every day to stay sane right? They're like oh I gotta like you know. 18:32.68 Max Shank Yeah. 18:43.23 Max Shank Okay. 18:46.49 mikebledsoe I Don't work out if I don't get that hot and if I can't work out hard if I can't push it I got someone gets an injury and they they're you know they just they get depressed and everything just goes in the shitter because they can't exercise I'm like you are so addicted to those neurotransmitters and those hormones. Um, and one of them being a nadoide na nadoide is this is the substance your body creates when you get into that runner's high that that what most people call endorphins. It's not endorphins. It's a nadomite and. Um, it's part of the Endo Cannabinoids system and that's it's really powerful because it's it. Ah, it's very similar and it and it attaches to the cell the same way T Hc does and so. This is why you'll find people who like to roll jujitsu or go for long endurance events and they smoke weed Beforehand or have an edible beforehand because not you get that you get that runner's high immediately. So I get running and I actually everyone knows when they slip into that Groove. It's. 19:57.33 Max Shank Like a flow. Yeah. 19:57.98 mikebledsoe You know you get like five miles in you get into the flow smoke some weed beforehand you'll be in flow in about 60 seconds and then when your body also pumps out the nadomite on top of that t hc that's a it's a double dose of runner's high so you know ah that that. Nothing wrong with that I enjoy doing that myself. Another example of this would be I've gone to the peruvian mountains and I fly in and immediately someone hands me a big bag of coca leaves. So just raw coca leaves which is not cocaine cocaine. Takes coca leaves and they break it down into ah such a concentration that you know it's it's incredibly higher. But I take the coca leaves I I wrap some stuff in there. It's some enzymes that basically help it break down better I chew on it and now like it does elevate my mood. And I can deal better with elevation. It keeps you from getting elevation sickness. So little little things that ah that are just I think about those 2 things kind of together because. 20:58.13 Max Shank Ah. 21:11.70 mikebledsoe Ah, it's just a simple thing to add in. That's gonna give you more of what you already were We're gonna get or wanted. 21:18.98 Max Shank Well and the devil's in the dosage. You know people are really fond of the term biohacker and I got to say it sounds like a really cool thing to be and I guess ah you know my. Natural state with things is one of mockery. So I like can't help but make fun of anything that sounds silly or you know people who say forward ambulation instead of walking it just like makes me laugh I can't take them serious. Ah, but the the nuance the context. Ah, using these substances to your advantage I mean imagine trying to build a business without a cell phone and imagine imagine imagine trying to build a business with a cell phone and a cell phone is another dopamine machine. You can use it or it can use you social media same thing you can use it or it can use you a little bit of Coca leaves boom mood elevator ah less sensitive to the higher altitude. Fantastic! ah. Tiny bit of booze wham maybe a deadlift pr a little bit of marijuana and maybe your best five mile runtime ever or flow state. You know, better music. Whatever um, so the context matters so much the dosage. Matters so much and recognizing that anything that is changing your state that way. It is a drug and the good and evils of it should be determined on an individual basis rather than like broad strokes with law in my opinion. You know that's that's my perspective is that the cost of having like a war on drugs which seems like it's just been a colossal failure to me is way lower than the benefit across the board. 23:21.85 mikebledsoe Yeah I mean the the intentions of the war on drugs I mean there's a lot of speculation that you know had more to do with just suppressing minorities and and things like that and it's a great excuse to put people in Jail maybe shut up protesters. You know that went after psychedelics in the. 23:32.45 Max Shank Yeah. 23:41.22 mikebledsoe Sixty S because of the Hippie movement And yeah, there's a lot of that going on and the other thing. Um. 23:45.80 Max Shank I mean it seems it just seems crazy that there's a such thing as a nonviolent crime in the first place but to have nonviolent crimes like go to jail instead of like compensate who anyway the whole thing is like. 23:55.68 mikebledsoe Right. 24:04.71 Max Shank Crazy to me. Yeah. 24:05.20 mikebledsoe It's insane. It's insane. Well, the other thing is I wanted to mention this earlier which is prohibition people don't if we look at prohibition of alcohol that happened you know a hundred years ago in the us ah, it created Al Capone and all these gangsters and. All this and they were having shootouts with the cops they lift prohibition on alcohol. What? what happens the gangs just kind of go away like like they they may still be operating but they're not nearly as violent. Maybe they they probably moved to a lot of them that were in the business of trafficking. Alcohol probably moved into opium or something else that was illegal. I mean if you watch narcos which is based on true story. But you know obviously it's hollywooded up. Ah you know they basically go oh the weed's not paying enough. We'll move to cocaine and so. Those types of people who are always looking to play at the edges are always going to go there no matter what the substance is that that is black marketed. 25:09.64 Max Shank No no question. It's hilarious that phrase crime doesn't pay but when you define something as a crime it pays handsomely like who's who's who's more wealthy than a Colombian Drug lord. 25:17.60 mikebledsoe Ah, crime pays when you don't get paid Just don't get caught. 25:29.59 Max Shank I mean unless you own a pharmaceutical company then you have legal drugs even more widespread use and you're even richer like those are some of the richest people on the planet. You know you look at you look at the different. Okay so is Netflix a drug is watching. 25:39.83 mikebledsoe Oh yeah. 25:47.96 Max Shank Media for hours and hours a drug. Yeah I mean there's no surprise that people gravitate toward maximum curiosity and maximum safety simultaneously. It completely satisfies our 2 most primal desires. Ah, that define human beings we want safety so you're inside your house or wherever you're in your own little world looking at your telephone or watching the screen and then you see the most outlandish you know game of thrones narcos like ah people like. Raping and killing each other and you're like I'm safe at home and I'm watching this like crazy dragons flying around everywhere. It's it's makes sense to me and look what are the the top companies in the world right now. It's ah like Facebook Amazon Apple Netflix. What's the g fang can't remember right now I should know that Google thank you I guess I could have googled it and figured that out. But that's so isn't that incredible. 26:49.90 mikebledsoe Google. 27:00.84 mikebledsoe That's now a definition in the there's else Google now made the dictionary by the way. 27:03.90 Max Shank Well I mean what's incredible about that is that they have avoided um, being considered a monopoly that's that's incredible. We're gonna get too far off track I take it back. We'll save it for another time. 27:21.71 mikebledsoe Alright I'll bring it back but let's get back the drugs so I like the classified drugs in the 2 categories. So when I talk to people and they get they they want to challenge me on like yeah I'm like. 27:21.84 Max Shank We we can't do this. We have to stay on drugs. Um. 27:40.57 mikebledsoe On on drugs and by the way I had someone on Instagram the other day just posting trolling me in the comments telling me I was ah was addicted to drugs and shit and it was pretty comical. They got blocked fuck them but they I mean you can talk a lot of shit to me in the comments I'll I'll respond back I enjoy. Back and forth. But when you just start when it starts getting ridiculous and there's not actually a conversation you're getting blocked. This person is probably listening to this I have a few trolls that know way too much about me which is which is a little creepy but um. 28:04.53 Max Shank So. 28:10.62 Max Shank Um, ah must make you feel pretty special. 28:17.83 mikebledsoe not not the kind of special I want to feel but ah when I get talking to people and they go ah, you know they they start lumping in say alcohol and heroin and with lsd in the same category of drug and I go. These are not the same. They're the opposite of each other to to put them in the same category and the category is drugs and I think it's good that we're using that name for this show and using it in this way because it really should be normalized I think the only way is to do it is to say drugs are. Fine and we need to talk about the drugs inside this context when you're growing up. There's like don't do drugs and all these things fall into the same thing so we're programmed to drop everything in the drugs category and there's 2 different types of drugs. There's drugs that make you feel less and there's drugs that make you feel more. And there's a lot of those are just like two sides of a spectrum. It's a concept. There's so much in between I mean when I think about using drugs I think of myself inside of a sphere and I can go not just three hundred and sixty degrees but three hundred and sixty degrees times three hundred and sixty degrees go in any direction I want to push my state into but there's largely. There's feeling less drugs and feeling more drugs and the feeling less drugs would be heroin alcohol these things that sedate you in a way that that it it. Keeps you from having the full human experience right? right. 29:56.79 Max Shank Reduces your sensitivity and others increase your sensitivity like alcohol and weed are the perfect examples that I think most people can understand. 30:03.78 mikebledsoe And so most people I think they associate or I'll talk to someone about having mushrooms and they go why I don't want to like you know I blacked out once on alcohol and I'm like this is you're not going to black out on mushrooms for one and but you're. Your awareness on alcohol is being so depressed and your awareness on on mushrooms is being if you've never done it if you've never done any psychedelics. It's It's an expansion that you'll never you'll break through multiple levels of expansion of consciousness that is indescribable. And the to to put these 2 things in the same category I think is a a huge disservice and it's a great way to just not learn about it. You know people just they just would rather not know shit about it and just. Avoid it because someone told them to yeah, it is easier. Okay, um. 30:59.36 Max Shank Well, it's easier to do that. Also right drugs are bad. Okay, you know, ah I mean the less nuance and context there is the less clear your understanding is going to be the more likely you are to just follow the closest. Authority figure. Um, so this this idea that we go into an a a meeting and then out in the hallway you got chain smoking and donut eating I mean look if you if you're an alcoholic and you. 31:19.82 mikebledsoe Accurate. 31:37.67 Max Shank And you like having that term attached to you and maybe you used to like beat your get drunk and beat your wife every night and now instead you chain smoke and eat donuts I think that's an improvement. Okay maybe we can do better but it's still a step in the right direction but this this whole idea. Of like substituting 1 addiction for another and that could be a whole um, different thing I've had some great talks with people about addiction and the hardest part is to define. It. The best definition I've heard is ah. Repeated behavior that gives you an outcome. You don't want that That's my favorite definition for addiction. So regardless of what the substance is go for it. 32:16.51 mikebledsoe E. Well I would say yeah people are one of the things I've noticed in my coaching with people is they get addicted addicted to emotions you know they they get addicted to to guilt. And because they're addicted to guilt I mean just experiencing guilt a terrible outcome. But yeah I think was it a? Ah, What's his name toll. 32:46.91 Max Shank It's like the familiar pain versus uncertainty a lot of people go into that. 32:57.87 mikebledsoe Be here. Not be here now that's Ram Das Ah not Ram das the power of now. Well he talks about the pain body and basically there's certain things that you're basically getting addicted to this is I associate this with being accepted or loved or whatever it is or. 32:58.60 Max Shank Ram Das Tolly is a power of now. 33:06.41 Max Shank Threat. 33:16.22 Max Shank Right. 33:17.83 mikebledsoe This is how I learned to survive when things became stressful or I'm afraid that I'm not going to be loved so now I need to respond in this way and so we we get addicted to there's this emotional pattern that is wreaking Havoc on our lives and so we're addicted to it So there's it Oh fuck. Yeah. 33:23.85 Max Shank Right? Well you ever met someone addicted to drama. You know what's you know? what's funny I've never heard. 33:37.74 mikebledsoe Get away from them. But we're all dick. But. 33:42.42 Max Shank A group of people who says I don't want any drama more than people who are addicted to drama like ah a person who's not addicted to it a person who actually doesn't want trauma doesn't even use that phrase but a person who's addicted to it. 33:59.97 mikebledsoe Totally totally. 34:02.10 Max Shank Always uses that phrase. It's one of the most and and I I'm like addicted to peace I like like drama is uncomfortable like I want to avoid it at all costs I don't mind a little confrontation but I don't want to. So for me I was just like whoa. This is insane that someone could actually want this like this and continue to either consciously or subconsciously manifest these situations of hardcore drama. 34:34.76 mikebledsoe Yeah, well we're we're all addicted to drama I mean if you if you buy into any narrative at all. It's because you enjoy the drama of it people watch Tv because they enjoy drama yeah, where what. 34:36.34 Max Shank Very exciting. 34:48.98 Max Shank You. 34:52.42 mikebledsoe What is the character they are playing in that story. They may be a more dramatic character. They may be emotional emotionally unstable. They may pick more fights but we're all living in a drama but you know what character are you playing in that drama and so. 34:55.36 Max Shank So. 35:02.42 Max Shank Right. 35:12.25 mikebledsoe You're kind of like the sit back and probably only step in when it's absolutely necessary kind of character whereas Karen Karen is out there just yeah and then you got Karen out there picking fights in the parking lot. 35:16.69 Max Shank I try to be like a Buddha guy. 35:25.83 Max Shank Well and and that can make you feel like you are solidifying your self image or your ego right? So a lot of these back to drugs. 35:34.96 mikebledsoe Yeah, all right? Let's get back to drugs. Um. Ah, the eye roll I don't think so I. 35:41.98 Max Shank If we had just done some cocaine before this. We'd be more focused. Yeah I've never I've never tried it but I've heard. It's really fun. Um. 35:52.25 mikebledsoe Yeah, ah and a handful of times. Ah I don't think the the repercussions aren't worth the fun compared to other drugs. Other drugs are just superior. It's kind of like when you start doing mushrooms. Why people start eating mushrooms like. 36:01.15 Max Shank Oh. Yeah, ah. 36:11.28 mikebledsoe Why was I drinking so much you mean on Friday night I could have eaten some mushrooms instead of drinking 12 beers. Wow the next day is that's pretty cool. 36:16.96 Max Shank Yeah, yeah, the the when you when it comes time to pay the Piper mushroom certainly seems a lot kinder than alcohol. Ah, how about? So I mean. 36:30.61 mikebledsoe Ah, just about anything's kinder than alcohol. 36:36.86 Max Shank Ah, is sex a drug. What do you think there are sex addicts out there also known as males. 36:40.20 mikebledsoe I Mean we're talking about it causes ears out, you know. Um, well you know, Ah, there's a certain chemical response happening in the body when you're having sex and you know sex with different people is going to give you different responses as well. So You know you might be addicted to a certain fetish or. 37:06.27 Max Shank And. 37:08.96 mikebledsoe Something like that. Yeah I mean I know people personally who identify as sex addicts and you know it was giving them a result they did not want and there's I shit man I I've had some sexual experience a lot of sexual experiences that ah. 37:14.35 Max Shank Ah. 37:28.19 mikebledsoe Would put in the psychedelic category of a lot I if you would ah if if you pulled the what's happening to my my dick out of the equation and I would say I don't know if I'm having sex or if I'm having a dmt experience. It's it's It's very. 37:30.83 Max Shank Oh. 37:46.99 Max Shank Sublime. 37:48.80 mikebledsoe Very similar Actually the older I get the more similar they become which is actually really exciting because I can just take get a little hit. Yeah well part of it is learning how to channel that energy. So most dudes are just. 37:51.59 Max Shank Um, it's an in intersection. That's pretty cool. Well, it's kind of like the meditation and mushrooms. Ah convergence right? like you were saying you can be. 38:06.31 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 38:09.88 Max Shank On mushrooms can get this like crazy effect. But um, it's kind of like a shortcut in a lot of ways where you could get there with lots of meditation and releasing the ego and really being here now and being present. It's just that most people need a jumpstart of some kind. To allow themselves to get there to cut through all of the ego and trauma and things like that and that's why um, there are such big changes after just 1 experience right. 38:41.48 mikebledsoe Yeah, huge benefit. There's most psychedelics and I like you you brought up meditation because you know you got this guy this monk sitting on a hill meditating for 30 years to achieve a state. Come back with some wisdom to share or just keep to themselves because I mean most of that's just for you anyway or you know I spent I spent a decent amount of time in South America with 39:03.44 Max Shank Yeah. 39:15.49 mikebledsoe Ah, the Ayahuascaros and what chimaro like healers down there is how they they go by by the way. The word shaman is ah is a northern europe like siberian word. It's not even south american so sometimes people give me like a shaman like you're appropriating I'm like no. 39:27.16 Max Shank Oh. 39:33.98 mikebledsoe You're appropriating. Are you from Siberia no all right shut the fuck up. But anyways, ah it's funny what it's it's mostly like white. Ah ah, whatever they call. Ah. 39:40.20 Max Shank Where do you find all these people good god. 39:48.92 Max Shank Hey I'm not white I'm pink Dude don't look at me. Yeah, um, yeah. 39:52.28 mikebledsoe You are definitely pink. You're not white I'm pink too. Ah now the ah ah new ages. It's like all this the new age crowd. You know they it's like oh so worried about appropriating I'm like you're appropriating shit left and right more than anybody just chill out. 40:11.70 Max Shank Um, isn't it isn't appropriation just called a appreciation or or sharing I mean like what if it's if it's good. It's good. 40:11.11 mikebledsoe Ah, but ah, it's pretty. Yeah I'm like I'm like anytime and when I when I hang out with we'll we'll say quote unquote shamans in South America because that's what people are are gonna I think understand better when I hang out with them and I'm like oh I'm like I'm gonna take back what I learned to. So where I live and they're like perfect bring it back to where I live show people like oh you're appropriating I'm like the only people we should be caring about is the people who I got it from and they're telling me to spread the word like this is how culture works this is how evolution works evolution works by appropriating what someone else has created. And then making it your own so people ah people people get upset because some people are really good at making money off of the thing they learn from another tradition and those people are poor I get that that's a whole other but it's it. That's such a deep conversation. Maybe. 40:56.14 Max Shank I Mean if you like it I think you'd probably do it. 41:06.84 Max Shank Ah. 41:13.97 mikebledsoe Maybe we just do a show on appropriation later. But ah so but I go down. Yeah yeah, but ah, you go down to South America they've been sitting with this medicine as thousands of years it at least if not longer thousands of years 41:16.74 Max Shank Expect a lot of eye rolling for that one for me. 41:33.21 mikebledsoe And you know they it's ah I equiate equate them that the knowledge that they get when um when a lot of these South American Healers have been introduced to Concepts of Buddhism and hinduism a lot of that they were completely ah ignorant of. Those philosophies of those religions and practices until the last couple decades because while the internet and people started traveling for these things and brought their own. They're like they like oh what we're doing down here is the same as buddhism like it's the same. 41:58.70 Max Shank Right. 42:10.39 mikebledsoe The the same wisdom is being accomplished in a much shorter period of time and ah, it's very interesting that people will will put meditation on this pedestal while using all sorts of drugs unknowingly and but. Using psychedelics as something is like oh you, you want to lean on that like human beings have been leaning on and evolving alongside psychedelic medicines for you know, probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years so the idea of like. Not using this tool that we've been using for so long that's going to expand my consciousness seems kind of ridiculous. 42:52.41 Max Shank Well, it's all ridiculous because everybody is trying to alleviate a pain that they're feeling and the most primal pains are ah hunger sexual desire. The desire for safety and then as human beings. It's even a greater challenge because we have to harmonize this concept of meaning and mission and perhaps legacy and so that's why there's such a huge amount. Written passed down for generations. You know you have the bible. You have the doo de jing you have the book of the buddha you have these ah shamans in different parts of the world. I mean we have been trying to figure out how to live for a very very long time. In a way that is is comforting that pain that we feel and that discomfort is the fire for achieving your goals also and if you squelch that fire with ah. You know, tiktoks or heroin. Well I mean I guess that's where you're going to go I mean there's no worries. That's just it's going to work out differently than someone who uses that fire of discomfort like ah a Martin Luther King right and he does he goes the complete opposite way and he takes that pain and he transmutes it into something that he can share with the rest of the people and and that's why the word appropriation makes me laugh so much because it's all about sharing. Ultimately, the reason we write stuff down is so we can share it and the different pains that people feel may have different specific origins but they'll they're all rooted in some of those primal desires your ah desire for acceptance. You know, childhood et cetera growing up attracting a mate like all these different things like how can you um, use that pain for action rather than just quench that fire in a destructive way right? So it's it's very It's very interesting to see why people use drugs and really how they use them. 45:27.25 mikebledsoe Yeah, and this is why it's very important to pay attention and this is why I like psychedelics is because Psychedelics taught me to pay attention and in days after a mushroom experience and. Being concerned that I was going to lose whatever wisdom I had had ah received in that first ceremony and then days later still paying better attention to my state than I ever had before and that's that's part of the point of meditation too. 46:00.96 Max Shank 20 46:05.43 mikebledsoe Especially if you look at something like Viposana Meditation it's all about being present with the sensations in your body being and that would be sight smell hearing as well and so most people when they start meditating me do eyes closed. But there's also eyes open meditation but it's ah it's a more advanced thing. Yeah, it's it's pretty advanced. Ah. 46:22.72 Max Shank You can meditate with your eyes open that sounds pretty advanced. Maybe you can put a training course together for that level one. How to sit still with your eyes closed. Level 2 How to sit still with your eyes open. 46:39.77 mikebledsoe Ah, yeah, yeah, So the the point is the point isn't the ceremony. The point is not when you're sitting in Meditation. The point is bringing that level of awareness and that ah being present with. Your body the the world around you and yourself and all these things as you move throughout your day and so noticing I'm not that familiar with Karma yoga. 47:04.93 Max Shank That's karma yoga right? isn't that karma yoga. That's you as I understand it's bringing the awareness of meditation to every task that you do and the first time I really got it the first time I really got it was 47:15.20 mikebledsoe Um, oh you're right. 47:21.25 Max Shank When I was ah cleaning the leaves out of my pool with a long skimmer and I'm not proud of it. But you know just days before that revelation I had considered killing my neighbor's tree. So The leaves wouldn't fall in the pool I was like I was like what I was like why is this happening to me and anyway I didn't kill the tree I just started to really I I know it's ridiculous. It's all relative isn't it only absolute is relativity but I was really annoyed. 47:47.20 mikebledsoe Why is this happening to me. Ah. 47:58.55 Max Shank That the leaves were falling into my pool and the indignance of it all was in retrospect quite hilarious and so instead of like you know, murdering a tree. Ah I started to really enjoy the process of skimming the leaves out of a pool so it was like my little water Zen Garden and. 48:13.51 mikebledsoe Um, yeah. 48:17.59 Max Shank The more you can bring that awareness to everything you do the more clear you get on who you really are and what your mission is what you stand for you know what your value and values are the easier. It is to bring that level of awareness to all that stuff you do and. It's no surprise that we have figured out a lot of this stuff in the last several thousand years and I think if you can if you're looking for wisdom I would look at stuff that has lasted a really long Time. So if you take ancient, wisdom and modern Tools. You'll probably be at the most peace and very wealthy if you take modern, wisdom and ancient Tools. You will probably mess yourself up. Pretty bad. 49:04.37 mikebledsoe Agreed agreed. Yeah so paying attention helps to know what drugs you may be taking whether it be caffeine or shallow or deep breathing or whether it's lsd. 49:21.17 Max Shank A. 49:22.60 mikebledsoe You're gonna if you're paying attention to your state from moment to moment you're gonna you're gonna know what you should do more of in less up or when you should do things and when you should not do things but I to me takes a lot of practice ah paying attention while intentionally putting yourself. 49:41.25 Max Shank The modern tools can help my my favorite addiction I mean look food sex. Yeah I'm all on board. But Youtube is 1 of my addictions because you can have a true expert on. 49:41.26 mikebledsoe And these state changes. So ah, the modern tools mean out. 50:00.46 Max Shank Nearly any topic take you through their whole thought process on anything I can I can go down the Youtube Rabbi a hole for hours and hours. That's why I use the modern tech to ah, click it off at a certain timeframe. 50:05.16 mikebledsoe Yeah. 50:18.58 mikebledsoe E. 50:20.31 Max Shank So you know when I'm on my phone. Ah 5 minutes only if I'm on my computer I get 15 minutes and that's it and at least that pause will allow me to. Ask the question of is this really what I want to be doing right now. So that pattern break alone can be tremendous. That's why I was telling you before we got started here um on the door of the pantry in the kitchen There's a little sign that says pattern break. 50:38.56 mikebledsoe Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 50:56.39 Max Shank So before you open the pantry with all the snacks in it. There's a little sign that essentially reminds you intention before ingestion like is are you going here because you're hungry. Are you going here because you're sleepy. Are you going here because you're bored. Are you going here because you're deeply uncomfortable. And I think food is the most difficult drug because you cannot practice abstinence permanently like you cannot quit cold turkey cold turkey you must continue eating food. So like you could quit heroin forever. But you can't quit food forever. There's there's a give and take there. So the fact that you always have to have a toe in there makes it very challenging and look It's no surprise. What do we have like over half of the people obese ah something like that I get I get it I get it hey we we won the game of life. 51:47.30 mikebledsoe Something like that insane. 51:55.94 Max Shank We're dying of being too fat instead of underfed in this country that's look we won nice job. Everybody now let's consider how how we can swing the pendulum back a little bit. Food is tough. Food is a tough one but it all comes down to a few of those basic principles. 52:05.41 mikebledsoe Yeah, well said. 52:15.40 Max Shank Intention before ingestion. It's not about the substance. It's about the behavior. Um, you had a couple good ones too. But it's community matters a lot I think who you associate with the the 5 52:30.76 mikebledsoe Um I I yeah I've noticed in the last couple years the impact of community because I I'm ah I'm a very social person by nature. But. 52:33.58 Max Shank The 5 monkey rule. 52:49.29 mikebledsoe Um, a very social person by nature and I've also just like the downfall of that is being too open at too many different energies and and a lot of times like I almost feel guilty about not almost I do there are times where I feel guilty about. Denying people my my attention knowing that by giving them my attention. It's bleeding me dry and ah yeah, just over the last few years I'd say I'd say like the last four years I've gotten 53:11.00 Max Shank And. 53:24.89 mikebledsoe Very intentional about my community and the people I surround myself with and not only does it change my experience from moment to moment as I'm in those communities with those people and and having my cup filled but my behavior that comes from being and and community with certain people is just. 53:43.43 Max Shank Ah. 53:44.77 mikebledsoe I Like how I am I like who I'm being I like my behavior much better when I place myself in certain communities and I so you know work with a lot of people and the thing that I've noticed you know people like I want to solve my. 53:54.30 Max Shank Um, totally. 54:04.90 mikebledsoe Financial problems by doing all these things I need more systems and business and I need no marketing and I'm like yeah you do need to know all that stuff. But you're not going to really be able to implement it if you're if there's no Community. You're not going to loan wolf your way into the good behaviors. There's There's some people that may be able to accomplish what they want as a lone wolf but it's not gonna be as enjoyable and and it's and it it may not they may accomplish their thing but may not be happy at the end. 54:31.39 Max Shank Also Also, you don't get extra points for doing anything all by yourself as I once thought there are no extra points or Credit. You're given at the end I always thought if I did something all on my own people would be like wow. Look how amazing he really is he You don't get any of those extra points at the end. It's total waste. 54:52.82 mikebledsoe No okay community is a huge leverage point I mean we see this in the gym people come in to lose £15 but they stick around why community they want to be around people who are like minded we have similar goals. 55:09.10 Max Shank The the. 55:10.83 mikebledsoe Have similar values and you know I like putting myself in community where they value something that I want to value more you know, ah people people say they value things They don't actually value. They. They they tell you they value things they want to value but most people if they haven't reached their goal if if their values were already aligned with their goals. They have had accomplished that or beyond such a trajectory reaching it. They would be obvious that it's just happening. But people want to be different which means they have to change their values. You have to change your values to reach your goals. So Yeah and I yeah you just go in their House. You can see and so community I like to choose to hang out with people who value. 55:50.00 Max Shank Um I think actions speak louder than words in that case, you're hundred percent right like it's easy to see what someone really values. 56:05.81 mikebledsoe Something more than I do that I that I want to value more and so I use community to shift my values because you know I hang out with people who make more money than me they they have spent more time valuing dollars than I have. 56:21.19 Max Shank Ah. 56:22.58 mikebledsoe They spend more time thinking about it and they think about it in ways that most people don't and so just by putting yourself in that environment. You don't even have to be talking about money. But you're just like it's the way they're being. It's there's an osmosis going on. 56:26.89 Max Shank Oh my God oh. 56:41.13 Max Shank Dude, that's so true I remember that was the first you were the person who mentioned that to me and it stuck with me was ah you know don't necessarily just listen to what people are saying notice how they are being. And I thought that was ah, an interesting distinction that I'd never really considered before and the atmosphere or the climate in the company you keep is totally different and money is a perfect example because you got to be so careful. Um. Hanging out with people who have a scarcity mindset around money like you probably want to hang around with people where five ten grand is not a lot of money if you want to be wealthy like if ah if people are telling you all the time about the thing they bought for. 57:22.14 mikebledsoe Down. Yeah. 57:31.70 Max Shank $5 off coupon I mean I'm not saying that makes you bad it just means that there's still like ah missing the forest for the trees or pennywise pound foolish kinda thing going on there like you don't want to be in that environment of scarcity versus abundance. 57:40.21 mikebledsoe Yeah, when this goes back to yeah and this applies to you know drugs as well drug abuse. So if you around a bunch of drug abusers. You're gonna keep abusing. 57:57.00 Max Shank Totally. 57:58.20 mikebledsoe And the the money one I think is a good one because people can almost everybody can they understand it. They experience it and. 58:04.52 Max Shank And. 58:10.32 mikebledsoe I think I may have lost it. Maybe it'll come back. Oh yeah, that changed that that changes people's state Incredible. Go check your bank account. What's that experience like. 58:12.61 Max Shank Well money is kind of a funny, a funny, a funny drug too like I see I see money as energy. 58:29.50 mikebledsoe For the average person. You know the average person. Some people they they don't want to go check their bank account. They're afraid to look at it. Some people are excited to look at it. It's having an impact. 58:37.83 Max Shank I Like to look at my bank account and whack off. Ah I'm joking that I don't really do that. But I actually try to look at it as little as possible to still know the direction that the ship is going because I I don't. 58:53.10 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 58:57.39 Max Shank I never wanted to have to like make sure I had enough in the account to buy something essentially but you know you get to a certain point I don't know I think like by today's values or something like that if you make over a hundred k you basically have as good a life. 59:01.57 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 59:16.88 Max Shank As the top 1% in terms of like the basic needs like you don't have to worry about food going out guacamole on your chipotle that sort of thing and then beyond that then it's just this new game like trying to trying to be a billionaire. 59:29.61 mikebledsoe Yeah, well that. 59:35.29 Max Shank Unless you have a solid mission that you want to use that fund those funds for like that's got to be some form of mental illness now. It's a very constructive. It's a very constructive mental illness. It's like how you think that you deserve love. 59:44.14 mikebledsoe There's something else going on there. 59:52.97 Max Shank You know I have that thing like people want love power attention in that order and so some people don't think they'll ever really deserve love because they hate themselves on some level or their mom did which is kind of like that you get the whole idea. So They think I'll just get as powerful as possible. And then people have to love me or fear me or whatever. So It's ah it's a very funny thing the different way we could do a whole thing about about money that would be kind of fun. Maybe we'll do that after business next time but that's a. 01:00:22.31 mikebledsoe Yeah, we should definitely do that. Yeah I'm put in the notes right now I remembered we'll close this up soon. Ah, the the it came back to me the what I wanted to say about the money in community is. 01:00:28.69 Max Shank Yeah, yeah. 01:00:39.46 mikebledsoe I What I witnessed a lot of people struggle with is they need to find new community so they can take on these new habits and behaviors. But they feel guilty about leaving their old community behind they're like oh you know and and then your old friends are gonna call you a sellout and this and that and like. 01:00:55.24 Max Shank Totally. 01:00:58.10 mikebledsoe And so so many people are afraid of of leaving that community and like leaving them behind but the reality is is they're leaving themselves behind now they're they're happy where they're at you want to change, you got to jump ship and people are gonna judge you no matter? what. 01:01:13.89 Max Shank No doubt. 01:01:16.65 mikebledsoe And ah yeah, the more successful you become the more prominent you become the more of a target you become and so I have to say the more popular I become the more people I have to turn down to hang out and they may talk shit about me but I've only got so much time. 01:01:24.57 Max Shank No question. 01:01:36.27 mikebledsoe And the day and my energy is important to me and I'm gonna I'm gonna keep it that way. 01:01:36.44 Max Shank Yeah questions. And that's great to hear from you because it sounds like you are just learning how to draw boundaries in the last few years that sound right? Yeah and it's funny. 01:01:49.15 mikebledsoe Yeah, I'd say the last four years say it's been about yeah yeah about 4 years now it's been ah I had to like I did cut a lot of people off a lot of people are mad at me. Yeah. 01:01:58.91 Max Shank I'm just learning how to be open. Yeah, Ah yeah for me I'm like coming from the opposite end of the spectrum you have like this super social like Chimp energy and I feel like I have this cat like a tiger type of energy where I like just. Have such hard boundaries drawn that if someone doesn't like it I'm like ah tough shit Basically but that also shrinks your circle so much. So finding that balance point or creating that balance that you really like is ah it's fun. That's why I like when we chat. 01:02:21.57 mikebledsoe Yeah. 01:02:28.47 mikebledsoe Mm. 01:02:34.28 mikebledsoe Yeah. 01:02:36.48 Max Shank Because we come at it from such different angles. But interestingly enough we still seem to agree on like almost everything because we really focus on the nuance and the principles and there are very few absolutes and that's what makes it so interesting. Same with drugs. There's no, there's no absolutes. It's like you either use them. 01:02:48.62 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 01:02:56.25 Max Shank Or you abuse them. But I guarantee you're using them. 01:02:59.98 mikebledsoe Yep yep, any final thoughts. 01:03:03.41 Max Shank Maybe just that everybody uses them some people abuse them. 01:03:05.89 mikebledsoe Sound are good. Ah, ah 1 thing I want to mention is set setting and dosage. So the set being your mindset. What What's your state of mind the setting. What's your environment like. And the dosage those are your 3 variables to pay attention to with everything but in regard to drugs set setting and dosage are the 3 most important things to focus on if one of those things are off. You may have a poor experience. 01:03:30.95 Max Shank No. 01:03:42.19 mikebledsoe You make sure that all 3 of those things are dialed in you're in for a good time and I'll leave it with that where do they find you max. 01:03:53.60 Max Shank http://maxshank.com or at ma shank. 01:03:54.77 mikebledsoe Excellent and I've got a strong coach summit coming up and marching go to http://thestrongcoach.com/summit and I imagine some people be doing drugs there as we listen to music at some point during the weekend. So if you want to hop in there come on over.

PRIVATE EVENTS IN A NATURAL SCIENCE The World Within One's Skin Verbal Responses To Private Events Varieties Of Private Stimulation Responses To One's Own Discriminative Behavior Conditioned Seeing The practical importance of conditioned seeing Operant Seeing Traditional Treatment Of The Problem Objections to the traditional view Other Proposed Solutions Studying one's own private world The physiology of sensation Operational definitions of sensation and image The private made public --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/debbie-jacobs/support

AI and machine learning have given us some of the greatest advancements in tech. But even more important than that, it brought us more new Stargate! Laurence Moroney is the Lead AI Evangelist at Google and he worked with Executive Producer Brad Wright to build an AI model that could create new Stargate scripts by combining the data from 17 seasons of previous Stargate Episodes. It's pretty awesome and we got to talk about it. Plus, we have another peek behind the curtain with Allison Goldberg talking about ways to make tech news fun.  Links to News of the week available at benefitofthedoud.com Patreon bonus for this episode: Early access, Full interview Special thanks to:Laurence Moroney - @LMoroney Lead AI Evangelist at GoogleTensorFlow - YouTube Get the show sent straight to your inbox! Subscribe to the show! Support the show! Read more! Twitter - @Benefitofdoud Instagram - @BenefitoftheDoud Youtube - http://bitly/botdtubeTikTok - @BenefitoftheDoud Benefit of the Doud is written and hosted by:Adam Doud - @DeadTechology Co-produced by:Clifton M. Thomas - @cliftonmthomas

In today's episode, I spoke with Prof. Leo Corry, a historian and philosopher of mathematics and science, and the former dean of the Humanities at Tel Aviv university. Leo has studied mathematics, history, and philosophy, and has such an extensive mapping of the history and evolution of science and mathematics, as well as how different cultural and social movements worked together and created the environment that made certain technological advancements and progressions in humanity's understanding of the world. We spoke at length about the philosophy of science, how we need to stay humble in the face of uncertainty, and how for the greater part of history, science and religion have been married to one another, science having been born out of religion, with the fundamental goal of both being to understand the world and the universe we find ourselves in. We talked about the point at which science became divorced from religion, to the extent that today most people would find the two antithetical to one another. I believe that taking this zoomed out approach helps us better understand how science evolved to where it is today and gives us context for our own modern ways of thinking. For more information on Leo:Leo's WebsiteLeo's Blog@YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBiggerPicturePodcast@Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biggerpicturepodbyroni/@Website: https://thebiggerpicturepod.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebiggerpicturepod.substack.com

01:25 - Teaching, Learning, and Education 06:16 - Becoming a Data Scientist * Opportunities to Create New Knowledge * Data Science Science 19:36 - Solving Bias in Data Science * Weapons of Math Destruction (https://weaponsofmathdestructionbook.com/) 23:36 - Recommendations for Aspiring Data Scientists * Hire a Career Coach * Creating and Maintaining a Portfolio * Make a Rosetta Stone * Make a Cheat Sheet * Write an Article on a Piece of Software You Dislike * A Few Times, I've Broken Pandas (https://towardsdatascience.com/a-few-times-i-managed-to-broke-pandas-d3604d43708c?gi=7c2404551ab3) * Kyle Kingsbury Posts (https://aphyr.com/) * Contribute to Another Project * Post On Project Contribution (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6800974518308478976-4YqK) * Spend $$$/Invest on Transition * Bet On Yourself 45:36 - Impostor Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) * Immunity Boosts * Community * Know Your Baseline * Clance Impostor Phenomenon Test (http://impostortest.nickol.as/) * Dr. Pauline Rose Clance (https://paulineroseclance.com/) * The Imposter Phenomenon: An Internal Barrier To Empowerment and Achievement by Pauline Rose Clance and Maureen Ann O'Toole (https://paulineroseclance.com/pdf/ip_internal_barrier_to_empwrmnt_and_achv.pdf) * Disseminate Knowledge * Confidence Leads to Confidence * Dunning-Kruger Effect (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dunning-kruger-effect) * Johari Window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window) Reflections: Mae: Checking out the metrics resources on Impostor Syndrome listed above. Casey: Writing about software in a positive, constructive tone. Mando: Investing in yourself. from:sheaserrano bet on yourself (https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Asheaserrano%20bet%20on%20yourself&src=typed_query&f=live) Adam: Talking about career, data science, and programming in a non-technical way. Also, Twitter searches for book names! This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: MANDO: Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome to Greater Than Code. This is Episode number 241. I'm Mando Escamilla and I'm here with my friend, Mae Beale. MANDO: Hi, there! And I am also here with Casey Watts. CASEY: Hi, I am Casey! And we're all here with Adam Ross Nelson, our guest today. Welcome, Adam. ADAM: Hi, everyone! Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad to be here. CASEY: Since 2020, Adam is a consultant who provides research, data science, machine learning, and data governance services. Previously, he was the inaugural data scientist at The Common Application which provides undergraduate college application platforms for institutions around the world. He holds a PhD from The University of Wisconsin: Madison in Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis. Adam is also formerly an attorney with a history of working in higher education, teaching all ages, and educational administration. He is passionate about connecting with other data professionals in-person and online. For more information and background look for his insights by connecting with Adam on LinkedIn, Medium, and other online platforms. We are lucky we have him here today. So Adam, what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? ADAM: I spent so much time thinking about this question, I really wasn't sure what to say. I hadn't thought about my superpower in a serious way in a very long time and I was tempted to go whimsy with this, but I got input from my crowd and my tribe and where I landed was teaching, learning, and education. You might look at my background with a PhD in education, leadership, and policy analysis, all of my work in education administration, higher education administration, and teaching and just conclude that was how I acquired the superpower. But I think that superpower goes back much further and much deeper. So when I was a kid, I was badly dyslexic. Imagine going through life and you can't even tell the difference between a lowercase B and a lowercase D. Indistinguishable to me. Also, I had trouble with left and right. I didn't know if someone told me turn left here, I'd be lucky to go – I had a 50/50 chance of going in the right direction, basically. Lowercase P and Q were difficult. For this podcast, the greater than sign, I died in the math unit, or I could have died in the math unit when we were learning greater than, or less than. Well, and then another one was capital E and the number 3, couldn't tell a difference. Capital E and number 3. I slowly developed mnemonics in order to learn these things. So for me, the greater than, less than pneumonic is, I don't know if you ever think about it, but think of the greater than, or less than sign as an alligator and it's hungry. So it's always going to eat the bigger number. [laughs] It's always going to eat the bigger quantity. So once I figured that mnemonic out and a bunch of other mnemonics, I started doing a little bit better. My high school principal told my parents that I would be lucky to graduate high school and there's all kinds. We can unpack that for days, but. MANDO: Yeah. ADAM: Right? Like what kind of high school principal says that to anybody, which resonates with me now in hindsight, because everything we know about student learning, the two most influential factors on a student's ability to learn are two things. One, teacher effectiveness and number two, principal leadership. Scholarship always bears out. MAE: Whoa. ADAM: Yeah. So the principal told my family that and also, my household growing up, I was an only child. We were a very poor household; low income was an understatement. So my disadvantages aside, learning and teaching myself was basically all I had. I was the kid who grew up in this neighborhood, I had some friends in the neighborhood, and I was always exploring adjacent areas of the neighborhoods. I was in a semi-rural area. So there were wooded areas, there were some streams, some rivers, some lakes and I was always the kid that found something new. I found a new trail, a new street, a new whatever and I would run back to my neighborhood and I'd be like, “Hey everybody, I just found something. Look what I found, follow me and I will show you also. I will show you the way and I'll show you how cool that is.” MAE: Aw. ADAM: I love this thinking. [laughs] MAE: I love that! CASEY: Sharing. ADAM: I'm glad because when I'm in the classroom, when I'm teaching – I do a lot of corporate training now, too. When I'm either teaching in a traditional university classroom, or in corporate setting, that is me reliving my childhood playtime. It's like, “Hey everybody, look at this cool thing that I have to show you and now I'm going to show it to you, also.” So teaching, learning, and education is my superpower and in one way, that's manifested. When I finished school, I finished my PhD at 37. I wasn't 40 years old yet, if you count kindergarten had been in school for 23 years. Over half of my life, not half of my adult life, half of my entire life I was in school [chuckles] and now that I'm rounding 41—that was last week, I turned 41. Now that I'm rounding 41 – MAE: Happy birthday! ADAM: Thank you so much. Now that I'm rounding 41, I'm finally a little more than half of my life not in school. MANDO: Congrats, man. That's an accomplishment. [laughs] So I'm curious to know how you transitioned from that academic world into being a data scientist proper, like what got you to that point? What sets you down that path? Just that whole story. I think that'd be super interesting to talk about and dig into. ADAM: Sure. I think context really matters; what was going on in the data science field at the time I finished the PhD. I finished that PhD in 2017. So in 2017, that was that the apex of – well, I don't know if it was, or maybe we're now at the apex. I don't know exactly where the apex was, or is, or will be, but there was a lot of excitement around data science as a field and as a career in about 3, or 4 years ago. MANDO: For sure. ADAM: So when I was finishing the PhD, I had the opportunity to tech up in my PhD program and gain a lot of the skills that others might have gained via other paths through more traditional computer science degrees, economics degrees, or bootcamps, or both. And then I was also in a position where I was probably—and this is common for folks with a PhD—probably one of the handful of people in the world who were a subject matter expert in a particular topic, but also, I had the technical skills to be a data scientist. So there was an organization, The Common Application from the introduction, that was looking for a data scientist who needed domain knowledge in the area that I had my PhD and that's what a PhD does for you is it gives you this really intense level of knowledge in a really small area [chuckles] and then the technical skills. That's how I transitioned into being a data scientist. I think in general, that is the template for many folks who have become a data scientist. Especially if you go back 3, or 4, or 5, or 6 years ago, before formal data science training programs started popping up and even before, and then I think some of the earliest bootcamps for data science were about 10 years ago. At least the most widely popular ones were about 10 years ago to be clear. And then there's another view that that's just when we started calling it data science because the skills for – all of the technologies and analytical techniques we're using, not all of them, many of them have been around for decades. So that's important to keep in mind. So I think to answer your question, I was in the right place at the right time, there was a little bit of luck involved, and I always try and hold myself from fully giving all the credit away to luck because that's something. Well, maybe we'll talk about it later when it comes to imposter syndrome, that's one of the symptoms, so to speak, of imposter syndrome is giving credit for your success away to luck while you credit the success of others to skill, or ability. But let me talk about that template. So the template is many data scientists become a data scientists with this three-step process. One, you establish yourself as an expert in your current role and by establishing yourself as an expert, you're the top expert, or one of very, very few people who are very, very skilled in that area. Then you start tackling business problems with statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. You might not be called a data scientist yet, but by this point, you're already operating as a data scientist and then eventually, you be the data scientist, you become the data scientist. If it is a career path for you, you'll potentially change roles into a role that's formerly called, specifically called data science. But one of the articles I wrote recently on Medium talks about the seven paths to data scientist and one of the paths talks about a fellow who really doesn't consider himself a data scientist, but he is a data scientist, been a data scientist for years, but he's really happy with this organization and his role as it's titled as an engineer and he's great. He's good to go. So maybe we'll talk about it a little bit later, too. I think as we were chatting and planning, someone asked about pedigree a little bit and one of the points I like to make is there's no right, or wrong way to do it. There's no right, or wrong way to get there just once you get there, have fun with it. MAE: I love what you said, Adam, about the steps and they're very similar to what I would advise to any traditional coder and have advised is take all of your prior work experience before you become a programmer. It is absolutely relevant and some of the best ways to have a meaningful impact and mitigate one's own imposter syndrome is to get a job where you are programming and you already have some of that domain knowledge and expertise to be able to lend. So you don't have to have been one of the rarefied few, but just having any familiarity with the discipline, or domain of the business you end up getting hired at, or applying to certainly is a way to get in the door a little easier and feel more comfortable once you're there, that you can contribute in lots of ways. ADAM: And it gives you the ability to provide value that other folks who are on a different path, who are going into data science earlier—this is a great path, too don't let me discount that path—but those folks don't have the deep domain knowledge that someone who transitions into data science later in their career provides. MAE: Exactly. Yeah, and the amazing teams have people with all the different versions, right? ADAM: Right. MAE: Like we don't want a team with only one. Yeah. ADAM: That's another thing I like to say about data science is it's a team sport. It has to be a teams – it has to be done in tandem with others. CASEY: I just had a realization that everyone I know in data science, they tend to come from science backgrounds, or maybe a data science bootcamp. But I don't know anyone who moved from web development into data science and that's just so surprising to me. I wonder why. MAE: I crossed the border a little bit, I would say, I worked in the Center for Data Science at RTI in North Carolina and I did do some of the data science there as well as just web programming, but my undergrad is biochem. So I don't break your role. [laughs] MANDO: [chuckles] Yeah. I'm trying to think. I don't think I know any either. At the very least, they all come from a hard science, or mathematics background, which is interesting to me because that's definitely not my experience with web application developers, or just developers in general. There's plenty that come from comp side background, or an MIS background, or something like that, but there's also plenty who come from non-traditional backgrounds as well. Not just bootcamps, but just like, they were a history major and then picked up programming, or whatever and it doesn't seem to be as common, I think in data science. Not to say that you couldn't, but just for my own, or maybe our own experience, it's not quite as common. ADAM: If there's anybody listening with the background that we're talking about, the other backgrounds, I would say, reach out probably to any of us and we'd love to workshop that with you. MAE: Yes! Thank you for saying that. Absolutely. MANDO: Yeah, the more stories we can amplify the better. We know y'all are out there; [chuckles] we just don't know you and we should. MAE: Adam, can you tell us some descriptor that is a hobnobbing thing that we would be able to say to a data scientist? Maybe you can tell us what P values are, or just some little talking point. Do you have any favorite go-tos? ADAM: Well, I suppose if you're looking for dinner party casual conversation and you're looking for some back pocket question, you could ask a data scientist and you're not a data scientist. I would maybe ask a question like this, or a question that I could respond to easily as a data scientist might be something like, “Well, what types of predictions are you looking to make?” and then the data scientists could respond with, “Oh, it's such an interesting question. I don't know if anybody's ever asked me that before!” But the response might be something like, “Well, I'm trying to predict a classification. I'm trying to predict categories,” or “I'm trying to predict income,” or “I'm trying to predict whatever it is that –” I think that would be an interesting way to go. What's another one? CASEY: Oh, I've got one for anyone you know in neuroscience. ADAM: Oh, yeah. MAE: Yay! CASEY: I was just reading a paper and there's this statistics approach I'm sure I did in undergrad stats, but I forgot it. Two-way ANOVA, analysis of variance, and actually, I don't think I know anyone in my lab that could explain it offhand real quickly really well because we just learn it enough to understand what it is and why we use it and then we have the computer do it. But it's an interesting word saying it and having someone say, “Yes, I know what that means enough. It's a science, or neuroscience.” ADAM: I would be interested in how neuroscience is used two-way ANOVA because I'm not a neuroscientist and two-way ANOVA is so useful in so many other contexts. CASEY: I'm afraid I can't help today. Maybe 10 years ago, I could have done that. [laughter] CASEY: It's just something that you don't work with and talk about a lot. It's definitely fallen out of my headspace. I looked up the other day, I couldn't remember another word from my neuroscience background. Cannula is when you have a permanent needle into a part of the brain, or maybe someone's vein, same thing. I used to do surgeries on rats and put cannulas and I was like, “What's that thing? What was that thing I did?” I have no idea! It's just like time passes and it fades away. I don't do that anymore. [chuckles] ADAM: So sometimes folks will ask me why I'm a data scientist and I love that question by the way, because I'm a major proponent of knowing what your why is in general, or just having a why and knowing a why, knowing what your why is. Why do you do what you do? What makes you excited about your career, about your work, about your clients, about your coworkers? One of the main reasons I am a data scientist is because it's an opportunity to create new knowledge and that's the scientific process, really. That's the main output of science is new knowledge and if you think about that, that's really powerful. This is now at the end of this scientific process, if you implement it correctly, we now know something about how the world works, about how people in the world work, or something about the world in general that we didn't know before. I get goosebumps. We're on podcast so you can't see the goosebumps that I'm getting. But when I talk about this, I actually get goosebumps. So for me, being a data scientist and then there's also the debate is data science, science and I say, absolutely yes, especially when you are implementing your work with this spirit' the spirit of creating new knowledge. One of the reasons I am very adamant about keeping this why in the forefront of my mind and proposing it as a why for others who maybe haven't found their why yet is because it's also a really powerful guardrail that prevents us from working on problems that we already have answers to, that have been analyzed and solved, or questions asked and asked and answered. I'm a major proponent of avoiding that type of work, unless you have a really good reason to replicate, or test replication, or you're looking for replication. That would be an exception, but in general, questions—analytical questions, research questions, and data science problems—that lead to new knowledge are the ones that excite me the most. And then this goes back to what I was talking about a moment ago, my superpower teaching and learning. One of the reasons I really enjoy teaching data science in the classroom, or statistics in the classroom, or at corporate training is because then I can empower others to create new knowledge. That feels really good to me when I can help others create new knowledge, or give others the skills and abilities to do that as well. MAE: I love that. Yeah. I do have one angle on that, but I hope this doesn't feel like putting you on the spot, but especially in the not revisiting a established—I'm going to do air quotes—facts and from undergrad, the scientific definition of fact has not yet been proven false. But anyways, there is a growing awareness of bias inherent in data and we so often think of data as the epitome of objectivity. Because it's a bunch of numbers then therefore, we are not replicating, or imposing our thoughts, but there is the Schrodinger's cat, or whatever in place all the time about how those “facts” were established in the first place, where that data was called from? Like, the Portlandia episode where they ask where the chicken is from and they end up back at the farm. [laughter] The data itself, there's just a lot in there. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts about that accordion. ADAM: There's a lot. That's a big question. I will say one of the things that keeps me up at night is this problem, especially when it comes to the potential for our work in data science, to perpetuate, exacerbate social inequity, social inequality, racial inequality, gender inequality, economic inequality. This keeps me up at night and I am, like most, or like everyone – well, no, I don't know if everybody is interested in solving that problem. I think a lot of data scientists are, I think a lot of researchers are; I think many are interested in solving that particular problem and I count myself among those. But I would be ahead of myself if I purported to say that I had a solution. I think in this format and in this context, one of the best things to do is to point folks towards others who have spent even more time really focusing on this and I think the go-to is Weapons of Math Destruction. Weapons of Math Destruction is a book. If you're on a bad connection, that's M-A-T-H. Weapons of Math Destruction and especially if you're just getting started on this concern, that's a good place to get started. MAE: Thank you. Thanks for speaking to that, Adam. CASEY: There's a piece of the question you asked me that I always think about is the data true and I like to believe most data is true in what it measured, but it's not measuring truth with a T-H. ADAM: That's true. MAE: Whoa. ADAM: I think you could spend a lot of time thinking this through and noodling through this, but I would caution you on something you said it's true as to what you measured. Well, you have measurement error. We have entire – actually, I happen to have social statistics handbook handy. In any statistics handbook, or statistics textbook is going to have either an entire chapter, or a major portion of one of the introductory chapters on error, the types of error, and measurement error is one of them, perception error, all of the – and I'm on the spot to name all the errors. I wish I could rattle those off a little bit better. [chuckles] ADAM: But if you're interested, this is an interesting topic, just Google data errors, or error types, or statistical errors and you will get a rabbit hole that will keep you occupied for a while. MAE: Love it. I will be in that rabbit hole later. [laughs] ADAM: Yeah. I'm going to go back down that one, too myself. MANDO: So Adam, we have people who are listening right now who are interested in following one of your paths, or one of the paths to becoming a data scientist and maybe they have domain expertise in a particular area, maybe they don't. Maybe they're just starting out. Maybe they're coming from a bootcamp, or maybe they're from a non-traditional background and they're trying to switch careers. If you were sitting there talking to them one-on-one, what are some things that you would tell them, or what are some starting points for them? Like, where do you begin? ADAM: Well, one, admittedly self-serving item I would mention is consider the option of hiring a career coach and that's one of the things that I do in my line of consulting work is I help folks who are towards the middle, or latter part of their career, and they're looking to enter into, or level up in data science. So a career coach can – and I've hired career coaches over the years. Back to, Mando, one of the questions you asked me earlier is how did you end up in data science? Well, part of that story, which I didn't talk to then is, well, I went into data science route when the faculty route didn't open up for me and I'm a huge fan. I had two career coaches helping me out with both, faculty and non-faculty work for a while. So having been the recipient and the beneficiary of some great career coaching, I have also recently become a career coach as well. Probably something more practical, though. Let me give some practical advice. A portfolio, a professional portfolio for a data scientist is probably one of the most essential and beneficial things you can do for yourself in terms of making that transition successfully and then also, maintaining a career. If you're interested in advancing your career in this way, maintaining a career trajectory that keeps you going so having and maintaining a portfolio. I'll go through four tips on portfolio that I give folks and these tips are specifically tips that can help you generate content for your portfolio, because I know one of the hardest things to do with the portfolio is, well, let me just do some fictional hypothetical project for my portfolio, so hard to do and also, can end up being sort of dry, stale, and it might not really connect with folks. These are four ways you can add to, or enhance your portfolio. I wouldn't call them entire projects; maybe they're mini projects and they're great additions to your portfolio. The first one is: make a Rosetta Stone. This one is for folks who have learned one computer programming language, and now it's time for them to learn another computer programming language, or maybe they already know two computer programming languages. In fact, the Rosetta Stone idea for your portfolio doubles as a way to build on and expand your skills. So here's what a Rosetta Stone is. You have a project; you've done it from start to finish. Let's say, you've done a project from start to finish in Python. Now port that entire project over to R and then in a portfolio platform—I usually recommend GitHub—commit that work as git commits as a Rosetta Stone side-by-side examples of Python and R code that produce the same results and the same output. I love this piece of advice because in doing this, you will learn so much about the language that you originally wrote the program in and you will learn a lot about the target language. You're going to learn about both languages and you're going to have a tangible artifact for your portfolio and you might even learn more about that project. You might encounter some new output in the new language, which is more accessible for that language, that you didn't encounter in the old language and now you're going to have a new insight about whatever your research project was. The next piece of advice I have is make a cheat sheet and there's tongue in cheek opinion about cheat sheets. I think sometimes folks don't like to call them cheat sheets because the word cheat has negative connotations, but whatever you're going to call it, if it's a quick reference, or if it's a cheat sheet, a well-designed cheat sheet on any tool, platform, tool platform, language that you can think of is going to be a really nice addition to your portfolio. I recommend folks, what you do is you just find the things that you do the most frequently and you're constantly referencing at whatever website, make a cheat sheet for yourself, use it for a while, and then polish it up into a really nice presentable format. So for example, I have a cheat sheet on interpreting regression. I also have a cheat sheet that is a crosswalk from Stata, which is a statistical programming language, to Python. So actually there, I've put the two of them together. I've made this cheat sheet, which is also a Rosetta Stone. If you're looking for those, you can find those on my GitHub, or my LinkedIn, I have cheat sheets on my LinkedIn profile as well and you can see examples. I do have on YouTube, a step-by-step instructional video on how to make a cheat sheet and they're actually really easy to do. So if you even if you consider yourself not graphically inclined, if you pick the right tools—and the tools that you would pick might not be your first choice just because they're not marketed that way—you can put together a really nice cheat sheet relatively easily. The third tip is to write an article… about a piece of software that you dislike. So write an article about a piece of software that you dislike and this has to be done with, especially in the open source community, do this one carefully, possibly even contact the creators, and also, be sure not to blame anybody, or pass judgment. Just talk about how and why this particular project doesn't quite live up to your full aspiration, or your full expectation. I've done this a couple of times in a variety of ways. I didn't in the title specifically say, “I don't like this,” or “I don't like that,” but in at least one case, one of the articles I wrote, I was able to later submit as a cross-reference, or an additional reference on an issue in GitHub and this was specifically for Pandas. So there was a feature in Pandas that wasn't working the way I wanted it to work. [chuckles] MAE: Pandas. ADAM: Yeah, Pandas is great, right? So there's a feature in Pandas that wasn't working in quite the way that I wanted it to. I wrote an article about it. Actually, I framed the article, the article title is, “How I broke Pandas.” Actually, several versions of Pandas back, the issue was it was relatively easy to generate a Pandas data frame with duplicate column names. Having duplicate column names in a Pandas data frame obviously can cause problems in your code later because you basically have multiple keys for different columns. Now, there's a setting in Pandas that will guard against this and it's an optional setting—you have to toggle it on and off. This article, I like to say, helped improve Pandas. So write an article about software you dislike and also, like I said, be diplomatic and in this case, I was diplomatic by framing the article title by saying, “A few times, I managed to break Pandas,” and then – MANDO: This reminds me a lot of Kyle Kingsbury and his Jepsen tests that he used to do. He was aphyr on Twitter. He's not there anymore, but he would run all these tests against distributed databases and distributed locking systems and stuff like that and then write up these large-scale technical explanations of what broke and what didn't. They're super fascinating to read and the way that he approached them, Adam, it's a lot like you're saying, he pushed it with a lot of grace and what I think is super important, especially when you're talking about open source stuff, because this is what people, they're pouring their heart and soul and lives into. You don't have to be ugly about it. ADAM: Oh, absolutely. MANDO: [chuckles] And then he ended up like, this is what he does now. He wrote this framework to do analysis of distributed systems and now companies hire him and that's his job now. I'm a big fan of the guy and I miss him being on Twitter and interacting with him and his technical expertise and also, just his own personality. Sorry, your topic, or your little cheat there reminded me of that. We'll put some links—thanks, Casey—and in the show notes about his posts so if people haven't come across this stuff yet, it's a fascinating read. It's super helpful even to this day. ADAM: I'm thankful for the connection because now I have another example, when I talk to people about this, and it's incredible that you say built an entire career out of this. I had no idea that particular tip was so powerful. MAE: So cool. MANDO: [chuckles] So I think you said you have one more, Adam? ADAM: The fourth one is: contribute to another project. One of the best examples of this is I wrote an article on how to enhance your portfolio and someone really took this fourth one to a whole new level. I'm sure others have as well, but one person—we'll get links in, I can get some links in the show notes—what he did was he found a package in R that brings data for basically sample datasets for our programmers and citizens working and data scientists working with R. But he was a Python person. So he suggested, “Hey, what about making this?” I remember he contacted me and he said, “I read your article about adding to my portfolio. I really think it might make sense to port this project over to Python,” and so, he was combining two of them. He was making a Rosetta Stone and he was contributing someone else's project. Now this data is available both in R and in Python and the author of this project has posted about it. He posted about it in May, early May, and it's constantly still a month and a half later getting comments, likes, and links. So he's really gotten some mileage out of this particular piece, this addition to his portfolio and the original author of the original software also has acknowledged it and it's really a success. It's really a success. So contribute to another project is my fourth tip. Oh, one more idea on contributing to another project. Oh, I have an article on that lists several projects that are accepting contributions from intermediate and beginners. The point there is identify specific projects that are accepting beginner and immediate submissions on contributions, mostly via GitHub. But if you go to GitHub and if you're newer to GitHub, you can actually go to a project that you like, go to its Issues tab, and then most projects have tags associated with their issues that are identified as beginner friendly. That is an excellent place to go in order to get started on contributing to another project, which makes the world a better place because you're contributing to open source and you have an addition to your portfolio. MANDO: Oh, these are fantastic tips. Thank you, Adam. ADAM: I'm glad you like them. Can I give another one? Another big tip? This one's less portfolio, more – MANDO: Yeah, lay it on us. MAE: Do! By all means. ADAM: And I'd be interested, Mae, since you also made a similar career transition to me. I made an investment. I think I know what you might say on this one, but I spent money. I spent money on the transition. I hired consultants on Fiverr and Upwork to help me upgrade my social media presence. I hired the career coaches that I mentioned. Oh, actually the PhD program, that was not free. So I spent money on my transition and I would point that out to folks who are interested in making this transition, it's not a transition that is effortless and it's also not a transition that you can do, I think it's not one that you can do without also investing money. MAE: Yeah. [chuckles] Okay, I'm going to tell you my real answer on this. ADAM: Okay. MAE: Or corollary. I had a pretty good gig at a state institution with a retirement, all of these things, and I up and left and went to code school. I had recently paid off a lot of debt, so I didn't have a lot of savings. I had no savings, let's just say that and the code school had offered this like loan program that fell through. So I'm in code school and they no longer are offering the ability to have this special code school loan. I put code school on my credit card and then while in code school, my 10-year-old car died and I had to get a new car. ADAM: Ah. MAE: In that moment, I was struggling to get some fundamental object-oriented programming concepts that I'm like, “Holy cow, I've got a mortgage. I no longer have a car.” Now I'm in a real bind here, but I be leaving myself. I know I made these choices after a lot of considered thought and consultation. I, too had hired a career coach and I was like, “I've already made this call. I'm going to make the best of it. I'm just going to do what I can and see what happens.” I really have a test of faith on that original call to make those investments. I would not recommend doing it the way I did to anyone! [laughter] MAE: And I went from a pretty well-established career and salary into – a lot of people when they go into tech, it's a huge jump and I had the opposite experience. That investment continued to be required of me for several years. Even still, I choose to do things related to nonprofits and all kinds of things, but it takes a lot of faith and commitment and money often, in some form, can be helpful. There are a lot of, on the programming side, code schools that offer for you to pay a percentage once you get a salary, or other offsetting arrangements. So if somebody is listening, who is considering programming, I have not seen those analogs in data science, but on the programming side, especially if you're from a group underrepresented in tech, there's a number of different things that are possible to pursue still. ADAM: Here we are talking about some of the lesser acknowledged aspects of this transition. MAE: Yeah. ADAM: Some of the harder to acknowledge. MAE: Yeah. MANDO: Yeah, I really liked what you said, Mae about the need to believe in yourself and Adam, I think what you're saying is you have to be willing to bet on yourself. ADAM: Yes. MAE: Yeah. MANDO: You have to be willing to bet on yourself and sometimes, in some forms, that's going to mean writing a check, or [chuckles] in Mae's example, putting it on your credit card, but. [laughter] Sometimes that's what it means and that's super scary. I'm not a 100% convinced that I have enough faith in my ability to run the dishwasher some days, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that today, or not. This is going to be really silly and stupid, but one of my favorite cartoons is called Avatar: The Last Airbender. MAE: Yes! MANDO: It's a series on Cartoon Network, I think. No, Nickelodeon, I watched it with my kids when they were super little and it's still a thing that we rewatch right now, now that they're older. There's this one episode where this grandfatherly wizened uncle is confronted [chuckles] by someone who's trying to mug him [chuckles] and the uncle is this super hardcore general guy. He critics his mugging abilities and he corrects him and says, “If you stand up straight and you change this about the way that you approach it, you'll be much more intimidating and probably a more successful mugger,” and he's like, “But it doesn't seem that your heart is into the mugging.” [chuckles] So he makes this guy a cup of tea and they talk about it and the guy's like, “I don't know what I'm doing. I'm lost. I'm all over the place. All I want to do is become a masseuse, but I just can't get my stuff together.” Something that the uncle said that really, really struck with me was he said, “While it's important and best for us to believe in ourselves, sometimes it can be a big blessing when someone else believes in you.” MAE: So beautiful. MANDO: “And sometimes, you need that and so, I get it. You can't always bet on yourself, or maybe you can bet on yourself, but sometimes you don't have that backup to actually follow through with it.” That's why community is so important. That's why having a group of people. Even if it's one person. Someone who can be like that backstop to be, “You don't believe in yourself today. Don't worry about it. I believe in you. It's okay. You can do it. You're going to do it.” ADAM: Community is just massive. Absolutely massive. MANDO: Yeah. ADAM: Having a good, strong community is so important. Also, I think I could add to what you're saying is about betting on yourself. I don't know if I love the analogy because it's not a casino bet. MANDO: Right. ADAM: The odds are not in favor of the house here. If you have done the right consultation, spoken with friends and family, leveraged your community, and done an honest, objective, accurate assessment of your skills, abilities, and your ambition and your abilities, et cetera. It's a bet. It's a wager, but it's a calculated risk. MAE: Yes! That is how I have described it also. Yes, totally. I loved that story from Airbender and it ties in a few of our topics. One is one of the things Adam said originally, which is being deeply in touch with your why really helps. It also ties in the whole teaching thing and often, that is one of the primary roles is to offer faith and commitment to your pursuits. If I had had different code school teachers, the stress of my entire livelihood being dependent on my understanding these concepts in week two of bootcamp that I was struggling with, and I had made a calculated bet and I thought I was going to be awesome, but I was not. It was like the classic Peanuts teacher is talking, “Wah wah woh wah wah.” I had to lean into my teachers, my school, my peers, believe in me. I believed in me before, even if I don't in this moment and I just have to let that stress move to the side so that I can reengage. That was really the only way I was able to do it was having a similar – well, I didn't try to mug anybody, [laughs] but I had some backup that really helped me make that through. MANDO: Yeah, and those credit card folks call like, it's tricky. MAE: Yeah, and then I had to buy a car and those people were calling me and they just did an employment verification. They said, “You don't have a job!” I was like, “Oh my god. Well, you [inaudible] get my car back, but I have really good credit. How about you talk to your boss and call me back?” So anyway, these things all tie into, if we have time to talk about something, I was hoping we would cover is this thing about imposter syndrome and believing in oneself, but also not believing in oneself simultaneously and how to navigate that. I don't know, Adam, if you have particular advice, or thoughts on that. ADAM: I do have some advice and thoughts on that. Actually, just yesterday, I hosted a live webinar on this particular topic with another career coach named Sammy and she and I are very passionate about helping folks. When we work with clients, we work with folks intentionally to evaluate whether imposter syndrome might be part of the equation. Actually, in this webinar, we talked about three immunity boosts, or three ways to boost your immunity against imposter syndrome and in one way, or another, I think we've touched on all three with the exception of maybe one of them. So if you're interested in that topic reached out to me as well. I have a replay available of that particular webinar and I could make the replay available on a one-on-one basis to folks as well, who really want to see that material, and the section – MANDO: [inaudible] that. ADAM: Yeah, please reach out and LinkedIn. Easiest way to reach me is LinkedIn, or Twitter. Twitter actually works really well, too these days. MANDO: We'll put both of those in the show notes for folks. ADAM: Okay. Yeah, thank you so much. I look forward to potentially sharing that with folks who reach out. The community was the second immunity boost that we shared and actually, Mando and Mae, both just got done talking extensively about community. And then the first immunity boost we shared was know your baseline. We called it “know your baseline” and I know from our planning that we would put in this program notes, a link to an online assessment that's named after the original scientist, or one of the two original scientists who really began documenting imposter syndrome back in the 70s and then they called it imposter phenomenon. Oh, the history of this topic is just fascinating. Women scientists, North Carolina, first documented this and one of the two scientists is named Pauline Clance. So the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale, that'll be in the show notes. You can take the Imposter Phenomenon Scale and then objectively evaluate based on this is imposter syndrome a part of your experience, if it is what is the extent of that, and just knowing your baseline can be a really good way, I think to protect you from the effects of the experience. It's also, I think important to point out that imposter syndrome isn't regarded as a medical, or a clinical diagnosis. This is usually defined as a collection of thoughts and actions associated with career, or other academic pursuits. And then the third immunity boost is disseminate knowledge and I love the disseminate knowledge as an immune booster because what it does is it flips the script. A lot of times folks with imposter syndrome, we say to ourselves, “Gee, if I could get one more degree, I could probably then do this,” or “If I got one more certification,” or “I can apply for this job next year, I could apply for that permission next year because I will have completed whatever certification program,” or “If I read one more –” MANDO: One more year of experience, right? ADAM: Yeah. One more year of experience, or one more book, or one more class on Udemy. Especially for mid and late career professionals and we talked about this earlier, Mae the bank of experience and domain knowledge that mid and late career professionals bring, I promise nobody else has had your experience. Everybody has a unique experience and everybody has something to offer that is new and unique, and that is valuable to others. So I say, instead of signing up for the seminar, host the seminar, teach the seminar. [laughter] ADAM: Right? Again, there's nothing wrong with certifications. There's nothing wrong with Udemy classes, I have Udemy classes that you could should go take. There's nothing wrong with those, but in measure, in measure and then also, never, never, never, never forget that you already have skills and abilities that is probably worth sharing with the rest of the world. So I recommend doing that as a boost, as an immunity boost, against imposter syndrome. MANDO: Yes, yes, and yes! [chuckles] CASEY: Now, I took the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale test myself and I scored really well. It was super, super low for me. I'm an overconfident person at this point, but when I was a kid, I wasn't. [laughter] I was super shy. I would not talk to people. I'd read a book in a corner. I was so introverted and it changed over time, I think by thinking about how confidence leads to confidence. MANDO: Yes. CASEY: The more confident you are, the more confident you act, you can be at the world and the more reason you have to be competent over time and that snowballed for me, thank goodness. It could happen for other people, too gradually, slowly over time the more you do confidence, the more you'll feel it and be it naturally. MAE: Yes! MANDO: I think it works the other direction, too and you have to be real careful about that. Like Adam, you were talking about flipping the script. If you have a negative talk script of just one more, just this one thing, I'm not good enough yet and I'm not you know. That can reinforce itself as well and you just never end up getting where you should be, or deserve to be, you know what I mean? It's something that I struggle with. I've been doing this for a really, really long time and I still struggle with this stuff, it's not easy. It's not easy to get past sometimes and some days are better than others and Casey, like you said, it has gotten better over time, but sometimes, you need those daily affirmations in the morning in the mirror [laughs] to get going, whatever works for you. But that idea, I love that idea, Casey of confidence bringing more confidence and reinforcing itself. MAE: And being mindful of Dunning-Kruger and careful of the inaccuracy of self-assessment. I like a lot of these ways in which making sure you're doing both, I think all the time as much as possible. Seeing the ways in which you are discounting yourself and seeing the ways in which you might be over crediting. ADAM: Right. Like with a lot of good science, you want to take as many measurements as possible. MAE: Yeah. ADAM: And then the majority vote of those measurements points to some sort of consensus. So the IP scale is one tool you can use and I think to your point, Mae it'd be a mistake to rely on it exclusively. You mentioned Dunning-Kruger, but there's also the Johari window. MAE: Oh, I don't know. What's that? ADAM: Oh, the Johari window is great. So there's four quadrants and the upper left quadrant of the Johari window are things that you know about yourself and things that other people know about yourself. And then you also have a quadrant where things that you know about yourself, but nobody else knows. And then there's a quadrant where other people know things about you that you don't know. And then there's the complete blind spot where there are things about you that you don't know that other people don't know. And then of course, you have this interesting conversation with yourself. So that quadrant that I don't know about it and nobody else knows about it, does it really exist? Does the tree falling in the woods make a sound when nobody's there to hear it? You can have a lot of fun with Johari window as well and I think it also definitely connects with what you were just saying a moment ago about accuracy of self-assessments, then it gets back to the measurement that we were talking about earlier, the measurement errors. So there's perceptual error, measurement error—shucks, I had it, here it is—sampling error, randomization, error, all kinds of error. I managed to pull that book out and then get some of those in front of me. [laughter] CASEY: There are some nice nicknames for a couple of the windows, Johari windows. The blind spot is one of those four quadrants and façade, I like to think about is another one. It's when you put on the front; people don't know something about you because you are façading it. MAE: Hmm. MANDO: So now we'll go ahead and transition into our reflection section. This is the part where our esteemed panelists and dear friends reflect on the episode and what they learned, what stuck with them, and we also get reflection from our guest, Adam as well, but Adam, you get to go last. ADAM: Sounds good. MANDO: You can gauge from the rest of us. Who would like to go first? MAE: I can! I did not know that there was an evaluative measure about imposter phenomenon, or any of that history shared and I'm definitely going to check that out. I talk with and have talked and will talk with a lot of people about that topic, but just having some sort of metric available for some self-assessment, I think is amazing. So that is a really fun, new thing that I am taking away among many, many other fun things. How about you, Casey? CASEY: I like writing about software you dislike in a positive, constructive tone. That's something I look for when I'm interviewing people, too. I want to know when they get, get feedback, when they give feedback, will it be thoughtful, unkind, and deep and respectful of past decisions and all that. If you've already done that in an article in your portfolio somewhere, that's awesome. That's pretty powerful. MANDO: Oh, how fantastic is that? Yeah, I love that! CASEY: I don't think I've ever written an article like that. Maybe on a GitHub issue, or a pull request that's longer than it feels like it should be. [laughter] Maybe an article would be nice, next time I hit that. MANDO: Oh, I love that. That's great. I guess I'll go next. The thing that really resonated with me, Adam was when you were talking about investing in yourself and being willing to write that check, if that's what it means, or swipe that credit card, Mae, or whatever. I'm sorry, I keep picking on you about that. MAE: It's fine. [laughs] It's pretty wild! MANDO: I love it. I love it, and it reminded me, I think I've talked about it before, but one of my favorite writers, definitely my favorite sports writer, is this guy named Shea Serrano. He used to write for Grantland and he writes for The Ringer and he's a novelist, too and his catchphrase—this is why I said it earlier in the episode—is “bet on yourself.” Sometimes when I'm feeling maybe a little imposter syndrome-y, or a little like, “I don't know what I'm going to do,” I click on the Twitter search and I type “from:sheaserrano bet on yourself” and hit enter and I just see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of tweets of this guy that's just like, “Bet on yourself today.” “Bet on yourself” “Bet on yourself today, no one else is going to do it.” “No one's coming to save you, bet on yourself,” stuff like that and thank you, Adam for that reminder today. I needed that. ADAM: You're welcome. I'm so happy that you've got that takeaway. Thank you so much for sharing the takeaway. I have, I think two reflections. One, what a breath of fresh air, the opportunity to talk about life, career, but career in data science, and programming in a non-technical way. I think the majority of our conversation was non-technical. [laughter] We briefly went into some technicalities when we talked about how you can sometimes have duplicate heading names in a Pandas data frame. That was a little bit technical. Otherwise, we really just spoke about the humanistic aspects of this world. So thank you so much for that and I got a research tip! Mando, what a brilliant idea. If you're ever looking for more background on a book, do a Twitter search for the book name and then anybody who's been speaking about that book – MANDO: Oh, yes! ADAM: Yeah, right? You could extend that to a research tip. [overtalk] MANDO: That's fantastic! Absolutely. Yeah. ADAM: So today, I learned a new way to get additional background on any book. I'm just going to go to Twitter, Google, or not Google that, search the book title name, and I'm going to see what other people are saying about that book. And then I can check out their bios. I can see what else they're sharing. They might have insights that I might not have had and now I can benefit from that. Thank you. Thank you so much for the research tip. MANDO: Yeah, and I think it dovetails really well into what you were talking about earlier, Adam, about publishing data. Like building out this portfolio, writing your articles, getting it out there because someone's going to go to Google, or Twitter and type into the search bar a Pandas data frame, column, same name, you know what I mean and now they're going to hit “A few times, I managed to break Pandas,” your article. But it could be about anything. It could be about that stupid Docker thing that you fought with yesterday, or about the 8 hours I spent on Monday trying to make an HTTP post with no body and it just hung forever and I couldn't. 8 hours, it took me to figure out why it wasn't working and it's because I didn't have one line in and I didn't call request that set body. I just didn't do it. I've done this probably more than a million times in my career and I didn't do it and it cost me 8 hours of my life that I'm never getting back, but it happens. That's part of the job is that – [overtalk] MAE: Yeah, sure. MANDO: And you cry about it and you eat some gummy worms and then you pick yourself back up and you're good to go. ADAM: Yeah, another common one that people are constantly writing about is reordering the columns in a Pandas data frame. There's like a hundred ways to do it and none of them are efficient. MANDO: [laughs] Mm hm. ADAM: So I love [inaudible], of course. MANDO: Yeah, you hit the one that works for you, write a little something about it. It's all right. ADAM: Exactly, yeah. MANDO: All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on, loved having you on. Special Guest: Adam Ross Nelson.

Congregational stories about vaccines from Pastors Jackson & Daryl, Clayton Simon, Dwight Woodruff, Elaine Pappas-Puckett, Mary Smith, April Rudge, Kristy Vetter, Heidi Galloway, Jon Mooney, Jon Saur, and Vicki McRobbieralls. Clayton Simon's Marina Hills Animal Hospital mRna Video Hesitant about the COVID vaccine? Have no fear, we've got your back! Check out these resources, from people far wiser than us in the area of epidemiology: Are mRna vaccines risky? Info on the COVID vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control Commonly asked questions about the vaccine Find a vaccine near you (nationwide!)

In this week's edition of Bitesize Science, Stephanie talks about biochemistry changes in brain associated with love.

Yay, Science! In this episode, Andy and Patrick take a deep dive into Star Trek Discovery, and Patrick does his best to hide his general distaste for space mushrooms and Michael Burnham (although, he dislikes one of those things more than the other).

This week we take a look at Citizen Science! What is Citizen Science? How can you get involved? What sort of projects are out there? We answer all of these questions and more!

In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we sit down with Rabbi David Fohrman - author, lecturer, and founder of the Aleph Beta Academy - to discuss in what genre the Torah is meant to be, and how that should influence the way we think about it. There are many approaches one could take when confronted with science that seem to contradict parts of the Torah. Some, including Nathan Aviezer, orchestrate elaborate readings of the beginning of Bereishis in accordance with Biblical concordism. Some, like Natan Slifkin, feel comfortable reading the pesukim metaphorically, feeling less need to provide literal reconciliations. Rabbi David Fohrman feels that many people could benefit from thinking more about how the Torah and science coexist, particularly the words of the first few chapters in Bereishis. - In what genre is the Torah?- How should we treat its content?- Does it ever try to teach us empirical facts about the world, or is it trying to give perspective on life?- What other kinds of patterns should we look for in the Torah?Tune in to hear Rabbi David Fohrman discuss the many ways in which we could think about the pesukim in the Torah. For more, visit https://18forty.org/science/#fohrman.

In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we sit down with Professor Allison Coudert, of the Department of Religious Studies at UC Davis, to discuss the historical interplay of science with religion, and specifically with Kabbalah. During a 1917 lecture talking about the rational mindset underlying science, Max Weber famously declared that “This means that the world is disenchanted.” Though this sentiment has permeated the public consciousness, Allison thinks the real story is more complicated. She thinks that science and enlightenment philosophy only heightened the magic we humans could experience, and that enlightenment movements have done so historically. In her mind, religion and science aren’t opponents, as they’re so often framed, but engage in a mutually-beneficial relationship, each inspiring and strengthening the other. - What has the historical interplay of science and religion been?- What influence has Kabbalah specifically had on scientists’ thought?- What connotations do the words “modernity” and “enlightenment” tend to evoke in listeners?- And are these evocations justified?Tune in to hear Allison Coudert discuss the influence that Jewish thought has had since the Scientific Revolution. For more, visit https://18forty.org/science/#coudert.

Born and bred in North London, Dr Yewande Pearse completed her PhD in Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, London in 2016. She is now based in Los Angeles, where she works as a Research Fellow, developing a stem cell therapy treatment for a rare childhood brain disease. Outside of the lab, Yewande is a writer for Massive Science – an online science media platform, and a TEDMED Research Scholar for this year’s Stage Programme. Born of a mutual love of science and music, Yewande believes that science is for everyone. Sound Science is a monthly podcast about the science stories that affect our lives and in some way relate to music. With the help of guest experts in the field and a carefully selected sound track curated to the theme of the scientific topic, Yewande brings you stories that will make you hear science differently.

Stat: 54%: The share of Americans who view scientists as good communicators. Story: In the last episode of our science season, we explore how scientists communicate: What is the state of our national conversation on science, and who is doing the talking? Guests include Laura Lindenfeld, executive director of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and dean of the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University, and Shirley Malcom of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

When Mary and I started to study the Bible, we asked the Lord what theories of creation should we adopt. We only had one version in secular schools, and that was evolution. And there are many versions of evolution as well!   But, starting in Genesis 1, God gives us HIS EYEWITNESS testimony of the His narrative of when He created the universe. Eyewitness testimony is missing from secular Science. Thus, the origin of the world, plants and animals, and the universe are just theories and questions in the secular world.  We started with a "but," and we should then follow up with a problem; we want to believe the Bible and what God says, and this starts with the creation account.  I find it interesting that God put this upfront in the Bible. Why? Because what we believe matters in our origins and this belief in our origins affects many things.  For example, our worship, sin, eternity, to name a few. Was it 6 literal days or long ages? I was surprised in Christian academia; there are many different theories of "how" God created.  At the end of our discussion, I address my thoughts, and it will ask this question: How big, or small is your God?  We should ask ourselves another question. What is Science? Science is a methodology to discover the truth. Here is an internet definition. "Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence. [The] Scientific methodology includes the following: Objective observation: Measurement and data (possibly although not necessarily using mathematics as a tool)". Based on this definition, isn't it interesting that the theory of evolution is touted as fact? That was a significant discovery for me, but it can only remain a theory because there isn't any "evidence," just interpretation of the data FROM A SCIENTIFIC PARTICULAR WORLDVIEW (which is another way of saying philosophy)!Belief in God is absent in some worldviews, as well as it should because evidence should matter. But why is being anti-god in Science make you any less of a scientist? It doesn't.   Many of the great scientists were Christians with a creation worldview. (Newton, Maury, Bacon) Did that make them less of a scientist? No. But some people in the science world say you cannot be objective if you believe in God. Garbage logic. We could also apply that to those that don't believe in God, right? The goal of Science is to discover the truth, WHEREVER THAT LEADS. But in this case, it matters to us who are bible studiers searching for the correct interpretation of the Bible to get to the revelation of God. We need to know if God did this in 6 literal days. Does our "faith" depend on whether we take God at His testimony? Or does it? It mattered to Abraham. He journeyed to a foreign land based on God's word to him. This action (faith in God's word) led to an entire nation and eventually, our faith in Christ. Our origins and how we perceive them matter. Listen to the podcast prayerfully. Six literal days matters!  Ric Joyner gives his thoughts before and after this fun talk. Will you join us and share? Please comment.   

The Mile High Philosophy and Science Virtual Summits have now become legendary.   Dr. Dan Lyons was one of the presenters in last year's Subluxation Science Summit. This episode of the Mile High podcast is a replay of his segment of the Summit. He's very well known for his work with Gonstad Research. You can hear more of Dr. Dan at Mile High 2020 from Denver, August 20th -23rd.  The Mile High live, in-person event is sold out.  The good news is that you can access Mile High 2020 virtually from around the world.  This will be phenomenal.  Enjoy this episode with Dan Lyons hear much more from him at Mile High 2020.  If you registered early, you'll be able to attend the live event.  If you didn't register before the seats for the in-person event were sold out, you can still register and watch everything virtually on your computer.  You can also share the link with up to 4 of your team members and colleagues.  You will also receive some special bonuses, including the streaming video of Mile High 2020.  Register at www.milehigh2020.com and get ready for the event of a lifetime.

Dan Lyons: Science, Science, Science. [PODCAST] The Mile High Philosophy and Science Virtual Summits have now become legendary.   Dr. Dan Lyons was one of the presenters in last year’s Subluxation Science Summit. This episode of the Mile High podcast is a replay of his segment of the Summit. He’s very well known for his work […]

In this collaboration episode with Demystifying Science, Rich and Maya are joined by Quinn and Micky, two aliens from the planet Alvæfloss, to discuss the differences between our moral system here on Earth and on their home planet. Special thanks to Quinn and Micky for joining us, go check out their podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUfzVdgNu2xLThgM2qQZmSQ

Can I Trust the Bible and Science? with guests Dr. Dan Sharda, Dr. Jori Sharda, Dr. Derek Rosenberger, and Dr. Dan Himes When do we as followers of Jesus Christ sometimes start to fear using reason, thinking, and science with Scripture? Who is the author of Scripture? 2 Timothy 3:15-17. Who is the author of Creation? Genesis 1:1, 2:4; Psalm 19:1-4; Romans 1:20 What is the role of Science? To predict. To reveal. To connect us to the creation as better caretakers. What is the role of Scripture? To reveal the Creator’s love for you. To connect you to the Creator. To connect you to your neighbor. What if Science and Scripture seem to contradict each other? Creation and Scripture BOTH reveal and connect us to God’s love. But God’s Spirit uses different voices in them to connect with us. Remember, God authored BOTH. We may need to live in the tension of that lack of understanding and ‘contradiction’. In that tense space, we step in faith to the author, God. God may teach us MORE in that faith space than in any sure footed space we find ourselves. Can I Trust the Bible and Science? Science cannot absolutely prove or disprove God. Scripture cannot absolutely prove or disprove God. Often, we start to fear science because we fear losing our intimate connection with God through Scripture. God authored BOTH and is BEYOND both. The wonders of the creator God can be revealed to you through science and scripture. But they both are only signs pointing you to the creator God. The step of faith comes from your heart connecting to the God to which they point you.

The Global Cable is back for the new year with a conversation with Michael Weisberg. He is the Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and this year he's the inaugural Penn Faculty Fellow at Perry World House. Professor Weisberg is currently working on initiatives in the Galápagos Islands, educating local communities about their unique environment and how to conserve it.   He talks to us about taking part in the COP25 climate negotiations in Madrid; how a better understanding of science shapes public attitudes to major issues like climate change; why Charles Darwin inspires him; and whether we can still be optimistic about saving the world from the coming climate emergency. Music & Produced by Tre Hester.

Bringing up the Superbowl at a Sunday BBQ is cool, but bringing up science is much less “socially acceptable”… Likewise, people read about politics and celebrity gossips, but why not the science section in newspapers and magazines? Is it just because science journalism is fundamentally less interesting? Or is it because our society lacks appreciation for science and intellectual discourse? Mr. Mike Lemonick is here to answer those questions and provide his insights on Trump’s latest science policies. Mike is Opinion Editor at Scientific American. He has written more than 50 Time magazine cover stories on science, and has written for National Geographic, The New Yorker and other publications.  This interview will be co-hosted by both Tiger and Brian Kraus. Brian is a graduate student in Princeton and the host of “These Vibes Are Too Cosmic,” a talk radio program at Princeton’s WPRB 103.3 FM where experts share cutting-edge science research with listeners on and off campus. It’s truly a pleasure for Policy Punchline to collaborate with Brian on this interview and share his years of science knowledge and radio show hosting experience.

Amanda Fuller (Executive Director, Kentucky Academy of Science) interviews Catherine McDermott and Nonah Oleson about the Developing Scientists Program run by the University of Louisville Department of Psychological and Brain Science. Scott Miller explores the link between recycling our trash and recycling the stars. Dave Robinson provides an update on an upcoming moon landing by Israel, and a disturbing story about the ingestion of plastic waste by whales. Bench Talk is a weekly program that airs on WFMP Louisville FORward Radio 106.5 FM (forwardradio.org) every Monday at 7:30pm, Tuesday at 11:30am, and Wednesday at 7:30am. Bench Talk: The Week in Science | Science Education; Recycling & the Stars | April 8 2019 by Forward Radio is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Biblical Solutions For Life Workshop: Neurologically Real... “The Bible proves science. Science does not prove the Bible.” Dr. B. Baker http://astoundinglove.org/contact-us @LoveAstounding --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/communion5779/support

HashtagNewYearNewYou - The girls are back and are embracing a new year in podcasting. This week they talk about crazy experiments - but, beware!  One of them is telling a tall tale. Website: www.strangeexchangepodcast.com Insta: https://www.instagram.com/strangeexchangepodcast/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strangeexchangepodcast/   Intro music "Roses(Intro)" used by permission from Gregory 'Tha Silent Partner' Davis under a Creative Commons Attribution Commercials Share Alike License

Science and art are often pitted against each other: left-brained or right-brained? Feeling or thinking? Creative or logical? But, is this always the case? We talked to Dr. Megan Halpern from MSU who specializes in studying the "intersection of art and science" and looks at how experts and the public interact. Dr. Halpern tells us about her science theater shows, "human powerpoints," and other ways she has seen art and science support, shape, and enhance each other.

How often do we actually hear about science in the news? Are these stories accurate? And who is telling these stories? Sheril Kirshenbaum talks with us about how science gets from the lab to the newspaper or the TV screen and how, as viewers, we can keep the stories we read in perspective. 

This episode we talked with Sheril Kirshenbaum, the executive director of Science Debate, a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that asks political candidates to think about questions regarding science policy. We asked her about who in government needs science, how to address science issues from both sides of the aisle, who do we listen to to inform our ideas about science policy, and how we can get involved in science policy?

There are concerns that a science journal may revise a paper amid pressure from activists. What role should the public play and should science have boundaries to protect its integrity? Ian Sample presents. Since publishing, we received complaints. We value this feedback and we would like to highlight: The intention was to look at the relationship between science and the public. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (aka. myalgic encephalomyelitis) was intended as an example of the broader theme The response from Cochrane’s Editor we quoted from a Reuters piece was a part inclusion of this statement The episode included two authors of the PACE trial. The trial is considered controversial and has received criticisms. It has not been retracted Since publishing, the complainant has been named by Cochrane. And the details of the complaints have been made publicly available. Read them here. Updated: 07/08/19

This week on the show Claire gives a round up of the highlights of the Eureka Prizes for science, or as we like to affectionately call them, the 'Archies'. Chris brings a tasty scientific question into the studio that has been plaguing physicists for years - why does spaghetti break in 3 parts? And Stu talks about a new neuron that has just been discovered, the rose-hip neuron!

On today's show, we explore the word ‘science'… what does the word science mean? Is there one kind of science? Where did it come from? These are just a few of the questions we touch on and we can get pretty deep at times, but this is a fun episode where we share our thoughts about science, it's meaning, and how it's affected Indigenous communities in the past, present, and future. In an age troubled by things like fake news, climate change denial, and a general mistrust of science and government, people are more skeptical of scientists than ever. And this is totally understandable, most scientists aren't trained to communicate with people outside of an academic setting. We are also classically introverted and often get into this line of work because we like to be in nature or in the lab working with everything but other people. This isn't how it used to be though, and it can't stay this way. We need to come together as a community. We need to respect each other for our differences as well as our similarities. We need a scientific revolution that honors multiple ways of knowing, the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples, and the inherent rights of Mother Earth. ~ Some of the main ideas we talk about are: - Western Science Definitions - Indigenous Science Definitions - A Brief Introduction to the History of Science - Science and Religion - Science and Research in Indigenous Communities - Paradigm Shifts and Scientific Revolutions ~ Links and Resources: [NDNs on the Airwaves](http://ndnsontheairwaves.wordpress.com) [Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence](http://tribalcollegejournal.org/native-science-natural-laws-interdependence/) [Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/evolution-creationism-and-other-modern-myths-vine-deloria-jr/1122749669) [Society of Catholic Scientists](http://www.catholicscientists.org/about/mission) [Lamarckianism vs Darwinism](http://necsi.edu/projects/evolution/lamarck/intro./lamarck_intro.html) [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/19/thomas-kuhn-structure-scientific-revolutions) ~ [Like this show? Leave us a review here](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ndn-science-show/id1377936061?mt=2)... even one sentence helps! And if you leave your Twitter handle we'll be sure to thank you personally! You can also [Support the Show on PayPal](https://www.paypal.me/ndnscienceshow) [NDN Science Show Wordpress Page](http://www.ndnscienceshow.wordpress.com) ~

In this installment of Spotlight on Science, arts and culture writer Frankie Lewis speaks with journalist Becca Cudmore. Within their conversation are the struggles of being a science journalist, Cudmore's work for Audobon and Nautilus, and a brief preview of her upcoming story on Cougar's in the Pacific North West. Spotlight on Science is a series from the Emerald Podcast Network designed ot spark conversations across disciplines with researchers at the University of Oregging in researchers to discuss their work in a way that is understandable to everyone. Music in this episode is "Zombie Disco" by Six Umbrellas. This episode was produced by Alec Cowan.

Scientists are tasked with helping us understand our world. When the science is right, they help move humanity forward. But what about when science is wrong?

In this second season debut of Spotlight on Science, Kris Chauvin and Max Drascher speak with Theresa Cheng and Saul Propp about science communication: why it is important and how scientists and researchers can get better at it. Science communication aims to explain research and findings in a way that informs and convinces the public of its validity. Theresa Cheng is currently a Ph.D. student at the UO studying developmental psychology and Saul Propp is a third year Physics Ph.D. student studying theoretical electron optics and quantum information theory. Spotlight on Science is a series from the Emerald Podcast Network designed to spark conversations across disciplines with researchers at the University of Oregon, bringing in researchers to discuss their work in a way that is understandable to everyone. This episode was produced by Alec Cowan. Our theme song is “Zombie Disco” by Six Umbrellas.

What is Science? Science is a method - it is methodological. In research we do not just get data and facts but also whole ways of thinking about the world. The Scientific Method is rational thinking and Science as a method should be more broadly usable. At times, when we speak of "science" we mean a particular group of scientists who agree on something. Scientific Methodology tends not to include and in fact, rejects looking into supernatural causes. Realize that there is not a uniform, intentional, communal opposition to religion within the scientific community. Consider paradigms of research. Science has not been just accumulating new data on an existing worldview. Many when using the word "Science" mean a view of the world in which God does not exist or might as well not exist. Deism is the idea that God started the world and now sits back and watches. Deism holds that God never intervenes because he got it right the first time. Sometimes Science is a means to power. Global warming is a scientific theory that has been heavily politicized. Always be suspicious of science that has been politicized and is being used to establish power. Science is an explanation of what is real about the world. Explore the theme of Science and the search for underlying reality. Science is the study of God's general providence and the way God is revealed through the study of General Providence.

John Hughes And the Brat Pack. Uncle Buck and Breakfast Club. Smagic Science so unscientific, it is magic: smagic. Callbacks to pygmalion and Frankenstein. Sexism/Objectification Boy howdy. Literally using a barbie to create a living sex object. Consent. Creating sex bots. The 1950s comic on which the movie was based. Geekery What are they? what are we? Geeks? Nerds? Both? Growing Up Adolescence sucks. Being a sexually frustrated teenage boy. Fantasies and ethical concerns. Frankenstein w/ Joe Ruppel: Decipher SciFi Made of the Future/Weird Science: Mars Will Send no More Support the show!

Dr. Mike Israetel of Renaissance Periodization joins us to talk about the TRUE science of training, nutrition, carbs, and meet prep.

Show #118 | Guest: American journalist, editor, and fiction writer Charlie Jane Anders discusses her latest All the Birds in the Sky. Her previous novel Choir Boy won a Lambda Literary Award in 2005. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is managing editor of the science fiction website io9. | Show Summary: The latest from award-winning writer Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky, is either about the end of the world, the beginning of our future, or both. The novel’s a darkly comic exploration of love, life, and the apocalypse.

Join The Science Museums Resident Comedy Team in conversation with staff from the Science Museum. A fun look at what it is like to work at the home of human ingenuity. A behind the scenes chat where we discuss our iconic objects and some of the great stories behind them. We discuss some of the amazing rumours about our collection and share many laughs. Music supplied by bensounds.com

In episode 5, we sit down with 3 of our contributors to talk about traveling to Mars, the existence of alien life, and a new class of brain supplements called 'nootropics.' It's a really fun conversation that we're pretty sure you don't want to miss! For articles related to everything we discuss, head over to our blog. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://anchor.fm/vernacular/support

Pop Culture, Worldview and Apologetic Conference - January 16-17, 2015

Pop Culture, Worldview and Apologetic Conference - January 16-17, 2015

Pop Culture, Worldview and Apologetic Conference - January 16-17, 2015

Pop Culture, Worldview and Apologetic Conference - January 16-17, 2015

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Kathy Spindler In this second consecutive all-email episode, the complete TWiV team reads questions and comments from listeners about systemic antiviral responses, wild type poliovirus in Israel, Turkish scientists, viral symbiotes, and much more. Links for this episode: One Nation in support of biomedical research? Bilim Kazani (The Cauldron of Science) Science for Gezi State of Turkish Science Pathogenesis of feline coronavirus (EID) Dinosaurs plagued by infection (PLoS One) Dinosaur renaissance (WikiPedia) Birds are dinosaurs (AMNH) Influenza vaccine enhances disease in pigs (Sci Transl Med) Gut microbes influence B-cell development (Nature) Circovirus in dogs (EID) We the microbiologist Letters read on TWiV 251 Weekly Science Picks Dickson - HD slow motion montage (YouTube)Kathy - Damselflies and Eyewitness appAlan - Space weather forecast (YouTube)Rich - 1984 by George Orwell (Doublethink)Vincent - PopSci comments off and Why so few women in science? Listener Pick of the Week Meika - Flip action roll (YouTube)CN - Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm GladwellBernadeta - Higgs Boson wins Nobel Prize Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twiv@twiv.tv

--{ Compliance of Science: Science over Nature Leaps, Wiping Humans Out for Keeps: "World's Getting Crazier, Oh What to Do, The U.S. Paid a Scientist to Create a Killer Flu, "To Find Out How it Could -- Evolve by Nature?" I Really Wish They Hadn't, Who Needs this Favour, It's a Time of Created Chaos to Bring in the New Depopulated Society Ruled Over by the Few, It's Been Their Goal, for Over a Hundred Years, Took Many Wars, Millions of Lives and Tears, But No Pain, No Gain, So the Saying Goes, Moving Toward the Release-Time? -- No-One Really Knows" © Alan Watt }-- US Tax Money Sent to Afghanistan - Mexicans Leaving US for Mexico - Gov. Giving "Green" Advice for Austerity, Energy Cutbacks - Rising Electric Bills to Pay for Wind-Farm Subsidies - Self-Appointed Guardians of the Planet - Facebook User Data used for Psychological Research - Thai Police Arrest Man after Babies' Bodies found Roasted, Wrapped in Gold Foil - Bacteria Releases in Subways - Animal Vaccines and Cancerous Tumours - Veterinarian Business - Britain, Police Powers given to Control Freaks - Hired Provocateurs at Protests - Clashes at NATO Meeting - Propaganda to be Officially and Lawfully Used on Americans - Killer Airborne Flu Created - "Deadly Allies: Canada's Secret War" book - Biowarfare Laboratories. (See http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com for article links.) *Title/Poem and Dialogue Copyrighted Alan Watt - May 21, 2012 (Exempting Music, Literary Quotes, and Callers' Comments)

In this issue: This is has Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla trying to achieve world peace by kicking the crap out of Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan... what else do you want? Oh, we've got Spider-Man 4, Buffy/Angel, and Brightest Day talk too, if you are really into that thing, but really, it's all about science. SCIENCE! NEWS Angel is Twilight Spider-Man Kicked to the Curb Linkage Brightest Day follows the Blackest Night Linkage REVIEWS Stephen BPRD: KIng of Fear #1 (64 in the series) Writer: Mike Mignola, John Arcudi Artist: Guy Davis Colorist: Dave Stewart Cover Artist: Mike Mignola After the defeat of the mystic Memnan Saa, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense -- on the outs with the United States government after the bloodstained rescue of Liz Sherman -- embarks to the Ural Mountains, the site of B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth, to put the frog menace to rest once and for all. Rodrigo The Muppet Show Comic Book #1 Written by Roger Langridge Drawn by Roger Langridge Roger Langridge’s celebrated run on THE MUPPET SHOW continues with this first issue of the new ongoing series! With the theater in disarray after the events of PEG-LEG WILSON, the Muppet gang decides to take their show on the road! Is the world ready for traveling Muppet minstrels? Matthew Suicide Squad #67 Written by John Ostrander and Gail Simone; Art by J. Calafiore; cover by Daniel LuVisi Original SUICIDE SQUAD writer John Ostrander and Gail Simone resurrect The Suicide Squad as they take on BLACKEST NIGHT and the Secret Six! The Fiddler has risen from the dead, and he's targeting Deadshot and anyone who stands in his way. But someone else has targeted Deadshot – the Suicide Squad! Everything is about to hit the Wall (Amanda Waller, that is) – and this Wall hits back! MAJOR SPOILERS POLL OF THE WEEK Alfred Pennyworth has been the Batman's batman for years and has patched up the Dark Knight more times than we can count.  Likewise, Edwin Jarvis began catering Tony Stark, but eventually found himself waiting hand and foot on anyone who stopped by the Avengers Mansion.  Both butlers have extensive military experience, and both know how to keep a stiff upper lip, but in a fight, who would emerge victorious? Alfred Pennyworth Edwin Jarvis Get over to the Major Spoilers Website and vote. VOTE MAJOR SPOILERS DISCUSSION: The Five Fists of Science True story: in 1899, Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla decided to end war forever. With Twain's connections and Tesla's inventions, they went into business selling world peace. So, what happened? Only now can the tale be told - in which Twain and Tesla collided with Edison and Morgan, an evil science cabal merging the Black Arts and the Industrial Age. Turn of the century New York City sets the stage for a titanic battle over the very fate of mankind. Contact us at podcast@majorspoilers.com Music from this episode comes from Armin Brewer (intro) and James Kennison (closing) from the Nobody's Listening Podcast. A big thanks to both of these guys for creating kick-ass music for the show! A big Thank You goes out to everyone who downloads, subscribes, listens, and supports this show. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to our ramblings each week. Tell your friends about the podcast, get them to subscribe and, be sure to visit the Major Spoilers site and forums.

In this issue: This is has Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla trying to achieve world peace by kicking the crap out of Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan... what else do you want? Oh, we've got Spider-Man 4, Buffy/Angel, and Brightest Day talk too, if you are really into that thing, but really, it's all about science. SCIENCE! NEWS Angel is Twilight Spider-Man Kicked to the Curb Linkage Brightest Day follows the Blackest Night Linkage REVIEWS Stephen BPRD: KIng of Fear #1 (64 in the series) Writer: Mike Mignola, John Arcudi Artist: Guy Davis Colorist: Dave Stewart Cover Artist: Mike Mignola After the defeat of the mystic Memnan Saa, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense -- on the outs with the United States government after the bloodstained rescue of Liz Sherman -- embarks to the Ural Mountains, the site of B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth, to put the frog menace to rest once and for all. Rodrigo The Muppet Show Comic Book #1 Written by Roger Langridge Drawn by Roger Langridge Roger Langridge’s celebrated run on THE MUPPET SHOW continues with this first issue of the new ongoing series! With the theater in disarray after the events of PEG-LEG WILSON, the Muppet gang decides to take their show on the road! Is the world ready for traveling Muppet minstrels? Matthew Suicide Squad #67 Written by John Ostrander and Gail Simone; Art by J. Calafiore; cover by Daniel LuVisi Original SUICIDE SQUAD writer John Ostrander and Gail Simone resurrect The Suicide Squad as they take on BLACKEST NIGHT and the Secret Six! The Fiddler has risen from the dead, and he's targeting Deadshot and anyone who stands in his way. But someone else has targeted Deadshot – the Suicide Squad! Everything is about to hit the Wall (Amanda Waller, that is) – and this Wall hits back! MAJOR SPOILERS POLL OF THE WEEK Alfred Pennyworth has been the Batman's batman for years and has patched up the Dark Knight more times than we can count.  Likewise, Edwin Jarvis began catering Tony Stark, but eventually found himself waiting hand and foot on anyone who stopped by the Avengers Mansion.  Both butlers have extensive military experience, and both know how to keep a stiff upper lip, but in a fight, who would emerge victorious? Alfred Pennyworth Edwin Jarvis Get over to the Major Spoilers Website and vote. VOTE MAJOR SPOILERS DISCUSSION: The Five Fists of Science True story: in 1899, Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla decided to end war forever. With Twain's connections and Tesla's inventions, they went into business selling world peace. So, what happened? Only now can the tale be told - in which Twain and Tesla collided with Edison and Morgan, an evil science cabal merging the Black Arts and the Industrial Age. Turn of the century New York City sets the stage for a titanic battle over the very fate of mankind. Contact us at podcast@majorspoilers.com Music from this episode comes from Armin Brewer (intro) and James Kennison (closing) from the Nobody's Listening Podcast. A big thanks to both of these guys for creating kick-ass music for the show! A big Thank You goes out to everyone who downloads, subscribes, listens, and supports this show. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to our ramblings each week. Tell your friends about the podcast, get them to subscribe and, be sure to visit the Major Spoilers site and forums.

We've seen science in action: we ask questions and we perform experiments to answer them. But there's more to it: it's a process with guidelines. Let's see what scientists at Colorado State University have to say about the process.

Can the Bible really be more advanced than modern science? Are there actual scientific discoveries that were found in the Bible before modern science discovered them? Are there other amazing facts that can be found in the Bible that science has not discovered yet? Grab your King James Bible and follow along with us and find out! Website:  That's In The Bible?Join Our Mailing List

In this episode, we'll hear about the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which took place last week in Boston. Nobel Laureate and AAAS President David Baltimore talks about the ongoing challenges of HIV vaccine research; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Charles Elachi discusses the lab's next batch of missions; and Scientific American editor Mark Fischetti summarizes a few sessions he went to covering the environment. Plus we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Websites mentioned on this episode include www.jpl.nasa.gov; www.aaas.org