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A poem about a map opens North and South, the first collection of the great twentieth century poet Elizabeth Bishop, and since, maps have been associated with her poetic vision—at once telescoping and binocular—and with the polarities and preoccupations of her work. The map's privileged, sweeping, bird's eye view of the earth is also hand-held, man-made, intimate. Depending on its level of minuteness or obsession, it can contain the tiniest details as well as, let's say, the whole enchilada. And though it purports to be scientific and objective, it is representational and therefore subjective, particular, imaginative, and personal. For several episodes, Wes & Erin will be reading a selection of some of Bishop's most anthologized poems, starting with “The Moose” as expressions of, among other things, her map-like imagination. Upcoming Episodes: Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey”; more Elizabeth Bishop poetry: “First Death in Nova Scotia,” “One Art.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email advertising@airwavemedia.com to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:11 Erin: Welcome to part two of our discussion of the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. We are currently about. Oh, I'm okay. I'm proud of us. We're just about halfway through the Moose. That's not bad compared to our usual record. We're not halfway through stanza one. We're going. You know, it's about a bus trip. It's encouraging us to pick up the pace a little bit and get to our next stop. So we were just going to pick up with the woman in stanza 13 climbing into the bus. 0:41 Wes: Before you say that, I just want to make one little observation. 0:44 Erin: Oh, sure. 0:45 Wes: Just that we get right as soon as the light goes out, it's then that we get the barking of a dog and the smell of salt. First it's the smell of salt hay and then it's the barking of a dog. So smell is introduced. And is that the first time sound is really introduced in any. You know, we get the bus starting and all that, but I think that's right. It's very visual up to that point, I think. And then as soon as we lose the light, we get these new sensory modalities. The collie just supervised this dog, gives us a nice bark, and presumably we can't even see him. We just hear him. So I just love that. I just. I love the transition into darkness. It's so. 1:26 Erin: Yeah. 1:26 Wes: I don't know how else to say it. 1:28 Erin: Yeah. 1:28 Wes: And it's then that we. This really is the midpoint of the poem because now we're going to make this transition into the world of the bus, I guess. As the woman climbs in, we have 1:41 Erin: the ship's port lantern, as you said, being an indication that it's now nearly or fully dark outside. 1:47 Wes: She says red light swims through the dark. 1:50 Erin: Yeah. I'm assuming that at this point a bus would have some form of illumination, at least for when it's stopped and the doors open for people getting on and off the bus. Right. It would. It would light up on the inside interior. Yeah. 2:03 Wes: Yeah. 2:03 Erin: Or at least maybe it would stop, certainly if it were stopping at a station or a little, you know, whatever those things are called. Those little. Yeah, there's a word for it. 2:14 Wes: We need something to see the freckles by. 2:16 Erin: Right. We need something. Exactly. But wherever they would be stopping would have some form of street light illumination or something of that order. Anyway. 2:26 Wes: But it's interesting you say this, because I didn't picture a bus station at any point in this. And I just imagine people along the side of the road. 2:34 Erin: Right. But if it were a course, it 2:38 Wes: couldn't be that way. 2:39 Erin: Well, I don't think it's a station. I think it would be a stop with a. You know, like a lean to. You know, what are those things that just. 2:44 Wes: Yeah, sure. 2:45 Erin: That just protect you from the elements. 2:47 Wes: Yeah. Bust down. 2:48 Erin: Right. 2:48 Wes: Yeah. 2:49 Erin: And that would probably have at least a street light. But anyway, then we get the moonlight. Maybe my favorite. Oh, it's so hard to say, but maybe my favorite image in the poem is the hairy, scratchy, splintery moonlight and mist caught in them like lambswool on bushes in a pasture. Just. There's nothing. There's no image greater than that. That's unbelievable. 3:13 Wes: There's kind of a more wildness to this. Right. The image now, the hairiness and scratchiness and splinteriness. It's a bit less Domesticated, I guess, than the previous part of the poem. 3:27 Erin: That's a really good point. I hadn't thought of that. Even a suggestion of danger, like the lamb running. 3:34 Wes: I just thought, this is where the hobbits are entering Fangorn Forest. 3:39 Erin: Yes. Yeah, yeah, the New Brunswick. 3:41 Wes: But you go a little bit more. It's a little wilder and more primal. I think once you. Even if you're on a bus, once you get into the woods, there's something different about it. 3:52 Erin: That's right. 3:53 Wes: But yeah, you're right. The idea that the moonlight could get caught in that. That's a great image. 3:59 Erin: Something giving chase to the lamb would cause it potentially to get a little ensnared in the chase. 4:06 Wes: It's as if Lambswool has, you know, a lamb is brushed up on the bramble or whatever and left its will so that. So the moonlight, instead of making this cosmic journey and landing on articulating the environment, has been subordinated to the environment. Right. It's become. It's been captured by these hairy woods. It's caught on it and, you know, a piece of it has come off from being caught on something that's scratchy and splintery. So that. That. Yeah, this is the great reversal. And that's the place where you can really get some good sleeping. Yes, right. 4:44 Erin: Yes. And where dreamy things can happen. 4:47 Wes: Divagation. Yeah, wanderings. 4:51 Erin: I looked that up. Wandering, straying or digressing from a main course, path or topic. So like a digression as long as 4:59 Wes: the bus stays on track. 5:00 Erin: Yeah, that's right. 5:01 Wes: You do whatever you want with your mind. 5:02 Erin: That's right. And the night. I just looked on Google Maps while I was writing my little notes in the margins. And if you were to take a bus today from Great Village to Boston, it would take like 10 hours. So it definitely is a, yikes, full course of the night on this night bus. So I love what happens in stanza 16, which begins in the creakings and noises, an old conversation not concerning us, but recognizable somewhere back in the bus. So I really love that it's grandparents voices, she says, uninterrupted talking. This is where the I becomes an us. And this is a characteristic of a bishop. I think she's rather reluctant to use an I, capital I in a poem. She's more likely to use a we or an us. And here it's as if they're all part of the same family now in the bus and the adults. It's almost like everybody on the bus who isn't a grandparent is a child and the adults in the back are talking and we are all, oh, that doesn't concern us. Just go to sleep. It's none of your business. Just stop eavesdropping on us. Right, so there's some community that's been formed already by the people who are not the grandparents talking. Do you get that impression? 6:20 Wes: Yeah, it's a bit confusing. So, yeah, let's try to figure it out. Because it. So it begins. A dreamy navigation begins in the night. She doesn't say, I started dreaming or they started dreaming or we started dreaming. Although it seems almost like it's collective. Right. So that the bus is dreaming or everyone on the bus is dreaming together, which kind of lines up with the not concerning us later on, the gentle auditory slow hallucination. So that's a very interesting idea. Right. The dream is usually associated with subjectivity. Right. The cogito and Descartes. Right. The dream tells us that we might have trouble distinguishing reality from what's in our own minds. And we in our own minds are very potentially cut off from reality. But it's a. It's an alienated individual position here. The dream is. Seems to be collective. And perhaps it's collective because it's partly real. Right. Is that the conversation? I thought, okay, there's a conversation going on in the back of the bus and it is old people talking. But as you're lying back, you could sort of. You can't hear exactly what they're saying. And you might have that kind of half dream, Right. Where you're. The dream is kind of lined up with or intertwined with what's going on in reality. So she's hearing in the conversation of the old people, her grandparents voices. Is that the way you took this? Or. Or they, they're hearing the grandparents voices or. Yeah. How do we, how do we interpret this? 7:54 Erin: I interpreted it as, you know, people of the age of grandparents having a real conversation. But the idea that one could be having an auditory. I mean, we are given the word auditory slow hallucination. So the idea that there could be an auditory hallucination or kind of half dream of one's own grandparents having a conversation, or it may be superimposed on a real conversation kind of inaudible going on on the bus. I never noticed this before. The G in grandparents is capitalized. So it does seem to sit to suggest the speaker's particular grandparents rather than. 8:30 Wes: Oh, I was going to. I thought you were going to say archetypal grandparents. 8:34 Erin: Oh, yeah, I suppose it could be yeah, it could be read that way, too. I think all of these things are true, right? 8:40 Wes: Yeah. 8:40 Erin: I mean, the image works because of the, shall we say, universal particularity of this experience. 8:47 Wes: The ordinary way to write the poem would be to. And a much simpler way would be to put this in her point of view and not try to put it into a collective point of view. But that seems to be what she's doing. 8:59 Erin: Yes. The effectiveness, though, I think is the. And it could just be the speaker's perception of it, but the atmospheric quality, because everyone on the bus is going to share an experience shortly, but already they are sharing an experience and a kind of atmosphere that they're all listening to the hum and having that. You know, when you're in the car and you. Maybe when you're a kid and you put your ear up against, like, the. The car door or the window or something, and you hear orchestral music. I don't know if you ever had that. I used to always hear classical music when I would put my head up. 9:38 Wes: Yeah, I don't think I have that. 9:40 Erin: All kinds of. And I always think, like, I should write this down. But you always have, like, a hallucination of an orchestra playing songs. Different songs. Sometimes like fantastical songs. Yeah. You know, my particular experience maybe doesn't quite get at the. Yeah. The sense that this is shared. 9:57 Wes: Well, you're put into a kind of dreamy state, and yet you're getting at the auditory hallucination part. I mean, for me, I think, as a child, and this, I think, is very evocative of childhood. It's something about being half asleep or falling asleep. You're on a journey and there are adults in the car and there's some. Maybe some sense of safety, I think is very relevant to this poem. But being ensconced in the world of adults and not quite alone when you do this thing, which is potentially very lonely, which is go to sleep. And of course, a lot of kids don't want to go to sleep because that loneliness factor. But it's a much different experience if you're traveling. You're all on the way to something together. And of course, you're with people who are awake and, you know, are going 10:45 Erin: to be awake, maybe because the kids are falling asleep. Their. Their voices are lowered and softer. And maybe that also contributes Right. To the. The way in which. That lulls the children in the back simply because they're aware of not wanting to talk too loudly. Certainly that would be the case on a bus like this, where they're Having a conversation where they're talking in. In lower voices and maybe actually inducing that calm and hum for sleep in the people, the other people in the bus who aren't talking. 11:15 Wes: And the question is, what are the adults doing with their talk? Right. It's not going to work if your parents are just fighting. In this case, it's the grandparents. Voices are clearing things up and I guess bringing certain things to resolution, coming to terms with these losses. But a lot of it does sound a bit gossipy and not necessarily like the most comforting. 11:39 Erin: Yes. Yeah. 11:39 Wes: Sort of talk we could imagine. Yeah. 11:41 Erin: Well, you know, in a situation like this where you might be a child in this car, could be that you're coming back from whatever, like a, like a late night and then the adults in the car are working through whatever has just happened over the course of the night. And. Oh no, she was the one who had that long. Yeah. Who had the criminal record because of that thing, remember where they. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was like 20 years ago. So you sort of get that. But for an entire family history going back ages and ages, talking in eternity. Deaths, deaths and sicknesses. The year he remarried, the year something happened. Oh, yeah, what year was that? Right. Something about the journey afterwards or maybe away from home. If these people are also. If their home is Nova Scotia and they're departing it, you know, then there's that backwards looking quality where something about the idea of the journey and moving away from the place is giving the opportunity to then take stock and look back. So there's this sort of like dual action happening in the poem where the further the bus goes, the further back they're kind of looking from deaths and sicknesses to then remarriage and then childbirth. Son lost when the schooner found her. 12:58 Wes: These are all very blue collar tragedies, right? 13:00 Erin: Yes. 13:01 Wes: He was arrested for insider trading. 13:04 Erin: No, but I mean, you know, there's a reverse order to what's happening, you know, so we get. We have death, then sickness, then remarriage, then dying in childbirth. So there's a rewind is what I mean. Yeah. 13:17 Wes: Well, we come back in the end to death. The way it's all summed up. 13:20 Erin: Insider trading. Sorry. 13:23 Wes: Huh? 13:24 Erin: Sorry, Just insider trading. That really is funny. 13:31 Wes: And he had an affair. No. A sharp indrawn breath. Half grown, half acceptance. That means life's like that. We know it. Also death, you know, and then the question, what does also death mean there? Death knows it, we also know death. But it, you know, it made me wonder at various points I wondered. Well, Is this an element here of a journey to the underworld or to the afterlife? Maybe it's a job not claiming that that's strong thematic part of this, but maybe a hint of that type of thing. Because the journey, I mean, and it does seem like journeys are good places for this or like when I travel, it produces in me a very different state of mind. And I do find it very calming in a way, you know, especially actually being on the train or something like that, because you're in between two different locations and you maybe you're not caught up in the expectations or the constricting qualities of any particular location. If I'm at home, I have to do this and that work, or if I'm at a destination, then I'm dealing with relatives or I have to be a tourist or something like that. But there's something liberating about being in between two locations. So it does seem like a place for this type of dreamy hallucination or this reflection or this clearing of things up. It's almost like therapy. Right? That's what all of this sounds like. People are talking through their problems, but where is it that they get to in the end here? The half grown, half acceptance. So it's not fully acceptance. It sums things up with this, maybe a degree of resignation. So yeah, I don't know. What do you make of the stanza? 15:15 Erin: Well, they're traveling west significantly. Right. I do take a lot of this to be a kind of, say, pre figurement of death, even though at the same time the fact that they're in the woods, the fact that not to jump ahead too much, the fact that the moose will come out of the woods and appear notably in the middle of the road, there is a suggestion of middle age or middleness, or midway in the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark forest. So I think it works both ways, or perhaps it's working in several ways simultaneously for the various passengers. So maybe the speaker is experiencing something more akin to the Dante esque middle of the journey on the bus. And something about the bus journey is also, symbolically speaking, a kind of final bus journey for some of the other passengers. And that intersection seems significant, but I don't know how, just in the sense that there's a retrospective quality happening or maybe even a reversion to childhood that goes on for the speaker and the other people in the bus by virtue of the propinquity to these old people at the end of their life's journey. Because there is very little about middleness Here, come to think of it, other than the moose appearing in the middle of the road. Right. It seems that the other people on the bus are like children and the grandparents are the adults. 16:50 Wes: I mean, I think part of what's comforting when we're children is that feeling that adults know the answers and that adults know how to cope with all the dangers and have experience doing that and therefore can protect us. The reality, of course, as we realize as we get older, is that that's not true. So what they may have is more of this acceptance that's sort of highlighted in this stanza, which is potentially a good thing, but maybe a double edged sword because it does seem to be a form of dying. It does seem to be a form of the very thing that we want to be protected from. 17:30 Erin: There's also, though, that. What I used to call my mom, the external hard drive. I used to say back before she. 17:42 Wes: She liked that. 17:44 Erin: I think now it would make her sad because she'll say, you know, very openly that she. Her memory is gone. But it used to be that she knew all the, you know, you could ask her who said that at that one. You know, there's that kind of. I mean, that's a sort of jokey, gossipy scorekeeping thing that she would keep tabs on. But there's also just the idea of long memory being the history keeper, the record keeper, the, you know, and there's sort of settling accounts over the course of this conversation. Oh, right, it was that year. Okay. And then this happened and then, then that happened. And that's important too, I think, for, you know, it situates children in a context. Not just say this idea of death that you're referring to, but also how to situate oneself in a life. 18:34 Wes: Right. 18:34 Erin: There's a. There's a sort of frame that the grandparents or the elder relatives have that whole history up until you enter the narrative and where you fit within that. We mentioned in part one a little bit about Bishop's family history just to kind of prefigure the types of story that she inserts, I think very significantly into the poem, particularly about poor Amos who just wouldn't stop praying in the store and had to be. Had to be put away. Right. Of course she does a gender swap, but yeah, we all have family stories like this, of this kind of unruly behavior or madness of some kind or other or some sort of family drama. 19:19 Wes: Yeah. So it's universal. But the way she captures it is very clever with this talk that we don't quite know whether it's just the conversation of the people, the old people at the back of the bus, or whether it's her dream or whether it's both or somewhere in between. They're interlaced, those two things. And that. That interlacing gets at this aspect of universality. Although I think by the time we get to the stanza where she's fantasizing about the grandparents and the featherbed, this, it start. Seems to become inescapably personal, which is why I think of the. The point of view is getting more and more focused. Right. With. With time. Yeah. And potentially it's still universal, but it seems almost like a personal memory. Right. So talking the way they talked in the old feather bed. Right. The way they. Her. Her grandparents presumably in the old feather bed, peacefully on and on. Dim lamp light in the hall, down in the kitchen, the dog tucked in her shaw. Shawl. Yeah, get another. And get another dog here. 20:28 Erin: I love this. 20:29 Wes: The collie, the barking dog. And. Yeah, so this, this stanza is wonderful. And it gets at exactly this thing that you've been talking about, which is the, like, comfort of being a kid overhearing adults talking. It really, despite this talk of death. Right. A reconciliation with death. This is the point. Seems to be the point of view of a child who finds this very comforting. And. Right. She'll say in the next stanza, now it's all right now even to fall asleep, just as on all those nights, the way in which the adult world and the safety of protective figures can make sleep okay to do. And then suddenly that's interrupted. 21:07 Erin: But I love too. I mean, yes, it's so particular, but it also just in this one stanza does so many things in miniature that the poem is doing all along, this telescoping in again to a scene which. Which even as a child, if it were her childhood in particular that she's referencing, she couldn't possibly know or see. She wouldn't be able to see the grandparents in their featherbed. She would have to be picturing them in the featherbed and she wouldn't be able to see the dog in the hall. And also I wonder if this. If the stanza in its operation is kind of doing. I mean, this is just occurring to me now, but maybe it's doing that kind of hallucinatory work that has prior been described where we actually get a remix of, you know, this is the third dog in the poem. But it's also the elements in the stanza are a kind of recapitulation of the light, the red light swimming, the port Lantern becomes the lamp light in the hall. We get the dog barking now becomes the dog curled up in the shawl. And then maybe even because we also get kitchen, maybe the shawl is even a kind of transposition of the table, tablecloth shook out. Right. So there's something actually in the stanza which has that hallucinatory quality that she's describing where these three elements swim in the imagination and then become the lamplight and the dog and the shawl in this half asleep kind of dream space. Maybe that's pushing things too far, but it does seem to be. It's the dreamiest stanza perhaps in the whole poem. Maybe the following one. Now it's all right now even to fall asleep. But this gets interrupted that next stanza. So this one, I think is the real depth of the dreamy or borderline dreamy or hallucinatory moment. 23:00 Wes: Yeah, this is great because it really underlines the way deviation creates the capacity for stasis or for comfort. So the deviation of a bus trip or of the dreaming. Right. Which is movement, which is dynamic and has that momentum, forward momentum that we were talking about, sort of underwrites or grounds this ability to. For stasis, for stopping, for going to sleep, for feeling comforted as a child and safe, I think. And I keep repeating that word because of the. What's going to happen. The use of the word that's going to happen in this poem later. But yeah, I'm not sure if you were saying that explicitly, but that's what came to mind my mind as you were talking. This. The way in which this journey, devigation, motion can ground something that's going to be more static or stationary, which is what we're going to get in the moose. Because it interrupts the. It explicitly interrupts the motion of the bus and the external line of the poem in a way that parallels the comfort that's produced by the dreaming. 24:08 Erin: Yeah. In stanza 22 is where we have that break that you're describing. The moose finally appears. Well, the moose doesn't appear until stanza 23 finally appears. 24:21 Wes: We've been waiting for you. 24:22 Erin: We've been waiting for you. The title has promised that you would come and then here you are. It is foretold of your coming. 24:29 Wes: Comes through the curtains, takes his bow. Right. 24:32 Erin: We get nights, just as on all those nights. And then the moose's appearance, the lights turn on. And that rhyme you get, I mean, it's a very basic, simple rhyme. Right. But there's that sort of sudden jolt which is then also visualized where in the middle of night we have this appearance, this bright because of the headlights on it. Appearance of the moose. And it looms and sniffs at the bus's hot hood, which I'm assuming means that it thinks that the bus might be a boy moose. 25:06 Wes: No. Well, it's a very hot bus, I'll say that. 25:10 Erin: Ow. Ow. 25:14 Wes: That enamel. And it's dented and, you know, depends on if you like bad buses. No, just kidding. 25:21 Erin: Dented from its last encounter with a girl bus. 25:25 Wes: Yeah. It's funny because I wrote in my notes, but was just reading it stanza by stanza. And the previous stanza I'd said, okay to sleep, even with death looming. Looming for all of us, you know, all day one. You know, one day we all die. Blooming in that sense. And then suddenly the moose is looming, standing there, looming. And I thought, whoa, that's really interesting 25:45 Erin: that I. Oh, yes, chose. 25:48 Wes: Chose that word before I even got to the next stanza. Not to give some, you know, obvious rote sort of identification of the moose with death or the experience of the moose as having something to do with that. But obviously they're coming into contact here with something quite primal and important. It's not just, oh, look, there's a nice moose, but is he sniffing or she's sniffing the buses hot hood because she thinks it might be another moon. That hadn't actually occurred to me. 26:21 Erin: I must have been infected with that reading at some point that this was a frisky moose, that it otherwise doesn't seem frisky at all. It seems pretty. Like a pretty staid, respectable moose. 26:34 Wes: But frisky and ditzy. 26:39 Erin: That's right. Hello. 26:41 Wes: What? 26:41 Erin: Oh, look, I seem to be in the middle of the road. Pardon me. 26:46 Wes: So, towering, antlerous, high as a church, homely as a house. We're safe as houses, a man's voice assures us. Perfectly harmless. Which you presume, right, that the. The man making that assurance is. Precedes the idea of it being homely as a house and safe as houses. Even though. So. So she interestingly puts the associations before her associative responses before the actual stimulus. Right. I don't think she's the one who is thinking about how they must be safe and. And he's saying something. I mean, as far as I know. I don't know back then. But you were warned about bison and mooses, right? Or is it mooses or moose? I think we're warned because they don't. They. They seem harmless, but they're not. And so I was quite surprised by this stanza. And I thought this idea, okay, safe as houses. Well, yeah, houses ought to be safe, but they're not always safe. The bus, the moving container of the bus turns out to be, in a way safer and more conducive to reverie and dreaming and all of that. 27:59 Erin: No matter how you slice it, whether you see the moose as harmless, truly, or not so harmless, this has got to be just a little bit of a wink, right? A man's voice assures us. 28:09 Wes: I mean, I think we're definitely meant to be skeptical. 28:12 Erin: Yeah. 28:13 Wes: This perfectly harmless line, it's not there for us to nod our heads in agreement. 28:20 Erin: Oh, yeah, he's right, right, right. I think it's more like, oh, here's another mansplainer. 28:26 Wes: He's moose splaining. 28:28 Erin: Mooseplaining this woman moose to moose splaining. Just out for a good time, having her existence commented upon by another man's voice. Probably a podcaster. One of those male podcasters has a manosphere podcast. 28:45 Wes: Girl mooses are. 28:49 Erin: Then we get these childish again. The passengers are like children and having this childlike response to the appearance of the moose, including. It's awful, plain sad. So much judgment of women's bodies. 29:04 Wes: I mean, they're not good looking creatures. Let's just. They're, you know, put that on the table. Come on. They are in an ugly sort of way. 29:11 Erin: Yeah. I mean, okay, I guess they don't follow, you know, classical proportions. They don't represent the golden mean. 29:21 Wes: They're not into beauty society societal beauty standards. All right. 29:28 Erin: They are like cartoon characters. 29:29 Wes: They're miss Positive is what they are. 29:35 Erin: Well, what I love though, about the description, you know, we get several, I suppose. Yeah. Contradictory descriptions of the moose in a way, because we get homely as a house or safe as houses. We get awful plane. But then she looks the bus over grand otherworldly, so she has some gravitas. She's like a great character actress who. Who may not be beautiful in that leading lady way, but she's Kathy Bates. Yes. Yeah, well, that's maybe a bit insulting to Kathy Bates, who I do think is a very attractive woman, but. 30:19 Wes: Sorry, Kathy. 30:20 Erin: I know, I love her. 30:21 Wes: Come on the show sometime, please. 30:24 Erin: Oh my gosh, I would die. I love Kathy Bates anyway. And then we get curious creatures. Well, first we get the idea that it inspires joy and then we get curious creatures. So there's a. The joy is then immediately undercut by a kind of ambivalence. Right. So there's just all of these descriptions of the moose combine to create a kind of ambivalent portrait, such as it is, of the animal. 30:47 Wes: Are we going to be able to answer this question? Why? Why do they feel the sweet sensation of joy? I mean, I think I would probably feel it. 30:57 Erin: Why? Why do we all feel it? I mean, they have. Well, they've successfully done what I couldn't see a moose in real life. So they're like one up on Erin. Can't wait to go back and tell her we saw moose. Yeah, I've seen certain things. I can't think of a specific example of this, but I've had plenty of instances. Whether it is a wild animal or, I don't know, like a sunset or a really spectacular natural event of some kind or other. You do get that feeling of joy, kind of excitement. 31:28 Wes: Yeah. Unfortunately, most of my encounters with large animals are at zoos. I did see a bear once. I was going to the bathroom. My mom had a house in Front Royal, Virginia, at the beginning of the Appalachian Mountains. And it was up high on a. We called it a mountain, but it was, I guess, more of a hill. But so it was out, you know, it was kind of. There was a bear on the mountain, let's just put it that way. And, yeah, I was going to the bathroom one day and looking out the window. There's a window right. You know, above the toilet. And suddenly there's bear's face looking at me. Wow. What the. So, but that, you know, and. And that was majestic. No, just kidding. That it was. I. It was surprising. 32:13 Erin: Yeah. 32:14 Wes: And there's an element of fear that involved. Even if you're, you know, even if, you know, black bears are harmless and there's a wall between you. Some. Something scary about it. I didn't have time to feel like it's majestic. Yeah. You know, like you have had these experiences in. In nature, but I can't think of a encounter like this. But it. I seem sure that if I had an encounter like this, I would feel exactly the same way. So. Yeah. What is otherworldly about it? What is majestic about it? It's a big, dumb beast. And I say that with love, without any criticism in the sense that. Right. It's an encounter with something primal. And I think we have to take into account the size of the animal as well. I mean, it is interesting to run into a fox or something like that, but it's also a matter of scale here. But. Yeah. What is otherworldly about it? I mean, I think the most. The most obvious part of this is that you know, we have lost something in our humanity and becoming language using creatures and becoming self conscious creatures. And sometimes when we're confronted with an animal like this, we're confronted with that loss. We're not as connected to the environment because of the intermediation of something like language, which poetry of course tries to overcome. It tries to put language into a disintermediating. Sorry to use these business terms. I don't know why this is happening. Into a disintermediation. 33:46 Erin: Actualize. Yeah, yeah. 33:49 Wes: When it. Yeah, right. Synergize it's agenda. Often where language might put distance between us and the world. Poetry, I think, can undo that distance. Like I was saying, with the very vivid imagery, I can undo that distance with figurative language. And maybe that distance is also undone to some extent by the dreaming or the half dreaming hallucinatory state that she was in. And the comfort of that, the return to childhood, which is also a simpler time. I don't know. I'm thinking out loud here. But yeah, I wanted to try to get more at this, you know, the otherworldly status of the moose and the joy that comes from encountering it. 34:34 Erin: I was thinking to myself, is the moose's gaze really clearly encapsulated? And then I thought, yes, she regards us amicably. And then I was like, no, no, that's the passenger who gets on the bus. 34:44 Wes: Right. Does the moose have freckles? Yeah, that'd be an interesting twist, right? 34:50 Erin: But yeah, but there is one. 34:51 Wes: Turned her into a moose. 34:53 Erin: Well, I would think that this would be a more garden variety animal encounter and maybe even a more, to use a word, I don't like, problematic poem in terms of its relationship with the animal. If it were to focus on the gaze of the animal. Because I think that is the thing which is often at the core of these interactions with animals in which we project or hope to have a kind of meaningful encounter. You want to meet the gaze of the animal and in so doing understand it. Right. And of course you don't realize that you're just projecting onto it a kind of maybe mutual regard. She regards us amicably. That you are seeing it and it is seeing you. And there's an acknowledgement and there's this, you know, spiritual encounter that you have with this animal. And all of that, of course, is often quite silly. It's often quite reductive and fanciful and unrealistic. But I am thinking of an encounter that springs to mind is in Utah. I hiked the same trail almost every day. And I Would often hike it late in order to escape the full heat of the desert sun. Which is a little dangerous, right? Because sometimes the sun would be setting and then all kinds of things come out. And one time I was trying to get back to my car before it got completely dark. And what I thought was a wolf, but what must have been a coyote. And the coyotes in Utah are huge. They look like wolves and completely white. Came out from over a hill, crossed my path, turned, looked at me in the eyes for a very long time, turned and went over on the other side of the hill. I mean, curiously, then, of course, I got to the car and I actually found out that a beloved family member, an elderly family member of mine, had passed away. And I said, I think I just saw her. You know, I had this feeling of, like. I don't know, the sense of this connection, inherent connection between these two. This woman who was dear to me and this encounter. But, of course, that's all silliness. And the idea that I was having a sort of interaction through the gate. Some sort of reciprocal. Right. Interaction with this animal was also entirely just my own projecting onto the animal. However, I will say that that's an instance in which I felt fear. But then there was also this, like, joy at the encounter, I think fear because it was dark. Because I wasn't actually sure if this was a wolf because it blocked my path. It was far enough away that I didn't feel as threatened as I might have. But it was definitely a mixed perception. 37:28 Wes: You didn't shoot it and then hang it around your neck. No, because I was thinking. I just suddenly thought of the albatross poem. 37:37 Erin: Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 37:38 Wes: Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And that sort of relationship to the natural world where. I mean, I forget what we said about it, but maybe I said something about envy and wanting to kill the albatross for. Because of its freedom or something like that. I don't. I don't know. But I think it's important because, yeah, this is part of something about the encounter with the natural world. Whether it's a big moose or something else. Yes. Is otherworldly. Strangely enough, it's otherworldly to us, even though it's where we come from. It's uncanny, maybe. And Freud actually, in the German, I think uncanny is sort of like unhomelike is what the German sounds like. And Freud made a lot out of this. I think it's home, but it's a home from which we've become alienated. We're animals, we're something more than animals. And so that primal encounter brings us back to that foundation, that natural foundation in us, but we can't fully come to terms with it. And I think the other aspect of this, I think the death. Right. So there is a link to death. Just. And I was thinking about that when you described thinking of it as seeing. As seeing your departed loved one. Because if we could regress to that animal state, it would be a kind of death. I think that the association with the movement to the pre. Linguistic, natural foundation is something like the movement towards dying, but there's something comforting. 39:07 Erin: Yes. 39:07 Wes: Right. And we encounter that when we encounter the gaze. To have a. Have a gaze returned by an animal like that usually like, like our internal. Our entire psychological structure, what makes us self. Self conscious is the internalization of a human gaze. Right. To the extent that we. We get an animal gaze, I think we are returned to that more primal part of ourselves. And it does seem to me to have something to do with being reconciled to mortality. Right. Which is part of what the function of that dialogue between the elderly people is doing. 39:44 Erin: You're leading me into the one, say, reading of the moose that I wanted to get to. And I just want to say that I think the great thing about Bishop and about this poem and all her poems is that the moose is a moose. It's not a symbol. I hesitate to offer any kind of 40:03 Wes: direct reading, but that's her job on this podcast, though. 40:05 Erin: I know, I know. It's. Yeah. In the letters with Robert Lowell when he's writing to her about her poem at the fish houses, he says, alas, all my fish just become symbols. 40:16 Wes: Ah, very good. 40:17 Erin: I hesitate to reduce. I think what you've just said makes me think that it's the maternal, the mother. 40:25 Wes: Which also brings us back to the house. 40:28 Erin: Yes, the house. Yeah. It's something that comes like the clapboard churches, like clamshells seem to arise out of the ground, if you will, or are directly compared to these native creatures. The houses are then in turn used as comparisons for the moose, the maternal. The idea that this is something that returns us to nature, that this is the encounter that we would have presumably upon death. It's the loved one that is somehow comforting, maternal, and is a female moose. It's moose mom. I don't know. I don't know. Something going on there. 41:04 Wes: Moose mom. 41:05 Erin: Natural and strange at the same time, not us. And I guess that's why I. That's why I mentioned that the story of my grandfather at the beginning, because I don't know why I wanted so badly to see a moose right after my grandfather's death. But there was something, like, logical about it to me. And I was familiar with this poem, but I very much did not have. You know, it was not something that was the forefront of my mind at all. But I think there is this inherent connection, and it's silly. You know, I kind of can't believe I'm saying this, but I do. I do think there is this kind of connection between this desire that I felt to see this animal. Like the particular kind of primordial itch that the moose in particular seems to be scratching for me in that moment. For Bishop, in this poem, something that is at once safe and comforting and from another world, natural in that kind of elemental way. 42:00 Wes: Yeah. 42:01 Erin: That all kind of coalesce in that image. 42:04 Wes: Very good. 42:05 Erin: Okay. I think that's it, Wes. All we're left with is the dim smell of moose and an acrid smell of gasoline. 42:12 Wes: Oh, you know, we should have talked about that. Maybe we can start with that on our next Bishop recording. We'll. We'll begin with the smells, the smells and the significance of that image at the end. 42:25 Erin: Nice. 42:25 Wes: That smellage at the end. 42:26 Erin: Smellage. All right. Thank you. 42:29 Wes: Thank you.

GBAG Nation analyzes the latest NFL top 100 rankings and debates player evaluations for Trey McBride and Jamar Chase. They explore common mispronunciations of words and athlete names like Orel Hershiser before shifting focus to college football updates and NBA trade rumors involving the Denver Nuggets. Discussions conclude with a look at the Texas Longhorns' championship potential and a preview of future NFL draft prospects at cornerback. 01:50 - NFL Top 100 Discussion 05:03 - Pronouncing Orel Hershiser Correctly 09:10 - Mispronounced Words And Phrases 12:31 - College Football News Update 18:22 - WNBA And NBA Analysis 21:55 - Lakers Rumors And Billionaires 25:15 - College Game Ticket Prices 28:22 - Thom Brennaman Apology Anniversary 33:57 - Texas Football Season Outlook 37:27 - Cowboys Future Draft Needs

Here's a Thought… #2716 with Brooks Jensen Fun Is a Medicine I assume that all of you listening to these commentaries take your photography pretty seriously. You want your photographs to be meaningful, lovely, treasured, valuable. We approach our image making with a serious mindset. Must we? What about fun? Silly? Playful? Not all of our work needs to be momentous. Make something small, fun, light-hearted that you can give away just because it makes everyone smile. Strangely enough, doing so can make your serious work more meaningful. Become a member of LensWork Online and have access to all 2700+ Here's a Thought… commentaries.

Today's chapter is the final chapter of 2 Samuel. Strangely enough, it abruptly ends with a census, a plague, and a sacrifice. For the casual modern reader, it's definitely a head scratcher. There's no "and all they lived happily ever after."A chapter-a-day podcast from 2 Samuel 24. The text version may always be found and shared at tomvanderwell.com.Please subscribe, follow, "Like," and share. Comments welcome.

Strangely, almost unbelievably, Israel's economy is booming, even after three difficult years of war. The Tel Aviv 35 Index is up 130% since this government took office. Mike and Gadi try to explain how this has come to pass. Also on this episode: the plague of selective enforcement against the Israeli right in the showdown ahead of the coming elections, and our usual assessment of the state of the war—in the Gulf and here at home, in Gaza. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Melania Trump Criticized by Legal Expert for Staying 'Strangely Silent' on New Abuse Allegations Against Rep. Max MillerAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, the synchromystic researcher, Matthew J. Bell returns to THC to tell the story of the Bankers Trust, the elite level influence of the mystic Nicholas Roerich, and the involvement of a strange stone said to have come from Sirius. Strangely, these things all come together within the events of 9/11. Guest links: Substack: https://matthewjbell.substack.com/ […] The post Matthew J. Bell | Bankers Trust, Nicholas Roerich, & The Mystic Stone From Sirius appeared first on The Higherside Chats.

The Name Above Every Name Conference Three The Broken Heart and the Descent into the Heart Learning to Stand Before God “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” — Psalm 51:17 There comes a moment in every authentic spiritual life when we discover that we cannot pray as we imagined we would. We begin with generous resolutions. We set aside time. We struggle to be faithful. We seek recollection. Yet gradually another discovery is made. The deepest obstacle to prayer is not distraction. It is ourselves. Not because we are evil. But because our hearts have become divided. Part of us longs for God. Another part clings to the world. Part of us desires silence. Another part fears it. Part of us seeks Christ. Another part still wishes to preserve itself. Prayer slowly uncovers this division. Not to discourage us. But to heal us. ⸻⸻⸻ Archimandrite Zacharias often says that the purpose of the spiritual life is not simply to become moral. It is to acquire a heart capable of standing before the living God. That is a very different thing. Many people imagine holiness as flawless behavior. The saints speak instead of relationship. A man may appear outwardly blameless while never allowing God near his heart. Another may come before God in tears, unable even to lift up his eyes, and return home justified. The difference is not perfection. It is truth. God can only fill the heart that has ceased pretending. ⸻⸻⸻ This is why repentance occupies such a central place in the Jesus Prayer. “Have mercy on me.” These words are not born of self-hatred. Nor are they the cry of someone obsessed with guilt. They are the language of love. 2 Only someone who has glimpsed the beauty of Christ can grieve over the ways he has turned from Him. Repentance is therefore not primarily looking at ourselves. It is looking at Christ. His light reveals everything. Not harshly. Tenderly. Like the rising sun that slowly illumines a valley still covered in morning mist. Nothing is forced. Everything is revealed in love. ⸻⸻⸻ The Fathers distinguish between remorse and repentance. Remorse circles endlessly around itself. Repentance turns toward God. Remorse says, “I have failed.” Repentance says, “Lord, have mercy.” Remorse ends in discouragement. Repentance opens the door to hope. This distinction is essential. Many sincere Christians carry burdens Christ never asked them to carry. 3 They believe continual self-accusation is humility. It is not. True humility forgets itself because it has become absorbed in Christ. The humble man knows his poverty. But he knows God's mercy even more. ⸻⸻⸻ Archimandrite Zacharias writes often about standing before God. This expression appears again and again. It is wonderfully simple. Prayer is not first speaking. Nor thinking. Nor even feeling. Prayer is standing. Standing before the Face of Christ. Standing in truth. Standing in poverty. Standing in hope. Everything else gradually unfolds from this. Sometimes words disappear. Sometimes thoughts become quiet. Sometimes only tears remain. 4 The Fathers are not disturbed by this. The heart has begun to speak. ⸻⸻⸻ One of the greatest gifts God grants us is the knowledge of our own weakness. Strangely, we usually resist this gift. We prefer strength. Competence. Success. Spiritual progress. God often gives something different. He allows us to encounter ourselves. Not to humiliate us. But to make us truthful. Without this knowledge, compassion remains shallow. We judge others because we have never seen ourselves. Once we have stood honestly before God, judgment becomes almost impossible. We recognize the same poverty within ourselves. And mercy begins to flow naturally. ⸻⸻⸻ The publican in the Temple becomes the icon of this prayer. He possesses nothing. No arguments. 5 No achievements. No excuses. He simply stands. “God, be merciful to me.” Nothing more. The Fathers never tire of returning to this image because it reveals the true posture of prayer. The Kingdom belongs to those who have nothing left except God. ⸻⸻⸻ There is another mystery hidden here. As repentance deepens, the heart begins to enlarge. This seems impossible. One might imagine continual repentance making a person smaller. The opposite occurs. Pride narrows the heart. Humility expands it. The more we stand honestly before Christ, the more room He creates within us. We begin to carry others. Their grief no longer feels foreign. Their wounds become our concern. Prayer quietly widens until it embraces the whole Adam. This is why the saints wept. 6 Not because they despaired. But because their hearts had become vast. ⸻⸻⸻ Archimandrite Zacharias frequently speaks of bearing shame. This language can trouble modern ears. Yet he uses it with profound care. The shame he describes is not humiliation inflicted by others. Nor is it psychological self-contempt. It is the willingness to stand before God without hiding. Adam covered himself. The saints uncover themselves before Christ. Nothing remains concealed. Nothing defended. Nothing explained away. And because everything is brought into the light, everything becomes capable of healing. The heart finally stops fleeing. It remains. ⸻⸻⸻ This is perhaps the deepest work of the Jesus Prayer. Not continual repetition. Continual return. 7 Every invocation is another act of trust. Another refusal to hide. Another opening of the heart. The prayer slowly becomes the place where Christ and the soul meet. No visions are required. No extraordinary experiences. Only faithfulness. Day after day. Year after year. Until standing before Christ becomes more natural than standing before ourselves. ⸻⸻⸻ There comes a point when prayer grows wonderfully simple. The words become fewer. The heart quieter. Silence itself begins to speak. This is not emptiness. It is fullness. The Presence for which words were preparing us has quietly arrived. The Fathers never encourage us to seek such moments. They teach us simply to remain faithful. Grace knows its own time. The flower does not open because we command it. 8 It opens because spring has come. So too the heart. ⸻⸻⸻ Perhaps this is the greatest lesson Archimandrite Zacharias offers us. The Jesus Prayer is not given so that we may become experts in prayer. It is given so that we may become truthful before God. The heart that continually cries, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,” gradually loses the need to defend itself. It no longer fears weakness. It no longer hides failure. It no longer seeks admiration. It desires only to remain before Christ. And this is already the beginning of heaven. For heaven is nothing other than the soul standing unveiled before the Face of the One who has loved it from all eternity. As we leave this conference, let us ask for only one grace. Not extraordinary prayer. Not lofty experiences. Simply the courage to remain before Christ without masks. To allow His light to reveal us. To allow His mercy to heal us. 9 To allow His love to enlarge our hearts until they become capable of bearing both our own poverty and the suffering of the whole world. For this is the hidden work of the holy Name. It leads us, not away from ourselves, but through the truth of ourselves into the inexhaustible mercy of God. 10

“How many people do you think go into a bar and say: ‘I'd like an Everclear on the rocks, please…'?”   Looking back, 1997 seems utterly surreal…   To put things in perspective, 1997 marked the debut of South Park on Comedy Central, the release of Radiohead's breakthrough, third album, OK Computer, the beginning of the final season of Seinfeld, and (of course) the arrival of Metallica's conclusion to The Loads with Reload.   Perhaps one of the most surreal (and tragic) parts of 1997 was the time a bunch of children in a band called Hanson went viral with a song called MMMBop while a lesser known, criminally underrated, and FAR SUPERIOR band (with an extremely similar sounding name, consisting of former members of Helmet & Quicksand) called Handsome released their one (and only) album, Handsome, earlier that same year.     Sometimes life is just too weird and utterly unfair…   It's time to discover the power of “a better magical piece of paper” that is not a college degree and understand that whenever someone uses the term ‘dating' that “we know exactly what they're talking about”.    Find out who “stayed metal the whole time”, who was “chuggin' the D”, and who wasn't going to metal shows “unless it was Metallica” when you JOIN US as we go back in time almost 30 years with THE CLASS OF 1997. Visit www.metalnerdery.com/podcast for more on this episode Help Support Metal Nerdery https://www.patreon.com/metalnerderypodcast Leave us a Voicemail to be played on a future episode: 980-666-8182 Metal Nerdery Tees and Hoodies – metalnerdery.com/merch and kindly leave us a review and/or rating on your favorite Podcast app Follow us on the Socials: Facebook - Instagram - TikTok Email: metalnerdery@gmail.com Can't be LOUD Enough Playlist on Spotify Metal Nerdery Munchies on YouTube @metalnerderypodcast   Show Notes & Time Stamps: (00:01): “Now we're about the same height…”/ “Alright, let's see ‘em…”/ “Has anybody had any weird diarrhea lettuce issues?” / “You had it before it was cool?”/ #BastieBoys / “I got so freaking sick…out of both ends…also, every 5 minutes, I was having contractions…”/ “Doctor, he's dilated…”/ #cyclospora / “So it was the exact same thing?”/ (NOTE: “Cyclospora stays dormant in your body for up to 2 weeks…) / #nightsoil / “Reason #2 I don't eat greens…”/ “Email Russ at RussWages@diarrhealettuce.com...” /  ***WARNING: #listenerdiscretionisadvised *** / “And frankly…tiresome.”   (05:50): “You wanna say the hellos and the welcomes?” /  ***WELCOME BACK TO THE BUNKERPOON CENTER FOR METAL EXCELLENCE AND THE METAL NERDERY PODCAST!!!*** / #rainylanta /  “Because of the gudatron? The front gunt?” / “I've been having to find all my fat clothes…”/ “What, was it 121/81?” / #RussellsHealthReflections   (09:19): ***PATREON US at patreon.com/metalnerderypodcast *** / #Doomsicle #SmogMountain #SabbathFuzzySabbath /  “I like floral cunt, I'm gonna keep using it…” / “We speak your names…”/ “I'm just gonna go ahead and make this statement…”/ ***EMAIL US at metalnerdery@gmail.com ***/ ***SOCIAL MEDIA US at #metalnerderypodcast on #YouTube #Facebook #Instagram #TikTok *** / “Are we gonna have to hire somebody to go through our emails now?” /  “CD Samplers…?”/ ***VOICEMAIL US AT 980-666-8182!!!*** /  #doowop (NOTE: It's Padavona, NOT Padanova) /  #RJD (14:19): #TheDocket METAL NERDERY PRESENTS: THE CLASS OF 1997 / “The year I graduated from college and got that magical piece of paper…”/ “You know what a better magical piece of paper is?” / “It makes for a much better life…”/  “And by ‘dating'…we know EXACTLY what they're talking about…”/  “That dude's a Dude, man…”/ “Spittin' Crickets is such a 90's band name…”/  “I gotta ask the question…where did y'all get that name?” / #hawktuah / #RussellsReflectionsNostalgiaEdition / “That's some red neck shit; that's not frat boy shit…”   (19:02): “I will say…in 1997…we were big followers of a local heavy metal band…who released their breakthrough album…” / #RussellsSevendustReflections /  #Sevendust BLACK (Sevendust – 1997) / “That's a good opener…like a show opener…”   (23:38): #StrappingYoungLad ALL HAIL THE NEW FLESH (City – 1997) / #CanadianMetal / “Get ready…”/ “It's like a super charged Filter…”/ “If I was still working out, that would be in the playlist for sure…”   (27:00): “Hold on, so it's a different singer?”/ NOTE: This is the first Priest album with Tim “Ripper” Owens on vocals, and also the first Priest album since 1990's Painkiller / #IcedEarth / #JudasPriest JUGULATOR (Jugulator – 1997) / “You pulling up the Jugulator?” / #moonshine /  “How many people do you think go into a bar and say ‘I'd like an Everclear on the rocks, please…'”/ NOTE: Everclear is the active ingredient in Hunch Punch / “Chuggin' the D…” /  “That does not sound like Judas Priest…”/ “That's a very different vibe…that's a different band!”   (33:30): “How about some…Overkill?”/ “In 1997, were you looking for Overkill albums?” /  “(The Hodges) stayed metal the whole time…” / #WFO #TheKillingKind / #NostalgicReflections / “I wasn't going to metal shows…unless it was Metallica…”/ “There were a lot of used CD stores back then (in the mid to late 90's) …” /  #Overkill IT LIVES (From the Underground and Below – 1997) / “I love panning…”   (39:56): “Alright, Matt…look at the inventory of cokelines…”/  “Track 5…I know it doesn't have as many cokelines…trust me…”/ “Is it more of the Forbidden Evil?” / “Imagine Forbidden doing groove stuff but it still sounds like Forbidden…”/ #Forbidden FACE DOWN HEROES (Green – 1997) /  “This was in the Can't Be Loud Enough…”/ OVER THE MIDDLE /  “This sounds nothing like Forbidden Evil…”/ “That sounds like…Slayer.” (43:20): “Did y'all ever hear that one (Demonic)?”/ “That's where the power comes from, dude…”/ #Testament DEMONIC REFUSAL (Demonic – 1997) / “This is where (Chuck Billy) changed his voice…that's death metal…”/ “Looks like I need a bigger rug…”/  “That's definitely different Testament…”   (46:28): “Mark the time, please…”/ #Kreator PHOBIA (Outcast – 1997) / “Like Slayer, you always know what you're gonna get (with Kreator) …”/ #industrialsound / “That's different than normal Kreator…”/ “It's almost like industrial punk…it's almost like a Kreator side project…”   (48:52): “We've got to pay tribute to The Loads…”/ “I think that's probably the best song on the album…but it takes forever to get there…” (Fixxxer) /  “It might be worse than Sandman…” (Fuel) / #Metallica DEVIL'S DANCE (Reload – 1997) / “That's a meaty bass sound…”/ “It's like a weird, Metallica, stoner metal…”/ “Yeah, it needs a laugh right there…”/ “Under a different name, they're good rock and roll records…” ***Go check out our Building the Perfect Load episode…*** / “Watch him pull up Queensryche…big fan from way back…more than KISS…” (53:47): #Misfits DIG UP HER BONES (American Psycho – 1997) /  “It's like Peter Steele with a higher voice…”/  “He sounds like Peter Steele PLUS the singer from Life of Agony…”/ #Caputo / “They came back, dude…”/ “It's like Optimus Prime can be a robot, and then he can be a truck, and then he can be a robot again..." (56:26): “This sounds like a lovely title…I guarantee you it sounds like WASP…”/ #powerballads / “Let us know if we should do a whole episode of power ballads…” /  “We might need some extra special relaxers for that episode (power ballads) …” / “No microdosing…we gotta go full tilt…bring sleeping bags…”/ #TheChronicles / “Have you ever heard anybody talking in their sleep?”/ #sleeptalking #gibberish / “He would call in air strikes…while he was at home in bed, years after the war…”/  “We got new chairs down here in The Bunkerpoon…I look a lot more slender because I'm hiding my gunt underneath the table…” / #WASP KILL FUCK DIE (Kill Fuck Die – 1997) / “Oh listen, it's industrial…when L.A. Metal goes Industrial, that's kind of a weird sign…”/ “What is it?  What'd you say?” / “That was not at all what I was expecting…” (1:01:24): “Look at that album cover…that just screams 1976…he looks like the homeless hatchet guy…there's a documentary about this dude…”/ “But he looked just like that dude…” / “Turn up the fuzzmeter…”/ #FuManchu EVIL EYE (The Action is Go – 1997) / “Kinda sounds like ‘I Disappear' a little bit…”/  “It's good rock and roll with a lot of fuzz on it…” (1:04:39): “On that note, how about a little Karma to Burn…”/  “Hold on, that was wet and you didn't cup…you SHOULD have cupped…”/ #instrumental /  “I'm going in with an open mind…and a pink shirt…”/ “I don't care…” /  “Where are we on the whole ‘how do snakes fuck?'…” / “It IS whittled…”/ #debutalbum /  #KarmaToBurn EIGHT (Karma To Burn – 1997) / “This sounds like some good pre-show music…very good background music…” (1:07:54): “Annihilator had an album out that year…”/ #recordscratch #mouthsounds /  “That sounded almost like a record scratch…I can't do it again…make it a button…”/  “All the cokelines…”/ #Annihilator MURDER (Remains – 1997) / “That's gated…there's your '97 vibe…”/ “He's gonna yell in a minute…he yelled…I heard him…”/  “Let's pick another one…” / SEXECUTION / “Sexecution…that's got to be good…”    (1:12:45): “We've got to cleanse…”/ “What did (Annihilator) do there?” /  “I'm hoping, for the sake of all that is evil…that Venom will sound like Venom…”/  “Metallica's the ONLY band that changed in the 90's…whatever…”/ #Venom THE EVIL ONE (Cast in Stone – 1997) / “That's what heavy metal sounds like…”  (1:15:41): “You know, THAT guy from THAT band…”/ “Who sings on this, him (Geezer Butler)?” / NOTE: This was NOT Burton C. Bell on vocals, it was Clark Brown on vocals…/  #GZR MAN IN A SUITCASE (Black Science – 1997) / “Strangely industrial? Or weirdly industrial?” (1:17:27): “How about a little Grip Inc.? That was Dave Lombardo's band after Slayer…”/ #GripInc PATHETIC LIAR (Nemesis – 1997) / “That has the Slayer sound to it…if you're playing with Dave, I'm sure it's going to sound like Slayer at some point…”   (1:19:44): “I was just looking up some In Flames…”/ “Let's cup so they get the full effect…”/ #InFlames JOTUN (Whoracle – 1997) / “I think that's what they call melodeath metal…”/ “It suits this kind of day…the gray and cloudy…” / “Nothing's gonna impress me anymore after Psycroptic…” / “It's the first thing we've heard in forever that's really a mindblower…you keep getting away from the novelty effect…and then you hear that (Psycroptic)…”   (1:23:34): “Billiam never picks trash…”/  “We should do the most underrated bands and talk about nothing but Poison and Nickelback the whole time…”/ “You don't shit on Nickelback and you don't shit on Creed…”/ “It's just fun to talk like that…” /  NOTE: This was NOT Bruce Dickinson's first solo album…it was his fourth /  #BruceDickinson ROAD TO HELL (Accident of Birth – 1997)  (1:26:38): “My only thing about that…remember when (Dave) did the thing (remixed the entire Megadeth catalog in 2004…) with the drums?”/  #Megadeth TRUST (Cryptic Writings – 1997) / “I think he got mostly cleaned up in the early 90's…”/ “Would you call that rock or metal?” / “If you could take 5% (of that bass mix) and drop it in AJFA…” / “2002 was (allegedly) when (Mr. Mustaine) fully gained sobriety…”   (1:30:18): “I think Billiam finally found what he was looking for…”/ #MachineHead TEN TON HAMMER (The More Things Change – 1997) / “It's weird that harmonics could be so heavy…”/ “It's like harmonics with a cape…”   (1:32:10): “Awwwwwww mannnnnnn…” /  #Pantera WHERE YOU COME FROM (Official Live: 101 Proof – 1997) / “Wait for it…”/ “They recorded (the 2 new songs) in 12 days…”/ “Should we call it Class of '97?” /  THANK YOU FOR JOINING US!!! / #untilthenext #outroreel

The Name Above Every Name Conference Two Guarding the Heart with the Name The Jesus Prayer and the Hidden Battle “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” — Proverbs 4:23 When we begin to pray the Jesus Prayer with any measure of faithfulness, we often encounter something unexpected. Rather than becoming peaceful, we become distracted. Rather than discovering silence, we discover noise. Rather than finding purity, we become painfully aware of the confusion within us. Many become discouraged at this point. They imagine they are failing. The Fathers tell us something very different. For the first time, we are beginning to see. The purpose of the Jesus Prayer is not merely to console us. It is to bring us into the light of Christ. And whenever light enters a darkened room, it reveals what has long been hidden. The heart is no different. The Jesus Prayer does not create our distractions. It uncovers them. It does not produce our passions. It reveals how deeply they have already taken root. This is why the beginning of prayer can feel more difficult than life before prayer. Grace has begun its work. ⸻⸻⸻ Archimandrite Zacharias often reminds us that God grants us His light gradually because He knows our weakness. If He were to reveal our heart all at once, we could not bear the sight. Instead, He teaches us gently. He uncovers one attachment. Then another. He exposes one fear. Then another. He reveals one hidden wound. Then another. Not to condemn us. But to heal us. This is the great difference between the accusation of the enemy and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. The enemy exposes in order to produce despair. Christ reveals in order to restore communion. The one drives us inward. The other draws us toward repentance. This distinction must never be forgotten. 2 ⸻⸻⸻ The Fathers speak constantly of watchfulness. This is not suspicion. It is not anxiety. It is not becoming preoccupied with ourselves. Watchfulness is simply the refusal to live asleep. Most of us spend our lives reacting. A word is spoken. A memory arises. An anxiety appears. A desire awakens. Without reflection we follow it. The Fathers ask us to pause. Not to analyze. Not to condemn. But to stand before Christ. The Jesus Prayer gradually creates this holy pause. Instead of immediately following every thought, we return to the Name. Again and again. Not violently. Not anxiously. Simply and quietly. 3 Like a child returning home. The Name becomes the place where the heart learns to remain. ⸻⸻⸻ One of the greatest misunderstandings of the Philokalia is the belief that thoughts themselves are the enemy. The Fathers never teach this. Thoughts come and go. Many arise without our consent. Temptation is not sin. Memories are not sin. Emotions are not sin. Even powerful images may arise without our choosing them. The hidden battle begins only when the heart gives consent. This is why the Fathers devote so much attention to freedom. Between the arising of a thought and our agreement with it there exists a sacred space. The Jesus Prayer enlarges that space. It restores our freedom. We are no longer carried wherever every thought wishes to lead us. We become capable of remaining with Christ. This is one of the greatest miracles of grace. ⸻⸻⸻ The enemy has always sought to scatter the human heart. 4 Our age makes this easier than ever. Never before have so many voices demanded our attention. Never before have we carried so much noise in our pockets. Never before have we been so easily distracted from the one thing necessary. The tragedy is not merely that we become distracted. It is that we gradually lose the capacity for recollection. We become strangers to our own hearts. The Jesus Prayer quietly gathers what has been scattered. Like a shepherd calling sheep from every hillside, the Name summons the fragments of our life back into unity. Thought by thought. Breath by breath. Day by day. The heart slowly becomes one. ⸻⸻⸻ This battle cannot be won by force. Many begin the spiritual life with enormous determination. They resolve to conquer every passion. To eliminate every distraction. To achieve uninterrupted prayer. Such zeal often ends in exhaustion. The Fathers counsel another way. 5 Humility. When distractions arise, we do not become angry. When thoughts return a hundred times, we return to Christ a hundred and one times. The victory lies less in never wandering than in always returning. The prayer itself teaches us this rhythm. Return. Remain. Return again. Eventually we discover that perseverance is stronger than intensity. ⸻⸻⸻ Archimandrite Zacharias repeatedly insists that humility attracts grace. This is why every sincere invocation of the Name weakens the dominion of pride. “Have mercy on me.” These words leave little room for self-sufficiency. They are the language of one who knows he cannot save himself. Strangely, this becomes the beginning of true freedom. Only the humble can receive help. Only the poor can receive riches. Only the empty can be filled. The Jesus Prayer continually places us in this blessed poverty. ⸻⸻⸻ 6 The hidden battle is therefore not primarily against demons. Nor is it first against thoughts. It is against forgetfulness. Adam forgot God. Israel forgot God. We forget God. Everything else follows from this forgetting. The Jesus Prayer becomes an act of remembrance. Not merely remembering a doctrine. But remembering a Person. The heart learns to live in His presence. As remembrance deepens, many passions lose their strength. Not because we have crushed them. But because Christ has become more beautiful than the things that once captivated us. Love quietly accomplishes what fear never could. ⸻⸻⸻ The Fathers speak of purity of heart. Our world often misunderstands this expression. Purity is not emotional perfection. Nor is it psychological simplicity. It is singleness. One heart. 7 One desire. One Lord. This is why Christ says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Only a unified heart can truly behold Him. The Jesus Prayer slowly gathers every divided affection into this one desire. Christ Himself becomes the center around which every thought, memory, sorrow, and joy begins to find its proper place. ⸻⸻⸻ Perhaps the greatest surprise of the spiritual life is that victory often feels like weakness. The proud imagine victory as mastery. The saints experience it as dependence. They become less confident in themselves. More confident in Christ. Less interested in their own progress. More attentive to His mercy. The Name accomplishes this quietly over many years. Not dramatically. Almost imperceptibly. Until one day we discover that we no longer rely upon our own strength. We instinctively turn toward Christ in every circumstance. The prayer has become the movement of the heart. 8 ⸻⸻⸻ As we continue this retreat, let us not become discouraged by the hidden battle. The very struggle is already a sign that grace is at work. If we now see distractions that once escaped our notice, give thanks. If we recognize passions that once ruled us unnoticed, give thanks. If we discover our weakness, give thanks. For Christ has not come to condemn what He reveals. He has come to heal it. Let us therefore guard the heart—not with fear, but with hope. Let us return again and again to the holy Name. For every sincere return, however small, is already a victory of grace. And slowly, often without our noticing, the heart that was once scattered among a thousand desires begins to rest in the One whose Name is above every name. 9

Some Americans are panicking at the recent so-called outbreak of "explosive diarrhea." The news is reporting hundreds of cases nationwide. But according to the AAFP, "acute diarrheal disease accounts for 179 million outpatient visits annually in the United States." So there is no sudden outbreak of disease, and the suppose culprit, the Cyclospora parasite, is only suspected but not proven to have caused the diarrhea. Strangely, a Meta data center recently dumped contaminated water into public sewers, spreading what they said was Cupriavidus gilardii, which can also cause diarrhea. Taco Bell, famous for its diarrhea aftereffects, has begun removing certain vegetables from their menu since produce is being blamed for the so-called outbreak. Whatever truth there may be to this should be overshadowed by the fact that produce is only contaminated because large scale in industrial farms often are polluted by animal agriculture, or animal feces is sprayed directly on the produce via collected water. Is it possible that this diarrhea is simply a byproduct of the poor American diet, severely deficient in fiber and burdened by excess protein. Both of these problems can separately cause diarrhea, but together are certainly essential cause. Other developed countries have a third the number of annual U.S. diarrhea cases. So what is happening?https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2026/07/09/maps-explosive-diarrhea-outbreak-cyclosporiasis/90862952007/https://apnews.com/article/cyclospora-outbreak-michigan-31e5e0034d39e85c844065a2bd593ecbhttps://www.aafp.org/afp/2022/0700/acute-diarrheahttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/08/meta-datacenter-ai-wyoming-waterhttps://nypost.com/2026/07/09/lifestyle/taco-bell-pulls-ingredients-off-menu-as-explosive-diarrhea-parasite-cases-surge/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=nypost&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwY2xjawS9E9xleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETJuVDdFSUFWME1HWXF4U1dNc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHsE7Yg3iMVCLTmtIsf61LLM61x7QdmHwTLcDJjgZAG8eO4DkhF4mKH38-64b_aem_YV9NJe_qxxvUnK9FraFLbQ*The is the FREE archive, which includes advertisements. If you want an ad-free experience, subscribe below.

Catch a quick bite of the Classics this week courtesy of 'Doug' at Etymonline. On the menu is a discussion of the first English dictionary, the Latinate tome of Henry Cockeram, 1623. Jeff and Dave also stratuminate your path toward the labors of Sir Thomas Elyot, another aspiring neologist who sought to beef up the paucity of the English verbalate with some gems exveined of Latin. The question is, does English with its popping and snapping monosyllables really have room for meridiation ("a sleeping at noone-tide"), desipiate ("to wax foolish"), and galluate ("beginne to have a big voice")? Hard to say, but we advise that you just morigerate ("do as commanded"), stop secubating ("lying about by one's selfe"), and knock off any desire to bubulcitate ("cry like a cowboy"). Rather, transliminate the vomitorium with us! It'll be persebonate, and we make that claim with all bellitude.   

Today on Living By The History, we dive into the history of Europe... wait, this isn't right. Where are the Ranger's Apprentice notes? This isn't right at all... well, we'll figure it out.In this episode we dive into the world of Ranger's Apprentice, discovering the incredible depth and beauty contained within.Warning: This episode contains spoilers for the Ranger's Apprentice Series. Enjoy!Welcome to Living by the Lore, where we discuss fictional worlds and how wondrous and ridiculous they are. Guy, Matt, and Jude are 3 Aussie blokes here to laugh and share fiction. Whether it's butchering your favourite world or introducing you to a whole new one, become a Lore Keeper today and live by the lore!Support us and become a Lore Keeper today - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/livingbythelore⁠⁠⁠⁠Find us everywhere:YouTube - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzgbJhDOA1uqesKG4bNZg1g⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@livingbythelore⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/livingbythelore/⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/livingbythelore⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://discord.gg/A8kAdBG5eQ⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitch - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/livingbythelorepod⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify (archived episodes) - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/4DUWavLZ5MwQzf723a3BwE⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/living-by-the-lore/id1508853028⁠⁠⁠⁠If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a rating on Spotify or a review on Apple Podcasts - it genuinely helps.#RangersApprentice #JohnFlanagan #Araluen #Skandia #Gallica #Toscana #Arrida #Worldbuilding #FantasyBooks #YA #BookTok #Podcast #Australia #Comedy #Satire #Lore #Nerd

Today on the 5: Supergirl is out, and between the critical reviews and early box office performance, it doesn't look like the success many were hoping it would be. Strangely, the tone of many reviews and that lack of blockbuster success has me more interested in the movie than I already was.

Well, it's game day! Strangely, I feel less nervous about today's game than I did for the previous two. Heading into the World Cup, it always felt like the All Whites games were going to get progressively harder. On paper, our best chance was in our first match against Iran, our second best chance was in our second match - but there cannot be many fans, many bookmakers, many pundits on Earth who, before the tournament kicked off, would have backed New Zealand against Belgium. I'm not going to kid myself, they are still very long odds, but the reason I'm not so nervous is because it really felt, to me, like the dream of making it through to the knockout stage of a Football World Cup kind of slipped away in the first 10 minutes of the second half the other day. And yet, one is always reminded that sport is a funny business. And that even though our heads and our hearts are in very different places this morning - it's kind of like a Powerball jackpot. There's nothing wrong with dreaming. So, here's what gives me a little sliver of hope as we stare down the barrel of a must-win contest against what, on paper, must surely be one of the world's best football teams. First of all, Belgium haven't been very good in their first two matches. They haven't fired, they've looked kind of blunt, kind of dull - are some of their superstars maybe a bit long in the tooth? Perhaps. Is today the day they find their edge and fire? Or, come on and dream, is today the day that something crazy happens? Second of all, the All Whites have scored goals. I feel like, for basically the entire history of New Zealand football, we have been a country that has relied on stoic, physical defence, rather than attacking flair. You know what I mean, 7 at the back, clear the ball, hoof it up the field - that kind of football. But in this tournament, we've had flashes of a different kind of football. For me, Eli Just has been the obvious standout performer in our first two matches. Every time he's on the ball, he looks threatening - our midfielder, more technically capable than almost any team we've had in the past. And with Chris Wood as a point man distributing to reinforcements, there have been impressive passages of attack in football, it's been refreshing. The third thing that gives me just a little bit of hope is the p-word: pressure. It is a must-win game for both teams, but basically no-one in the whole footballing universe seriously expects New Zealand to topple the mighty red devil. So what does it mean if the scores are tied after 20 minutes? What does it mean if they're still tied at half-time? What does it mean if, partway through the second half, New Zealand has a moment of glory and snatches the lead? What does it mean when all of those superstars look over to the referees' assistant as they lift their little digital sign in the air - with 8 minutes of the referees' time left? I recently saw this amazing presentation from Richie McCaw and he talked about the All Blacks' 2007 World Cup defeat. And this was his point - pressure. Everyone feels pressure. But when the world's expectation is that you're going to destroy another team, all it takes is a few little sporting twists - a bounce of a ball, a random unlucky deflection, a footballing force majeure - for that pressure to intensify. For what it's worth, I reckon Darren Bazeley needs to take a punt, he needs to get young blood in there, some fresh legs. I want to see Jesse Randall run at the Belgian defence, I think he waited too long to make changes in previous games. And who knows what might happen? It's interesting, Ecuador beat Germany yesterday, for the first really big upset of the Football World Cup. But I think the thing about that game was that there was no jeopardy for the Germans. They had already qualified for the next round, so they were resting their stars and taking it easy. This Football World Cup is still waiting for a really, really big, football universe-shattering upset. Belgium needs to win, we need a win. So come on - why not? LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Intergalactic war is probably billions of years away — yet physics can already tell us how it ends. And strangely that conclusion is relevant to decisions people have to make today.In this video, Rob Wiblin walks through a fascinating analysis from researcher Beren Millidge that uses known physics — no wormholes or faster-than-light travel — to identify the only three weapons that could work at an intergalactic scale.We then unpack how to best defend against each.The upshot is that at the intergalactic scale, violence is a losing proposition.If so, the universe is most likely to settle into a stable patchwork where each galaxy belongs to whoever got to it first. Which would mean that what humanity does over the next few centuries could permanently decide which slice of the cosmos belongs to Earth-originating life — and whether our very existence turns out to be a good thing, or a bad one.Learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/war-in-spaceThis episode was recorded on March 2, 2026.Chapters:Let's talk intergalactic war in space (00:00)The three best weapons for intergalactic warfare (01:43)How to defend against an attack from space (07:50)The defender's surprising advantage (10:00)What this means for us (11:52)Video editor: Nick PerlmanProducers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick StocktonCoordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou MoranCamera operator: Dominic Armstrong

Nigel's guest today is Craig Robert Young. Craig is an actor based in Los Angeles who has made countless appearance on stage and screen, including his latest venture Wannabe: All Washed Up about a former 90's teen pop star. Strangely enough, that is what Craig used to be as a member of the neon-bright pop group Deuce whose hits included Call It Love, I Need You and the anthemic On The Bible. Craig is a gay man who hid his sexuality during his time in the band and has also at times wished that he wasn't gay. This series is a celebration of a beautiful queer community; people of all ages, people who have had to tread their own path to live their real truth, who have fought with their emotions and emerged victorious, who inspire, who aspire and always entertain. Hosted by Nigel May. Every episode Nigel speaks to a person from the LGBTQIA+ rainbow to hear their story; one person, one life, one conversation. And it always guarantees A Gay Old Time!Follow the podcast on TikTok @agayoldtime and on Instagram @agayoldtimepodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

HT2651 - Processing Delta In mathematics and statistics, delta is the measure of change. Strangely enough, I find this a useful concept in processing my photographic artwork. What is the delta (change) required between the scene captured and the artwork I envision? My role as a creator changes dramatically depending on the delta between the image capture by the camera and the finished photograph. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

Friday Feedback today, and for some reason they always seem a touch looser than the usual pods, tis the nature of a friday....We start with a message from Teddy in Thailand, we did a mini last week on Teddy's grip issues, and he writes in with some more info, and Mark received an email from Ben Jackson the honcho of a grip company with some info on their Thai distributor - who happens to be based where Teddy lives! What are the odds!We start with some feedback on Marks outrageous behaviour of watching lawn mowing videos last week when we were trying to record the pod. Strangely, most wolfpackers seemed to not have an issue with it....we may have misjudged the room on this one (to Marks happiness). For some reason we then merge into more snooker chat....seriously Talk Birdie is on the verge of jumping the shark Fonzie style.But then onto the real stuff. Couple of comments on the discussion last week about whether all handicaps are created equal, one of which is a sort of compliment from Dean who agrees with Nick and Marks views, but then goes on to whack the boys over the recent Talk Birdie Top 20 Golf Course list. Leads to a chat about Queensland courses, and Nick and Mark list their fave Queensland courses and why. No surprises as to Nicks.Steven from Western Australia has a story on Monty which brings much joy to Mark, and then a couple of comments on the ball striking of Ángel Cabrera, Nick and Mark discuss what it was like to watch him hit the ball, and to play golf more broadly.Al is a lefty, and is after some advice from Nick about how to maximise the influence of his dominant hand, he's a former cricketer who came to golf late, and is struggling a little with the right hand placement.Bruce has noticed something Tour Pros do that he finds frustrating, and is keen for Nick and Marks thoughts. Greg agrees with the boys Rory McIlroy comments following what he said about Royal Melbourne not being 'fit for purpose'. Athol has heard our chats of recent pods on the Ryan Ang situation and has a whack for Nick and Mark over it.Aaron heard us wondering about Links Kennedy Bay last week, and wrote in to clarify where the course is at, which leads to us discovering that Nick is planning a trip to WA next year and not only has he failed to secure Mark and invite to Long Island, but he's not bothering to see if Mark and Dan want to come along! Sure it's a family wedding, but let's not let that get in the way of a golf trip!!!!By the way, speaking of golf trips.....don't forget to suss what our mates at GolfLoot have for you to win....see it here. Well worth the membership.And we wrap with some comments from Alan on the number of clubs in the bag.A fun Friday Feedback pod, hopefully we can get through the shows next week with zero lawnmowing and snooker chat....We're live from Titleist and FootJoy HQ thanks to our great partners:Hostplus, Talk Birdie To Me's official retirement partnerBMW, luxury and comfort for the 19th hole;Titleist, the #1 ball in golf;FootJoy, the #1 shoe and glove in golf;PING will help you play your best;Golf Clearance Outlet, they beat everyone's prices;Betr, the fastest and easiest betting app in Australia;The Find My Player app - follow every player on every tour;And Southern Golf Club. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

They Strangely APPEARED from NOWHEREBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/missing-persons-mysteries--5624803/support.

This is the first sermon from our sermon series walking the through the book of 1 Peter, entitled Fully Hope on Future Grace. For more information about Northfield Community Church in Northfield, MN, go to our website - northfieldcc.org.

...the man arriving back in London was spiritually shattered.

The TYP Circus led by Patrick and Tiff is back in town with all its irreverence, misinformation, exaggeration and a sprinkling of legitimate information. Strangely, some people like this fortnightly extravaganza the most. Weird. Anyway, this time we talk about perv glasses (with cameras), the comeback of records, CD's and DVD's, a new material that 'self-repairs', new cars with actual knobs and buttons, medical self-diagnosing with Al, humanoid robots working as ground handlers at airports, switching from plastic to hemp and lots more. Enjoy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

听前提示一、每期提供10个单词，每个单词都会有2-3个例句，方便理解记忆。二、每个单词和句子都会重复5遍，其中第2遍为慢速，有助于识别。三、本材料的整体难度较低，可以用来听力磨耳朵和单词查漏补缺。Day 1531521.Nephewn.侄子，外甥I have 2 nephews.我有两个侄子。He is my nephew.他是我的侄子。1522.Nervousa.神经的；紧张不安的I didn't mean to make you nervous.我不是故意让你紧张的。The brain is the center of the nervous system.大脑是神经系统的中心。Strangely enough, I don't feel nervous at all.奇怪的是，我一点也不感到紧张。1523.Nestn.窝，巢v.筑巢If you look closely, you can see a nest in that tree.如果你仔细观察，你可以在那棵树上看到一个巢。1524.Netn.网，网状物 a.纯净的The ball is in the net.球在網裏。球在网里。We have a fish in the net.我们的网里有一条鱼。1525.Neverad.永不，从不，决不I've never seen such a thing.我从来没见过这样的东西We've never been formally introduced.我们从未被正式介绍过。1526.Neverthelessconj.然而，不过ad.仍然She doesn't earn much, but she loves her job nevertheless.她的收入不高，但她仍然热爱自己的工作。1527.Newa.新的；新来的；不熟悉的I bought a new pair of glasses.我买了一副新眼镜。Is there anything new on the menu?菜单上有什么新东西吗？They are about to begin a new chapter in their history.他们即将开启其历史的新篇章。1528.Newsn.新闻，消息I have good news for you.我有个好消息要告诉你。What was his reaction to the news?他对这个消息有什么反应？We were shocked at the news of his death.我们对他去世的消息感到震惊。1529.Newspapern.报纸What newspaper do you read?你读什么报纸？What's your favorite newspaper?你最喜欢的报纸是什么？He cut the advertisement out of the newspaper.他把广告从报纸上剪下来。1530．Nexta.紧接的，其次的ad.其次Are you busy next Monday?下周一你忙吗？I will send you a progress report next week.下周我会给你发一份进度报告。Who is your selection for the next president?你选谁来竞选下一任总统?

RFM is joined by esteemed co-counsel Kolby Reddish to dissect Jacob Hansen’s recent debate with Allie Beth Stuckey of The Blaze. Strangely, Jacob seems to want to talk about anything other than Mormonism. His efforts to make Mormonism sound like Protestantism grow increasingly bizarre. But Allie is not going to let him get away with… Read More »Mormon Gets Creamed In Debate: RFM: 456

RFM is joined by esteemed co-counsel Kolby Reddish to dissect Jacob Hansen’s recent debate with Allie Beth Stuckey of The Blaze. Strangely, Jacob seems to want to talk about anything other than Mormonism. His efforts to make Mormonism sound like Protestantism grow increasingly bizarre. But Allie is not going to let him get away with… Read More »Mormon Gets Creamed In Debate: RFM: 456 The post Mormon Gets Creamed In Debate: RFM: 456 appeared first on Mormon Discussions Podcasts - Full Lineup.

This week, in Fayette, Maine, a man comes home from a double shift, to find his wfe, brutally murdered, and his baby, crawling around in pools of blood. The problem is, they have no enemies, and robbery doesn't appear to be the motive. The husband is cleared as a suspect, leading to a long investigation, focused on the wrong man, even though the real killer was a suspect, from the start. But due to mistakes, he was allowed to terrorize even more innocent people!!   Along the way, we find out that "deer watching" is an actual festival activity in Maine, that even if you have no enemies, you still may never be safe, and that when you let a killer go free, for over a decade, they have a chance to ruin even more lives!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

Brooklyn-based folk-rock band The Lone Bellow have stuck through thick and thin for the past 15 years. Their creative output has been fairly consistent, only disrupted recently by a burglary on the road. Strangely, the thieves who broke into their tour van stole the hard drives containing the vocal takes for their latest record and left the precious instruments behind. Still, the financial burden was significant enough to delay the release of What a Time to Be Alive. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, the trio had their second shot at realizing their vision.  Now back on the road after a short break to promote their new album across the US, The Lone Bellow is once again ready to welcome “the alchemy of everybody together in the room” on stage. But first, they share their rich vocal harmonies, backed with acoustic guitars and a mandolin, at our Manhattan studios for the latest installment of Soundcheck. (- Sırma Munyar) Setlist: 1. I Did It for Love 2. You Were Leaving 3. No Getting Over You 

Tragic Death of David Wilcock adds to growing list of dead or missing scientists - My take on his bizarre death and personal recollections of a brilliant light On Tuesday afternoon, I heard the terrible news that David Wilcock had died under very bizarre circumstances on Monday, April 20. The local sheriff's office released a report that many will find hard to believe. Apparently, David contacted the sheriff's office and asked for help. Minutes after they showed up, he shot himself according to the official report. David had long reported cyberstalkers launching vicious personal attacks against him. David's work in promoting breakthrough aerospace technologies such as antigravity put him on the frontline of UFO researchers trying to revolutionize our planet. Consequently, David was a big target for covert efforts to discredit him or influence him to hurt himself in some way. Psychotronic technologies such as voice-to-skull do exist and have been used to influence individuals to engage in self-destructive behavior. It's very likely that David was targeted by such covert weapons over an extended period of time, which ultimately led to him behaving so contrary to everything he taught and believed. David therefore becomes the 12th scientist linked to UFO research who has died or is missing under mysterious circumstances.I first met David in 2008 after he agreed to speak at the Earth Transformation Conference on the Big Island of Hawaii organized by my wife, Angelika Whitecliff and I. David had only recently decided to start public speaking again, and we were delighted that he chose our conference as the venue for his return. He arrived with his new girlfriend and he looked very happy. Strangely, we didn't get to see them much at the conference, but years later he confided that they chose stay in their oceanfront hotel room enjoying the great views and getting to know each other better, if you know what I mean. David did a presentation and a workshop that awed the audience with his unique combination of humor and profound insights. Later, in 2011, I read his first book, the Source Field Investigations, and honestly thought David deserved a Ph.D. for its penetrating insights and scholarship. I got to work more closely with David in 2015 after the public emergence of Corey Goode. David and I collaborated in spreading Corey's remarkable secret space program story, and we met again at Gaia TV and several UFO Disclosure events. David was always a wealth of information and very popular with the audience who loved his zany humor and deep truths he shared. After Corey and I parted ways in 2021, I lost touch with David but I would occasionally watch one of his livestreams where he continued to share his wealth of information and humor. I was always impressed by David's generous spirit in sharing hours of livestreams for free. Join Dr. Salla on Patreon for Early Releases, Webinar Perks and More.Visit https://Patreon.com/MichaelSalla/

We are all born a long way from home. Home is not where we begin; home is where we need to go. More than ever we are searching for home. Strangely, the home for which we yearn is in another world. This other world, this unseen world, this spiritual world is commonly called heaven. Thus we live here, as Peter says, in exile.

Spoke to the witness and he has agreed to come on the show. A listener writes "I recently attended a meeting of my local Purple Heart chapter for combat wounded veterans. There were six of us in total three from the Global War on Terror and three Vietnam veterans. What stood out was that every Vietnam veteran who had been wounded shared that they had seen what they called a "rock ape." As they told their stories, the rest of us those from GWOT, myself included remained quiet.  After the meeting, I spoke privately with another GWOT veteran, who admitted he had also witnessed unusual things while serving as an Army instructor on a base. My own experience happened on the eastern shore of Cougar Reservoir in Oregon. I was camping with my family when, close to midnight, something began approaching our campsite. I first heard heavy footsteps about 100 meters away. As it drew closer, I realized I had to stand my ground. It was moving toward us steadily not sprinting, but deliberately giving my ex-wife time to turn on the SUV's lights and get our two toddlers out of the tent and into the vehicle, about 40 feet away. I positioned myself between the approaching figure and my family. It came down from a hill toward our campsite by the water, a distance I later confirmed to be about 100 meters. When it got within roughly 40 meters, I fired a couple of warning shots with my 9mm, though it felt completely inadequate. My plan, if it came closer, was to aim for the eye shine to buy my family more time. At around 20 30 meters, I could feel the vibration of its footsteps through the ground beneath my bare feet. Strangely, it kept its eyes covered as it approached. The SUV's headlights were shining directly at it on high beams, yet I couldn't see any eye reflection. I've never been able to shake the feeling that it understood what I was trying to do. It stopped about 12 feet in front of me and remained there while we finished loading the car. Once everyone was inside, I slowly backed away, got into the SUV, and drove us out along the narrow road leading from the campsite. For most of the encounter, I actually thought I was dealing with an elephant something large that could move quietly despite its size. I heard no brush breaking, despite the dense vegetation only the sound of its footsteps. I didn't smell anything, even when it was close. When I finally saw it clearly, my first thought was that it looked almost artificial, like something constructed. It took a while to come to terms with what I saw. I have no doubt that these creatures exist as living, physical beings. What unsettles me most is the pattern described by the Vietnam veterans each of them had seen one shortly before being wounded in separate incidents. My own encounter came much later, as did the other GWOT veteran's. Over the years, I've spoken with hundreds of veterans, often asking those with extensive time in the wilderness if they've ever experienced anything unusual. Most say no, or mention only distant, unexplained sounds. But in that room of Purple Heart recipients, only one of the six had not directly described seeing something. The rest of us had encountered what appeared to be a large, upright walking ape. Half of those sightings reportedly occurred just days before being wounded. To be fair, the one individual who didn't share may simply have chosen to remain silent."

Hi! This bonus episode of A Friend for the Long Haul - A Long Covid Podcast was recorded in the spur of the moment on our phones, so it's nowhere near studio quality! I literally called Nina to see if she was free, and she was in a parking lot with Bubsie in the backseat. ---What if dark humor and salt could help shine a light on the often invisible world of Long Covid, chronic illness, and disability? Nina Storey, a long hauler who is a singer, songwriter, and comedy writer, decided to create a short film capturing the unpredictable reality of living with Long Covid. Despite the struggles and a very tight deadline, Nina's film, Strangely Optimistic, is a powerful testament to finding joy amid chaos, and it was all crafted in just five days for the 13th Annual Easterseals Disability Film Challenge. In this bonus episode of A Friend for the Long Haul - A Long Covid Podcast, Nina shares the story behind her dramedy and how her personal experience with Long Covid motivated her to push for greater awareness through storytelling. We discuss how she balanced creative vision with her physical health, why representation in media for invisible illnesses matters, and the key role humor plays in survival and advocacy. We speak of the strength of those of us living with chronic illness and disability, the power of community support, and the importance of authentic, unfiltered stories in changing perceptions. This isn't just about Strangely Optimistic, it's about reminding us all that even in our darkest moments, humor and authenticity can pave the way for connection and understanding. If you're living with chronic illness, caring for someone who is, or simply want to learn how storytelling can be a form of advocacy, this conversation offers inspiration and practical insight. Nina's journey shows us that visibility is also about giving voice to the unspoken and challenging the stereotypes. And the occasional fart joke doesn't hurt.Find Nina's film at https://www.strangelyoptimisticmovie.com or on the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge YouTube channel here:    • Strangely Optimistic - 2026 Easterseals Di...   Please engage with the video on the Easterseals channel - there are prizes for several different winning categories! Likes, comments, and shares of the YouTube video of Strangely Optimistic all contribute. Thank you! Oh, and if you watch the video and spot Nina's homage to me, comment on it and tag me! :) How to Support the Awareness Campaign: From April 4–13, the public can support the film's mission by watching, liking, and commenting on the official Easterseals YouTube and Facebook posts. These engagement metrics directly contribute to the "Best Awareness Campaign" award, elevating the conversation around Long COVID on a global stage. Thank you so much! And thanks for listening to and supporting A Friend for the Long Haul!Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. Wes Ely's Reverse Long Covid Trial: https://www.reversinglongcovid.org/Beth's "Rest is Medicine" shirt is by Dr. Julia Moore Vogel, and you can see her craftiness on her Instagram account:   / pineapple_sewing  If you'd like to support A Friend for the Long Haul, you can do so by: Subscribing to this YouTube channel!Following on Instagram:   / afriendforthelonghaul Substack: https://f4lh.substack.com/TikTok:   / afriendforthelonghaul  Send me something helpful from my Amazon Wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/...Buy your everyday goods through my Amazon Storefront: https://a.co/d/05Dr2htOLike and share when an episode moves you! Thanks so much! I am a one-woman disabled by LC team!

BELOVED ! April 2026HAPPY ** BIRTHDAY DANNY !Hello everyone, So after 6 playlists in 6 weeks, I thought I may wait a little while until the next one.But I found so many great tracks recently, I had to publish this one on this special day. These tracks made me so excited when I first heard them. I love them for the disco, gospel , vocal 90's house sound at the beginning. There are so many music genres , I am unsure of how to  categorise them haThe first track is always the important one, as if you like it then I may hook you into listening to the rest of them . Found it very hard to pick a favourite starter track as the first three are A-MAZ-ING!I absolutely love them Everybody Dancing is an epic track at 5:51mins, there was no way I wanted to edit/shorten it, its there in all it's glory. Then I found the Dirty Diana track , so different from the original MJ one & this remix from Kristy Ink's original track is a bit night/day. New Religion by Bebe Rexha is another wow track . Adding Faithless to my Dawn playlist, a nod to my sister, then this came out and again I was so excited. I am so happy I get to find a new rework to add it to another playlist. Strangely with this playlist , I seem to be finding quiet a few tracks thru the music I hear on TikTok, taking me away from the main places I usually go. I guess the algorithm knows what I like. Not so much deep house on this one, just as sprinkling. I hope you love this one as much as me. Thanks for downloading my playlists. Until next time .....Happy listening! Track list :1  Saving My Love Jolyon Petch 2:572  Everybody Dancing Layson Finn 5:523  Carry Us Away DJ Fudge 4:084  Stand Up (feat. Stella Brown) [Edit] Da Lukas 3:505  Stronger (feat. Nada Leigh) [Grant Nelson Remix] Random Soul 4:176  Dirty Diana (Dantana & George Calle Dirty Guitarra Mix)PPedit Kristy Ink, Dantana, George Calle 3:487  Come Back To Me (feat. Troy Denari) ReEdit Rightside 3:558  Spirit Moves (feat. Dyanna Fearon) Michael Gray & Definite Grooves 2:559  Move Your Body John Gold 2:1110 Promised Land (Radio Mix) Thunderfunk 3:3411 New Religion Bebe Rexha & Faithless 2:5412 Bear With Me (feat. Rona Ray) Dave Mayer & Husky 4:3213 Tell Me Kyma & MENTIS 2:4014 Take Me There LOEK & Nu-La 2:5815 Body Moving Umaedo 2:5216 Save Me No More (feat. Eljé) Riva Starr & Deetron 3:1117 Destiny Layton Giordani & Camden Cox 3:3418 Delusions Tim Sanders & Alexis Roberts 2:1819 Paradise TRFN 2:2620 Always You Romantik. 2:49

He is risen! After His resurrection, Jesus joined two disciples on a journey that lasted several hours. Strangely, they were kept from recognizing Him. Rather than immediately revealing His identity, Jesus chose to open the Scriptures, walking them through all that had been written about Him.It was a profound moment. Through this encounter, we discover the most compelling evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is not something seen, but something said. Welcome to Antioch Georgetown! We are a church in Georgetown, TX, and our mission is simple--We lead people to follow Christ in a life-changing way.Get Connected:

Full Text of Readings The Resurrection of the LordThe Mass of Easter Day Lectionary: 42 The Saint of the day is Saint Vincent Ferrer Saint Vincent Ferrer's Story The polarization in the Church today is a mild breeze compared with the tornado that ripped the Church apart during the lifetime of this saint. If any saint is a patron of reconciliation, Saint Vincent Ferrer is. Despite parental opposition, he entered the Dominican Order in his native Spain at 19. After brilliant studies, he was ordained a priest by Cardinal Peter de Luna—who would figure tragically in his life. Of a very ardent nature, Saint Vincent Ferrer practiced the austerities of his Order with great energy. He was chosen prior of the Dominican house in Valencia shortly after his ordination. The Western schism divided Christianity first between two, then three, popes. Clement VII lived at Avignon in France, Urban VI in Rome. Vincent was convinced the election of Urban was invalid, though Catherine of Siena was just as devoted a supporter of the Roman pope. In the service of Cardinal de Luna, Vincent worked to persuade Spaniards to follow Clement. When Clement died, Cardinal de Luna was elected at Avignon and became Benedict XIII. Saint Vincent Ferrer worked for him as apostolic penitentiary and Master of the Sacred Palace. But the new pope did not resign as all candidates in the conclave had sworn to do. He remained stubborn, despite being deserted by the French king and nearly all of the cardinals. Vincent became disillusioned and very ill, but finally took up the work of simply “going through the world preaching Christ,” though he felt that any renewal in the Church depended on healing the schism. An eloquent and fiery preacher, he spent the last 20 years of his life spreading the Good News in Spain, France, Switzerland, the Low Countries and Lombardy, stressing the need of repentance and the fear of coming judgment. He became known as the “Angel of the Judgment.” Saint Vincent Ferrer tried unsuccessfully, in 1408 and 1415, to persuade his former friend to resign. He finally concluded that Benedict was not the true pope. Though very ill, he mounted the pulpit before an assembly over which Benedict himself was presiding, and thundered his denunciation of the man who had ordained him a priest. Benedict fled for his life, abandoned by those who had formerly supported him. Strangely, Vincent had no part in the Council of Constance, which ended the schism. Reflection The split in the Church at the time of Vincent Ferrer should have been fatal—36 long years of having two “heads.” We cannot imagine what condition the Church today would be in if, for that length of time, half the world had followed a succession of popes in Rome, and half an equally “official” number of popes in say, Rio de Janeiro. It is an ongoing miracle that the Church has not long since been shipwrecked on the rocks of pride and ignorance, greed and ambition. Contrary to Lowell's words, “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,” we believe that “truth is mighty, and it shall prevail”—but it sometimes takes a long time.Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Strangely enough, I got inspired by cleaning out my garage. Here are some tips to help set you up for success this spring and summer!Support the showFollow Moms Who Create:Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/momswhocreatepodcast/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/momswhocreatepodcastMonthly Meeting Book Club - https://www.facebook.com/groups/momswhocreatebookclubWebsite - https://www.momswhocreate.com/

Synchrony is at a crossroads, and in part one of this two-part episode, Megan and Steven explain the history of how the project came to be in this unique moment. Strangely, the history starts three generations ago. Interested in matchmaking? Ladies, our pipeline is currently closed to female applicants, but will re-open in the Summer. Visit our website to join the waiting list. Men can get started for free and meet their first match at no cost. Check https://www.synchronyproject.com to register. Men: Join the Discord server here! https://discord.gg/hqZmtuMws9 Get the From Singles, to Shepherds Info Guide Here! https://the-synchrony-project.mykajabi.com/from-singles-to-shepherds Contact: If you want to join the conversation about this topic and give your thoughts, reach out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or at questions@synchronyproject.com. Learn more about our matchmaking services and dating resources at https://synchronyproject.com. Intro/Outro music by: Balloon Planet, "Write Your Own Story," https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music/song/write-your-own-story/135437

383 - You won't believe how this beloved father died! Tuckin to hear the most absurd tragedy in literature. Strangely funny, yet quietly touching, author Graham Greene gives us his dark take as the young son copes with the death.

383 - You won't believe how this beloved father died! Tuck in to hear the most absurd tragedy in literature. Strangely funny, yet quietly touching, author Graham Greene gives us his dark take as the young son copes with the death.

The SaaS multiples run was long, but it had to come to an end. Or Had it? Navigation: Intro Setting The Scene The Roots — This Didn’t Happen Overnight The Structural Thesis — Why This Isn’t Just A Sell-Off The Private Market Fallout The Bull Case — Is The Market Wrong? Separating The Wheat From The Chaff — Who Survives? Wrap-Up & Key Takeaways Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Introduction Nuno Goncalves PedroWelcome to Episode 75 of Tech DECIPHERED, the SaaS Apocalypse: Why AI Breaks or has Broken or Broke the Software Business Model. In today’s episode, we will talk about what’s been going on in SaaS. SaaS, also known as Software as a Service, as a sector, has just had its worst month since the 2008 financial crisis. Give or take, around 1 trillion in software stock market cap has evaporated this year, and it was triggered in many ways by the rise of a lot of the things we’re seeing, in particular, agentic AI. We’ll talk about it later.One of the key triggers seems to have been the launch of Claude or Claude Cowork. There’s a lot of fears that the model that is taken as SaaS to be the darling of investors, both VCs, private equity funds, and also retail investors, has now evaporated. The sweetheart industry no longer works. Bertrand, what happened to SaaS? What’s happening? Bertrand SchmittSetting The SceneWe are in the middle of what some are calling the SaaSpocalypse. I think that was a coined term early this year. It’s pretty bad. We are recording that March 13th. Definitely January, February of this year, 2026, were really terrible. There is no question about it. Strangely enough, since the start of the war with Iran, there has been a small rebound, so we will see how it goes. But also to give some context, we are still not worse than what happened in 2022. We are still in a better place so far. I would say the difference, there is clearly a focus in terms of SaaS versus tech in general for that down term. Nuno Goncalves PedroWe’ve seen obviously a lot of things happening, right? A lot of announcements. The iShares expanded Tech-Software ETF down 25% year-to-date. Everyone seems to be running into panic, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs. Basically, Jefferies, I think, as you said, originally termed this the SaaSpocalypse. But definitely, it seems like everyone’s trying to sell stock and saying, “Hey, SaaS is going to die.” We’ve seen a lot of interesting elements to this, we’ll talk about it later, around AI eats software. Software eats the world. AI now eats software. I guess AI eats the world.But the reality is, we’ll discuss it later in the episode, it might be just a lot of stuff that’s reacting to what’s actually happening in the market, that there was a couple of misses in terms of numbers, that the growth of some of the key SaaS players that are driving a lot of the public stock wasn’t that great recently. That adding to some launches like we mentioned, the Claude Cowork launch, et cetera, has led people to say, “Hey, maybe some entire spaces of SaaS don’t make much sense going forward.” Bertrand SchmittActually, I don’t know if you noticed, but I think it was yesterday, it was announced that the CEO of Adobe just resigned. I was shocked how bad they managed the transition to AI. I guess it’s one of the first victims of what has been happening. From my perspective, and I will go deeper, but there is a bit of an overreaction. Claude is amazing as a tool, but the launch of Claude Cowork, a few plugins decimating the market, I think that’s an overreaction in the sense that many of these SaaS companies will be able to actually benefit from AI as well. Or some of the new AI tools really, really depend on the existence of an underlying SaaS layer that’s controlling some processes, some data. So I think we have to be careful about the extremes.At the same time, what is true, the growth rate has been going down for SaaS. If you look in the 2021 to these days, we move maybe from 30-11%, 12% average growth rate. It’s a dramatic difference in growth rate, and you cannot keep the same valuation when your growth rate has been divided by three. I mean, that’s just not possible.I think that there might be some overreaction about what company like Claude can truly achieve. At the same time, the reality is there that while SaaS companies are usually relatively strong companies, the growth rate has diminished, and as a result, so should the valuation.The Roots — This Didn’t Happen OvernightBut maybe we can move deeper about what happened the past 2 years about SaaS. Nuno Goncalves PedroIndeed. Some things going back as much as 2024 when Salesforce had its worst trading day. By then, in 2 decades, and went down by 20% on a rare revenue miss. So some early people, a lot of analysts, see this as an early warning of what was to come. Late last year, a huge shift as the different labs of a bunch of different players started launching agentic solutions, which in some ways started eating into a lot of the functionality, not just of vertical SaaS, but also of horizontal SaaS. As a distinction for some of our listeners who are not familiar with that distinction, vertical SaaS is normally SaaS that’s very specific to a specific industry or sub-industry or specific arena, whereas horizontal SaaS is normally SaaS that doesn’t require much adaptation to work across industries. A good example of that might be HR management systems.But basically, because of some of the early developments in those labs and a lot of the solutions that we started seeing around agentic tools, the market started being less positive on SaaS players and trying to readjust it. Those are the historic moments, 2024, 2025. Then all of a sudden, we see the growth rates of SaaS companies coming down, because obviously this doesn’t only have manifestations in the public equity markets. This has manifestations in clients.People, at this moment in time, we’ll talk about it later, are reconsidering their options. They’re like, “Why should I have a SaaS tool? Should I buy it from another player? Should I have a more holistic solution or an integration with Claude, for example? Should I develop in-house?” We’ll talk at length on what’s in customers’ minds, but customers started changing their views and stop buying some solutions that were out there from the large players that are public equities today. Bertrand SchmittYeah, it’s clear that there has been also just overall industry-wide tendency to try to cut on the SaaS subscriptions. Maybe there was too much interest buying too many software solutions, not rationalizing enough, not being careful about the spend. It makes sense that this has hurt overall SaaS growth rate. At the same time, there has been a transfer from IT spending from SaaS tools to AI, so we create a smaller budget for buying SaaS software.But going back, when you look at the change in revenue multiples, it’s crazy. In 2021, we were close to 20X EV, enterprise value to revenues. Now we are talking about 6-7X entering 2026, and we will see later on it does crunch even more. Right now, we are at 4X revenues. So from 20 to 6 to 4, and that’s the lowest in terms of multiples since 2016. That’s 10 years ago. P/E multiple for what multiples also comprise from close to 40 to close to 20.Talking about Adobe, Adobe trades at 5-year average of 30X, now at 12X. No wonder the CEO resigned. I don’t want to be mean, but I think it’s clear some CEO were very strong leading their companies into a SaaS paradigm, but were not as strong leading their company to a new AI paradigm. I think the markets are going to be brutal. If you are good at showing that you can transition to AI, you’re an important piece of the puzzle for AI, that’s one thing. But if the markets believe your products have not kept up, then it’s truly big trouble.I mean, they are not the only one. Intuit 34% decline in a month. Atlassian, minus 35 in a week. ServiceNow also down a third. They are not the only one, but definitely companies have to show some proof of either the lack of vulnerability in an AI world or their capacity to really move strong to a brand-new AI world. Nuno Goncalves PedroThe Structural Thesis — Why This Isn’t Just A Sell-OffWhat are the structural issues? Why wasn’t this just a sell-off? Why is this structurally a problem? The first thing is really around monetization and business model. SaaS 1.0 or 2.0, however we want to call it, was based on seat-based licensing. Seat-based licensing was the notion that with more employees and more users on the platform, there would be more revenue for the SaaS company. Very simple, very clear, very lucrative.Now, obviously, AI agents don’t occupy seats. An agent can do the work of 10 people, can do the work of 20 people, 30 people, 100 people, whatever it is. Therefore, if I’m a company, and I’m using agents, and not necessarily a human user, I’m not going to buy 10 licenses for the work of 10. I have one license, and it’s used by an agent that basically has access to that tool. That’s the first issue. The first issue is that the seat-based pricing, assuming humans, assuming a certain degree of productivity, et cetera, all of a sudden is under stress. Bertrand SchmittMaybe to highlight some point, not every SaaS company was focused on per-seat pricing. Me, when I led App Annie, we didn’t have a per-seat licensing or pricing at all, so we were focused on value-based pricing. But that’s true that around us, we have seen that quite a lot of your typical SaaS business was run on a per-seat pricing. Anytime there is a market downturn, you pay a dear price for your per-seat pricing. On top of it, these days, as you said, we have AI. In an AI world, the per-seat pricing model breaks down. Nuno Goncalves PedroIndeed. Now people are asking for other kinds of pricing schema, right? Either flat pricing based on certain usage patterns or, for example, outcome-based pricing. So depending on the outcome of what I’m trying to achieve, is it a booking of a sales call, is it something else? Whatever it is, I pay for that. But I do not pay for seats because that doesn’t work anymore.There have been a lot of movements around these licensing agreements and these basic elements. Some have actually now tried to create agentic licensing agreements. It’s like, “Okay, I have licensing agreements now for your agents, not for your end users.” It used to be end user licensing agreements. It’s now agentic licensing agreements. Obviously, there’s a shift.Part of the shift is, I believe people want to be in a measurement scale that is different. They don’t want just to pay for a seat. They want to pay for either specific outcomes that are very clearly measurable or have flat fees across the board on a variety of things. I think we’ll see the emergence of a couple of these business models and these monetization models more significantly. I do think we’re still to see some innovation around some of these monetization models, which will occur over the next probably few years as people are getting used to it. Okay, now it makes more sense for me to pay by this rather than by that.Again, because it’s a disruption, we’re still getting and nailing down what effectively the new monetization models and business models will look like for some of these players, but it still will be served as a service. We’ll come back to that later as well. Agents can do a lot of stuff and whatever, but it’s like agents and AI are software. AI is software, whatever you want to call it. AI is software at its base and its profound meaning and what it does, et cetera. Bertrand SchmittSeat-based pricing, usage-based pricing, yes, it’s too simple. Yes, it has its flaw. But at the same time, when the industry started, it made a lot of sense. That’s easy to manage, easy to control, at least from the SaaS company perspective. But definitely now that the industry is maturing, I can see that rise and the benefit and value of moving to an outcome-based pricing or to a value-based pricing. What I like with that also, it’s more truly win-win for both sides, for the SaaS companies as well as for the customer of the SaaS company. If you are more win-win, more aligned, I think it’s a better situation, more frictionless. I think it would be a big change.Another interesting piece of the puzzle, obviously, of all the changes we’re seeing is that one of the best assumptions in SaaS was you have 80% to 90% gross margin. If you are below 80%, there were serious questions coming your way in terms of what’s wrong with your business model as a SaaS business. Below 80% was blinking yellow light, below 70, blinking red lights. But now, it’s very different because AI-native companies, you’re expecting more a 50-60% gross margin.Obviously, if you’re SaaS companies, you better move fast to more AI-native tools and services. That will impact your margin. When you decrease so much your margins, of course, it will impact your valuation. There is no other way around that. You cannot value the same way a 90% gross margin business and a 50% gross margin business. That’s simply not reasonable. I think that one is part of the change and part of a different way to value companies. It’s very reasonable. Nuno Goncalves PedroThe first two structural issues is, one, obviously the per-seat pricing piece is potentially dying or at least becoming less pervasive in the market, added to these emerging pricing and monetization models that we just discussed, value-based, outcome-based, some usage-based pricing, some hybrid models that are also out there with some base subscriptions and then other kinds of things and tiers on top of it, either usage or outcome-based.The third big structural shift that we are seeing is, and I already alluded to it earlier, this notion of build-versus-buy. In the past, I think the market went fully into buy. In some ways, even beyond the, “I will buy one” solution that solves all the problems, we went into best in class. We went to unbundled buying: I’ll buy the best solutions for what I need in my corporation and enterprise needs.Now we’re getting a shift back into building: I’ll build my own stuff. I think a lot of it is relating to two things. One, there’s coding agents out there like Claude Code, Codex from OpenAI, and a bunch of other coding agents that have emerged. There’s a lot of solutions out there, like we mentioned already, Claude Cowork, that really managed to have agentic solutions into workflows that are deeply embedded into some of the enterprises.At the end of the day, I think there’s a lot more of this notion of, I have all my data in-house. I want to really leverage all the data I have. I don’t want to just use a third-party solution that has generic data. I want to use my data set, I want to use my stuff, and I want to basically fit that into ongoing improvements in terms of workflow.The other piece, I think, what’s happening with IT departments in some large corporations that’s leading to this build mindset rather than this buy mindset is also the notion of maybe we have too many people. How do we really express our productivity if we don’t have solutions that are at the core of our processes? If we have solutions at the core of the processes that we develop ourselves or that we develop in partnership with integrators, et cetera, but using some of these new AI platforms, we also have more visibility on the people that we can let go.Now, I know this is quite negative, but I think this has also been leading to all the layoffs that we’ve been seeing across industries recently, where people are like, “Well, I can just extract productivity.” We’ve seen some of those very visible ones. We were talking about Amazon and what’s happening at Amazon with the layoffs recently. A significant amount of layoffs recently announced.Then some other issues on the other side where apparently the junior engineers that were still working on stuff using Claude and other tools that they were using internally started breaking platforms and breaking systems. Anyway, definitely there’s a lot of that going into this build mindset. I want to have control. I want to make sure I understand where the productivity enhancements are, and that will give me more visibility on the people that I need to keep and the people that I need to let go. Bertrand SchmittI’m not so convinced about this part of the puzzle. I think that for many, AI is a convenient demand, but I’m more thinking that some companies, Amazon included, Microsoft, truly, truly over-hired in 2020, 2021. Yes, they scaled back a bit, 2022, 2023. But I don’t think they ever scaled back to what was reasonable given their needs. So it’s quite convenient to say, “No, it’s not management mistake of efficiency, it’s something new AI, and we have to adjust to that.”What I believe is true, however, is that you cannot fund both at the same time in the sense of you cannot finance an over-bloated workforce, and two, significant extremely large AI investment. At some point, these companies were faced with a choice, and they took a reasonable decision on this to be more efficient with their workforce.But personally, I think that actually the ability to do so much more with AI will make more companies think more about their teams and building things because when suddenly your engineers can be way more efficient, can build way more, the value increases. So you could argue that there is an opportunity for companies to deliver more, and as a result, I can see if you’re a good engineer, then there will be opportunities to build more value, potentially across more companies.So we might see a shift where you have more growth in software-related jobs outside the core top 10 bigger software companies, but growing more widely across your typical S&P 500 and even SMBs who could never afford to really deliver value with typical software engineering. But now suddenly, software engineering equipped with AI can be more dramatic in terms of value for them. Nuno Goncalves PedroI agree this is a scapegoat. I agreed that there’s a lot of posturing as well. If someone can lay off a significant percentage of their… It’s almost like the percentage of people you can lay off becomes your new pattern as a CEO, your new, “Basically, I’m saying right now to the market, I can cut…” I mean, Block, I think, cut off 40% of their workforce.At this point in time, seems a bit dehumanized. I think the tech companies are the worst cases, in particular because AI also does disrupt them a lot in their own processes internally. But it feels to me right now, it’s a little bit this one-upmanship of, “Okay, I can lay off more people than you can, kind of thing.” It’s precisely all the fears that a lot of people have around AI. It’s like you’re dehumanizing work. It’s like at the end of the day, people are still needed to work, et cetera. Bertrand SchmittBut I think Block might be one of these companies that completely over-hired over the past few years and never took the pill to reoptimize the business. Nuno Goncalves PedroI think we mentioned it at a previous episode that there was an estimate at some point in time that… For example, even Google had more than double the number of engineers they needed at any given point in time. So obviously, they did hoard engineering resources in other capacities. But at this point in time, it feels a little bit like up to you since being a software engineer right now is a kiss of death kind of thing. Which is weird because at the same time, we are seeing tremendous reallocation of capital overall in the industry towards infrastructure and platforms, where hyperscalers are at 660-690 billion in infrastructure CapEx for this year alone, and 75% of that being AI, where we are seeing a lot of movements around how do I budget accordingly if I’m a corporation.To your point, I think you made that point earlier, Bertrand, how if I’m the CIO of a company, do I allocate my resources more clearly, in particular, if I’m taking into account that I need to spend more money on AI and AI tooling and AI platforms. Obviously, at the end of the day, the CFOs are still there, and the CFOs are basically saying, “Hey, guys, we went into an unbundled world. We had all these agreements with all these people. I want more concentration.” At the same time, the CEO is telling me we need AI, “So whatever it is, you guys tell me what it is, but we can’t increase our budget for this stuff. We need to decrease it, and there needs to be AI in it.” Obviously, there’s a lot of reallocation also at a micro level within the corporate world. Bertrand SchmittYes, you cannot say it will be more built versus buy. At the same time, we are going to need less engineers to do the build. You see what I mean? Even with AI helping you, building which still cost you more, require more software engineering than just a buy decision. For me, what’s interesting is that not so many of these stories can be true at the same time. You require a next workforce, but at the same time, you’re going to rebuild your whole software stack from zero just because of the AI God that you just brought in from cloud. This is not reasonable, simply not reasonable. Nuno Goncalves PedroI think the thesis is that your top engineer is I think, in particular, the more senior engineers, can now do the job of 10. Therefore, what I am switching in terms of cost, I’m not saying I’m agreeing with the thesis, but the thesis is that. What I’m reallocating in terms of budget is, I’m reallocating towards spend at infrastructure platform level, on tokens, et cetera. That’s basically, I think, the thesis of what we’re seeing happening right now. Bertrand SchmittYes, but if you were just, quote, unquote, buying software, you’re not building software. You didn’t need software engineering to just buy software. Your software engineer that becomes as valuable as 10, yeah, but you had zero if you were just buying software. You see what I mean? Nuno Goncalves PedroNo, IT departments have always had engineers, the larger corporations. Yeah, for sure. Bertrand SchmittIt’s a very different game if you are moving from buying to building. It’s my point, I guess. Nuno Goncalves PedroIt is. Just to be clear, Bertrand, this whole build-versus-buy, the build is going to be done with a lot of use of outsourcing and a lot of use of service providers and a lot of use of integrators, et cetera. This whole bullshit of build-versus-buy, in effect, it’s a misnomer because at the same time, you’re going to have to hire, to your point, you’re going to have to hire companies, et cetera, to help you do this. It’s not magically that you can do it off the existing IT departments that you have. Bertrand SchmittExactly. The question will also be, is your first priority of business to rebuild Salesforce from scratch so that it better fits your internal need as a corporation because you have rebuilt from scratch with AI? I don’t think so. That for me is total overhyped bullshit. Klarna was big on that, this is total BS, quite frankly. Not only it didn’t work, but it makes zero business sense. Zero business sense. You’re not going to rebuild a CRM just for the fun of it while your software engineering could be focused on your core value proposition as a business. If you’re a company just starting, you have processes from scratch, you still don’t have solution, yeah, maybe you could consider that.But even then, is it really your priority versus building your core value proposition? For me, that’s a big question. But what I would expect, however, is that this overall trend mindset and stuff is going to keep the pressure on two software companies in terms of reducing tiers of cost, in terms of delivering more value, in terms of being more aligned to the business, and in terms of overall growth rates that are simply not the same as they used to be. Nuno Goncalves PedroBefore maybe we move to another topic, I think it’s clear, we’ll come back to that later, that there are a lot of overblown elements in this. You can never disregard a couple of very, very core elements. A lot of these software companies have very deep tooling into significant enterprise customers. You can’t just rebuild it from scratch yourself to your point. Not only does it make sense, but you can’t. It would take you years to do it. Good luck to you.Secondly, they have also distribution. They are pervasive in the market. They have sales forces. They have people that are selling out there. They have go-to-market teams. Again, we’ll talk about that in maybe one of our penultimate sections today. But maybe to move forward, we talked a lot about the public equity markets and how there’s been a reckoning by institutional and retail investors, et cetera.The Private Market FalloutBut also there’s been a private market fallout. The first one is very obvious to understand. Private equity firms loaded themselves with SaaS. Some even went after roll-up strategies in SaaS, like bringing a bunch of companies together and trying to attack a market and really getting a significant part of that. Software accounts for roughly 25% of the private credit market, which is incredible. Just that’s private credit alone, significant again. They’re loaded with a bunch of companies that have nowhere to go. They can’t IPO, nobody else is interested in buying them unless it’s for a huge write-off or write-down. That’s the first problem right now that we’re seeing in this fallout, which is the private equity market itself. Not only the buyout market, but also we saw a lot of growth funds loading themselves with private equity stock, with a rather SaaS stock, private SaaS stock.Right now, there’s nowhere for that to go. They’re stuck between rock and a hard place with a lot of solutions that are not growing at the rates they were growing before, with a public market that’s not really interesting right now to IPO in, because as we were mentioning earlier, the multiples have gone downhill dramatically, so it’s not interesting. Basically, it’s a chicken-and-egg issue. I would love to sell this now, but I can’t because I have awful market. I can’t IPO it either, so what do I do with all these assets? That’s the first issue here. Bertrand SchmittIt’s clear that you have to be pretty delusional to think that what’s happening in the software public markets is not impacting the private markets. We don’t know why it will be in six months. In six months, it could keep getting worse in the public markets. Six months, at some point, maybe there is a recognition it went too far in terms of adjustment. It’s always tough. But at the same time, you have to be prudent. For sure, what it means is that if I’m a private equity investor in a SaaS business, you have to be a very, very, very special SaaS company to get more financing these days at good terms.Sometimes it’s a very simple math. If you fundraise at 20X, even 10X, how do you go to get to another round of financing if now your multiples are at 4X? That simply makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Or you need to have grown into your valuation enough that it’s not crazy anymore. If you raise at 20X, and now you’re in 4X multiple, then you need to have grown 5X in your revenues so that you simply stay at the same valuation, or maybe you have to accept a different valuation. But again, quite frankly, the tough part would be convincing investors that it make any sense to put money in a SaaS business. Nuno Goncalves PedroJust to rub it in, just to make it even worse, the secondary market, which was a great market for exits or partial liquidations, et cetera, is demanding now huge discounts. There’s no way I’m going to buy into a stock if it’s not growing at the same pace. I’m like, “I’m sorry.” I will buy your stock at a significant discount. In some cases, it might be what would be a lesser price per share than your last round or your last two rounds. Not just, I want a discount on what you think you’re worth, but it’s like, I want a discount on your last round.Because there’s liquidity issues also in some parts of the market, we were talking just about the private equity firms, some of these deals will go through. If all of this wasn’t quite enough, we have what’s happening in venture capital, which is very close to my heart, of course, because that’s where I play. If you come to me, it’s like I’m a SaaS player immediately off the game. I’m like, “Really? You’re a SaaS, tell me more.” I was just talking to a player recently, SaaS play, there was nothing around AI in their pitch.It’s not just because you have AI in your pitch that I’m going to give you money, clear, but if you’re doing a SaaS play and there’s no AI in your pitch, I’m like, “Am I missing something?” If it looks very classic, I’m like, “Oh.” There’s been a huge, huge reduction in confidence in the VC space in investing in SaaS. There’s a tremendous hyper focus on AI, and in AI investing, AI apps, platforms, infrastructure by most VC firms at this moment in time. And so at this point in time, if you’re a non-AI SaaS player trying to raise money, where’s your AI play? I think that’s the question you’re going to get. It’s going to be very difficult to raise, very difficult to raise. Bertrand SchmittI agree with you. Myself, I saw that SaaS startups with absolutely no AI in their deck, and I was so shocked. I was like, “Guys, where are you living? Are you living in a parallel universe? Are you living under a rock? What’s going on?” Then they are like, “Yeah, but we’re preparing something like that, I come back and prepare.”But even then, as you say, it’s not just leaving AI in your deck. It’s what are your proof points? What have you delivered? How do you make sure that it’s truly differentiator? And how does it make sense versus a pure AI native companies? How are you going to find the new cloud tools that are going to get out in a few weeks and more or ChatGPT or whatever? You have to have a very different proof point. There is nothing new in the past. It’s how are you going to survive against Google? How are you going to survive against Salesforce? How are you going to survive against Microsoft? So nothing is new.Software universe is changing. There’s always that big guys that can destroy you in a matter of weeks. So the question is more, how are you going to be smart enough not to be killed too easily and to find your way in a space that’s probably moving faster than ever? That is probably the difference is that it’s weeks after weeks, you have big change. I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen in that space before because I’ve seen there, I’ve seen that, and it’s moving faster than ever. But it’s nothing new that there is this big company potentially destroying your business. You have to be smart.I feel in some ways, maybe it’s the 2020s, but people stopped being smart, quite frankly. They just raised easy at very large valuation and think that you just do something sometimes pretty basic in terms of software development and that’s good enough. Your GTM is traditional, and you think you made it, and you deserve some investment. I think you must have seen some of this. I have seen a lot of this. In some ways, it’s good. The market is becoming more discerning. Nuno Goncalves PedroThe Bull Case — Is The Market Wrong?But is the market wrong? Maybe shifting to that, at least my perspective is it’s wrong. It’s not fully wrong, but it’s wrong. There’s a right sizing of multiples, but maybe 4X is not the right multiple either. This whole 20X on actuals and 40X on forward stuff didn’t make any sense. There is an argumentation to say that the market is oversold. All the banks have come forward. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Jeffries, Morgan Stanley. Everyone’s come forward and said there’s been definitely, Bank of America, whatever, there’s been an overselling of stock, a dramatic overselling of stock. There’s been a panic that wasn’t warranted. The price has gone down too dramatically for some of these key players.I think part of it, in some ways, is what we were alluding to earlier, the fact that some of these players have built really important stacks that are fitting their customers in a significant on core processes. You can’t just rip it off and put something new. Magically, it will work. It will be around building things around it rather than building things that replace it. Will there be over the long term potential disruption of some of these players around CRM and other solutions? For sure, we’ll see it.But definitely, some of the existing players, public companies that are large, are here to stay, and they themselves will buy into these markets. They’ll acquire positions into other service providers into toolmakers, into other platforms that allow them to be fully AI-enabled and to make their platforms more AI-enabled. I do think there was a huge amount of overselling. The second thing we already alluded to as well as go-to-market. If I’m selling something to someone, there’s a salesperson involved or there are a couple of salespeople involved, they’re not going anywhere. So in some ways, that relationship building with CIOs, with their teams, with procurement teams, all of that is still there.And a lot of the large SaaS players have been doing this for decades. So they have the surface of attack and go-to-market that will take a long time to build for even some of these startups that are disrupting, so to speak, the market. My view is there has been too much panic and the modes of the large players that are already public, in some cases, haven’t been considered at all. Bertrand SchmittThere’s definitely some truth in that. Another piece of the puzzle is that if SaaS is not growing as fast as it used to be, it’s still growing. Many companies are still very good cash generation machines. Many of these companies are moving to AI full speed, improving their tools, changing how you can search their data, how you can leverage their data. They are very close to the data, so they know best how to deliver value on this data. They can integrate existing AI tools. There are a lot of ways for them to capture part of the value that native AI companies are claiming they will get. I think it’s definitely going to, and we’ll talk more later on. I think there will be a question around how do you differentiate the best SaaS companies from the worst SaaS companies in that context.But maybe I just felt we moved a bit quickly on one big event that’s shaping the software industry, it’s the current crash in private credit. Do you have some thoughts about that? Because what’s happening there is pretty crazy, to be frank. Nuno Goncalves PedroYeah, we’ve seen a lot of these players like KKR and Apollo getting slaughtered. Basically, Blue Owl, TPG, Ares, KKR all fell double this in one day on private credit exposure fears. Overall, Apollo has fell 7% as the date of as we were recording BlackRock, 5%. These guys were walking on water and all of a sudden, there was like, “What happened?” And what happened was private credit exposure. A lot of the concerns in the market is private credit is super sexy, and for those who don’t understand what it means is I’m giving credit to a private company in exchange for something, either warrants in the company or revenue sharing in the future, or I’ll get your revenues in advance from you, or I’ll take, whatever it is. There’s over exposure.There’s this potential logic that all these guys are scaling, all the companies that they give private credit to are scaling. And now there are concerns that there might be some dramatic credit in the market, that some of these companies are actually going to die, they’re going to implode, or they’re not going to really fulfill their covenants in their private credit agreements. Bertrand SchmittIt was hidden in plain sight, but that some of these private credit funds at 25, 35% exposure to software, IT, and SaaS, so a huge chunk in an industry where you bet on the long term revenues and cash flow to pay back your loans, while at the same time there is a discovery that this business may be at risk in the next three, five years or even one year because of AI.I think that was the first big chink in the armor that suddenly the creditworthiness of these companies might not have been evaluated properly. But two, it looks like there is also fraud that has been happening. I was reading stories how three, four people, accounting companies, were valuing and estimating loans for hundreds of SaaS business. Good luck, this is crazy. It looks like there is another layer to that story. Nuno Goncalves PedroWhen there are industries building a lot of wealth or apparent wealth that’s coming a little bit from out of nowhere, the likelihood that there’s fraud and things that were not properly done is, it sadly increases dramatically or exponentially. I think we’re seeing just maybe the first effects of that. Bertrand SchmittI was reading, for instance, that one of these big funds was no haircut across the portfolio, ever seen value that was 100%, whatever. One quarter after that, one of their clients going out of business and they lost everything. In three months, you move from no haircut to 100% haircut, decent enough part of your portfolio. This is crazy for a credit business. Nuno Goncalves PedroIt’s ostrich syndrome. You just put your head under the ground, and you’re like, “Hey, whatever.” I don’t know. Bertrand SchmittYeah, it’s zero mark-to-market in an industry that should be relatively conservative. This is private credit. This is not VC, this is not startup, this is not equity, this is credit, so pretty scary. Another piece was like, some of them were supposedly senior on the debt, but they were not so senior after all, this is insane. You claim seniority, but you don’t have it.My point, I think what’s happening in private credit is maybe it all started with that what’s going on, a lot of software exposure. It’s risky because of AI, but the more investor dig into it, that’s when they started to realize that maybe there is more than just that software issue. I guess, all of this is going to be an issue for software business because if suddenly you cannot get loans anymore or the loans you add, you have to pay them back or when it’s time to pay them off, you cannot renew the loan. There is nobody else to turn yourself to get another loan to replace it. That’s not going to be fun and that’s going to impact your growth rates. That could potentially also even be worse than that, be dramatic for your own business survival. Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe now switching back to the positive part for the bull case. We think the market’s wrong, not fully, but wrong. The other side is still things move on. We’ve also had the same issues in credits in several industries in the past when markets imploded and credit came back. In some cases, it took a while. In other cases, it came back relatively quickly. One great analogy on making a bull case on why all of this stock that was sold was oversold, there’s too much stock being sold on SaaS and at prices that don’t make any sense is an analogy, precisely, for example, with retail. Amazon was going to destroy everyone their mother in 2010, and it did not. It was going to destroy Walmart. Walmart passed the $1 trillion market cap. Bertrand SchmittNot too bad. Nuno Goncalves PedroSo what happened? They adapted. They had huge advantages. They had huge advantages in terms of their customer base, presence, relationship with their suppliers, with the offerings they had, et cetera. They had huge advantages of economies of scale, and they leverage those advantages. And those advantages ultimately materialized in tremendous increase in revenue, tremendous increase in market capital as well.Amazon has done really well as well. It’s not like Amazon didn’t do well. Again, I think this notion, people sometimes have this difficulty in separating the notion of disruption from the notion of replacement. Disruption doesn’t mean necessarily full replacement. You can disrupt industries, disrupt players in that industry, and still those players will exist 10, 20 years later, and they’ll be much bigger because they adapted. The ones that don’t adapt may be killed.But the disruption doesn’t necessarily mean replacement or killing. It means just that effectively the rules of the game, the business model, which we already talked about, monetization models, the way that capital flows in that industry, et cetera, all of that shifts. It doesn’t mean that necessarily the existing players are not going to exist tomorrow. In some cases, they will exist and they’ll be even stronger tomorrow. Bertrand SchmittI think what’s happening is truly a disruption of the SaaS business model, of the SaaS valuations, of the SaaS analysis, because now you need a new prism to analyze it. What are the markets doing in the meantime? They are just dumping it, waiting for, “Okay, how do we look at it in a different way? Who are going to be the winners and the losers?” For now, we don’t care, they’re all losers. But I think that the next piece of the puzzle for us in this episode, but for the market is, how are we going to separate the wheat from the chaff? Who is going to survive? Who is going to more than just survive? Who is going to thrive in that new industry. Nuno Goncalves PedroThere I feel the ones that survive, there’s a couple of obvious ones we can go into. Two that immediately come to my mind are data infrastructure, the Snowflakes, Databricks of the world, because this is the underpinning of everything that’s happening around AI. I don’t see the data infrastructure fundamentally shifting right now. It might in the future, but right now I don’t see it fundamentally shift. Those guys have, if anything, tailwinds rather than headwinds.Then the other one that’s very obvious to me is cybersecurity, where I think AI is very additive to it rather than just necessarily replacing everything that exists. In some ways, that already been used for a while, certainly by the top players. Definitely, those are two immediate categories and areas that come to mind that have maybe more headwinds and tailwinds where really AI is adding rather than subtracting to it. Bertrand SchmittNo, I totally agree with you concerning data infrastructure, cybersecurity. You could argue if you take cybersecurity, that with the rise of AI attacks, with AI making it easier than ever to generate attacks, you better build up your security. Nuno Goncalves PedroWith AI? No, but you have to have AI on your side defending as well. The only way to defend AI is AI. Bertrand SchmittThat’s my point. Your cybersecurity vendors will become AI-enabled, will leverage AI at scale in order to defend you, else they won’t be able to defend you, just quite frankly. Nuno Goncalves PedroCorrect. Bertrand SchmittThat’s part of the game. Data infrastructure, no questions. Again, I don’t think you want to redo your infrastructure with brand-new tools, brand-new stuff is the current tools are working great and doing the job. Maybe another piece of the puzzle is that vertical SaaS, domain-specific tools, healthcare, manufacturing, if you have proprietary data, regulatory modes, it will be much harder for AI to disrupt quickly. If you are not disrupted quickly, you have more time to readjust your business model, to adjust your business model, to leverage AI to improve your business model.Again, of course, some companies, we have seen with Adobe, for instance, have not proven great skills at adjusting to AI. Not everyone is going to get out as a winner. I think some categories have better chance to actually not just survive, but potentially thrive. Another piece are systems of record. If you are holding proprietary non-scrapable data that AI needs to function, that you have deep switching costs protecting you, you are not going to disappear right away. I think you will probably survive. If you are smart enough, you might be able to even adjust and leverage AI.But I can see some might just stick to their revenues and hold companies hostage and might not innovate a lot. I guess we’ll do well on the short run, but on the medium to long I would definitely more worried. Nuno Goncalves PedroOne point I would like to make is at the end of the day, there’s more than that. The algorithmic methodologies you should use for specific industries, for specific verticals, for specific use cases could vary. We’re still very early in a lot of the application of some of these AI methodologies. We’re not early in the development of the research around them. They’ve been around for decades, but the application of them is still relatively early. I think that’s one of the advantages why vertical SaaS companies and vertical SaaS solutions right now might have an advantage, because the domain in which you’re operating, even algorithmically, is actually different, and you need to really right purpose it for those environments and for those domains.For me, that’s an important point to make. It’s not just any vertical SaaS. I think vertical SaaS, where there’s algorithmic distinctiveness, definitely has a shot at it. Other might not. We just saw a lot of discussions around legal tech and how legal tech got slaughtered with the launch of Claude Cowork, for example. Definitely, it will depend a little bit on the verticals. Bertrand SchmittTake the legal side. There has been some interesting decision recently where basically, if you use AI for legal advice, then this data, this discussion is not privileged. You are at big risk of discovery. There is a lot of issues that if you are working with real lawyers, will not be there. Your data is not discoverable, your discussion stay private, so it cannot be used against you. I think companies have to be very careful and very worried about how some of these tools are being used because it’s creating new risk. Some of these tools are not going to get privileged in the coming few months, I don’t think so.You could argue most of these companies in the first place claim a right to access your data and leverage it. I think that even in legal, it would be interesting to see how it evolved. AI will be able to claim some privilege at some point? Maybe, I don’t know. But on the short run, I can imagine how the legal profession, for instance, will not let it happen too quickly, and how you have to be very careful. It’s great to move fast, but you have to be careful with what is it that you are getting into. Nuno Goncalves PedroLet me guess, the last company you’re going to say or the last type of companies that you’re going to say are like the survive, thrive are AI-first or AI-native companies. Is that correct? Bertrand SchmittYeah, I guess. Yes. They are going to be less disrupted by AI, given that they’re already AI native. Nuno Goncalves PedroThey are AI. Bertrand SchmittWe are going into another territory. Even if you are AI-native, are you going to still get killed by Claude because you don’t have enough technology or ChatGPT because you don’t have enough technology? You are just that basic rapper around another AI tools. Here my perspective and what I share more and more with some entrepreneurs is you have to be careful if you are just an AI native company, but ultimately you are a very AI light in the sense that, yes, you are a native, but you are just reusing other LLMs and stuff, and you have not built any proprietary tech or moat with your data or in your industry. That’s going to be trouble. That’s going to be trouble.I’m not sure the market discriminated well enough at this stage, but I think there will be quickly some premium around, have you built a real technology mode? Are you really in such a situation that you are not going to get killed by a Claude or ChatGPT in a few weeks? I think there will be some discrimination that’s going to happen. Ai native won’t be enough to save you, basically. Nuno Goncalves PedroI think there’s one thing. One is what you’re saying. Is there fundamental technology differentiation and/or product differentiation that will sustain itself as a moat? The second thing is, even if it’s an AI app at a higher level, the reality is the guys that are in the market today, the OpenAIs, the Googles, the Anthropics, etc., they’re not going to address all use cases. There are places where some use cases will still exist. We saw that in the mobile app economy.In some of these use cases, you’d be like, why hasn’t, for example, Apple addressed the need for this kind of solution, whatever, and maybe it took them a decade to do it. Then, when they did it, they almost killed the market. But you have some of these AI apps that I think will still be in the market that will emerge and will address use cases that for some time, for some reason, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc., won’t go after. To Bertrand’s point, and I think importantly, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re writing on a very specific use case, and there’s seemingly a high likelihood that any of these players are going to address at some point, you’re not in a sustainable place. You’re not going to be around very long. Bertrand SchmittOr you have to take that initial leadership position and transform it into a deeper technology mode, a business mode. You have to leverage that first mover advantage, maybe, to something deeper than that, something more defensible. Maybe you pivot also in term of industry. You started in industry A, but you realize industry B is really the good one. You have to really optimize your way and not take anything for granted. Nuno Goncalves PedroBertrand, do you remember when it’s like every release of iOS and whatever, we were like, what industry is Apple going to kill now? What are they integrating? There was a period of time where it was literally like every big release, every major release, the yearly one, you’d be like, what industry are they going to kill now? Bertrand SchmittTotally. Totally. I think the same is happening. Definitely, we say AI, but I think some players have been smart enough to zigzag around that onslaught from Apple, from Google. But some will stay put. We think it’s not going to happen to them. Yes, they got into trouble pretty quickly. I think also what we have seen is that a lot of value could be from players who are simply more neutral and independent vis-à-vis a platform. If you need someone in the middle, your three or four mobile platform, or now your three or four LLMs or AI platforms, there might be value you can extract because companies are not… That’s another piece of the puzzle.You don’t want to just depend on Claude. You don’t know in three months, ChatGPT has a better model. You will want to make sure that whatever you are running can adjust to a change of LLM providers, for instance, or tool providers. I think, for instance, one position could be that mutual player, the one gives you the ability to adjust quickly to different technical AI development. We will see. But I think there are different strategies you can go through to make sure you end up not being killed, and that will require smart entrepreneurs. Nuno Goncalves PedroSeparating The Wheat From The Chaff — Who Survives?We talked about who survives, who doesn’t survive. Let me start with one. Or where I think will be categories that will be incredibly under attack, so a lot of players, I think, will disappear or will become very, very small. One obvious for me is anything that relates to the small, medium business markets, so very SMB-focused SaaS, a lot of regional SaaS stuff that has emerged, copycatting in certain markets because the larger players didn’t want to expand in some of those markets.I think a lot of that stuff gets just replaced because a lot of the SMB markets are price sensitive. A lot of these markets are also best effort-driven. It’s like it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to do the basic stuff. Therefore, I see that market as a market that’s going to get, in all honesty, over the next 3-5 years, slaughtered. It’s not going to be rapid death, but some of them are just going to be totally replaced. Bertrand SchmittI agree with you. If you don’t have a big enough moat, if it’s very shallow, if your clients are moving quickly, you can easily switch based on a small price difference. That’s definitely trouble. Nuno Goncalves PedroI’ll let an anecdote just so people I don’t understand. Because people say, but these regional SaaS solutions normally because of their specificities to the markets and stuff like that, whatever. I literally drafted the other day an agreement, a semi-agreement relating to Portuguese law on Claude in Portuguese, from Portugal, not Brazil and Portuguese. It drafted an agreement from scratch based on my prompting, and it took into account specificities of the Portuguese legal system and taxation. Guys, it’s like, this is a freaking consumer tool. Localization of what? The tax regime and whatever? Who gives a shit? It’s like, again, I think that’s the market that definitely will get a pretty significant beating. Bertrand SchmittAnother market for me, we talk about Adobe, but content creation tools. Here, I think there is a dramatic shift in how you use them. Before you use another Photoshop to replace something in a picture, change a slightly picture stuff. Now, you just say, hey, remove this guy from the picture. Hey, replace. Hey, create that picture from scratch. I have five photo IDs, put these guys in context, put them in your meeting room, and go for it. This is such transformational versus how you used to work before that I think some of this industry is getting destroyed.There will be simply no point of using these tools anymore because something else is just 10X better. That is not even a question. You could argue there is still a niche of professionals doing stuff in an always because it guarantees a bit more higher quality or this or that. Sure. But overall, this is getting disrupted big time and the much bigger business might be totally new and totally AI native. Nuno Goncalves PedroI will do a parochial comment. We have two investments in the content creation space, one more on the marketing side and the other one more on the hardcore content creation side. They’re both AI from inception, so they’re both AI native. One of them is called LetsEnhance, the other one is called blaze.ai. I feel it’s true that there’s going to be a lot of replacement of some of the content creation tools in certain markets like consumer and prosumer, driven by the Nano Bananas of the world and all that stuff.But on the top end and in enterprise and all that stuff, we feel that AI native content creation tools are there to be. It’s actually one of the areas of what I would call use cases or AI apps/platforms where I feel being AI native will give you an advantage. Just being a cross-cut play around the market being Anthropic or OpenAI, whatever, actually won’t solve the problem for some of the markets that need to be served in. Bertrand SchmittMakes sense. I agree with you. Maybe more quickly, some point solutions, relatively high risk. If you have a single function tool, then could be easily replaced potentially by an AI agent. We already talk about it. If you are too SMB-focused, that’s not the best segment of the market, typically. Maybe you can have a single test to check if that company is at risk. If you were to replace that tool, can a $20 a month AI agent do this task? If switch it cost are low, then maybe that’s not a good business opportunity. Maybe you should not invest, or you should sell the stock.Again, maybe you have to focus more on regulated niches, hardware dependent, critical private data, solutions where there is already outcome or value-based pricing in place. You have to put some rules and analysis to help you understand, is this business at risk of significant disruption or not? Not all business are the same. As an investor, that might mean that there would be some good opportunities. SaaS businesses that are going to emerge even stronger right now are at a cheap discount. Nuno Goncalves PedroAbsolutely. I think at the end of the day, certain basic workflow tools that are out there to simplify CRM, some very basic ERP modules, anything that’s very, very simple in terms of if this then that, all those tools are also going to be slaughtered relatively soon, sadly. If you’re in that space, maybe time, as Bertrand was saying earlier, to pivot, to go after some fundamental differentiation, or to do something else. You want to conclude, Bertrand? Bertrand SchmittConclusionSure. I guess we could see that from a trade perspective, from an investor perspective. I think it’s creating quite genuinely some opportunities. Some stocks are in the bargain, some of those are value traps, so you better get your investment skills in order. PE, private credit, definitely a lot of risk, not just from AI, I think from basic fraud as well.Secondary market, as you just say, it’s not an easy one. It’s a canary in the coal mine. I think you will agree, but this is before getting between AI native versus everything else these days, especially if you are more early stage. A more established business, it’s a different thing. But right now, just starting a regular SaaS company, that’s a tough one. From an investor perspective, you need to pivot as fast as you can from seed-based pricing, hybrid, outcome-based, value-based pricing. You have to do the move quickly. You don’t want to be pushed when it’s too late.Build-versus-buy is real, and that will only accelerate as coding agents mature. Vertical specialization, proprietary data are strong moat. They were before as well, so it’s nothing new. But I think the importance of having a true moat is more critical than ever. Lots of companies have received investment with not enough moat, and that’s the one getting destroyed in the private and public market. If you have strong matrix, there is a question of when is a good time to exit? I don’t know if the relations will ever come back. I think it truly depends as well on your business, a strategic fit with acquisition opportunities.Anecdotally, I have seen some businesses who look at exit opportunities and now are finding attractive options. It’s not all that dark, I would say. Maybe to answer to the question, do we have a SaaS apocalypse? Yes and no. Some companies are going to end badly, some companies are going to emerge stronger. I think that’s it for today. Thank you, Nino. Nuno Goncalves PedroThank you, Bertrand.

HT2563 - Advice on Travel Photography Here is some advice about travel that doesn't come from me, although I do agree with it. Strangely enough, it's a passage from the book Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1929. Not aimed specifically at photographers or artists, it still is an observation about travel that I think fits perfectly with our creative process as photographers. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

Why do confident, capable women replay conversations long after they end? In this episode of Elevate Your Mind, Rebecca Wiener McGregor — master hypnotist and subconscious recalibration specialist — explains: • Why overthinking conversations is often subconscious vigilance • How early relational environments shape nervous system patterns • The difference between insight and imprint • How subconscious recalibration dissolves conversational tension If you're articulate but internally alert in connection, this episode will resonate. Explore private subconscious recalibration work at rebeccawiener.com

Strangely, Friends: A History of Cuban-Canadian Encounters (Between the Lines, 2025) delves into the rich, often overlooked history of personal and cultural connections between Cubans and Canadians. From the early days of the Cuban Revolution to the present, this book uncovers the stories of Canadians who were drawn to Cuba--teachers, artists, development aid workers, filmmakers, and activists--who left an indelible mark on the island, and Cubans, especially the musicians, who found a home in Canada. Through intimate portraits and serendipitous encounters, Karen Dubinsky explores how these relationships transcended political ideologies and state policies, revealing a shared humanity that defies borders. From the classrooms of Havana to the jazz clubs of Toronto, this book captures the enduring bonds forged through music, education, and mutual curiosity, offering a fresh perspective on the power of people-to-people connections. Karen Dubinsky is Professor of History at Queens University in Canada. Katie Coldiron is Latin American & Caribbean Studies Librarian at Florida International University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Strangely, Friends: A History of Cuban-Canadian Encounters (Between the Lines, 2025) delves into the rich, often overlooked history of personal and cultural connections between Cubans and Canadians. From the early days of the Cuban Revolution to the present, this book uncovers the stories of Canadians who were drawn to Cuba--teachers, artists, development aid workers, filmmakers, and activists--who left an indelible mark on the island, and Cubans, especially the musicians, who found a home in Canada. Through intimate portraits and serendipitous encounters, Karen Dubinsky explores how these relationships transcended political ideologies and state policies, revealing a shared humanity that defies borders. From the classrooms of Havana to the jazz clubs of Toronto, this book captures the enduring bonds forged through music, education, and mutual curiosity, offering a fresh perspective on the power of people-to-people connections. Karen Dubinsky is Professor of History at Queens University in Canada. Katie Coldiron is Latin American & Caribbean Studies Librarian at Florida International University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Strangely, Friends: A History of Cuban-Canadian Encounters (Between the Lines, 2025) delves into the rich, often overlooked history of personal and cultural connections between Cubans and Canadians. From the early days of the Cuban Revolution to the present, this book uncovers the stories of Canadians who were drawn to Cuba--teachers, artists, development aid workers, filmmakers, and activists--who left an indelible mark on the island, and Cubans, especially the musicians, who found a home in Canada. Through intimate portraits and serendipitous encounters, Karen Dubinsky explores how these relationships transcended political ideologies and state policies, revealing a shared humanity that defies borders. From the classrooms of Havana to the jazz clubs of Toronto, this book captures the enduring bonds forged through music, education, and mutual curiosity, offering a fresh perspective on the power of people-to-people connections. Karen Dubinsky is Professor of History at Queens University in Canada. Katie Coldiron is Latin American & Caribbean Studies Librarian at Florida International University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

“If everything's important, then nothing is important”. You've probably heard that many times. Yet, are you guilty of ignoring it?  In today's episode, I share with you a few ideas on how to best prioritise your days.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin   The Ultimate Productivity Workshop  The Hybrid Productivity Course    Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 405 Hello, and welcome to the real episode 405 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. (Apologies for the incorrect numbering last week) A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.  How many overdue flagged tasks do you have in your task manager? If you're like most people, you will have quite a few.  The question is: why are they overdue? You made a conscious decision that these tasks were important, but then did not do them when you wanted to do them. This is something I struggled with for years. I would add flags to anything I felt was important, then completely ignore them throughout my day. It wasn't until I realised I was making a mistake and diminishing the power that flags give me, that I changed my approach. Over the last few weeks, I've seen this coming up in a lot of my coaching sessions, where I notice overdue flagged tasks cluttering things up and becoming a distraction to the user.  The other issue here is that overdue flagged tasks cause an increase in anxiety. You flagged them because they were important or urgent, and now you have a long list of such tasks. Where do you start to get them under control?  Now, before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question, if you've been waiting for the 2026 Ultimate Productivity Workshop, then the wait's over. Coming on the 8th and 15th of March, join me live for a festival of productivity. Featuring the COD foundation, the Time Sector System, and how to get on top of your backlogs and so much more, including the DPS (daily Planning Sequence and the WPM (weekly Planning Matrix).  Places are limited, so get yourself registered today. Full details are in the show notes.  And now it's time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week's question comes from Caroline. Caroline asks, “ Hi Carl, I've recently cleaned up my Todoist, and as I was doing so, I found a lot of flagged tasks that I had ignored. These are important tasks, and I don't want to remove the flag. But it's become so overwhelming. What's the best way to use flags, in your opinion?  Hi Caroline, thank you for your question.  As a Todoist user, you have many options for your flags. There are technically four flags. P1 (red), P2 (orange), P3 (blue) and P4 (white). The P4 flag isn't really a flag, since all tasks default to it. With these flags, there are many ways you can organise them. However, you do need one of them to be your priority flag.  When I say “priority flag,” this is the one you use when a task absolutely must be done on the day it was assigned.  Logically, you would use the P1 red flag for that.  Now, this is where many people go wrong.  It's very tempting to add a flag to a task long before it is due. The feeling is that if the task is important, it will still be important on the day you plan to do it.  Not true. Priorities change.  You plan to finish a proposal for your most important client on Thursday, but that morning, your daughter has a serious asthma attack, and you are now in the emergency room of your local hospital. Where's your priority now?  Okay, I know that example is a little extreme, but those things happen.  Priorities also change throughout the week. That important client may tell you the proposal is on hold for a few months, so there is no urgency. But new priorities will come along, don't you worry.  This is why adding your flags should be done at a daily planning level.  Now I will caveat that.  There are times when I know something will be the priority for the day. The script for this podcast, for instance, is today's priority. I knew that when I planned the week, and I flagged it. It doesn't matter what other things pop up through the week; when it comes to writing this script, it's the priority for the day.  Your core work will always be a priority. This is why I have people spend time working out what their core work is. After all, your core work is the reason you are employed. If you didn't do your core work consistently, you would not have a job for very long.  Even retired people need to consider what their core activities will be each day.  I'm reminded of this following a conversation I had with my father-in-law over the weekend. We've just had the lunar New Year here in Korea, and my parents-in-law stayed with us over the holiday.  During that time, my father-in-law mentioned he planned to hang up his silicone gun and tiling trowel at the end of the year. He fits bathrooms and was thinking about what he would do when he no longer needs to wake up at 5:00 am each morning.  The first thing I said was that he needs to prioritise exercise. His job ensures he's getting plenty of exercise. Walking up and down stairs carrying sinks, shower kits and tiles is hard physical work. His job currently ensures he's getting his exercise.  The moment he stops doing that five days a week, he will need to find a replacement activity to prevent muscle loss.  Losing his muscle mass will lead to him losing his independence very quickly.  We all have priorities that recur. Those tasks can be pre-flagged. They are critical, whether you are working or retired. Having a few tasks already prioritised helps you plan the day, since you can decide whether they will be the priority or not. Let me explain.  All of us are limited by the same thing each day. Time. It's the one thing none of us can change. Writing this podcast script takes about 2 to 2.5 hours. That eats a big chunk of my work time each week.  At the same time, we all have to deal with communications, meetings, admin and other day-to-day tasks. I need to include an hour each day for taking Louis for his walk, and next week, he also has a grooming appointment, which will take time out of my week.  Looking at next week's calendar today, I can see where my appointments are and already guess which tasks will be a priority. When I do my weekly planning, I pre-flag what I think will be the priority for each day, but I am aware that when I do daily planning, I may need to change it. There has to be a degree of flexibility.  It could be that I get an email on Monday asking for a proposal to work with a company and design a workshop for them. That would become a priority for that week.  I would add a task, “Begin work on company workshop”, and schedule it. Yet, I would not flag it then. When the day comes, and I do my daily planning, I then get to see the real landscape of my day.  It could be that I have five hours of meetings that day and two or three pre-planned, prioritised tasks. Now I have to make a decision. What is my REAL priority that day?  If I have promised to get the workshop outline to the client by the end of the week, that will be my red-flagged task that day. I made a promise, and I will deliver on that promise.  Given that I have five hours of meetings and need two hours to put together the outline and proposal, there's not going to be much time left for anything else that day. I need to re-prioritise my day.  So I add the flag to the workshop's proposal and decide on what needs to be rescheduled.  It's likely that, in that given scenario, I would not flag anything else. I know I don't have time to do much else.  This is why daily and weekly planning complement each other. The weekly plan is about setting yourself objectives. The daily plan is about ensuring you prioritise your day so you work towards meeting those objectives—given the new information, ie, new tasks that will inevitably come in.  Now I know many of you will add a flag to a task because you keep rescheduling it and just do not want to spend the time doing it. The thinking goes that if you flag it, you will do the task. Hmmm, how often does that work?  This is often the reason many flagged tasks become overdue. The only change is that the task now has a flag. Yet you still don't want to spend the time doing it. When you use your daily planning time to prioritise your day, you're using real, up-to-date information to guide you. You can remove flags from tasks you thought were important but are no longer, and add a flag to the tasks that are important that day.  I mentioned that you can pre-prioritise your week by flagging tasks at the weekly planning session. When you do the daily planning, you decide if your priorities have changed and, if so, remove flags or reschedule those tasks.  What I like about this approach is that it feels like your task manager is supporting you rather than the other way around. You retain control over what you will and will not do each day.  This works particularly well if you find yourself behind on something or have a backlog that needs dealing with. When you plan the day, you get to decide what to place on your task list and in what order. Now, how many flags should you allow each day? Several years ago, I decided to find out how many tasks I could consistently do each day for a week. I began with fifteen and soon discovered that if I wanted to be consistent, then that number was ten.  This number does not include routine tasks such as cleaning my actionable email, my daily admin tasks and the usual things we all have to do at work each day.  When it came to flagged tasks, I soon discovered that I could consistently do two important tasks a day. When I tried three or more, I frequently was unable to do one of them. I just ran out of time.  And so, my 2+8 Prioritisation Method was born.  This method forces you to realistically prioritise your day. You can choose only two must-do tasks for the day. These are flagged. The remaining eight are not flagged, and you will do what you can to clear that list each day.  This method works because it introduces constraints into your system.  Given that it's human nature to want to do more than we can realistically do each day, adding this constraint of no more than ten tasks per day ensures you are picking the genuinely important tasks.  No, that interesting YouTube video is not important. You can watch that any time. But renewing your father's prescription for him is.  Checking your car's tyre pressures before you head out on a long road trip this afternoon will be a priority over reading that article your colleague sent you.  I have my Todoist set up so I can see my red-flagged tasks each day using a filter. That filter is “today & P1”.  Each morning, before I begin my day, that's the first place I go. I review my flagged tasks and remove any excess.  This has taught me to become ruthlessly competent at prioritising.  Strangely, this goes back to something I learned in my teenage years. In Hyrum Smith's Ten Natural Laws of Time and Life Management, he writes about establishing your governing values. Today. I think of these as my Areas of Focus.  These governing values are the predetermined priorities in your life. Often, family will be at the top of that list. The idea is that your governing values have a natural prioritised list. For example, if your family's well-being is above your career, if your family needs you to do something, that will be prioritised over your work commitments.  For me, my health and fitness is above my work in my list of areas of focus. This means I will not schedule meetings at 4:30 pm. That's my exercise time. I will not do any work at that time either. At 4:30 pm, I exercise.  So there you go, Caroline. I hope that has helped. The key is to prioritise your day during your daily planning and use that time to reset your flags so nothing is ever overdue.  And above all, respect your flags. If you know you will not be doing a flagged task on any given day. Either reschedule the task or remove the flag.  Thank you for your question, and thank you to you too for listening.  It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

At a small college in northern Wisconsin, students whisper about a ghost named Wanda who haunts Memorial Hall.But that isn't the dorm this student is worried about.Assigned to McMillan Hall her freshman year, she expected homesickness and late-night study sessions — not the unmistakable sound of someone shifting in the bottom bunk of her empty room. At first, it was just creaking. Then it was movement. Then it was something she could almost see.When objects began sliding across the floor and lifting on their own, the unease turned into fear. And one night, she woke up running for the lights — with an injury she couldn't explain. Strangely, not every floor felt the same.So if Wanda wasn't in her building… who was?#RealGhostStoriesOnline #HauntedDorm #CollegeHaunting #WandaTheGhost #Ghosts #ParanormalEncounter #CampusGhost #TrueGhostStory #MidnightFootsteps #HauntingsLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

When her family moved into a new house, she chose the bedroom at the back—quiet, private, and unremarkable. At first, nothing felt wrong. But over time, she began waking at night with the unmistakable feeling that someone was standing beside her bed. A dark figure appeared, small and indistinct, never speaking and never threatening—easy to dismiss as a half-dream.Then objects began moving. An alarm clock cord she kept carefully hidden was repeatedly found rearranged. One night, she saw the clock stretched into the room, suspended in the air, only to blink and find it back in place.Strangely, everything stopped whenever she moved her bed away from one specific wall.Years later, curiosity led her to test that theory again—and this time, the presence made itself known in a way she could no longer explain away. Even now, she's left wondering whether the room was ever truly empty.#RealGhostStoriesOnline #ShadowFigure #HauntedBedroom #ParanormalActivity #TrueGhostStory #Unexplained #ShadowPeople #ListenerStoriesLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

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