Podcasts about Theoretically

ACOFAE Podcast Presents: Jessica's Genre: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood. Celebrating Jessica Marie's half birthday with her genre of choice, ACOFAE dives into the Romance genre with Ali Hazelwood's Love, Theoretically. Surprising maybe someone, Laura Marie loved this story that is filled with Academia, it's politics, people pleasing, and learning how to truly be yourself. Oh and also unlearning the need for male validation. ACOFAE loves that. Elsie is a Physicist and needs a job badly. Jack is a Physicist and has met Elsie before in different circumstances. Shenanigans ensue that are as delightful as they are meaningful. Throw in a delightful female friendship dynamic and a grand gesture at the end and Laura Marie and Jessica Marie are eating this story up. Why are men. TW / CW: domestic violence, toxic relationships For additional TW/CW information for your future reads, head to this site for more: https://triggerwarningdatabase.com/ Spoilers: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood and The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood Mentions: ACOMAF by Sarah J. Maas (SJM) and Twilight *Thank you for listening to us! Please subscribe and leave a 5-star review and follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/acofaepodcast/) at @ACOFAEpodcast and on our TikToks! TikTok: ACOFAELaura : Laura Marie (https://www.tiktok.com/@acofaelaura?) ( https://www.tiktok.com/@acofaelaura) ACOFAEJessica : Jessica Marie (https://www.tiktok.com/@acofaejessica?) (https://www.tiktok.com/@acofaejessica) Instagram: @ACOFAEpodcast (https://www.instagram.com/acofaepodcast/) https://www.instagram.com/acofaepodcast/ @ACOFAELaura (https://www.instagram.com/acofaelaura/) https://www.instagram.com/acofaelaura/

Welcome to Immersion You have reached strata 3Flex and the Robo-Dog (Making Decisions)Decisions are the cusp between reality and possibility. Decisive actions create a continuously evolving universe for sentient beings where fate can immobilise actions and defeat progress. The decision-makers hold power over themselves, and, more often than not, over others.Androids programmed to learn can aid decision-making when dealing with complex data, intricate parameters, and variables that surpass human understanding.Often they excel at making accurate choices within their defined boundaries. However, an android will not excel in addressing intangibleaspects of human decision-making. Ethical dilemmas, moral considerations, and other human factors that significantly influence our lives and shape society are neither considered nor understood by a machine.Maybeline was sitting on Renyke's shoulder cleaning herself. Renyke collected bugs from the alley and analysed their chemical and biological structure.There was a bag next to where he had woken, a large backpack, beside a long leather coat. Renyke took some time to look in the bag attempting to remember how he had arrived in the alley. Nothing seemed familiar.'What are all these things?' he asked POS.These are standard-issue SAS munitions from the 21st century.....It occurred to Renyke that he could interrogate POS for more information.'Why am I here?Where have I come from?'There was a long pause before POS answered....I do not have access to that information. My software was set to launch when we arrived. There is no accessible historical data at my disposal...Catching himself in a window reflection Renyke put on the dark glasses he had found in the pocket of the coat.'We look pretty good Maybeline,' he remarked, surprised by his unfamiliar vanity.Mabeline nestled into Renyke's neck as they left the relative safety of the alley and entered the foreboding street.They were in the centre of a busy metropolis. There was a lot of activity with people shouting, bartering goods and moving quickly about the place. There were small groups of brightly dressed individuals congregating around stationary vehicles. Some were smoking pipes. Small hazy clouds hovered above them trapping the weak rays of the sun. The towering semi-derelict buildings created shadowy corners where small fires provided more light and warmth.The vehicles appeared to be a mix of old-fashioned motorised cabins from transportation systems and helicopters. There were some long-legged hybrids; electric solar-engine mashups that looked like menacing metal insects.Renyke's detectors showed the air comprised mostly of oxygen with low levels of other chemicals: chlorine, sulphur, silicone, fluorine polymers and plasticisers.'Hey, dude from the *Brightside, you want some *nibs?'A man hovered expectantly, somewhat close for comfort. He looked dishevelled but alert as he checked all directions avoiding eye contact with Renyke.Renyke checked POS for 'nibs'.......A drug used by nearly half the world's population that creates euphoria and doubles strength for a limited period. Overdose can cause temporary and permanent coma. Long-term effects; brain rot......'How much?' asked Renyke, whose algorithm was set to absorb all information about humans.'I can do you a deal' said the man, '50 *bits.... Or the Rat'.Renyke checked POS for *bits......Bits: street talk for gold, silver, uranium and other metal nuggets used in the black and grey economy without government authority....'I have no bits,' said Renyke.'Hahahahahaha'.........' see you in hell brother!' shouted the man as he danced away on long legs and a demeanour that seemed at odds with his situation.In the *midcasts, happiness came with security and expectation. digital and technological lives were formatted for predictability and reliability. The present and the future were reliable and predictable. Although Renyke was struggling to remember the details of his purpose here,, he knew very well that this place was different.A large flamboyant man in a fur coat whistled.'Hey girly, you want some dirty action? I'll take that rodent off your hands if you need some sexy time.'A warning comes from POS......Danger! Immediate! Ground Level!....A *robo-dog was barking loudly at Maybeline who was now snarling and making a shrieking noise.For a fraction of a second Renyke analysed all the variables and consequences of his next actions.The options were endless. POS had created a fleeting map of the most probable scenarios and outcomes that sprawled a multidimensional time map like a mathematical cobweb. Of course, Renyke, with his advanced artificial intelligence capabilities, was able to analyse in the tiniest fraction of time.He could immobilise the robo-dog, tame it and use it, sell it, break it up, separate its useful component parts, analyse its database for information, absorb its operating system, or, he could simply ignore it.Renyke began to ponder his skill set remembering that he was an excellent chess player. Single decisions about actions that he could make foresaw a million possibilities. Theoretically, this allowed for finely tuned activities and performance with very little or zero harm caused to his previous owners. Indeed, this forward-thinking ability had marked machines as superior in operation to humans who were narrow thinkers and only able to make selfish and immediate decisions based on emotional desires without reference to consequences.The robo-dog opened its mouth and bit Renyke's ankle.to be continued...© 2025 Sarnia de la Mare

On this episode Sarah and I bring almost every rating.  We are quite sure you will find something to add to your shelf.  If you've read any, do you agree with our ratings?  Let us know. Sarah's Shelf: What Does It Feel Like by Sophie Kinsella The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits by Jennifer Weiner There's Something About Mira by Sonali Dev   Jayme's Shelf: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan Out On a Limb by Hannah Bonam-Young

Quaranteam – Book 1: Part 3 A New family. Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels. Chapter 7 That evening, Andy and the girls decided to curl up in bed and watch some television with Niko asleep next to them. At first, Andy was worried that the volume would be high enough to wake up their newest addition, but Aisling assured him nothing was going to stir her from her slumber. Sure enough, despite the volume of the show “ a Spanish Netflix crime drama called La Casa De Papel “ Niko didn't budge an inch. Andy fell asleep with Aisling pressed up against his right side and Lauren pressed up against his left, both of their heads resting against his chest. When he'd first started sleeping with Aisling in his bed, he'd had trouble falling asleep easily. It wasn't something his body had any regular experience with, so it had to be trained. He'd had similar trepidation when Lauren joined them. But now, having had both of the girls for nearly three weeks, he'd grown comfortable with their bodies nestled against his. In the middle of the night, he was in the middle of a strange sex dream only to be woken to find Niko bobbing her head up and down on his cock, her lips latched around it firmly. Neither Lauren or Aisling had woken. Andy couldn't see Niko well in the low light of the wee hours, but her head was feverish, her mouth suctioning on his member until he popped a load against the back of her throat, a thankful, almost vulgar moan coming from the woman, as her tongue lathered over his cock to make sure no droplet remained. She was still spasming in orgasm long after he was done. Once she'd finished licking his cock clean, she crawled back up into the bed, and moved to lay against Lauren's side, folding one arm over the Aussie. Andy fell back asleep almost immediately. When dawn broke, Andy awoke to find Niko straddling his hips, his cock lodged up inside of her snatch. He often woke up with a hard on, but Ash and Lauren had agreed to let him at least wake up in the morning before having a go at him. Clearly no one had informed Niko. He didn't feel bad taking a better look at her now, her tits pressed together between her arms as her hands rest against his chest, while her hips snapped back and forth. Her skin was a deep tan, her nipples a chocolate brown, her hair a jet black. She wasn't tall, about the same height as Aisling so half a foot shorter than Andy, and a full foot shorter than Lauren. She was muscular, toned, a life of military training having kept her very in shape. His orgasm wasn't strong, but it came on quick. By this point, Andy was a little surprised he wasn't cumming dust. As soon as his orgasm hit, she fell forward against his chest, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Aisling and Lauren were both already awake, each with a hand on one of Niko's thighs affectionately. "God damn, sorry about that, sir," Niko laughed, breathy and still shaking. "2nd Lieutenant Niko RedWolf, reporting for her new life, sir. I think my head's finally clear again." "Wasn't it before?" Andy asked. She shook her head, lifting her head up enough so she could look down and smile at him, her hair threatening to spill out of her ponytail at a moment's notice. "Would you believe this is the first time it's actually registered to me what you look like, sir?" She had a mischievous smile and kind brown eyes. "They may have told me your name, but I don't think it cut through the fog. Who are you?" Andy blanched. "My name's Andy Rook. What do you mean, you don't think it cut through the fog?" Niko looked over at Lauren, who scooted a little bit to one side, so Niko could slide off of the top of him and in against his side. "I serve on the Air Force base where they were testing the vaccine, and I agreed to be a test candidate. The two men who were injected with it died immediately, but I and the other female officer seemed fine. At first. Within a few days of it, I started feeling, well, pardon my saying so, sir, but I started feeling horny all the time. The other female officer as well." Aisling smirked over at Niko. "Permission to swear freely is habitually granted in this home, 2nd Lieutenant. In fact, Andy likes a girl with a filthy mouth," she giggled, slapping his thigh. He wilted a little bit, but then nodded in confirmation to Niko. "It's true." "Duly noted, sir," Niko answered. "Anyway, they didn't know about the side effects during the early testing stages, but it started to become pretty fucking apparent to them when I would continually get all fidgety. I tried to resist as long as I could, but eventually I was jilling off in bathroom stalls every chance I could get. Within a week or two, they had an answer, and the program was born." "The Air Force developed the vaccine?" "You think those morons in private research were going to do it this fast? Hell no." Niko snuggled in, trying to get as comfortable as possible pressed up against his chest. "So they figured out that they could introduce the vaccine to men by sexual contact with a vaccinated woman, and that it seemed to help quell the insane need to fuck all the time that women given the vaccine were feeling." "If you were one of the first people to be given the vaccine, then why weren't you partnered up with someone immediately?" Lauren asked. "I wasn't fond of being subservient to a man, so I told them I wanted someone who would keep me on equal ground. But because the nature of my work with Air Force, I also needed someone who would have Top Secret level clearance." Andy's eyes widened. "I sure as hell don't have that." "No, you don't, but you'd mostly been vetted for it Your friend Phil Pak has been trying to get you to come and work with him for a long while, so they'd done all the legwork, and decided to call it good enough." "I also happen to have a mess of partners, Niko. Are you sure that's going to be okay?" "It's all been taken care of, otherwise they wouldn't have sent me here." Niko's eyes suddenly widened. "Oh my god, I haven't even introduced myself to your other partners." Aisling winked at her. "You had hard fucking to do, love. I'm Aisling Blake, I'm from Dublin originally. Everyone around here calls me Ash. I do graphic design." She shook Niko's hand, but Niko pulled her over Andy's head and pressed a kiss against Aisling's lips above him, one which Ash was perfectly happy to reciprocate. "And who's the giantess surfer behind me?" Niko said, pulling back and turning around. "Lauren Herron. I'm a personal trainer for the '49ers." "An Irish girl and an Aussie. About time you got some American blood in this mix." Andy laughed. "That's what my roommate's partner Lily said." "Where are you from, Niko?" "The Rosebud reservation in South Dakota. I'm half Lakota, one quarter Mexican and one quarter Japanese. I know, it's quite the cocktail, but we've all got stories." It was nearly noon when they all got out of bed. Niko was the youngest of all of them, only twenty two. Ash was twenty seven, Lauren thirty five and Andy himself just shy of forty. Andy was worried that Niko might consider him too old, but Niko assured him that his age was not a concern for her. As a matter of fact, she liked older men. She found younger men too emotionally volatile for her tastes. She'd actually read one of his books, but the problem was that it was "The Trouble With Were Bears," the book he was least proud of. She'd said she found the main character interesting, but the plot rather confusing. He assured her the other ones were better, and she seemed eager to read them. The fuck lust, as Niko described it, would be with the girls for the rest of their lives. The longer they went without reconnecting with Andy, the more their judgment would be compromised, the harder it would be to think clearly. They would become like junkies in need of a fix. They would be easily agitated, quick tempered and even violent if they felt it would get them back to their pusher “ Andy. When Niko had arrived at Andy's condo, she had been so out of it that even now she couldn't recall the events he related back to her. Her first memory in weeks had been being in bed with him this morning, even as she crawled atop of him. She knew that he was her mate. She wasn't sure how she knew that, but she could feel it, sense it. And when he'd had his third orgasm inside of her within less than a day, the imprinting had finally settled in and peeled back the cloud from her consciousness. While Lauren was on leave until the pandemic had receded, Niko would be working from the condo. Although she was a qualified pilot, her service in the Air Force was as a data analyst, and a secure connection was being set up on site for her to use. Until then, she had a bit of a break. It was a Saturday, and the girls decided they wanted to work on their tans. The condo had a small back yard that was fenced off. While the neighbors in the condos on either side would be able to peer down and see them, the girls had decided to sunbathe topless. Lily had even decided to join them, although she bitched about the heat, which was pushing over a hundred. Andy spent the afternoon filling Eric in on all the information he'd gotten over the last two days “ what Phil had told him, what Niko had told him, all of it. Eric, in return, had filled in Andy with what he'd learned from work over the last few weeks. While Lily, Andy and Eric all knew who Eric worked for, they'd been a little bit vague with the girls, always joking that Eric worked for a think tank that didn't do anything interesting, but soon they were going to have to fill them in. Eric worked for a company called Long Thought Research and Development, but the truth of the matter was that they were a remote analyst cell for the CIA. Long Thought handled problems that were overwhelming in the abstract and deadly in application “ they were responsible for terrorist profiling, weapons migration modeling, political theater simulations and a whole lot more. Over the last few weeks, they'd been working on building a new model, one which had Eric worried. Theoretically, every member of Long Thought was supposed to be sectioned off, working on only a singular aspect of the problem so that no one analyst could get an idea of what the simulation was intended to determine. It was supposedly to avoid confirmation bias, but Eric had considered that explanation bullshit as of late. So he'd done a little bit of data gathering from his coworkers on the sly, and come up with a working theory. The model was designed to see how the world's new normal would pan out if 37.5% of the male population of Earth died out to a pandemic. This pandemic. Niko had wandered in before the rest of the girls, while Andy and Eric stood in the kitchen, staring at one another. Then she'd offered her own information, to help talk Andy out of what he'd been thinking about. Because Andy had been thinking about going to the press. She'd explained to him that for the time being, all of the information had to remain secret, or a nationwide panic would ensue. The vaccine that the Air Force had developed was starting to be deployed to major metropolitan areas on a very specific basis. And when a mayor, a governor, a representative or a senator had put up a fuss, Niko hinted that that particular politician had been exposed to the virus and then offered a choice “ they could take the vaccine, and be mated for life to one (or in some cases many) person, or they could deny the vaccine worked, and would be allowed to die. Only one governor had chosen to decline the vaccine, and while the Air Force had respected their wishes, they didn't allow the governor to tell anyone about the vaccine and its side effects. They did allow the governor to die, though. Niko explained to the two men that there were probably only a hundred or so people in the country with the full picture of what was going on, and that was by design, because already the virus was starting to take its toll on other countries. While some countries had done excellent jobs at containing the spread of it, others were on the verge of collapse. And the CIA was debating on what countries were worth saving and which weren't. England, Ireland and Australia were already in the process of being brought up to speed about the vaccine, but the complete details were only being given to them on an as needed basis. The pairing program had been confirmed to the outside world, but the side effects of the vaccine had been kept hush hush. On some level, the Air Force was convinced that foreign governments would laugh themselves at being told that the vaccine had crazy sexual side effects until they had gotten a chance to experience them for themselves. "Shit," Andy grumbled. "The ex-journalist in me feel like I'm sitting on the story of the century here, and I can't tell anybody." Niko squeezed his hand softly. "You're a good man, Andy Rook, which is why I'm happy to be mated to you, but you have to consider the ramifications of what would happen if you revealed all of this to the public." "The whole goddamn world would explode," Eric sighed. "I know. I've seen the data. And that's not the worst of it." "What's the worst of it then?" Andy asked. "The worst of it is that we're going to have to let a billion men die off for the planet to stabilize. It's going to be the biggest culling since World War Two, and even that wasn't a drop in the bucket compared to what this is." The three stood in silence for a long time. "How does anyone make these kinds of decisions?" Andy whispered. "You don't have to. We don't have to," Niko said, wrapping an arm around him. "You can't save the whole world, Andy, but you can save us. Hell, you've already saved those two amazing women out there. And they've been so nice to me, even though I apparently fucked you at your desk before even introducing myself." She blushed a little. "I still don't remember that. Did you watch, Eric?" Eric laughed, lifting the Collins glass full of scotch to his lips. "Are you kidding? Lily would've kicked the shit out of me if I did." "Oh, I dunno," Andy chuckled. "If you asked, she might let you watch." "Well, I don't intend to ask. She already has me waking up sore most mornings." "That's just the exercise from all the fucking you're doing," Andy said. "You're out of practice, just like me, and hell, I've got three women to satisfy." "Soon to be four," Niko giggled. "I'm sure it's every man's dream." "I'm just waiting for the first big fight to occur, because I know it's coming sooner or later." "That's future Andy's problem," Niko said, turning his face down so she could kiss him for a moment. "Besides, Ash made it pretty clear just because you're tired of giving me my medicine doesn't mean you get to skimp out on your promise to her." Andy groaned playfully. "I'm going to be running dry in a few days at this rate." "Oh I wouldn't worry too much about that, Andy," Eric said with a laugh. "The fall will probably kill you." "Yeah, well, you just keep thinking, Butch," Andy countered. "That's what you're good at." "What are the cats' names?" "The Russian blue is Muninn, and the black one is Huginn." "Odd names." "It's the name for Odin's two ravens, thought and wisdom," Eric said. "We were on a Norse mythology kick when we got them as kittens." "They friendly?" "Oh sure," Andy said. "They're just getting used to this many people being in the house at one time. If you put out their food enough times, they'll start cuddling up to you any chance they get. Ash decided she was going to befriend them right after she got here, and Muninn'll hop up into her lap when she's working at the table some days and just settle there. That's why Eric built her the foot rest, so she can put her legs up and Muninn'll sit there quietly." Niko looked back and forth between the two men for a minute. "How the hell were you two single before any of us showed up?" "Women don't like nerds," Eric grumbled. Andy raised a finger, arguing the point. "No, they like nerds alright, but they don't seem to understand that nerds like aggressive women and are terrible at making the first move. So nerds don't get the love they deserve." Niko looked out into the back yard, where the girls were gathering up their things, wrapping towels around their waists. "I dunno. You two seem to have done pretty well for yourselves at this point." Andy smirked, cocking his head to one side. "Sure, but luck is like the weather. Wait a few minutes and it'll change." A storm of bad luck was, indeed, just over the horizon. Chapter 8 The next few days involved a lot of time getting settled, as Andy learned more about the girls who now shared his life. They also spent time learning about each other. Andy spent time trying to get some writing done on another Druid Gunslinger novel, and when he got into a zone, the girls made a pact not to disturb him, especially if he started typing away badly. That gave them plenty of time to dig into each other's history, and the girls began to scheme and plan. They took great fun in learning each other's turn ons and offs, and to figure out how to quell their own wild desires, to try new experiences. The girls also took an interest in reading the seven books Andy had written in the Druid Gunslinger series, with Aisling going so far as to even mock up a movie poster for one of them, which delighted Andy to no end. It was starting to become obvious that the condo wasn't designed to hold this many people, however. At night, things were fine because everyone was packed in their beds, but during the day, people were having to work around one another. Aisling and Niko set up their laptops at the dining room table, while Lauren spent much of the day either working out in the backyard, or reading in a deck chair. Andy and Eric each had their own desk, Andy's in the dining room and Eric's in the living room. Lily seemed perfectly comfortable coding in the living room on the couch. When Andy's last partner showed up, she would have to either share space in the backyard or the couch in the living room. The dining room table might fit a third workspace, but it would be a very tight fit. There had been nice surprises, however. Both Lauren and Aisling were excellent cooks, each with radically different styles. Lauren focused on healthy cooking, while Ash was the master of lush, savory cooking that threatened waistlines just from the very smell of it. The cats had taken well to their new housemates, keeping themselves entertained while everyone was working. From time to time, they would hop onto people's laps, or walk across their laptops, but for the most part, they were just happy to have people to be around who might be willing to pet them in a spare moment. But they were starting to feel the limitations of the condo, and the heat wasn't helping. They had fans running nonstop, but the condo didn't have centralized air conditioning. When it had just been the two of them, they were able to manage by closing the windows and drawing the drapes, because the condo was nicely shaded by trees. But with six people, that wasn't holding up as well. By the time it started to cool down in the evening, a light funk had started to fill the place. And there was still one more person to show up. The camaraderie between them all had helped diffuse the tension, even as they delved into each other's past. Andy had gotten to know some of Aisling's siblings, especially Dermot, who had refused to let Andy off the line the first time they'd talked until he'd promised to send him an advance reader copy of "High Noon At Stonehenge," the upcoming Druid Gunslinger book that had started Andy down this whole journey. Turning on the news every night had been hard to watch, simply because it didn't jibe with the information they had at their own fingertips. As Phil had predicted, the government was doing its best to downplay the casualties, reporting false numbers to make it sound like everything was under control. And while reports of the vaccination program were starting to get out to the masses, nobody was talking about the side effects. Why, Andy kept asking himself, why oh why was nobody talking about the side effects? They were wrapping up a day's worth of work when Niko looked over at Andy with a soft smile. Aisling and Lauren had headed upstairs a few minutes earlier. "I've sort of been monopolizing you for a few days, Andy, so Ash and Lauren have a little surprise cooked up for you while I work late tonight. I'll be up in a few hours to crawl into bed, but you should go up to your room and enjoy what they've got up their sleeves." "You okay with that?" Andy said. He'd been navigating a whirlwind of emotions since the girls had come into his life, and was doing his best to make sure nobody ever felt left out, and that everyone also got a turn being the center of attention. "Oh relax. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have said so. And I did demand a mess of attention when I got here, so it's only fair I tap out of a couple of play sessions. Gimme a kiss and then go have your fun." She tilted her head upward as he smiled and leaned down, pressing his lips against hers. He'd meant to give her a quick kiss, but she folded her hand against the back of his neck and pulled him in to make it much more intense, practically searing him with the heat. "And Lauren's going to be a little nervous, and you're going to want to go easy on her. Don't, okay? She wants what she's offering, so don't deny her that. You'll know what she wants. Give it to her." "Yes ma'am." He offered her a mock salute and she reached over and swatted his ass. "Don't be a smartass. Now get your butt upstairs." Andy shutdown his desktop and then headed up the stairs. The door to his room was closed. Eric and Lily had been in their room for about an hour already, and he could hear the sounds of moans behind their closed door. Lily and Eric both started and ended their days earlier than Andy and his girls. Whenever a door was closed in the house, the rule was that you always knocked. So there was Andy, once again, knocking on the door to his own bedroom. "Come on in, luv," Aisling said. Andy stepped into his own bedroom, and saw Aisling sitting on the corner of the bed. On her knees on the floor next to her was Lauren, with her hands folded together in front of her. She wore absolutely nothing, except for a collar attached to a leash, the end of which was in Aisling's hand. He closed the door behind himself, feeling Huginn skitter in just before he did. "So what's all this then?" "Well love," Aisling said, "Lauren has a request. A couple of requests, actually. Don't you, slut?" Lauren licked her lips nervously, not speaking, but nodding in agreement. Aisling took the leash by the midpoint and used the end to give Lauren a smack on the back like a mock lash. "I asked you a question, Lauren. Answer me." "Sorry, Mistress," Lauren said. "Yes, Master, your slut would like to make a coupla humble requests, if that's good." What Niko had told him just a few minutes rung in his ears once more before he spoke. "You may ask. Whether I'll grant them or not remains to be seen, but if you don't ask, you risk nothing, you gain nothing. Speak." "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. The other birds and I were talkin', and Aisl, Mistress Aisling was telling' us about her first time being taken in the back, an' I wanted to have a go at it." "Taken in the back?" Aisling gave her another playful smack with the leash end. "What did I tell you, whore? Speak plainly and dirty, otherwise he's not going to know what you want." "The ass, sir. I wanna be fucked in the ass." "That's one request. What's the other?" Andy said, moving a little closer to the two women. "You've been so wonderful and kind with me, Andy, but I want to see the other side of ya. I wanna rough go at it. Pull me hair, spank my ass, pinch me nips, ride my hard, pound me hard, make it hurt. Don't break me, but take me right up to that edge." Andy reached down and pinched one of Lauren's nipples between his fingertips, his grip holding firm and clamping even tighter than he would've normally. He expected to hear a whimper of pain from Lauren, but instead, a deep throated moan poured from her, and her hips almost rutted forward. "That what you're looking for?" "Fuck yes, Master." "If you want to be fucked in the ass, Lauren, you're going to need to get my cock good and slick. Going in dry would do some damage." Aisling giggled a little bit, and reached behind her, grabbing a tube of lubricant, handing it down to Lauren. Andy peeled his shirt off and felt Lauren's hands prying his jeans open, nearly ripping them down his legs. It wasn't until she'd gotten them down there that she realized he was still wearing his shoes from having walked out to the mailbox earlier. "Oh, you useless cunt, girl," Lauren said to herself. "Forgot to get his runners off." He certainly didn't go easy on her, and she certainly seemed to enjoy herself. Niko had slipped into bed with them an hour or so later, and the four of them drifted off to sleep. But it wasn't going to be a long and restful night for Andy. There was a knock on the door in the middle of the night. Aisling and Lauren were on his left and Niko was on his right, so he only had to move past her to get to the door. He saw her stir a little when he crawled out of bed, but he was able to avoid disturbing her too much. He pulled on a pair of boxers, tugged on a t shirt and opened the door to his room to see Eric and Lily standing outside. Eric curled his fingers at Andy to come out of his room. Andy nodded and stepped out into the hallway, then followed Eric and Lily downstairs to the living room. "Andy, we," Lily started, then paused, then started again, "I need your help." "Help?" Andy said, looking over at Eric. "What kind of help can I provide? I'm a writer, for fuck sake." "My roommate, well, my former roommate, she was given the vaccine, but,” Lily motioned for Andy to sit on the couch, so he did. "Look, Jenny's a nice girl. She's a little naive, and occasionally she's a bit daft, but she's a nice girl. She wasn't prepared for this." "Prepared for what?" Andy said. "What's happening?" "They delivered her to the man who was supposed to be her partner, and he took a swing at her, said he wanted to put her in her place before he'd let her have a taste of his seed. He tried to hit her, the fucking bastard. But Jenny's been studying aikido since she was six, and she broke his arm defending herself and ran. Even as horny as she was, she wasn't going to let someone push her around. So she fled and she's in hiding, and I can't let that stand, so we need to go and get her." "Go get her? Go and get her? And do what with her?" "I don't know, alright?" Lily said, raising her voice for a second. "I'm thinking we can take her to one of my coworkers and pair them up." "Isn't the government doing match ups? Aren't they going to be pissed that she isn't with who she's supposed to be?" "Look at me, Andy," Lily said, pointing her fingertips at her eyes. "Do I look like I give a shit what the government thinks? They didn't even do a proper check on the guy they were connecting her to. They paired her up with some abusive asshole with a history of violence towards partners. That isn't going to fly, okay?" "Let's go get her, and then we can figure out what to do with her, okay?" Eric suggested. "I'm sure one of us is going to regret this," Andy said, heading back upstairs to grab his socks and shoes. Before the plague had hit, even at three in the morning, there would've been at least a few cars on the road, but now, everyone was staying at home nearly all the time, which meant the freeway felt like a ghost town. That was for the best, because despite it not raining that much in the Bay Area, tonight it was pouring like a flood was coming. And people in the Bay were terrible drivers in the rain. It wasn't a short drive, and after a bit, Andy started to get a bit nervous. "How far up into the hills are we going, Lily? We're more than half way up to San Francisco at this point." "She's up here in Hillsborough, camped out in someone's vacant house since she fled from the asshole. I'm more worried that the cops have shown up to haul her ass to jail." "Or us," Eric said., They're gonna arrest us for being out under curfew." "Quit whining, baby," Lily said to him. "Right up there, on the left, 2885." There were in a very posh neighborhood in Hillsborough, with mansions on either side of them. There was plenty of space in between the houses, something that was mostly at a premium in the Bay. "You wait here with the engine running, Andy, in case we have to bolt quickly. Eric and I will be right back with her." Lily and Eric hopped out of the car, closing the doors and heading over to the house, and left Andy to wait. A minute or so later, a helicopter flew overhead, low and with a spotlight shining down, but it was off to the side and the beam of light cut through some back yard three or four streets over. Andy wasn't sure if they were looking for Lily's friend Jenny or not, but he hoped the police had other things on their mind. The wait was nearly unbearable. After ten minutes, Eric and Lily came back out of the house, a third person between them, hanging on, covered in a blanket it looked like had probably been stolen from whatever house she'd been hiding in. Eric held open the door and Lily loaded the woman into Andy's back seat before Lily ushered the girl into the car, crawling in after her as Eric slid into the front passenger's seat. "I think the cops are close, Andy," Lily hissed at him. "Fucking drive already!" As soon as both doors slammed shut, Andy's foot was off the brake and the car was in motion. It was hard to look back behind him, but after a few blocks he had to stop at a red light and glanced over his shoulder as he had to wait, and saw a familiar face resting her head in Lily's lap. "Jesus Lily, you didn't say your roommate was Jenny Carnero!" "Who's Jenny Carnero?" Eric asked. "She's the goddamn weather forecaster for channel 2." "How the hell would you know that?" Lily asked. "Neither of you strike me as Fox News watchers." "It's the only thing they had on over at 24 Hour Fitness when I went to work out, so I saw her all the time." "It was a job, Andy," Lily said. "I also didn't expect you to hold a grudge." "It's not that, Lily," Andy sighed. "She's going to be noticed missing. It's not like she's somebody we can just keep hidden without people knowing where she is. The minute she goes into work, the guy she's supposed to be with will know where to fucking find her, and that means they'll come for her." "By that point, she'll already be imprinted on someone, so it won't fucking matter," Lily growled. "And it won't be that asshole who tried to hit her." The girl whimpered, her head squirming in Lily's lap. "Lily," she whined, "Lily, it hurts. Need cock." "Soon, Jenny, soon. It won't be long." "Not long, Now," Jenny said, her voice starting to sound almost violent. "Give cock." "Oh shit, her nose is bleeding," Eric said, his eyes back on Jenny's face. "Just pull over and Andy can fuck her." "Excuse me, but I've already got three girls, and supposedly one more on the way. Why don't you fuck her?" "Because Lily says I can't." "Andy, stop the car," Lily said. "Eric, get back here." "But you said,” "I know what I fucking said, you little shit, but I'll have to fucking learn to deal with it, won't I? Get back here and let her suck you off while Andy's driving us home." Andy brought the car to a stop at the next red light, and Lily swapped places with Eric. As soon as Eric was sitting in the back seat, Jenny was practically ripping his pants off, fishing out his cock before slamming her mouth down on it. "Lily, are you sure about this?" Eric said, nervousness apparent in his voice. "Give it to her, Eric. She and I were good friends, we will be again. It'll just be an adjustment." Andy kept his eyes pointing forward for the rest of the drive as Eric got blown in his back seat. Chapter 9 The next day Andy was struggling to figure out a plan. He'd been running it around in his head for hours, trying to see some easy way through this, but he kept coming back to the same inevitable point “ he needed Phil's help. God, he was tired of having to ask Phil for help. "You're vexed, Andy," Niko said to him, placing her hand on his shoulder. He'd been sitting at his desk, and he looked back over his shoulder to her. "How can you tell?" "You've been looking at that computer screen for almost an hour and haven't typed a word, babe," she said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. "That's vexed. We haven't been together long, but I recognize when you're vexed. I do the same, when I'm thinking very hard about something. I stare and I fret, while I'm vexed." "You seem rather like a badass, Niko. You sure you're going to be okay, being saddled with a square like me?" She laughed. It was a sound he was quickly learning to love, confident and yet still somehow a little cheeky. "You've been keeping this house together despite all the chaos. That doesn't seem square to me." "You know I'm like a dozen years your elder, right?" "I won't tell anyone if you won't. So how can I help? What are you vexed by?" "Last night, our little voyage out, we brought back a new girl for Eric. She's Lily's former roommate. She was supposed to be with someone else, but apparently the man she was paired up with has a history of domestic abuse, and so Lily insisted we rescue her and paired her up with Eric so no one could pull her away." "So you're trying to figure out how to tell the government about how she's paired up with someone different? What makes you think they're even going to notice?" "She's a weather reporter on one of the local news stations, so people are going to notice. I think I've got a solution, but I just hate to do it. I feel like I'm always leaning on this friend to help us out." "Oh? Someone you've told me about?" "Phil. I've mentioned him. In fact, you should probably meet Phil. I'm just tired of constantly asking him for help." "Do you really ask him for help a bunch, or does it just feel like it and you're overreacting?" she grinned. "Probably the latter, but it doesn't always feel like that." Andy grabbed his phone and loaded up the Signal messenger app. He and Phil used it to keep their communication private. “Meet up in an hour at the usual spot? Almost immediately he got a response. “Make it 2. "Okay, looks like I've got a meeting set up. Phil's been our man on the inside for this whole pandemic. He works for a company that contracts for the military, and while he can't tell us exact details about what's going on, he can help paint in some of the corners. Phil will know how to get all this sorted out." "How long have you two known each other?" "Nearly 20 years? He's good people. Why don't you come with me?" "Sure, lemme go throw some pants on." A couple hours later, Andy and Niko had headed back to the park to meet up with Phil, who didn't bring Audrey with him. He was dressed wrapped in head to toe, much like he was the last time, a mask over his face and goggles over his eyes, with a ball cap pulled down over his jet black hair. Andy was dressed much the same. Niko didn't feel the need to wear goggles, and had her hair drawn back into a ponytail. Phil kept a good distance from them, pushing his vape pen behind his mask to take a drag from it, then tugged the mask down briefly to blow out a cloud of vapor into the air. "So what's the 911 call about, Andy?" "First, let me introduce you, "2nd Lieutenant Redwolf," Phil said, cutting him off. "Mr. Marcos," Niko replied. "Didn't know your name was Phil." "I'm surprised you even remember me, Redwolf. You were pretty out of it when I sort nudged you towards Andy." Andy cocked his head. "You sent her my way?" "She's part of our tribe, Andy. Geek cred through and through, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to have her kept in the family, so I just made a connection in the system. She had decent odds to end up with you anyway, but why take a chance, right?" "Guess I owe you one then, Mr. Marcos," Niko said. Phil swiped his hand in the air. "Then I'll call in that favor to insist you never, ever call me Mr. Marcos unless we're at work. Deal?" "I can make that promise." "This what you called me about, Andy?" Phil said, finally stepping a little further back, pulling off his mask so he could just continually draw from the vape pen. "Nah. I've got a bigger problem. So Eric's picked up a runaway." Phil frowned a little bit. "How do you mean?" "So Eric's partner, Lily. She had a roommate before the whole pandemic, name of Jenny. Now apparently Jenny was set up with some guy." "That's how it works, Andy." "I get that, Phil. But it turns out the guy she was set up with was some kind of domestic abuser." "Wait, what?" Phil scowled. "That sort of thing should've shown up before he got paired up with anyone." "I dunno. Maybe it didn't get reported before, maybe this was his first time and he was trying it on. But before Jenny could get imprinted on him, he tried to take a swing at her." "Fuck. She okay?" "She's got some self-defense training, so she got away from the guy unscathed and went into hiding." "You get the guy's name?" "I can have Eric send it to you. But that's not the big concern. The big concern is that once we rescued her, she imprinted onto Eric. And she's a talking head." "Shit," Phil said, taking another drag. "News?" "Weather." Phil swiped a hand back in the air again. "Send me her name. I'll get it taken care of. Don't even trip about it. That's the least of our problems right now." "Shit getting bad, sir, I mean Phil?" Niko asked. "You have no idea." "How bad?" Andy asked. "We're looking at ten to twenty before it's all done." "Ten to twenty million people dead? Jesus!" "No, percent. We're talking ten to twenty percent of America dead, mostly men. We're guessing it'll end up around sixty million dead before the vaccine's in full effect in the middle of next year." Phil took a heavy drag, and the news hung in the air like a guillotine's blade. "The news is going to break any day now how fatal the new mutation of the virus is getting, and then everything'll be crazy. The army's going to be deployed here on US soil and martial law's going to go into effect. President Pelosi's at least been quick about it, and she's bunkered down. News hasn't broken yet, but the orange gooomba died on the operating table a couple of hours ago. Looks like milquetoast will be next in a couple of days." "Forty or fifty million men dead? That's nearly half of the male population!" Niko said. "How the hell are we going to recover from that?" "We're going to have to pair up a lot more women with the remaining men, and encourage them to have a whole shitload of kids," Phil sighed. "But even with that, it's going to be a fucking mess for a generation. Which reminds me, when you go home, I want you to start packing up your things." "Packing?" Andy asked. "What do you mean?" "I mean, start figuring out the absolute minimum you would need to take with you if you had to leave in a hurry, and then get anything that might take a few minutes packed up. Anything else, just have it at the ready." "Should I be worried?" "Nah, but it wouldn't hurt to be a little prepared." "What's happening, Phil?" "I can't tell you that yet, but the world's gonna keep on changing, and it doesn't hurt to be ready for it." "Yeah, okay." "You'll actually be very happy after it happens, man. Trust me." "If you say so." "Trust Big Daddy Phil." Andy rolled his eyes. "I trust you about as far as I can throw you, and that ain't very far." "You'll see." His watch beeped and Phil turned it up to look at it. "I gotta get back into the office. Send me Eric's new girl's name and the guy she was supposed to be hooked up with, and I'll make a few edits into the system." "You know Phil, there are days it feels like you're seriously into some black bag shit." "Only some days?" Phil said, taking one final drag off his vape pen before blowing a huge cloud up and into the air. It smelled vaguely of cinnamon buns, Andy noted. "Then I gotta up my game again. I'll see you soon, brother." He pulled his mask back up and headed back to his car. Andy and Niko watched him go, stretching out a little bit. "So you worked with Phil, huh?" Andy asked her. Her face scrunched up a little. "I was part of their security detail until I got exposed to the virus and then got quarantined. When the symptoms started to get severe, they used us as test cases for vaccinations and tried to pair us off. They were having trouble finding someone to match me with, based on my stated preferences before I got drugged." Andy smirked a little behind his mask. "I knew I wasn't exactly what you were looking for." "You're a little older than I initially wanted, Andy, but I don't have any complaints now that I'm with you. I was also a bit leery about sharing a partner with anyone, but it seems like that's going to be S O P moving forward." "S O P?" "Standard Operating Procedure. If Mr. Mar” if Phil's right about those casualty numbers, they're going to have to pair up a Lot of women to individual men. I bet you're going to get a bunch more than just the one more you're expecting." "Jesus, that's a whole lot of personalities to keep in balance," Andy grumbled. "I dunno if I'm up to that." "You don't have to do it alone, stupid head," she teased. "You've got Ash and me to help manage the cavalcade of women you're going to be saddled with. We'll try and keep everyone from killing one another and manage your time, although we're definitely going to have to continue getting you into better shape." "Lauren's started in on that, but frankly, I probably need to eat better." "And cut down on the soda. You've got a full nest to look after." "This scares the shit out of me," he sighed, leaning his back against a tree. "You know that, right?" Niko strolled over to him, a coy playfulness to her stride, as she moved close. "I know how to relax you." Andy arched an eyebrow beneath the goggles. "What, here?" "Who's going to see?" "We're in a public park, Niko!" "Ask me if I give a fuck," she said, as she dropped down to her knees, nuzzling her face against the crotch of his jeans. "Alright," he laughed, "Niko, do you give a fuh " His sentence was cut off as she pressed her mouth down along the length of his cock until the head of it was pressed against the back of her throat. She held it there for a good moment, long enough that he could feel her suppressing her gag reflex, straining back tears before she drew her head back and gasped in a deep breath of air. A playful giggle rolled from her lips, saliva dripping from them. "No sir, I fucking do not. But the faster you give me what I want, the faster we can go home," she said, moving to kiss at his balls, suckling on his nuts for a moment before moving her lips back to wrap around the head of his cock. "Now hold my hair back and fuck my face." Andy reached down and grabbed her silky ponytail with one hand, the other moving to curl his fingers against the back of her head as he pushed her face back down onto his cock. In response, she let out a wanton moan onto his cock, her hands reaching back to grab his ass, helping push her lips down to the base of his shaft, his balls pressing right against her chin. His hand holding her ponytail pulled her back, sliding her lips back to the head of his cock before pushing her face back down again, feeling her fingernails sinking into his jeans a bit more in response. He could swear he saw her hips thrusting forward beneath him, her legs spread wide, her knees almost pressed to the inside of his ankles. The pace quickened, as he thrust forward into her face while tugging her down onto each shove, whimpers that sounded delighted shivering across his skin between the sloppy sounds. He finally pulled her head back, letting her pop her head off his cock, just in case she wanted to tell him to stop, tell him she'd changed her mind, or whatever. Instead, she turned her eyes up to him. "Don't fucking stop. Fuck my face. Gimme that load of hot cum right against the back of my fucking throat. Please?" Her brown eyes were peering up at him as she licked her lips, and he could feel her struggling to try and lean even closer to him. He started to pump his cock into her mouth again, and suddenly he felt one of her hands slide away from his hips. He could see it push down the front of her jeans, and almost immediately, it came back up again and raised into the air towards his face. Her fingers were glistening, practically soaked, and he could smell her cunt on them as he leaned forward to lick them clean. Just as he did, he felt his balls draw up and his hand on the back of her head pressed her face down to the base of his cock as that orgasm shredded through him. He knew his cum was blasting into her throat, and could feel her spasming and trembling against him. It still boggled his mind, knowing that his orgasm triggered one immediately in his partner, and far more intense than he'd ever been able to bring a woman to before. His hands let go, giving Niko back control as she drew back, groaning in a carnal sound he hadn't yet grown accustomed to. Instead of pulling away, though, she started licking up, making sure to catch any loose jism or spittle from his shaft, her gaze never once leaving his, as she smirked while her tongue slathered him up. "See? Don't you feel less vexed?" He couldn't help it and started laughing, and it was infectious, because she immediately began giggling with him, even while she was lapping up the last of his spunk. "Okay, yes, you got me, I am certainly less vexed. How about you?" Niko smirked a bit, giving his cock one final lick before she pulled his boxers and jeans back up, rezipping and buttoning them up for him. "By now, you have to understand that your sperm is like a magic formula to us, your partners. It's exactly what we need and want every day. It's like giving a junkie a fix. Of course I feel better." She tugged up his shirt and kissed his stomach before pulling herself back up onto her feet. "I'd have kissed you but, "I don't mind that you just blew me, Niko," Andy chuckled. "Oh, that's not it at all. I just didn't want to share," she said with a wink, tapping one of her fingertips on his nose. "Girl's gotta keep every drop to herself any chance she can. Normally we try and pass a little of each load around, but here I get one all to myself. So I'm savoring that taste lingering on my lips. But we should get back to the house." "Fair enough." As soon as they got back to the house, Lily was waiting for them by the garage door. "Are we okay?" Niko smiled at her and gave the plump girl a huge. "Andy's got you covered, don't worry." She rubbed her spiky hair and then headed into the house, leaving the two together. "So get me the jackass's name from Jenny, and I'll get it to our friend Phil, who'll make sure it gets entered into the record that he's a domestic abuser." "Hopefully that means he won't get paired with anyone then." "Well, based on what Phil said in the Discord channel a week or so back, it's more likely they'll pair him with someone who can beat the shit out of him," Andy sighed. "Or, someone who's into that kind of thing. People are into all sorts of weird things out here." "You don't have to tell me twice," Lily said, exhaling a deep breath. "Jenny's been nuzzled up to Eric all morning, practically unwilling to let him go. I wasn't planning on sharing him with anyone, but if I have to share him with someone, I guess Jenny will be okay." Andy realized a second later, his face must have given something away. "What's with that look? You heard something else from Phil, didn't you?" "Yeah, it's pretty fucking scary out there, Lil." He shook his head then looked up. "You're probably going to be sharing Eric with quite a few other women. Men are dying left and right, and they're going to have to figure out how to keep the country afloat. That means the traditional family unit design is out the fucking window." "How bad can it really be if they're keeping it quiet?" "It's about to boil over. The estimate is we're going to lose nearly half the men in America." Her eyes looked to him as if she was waiting for the joke. When it didn't come, and the silence had hung in the air an uncomfortably long time, she finally spoke again. "Half? Fucking half? Fucking Half?" "Yeah, I can't say I'm thrilled about it either, Lily. I've got a lot of guy friends, and the idea of half of them just being fucking gone isn't exactly news I wanted to hear when I got up this morning, but I got it anyway." Andy tossed his hands up into the air. "And we can't fucking tell anyone! The news will out in a few days, but we have to be quiet about it until it is. Also, apparently we need to start packing." "Packing? What for?" "I guess we're going to be moved at some point. I guess we'll find out soon enough." Soon enough came the very next day. Andy and his usual gang of friends had a Discord channel they hung out on regularly, and they'd been using it for news on each other. And Phil poked his head in just before noon with a simple message: "@DruidGun 15 minutes." The household had spent part of the da

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John Harvey reads the next chapter of his book, Contending Perspectives. Here's the original video from where this audio came. Here's a list of links to John reading every chapter (released so far) in his 2021 book Contending Perspectives. I have edited both the video and audio to eliminate mistakes, coughs, interruptions, and etc. Sections in this chapter These timestamps are exact for the audio. For the video, you'll need to add around seven seconds in order to get to the precise spot. (This is because of the opening credits, which occur over around seven seconds of silence.) 5:23 - Common ground 7:02 - Environmental economics 9:19 - Ecological economics 18:18 - Theoretically agnostic economics of sustainability 20:44 - Ecological economics: policy 28:30 - Method 32:38 - Views of human nature and justice 33:22 - Standards: primary and secondary 35:03 - Contemporary activities 35:52 - Criticisms 36:29 - Final rejoinder 37:15 - Further reading

Following the death of Takara Hime, and the war on the Korean peninsula, Naka no Ōe was taking hold--or perhaps keeping hold--of the reins of government.  He wasn't finished with his changes to the government.  He also had a new threat--the Tang Empire.  They had destroyed Yamato's ally, Baekje, and defeated the Yamato forces on the peninsula.  While the Tang then turned their attention to Goguryeo, Yamato could easily be next.  The Tang had a foothold on the Korean peninsula, so they had a place to gather and launch a fleet, should they wish to bring Yamato into their empire. For more, especially to follow along with some of the names in this episode, check out our blogpost at https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-125     Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 125: The Sovereign of Heavenly Wisdom The people of Baekje looked around at the strange and unfamiliar land.  They had fled a wartorn country, and they were happy to be alive, but refugee status was hardly a walk in the park.  Fortunately, they still knew how to farm the land, even if their homeland was hundreds of miles away, across the sea, and occupied by hostile forces.  Here, at least, was a land where they could make a home for themselves. Some of them had to wonder whether this was really permanent.  Was their situation just temporary until their kingdom was restored?  Or were they truly the last people of Baekje, and what would that mean? Either way, it would mean nothing if they didn't work the land and provide for their families.  And so, as with displaced people everywhere, they made the best of the situation.  They had been given land to work, and that was more than they could have asked for.  They might never return to Baekje, but perhaps they could keep a little of it alive for themselves and their descendants. Greetings, everyone, and welcome back.  Last episode we talked about the downfall of Baekje and the defeat of the Yamato forces at the battle of Hakusukinoe, also known as the Battle of Baekgang, in 663.  And yet, something else happened as well: the sovereign, Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tennou, died as the Yamato forces were setting out.  Immediately Prince Naka no Oe took the reins of government.  He would be known to later generations as Tenji Tennou, with Tenji meaning something like “Heavenly Wisdom”. Now Prince Naka no Oe has been in the forefront of many of our episodes so far, so I'd like to start this episode out with a recap of what we've heard about him so far, as all of this is important to remind ourselves of the complex political situation.  I'm going to be dropping – and recapping – a lot of names, but I'll have many of the key individuals listed on the podcast website for folks who want to follow along.  I would note that this episode is going to be a summary, with some extrapolation by me regarding what was actually happening.  Just remember that history, as we've seen time and again, is often more messy and chaotic than we like, and people are more complex than just being purely good or evil.  People rarely make their way to the top of any social hierarchy purely through their good deeds.  To start with, let's go back to before the year 645, when Naka no Oe instigated a coup against Soga no Iruka and Soga no Emishi.  In the Isshi Incident, covered in Episode 106, Naka no Oe had Soga no Iruka murdered in court, in front of his mother, Takara Hime, when she sat on the throne the first time.  And yet, though he could have taken the throne when she abdicated in apparent shock, he didn't.  Instead, he took the role of “Crown Prince”, but this wasn't him just sitting back.  In fact, evidence suggests that he used that position to keep a strong hand on the tiller of the ship of state. Prior to the Isshi Incident of 645, the rule of the Yamato sovereign had been eroded by noble court families.  These families, originally set up to serve the court and its administration, had come to dominate the political structures of the court.  The main branch of the Soga family, in particular, had found its way to power through a series of astute political marriages and the support of a new, foreign religion:  Buddhism.  Soga no Iname, Emishi's grandfather, had married his daughters to the sovereigns, and thus created closer ties between the Soga and the royal line.  He also helped ensure that the offspring of those marriages would be the ones to take over as future sovereigns.  Soga no Iname, himself took the position of Oho-omi, the Great Omi, or the Great Minister, the head of the other ministerial families.  As Prime Minister, he held great sway over the day-to-day running of the court, and execution of much of the administration.  Much of this was covered in previous episodes, but especially episodes 88, 90, 91, 92, 95, 98, 99, and 103. Soga no Umako, who succeeded his father as Oho-omi, was joined in his effort to administer the government by his grand-nephew, Prince Umayado, also known as Shotoku Taishi, son of Tachibana no Toyohi, aka Youmei Tennou, and thus grandson of Umako's sister, Kitashi-hime, and the sovereign known as Kimmei Tennou.  Umayado's aunt, sister to Tachibana no Toyohi, was Kashikiya Hime, or Suiko Tennou.  The three of them:  Soga no Umako, Prince Umayado, and Kashikiya Hime, together oversaw the development of Yamato and the spread of Buddhism.  Buddhism was also controversial at first, but they turned it into another source of ritual power for the state—ritual power that Soga no Umako, Prince Umayado, and even Kashikiya Hime were able to harvest for their own use. Unfortunately, the Crown Prince, Umayado, died before Kashikiya hime, suddenly leaving open the question of who would take the throne.  Soga no Umako himself, passed away two years before Kashikiya Hime.  When she in turn passed away, there was another struggle for the throne, this time between the descendants of Crown Prince Umayado and Soga no Umako.  Eventually, Soga no Umako's son and heir, Soga no Emishi, made sure that a more pliant sovereign, Prince Tamura, would take the throne, and Prince Umayado's own son, Prince Yamashiro no Oe, was cut out of the succession.  Soga no Emishi, serving as prime minister, effectively ran things much as his father had.  When Tamura diedhis queen, Takara Hime, took the throne, rather than passing it back to Umayado's line—no doubt with Emishi's blessing.  He was careful, however, not to provoke direct action against Yamashiro no Oe, possibly due to the reverence in which Yamashiro's father, Prince Umayado, aka the Buddhist Saint Shotoku Taishi, was held.  Meanwhile, Emishi appears to have been cultivating his grandson by way of Prince Tamura, Furubito no Oe, to eventually succeed to the throne, trying to duplicate what his own father Umako and even grandfather had been able to accomplish. Soga no Emishi's son, Soga no Iruka, was not quite so temperate, however.   Who would have thought that growing up at the top of the social hierarchy might make one feel a bit arrogant and entitled?   When Soga no Emishi was ill, Soga no Iruka took over as Prime Minister, and he didn't just stand back.  He decided that he needed to take out Furubito no Oe's competition, and so he went after Yamashiro no Oe and had him killed. Unfortunately for him, he apparently went too far.  There were already those who were not happy with the Soga family's close hold on power—or perhaps more appropriately, this particular line of the Soga family.  This kind of behavior allowed a group of discontented royals and nobility to gain support. According to the popular story recounted in the Nihon Shoki, the primary seed of resistance started with a game of kickball, or kemari.  Nakatomi no Kamako, aka Nakatomi no Kamatari, was the scion of his house, which was dedicated to the worship of the traditional kami of Yamato.  The Nakatomi were ritualists: in charge of chanting ritual prayers, or norito, during court ceremony.  This meant that their powerbase was directly challenged by the increasing role of Buddhism, one of the Soga patriarchs' key influences on the political system. Kamatari was feeling out the politics of the court, and seemed to be seeking the support of royal family members who could help challenge the powerful Soga ministers.  He found that support in two places.  First, in Prince Karu, brother to Takara Hime, the current sovereign, who had been on the throne ever since her husband, Tamura, had passed away.  And then there was the Prince Katsuraki, better known to us, today, as Prince Naka no Oe.  A game of kemari, where a group of players tried to keep a ball in the air as long as they could, using only their feet, was a chance to get close to the Prince.  When Naka no Oe's shoe flew off in the middle of the match, Kamatari ran over to retrieve it.  As he offered the shoe back to its owner, they got to talking, and one of the most impactful bromances in Yamato history was born. The two ended up studying together.  The unification of the Yellow River and Yangzi basin regions under the Sui and Tang, and the expansion of the Silk Road, had repercussions felt all the way across the straits in Yamato.  Naka no Oe and Kamatari were both avid students and were absorbing all that the continent had to throw at them about philosophy and good governance.  As is so often the case, it seems like idealistic students were the fertile ground for revolutionary new thoughts. There were problems implementing their vision, however.  Although the Nihon Shoki claims that Naka no Oe was the Crown Prince, that honor was probably given to Prince Furubito no Oe, who would have no doubt perpetuated the existing power structures at court.  This is something that the Chroniclers, or perhaps those before them, glossed over and may have even tried to retconned, to help bolster the case that Naka no Oe was actually working for the common good and not just involved in a naked power grab for himself.  There is also the question as to where Yamashiro no Oe had stood in the succession, as he likely had a fair number of supporters. With the destruction of Yamashiro no Oe's family, however, the balance of power shifted.  Although Soga no Emishi had long been an influential member of the court, and not solely because of his role as Prime Minister, Soga no Iruka was relatively new to power.  Yamashiro no Oe's family, in turn, likely had a fair number of supporters, and even neutral parties may have been turned off by Iruka's violent methods to suppress an opponent who had already been defeated politically.  Naka no Oe and Kamatari seem to have seized on this discontent againt the Soga, but they needed at least one other conspirator.  They achieved this by offering a marriage alliance with Soga no Kurayamada no Ishikawa no Maro, a lesser member of the Soga household, whose own immediate family had been supporters of Yamashiro no Oe, and so likely had plenty of grievances with his cousins.  Naka no Oe married Ishikawa no Maro's daughter, Wochi no Iratsume, also known as Chinu no Iratsume.  Together, these three—Naka no Oe, Kamatari, and Ishikawa no Maro—brought others into their plot, and finally, in 645, they struck.  Soga no Iruka was killed at court, in front of a shocked Takara Hime and Prince Furubito no Oe.  By the way, this is another thing that suggests to me that Furubito no Oe was the Crown Prince, because why was he front and center at the ceremony, while Naka no Oe was able to skulk around at the edges, tending to things like the guards?  After the assassination at the court – the Isshi Incident -- Naka no Oe gathered forces and went after Soga no Emishi, since they knew they couldn't leave him alive.  With both Soga no Emishi and Soga no Iruka dead, and Takara Hime having abdicated the throne in shock at what had just occurred, Naka no Oe could have taken the throne for himself.  However, in what was probably a rather astute move on his part, he chose not to.  He recognized that Furubito no Oe's claim to the throne was possibly stronger, and those who had supported the Soga would not doubt push for him to take the throne.  And so, instead, he pushed for his uncle, Prince Karu, to ascend as sovereign.  Karu was Takara Hime's brother, and they could use Confucian logic regarding deference to one's elders to support him.  Plus, Karu's hands weren't directly bloodied by the recent conflict. As for Prince Furubito, he saw the way that the winds were blowing.  To avoid being another casualty, he retired from the world, taking the vows of a Buddhist monk.  However, there were still supporters who were trying to put him on the throne and eventually he would be killed, to avoid being used as a rallying point. Prince Karu, known as Jomei Tennou, ruled for around a decade. During that time, Naka no Oe and his reformers helped to cultivate a new image of the state as a bureaucratic monarchy.  Naka no Oe was designated the Crown Prince, and Nakatomi no Kamatari was made the “Inner Prime Minister”, or Naidaijin.  Ishikawa no Maro was made the minister of the  Right, while Abe no Uchimaro was made Minister of the Left, and they ran much of the bureaucracy, but the Naidaijin was a role more directly attached to the royal household, and likely meant that Kamatari was outside of their jurisdiction, falling into a position directly supporting Naka no Oe.  They instituted Tang style rank systems, and set up divisions of the entire archipelago.  They appointed governors of the various countries, now seen as provinces, and made them report up to various ministers, and eventually the sovereign.  After all, if you were going to manage everything, you needed to first and foremost collect the data.  This period is known as the Taika, or Great Change, period, and the reforms are known as the Taika reforms, discussed in episode 108. They even built a large government complex in the form of the Toyosaki Palace, in Naniwa, though this may have been a bit much—for more, check out episodes 112 and 113. Years into the project, though, things seem to have soured, a bit.  Rumors and slander turned Kamatari against his ally, Ishikawa no Maro, resulting in the death of Ishikawa no Maro and much of his family.  Naka no Oe and other members of the royal family eventually abandoned the Naniwa palace complex, leaving now-Emperor Karu and the government officials there to run the day-to-day administration, while much of the court made its way back to the Asuka area.  Karu would later pass away, but the throne still did not pass to Crown Prince Naka no Oe, despite his title.  Instead, the throne went back to Takara Hime.  This was her second reign, and one of only two split reigns like this that we know of.  The Chroniclers, who were creating posthumous titles for the sovereigns, gave her two names—Kogyoku Tennou for her reign up to 645, and then Saimei Tennou for her second reign starting in 655.   During her latter reign, Naka no Oe continued to wield power as the Crown Prince, and the Chroniclers don't really get into why she came back into power.  It may be that Naka no Oe, in his role as Crown Prince, had more freedom: although the sovereign is purportedly the person in power, that position can also be limiting.  There are specific things which the sovereign is supposed to do, rituals in which they are expected to partake.  In addition, there were restrictions on who was allowed into the inner sanctum of the palace, and thus limits on who could interact with the sovereign, and how.  That meant that any sovereign was reliant on intermediaries to know what was going on in their state and to carry out their orders.  As Crown Prince, Naka no Oe may have had more flexibility to do the things he wanted to do, and he could always leverage the sovereign's authority. When Baekje was destroyed, and Yamato decided to go to their aid, Naka no Oe appears to have had a strong hand in raising forces and directing movements, at least within the archipelago.  When Takara Hime passed away rather suddenly, he accompanied her funerary procession much of the way back, and then returned to Tsukushi—Kyushu—to direct the war.   This is the same thing that Toyotomi Hideyoshi would do when he sent troops to Korea in the late 16th century.  Moving headquarters closer to the continent would reduce the time between messages.  Theoretically he could have moved out to the islands of Iki or Tsushima, but I suspect that there were more amenities at Tsukushi, where they even built a palace for Takara Hime—and later Naka no Oe—to reside in.  It was likely not quite as spectacular as the full-blown city that Hideyoshi developed in a matter of months, but the court could also leverage the facilities previously created for the Dazaifu. The war took time.  This wasn't like some “wars” that were more like specific military actions.  This was a war that dragged on for several years, with different waves of ships going over to transport people and supplies.  Things came to a head in the 9th month of 663, roughly October or November on the Western calendar.  The Baekje resistance was under siege, and their only hope was a fleet of Yamato soldiers coming to their aid.  The Yamato fleet met with a much smaller Tang fleet at the mouth of the Baek River—the Hakusukinoe.  They attempted to break through the Tang blockade, but the Tang had positional advantage and were eventually able to counterattack, destroying the Yamato fleet.  Without their relief, the Baekje resistance fell. The remnants of the Yamato army, along with those Baekje nobles that were with them, headed out, fleeing back to the archipelago.  One presumes that there may have been other Baekje nobles, and their families, who had already made the trip. After the entry describing this rout, on the 24th day of the 9th month of 663, we have a gap in the Chronicles of just a little more than 4 months.  We then pick up with Naka no Oe's government starting to look at internal affairs.  For one thing, we are told that he selected his younger brother, the Royal Prince Ohoama, as Crown Prince, and he made updates to the cap-rank system, changing it from 19 ranks to 26 ranks.  The first six ranks remained the same, but the name “kwa”, or “flower”, for the 7th through 10th ranks was changed to “Kin”, meaning “brocade”.  Furthermore, a “middle” rank was added between the Upper and Lower ranks, further distinguishing each group, and adding 6 extra ranks.  Finally, the initial rank, Risshin, was divided into two:  Daiken and Shouken.  We aren't told why, but it likely meant that they could have more granular distinctions in rank. At the same time that was going on, the court also awarded long swords to the senior members of the great families, and short swords to the senior members of lesser families.  Below that, senior members of the Tomo no Miyatsuko and others were given shields and bows and arrows.  Furthermore, the vassals, or kakibe, and the domestic retainers, or yakabe, were settled, to use Aston's translation.  The kanji used in the text appears to refer to settling a decision or standardizing something, rather than settling as in giving a place to live.  It seems to me to mean that the court was settling servants on families: determining what kind and how many servants that various houses could have based on their position in the hierarchy.  I can't help but notice that all of these gifts were very martial in nature.  That does not mean, of course, that they were necessarily because of the war over Baekje, nor that they were in response to the concern about a possible Tang invasion -- we've seen in the past where swords were gifted to people who had served the court --but it is hard not to connect these gifts with recent worries.  We also know that this year, Naka no Oe turned his focus on building defenses, setting up guards and beacon fires on the islands of Tsushima and Iki.   Should any unknown fleet be seen coming to the archipelago, the fires would alert the forces at Kyushu, so they could send word and prepare a defense. In addition, the court built an impressive defense for Tsukushi—for the Dazai itself, the seat of the Yamato government in Kyushu.  It is called the Mizuki, or Water Castle, though at the time “castle” was more about walls and fortifications than the standalone fortress we tend to think of, today.  Along those lines, the Mizuki was an earthen embankment, roughly 1.2 kilometers long, extending from a natural ridgeline to the west across the Mikasa river.  Archeological evidence shows it had a moat, and this line of fortifications would have been a line of defense for the Dazai, should anyone try to invade.  This construction was so large and impressive that you can still see it, even today.  It stands out on the terrain, and it is even visible from overhead photographs. In the third month of 664, we are told that Prince Syeongwang of Baekje and his people, were given a residence at Naniwa.  In fact, even though Baekje was no longer an independent kingdom, there appear to have been thousands of Baekje people now living in Yamato, unable to return home.  Many of these were former nobles of the Baekje court, which Yamato treated as a foreign extension of its own.  Resettling these people would be a major theme for the Chronicles, but we will also see, as we read further on, how their talents were leveraged for the state. Also in the third month, a star fell in the north—it says “in the north of the capital”, but I suspect that anywhere north, south, east, or west of the capital would have seen the same thing “in the north”.  There was also an earthquake, which isn't given any particular significance, beyond its mention as a natural phenomenon. On the 17th day of the 5th month of 664, so roughly 2 months later, we are told that Liu Jen'yuan, the Tang dynasty's general in Baekje, sent Guo Wucong  to Yamato with a letter and gifts.  We aren't told the contents of the letter, but one imagines that this may have been a rather tense exchange.  Yamato had just been involved in open warfare against Tang forces on the peninsula, and they still weren't sure if the Tang empire would come after them next.  Their only real hope on that front was Goguryeo, since the Tang and Silla were still trying to destroy the Goguryeo kingdom, and that may have kept the Tang forces tied up for a while.  No doubt Guo Wucong would have seen some of the defenses that Yamato was constructing during his visit. Guo Wucong would hang around for about seven and a half months.  He was given permission to take his leave on the 4th day of the 10th month.  Naka no Oe had his friend and Inner Prime Minister, Nakatomi no Kamatari send the Buddhist Priest, Chisho, with presents for Guo Wucong, and he and his officers were granted entertainments  before they left as well. Finally, Guo Wucong and his people returned to the Tang on the 12th day of the 12th month. While the delegation from the Tang was in Yamato, we are told of several tragedies.  First was that Soga no Murajiko no Oho-omi had passed away.  Soga no Murajiko appears to have been another son of Soga no Kuramaro, and thus brother to Soga no Ishikawa no Maro.  Unfortunately, we don't have much more on him in the record. Just a month later, we are told that the “Dowager Queen” Shima passed away.  Aston translates this as the Queen Grandmother, suggesting that she was Naka no Oe's grandmother. We are also told, that in the 10th month of 664, around the time that Guo Wucong was given leave to depart, that Yeon Gaesomun, the Prime Minister—though perhaps more correctly the despotic ruler—of Goguryeo, died.  It is said that he asked his children to remain united, but, well, even if we didn't know how it all turned out, I think we would look somewhat skeptically on any idea that they all did exactly as they were told.  Sure enough, in 667 we are told that Gaesomun's eldest son, Namseng, left the capital city of Pyongyang to tour the provinces, and while he was gone his younger brothers conspired with the nobility, and when he came back they refused to let him back in.  So Namseng ran off to the Tang court and apparently helped them destroy his own country. This is largely corroborated by other stories about Goguryeo, though the dates do seem to be off.  Tang records put Gaesomun's death around 666 CE, which the Samguk Sagi appears to follow, but on his tomb the date would appear to be 665.  Confusion like this was easy enough given the different dates and trying to cross-check across different regnal eras.  Sure, there were some commonalities, but it was very easy to miscount something. One last note from the twelfth month of 664—it seems that there were omens of apparent prosperity that came to the court from the island of Awaji.    First, there was rice that grew up in a farmer's pig trough.  The farmer's name is given as Shinuta no Fumibito no Mu, and Mu gathered this rice and stored it up, and thus, every day his wealth increased.  Then there was the bridal bed of Iwaki no Sukuri no Oho, of Kurimoto district.  They claimed that rice grew up at the head of his brides' mattress during her first night's stay with him.  And this wasn't just some brand new shoot, but overnight it formed an ear, and by the morning it bent down and ripened.  Then, the following night, another ear was formed.  When the bride went out into the courtyard, two keys fell down from heaven, and after she gave them to her husband, Oho, he went on to become a wealthy man. The exact purpose of these stories is unclear, but it seems to be that the Chroniclers are choosing to focus on stories of wealth and growth, which speak to how they wanted this reign as a whole, including the sovereign, to be remembered. However, more tragedy struck the following year, in 665,  when Hashibito, another Dowager Queen – this time the wife of Karu, aka Koutoku Tennou - passed away on the 25th day of the 2nd month.  On the first day of the 3rd month, 330 people took Buddhist vows for her sake. We are also told that in the second month the ranks of Baekje were cross-referenced with the ranks of Yamato, and then ranks were given out to some of the Baekje nobles that had come over to Yamato.  Kwisil Chipsa, who was originally ranked “Dalsol” in Baekje, was accorded “Lower Shoukin”.  That was rank 12 of the 26.  In comparison, “Dalsol” seems to have been the 2nd rank of 16 in Baekje.  Along with handing out rank, over 400 Baekje commoners, both men and women, were given residence in the Kanzaki district in Afumi.  This appears to be an area along the Aichi river, running from the Suzuka Mountains, west towards Lake Biwa. The court granted them rice-lands in the following month.  At the same time, several high ranking Baekje nobles were put in charge of building castles at strategic points around the archipelago.  These included one castle in Nagato, as well as the castles of Ohono and Woyogi, in Tsukushi.  Two years later, in 667, we also see the building of Takayasu castle, in Yamato and Yashima castle in Yamada, in Sanuki—modern Kagawa, on Shikoku, facing the Seto Inland Sea passageway.  Kaneda castle in Tsushima was also a Baekje-built one. We mentioned something about these castles last episode.  They were in the Baekje style, and as I said, the term “castle” here is more about the walls, which were largely made of rammed earth ramparts.  This means that you pile up earth and dirt in a layer and then the laborers use tools specifically to tamp it down until it is thick and hard.  Then another layer is piled on top and the process is repeated.  These walls were often placed on mountain tops, and they would follow the terrain, making them places that were easy to defend.  Beyond that, they didn't necessarily have a donjon keep or anything like that—maybe a tower so that one could see a little further, but being at the top of a mountain usually provided all the visual cues that one needed. We know there were other castles made as well.  For example, I mentioned last week about Kinojo, in Okayama, the ancient Kibi area.  Kinojo is not mentioned in the Nihon Shoki, but it clearly existed back then, and matches the general description of a 7th century mountain castle as built in Baekje.  The name means Demon Castle, and there is a story about it that is connected to the local Kibitsu Jinja—the Shrine to Prince Kibi.  According to legend, Kibitsu Hiko, aka Prince Kibitsu or, perhaps more appropriately, the Prince of Kibi, came to the area around the time of the Mimaki Iribiko, so probably about the 3rd century, at the head of a large force.  Kibitsu Hiko had come to defeat the demon, Ura, who lived in the nearby castle, hence Kinojo, and legend says that he freed the people from the demon's rule. As I also mentioned, last week, this particular castle may have ended up in the Momotaro story.  There are those who believe that the story of Momotarou is based on the story of Prince Kibitsu Hiko, and his defeat of the so-called demon, “Ura”.   Certainly the story has grown more fantastical, and less connected to the ancient history of the Kibi region, but it still may have its origin in a much more standard legend of a founding prince of the ancient Kibi kingdom that was later changed into a fairy tale.   More likely, the castle was built by a Baekje nobleman, often thought to be a prince, who settled in the area.  There is the possibility that the demon's name “Ura” came from a mistranslation of his name, or it is also possible that he was unrelated to the story at all.  The Kibitsu Hiko legend may have incorporated the castle, Kinojo, at a later date, once people had forgotten when and why the castle was actually built. It would make sense if Kinojo had been built as part of the defenses for Yamato, as that area overlooks a large part of the fertile plains of Okayama and out beyond Kojima to the Seto Inland Sea -- it is perched over a key overland route from the western edge of Honshu to Yamato, and there would have been several ways to signal boats to put to sea to intercept forces on the water.  . This all suggests to me that Kinojo was probably part of Naka no Oe's castle-building effort, even if it isn't specifically remembered in the Chronicle.  But building castles wasn't enough to bring peace of mind that Yamato would survive a Tang invasion, and it is possibly as a defensive measure that Naka no Oe would go on to do something truly incredible—he would eventually move the capital from Asuka and Naniwa all the way to the shores of Lake Biwa itself, establishing the Ohotsu palace.  This was a truly extreme step that didn't endear Naka no Oe to the court, but it had several advantages.  For one thing, this move pulled the capital further away from the sea routes, meaning that if they were attacked, they had a more defensible position.  Even more so than Yamato, the Afumi region around Lake Biwa is surrounded by mountains, with a few narrow passes that restricted movement in and out. One of these is the famous Sekigahara, which remained a choke point even up to modern times.  The name even means the Field of the Barrier, indicating the barrier and checkpoint that had been set up there in ancient times.  Moving the capital also pulled the court away from some of the previous political centers, which may have been another feature that made it attractive to Naka no Oe.  Many capital moves have been made, at least in part, to get farther away from strong Buddhist temples, and this certainly would have moved things out of the Asuka region, which by now was a hotbed of Buddhist temple activity. But we'll talk about that all more, next episode.  Until then, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan

Welcome back to the book club!This week we're covering Gracie's favorite romance novel of all time, Love Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood. We cover the entire plot and discuss our thoughts on giant men, awkward sex scenes, and academia. Thank you for tuning in & we hope you enjoy the episode!!

For Earth Day, we bring back a special environmental episode from our archives!  As we head into an ever warming world, some experts and politicians are embracing a possible solution to climate change called geoengineering. Theoretically geoengineering could slow down climate change, stop it, and maybe even remove carbon from the air. It sounds like the perfect answer for a global political system that just can't stop burning fossil fuels even if it kills us all. But it might not be the easy fix we're hoping for. We talk to scientists and activists about what geoengineering is and why it could actually be a dangerous way to tackle climate change. We also dive into the moral and ethical questions of testing geoengineering technology on Indigenous lands. This episode first aired in 2023. Featuring: Basav Sen, Climate Justice Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies | Dr. Steven Zornetzer, Vice-Chair, Governing Board of Arctic Ice Project | Panganga Pungowiyi, organizer for the nonprofit Indigenous Environmental Network in Alaska  Making Contact Team: Episode hosts: Salima Hamirani and Jessica Partnow | Producers: Anita Johnson, Salima Hamirani, Amy Gastelum, and Lucy Kang | Executive Director: Jina Chung | Engineer: Jeff Emtman | Editor: Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong | Digital Media Marketing: Lissa Deonarain Music Credits: Chris Zabriskie – Air Hockey Salon | Bio Unit – Industrial Zone | Chris Zabriskie – Take Off and Shoot a Zero | Doctor Turtle – Leap Second | Monplaisir – Ridiculous | Monplaisir – Juan Garcia Madero  Learn More:  Indigenous Environmental Network | Arctic Ice Project | Institute for Policy Studies Making Contact is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

Hybrid Puzzle: The audio will tell you where each of the pieces on the board are, then read a series of moves from that position. When prompted, try to identify the best next move. To learn more about Don't Move Until You See It and get the free 5-day Conceptualizing Chess Series, head over to https://dontmoveuntilyousee.it/conceptualization FEN for today's exercise: 5k2/8/8/8/8/2P5/8/3K4 w - - 0 1 PGN for today's exercise: 1. Kd2 Ke7 2. Kd3 { Find the only move that draws for Black. } * And the answer is... 2... Kd7

I read a quote—I hope it's accurate, it was from Einstein. He said, "You can see the world as an ordinary course of events, or you can see everything as a miracle." And the poet Blake had mentioned how you can, through observation, appreciation and gratitude, actually notice within a drop of water the entire cosmos. So there's this sense of, when you look out and you see the rain, or you see the ocean, or you see the ability in another person, you can notice that all these things are coming from a source, and it's overwhelmingly amazing. When we have that sense of awe and gratitude and appreciation, this is the next stage of consciousness, opening consciousness, not being contracted and just resigned to the material body, but then it becomes more and more expansive. And what is it that's becoming more and more expansive? It's that emotion of gratitude that's the beginning of our spiritual awakening, besides just noticing that we're not our body, but also noticing that we're grateful for our life and that everything around us is amazing. There's not one thing around us that isn't unique and amazing. So this becomes more and more expansive as bhakti grows, and it grows unlimitedly, just as if you shine a light upwards towards the sky. Theoretically, it will expand unlimitedly like this, and our consciousness can expand like that, unlimitedly, through the process of appreciation and gratitude, otherwise known as bhakti. ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://iskconsv.com/book-store/ https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For the latest in SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/fan-the-spark ------------------------------------------------------------ #vaisesikaprabhu #vaisesikadasa #vaisesikaprabhulectures #spirituality #bhaktiyoga #krishna #spiritualpurposeoflife #krishnaspirituality #spiritualusachannel #whybhaktiisimportant #whyspiritualityisimportant #vaisesika #spiritualconnection #thepowerofspiritualstudy #selfrealization #spirituallectures #spiritualstudy #spiritualexperience #spiritualpurposeoflife #spiritualquestions #spiritualquestionsanswered #trendingspiritualtopics #fanthespark #spiritualpowerofmeditation #spiritualgrowthlessons #secretsofspirituality #spiritualteachersonyoutube #spiritualhabits #spiritualclarity #bhagavadgita #srimadbhagavatam #spiritualbeings #kttvg #keepthetranscendentalvibrationgoing #spiritualpurpose

2 hour and 14 minutes The Sponsors Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. Check out their wide selection of officially licensed Michigan fan gear at their 3 store locations in Ann Arbor or learn about their custom apparel business at undergroundshirts.com. Our associate sponsors are: Peak Wealth Management, Matt Demorest - Realtor and Lender, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, Sharon's Heating & Air Conditioning, The Sklars Brothers, the Autograph: Fandom Rewarded app, Champions Circle, Winewood Organics, Community Pest Solutions, and Venue by 4M where usually record this. 1. Men's Basketball Transfer Portal Starts at 1:00 Yaxel Lendeborg sounds Belgian but isn't, this starts out as a World War I podcast. Cadeau is a former five star who started for UNC, he has a Xavier Simpson assist rate but is not the most productive shooter. He also has an elevated turnover rate. Why this move feels like a wash coming from Tre Donaldson. Morez Johnson Jr. fits in well with Cadaeu, also he can thunder dunk the ball into the center of the universe. Illinois' offense would take a slight hit when Johnson is on the floor, but they get a +10 rebound rate with him. His best basket is a dunk. Unfortunately, the day Yaxel Lendeborg committed to Michigan he gave an interview where he said he wants an NBA contract and Michigan is the backup plan. Theoretically he's Danny Wolf but mean. Michigan needs a backup center but is otherwise in good shape. All signs point towards Nimari Burnett coming back. Brian is mad that Duke went 20 minutes without a turnover. We discuss Michigan's projected seed with the Yaxel situation and without the Yaxel situation.  2. Hot Takes and The State of College Athletics Starts at 42:40 Takes hotter than the best night club in Yaxel Lendeborg, Belgium. The state of things seem a bit perilous. Tre Donaldson hit the transfer portal with a broken heart emoji, what happened? It sucks that you don't really get to know players for multiple years up until their graduation. Part of the joy of college sports is watching players step up that you didn't expect to step up. The Big Ten needs an angry coach now that Fran is gone and Mick Cronin will step up. They should give schools incentives for keeping/graduating their players. The 1-4 seeds are all getting better and fans might get frustrated that more upsets don't happen. People want the chaos. Even Michael Jordan played three years in college, imagine if all the best players did that. This doesn't effect football quite as much. Fans and coaches all want roster continuity. Dusty May seems relatively well-positioned to maintain a lot of players. 3. Spring Football Bits Starts at 1:19:47 Spring Football is still happening. Updates on the offensive line, Evan Link has turned a corner after the Ohio State game. Crippen will be just fine at center. Andrew Babaloa won't be ready because he's a freshman and that's okay. Donaven McCulley is the real deal at wide receiver and everyone else is competing for the remaining spots. The running backs are good. The defensive line is not replacing Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant but it has depth. Are the redshirt freshman defensive ends turning the corner? It's being said that they are. Safety updates, with and without Rod Moore. They'll probably look for a punter in the portal.  4. Michigan Hockey Updates Starts at 1:55:27 Who hit the portal and what impact does that have? Michigan needs to get high-end defensive players. Does Gavin McKenna come to Michigan? He could be the number one overall pick. Why is Cameron Korpi in the portal? Is Michigan trying to get a CHL goalie? Or other CHL players? The CHL isn't happy about NIL.  MUSIC: "Consideration"—Rihanna ft. SZA "I'm Allowed"—Buffalo Tom "When I Get There"—Grady Strange “Across 110th Street”—JJ Johnson and his Orchestra    

Get 20% off + free shipping when you go to Manscaped.com and use code: BANNER at checkout. To be apart of the Discord, send voicemails or just follow the boys, click the link below!Discord Link https://discord.gg/AZ7bYRWcvnhttps://linktr.ee/Grabmybanner

In this hour, Adam Crowley and Dorin Dickerson react to a recent story released about the Pirates' spending habits. Also, Chris Carter and Noah Hiles from The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette each come on The Fan Hotline. March 28, 2025, 8:00 Hour

This week Katie is exploring all of Ali's forays into romance territory. Her most recent book, Deep End, seems to bridge the gap between the spicier side of romance (Not in Love) and her traditional rom-coms like Love, Theoretically and The Love Hypothesis. Deep End explores BDSM themes, power dynamics, and a peculiar type of love triangle.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212808709-deep-end?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=2c5NZIKHfr&rank=1Want more of Jordan, Katie, and Not Another Heroine? Join us on Patreon for bonus episodes and to listen to our Patreon-exclusive series, Tawdry Tuesday! https://patreon.com/notanotherheroine

Anne Ganguzza (00:05.233) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am so excited to be with very special guest, Luanne Regis. Luanne is a veteran voiceover agent and talent agency executive with over 30 years of experience. Her career spans everything voiceover, all voiceover, including... heading up scale departments at two LA boutique agencies, running the celebrity division at a top bi-coastal theatrical and commercial agency, as well as launching her own Chicago voiceover department in 2007. After a year at Sound and Fury Casting, she now owns and operates her own talent representation agency, Regal V.O. Luanne, thank you so much for joining me today. Luanne Regis (00:57.621) and thank you for having me, Anne. Anne Ganguzza (00:59.929) I love this. So I had such a wonderful time meeting you like fleetingly at MAVO and was so excited to get the chance to talk to you and work with you as well. You're gonna be coming up soon as a guest director for me on my VO Peeps group. So I'm very excited about that. And so for bosses that don't know who you are, give us a brief, kind of a brief. Luanne Regis (01:06.115) Yes. Luanne Regis (01:16.777) I can't wait. Anne Ganguzza (01:26.981) bio of you more than what I've given in regards to your evolution through the years as a talent agent and representative. Luanne Regis (01:37.067) Sure, of course. So I'll try to be brief because it is quite a long speech. And you know, voiceover, just, people ask you, how do you get into voiceover? And I'm like, I sort of really just fell into it, which I did. You know, back in the mid nineties, I answered an ad, they were looking for a voiceover assistant, an agent, and one of the partners at a boutique agency was looking for an assistant. And I thought, this is great. Let me just try this. And I quickly liked it. I liked the fact that Anne Ganguzza (01:41.124) Ha ha ha ha! Luanne Regis (02:04.703) The voice can really be anything. It has nothing to do with your aesthetic, what you look like, how tall you are, what color your hair is. I loved that. That to me was a very creative aspect for VoiceOver. And I started there and quickly became an agent, a scale agent, and was there for about five years. I have seen the business really, really grow and change to... And right around the early 2001s when all of the theatrical agencies were getting into voiceover because they poo-pooed and they snubbed their noses at voiceover for so very long, a major theatrical agency wanted to have a voiceover department. And so they plucked our entire department from the boutique agency, which was Special Artists, which is where I worked since the mid-90s. And we took our entire business, SpongeBob and all, and set up shop at Innovative Artists, which was the Anne Ganguzza (02:56.229) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (02:58.751) Bicoastal theatrical agency that I was at for 16 years, including what you mentioned in my bio, starting a Chicago voiceover department for them in 2007, just after the birth of my daughter. So I was there for 16 years and you wake up one day and you have 800 clients because you represent not only, we came with not only our voiceover department intact with all of our amazing clients, but we also were there to represent. Anne Ganguzza (03:00.314) Yes. Luanne Regis (03:26.591) their clients and they have a really healthy roster, a very well known TV and film actors. And that's where I began doing celebrity and overscale voiceover and really enjoyed it. But you know, like I said, you wake up one day and you have 800 clients and that's a lot to manage, especially in the way in which I agent. I was taught voiceover agenting by one of the best, she's a mentor, Marsha Hurwitz. you know, it's... Anne Ganguzza (03:29.735) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (03:43.441) Yeah. Luanne Regis (03:52.321) All hands on, it's more like a manager. It's not just submit an audition and whatever happens happens. It's you pitch, you sell, you call producers. We don't do that anymore because the business has changed. But you're on the phone, you're calling producers, you're selling people, you're saying, I think you should really listen to Nancy Smith. She's really good on this read. That's the way I voice over agent and it's really impossible to do that with 800 people. Anne Ganguzza (03:55.589) Yeah. Luanne Regis (04:20.641) 800 clients on your roster. So I went back to my small boutique agency, Roots TGMD Talent, which is formerly Tishman Agency. the owner, Kevin Motley, who's a dear friend of mine, had recently sort of reshaped his agency, gutted all of the promo and trailer announcer type guys, which was an avenue in which advertisers weren't going down anymore. And we built a really great roster of actors, well-known actors. Anne Ganguzza (04:28.993) Yep. Luanne Regis (04:50.761) working actors, which is all I know. I know about actors in voiceover as opposed to voice actors. And was there for four years doing that until the pandemic. And then after the pandemic, I thought, you know what, I want to try my hand on the buyer's side. I always wanted to try my hand at being on the other side of the business, not just rapping. And so I worked at Sound and Fury, which is one of the, if not the top voice casting companies in the entire country, if not the world. Anne Ganguzza (05:14.928) Mm. Luanne Regis (05:18.941) And you know, really enjoyed my time with that team. They're like a family to me. And I missed representing talent and agenting. And so after a year, I decided to go back to it, but do it on my own. And believe it or not, I kept a lot of clients with me even as I left the agenting side and went over to the casting side because I have a a really lovely roster of very loyal talent. Some of them I've had since I started in the mid 90s and you know they were very sad to see me leave the agenting side. So they sort of held on to me even while I was on the casting side and once I decided to jump back they were like well we're still here for the ride let's go and that's how I sort of built my roster, my independent roster I should say and again it just they just come at me. I have agents and managers and Anne Ganguzza (05:56.687) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (06:13.909) theatrical agents and commercial agents just wanting to work with me and they throw all their clients my way and I don't refuse them because I love to Anne Ganguzza (06:21.827) love that, I love that. You know, it's interesting because, you know, as we're talking, you're kind of going back and forth between casting and agent and manager. And, you know, for the benefit of our boss listeners, what is your definition of the difference between the responsibilities of each? Because I think it's important for us as voice actors to know when we're trying to develop relationships, you know, to understand. what is encompassed in your job because that makes us able to communicate with you easier and help you, because I really believe it's a partnership no matter what you're really looking for. And so I think it will help us as voice actors to work with agents or casting directors better. Luanne Regis (06:57.664) It is. Luanne Regis (07:06.443) Well, the reason why, and that's a great question, and the reason why the transition from agent to casting director back to agent was such a seamless one is because a lot of what my job entails as a voiceover agent is casting. We work with casting directors, but agents also work directly with buyers and producers, and they come to us looking for talent. And we sit there and cast. Anne Ganguzza (07:22.287) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (07:28.657) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (07:33.555) in pretty much the same way a casting director who gets paid to do it does it. I sit there, I go through my roster, who's right for this? And I do essentially do a casting. And so a lot of my agenting is casting, but that's just sort of like the day-to-day job of a voiceover agent. Again, back in the day when we had booths and actors would come into our lobby and read and have, you'd be distributing copy, you know, back in the day, pre-pandemic and all that. Anne Ganguzza (07:41.307) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (07:48.07) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (07:58.631) Look at Luanne Regis (08:03.611) A big part of my job also was directing talent, not just sitting at a desk and agenting. I would go into the booth. I need to know what my talent does. I need to be able to sell that person. So in order to do that, I'm in the booth, I'm directing, and I really, really love that directing process because it's, again, it hinges on such creativity. It's so creative. They get to play around. I get also to play around with them in terms of what they can do, what their range is. Anne Ganguzza (08:07.974) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (08:15.109) Right. Anne Ganguzza (08:21.264) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (08:32.991) And that's how I know what my clients can bring to the table so I can effectively sell them. So it's casting, it's directing, it's obviously selling. It's very managerial as well because I'm, like I said, very, very hands on. you know, like for instance, many times I go into the booth with a client and we'd spend an hour in there if we have the time. And the last five minutes of that hour really is recording the copy and auditioning. Anne Ganguzza (08:46.767) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (09:02.342) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (09:02.561) but the previous, how many ever minutes, spent catching up. How's your wife? How are the kids? How is life? How's your mom doing? Stuff like that. That's how you get to really know clients because what they share with you in the booth, you bring that to you as you're casting. You bring that to you as you're selling them. You have to really know them inside out. That's more of a very managerial, I think, position as an agent. Anne Ganguzza (09:08.646) Right. Anne Ganguzza (09:16.238) Right. Luanne Regis (09:30.641) not all agents agent that way. I just learned to do it that way. So it's manage it's managing talent. It's selling talent, agenting obviously, but it's also casting and directing talent in the booth. And then of course your negotiations skills come into play. Your knowledge of contracts, your knowledge of legal, legal procedures, as far as contracts go. That's all encompassing as a voiceover agent. Anne Ganguzza (09:33.484) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (09:48.355) Sure. Anne Ganguzza (09:54.34) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (09:58.767) It's such a broad base of that you need to have. And you said something before that I thought was so interesting. You said you had been working with, and it really, I think it goes to show the evolution of the business. You talked about actors who did voice acting rather than voice actors. And so I caught that little tiny nuance right there, which really speaks to your amount of time and experience in the industry. Luanne Regis (10:00.82) It is. Luanne Regis (10:16.416) Yes. Yes. Luanne Regis (10:23.829) Yes, yes. Anne Ganguzza (10:25.509) Because how often, like what would you say, I guess now in your, because you've been in business for so long, you must still, I suspect, deal with actors who do voice acting, as well as voice actors. And what are your thoughts on how you work with, let's say, actors now who do voice acting, or voice actors differently? Do you spend as much time, or how does that work today? Luanne Regis (10:33.877) We will. Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (10:53.737) The reason why for me, it's actors in voiceover, not only was I brought up in the business knowing that, because when I started at Special Artists, they were mainly a commercial, on-camera commercial agency, and this predated me, obviously, but when they started their voiceover department, they used their on-camera actors as the basis for their voiceover department. Anne Ganguzza (10:56.25) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (11:10.118) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (11:21.253) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (11:21.853) I come from a track record where the agents who taught me used actors and put them in voiceover and made them successful. The voice of SpongeBob, Tom Kenny, was a comedian, an actor. We put him, he made that transition because of how talented he is. So I do feel voiceover is not just a voice, you're acting. Anne Ganguzza (11:29.339) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (11:35.44) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (11:49.35) Sure. Yeah. Luanne Regis (11:50.529) You're bringing copy to life. You're selling copy, but you have to bring it to life. You have to connect with the product. You have to connect with what the words are saying. So at the end of the day, it really is about acting, which is why I favor having someone who has an acting resume, someone who's done work, because they have a certain measure of experience that they can bring to the voiceover table. Anne Ganguzza (11:59.761) Sure. Anne Ganguzza (12:08.358) Sure. Anne Ganguzza (12:15.463) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I love the emphasis on acting because even for something like I specialize in a lot of the corporate e-learning, the non-broadcast style stuff, but in order to really bring that material to life, and sometimes it needs a lot of help, just saying, because it can be a little bit dry and boring, you have to, I mean, every company, and I think whether you're dealing with commercial, Luanne Regis (12:27.894) Yes. Anne Ganguzza (12:41.959) Right? Any type of copy. mean, if you're dealing with a company or a client, they're ultimately, I mean, unless you're doing entertainment, right? Ultimately, they're trying to sell something. And so there's always a story. I good companies, I would say that, you know, it's marketing 101 that, you know, stories really sell better than, you know, Luanne Regis (12:49.375) Right. Absolutely. Anne Ganguzza (13:03.322) cold heart announcing facts sort of thing. And so if you can be the actor that can tell the story or understand the story that the company wants to sell or tell, that's gonna help them to sell. So I love the emphasis on acting. Luanne Regis (13:04.437) Yeah, yeah. Luanne Regis (13:14.749) Absolutely, and it really, you're absolutely right. When you say, a story, that is really what it is. I was telling actors yesterday, you have to, when you get a script, you create a narrative behind that script that those lines will support. Whether it's right or wrong, it's truthful and it's authentic. But you do have to connect with the product. You do have to connect with the lines. You do have to connect with the script. And the only way you do that is if you make it part of a story that you're telling. Anne Ganguzza (13:36.142) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (13:45.703) Yes, absolutely. And I think that's what so, at least with students when I'm working with them in the corporate narration or the e-lin, like what story? I'm delivering information. I'm like, but there is a story and you have to keep the listener's attention for longer than 30 or 60 seconds. This is not a 60 second commercial. And so even if I... Luanne Regis (13:58.849) We resist. Luanne Regis (14:04.372) You too. That's right. Anne Ganguzza (14:08.642) I think if the story doesn't make sense, right, if they're reading the words and they're like, well, I would never really say that, or you know, you have to create the scene in which those words make sense. And I guess my question to you is, what would you say is the main difference between on-camera acting and voice acting? Luanne Regis (14:17.173) That's right. Yes. Luanne Regis (14:26.939) on camera acting, you have so much more at your disposal. You have what you look like, you have the physicality of being on camera. And this is why I love voiceover, because with voiceover acting, you have to basically emit all of that just vocally. Whether you're in the booth and you're, you where you see the animation characters, they're in the booth and they're using their hands and all that, that's all well and fine, but that does not translate on camera in the way it Anne Ganguzza (14:31.59) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (14:44.708) Yeah, yeah, through your voice. Luanne Regis (14:56.417) would if you were an on-camera actor. really does have, so again, we go back to is telling that story. If you have a story to tell, it's gonna come out in the words, it's gonna come out in the smile, it's going to come out in the warmth that you bring out, or not the warmth, or the cold, or whatever it is, the stories that you're telling. But it all comes from the heart, it all comes from here. Anne Ganguzza (14:57.062) Right. Luanne Regis (15:22.313) as opposed to you being able to use your hands to gesture in a way that conveys whatever you're trying to convey in an acting, you know, when you're acting. Anne Ganguzza (15:26.49) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (15:32.231) So what would you say when you're working with talent? time is precious these days, so I imagine that you probably don't have as much time to work with talent, let's say on a job or an audition, as you would. What are the types of things that you find you're telling your talent to do most in terms of, know, either following direction better or their performance-wise? What are the kind of tips or tricks that you're speaking to most? Luanne Regis (15:40.437) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Luanne Regis (15:59.487) Yeah. Well, it does vary from project and script to script, obviously, but a lot of it is what I just said, you know, creating that story, creating that narrative. A lot of times, and this specifically relates to commercial copy, a lot of times you get a script and you have no idea what the storyboards are. You have no idea what the visuals are. You just have maybe two or three lines and you sort of have to put it together. At that point, you have to make a very specific creative choice. This is the story I'm going to tell. Anne Ganguzza (16:02.171) these days. Mm. Anne Ganguzza (16:18.566) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (16:25.562) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (16:27.957) So that's one tip and we just spoke about that. There's a lot of non-announcery, non-polish, non-slick directives nowadays and I always have to tell my clients, so here's what I want you to do. I don't want you to think about yourself on mic. I don't want you to think about yourself up there as a speaker or as an announcer saying something. I want you to sit and talk to a friend at a bar and you say what you need to say and you come from that place. so that we can get you conversational, we can get you casual, and we don't have you coming out of the box like you're making a grand announcement. A tip, a trick I use sometimes is I will have them slate their name after they've done their session, after they've done their audition, because once you slate your name, Luanne Regis, you sort of go into this, okay, I'm here, I'm announcing mode, I just want you to tell me what you have to say on your copy, you can save the slate for later. So that's just one of the tips that I use. Anne Ganguzza (17:05.296) Sure, sure. Anne Ganguzza (17:17.808) Right. Anne Ganguzza (17:25.06) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (17:25.375) you know, the conversational thing, just sort of like bring it back home. If it's something that I feel they need to be a little bit more intimate with, I give them situations like, I want you to read this bedtime story to your six year old, or I want you to sit with your child and have a one-on-one conversation with him or her. you know, I just give them a place from which to emote so that we can bring that emotion into the copy. Anne Ganguzza (17:48.752) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (17:52.803) Speaking of emotion, find, for me, just on longer copy, because if you have a particular energy or emotion and you continue for over a minute or two or three, with that same energy, it doesn't necessarily allow the story to flow. And I feel that people might get into the rhythm of this particular emotion or this particular... Luanne Regis (18:03.958) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (18:14.887) Energy and I feel with with any good story right energy in your story changes and evolves and it can evolve throughout like the course of one sentence even and the energy you start with in the beginning or the story that you tell in the beginning isn't necessarily the same story that's happening or evolving when you're halfway through or three-quarters of the way through and for a lot of for a lot of my students I find that you know if they're if they forget Luanne Regis (18:25.502) Absolutely. Luanne Regis (18:37.152) Right. Anne Ganguzza (18:44.119) about the story halfway through, then it starts to turn into this kind of just into this, let's news, news broadcast read or, you know, something like that. And so in the middle of the script, do you ever have to kind of redirect or give another scene to help this through? Or are you finding that for the most part, you're working with with top caliber actors that already are doing that or have done that? Luanne Regis (18:51.041) Yeah. Luanne Regis (19:09.279) Yeah, know what, an actor is gonna find his or her way, again, depending on the story that they want to tell. The seasoned actors, the really good actors understand how to flow in and out, how to make a change, or how to sort of navigate around certain things. And I'm glad you asked that question, because one point I really wanna bring to mind is sometimes when you're directing talent, I can't tell you. Anne Ganguzza (19:13.723) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (19:18.042) Yeah. Luanne Regis (19:37.663) Yes, I can give you a line reading. Yes, I can tell you how to do it. But I want you to color it the way you would color it because that brings a certain uniqueness that no one else will do. You might put a pause in the middle of the copy for effect, or you could take a beat, or you could do a slight, And someone else will not necessarily do that. that... Anne Ganguzza (19:39.748) Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (19:44.613) Right. Anne Ganguzza (19:50.395) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (20:02.822) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (20:02.827) Completely changes the way that copy gets conveyed to to the audience. So a lot of times it's it's what you do specifically and not me directing you into that read because I want it I sort of wanted to come from you I want you to bring that that authenticity to it because at the end of the day authenticity is what will May not book you the job, but it will have the producer go. Wait a second. What can we hear what? And that's what you want to do Anne Ganguzza (20:27.787) Mm, it might get you on the short list. Luanne Regis (20:31.357) Exactly. That's what I'm glad you said that I was seeing this exact same thing yesterday. It's like, yes, you want to book the job, but don't focus on booking the job. Focus on wowing whoever's listening, focus on making an impact. So maybe you weren't right for that job, but perhaps you bring you back in for something else. Anne Ganguzza (20:42.17) Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (20:48.133) Yeah, yeah. And also I think then you're really, especially if it's an audition that you're submitting to your agent or casting director that is very familiar with working with actors in regards to, well, okay, it can showcase right away that you're an actor. And if you're an actor, you'll be able to follow direction no matter what the direction ends up being. Cause I have a lot of times people will say to me, but that's not what I hear in the actual commercial. Luanne Regis (21:00.321) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (21:06.037) Yes. Anne Ganguzza (21:16.229) you know, it sounds completely different. And, you know, I'm always like, well, you know, it really depends on who's directing you at the time and what the client is listening to and what they hear in their head as being the way they want the copyright. So you have to be versatile enough to be able to take any direction. I've turned in for me as a coach, I've turned to almost saying, well, here, I'm coaching you on how to get the gig, not necessarily on the final product, because Luanne Regis (21:17.878) Thanks Luanne Regis (21:22.251) That's right. Luanne Regis (21:28.415) Yes, yes. Luanne Regis (21:45.429) Right. Anne Ganguzza (21:46.129) Coaching you to get the gig is gonna make you the most authentic actor that you can showcase in the first or second sentence. So for me, Luanne, coming in in the first or second sentence is so important with a connection to the copy. Talk to the importance of maybe that, the first few words that come out of the actor's mouth or in the copy, how important is that? Luanne Regis (21:50.145) That's right. Luanne Regis (21:58.719) Yes. Yes. Luanne Regis (22:10.145) very, very important because again, when I worked at Sound and Fury and we got 800 casting, 800 auditions from one casting, they're listening and they know right away if this person's gonna nail it or not. So you wanna come in just hitting the mark immediately. even, obviously I don't have 800 clients, but you see that process with a casting director. They don't have the time to listen to the entire script if they feel you didn't hit it within the first. Anne Ganguzza (22:24.079) Mm. Anne Ganguzza (22:28.027) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (22:39.929) Or maybe not even hit it if you didn't do something in the beginning that made them go. let me keep listening because time is money and they do have to get through all of these these auditions and the same to a certain extent with me I mean I listen to every single audition all the way through but I know by the second or third line if someone has nailed that piece of copy or not just because obviously I have the the experience in the years of the instinct but again, it's that You can't put your finger on it. It's that je ne sais quoi. It's like, yeah, let me keep this. wow, she did that? Okay. It really is important to nail whatever you want to nail at the beginning of the copy as opposed to saving your best for last. Anne Ganguzza (23:24.047) Yeah. Now, I love that you said you listen to the auditions all the way through. Now, why? Why do you do that? Luanne Regis (23:32.085) For several reasons. One, and you said something that I wanted to sort of bring back to the forefront, so I'm glad you asked that question. A lot of times, again, I'm a casting, I'm sort of a casting director when I age, because I'm putting people on stuff and I'm wondering, is she right for it, is he right for it? I have to listen throughout the whole thing. One, because it's my client and they've done the audition and I need to hear what they did, they may not be right for it. Anne Ganguzza (23:33.732) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (23:48.848) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (23:54.715) Mm. Luanne Regis (23:58.805) That way I know, you know what, I'm not gonna put him or her on this anymore because I don't think they're right for it. Or I hear something that they do and I think, you know what, I've got something else that, I've got a different role that I think she's right for. I don't think I put her on the right role. I think I need to get her on this other one. So it gives me a clue. It clues me into what my clients can do, what they can't do, even as well as I know them, even as much as I know their range. Anne Ganguzza (24:04.314) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (24:23.494) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (24:25.481) I still am learning a lot about them as we go along. So it behooves me to listen to everything that they do. Anne Ganguzza (24:33.53) so interesting. I love that you listen all the way through because it shows that you really care and that you really care about your clients and you care about making the best fit and really choosing the best person for the job. That just requires a lot of, think, integrity and I love that. I think that's amazing. Plus, I think it's so interesting because maybe even... Luanne Regis (24:36.417) Mm-hmm. It does, yeah. Yeah. Luanne Regis (24:47.359) Yeah. Luanne Regis (24:52.883) Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (24:57.946) You know, people that you've known for a long time, I mean, we continue to grow and evolve and learn and discover. I find with myself, like, I discover new things about myself and it impacts, right, my acting in the booth. And, you know, in lots of different ways where all of a sudden I'll be like, well, gosh, I've been doing it like this for years and goodness, I should have maybe thought this way. And it just will bring something different out in me, which is kind of cool. And so that's just kind of being the lifelong learner sort of. Luanne Regis (25:02.678) Yes. Luanne Regis (25:12.607) Yes. Luanne Regis (25:27.05) Yeah! Anne Ganguzza (25:27.483) you know, always trying to grow my skills and craft. And you think like, well, have I reached this point? Well, now I've done it and I'm an actor. But I feel like you never quite reach the point where you're never not learning. Luanne Regis (25:31.583) All right. Luanne Regis (25:42.129) No, you always are learning and you're always trying new things and I'm always learning things about clients. I'm like, I didn't know you did that. That's good for me. I can sell you in a different way now. it's a learning process on both ends. Anne Ganguzza (25:49.508) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (25:53.05) Yeah. Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (25:59.142) So the sell, okay? I wanna talk a little bit about the sell. When you're trying to sell a talent, what is it when you're communicating with a client for a particular spot? So what's involved in the sell of it on your end? I'm just curious because I've never, I mean, I've cast people, but I've never really been had to like, hear my choices and then the client will ultimately make the... the end result, but when you're really trying to sell a talent, like what goes, what sort of qualities are you selling in the talent? Luanne Regis (26:36.605) So you're talking about me selling to a buyer a casting director or okay? So then it would it depends on if it's the buyer's a casting director or if the buyer is the actual buyer the producer the the ad agency or something You know if it's a casting director. It's because I want that person to understand He can do this what you're asking what you're asking for me to cast for you This guy can do this so I need you to Anne Ganguzza (26:39.876) Yeah, to a buyer, yes, yeah. Anne Ganguzza (26:45.766) Mm-hmm. buyer, right, Yeah. Luanne Regis (27:05.161) I send links, send if it's stand-up comedians they're looking for, I send a link to their stand-up. One of many different ways I keep all of my auditions, so I will curate a specific sample of voices so that they can hear. For instance, if they're looking for something specific, I go back and I pull auditions that they've done for that specific character and I said, listen, here's what he's done for me in the past. That's one tool I use to sell. Anne Ganguzza (27:20.75) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (27:32.622) Mm. Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (27:32.833) And that's to a cast director if I want to convince her that this client can audition for her on a project if it's a buyer the actual buyer the producer the ad agency or Yeah, well, it would be the producer of an ad agency because if it's animation is it's casting directors You know again, it's showcasing what they've done before showcasing the stuff that they've done showing them listen to this Anne Ganguzza (27:40.218) Got it, got it. Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (27:48.357) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anne Ganguzza (27:55.206) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (27:59.647) I know you're looking for a guy that can do this. Listen to him right here. He's done this before. He's auditioned for this before. He's actually booked this before. Here's a spot that he's done. And you might want to listen to this. So that is, that's what I'm pushing when I'm speaking to producers. Sadly, don't get, don't have, agents don't have that direct link to producers anymore. It's really become so remote now and remote, in the sense of remote recording, but. Anne Ganguzza (28:12.003) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (28:16.624) Got it. Luanne Regis (28:27.433) remote in the sense of we're far removed from these producers. I used to be able to pick up the phone and call a producer at Leo Burnett and say, listen to Nancy, she's really great for this. You want to hire her. And they would hire her. But they themselves, the producers, they're removed as well from their clients. Now it's the client, Walmart, that has to make the decision. The producer used to be able to make the decision before. Anne Ganguzza (28:30.181) Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (28:47.59) Sure. that's a, I'm so glad you made that distinction because I think for a lot of voice actors, they don't really know what happens once they submit that audition. then what is, like what's, how does my audition traverse, you know, to either get to the ears of the person who's hiring and who is the person that's hiring, right? You know, because I think if you're my talent agent, right, and I'm auditioning for you. Luanne Regis (29:03.478) Yes. That's right. Luanne Regis (29:11.638) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (29:17.219) What I love and what I've heard from you is that you must have a little file of me where you're keeping all my good auditions and you're keeping all the spots that I've done and I like that, right? You didn't just trash my audition if I didn't work for that particular spot, but you're like, okay, so you've got like bits and pieces of me there. And then, so if you're working with another, let's say, casting director, right? You can then send those files and sell me in that way. But then if you're actually talking to the client directly, Luanne Regis (29:22.527) Yes. Yes. Luanne Regis (29:28.619) Nope, keep everything. Luanne Regis (29:43.236) Right. Anne Ganguzza (29:47.342) Which is something I'm like, well, I've not been in this process. I speak with my clients directly, but probably not on the scale that you do because you're working on a broadcast scale. So I have a client that I've worked with for years and they'll ask me, who do you think would be good to do this for me? And I can refer, which is. Luanne Regis (29:55.937) you Luanne Regis (30:00.394) Right. Luanne Regis (30:05.569) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (30:09.817) on a small scale compared to what you do. Because you're talking to big time producers and agencies that have multiple projects going on. And so for me as an actor, I never quite know what happens once I submit that audition. So it's really nice that you just kind of explain that process. And the fact that you said you don't always get to talk to the producer like you used to be able to, which is what I sometimes I assume and I don't really know. Luanne Regis (30:11.457) Yes. Anne Ganguzza (30:36.548) you know, depending on the agency, depending on who it is and what your relationships are, which I think it comes all down to relationships. But you're right, now even the producer is removed because it really comes down to like, let's say the client Walmart or whoever that might be. So that's a very good thing to know from my perspective. Luanne Regis (30:42.518) Yes. Luanne Regis (30:53.621) And I'll tell you the reason, I'll tell you the reason for that, Anne, and I want to make sure people understand this because it was a very drastic change. think the reason that I was able to, first of all, be able to pick up the phone and call a producer and they would actually book, or the producer would call me and say, who do you have for this? We need to cast this job right away. Who do you have? book David Pasquese. He'd be great. And they would hire him. So how many ever years, 10, 15 years ago when, you know, the big Anne Ganguzza (31:09.666) Mm. Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (31:15.611) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (31:23.113) ad agencies, the DDB Needhams, the Chiat Days, you the big ad agencies, they had the bulk of the work, they had the majority of the work. And as time went by, these smaller agencies started picking up work. So the ad agency now sort of lost the power to be able to make that decision because they themselves are trying to hold on to their accounts. So they no longer can say, I can hire you for this Walmart voiceover. Anne Ganguzza (31:25.37) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (31:29.821) mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (31:41.527) Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes. Makes sense. Luanne Regis (31:49.953) they now have to check with the head of marketing or whomever at Walmart. That never used to be the case. They used to be able to pull that trigger and go, great, let's hire him. That's no longer the case. And I do firmly believe it's because of that change over in, in work, a lot of ad agencies lost clients, a lot of ad agencies are afraid of losing their clients. So they're really at the disposal at the mercy of their clients to make every single decision. Anne Ganguzza (31:52.944) Sure. Anne Ganguzza (32:20.359) That's very interesting and that really speaks to this, think also the size of the industry over the years that has really increased greatly. Luanne Regis (32:21.248) Yeah. Luanne Regis (32:25.183) Yes, yes. It has, yeah. No, it has. You've had a lot of these smaller or maybe ad execs from ad agencies sort of offshoots and go off and start their own small companies, and they're now getting the big jobs. They're now getting the big work as opposed to those big multimedia conglomerate ad agencies that they're not really getting those accounts anymore. Anne Ganguzza (32:41.616) Sure. Anne Ganguzza (32:46.544) Right? Anne Ganguzza (32:51.686) Well, and now also I think technology, mean, gosh, technology has certainly evolved over the years. And now a lot of times, like you said, you'd meet in the, and I from back in the day when I would go to a studio for a callback, and gosh, that's almost not the case too much anymore. But I miss the days when you would see all your voiceover friends in the lobby. And even though you'd kind of be a little bit nervous, you'd all be like catching up and seeing people you hadn't seen in a while. Luanne Regis (32:55.179) Yeah. Luanne Regis (32:59.188) It has. Luanne Regis (33:09.491) I know. Luanne Regis (33:14.185) Yeah. Luanne Regis (33:19.137) Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (33:21.375) And I kind of miss that. with the digital evolution and people having their home studios and the internet and I think a lot of those agencies too, mean, went online, am I not correct? Yeah, yeah. Luanne Regis (33:23.497) Yeah. Luanne Regis (33:34.943) They sure did. They sure did. Yeah, they really did. And to speak a little bit, I'm just going to hear my pet peeve about that. Again, I remember a day when ad agency would hire a studio here, hire a studio in Chicago, hire a studio where they are, and they would connect. Now that cost, because we've had a situation like the pandemic where everyone sort of had to get set up to record from home, a lot of ad agencies haven't gone back to that, gone back to hiring studios. Anne Ganguzza (33:49.52) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (33:59.366) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Luanne Regis (34:04.277) they figured out a way, wait a second, we don't have to hire a studio. We don't have to incur that cost. We can keep that budget under control and pass that cost on to the actor. That's one of my biggest pet peeves of the consequence of the pandemic where actors have now had to become engineers, incur their own costs for studios. I'm like, wait a second, you would hire a studio in New York and Los Angeles back in the day. We're like, how is that? Anne Ganguzza (34:29.489) Yeah. Luanne Regis (34:34.37) What do I know what you're doing. Anne Ganguzza (34:36.282) Yeah, and they're not necessarily, you know, claiming, I am correct in the assumption, they're not necessarily saying, well, hey, I've got a home studio. I should be charging for that studio. I should be tired. Theoretically, right, they are, but I don't know anybody that really, like, has a line item that says, hey, this is my studio cost, right? Luanne Regis (34:45.825) No! Luanne Regis (34:53.957) No, no, the actors sadly have had to fall in line, you know, and now we've gone, it's just everyone is now remote studio required, home studio required. I'm like, wait a second, you would hire a studio back in the day. I just think it's unfair because now the actor should be concentrating on his audition and he should be concentrating on the creative aspect. He should not be asked to upload stuff. He should not be asked to be an engineer in his own session. You know, it's just the way of the world now. Anne Ganguzza (34:58.35) Yeah, it got absorbed. Anne Ganguzza (35:03.504) Yeah. Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (35:23.567) It is such a luxury to be directed even in my home studio now. It's just, and it's lovely for, I will say at least they're Source Connect so that an engineer can take what I'm doing back here in my home studio and engineer it and I don't have to upload and he can just take it. That is a luxury. And also the fact of actually having a director is a luxury these days. And I love it. And I kind of wish we went back to it. Luanne Regis (35:27.403) Yeah. Luanne Regis (35:39.711) and do his own thing. Yes. Luanne Regis (35:47.198) Yeah. Luanne Regis (35:52.757) I know. Anne Ganguzza (35:53.33) And you never know, mean, maybe that will happen, maybe that will not, but I think in the end, right, is it not all driven by the customer, right, the client, like it's Walmart, like what do they want? And so ultimately, what type of voice are they gonna look for? How are they gonna hire? And I think that's something as a voice actor, we need to consider the business aspect of it, because how are we going to kind of shine in front of all of... it seems like obstacles, maybe not obstacles, but there's so many paths to getting hired these days, you know, and yeah. Luanne Regis (36:28.031) Yes, there are. And let me go back to a question you asked earlier about what happens when that audition goes off. And it's really important for actors to understand, because you don't book a job, that doesn't mean you weren't on a short list. That doesn't mean that you weren't listened to and someone was vying for you and that just, the client or whomever came in and said, no, let's go with a woman instead of a man. doesn't, you have... Anne Ganguzza (36:53.264) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (36:54.205) I have no idea what happens once it leaves my, you know, my coffers because no one says anything. And then you get on a short list and you have one of five on a short list and that's great, you're excited. And then it just goes away. But for me, that's a win. Like someone listened to you and someone put you on a short list and someone considered you for this job. And even beyond the short list, you don't know who listened and went, wow, I really like him. You know what I mean? It's like, there's so many. Anne Ganguzza (36:57.574) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (37:08.42) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (37:20.496) Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that you brought that up. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Luanne Regis (37:23.837) intangibles and actors need to understand that just because you didn't book a job doesn't mean you weren't right for it. They could have changed their minds, changed the specs, changed the age, changed the gender. All of those things sort of are out of your control. Anne Ganguzza (37:36.432) Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (37:39.791) Yeah, there's so many aspects that are out of your control. And I think that's one of the most important things that a voice actor can also do is try to understand that and not let the mental, like, my gosh, I don't know what happened, or I'm not good enough, or that self-sabotage, get to them. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges that a lot of voice actors face is imposter syndrome that, because they didn't hear anything, they assume, right? Luanne Regis (37:53.119) I know. Yeah. Yeah. Luanne Regis (38:00.788) It is. Luanne Regis (38:06.399) Yeah, that's right. And by the way, that's another aspect of my job as an agent, to sort of manage their expectations and manage their disappointments. I had an actress tell me last night, she said, you know, I'm really just very dejected and sort of tired and fatigued with these auditions. I haven't had a callback, I haven't had this, I haven't had that. And for me, you know, I need to... Anne Ganguzza (38:15.171) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (38:19.792) Mm-hmm. Luanne Regis (38:32.841) I do need to boost her up, at the same time, I do need to understand her frustration and it's real. So, you know, my job there is to sort of maybe go, okay, let me reevaluate, reevaluate, excuse me, what I'm sending her. Maybe I'm not sending her the things that she's really gonna nail because at the end of the day, as an agent, you don't want to keep sending an actor hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of auditions and they're not booking because that debilitates them. Anne Ganguzza (38:38.63) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Luanne Regis (39:02.207) So part of my job is almost like a therapist of sorts. It's sort of like manage how they feel. Okay, let's do this then. Let's sort of reevaluate what we send you. Let me pull back a little bit so that you don't feel burnt out. How can I help you? Because obviously I believe in her. I don't want her to just go silent and not do auditions, but I have to kind of hold her hand along the way. Anne Ganguzza (39:06.086) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (39:26.727) Right, Sure. Luanne Regis (39:30.187) That's another aspect of the voiceover agent's job, at least mine. Anne Ganguzza (39:31.706) Yeah. Yeah. I love it. this has been such a wonderful conversation, Luanne. thank you. Thank you. Well, it's been a pleasure. And I'll tell you what, I cannot wait to have you as a guest director for my group, for my VO Peeps guys. So make sure you take a look for that coming up soon. Luanne Regis (39:37.824) I love your questions, the way. Your questions are very pointed. Luanne Regis (39:47.711) Yes, I cannot wait. Yes. Luanne Regis (39:54.08) Yes. Anne Ganguzza (39:55.916) And with that, I will give a great big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at ipdtl.com. Luanne, this has really been amazing. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Luanne Regis (40:08.373) Thank you, Anne, for having me. I really do love talking about this stuff. Anne Ganguzza (40:13.146) Bosses, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye. Luanne Regis (40:16.033) Bye!  

Foundations of Amateur Radio Recently I made a joke about operating your station with a dummy load in response to John VA3KOT operating their station with the craziest antenna they ever used. It got me thinking about the ubiquitous "dummy load" as an antenna. Since becoming licensed I've spoken with several amateurs who tell a similar story, one comes to mind immediately, Lance VK6LR, now SK, who told me that they managed an unexpected 2m contact with another station using a dummy load, across the city. There's various versions of this doing the rounds, incandescent light bulbs used as both dummy load and antenna, coiled up roll of coax, everyone has a story to tell. Having spent several years proving that you can in fact use 10 mW and be heard on the other side of the planet, 13,945 km away, it tickled my fancy to think about what would happen if I replaced my antenna with a dummy load on purpose, as a test. For the past two or so months my WSPR beacon has been transmitting every ten minutes on the 15m band. It was heard 3,493 km away. Interestingly, even in that short amount of time, the radiation pattern of my antenna as seen on the "wspr.live" website shows a similar outline to the 10m transmissions I've been doing since late 2021. The number of total spots wasn't nearly as significant. I added a local receiver to my shack, just to prove that I was in fact transmitting, but there were plenty of days without a single external report, this in contrast with my 10m experiment where most days I had at least one or more reports from outside my shack, most of them outside my state. In other words, not every band gets the same kind of report. My license restricts me to the 80m, 40m, 15m, 10m, 2m and 70cm bands. The two antennas I've used so far are essentially limited to a single band, unless I start tuning it every time I change bands. As you might recall, I purchased a Hustler 6BTV antenna several years ago. Unfortunately, it's still sitting in the box. Climbing on my roof has not been an option for several years, but its time will come. The purpose of getting that antenna was specifically so I could use WSPR across multiple bands and see how propagation was in my shack in real-time without needing to rely on external forecasts or predictions. Switching to a dummy load has several benefits and impacts. First of all, it's not something I've seen anyone do. Then there's the idea of band hopping without needing to re-tune. The idea of radiating into something that's not supposed to radiate, is something that makes me smile. Given that each band has a different level of propagation, which ones should I choose? I could pick all the ones I'm licensed for, but that would leave out the WARC bands and the ever popular 20m band. What if I ignored convention and transmitted on all bands supported by my WSPR transmitter? Remember, I'm transmitting into a dummy load. By all accounts this should not radiate. It's taken as gospel by the amateur community that it doesn't. So, using a dummy load, one that's rated at 15 Watts between DC and 150 MHz, feeding it with 200 mW, or 23 dBm, my WSPR transmitter is currently merrily pinging away across 80m, 40m, 30m, 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m and 10m. If all goes to plan, nobody will ever hear this. That said, I can hear the uproar from here. What's the point? You're illegally transmitting on bands you're not licensed for. I'll report you to the regulator. Here's the point. The community and the regulator both state that the dummy load is the approved method for testing equipment. It's implied that the equipment will be happy and there will be no radiation. I'm testing and monitoring that assumption. I'm using all bands because if conventional wisdom is right, nobody will hear this. On the other hand, if conventional wisdom is wrong, there will be reports from bands where there are many people monitoring. I'll note a couple of other things. There's a patch lead between the WSPR transmitter and the dummy load. It's about 200 mm long. It's the shortest one I have. It was terminated at the factory and connects the SMA output of the WSPR transmitter to the SO-239 on the dummy load. Theoretically it might radiate. Perhaps this is where other transmissions into a dummy load emanate from, perhaps not. I discussed the idea of measuring the emissions from a dummy load with a fellow amateur versed in testing much more sensitive equipment. We were not able to come up with a way that would be simple to do by any amateur. If you have ideas, feel free to share. I'm likely going to cop flack from those who think I'm doing something illegal. You cannot have it both ways. Either I'm transmitting legally or a dummy load isn't a suitable testing tool. Unless instructed by the regulator to cease, I'm confident that I'm operating precisely within the obligations and requirements of my license which encourages me to test and monitor interference, which is literally what I'm doing. One other point. Until now my WSPR transmitter has paused for eight minutes between transmissions, transmitting once every ten minutes, or six times per hour. It was the default as I recall. I've changed that to transmitting every cycle on a different band. This means that every 16 minutes, the same band will get activated. It also means that because 16 minutes doesn't fit neatly into an hour, the band will move over time, which I think is a good thing. The frequency hopping appears to be round robin, so no grey-line changes, but feel free to correct me. I don't know what this will do to the transmitter and if it will sustain this. I haven't asked Harry SM7PNV, but if it cooks itself, I'm sure that I can order a new one and mark it down as a lesson learnt. So, have at it. Point your receiver at VK6 and see what you can hear. I expect to keep this running for a year and see what we learn. I'm Onno VK6FLAB

Ocean waves form as wind blows over the surface of open water.  Globally, waves contain tremendous amounts of energy.  Theoretically, the energy generating potential of waves off the coasts of the U.S. would meet more than 60% of the country's electricity needs.  There are a variety of methods and technologies for tapping into this energy […]

The cost of power has been a major factor in our cost-of-living crisis but hope may be on the horizon. TheTaslink project would see New Zealand and Australia connected by the world's longest and deepest undersea cable, allowing the two countries to power share. Theoretically, New Zealand could make use of their excess solar power and in return they would use our wind-generated power. Richard Homewood, co-director of Taslink, speaks to Jesse today.

Hour 2 of Jake & Ben on March 3, 2025 It's tough to evaluate this Utah Jazz team because we don't know how many of these players are long-term pieces.  Theoretically, could the Jazz do a full 180 and be a playoff team next season?  Mark Pope has resorted to burning suits at Kentucky. 

If they really wanted to, could the Utah Jazz do a full 180 and make the Playoffs next season? 

Jake & Ben Full Show from March 3, 2025 Hour 1 The Utah Jazz lost a close one to the New Orleans Pelicans last night and Will Hardy was not particularly happy.  Top 3 Stories of the Day: Jazz host the Pistons tonight, Utah Hockey Club lost but not out of Playoff Push, BYU + Utah Basketball pick up wins while Utah State no-showed.  Is the Utah Basketball program close to locking up their next Head Coach?  Hour 2 It's tough to evaluate this Utah Jazz team because we don't know how many of these players are long-term pieces.  Theoretically, could the Jazz do a full 180 and be a playoff team next season?  Mark Pope has resorted to burning suits at Kentucky. 

In this week's episode, what's the best way to manage projects?  You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Ultimate Productivity Workshop Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived Subscribe to my Substack  Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Script | 359 Hello, and welcome to episode 359 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. 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. From time to time, something comes along that sounds great when first described but then turns nasty.  In the productivity world, that something is Getting Things Done and in particular the definition of what a project is.  This is not the fault of David Allen, Getting Things Done's author; this is how his description of a project has been horribly misinterpreted.  At its essence, Getting Things Done is about categorising your work into contexts. That could be work you can do on your computer or phone. In your office or at home. It is, and never was about “projects”. Projects, at best, are a sideshow. A simple way to organise your work. Nothing more. Yet for some reason, a few early readers misunderstood GTD, wrote about it and now there's a whole generation of people believing anything that involves two steps or more is a project and must be organised as such.  And there, is the source of overwhelm, time wasted to organising stuff instead of doing stuff and huge backlogs of things to do. Before we get to the heart of today's podcast, it's important that I clear this misunderstanding up.  If you ever bought one the fantastic GTD setup guides that was, and may still be, sold on the GTD website, you will notice that whatever task manager you are using, you set up the lists, folders or projects (depending on which task manager you are using) as contexts. Those contexts usually related to people, places or things. For example, your home, or office. Your computer, printer or car. Or your partner, boss or colleagues.  You then dropped any task related to these contexts into its appropriate context.  Your projects were organised in a file folder system that you kept in a filing cabinet. Current projects—the things you were working on this week or month—were kept on or near your desk for quick access.  In those folders you kept all the details of the project. Notes, documents, outlines, etc. Perhaps you also had a checklist of what needed to happen next.  Today, you can use your digital note app for that purpose.  The key thing about GTD was it was task context driven—ie, you could only do something if you were in the right place, with the right tool and with the right people. It was never about projects.  So, now you have the background, I think it's time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question. This week's question comes from Benjamin. Benjamin asks, How do you best manage projects using your task manager, notes app, and calendar together? Hi Benjamin, thank you for your question.  I think the first place to start is to avoid looking for a way to treat any new input as a project. Most things are not.  Theoretically, this podcast is a project. I need to choose the question, write the script, set up the studio, record the podcast, edit it, then publish it and hand it over to the my marketing manager for sharing on social media.  That's seven steps. Well within the definition of a GTD project. Yet, if I were to treat each podcast episode as a project, I'd waste hours just organising it.  A podcast episode is something I do every week. It's not a project. It's just part of my work.  Usually, on Thursday I will write the script. That means I go into my list of questions which is in a single note in Evernote, select a question, then begin writing the script.  Then on Sunday morning, after my coaching calls have finished, I set up my little studio, and record the podcast. Once recorded, I edit it and then publish it.  The only tasks on my task manager are a task on Thursday that reminds me I need to write my script and a task on Sunday that reminds me to record the podcast. Two tasks. That's it.  I don't need a project folder for any of this.  There is one other thing I do that relates to your question, Benjamin. I have a two hour writing block on my calendar on a Thursday for writing the script and a two hour block on Sunday for recording it.  So, there in essence you have all three tools working together.  I have a single note in my notes app with the title “podcast questions”. That makes it easy to search for.  My task manager reminds me when I need to write the script and record the podcast. My calendar protects enough time each week to ensure I get each part of the process completed.  If you want to simplify things I would suggest looking at how you define a project.  In my eyes, a project is something unique, something you either have not done before or rarely ever do. Typical projects would be: Moving house Buying a new car Planning a vacation Setting up a new payroll system Starting a business Finding a new job Doing the work you are employed to do is not a project—well not unless you are a project manager. An advertising agency isn't going to treat each new client as a “project”. An advertising agency creates advertising campaigns every day.  The graphic designer has a list of designs they are working on and when they begin their day they only need to choose which campaign they will work on that day.  Designing is their job.  The same goes for the copywriter. When they begin their day they choose which campaign to work on and that is dictated by when the next client meeting is. What is the work you are employed to do?  A teacher doesn't treat each new class as a project. They have a process or system for preparing their materials and when the teaching time begins they teach.  It's possible that a lot of your work does require a place to keep meeting notes, plans and links to documents you may be working on. That's what your notes app is for.  Your notes app has replaced the filing cabinet today. Filing cabinets were static—they never moved. Your digital notes app can go with you wherever you go.  If you do have any projects, that is where the information and resources go.  All your task manager needs to do is tell you what you should be working on today.  You may have tasks like: Work on new payroll system project Finish proposal for Universal Exports Follow up Mr Oddjob at Auric Enterprises Clear Action This Day folder Your calendar tells you if your task list for the day is realistic. If you have six hours of meetings today and you plan to work on your payroll project and finish the proposal for Universal Exports, you're likely being a little ambitious.  You calendar tells you if you have time to do the things you'd like to do that day.  You can go further, though and use your calendar to protect time for doing your key work.  If, for example, you want to (or need to) spend two hours working on the Universal Exports proposal, then you can block time on your calendar for doing that work. There might be some time sensitivity involved there. Getting the proposal to Universal Exports might be the most important thing you need to do that day. That would be flagged in your task manager as a non-negotiable task that day.  The daily and weekly planning is where I would decide what I will be working on that day or week.  The planning sessions are where you can step back and look at the bigger landscape of what you have to do and decide where you will put your time that day.  Right now, I do have a project. I am in the process of recording the audiobook version of Your Time Your Way. This is not something I can sit down a real off as a single task.  I need to book the recording studio and sound engineer and my voice will only last for around 3 hours before I begin sounding like an out of tune frog.  The only thing I need in my system each week is when I need to be at the recording studio. Currently that is Wednesday nights at 7:30. We record until 10:30 pm. I don't need a task for any of that. That's on my calendar.  The next day, the sound engineer sends me the recordings and I go through them to make sure everything sounds right. I have a task in my task manager that pops up each Thursday reminding me to review that previous day's recordings.  I have a project folder for the Your Time, Your Way book. That contains all my notes, meeting notes and any information I may need. Right now, though, I don't need to reference that. I just need to turn up at the recording studio on Wednesday nights, record the audiobook and review the recordings the next day.  The important thing is not to confuse your core work with projects. Core work is the work you are employed to do. Designers design, teachers teach, managers manage, truck drivers drive a truck.  All you need is a list of tasks you want to complete each day and get on and complete as many as you can. The majority of those tasks will be related to your core work. A project, on the other hand, is something unique, often outside of your core work, that needs additional time for doing. You may need to utilise your unique skills to complete that project, you may only have a small say in the project. Either way, on a day to day basis, the only thing you need to decide is what your next task is and do that.  This year is the fifth anniversary of the Time Sector System course. I am currently in the process of re-recording and updating that course.  Is it a project or just part of my core work.  I know from experience that if I treat it as a project things will get complicated.  Yet, I've create many courses over the years. I know the process.  For an update, it's to review and update the course outline. Then schedule time on my calendar for recording and editing it. There will be some additional tasks related to marketing, but I am not there yet. I'm recording, so the driver is my calendar.  Hopefully that has helped, Benjamin. The key is to simplify things as much as possible. Try to avoid creating projects and instead ask if there is a process you can follow. Most things you frequently do has a process.  Processes speed everything up. As the Formula 1 season is about to start, I'm reminded of one of the sports best leaders, Ross Brawn's comment on running a team.  The new car for the new season is never considered a project. It's a process. There's a time to begin work on the new car, there's a time to test the new car, etc. Yet none of that is considered a project. Aerodynamicists do the aerodynamics. Engineers work on the chassis and engine and the logistics people work on the logistics. It's what they do every day.  Yet, building a new wind tunnel, or engineering factory, that would be a project. These “projects” are rare and need specialist inputs.  Don't forget, we're two weeks away from the first Ultimate Productivity Workshop of 2025. This is your opportunity to take a live workshop with me where I help you to create and build your very own productivity system, A system that works for you.  Thank you Benjamin for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week.   

Back Home, One week later.By FinalStand. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.There is something worse than waking up and not knowing where you are: you could wake up and not know who you are.Note: World Events Stuff ~ aka Why things are happening in Cáel's lifeThe phone was from Iskender. His boss, Oyuun Tömörbaatar (OT), the former UN ambassador from Kazakhstan and now the informal and unrecognized UN representative and chief diplomat of the Khanate to the same august body, wanted to talk with me, immediately. OT wasn't being diplomatic at the moment, that would come later.{Now this is going to get convoluted}Any inquiries to the Khanate that didn't also include immediate official recognition of the Khanate currently were being steered my (and Hana's) way. For all the behind closed doors crap, he had me, his loyal ass-monkey mutton-head. I held faint hope that this latest meeting would work out to my benefit. For the meeting, I traveled light, only Naomi (the Amazon) and Chaz (British SRR) watched over me.Now fathers who know me, hide their daughters. I'd earned my 'scoundrel' reputation. T. Sarangerel, OT's daughter, was in the room when Iskender ushered me in. She gave me an uncertain look, I shrugged and she smiled. It took me 3 nano seconds to figure that out, OT was scoping me out as a potential son-in-law. I was in Temujin's Inner Circle and a man who he trusted (a rarity). Any union with me would strengthen OT's clan's standing in the new regime.The genetic footprint Temujin, and his immediate family collectively, had put down in the 13th and 14th centuries CE today was vast. He needed that to make his plans for the internal reorganization of the Khanate work. The old republics would go away, to be replaced by a system akin to the Byzantine 'themes, the re-organization of regions based on the recruitment of the Tumens.The Khanate was aiming for an 'Autocratic Republic' ~ a term invented in the 19th century. My use of this terminology was based on my gut instinct, Alal's host of memories involving every form of governance, and my experience with human nature. That clued me in to what Temujin was up to, his Greater Plan. He wasn't going to form a false-front government. He was going to retain the decision-making powers and do so openly, thus 'Autocratic'.He also planned to have a bicameral legislative branch. The Upper House would be based in Tumens and bureaucratic leadership, intellectual standing, religious sects, and tribal entities. This body would be based on merit, not primogeniture. The Lower, main chamber, would be a democratically-elected assembly (aka a democratic republic) that advised him on policy matters, thus 'Republic'.All the power would remain in the Great Khan's hands and would be exercised by his genetic descendants (which some geneticists estimated as being as high as 25% of the Central Asian population.) Marrying into that extended family would be easy, the 'family' itself would have a vested interesting in supporting a state that benefited them.Men and women could exercise power in the government through marriage alliances, identical to the manner Hana was working through me. Being surrounded by very populous countries in various states of belligerence, empowering women wouldn't be an issue since every willing mind and pair of hands mattered. Outsiders who shone through could be offered a spouse and brought into the ruling elite since polygamy was permissible.In the Khanate there would be universal compulsive suffrage (everyone 18+ was legally required to vote) to decide on the representatives in the new legislative body. Everyone was expected to fight, so everyone voted. It would be modeled on the Duma of early 20th century Imperial Russia. Unlike the ill-fated Tsar Nicholas II, Temujin would be much more attentive to the voice of the people, in the Information Age, he had to.Or so I hoped. I spewed forth my ideas to OT who didn't agree, or disagree with my vision. Perhaps Temujin and I did share a bond that went beyond obligation. OT then pulled a 'Pamela'."He told me he knew immediately you were his brother when you and I shared that vision," he commented out of nowhere."His words: You (Earth and Sky) are the old. He (meaning me) is the new. He (me again) will show us the way." My, that was nice, obtuse and not at all helpful. What did OT want? My good buddy, the Great Khan, wanted to cash in on Hana's and my sudden popularity. His most pressing need remained 'time'. He needed to have a cease-fire in the wings when his offensive resumed the next day.The Earth and Sky had moved, well, the Heaven and Earth to get the Tumens and their accompanying national armies up and running after only a two day respite. Thanks to me, Manchuria was a mess. The Russians had carried out my 'Operation: Funhouse' with mixed, mostly positive results.Dozens of smaller Chinese military police units along the border went, 'inactive' was the term most often used in the media. They didn't disarm, yet they didn't fight the Russians either. They sat back and let events unfold. The issue wasn't the Chinese's willingness to fight and die for their country. It was the schizophrenic government in Beijing.The PRC didn't want to wage a war with the Russian Federation at that moment. The Khanate was the priority. There were two fundamentally incompatible courses of action favored for dealing with the Russians:One large group advocated a passive Option A: let the Russians step in and shield the three remaining provinces making up Manchuria that were still in Chinese possession. Later, China would use military, economic and political means to edge the Russians out, once the Khanate was dealt with.A sizable faction favored a more aggressive Option B: play a game of chicken with Vladimir Putin. Tell the Bear not to come across the border while threatening him with a bloody and pointless (for him) guerilla war if he did intervene. Events on the ground were not providing a lot of support for that school of thought,However, this split at the highest levels of leadership left the local and regional commanders to try and muddle through as best they could. To the local commanders defending the Amur River side of the Chinese-Russian border, common sense dictated that they not oppose the Russian crossings, because the Russian 35th Army would kill them.All their military units had gone west to the Nen River line. With no heavy weapons and little air support, the People's Armed Police (PAP) (paramilitary) and the Public Security Bureau (regular police) units would be wiped out for little gain.Russia's GRU (Military Intelligence) sweetened the pot by allowing the police units to remain armed and in formation. It could be argued that they weren't even committing treason. At any time, they could throw themselves into the battle, or form the core of a resistance movement. 'Conserving your strength' had been a hallmark of the Communist Chinese struggle against the Imperial Japanese and Nationalists forces from the 1920's until 1945 and it had served them well.For the party officials, civil authorities and the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Army Air Force (PLAAF), and Army Navy (PLAN) who had gone with Option B, things weren't working out. In the north of Heilongjiang province at Morin Dawa/the Nen River line, the regional commander of the ad hoc forces facing the Khanate decided to duke it out with the Russian 36th Army as well. He was boned from the get-go.The PLAAF's overall command and control had been badly disrupted in the first few hours of The Unification War and had never fully recovered. Of the 22 air regiments that the PLAAF had started the war with in the Shenyang Military District (NE China), only 5 remained as effective formations flying, on average, a meager 20% of their original complement of advanced Shenyang J-16's, J-11's, Chengdu J-10's and Xian JH-7's aircraft.Replacing their aircraft losses meant sending up aged Shenyang J-8's (rolled out in 1980) and Nanchang Q-5's (in 1970) to fly and die in droves fighting their technologically superior Khanate foes. To add insult to injury, China's fleet of 97 Su-30MKK/MK2's (built in Russia) had suffered numerous suspicious mechanical and electronic failures, rendering them either flying coffins, or space holders in bomb-proof shelters.Furthermore, of the forces arrayed in the far north, only two of the five air regiments were responding. Two of the other three had begun displacing south into the Beijing Military District and preparing to defend the capital city. The fifth formation had another problem, North Korea (, more on that later.)In opposition to those two Chinese air regiments (roughly 60 aircraft of mixed types) stood seven complete and fresh Russian air regiments (over 400 front-line aircraft) and that didn't include the regiment and elements of the Far East Naval Aviation which was ALSO watching North Korea (, again more on that later.) The latter was of small comfort to the forces trying to hold the already compromised Nen River line.Behind those valiant troops, along the much more defensible Amur River line, the commander of the key city of Heihe sided with the Option A group and let the Russian 35th Army cross the river unopposed. By the time the PLA commanding general of the 'Nen Force' (the 69th Motorized Division and the subordinate 7th Reserve Division) figured that out, he was already in a shooting war with the Russians. So his supply lines weren't in danger, they were lost.The final indignity took place at Zalantun. The commander of the 3rd Reserve Div. had died during the attempt to recapture Zalantun. His replacement died when his helicopter was shot down as he was coming to assume command. In the absence of these officers, the divisional chief of staff told his men, including two hastily hustled forward mechanized brigades, to put down their arms. That meant 'Nen Force' was completely cut-off and surrounded.One battalion of the 36th Russian Motorized Brigade (yes, too many 36's running around) disarmed the Chinese troops while the rest, plus the 74th Independent Motorized Brigade raced for the prize, the city of Qiqihar. The last major mechanized formation of the 36th Rus. Army, the 39th MB was following them. However, instead of manning Qiqihar's defenses, the Chinese garrison in that city was waging war on its own populace.It wasn't only in Qiqihar; chaos reigned throughout Heilongjiang province. The Provincial Head of the Communist Party, Wang Xiankui, supported Option A. The Provincial Governor, Lu Hao, went with Option B. Both figures were rising stars in the PRC. Wang had ordered the still forming Reserve Divisions and the PAP units to disperse, thus avoiding any untimely confrontations with the Russians.Lu, without consulting Wang, ordered the same forces to launch a violent crackdown on all dissident forces, specifically all racial minorities. (It turned out that Lu was also a member of the Seven Pillars and his witch-hunt was aimed at getting the Earth and Sky organization operating in Heilongjiang).For the men and women on the other end of those phone conversations, there was no 'right' answer. Lest we forget, their organizations were already degraded by the Anthrax outbreak. Both men were powerful and represented China's future leadership, so if the person in charge at the ground level obeyed the wrong one, they could be assured of being roasted by the other.Some did try to do both, repress and disband at the same time. That meant that in the process of making mass arrests among an already war-fearful and plague-fearful populace, the law enforcement infrastructure began disintegrating.The problem with Lu's/7P's plan was that there was no 'revolutionary' organization to round up. That wasn't how the Earth and Sky operated in North-East China. They remained in tiny sabotage and reconnaissance cells. While they were scurrying for cover from the police crackdown, an opportunity presented itself.The afflicted minorities were getting furious with their treatment. These minorities saw themselves as loyal Chinese, yet they were being dragged out into the streets, put in detentions centers and (in a few cases) summarily executed. Being less than 10% of the overall population, resistance had never crossed their minds. It seemed all that those defenseless people could do was pray for Russian intervention forces to arrive.Within that mix of fear, betrayal and rage, the E and S discovered a way to start the dominos falling. The small, well-armed and well-trained E and S cells began ambushing police detachments. Weapons from those dead men and women were turned over to the pissed off locals before the cell went off to stalk the next police unit.Wash, rinse and repeat. It became a perverse and bloody case of wish fulfillment. Lu and the 7P's had been looking for an insurrection and they started one. Even though a miniscule portion of the population was involved, from the outside looking in, it reinforced the Putin Public Affairs initiative that portrayed Putin (and his army) as coming in to restore order to a collapsing civil system, which he was helping disrupt.From Moscow, the PRC's indecisiveness looked like Manna from Heaven. For the massive numbers of Russian soldiers riding through the Manchurian countryside, it felt like they were rolling into Arkham Asylum. Unlike the NATO countries' professional armies, Russia remained a largely conscript force whose normal term of service was only one year. These unseasoned troops could never tell if the local military, military police and police would attack until they rolled up on the Chinese units.At the start of that Day One of Operation: Funhouse, the Russian ROE (Rules of Engagement) was 'Ask and Verify'. It was tactically advantageous for the belligerent Chinese forces to lie about their intentions, then begin shooting at the Russians when they got close enough to hurt them. By Day Two, the standard front-line Russian soldier had adjusted that ROE to 'if they look at us wrong, light their asses up'. By Day Three, the officers had stopped trying to enforce Moscow's ROE orders.That was fine for the combat and rear echelon support troops because both the Chinese and Russian governments had another series of problems and they all centered around Pyongyang and Kim Jong-un's declaration that North Korea would intervene as well, without letting anyone know who he was 'intervening' against. To keep everyone guessing, the North Korean' People's Army was massing on all three borders, facing off with the PRC, Russia and South Korea. To prove his diplomatic intentions, Kim pledged to only mobilize half of his reserves, merely 4,250,000 extra men and women to go with his 950,000 strong standing army.It didn't take a military, or economic genius to realize the North Korean's chronically 'near death' economy was stampeding off a cliff. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was in the middle of an oil crisis and Kim was increasing their fuel consumption by 400% while decreasing his workforce by 10%. To put it in perspective, the US unemployment was around 6%. Now imagine that in one week's time it would become 26%. One week, no severance packages. Would the population become unsettled?But wait, it gets better. The Secret War was colliding with the Real World in more places than Manchuria. Setting aside the assassination attempt (Grrr) of Hana Sulkanen, my fiancée, six Nipponese elders (two women and four men) appeared in the personal quarters of the Japanese Prime Minister on the first full night of 'Funhouse' and relayed their urgent requests.Those six were the Head of the Six (formerly Seven) Ninja Families and they were there at, my urging. Cause I'm an idiot and requiring the deaths of Romanians in my personal crusade obviously wasn't enough. Now I was asking the Japanese Defense Forces (JDF) to pony up as well. So take a deep breath and put on the hip-waders.You might be wondering why I would want the JDF, see, there was part of Operation: Funhouse that was hitting a predictable snag, namely the Korea People's Navy Force (KPNF) and the uncertain determination of the PLAN:The KPNF's vessels were rather old, small and crappy. They also had a love affair with anything that could launch a torpedo and they listed over 700 of these floating deathtraps (only 13 of which could be classified as surface warships) and the fanatical crews to take them into battle.The PLAN's numbers were far more realistic and the fleet generally more modern. Only their North (18 surface warships) and East Fleets (22 plus 5 'elsewhere') could play any role in an upcoming FUBAR, and both fleets were heading out to sea, mainly to avoid the sporadic, but increasingly effective Khanate air strikes.The FU to be BAR'ed was the Russian Far East Fleet (RFEF) (6 warships strong, ) that had seized on this crazy idea (per my suggestion) to sail south, around the Korean peninsula so they could land elements of the 55th Guards Red Banner Marine Brigade (the 165th Marine Regiment and the 180th Marine Tank Battalion).Theoretically they were going to be the 'Southern Shielding Force' that would interpose itself between the Khanate and Beijing. It should surprise no one that the RFEF's flotilla was unequal to the task of taking their destination, the port of Qinhuangdao, by amphibious assault. Fortunately for the Gods of War (which did not include me), there were five other navies involved.Meanwhile, South Korea was having kittens because their always crazy northern kin were slathering on the insanity. (In how many Buddhist countries do people flock to the temples and pray that their neighbor attacks someone, anyone else, but them? That wasn't a religious conundrum I wanted to deal with.) N.Korea mobilizing meant S.Korea had to mobilize, which sucked down on their GNP as well.Besides, N.Korean dams and coal-powered plants kept the lights on in Seoul. Erring on the side of caution, the S. Korea (aka Republic of Korea, ROK) Army suggested calling up only one million of their three million person reserve force in order to assure Cousin Kim that this was a purely defensive gesture. It didn't work. Kim Jong-un castigated the ROK for antagonizing him, despite his declaration that he 'might' feel like invading the South in the immediate future.Into the emerging crisis, the ROK Navy could sortie nineteen small surface ships. Japan's Navy wasn't up to its old imperial standards, but could still deploy 45 surface warships. The 800 lb. gorilla in the room was the core of the 7th Fleet stationed at Yokosuka, Japan, the USS carrier George Washington and her 14 escort vessels.If the George Washington was the gorilla, RIMPAC 2014 was King Kong. 22 nations, 50 ships, including the USS carrier Ronald Reagan were engaged in war games in the Central Pacific. With them were 5 vessels of the PLAN, had Kim Jong-un just kept his mouth shut, this wouldn't have been an issue. Hell, if the Khanate had not come into existence and launched its Unification War, but he had and they did,To show the US was taking this escalation seriously (without tipping their hand that they knew about Funhouse, Carrier Strike Group One (CSG 1) (the Carl Vinson +10) was rushing across the Pacific from San Diego. CSG 3 (the John C. Stennis +2) was being assembled hastily so that they could rendezvous with CSG 1 ASAP. So many brave souls running toward the danger, sometimes I hate myself.So now does it make sense that I found myself in a room with a US Senator tasked with riding herd on me?Anyway, there were the other three navies still unaccounted for, Taiwan / the Republic of China (ROC) (22 surface ships), Vietnam (7) and the Philippines (3). Taiwanese involvement was easy to explain, the PRC refused to acknowledge them as an independent country and probably never would.The Vietnam People's Navy was tiny in both numbers and tonnage. Five of the vessels were 1960's Soviet frigates. What Vietnam did have was a huge grudge against the PRC. The PLA invaded Vietnam in 1979 and devastated the northernmost provinces, killing as many as 100,000 civilians.The PLAN had walloped the VPN in 1974 (technically South Vietnam) and again in 1988. Out in the South China Sea were two island archipelagos; the Paracel (occupied by a small PLA garrison and claimed by the PRC, Vietnam and the ROC) and Spratlys Islands (disputed by Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, the PRC, the ROC, and Vietnam).The Philippines had a grand total of three frigates (all between 50 and 70 years old). 99% of the time, they faced a hopeless struggle enforcing Philippines' South China Sea claims, except they were now experiencing that 1% where the PRC found itself in a life and death struggle. Even then, the PLAN's South Sea Fleet was hands-down the biggest player with 26 surface warships centered on the Carrier Liaoning.Except (and there always seems to be an 'except') virtually all the PLAN's naval aviation had gone off to fight the Khanate and it wasn't coming back, ever. In the air, the Philippines was next to useless. What did they have of offer in the struggle for the South China Sea? Bases. The ROC and Vietnam had much more to bring to the table.The Vietnamese People's Liberation Air Force (VPLAR) had about 50 front-line aircraft and 175 nearly obsolete models ~ the same models the PLAAF was now piloting. The ROC Air Force could put up 325 almost-new fighters that were now superior to their opponents on the mainland. Why would I give a shit?Things cascade. The Khanate Air Force took a two-day long deep breath as Putin's 'Policeman that only looks like an invading army' started their intervention. Forty-eight hours later, the Khanate started the fourth stage (the first lunge, defeat the PLA's counter-attack then the second lunge) of the campaign.Their initial air power was still skating on thin ice where maintenance was concerned. They need more time to thoroughly rest their pilots and bring all their top-flight equipment to 100% working condition. Against them, in two days the PLAAF's assets increased by over 250 fighters.In turn, the Khanate had added their constituent state air forces plus nearly 80 new cutting edge air planes and 25 drones. Phase Four saw rolling airstrikes all along the forces massing in front of the northern and central Tumens. For a few hours, the PLA thought they knew what was going on.They were wrong and this was where my meeting with OT came in. Jab with the right, cut them down with the left. The left in my case was Tibet. Yeah, Tibet. Economic value = not nearly enough. From the very start of the war, a small number of seemingly inconsequential air strikes had seriously eroded the PLA and PLAAFs combat power in the Tibetan Plateau while leaving the roads, bridges and towns intact.Common military logic dictated that the Khanate had to punch their way further east into Qinghai (to the south) and Gansu (to the north) provinces. That was where the population and industry where. Farther east were even greater numbers of people and factories and the Khanate forces in the North hadn't been strong enough to threaten to cut off the Qinghai-Gansu front. Then the Russians showed up and the Khanate forces threatening that flank doubled overnight.The PLA hastily reinforced their northern flank, using troops from their strategic reserves. The move resulted in incredible attrition by airpower to the freshly equipped formations. The PLA was about to get flanked, but not from the north. Southwest of Qinghai was Tibet. A third of the Khanate's mobile forces now swept around in a huge left haymaker to the south.My job? I needed the 'Free Tibet' forces in the US and UK to provide public and moral support to the Khanate move. As Khanate Special Forces seized crucial bottlenecks in Tibet, they needed the locals to keep their 'liberators' informed of PLA presences and undermine any attempt to create a guerilla movement.The five Tumens dedicated to being the Schwerpunkt (point of maximum effort) of this flanking maneuver were going to be on a tight timetable if they were going to surround the PLA forces in Central China.My plan was to convince the Tibetans that the PRC's 55 years of occupation was coming to an end and the Great Khan wanted to sign a 'Treaty of Mutual Respect' (my invention). This would require both the Khanate and Tibet to recognize each other's right to exist the moment a cease-fire was reached. That was it. No 'armed presence', or 'mutual defense' agreements.The treaty would be formally signed in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, when the city was safe ~ as determined by the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan Government in Exile, CTA). Riki came up with an additional sweetener and proved she was quickly adjusting to our group's extra-governmental capabilities.

Theoretically, but only under one definition and under a certain statute. https://www.lehtoslaw.com

Join Caroline, Dannelle, and Lexis as they continue to cross books off of their To Be Read lists! This episode features "We Shall Be Monsters" by Tara Sim, "Love, Theoretically" by Ali Hazelwood, "If Beale Street Could Talk" by James Baldwin, "Sing, Unburied, Sing" by Jesmyn Ward, "The Black Flamingo" by Dean Atta, and "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami.

Following on from last episode we discuss with Peter McNamara and Bradley Grace the fastest Diplomacy solo possible, all the math and all the reality of how to make it possible! Intro The guys introduce the episode and explain the latest comedy of errors plagueing the show. This includes recording at home again (another dumb reason why) and why Gavin is recording on his iPhone's speaker (0 mins 15 secs) Interview with Peter McNamara and Bradley Grace on soloing fast We begin setting the scenes for this episode's discussion with Peter McNamara and Bradley Grace about how to theoretically solo the board as quickly as possible and how to best practically achieve this (2 mins 25 secs) They discuss their drinks in the interview and the reason for the discussion (3 mins 30 secs) Peter talks about the theory behind how to solo as quickly as possible on the board in 1903 (7 mins 30 secs) Theoretically most players can get to 21 SCs in 1903 (9 mins 30 secs) Brad talks about the theory of reaching 21 SC in 1903 as England (11 mins 15 secs) Peter talks about a Backstabbr sandbox with Italy in 1903 with 21 SC (12 mins 30 secs) They discuss the mathematical equation to solo in 1903. Peter doesn't have it at hand, so Gavin finds it on ChatGPT with lots of other useful elements for this strategy (14 mins 30 secs) They all move onto the practical dynamics of being able to solo as quickly as possible, with Brad discussing soloing in 1904 (22 mins) Peter gives his perspective on why he could never solo that fast (26 mins) Ken asks about being able to make 18 with your own units, without other countries convoying (30 mins 45 secs) They talk about the practical aspects for how to convince players to allow you to solo so fast (37 mins 40 secs) Peter blows away the myth of The Return of the Mack (42 mins) Peter manages to find the sand box for the game at the 2020 Poppycon (45 mins) Ken and Gavin pay tribute to both Peter and Bradley as players and ask about their upcoming tournaments - apologies if they talk about tournaments that happened. Remember, things are pretty busy for the guys now so sometimes the podcast episodes come out much later then when they were recorded (50 mins 30 secs) The interview wraps up (55 mins) The guys give their perspectives on the interview and an update on the math sent post-interview by Peter - apologies for the bad audio from the breeze. They ask if anyone is aware of a solo by 1903 (56 mins) Ken talks about heading over to the Southeast Asian New Years Tournament, with Gavin asking if he's going to try a fastest solo ever effort (1 hr 2 mins) They also discuss busting (unfortunately) the Return of the Mack myth (1 hr 5 mins) Around the grounds Gavin discusses buying into a game he didn't remember buying in to (1 hr 6 mins 30 sec) The theory about dogs and their owners and picking up a great position that with some fast talk is doing very well (1 hr 8 mins) Ken discusses his Imperial game (1 hr 10 mins 45 secs) Despite talking about the vDip for podcast listeners, the game is no longer available - sorry folks with all the busy real life stuff tihs episode was recorded about a month before it came out (1 hr 15 mins 45 secs) They touch on the last time they were in Thailand when they came up the idea of Big Stick Diplomacy. They talk about whether to add to the variant the ability to move from one theatre to another, but allowing for a delay getting there eg using David E Cohen's ocean stacking or similar for naval travel (1 hr 19 mins) The guys start wrapping up the show (1 hr 25 mins) Venue: At home, Brisbane Drinks for the interview: Gavin:- Hempranillo Australian shiraz-tempranillo Ken: Kaner's dark ale home brew Bradley: Coors beer Peter: Penfolds shiraz Just a reminder you can support the show by giving it 5 stars on iTunes or Stitcher. And don't forget if you want to help pay off the audio equipment... or buy the guys a drink, you can also donate at Patreon, plus you get extra podcast episodes! Lastly, don't forget to subscribe so you get the latest Diplomacy Games episodes straight to your phone. Thanks as always to Dr Dan aka "The General" for his rockin' intro tune.

In this episode, Laura from What to Read Next and Francesca from Under the Covers Book Blog break down the Goodreads Top 100 Romances list from the past three years. They discuss trends, surprises, snubs, and whether the list accurately represents romance readers today. They also explore how shifting reading habits and platforms like BookTok have influenced the rankings.Topics Discussed:The Impact of BookTok on the Goodreads Top 100Whether Goodreads is still relevant for tracking booksThe dominance of specific authors on the listMissing romance subgenres like historical, paranormal, and romantic suspenseUnderrepresented diverse authors and LGBTQ+ romancesThe marketing and advertising influence on the rankingsTheir personal hits and misses from the listThe List: https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2887?ref=toprom25_ebBooks & Authors Mentioned:Things We Never Got Over by Lucy ScoreBook Lovers by Emily HenryThe Confidence of Wildflowers by Micalea SmeltzerThe Love Hypothesis & Love, Theoretically by Ali HazelwoodThe Deep End by Ali HazelwoodPraise by Sara CateFourth Wing by Rebecca YarrosNocticadia by Keri LakeThe Graham Effect by Elle KennedyThe Dixon Rule by Elle KennedySpell Shop by Sarah Beth DurstMissing subgenres: Mafia romance, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, and historical romanceConnect with Us:

#270rd for 30nd January, 2025 or 3311! (33-Oh-Leven, not Oh-Eleven, OH-Leven) http://loosescrewsed.com Join us on discord! And check out the merch store! PROMO CODES https://discord.gg/3Vfap47Rea Support us on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/LooseScrewsED PowerPlay Update:  The battle for Bumbur - A Post Mortem PP Standings (if any movement) Galactic Conflicts Next time say: You can find out more in our PowerPlay Hub on  the Loose Screws Discord with order often posted early on in the cycle and look out for Baromir's Broadcast that is published on the weekend! Squad Update:  TT 58343 is now back in our hands.  Maikoro and NLTT 1139 are next Overheating remains a problem and we're in perpetual expansion call it the new normal. Operation New Horizons - Our expansion - Semakhmets is over 75% - Theoretically it may be randomly selected to expand one of these go arounds, but we just need to push it to the top. Colonization will begin before BGS Expansion issues are sorted out.  Miola needs a boost All details in the #standing-orders and/or the #loose-screws-factions channels of the Discord. Galnet Update: https://community.elitedangerous.com/ Titan Wreckage In Sol Draws Keen Interest Brewer Corporation to Fund Survey Initiative Dev News:  FU on 2/25/25 Colonization update coming 2/26/25 under the name ‘Trailblazers.' Discussion: Battle of Bumbur Exploration Tips From Grover Kiwi Exploration builds Tools EDMC: https://github.com/EDCD/EDMarketConnector/wiki Its purpose is to facilitate supplying certain game data to, and in some cases retrieving it from, a number of websites and other tools. EDMC-Canonn: https://github.com/canonn-science/EDMC-Canonn/wiki The EDMC-Canonn plugin will help you keep up to date with Canonn News, direct you to things of interest in the game and will capture data that will enable us to catalogue the mysteries of the Galaxy. EDDiscovery: https://github.com/EDDiscovery/EDDiscovery/wiki#eddiscovery---what-is-it In short it's a 3rd party tool that can track your Elite Dangerous travels, combat, trading, rank etc. Spanish: https://spansh.co.uk/plotter Tool to help navigate the galaxy Elite Observatory: Link? Not Sure https://github.com/Xjph/ObservatoryCore?tab=readme-ov-file#readme Tool for reading/monitoring Elite Dangerous journals for interesting objects. Successor to the original Elite Observatory. EDCopilot: https://www.razzafrag.com/  EDCoPilot is the ship panel you have been missing in -game. Community Corner: DISTANT SCREWS 3! Coming February 2nd! confirmed! 2PM MST (-7 UTC) taking off from Ross 310 Planet 5D, if anyone asks it was always February 2nd.

Sometimes Greg wonders if he's sick in the mind—and considering this is an episode about O.J. Simpson (the benchmark of mental stability), that's saying something.Why the fear? The trepidation?Because this week, Open Loops dares to go where it dare not tread without full commitment.(Greg also has issues with commitment.)Yes, we're talking about the realm of TRUE(r) Crime.Oh, please… not another true crime podcast! For the love of Mel Robbins, let them, let them, let them… protect Open Loops in all its conspiratorial and paranormal glory!Don't worry. We've got you covered.In this episode, Greg sits down with B.T. Wedemeyer, author of O.J.'s MOON: Untold True Stories from the Other Side, whose meticulous investigation into the O.J. Simpson case has uncovered disturbing new details that challenge long-held narratives. This isn't another retelling of a well-worn trial. It's an exploration of what was left out, what was overlooked, and what it means when the justice system turns a blind eye to critical evidence.Greg and B.T. dive deep into:Tom Lang's forgotten testimony—why was a crucial firsthand account ignored by prosecutors?Discrepancies in the official reports—why do key details about the crime scene conflict with eyewitness statements?The LAPD's handling of the case—was there more to their investigation than what was presented in court?The lingering mysteries—what questions still remain unanswered decades later?This episode isn't just about O.J.—it's about perception itself.As the Oracle of Delphi once said (or maybe just some dude between puffs out on Santa Monica Blvd), "There's no 'I' in O.J. But there are two eyes in 'He Did It.'”Ommmm.Oh, and Greg also gets B.T.'s thoughts on Robert Blake, JonBenét, JFK, and a whole bunch of other wild rabbit holes...Get ready for a whirlwind episode.Because it's 2025, and somehow, you're still thinking about the O.J. trial....Yep. Greg is definitely sick in the head.B.T.'s Links: Go here to read or listen to the audiobook of O.J.'S MOON: Untold Stories from the Other Side Let Greg know how you like the show. Write your review, soliloquy, Haiku or whatever twisted thoughts you want to share at https://ratethispodcast.com/openloops

Theoretically this episode is about an article we read called "What Happens When Gen X is in Charge" 

This week, Amanda takes us through some of the remaining S5 theories, ranging from "maybe" to "hopefully impossible"...Stay Strange.

“But Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword back into its sheath. Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering the Father has given me?’” (John 18:11 NLT) John 18 tells the story of Jesus’ arrest. Keep in mind that John was writing his Gospel decades after the other three were written. The events in the garden and the trials that followed already had been covered in detail by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And those details were well known in John’s day. That may explain why John doesn’t offer as many specifics in his account. The fact that Jesus’ enemies brought armed soldiers to arrest Him showed that, despite their years of plotting against Him, they still didn’t understand Him. He refused every effort to make Him king. He had no political aspirations. He never encouraged rebellion among His followers. And He wasn’t a fugitive. He frequently taught in the temple, where the religious leaders spent most of their time. They could have arrested Him without incident any time they wanted. (Theoretically, of course. The reality is that they couldn’t have arrested Him outside of God’s timetable, not until Jesus’ “time had come”—which it had, in the garden.) And if anyone were prone to violence, it was the religious leaders, who several times picked up rocks to stone Jesus because they refused to believe the truth of His words. It may not have appeared that way in the confusion of the moment, but Jesus was in control of the situation. As His enemies approached, He stepped forward to identify Himself so that none of the disciples would be harmed. And that should have been the end of it. But Peter failed to read the room. He boldly drew his sword to “save” Jesus and . . . cut off the right ear of an unarmed slave. Oops. Jesus told Peter to put away his sword and reminded him that what was happening was God’s plan. In Matthew’s version of the story, Jesus said, “Don’t you realize that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us, and he would send them instantly?” (Matthew 26:53 NLT). Jesus allowed Himself to be arrested because it set in motion the events that would lead to salvation. There was nothing just about Jesus’ trials. The verdict was a foregone conclusion. The high priest Caiaphas had already decided that Jesus needed to die for the people—that is, so the Roman government wouldn’t crack down on Jewish religious practices (see John 11:49–53). John was the disciple who accompanied Peter to the high priest’s residence, where Jesus was being tried. Since John knew the high priest, he was able to get past the gate and into the courtyard. But then he had to convince the woman watching the gate to let Peter in too. “The woman asked Peter, ‘You’re not one of that man’s disciples, are you?’ “‘No,’ he said, ‘I am not’” (verse 17 NLT). Inside the courtyard, Peter warmed himself by a fire. Twice more, he was asked if he was Jesus’ disciple. Twice more, he said no. This was a total of three denials, just as Jesus had predicted hours earlier. — Listen to the Greg Laurie Podcast Become a Harvest PartnerSupport the show: https://harvest.org/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen to ASCO's Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology article, "You Don't Bring Me Flowers” by Dr. Kathryn Cappell, who is an Assistant Research Physician at the National Cancer Institute. The article is followed by an interview with Cappell and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Dr Cappell shares the difficulty in protecting oncology patients without taking away things that bring them joy. TRANSCRIPT  Narrator: You Don't Bring Me Flowers, by Kathryn Cappell, MD, PhD Easter morning dawned a beautiful spring day in Washington, DC. Soft sunlight and a cool breeze streamed through my bedroom window. My children woke up early, and I listened to their shouts of delight as they found their baskets, brimming with grass and chocolate eggs wrapped in pink and purple foil. Later that morning, I drove to a local hospital where I was rounding. Cherry blossom trees bursting with pink flowers bloomed throughout our peaceful neighborhood, and their showers of pollen had coated my car windows in a soft dusting of green. I put my arm out the car window and caught the heavy scent of flowers as fresh air flooded in. The fifth patient on my rounds, Evelyn, had been in the hospital for 22 days. This morning, as the charge nurse, Frances, and I entered the room, I noticed a vase brimming full of bright pink flowers beside her bed. Evelyn caught my eye and looked guiltily at her lovely bouquet. “I know it's against the rules,” she said, “but my son brought them, and they make me so happy.” Fresh flowers were indeed against ward policy. Theoretically, flowers could introduce fungal spores that could float through the air and lodge into the vulnerable lungs of our neutropenic patients. Evelyn was not the only patient who had received flowers. On that Easter day, the elevator area outside the oncology ward bloomed with forbidden flowers mistakenly brought by other loving sons. Frances kindly offered to take a picture of the flowers for Evelyn and print it out. Frances explained that this way she could still enjoy the picture while protecting herself and other patients on our ward. I found myself unsure; I wanted Evelyn to have the joy of the flowers during her long hospitalization. I could picture her son, a lumbering man in his 60s, carefully selecting the flowers last night. He was a quiet man, and I got the impression that bringing flowers was a way for him to share his feelings about his mother. Evelyn had been separated from her family for almost a month and was isolated in a hospital room without the ability to even open a window to enjoy a fresh breeze. She had maintained her gentle and positive attitude throughout, bravely battling complications from chemotherapy. The flowers probably brought her a little chance to savor the beauty of Spring and reflect on the love from her son. I did not want to take that from her. Still, I knew the importance of ward policies and protecting our vulnerable patients. I dislike taking things from my patients, but I have been diligently doing so for most of my career. As a medical student and resident, I remember oncology patients struggling to tolerate a neutropenic diet devoid of many fresh fruits and vegetables. A generation of doctors advised patients that the neutropenic diet was necessary to protect them from infections. I recall one young boy with leukemia repeatedly asking for fresh blueberries and the medical team insisting he follow the neutropenic diet. He eventually got sicker and died; I am not sure if he ever got a blueberry. I think of him with a lingering tension that we did him wrong by taking away something that could have brought him joy before he died. This is particularly true because the neutropenic diet has now been largely debunked.1 The modern oncology patient enjoys the blueberries that only 20 years ago we would have assiduously removed from the room. Like the neutropenic diet, there is little evidence that fresh flowers pose a significant infection risk. Fungal spores could theoretically also come into the ward on fresh fruits and the dusttracked in on employee shoes, yet we ban neither of these. The CDC hospital infection control recommendations note that there are minimal evidence-based studies in this area but cautiously recommend against flowers in areas where immunosuppressed patients are located.  The lack of evidence is reflected in varying hospital policies regarding flowers; some major medical centers ban flowers on the oncology ward and others do not.  I stood before Evelyn with her pink flowers, as she implored me to overrule the policy and allow her to keep them. Bright sunlight shone in through her window and the room felt stuffy and closed, in stark contrast to the lovely outdoor scene. The flowers did add a hint of beauty to an otherwise sterile-appearing room. The vase that held these was clean and the water crystal clear. If we tested the flowers and water, would it be brimming with fungus that would subsequently endanger Evelyn and others on the ward? Who knew? In the absence of evidence, I followed the rules. Evelyn's face fell as I concurred with Frances that it was ward policy to not allow flowers in the room. She was too polite to argue, and though she looked disappointed, her demeanor toward Frances and me did not change. Frances took a picture of the flowers and brought the picture back to Evelyn. The flowers were carefully moved to the oncology elevator lobby. I finished my rounds, put in orders, wrote my notes, and went home to my children. The afternoon was as lovely as when I went into work that morning. My kids rushed at me as I got out of the car, eager for a promised afternoon Easter Egg hunt. My son climbed on the apricot tree in front of our house, and little flower petals fell to the ground as the branches shook from his weight. He was still at an age where he would often pick dandelions in the yard and tuck these carefully behind my ear. It is his simple way of expressing love and it makes me feel cherished. I pictured him, a grown man, bringing flowers to me in the hospital someday, and how painful it might be to have those taken away. I could not quite shake the feeling I had made the wrong decision. I mentally reassured myself that it was hospital policy to take away Evelyn's flowers, and after all, it was for her own protection. Was it not? Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Hello and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the oncology field. I'm your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I'm Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. Today, we're joined by Dr. Katy Cappell, Assistant Research Physician at the National Cancer Institute. In this episode, we will be discussing her Art of Oncology article, “You Don't Bring Me Flowers.” At the time of this recording, our guest has no disclosures. Katy, welcome to our podcast and thank you so much for joining us. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Thank you. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's such a delight to have you here. Can you just start by giving us a little bit of your background? Dr. Kathryn Cappell: I've been practicing mainly in hematologic malignancies, and at the time of the writing of this article, I was an Assistant Research Physician at the National Cancer Institute. Before that, I trained at University of Miami, actually, where you work, for my bachelor's. Then I went to University of North Carolina for an M.D. Ph.D., and then I was at Stanford for my residency, followed by NCI for my fellowship. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: That's great. I didn't know about your University of Miami connection. I feel like I have to throw up a U to you on our video recording here. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yes. Your screen looks very recognizable from my undergrad. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, it's great to be reunited then with you. I was wondering if I could ask you to talk a little bit about your writing process. When did you start writing and when do you find the time to write? Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yeah. So this is actually my first story that I've written in a long time, probably in 20 years. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Wow. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: I started writing this story because when I was rounding at this hospital, I always noticed the flowers being absent in rooms. And I liked to chart my notes at the nurse's station where a lot of patients would come and check in. And when they were checking in, I'd often hear people getting their flowers taken away and moved to the lobby. So I've been thinking about the piece for a long time, just from rounding and while I was listening to all these conversations about patients losing their flowers. So that's where it came from. And it's my first piece. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: That's really amazing. It's a phenomenon we witness all the time when people with all of the best intentions bring things into patients who are in the hospital for three or four weeks, like those patients who are getting treatment for acute leukemia or those who are undergoing a transplant to try to make their room more recognizable and more homelike for them. And then we often see those things whisked away because of hospital policies. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yeah, definitely. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: When you're writing, does an essay all come out at once or do you revisit it? So how do you refine your writing to transform it into a work of art? Dr. Kathryn Cappell: This piece, I started writing, probably, actually a year ago. It took me a long time to get started, to the point where I was thinking about it for a long time, thinking about the piece, for almost a year. I can remember that because I started thinking about it at ASH 2023, and I hadn't really finished it till ASH 2024. And during that time, a lot was going on in my head about how I would structure the piece. And then once I had started writing it, I went through multiple revisions before I got the courage to submit one to JCO. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I love how you frame it in terms of the courage to submit to JCO. I just read a post from Adam Grant, who's an economist and writes about kind of our actions in the workplace, and he mentioned the point that we often will put something off out of fear. It's not some kind of deliberate action on our part to avoid doing something that we don't want to do. It's really fear and fear of failure and fear of anxiety that prevents us from doing something. So you talk about courage. I think the flip side of courage is fear. Describe what that's like, that first moment that you decide, “Okay, I'm going to write a piece, and I want to write something that's public, that other people will see.” Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yeah. I think most people, when they write, it's a very personal thing to share something that you've written, especially if you've been thinking about it in your mind for quite a long time. That's actually part of the reason I don't write very often is because of that. And I think you're right that it comes from fear of sharing it. So I started out by, I was just going to write this for myself. And then as I got more comfortable with it over time, I decided, “Well, I might as well share this piece to see what happens.” Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Did you bounce the idea off of friends or colleagues to kind of see what their reaction would be before you kept taking those steps that eventually led to a completed piece and submitting it to JCO? Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yes, I did bounce it off a friend who had the same experience in the same hospital with flowers getting taken away from patients. So I checked to see if other people had had the kind of same reaction to it as I had. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: That's great. It's always helpful to have a cadre of supportive readers when you first start writing - people who are going to talk about what's great about your piece and then give you advice that you can trust that's more helpful in revising it. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yes. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I love how in this piece you explore the tension we face as hematologist-oncologists between recommending what we feel is medically appropriate for our patients and feeling as if we've taken away some of their agency and some of their liberty. Can you discuss this in a little more detail? Dr. Kathryn Cappell: You'd think that the hardest thing about being a hematologist-oncologist would be knowing all the drugs and knowing what you should do, but I think that that's actually one of the easier parts. The harder part is these kind of interactions that arise because I think they have an emotional component to them and that makes it harder to do, day in and day out, dealing with those things. I mean, I think hospital policies are important and they're there to protect people. So I think, in the end of the story, I did do what the hospital policy said to do. And I think that that's in some ways important to make sure we have a good environment for everybody on the ward. But I think it's really painful as a doctor to have to make those decisions where it impacts someone's agency and someone's joy and what they're getting out of a day to day life, especially when they're in the hospital for a really long time. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Was there something that you could do to make up for it? So sometimes we'll take something away like beautiful flowers for fear of introducing infection in a ward where people are immunocompromised. But we can make up for it by saying, “Okay, but we're okay with you bringing food in from the outside.” Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yeah. So the nurse in the story, I mean, she definitely was trying to make up for it. She was a very sweet nurse with helping me. She went and printed out the picture of the flowers, which I think is one thing you can do, but another thing I've seen a lot of patients do and family members do is bring in paper flowers. They decorate the room in other ways, which I think makes it meaningful and still nice for people. And I think the nurses on our ward did a great job doing that too. They decorate the rooms and try to still keep a very nice environment. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: That's terrific. What other things do family members do to try to make the room more of a home environment? Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Bringing in their own blankets for people so they have their own comforter on the bed is a big one. Bringing in pictures of family members, putting them on the walls, on the windows. Bringing in food from home I think is very important. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I completely agree. And there was a recent study looking at neutropenic precautions in a transplant unit and whether or not those actually improved the outcome of patients, and it turns out it didn't. So we've had these incredibly restrictive diets for patients that I think we can feel much more comfortable now relaxing and allowing people their comfort foods, which you, as a University of Miami graduate know, here involves a lot of Cuban food. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yeah, definitely. But I think that that neutrophenic diet is a great parallel to that. We start instituting things that kind of take away people's agency in something that brings them joy, but we might not have that great of evidence for it. And it really does impact people's happiness, I think, in a lot of ways and comfort in the hospital. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Yeah. And that's so important for getting through this ordeal of being in the hospital sometimes for weeks. You start and end the essay writing about your family, and this beautifully illustrates the freedom that they and you have compared to your patients who are confined to the hospital on a lovely holiday weekend. How do you navigate what must feel almost like survivor's guilt of being free from the hospital when others aren't, and being able to shift your focus to the joy of being around your children enjoying their holiday. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yeah, I think children help you focus it themselves. When I come home, they're pretty focused on what they want. They want their Easter egg hunt in the morning. They need their Easter baskets. So that alone brings you back into a different world. I come back, and suddenly I'm thinking about where the Easter eggs are going to go. That helps me a lot doing that. But I also think most people in oncology, most onc physicians, it is a difficult separation. You do think about your patients outside of work hours. That is something that's hard to do. But I'd say my children actually help me with that, getting my mind onto something different because they're just so active and they have so much going all the time. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's interesting how you frame that also, how your children help you. I remember distinctly one time my daughter asked me, “How was work?” And I said, “Oh, it was a hard day because I had to tell somebody some bad news.” And she very deliberately said to me, “You need to separate what you tell us at home from what happens at work. We don't want to hear your sad stories.” Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Oh, that's a sad story in itself. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, it is, right? But it was kind of very helpful to me to realize that, yes, we do have to- we have to compartmentalize, not only for our own health, but also for the health of our family. We've chosen this path in our lives, which is this incredible opportunity to be around people who have a cancer diagnosis at a pivotal point in their lives. But our family hasn't necessarily made that same choice. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: The children don't understand it 100%. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Do you feel as if hematologists-oncologists are better at compartmentalizing maybe than other professionals in medicine? Dr. Kathryn Cappell: I'm not sure. I feel like a lot of medicine has those sad points that are difficult. So I think psychiatry is a good example of that. That's hard to, I think probably, very difficult to compartmentalize. So I'm not sure. I think other physicians also have difficulties with it. But I do think we see a lot of difficult scenarios more than other groups. So that could make it that we're better at compartmentalizing. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: You mentioned in your essay, you refer to your patient's lumbering son. I love that phrase, the lumbering son who brings her the flowers. Do you think it helps to see that backstory to what's going on in your patients' lives? There's a risk of almost too much empathy, of knowing too much about it, and therefore having an even more difficult time separating yourself. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: For me, I think it helps with patient care a lot to know their family so you know where they're going back when they leave the hospital. You kind of know what helps, you know what they value. So I think in a lot of ways it does help for patient care to know what they're coming from in terms of family members. I do think sometimes getting too involved and knowing too much about the situation and attaching to it emotionally can make it hard to be objective. So I think that it's important to keep some distance there in terms of being able to make good decisions for your patients as well. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: You mention looking at people's rooms and seeing the photos up on the wall. I always think we worry about the patients most who don't have any photos up on the wall and what kind of support system they're going back to when they're discharged from the hospital. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Yeah, I definitely agree. That's definitely something I think about as well. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: You end this beautiful essay by asking the question, and I'm quoting you now, “I couldn't quite shake the feeling I'd made the wrong decision. I mentally reassured myself that it was hospital policy to take away Evelyn's flowers. And after all, it was for her own protection, wasn't it?” And I'm wondering, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit, Katy, can you answer your own question? Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Boy, I'm not sure if I can still. I think that's part of where the tension in the piece arises from. I think when you're in a hospital, you're working as a team, and part of the thing I think about is nurses are an important part of that team and they structure the ward. So I don't think it's just my decision. I think it's a hospital decision as a team. And I do think there's a component of fairness. If you're going to say it to one patient, that's the policy, it should be the policy to all patients. So in some ways I reassure myself about that. But in the other side of me, it still makes me a little sad. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Yeah, it's well stated. I'm wondering that the hospital in which you work changed their policy or did your previous position change their policy? Dr. Kathryn Cappell: I haven't actually mentioned this story to them yet or asked them to change their policy. I do feel it's pretty common at the different hospitals. I've worked at seeing a policy similar to this, so I haven't asked. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, Katy, I want to thank you for joining us today on the podcast. Your writing is elegant, the tale that you tell resonates with all of us, and it's been just delightful getting to know you even better. Dr. Kathryn Cappell: Great to meet you as well. Thank you for having me on. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Until next time, thank you for listening to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. Don't forget to give us a rating or review, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find all of ASCO's shows at asco.org/podcasts. Thank you again.   The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.     Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review.  Guest Bio: Dr. Kathryn Cappell is Assistant Research Physician at the National Cancer Institute.  

This week, Marina helps us explore the possibility of a new adversary in Season 5, or maybe a Big Bad we've never considered. Stay Strange.

Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry are unlike anyone at their respective positions.The quarterback will likely win his third MVP, judging by the All-Pro voting. The running back is up to 2,107 yards and 18 touchdowns on the season, all at the age of 31 years old. But you heard it from A.J. Epenesa after the Buffalo Bills' wild-card win over Denver. This Buffalo Bills defense that's suffered its share of postseason duds will not put the Ravens up on a pedestal. They're confident in their own progress since. Week 4. “We definitely respect them,” Epenesa told Go Long, “but there's a way to beat everybody and that's our mindset.”On Substack Live, from One Bills Drive, I was joined by Jay Skurski of The Buffalo News on Wednesday. We dive into the match-up.* How should the Bills defend this duo? Theoretically, Sean McDermott could replace nickel Taron Johnson with a linebacker, but is it worth changing who you are?* Is McDermott's team looser into this playoff game vs. past divisional round games? He got into the psychology of his team in our sitdown last week. * Which Ed Oliver shows up? Buffalo needs him. * Tackling Derrick Henry in 5-degree weather likely will not be a fun experience. Which team benefits from the bitter cold in the forecast? * Why the Bills are determined to win on the line of scrimmage.* Josh Allen will need be the purest form of Josh Allen to win.As a reminder, download the app and turn notifications on to hang out with Go Long on future Substack Live videos:Thanks, all. More stories coming soon.This is the best sports weekend of the year. How did the Packers and the Vikings fall apart at the worst possible time? Here's two hours with Bob McGinn on the “Ty & Bob Pod.”This AFC heavyweight showdown will be a battle of quarterback titans. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.golongtd.com/subscribe

Does a food carbon tax increase animal deaths and/or the total time of suffering of cows, pigs, chickens, and fish? Theoretically, this is possible, as a carbon tax could lead consumers to substitute, for example, beef with chicken. However, this is not per se the case, as animal products are not perfect substitutes. I'm presenting the results of my master's thesis in Environmental Economics, which I re-worked and published on SSRN as a pre-print. My thesis develops a model of animal product substitution after a carbon tax, slaughter tax, and a meat tax. When I calibrate this model for the U.S., there is a decrease in animal deaths and duration of suffering following a carbon tax. This suggests that a carbon tax can reduce animal suffering. Key points Some animal products are carbon-intensive, like beef, but causes relatively few animal deaths or total time of suffering because [...] ---Outline:(00:57) Key points(03:07) The Small Animal Replacement Problem(05:46) The model(05:49) Input data and market model(08:14) Measuring animal welfare impacts(09:39) Results(09:42) Carbon taxes(11:31) Slaughter taxes(12:10) Is a carbon tax or a slaughter tax better?(13:41) Cant we just put a simple tax on meat and fish instead?(14:06) Limitations(15:54) Full thesisThe original text contained 1 image which was described by AI. --- First published: January 3rd, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KbREamTda2sZhKtTz/will-a-food-carbon-tax-lead-to-more-animals-being --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

We're back (from the future) with a new Theoretically. Last week, Amanda will take you through the ways time travel works in media & how it already appears in Stranger Things. Stayed Strange.

Jess and Trisha talk about lists and roundups that closed out 2024, as well as their favorite backlist reads of the last year. Follow the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. To get even more romance recs and news, sign up for our Kissing Books newsletter! A new year means a new Read Harder Challenge! Join us as we make our way through 24 tasks meant to expand our reading horizons. To get recommendations for each task, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter. All Access subscribers get even more recommendations plus community features, where you can connect with like-minded readers in a cozy and supportive corner of the internet. You can become an All Access member starting at $6 per month or $60 per year to get unlimited access to all members-only content in 20+ newsletters, community features, and the warm fuzzies of knowing you are supporting independent media. To join, visit bookriot.com/readharder. This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Books Discussed Rifts and Refrains by Tiye and Keisha Mennefee Just Playing House by Farah Heron The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter Demon's Dream by Elle Kayson Fly with Me by Andie Burke Role Playing by Cathy Yardley Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton White Whiskey Bargain by Jodie Slaughter Love in Color by Bolu Babalola The Marquess Makes His Move by Diana Quincy Amor, Actually by Adriana Herrara et al The Broposal by Sonora Reyes (publishing 1/21/25) Secret Spark by Kelly Farmer (publishing 1/7/25) Let us know what you're reading, what you're thinking, and what you're thinking about what you're reading! As always, you can find Jess and Trisha at the WIR email address (wheninromance@bookriot.com). You can also find us on Twitter (@jessisreading), or Instagram (@jess_is_reading and @trishahaleybrown), and Jess is even on TikTok (@jess_isreading). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Applications for the 2025 AI Engineer Summit are up, and you can save the date for AIE Singapore in April and AIE World's Fair 2025 in June.Happy new year, and thanks for 100 great episodes! Please let us know what you want to see/hear for the next 100!Full YouTube Episode with Slides/ChartsLike and subscribe and hit that bell to get notifs!Timestamps* 00:00 Welcome to the 100th Episode!* 00:19 Reflecting on the Journey* 00:47 AI Engineering: The Rise and Impact* 03:15 Latent Space Live and AI Conferences* 09:44 The Competitive AI Landscape* 21:45 Synthetic Data and Future Trends* 35:53 Creative Writing with AI* 36:12 Legal and Ethical Issues in AI* 38:18 The Data War: GPU Poor vs. GPU Rich* 39:12 The Rise of GPU Ultra Rich* 40:47 Emerging Trends in AI Models* 45:31 The Multi-Modality War* 01:05:31 The Future of AI Benchmarks* 01:13:17 Pionote and Frontier Models* 01:13:47 Niche Models and Base Models* 01:14:30 State Space Models and RWKB* 01:15:48 Inference Race and Price Wars* 01:22:16 Major AI Themes of the Year* 01:22:48 AI Rewind: January to March* 01:26:42 AI Rewind: April to June* 01:33:12 AI Rewind: July to September* 01:34:59 AI Rewind: October to December* 01:39:53 Year-End Reflections and PredictionsTranscript[00:00:00] Welcome to the 100th Episode![00:00:00] Alessio: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space Podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co host Swyx for the 100th time today.[00:00:12] swyx: Yay, um, and we're so glad that, yeah, you know, everyone has, uh, followed us in this journey. How do you feel about it? 100 episodes.[00:00:19] Alessio: Yeah, I know.[00:00:19] Reflecting on the Journey[00:00:19] Alessio: Almost two years that we've been doing this. We've had four different studios. Uh, we've had a lot of changes. You know, we used to do this lightning round. When we first started that we didn't like, and we tried to change the question. The answer[00:00:32] swyx: was cursor and perplexity.[00:00:34] Alessio: Yeah, I love mid journey. It's like, do you really not like anything else?[00:00:38] Alessio: Like what's, what's the unique thing? And I think, yeah, we, we've also had a lot more research driven content. You know, we had like 3DAO, we had, you know. Jeremy Howard, we had more folks like that.[00:00:47] AI Engineering: The Rise and Impact[00:00:47] Alessio: I think we want to do more of that too in the new year, like having, uh, some of the Gemini folks, both on the research and the applied side.[00:00:54] Alessio: Yeah, but it's been a ton of fun. I think we both started, I wouldn't say as a joke, we were kind of like, Oh, we [00:01:00] should do a podcast. And I think we kind of caught the right wave, obviously. And I think your rise of the AI engineer posts just kind of get people. Sombra to congregate, and then the AI engineer summit.[00:01:11] Alessio: And that's why when I look at our growth chart, it's kind of like a proxy for like the AI engineering industry as a whole, which is almost like, like, even if we don't do that much, we keep growing just because there's so many more AI engineers. So did you expect that growth or did you expect that would take longer for like the AI engineer thing to kind of like become, you know, everybody talks about it today.[00:01:32] swyx: So, the sign of that, that we have won is that Gartner puts it at the top of the hype curve right now. So Gartner has called the peak in AI engineering. I did not expect, um, to what level. I knew that I was correct when I called it because I did like two months of work going into that. But I didn't know, You know, how quickly it could happen, and obviously there's a chance that I could be wrong.[00:01:52] swyx: But I think, like, most people have come around to that concept. Hacker News hates it, which is a good sign. But there's enough people that have defined it, you know, GitHub, when [00:02:00] they launched GitHub Models, which is the Hugging Face clone, they put AI engineers in the banner, like, above the fold, like, in big So I think it's like kind of arrived as a meaningful and useful definition.[00:02:12] swyx: I think people are trying to figure out where the boundaries are. I think that was a lot of the quote unquote drama that happens behind the scenes at the World's Fair in June. Because I think there's a lot of doubt or questions about where ML engineering stops and AI engineering starts. That's a useful debate to be had.[00:02:29] swyx: In some sense, I actually anticipated that as well. So I intentionally did not. Put a firm definition there because most of the successful definitions are necessarily underspecified and it's actually useful to have different perspectives and you don't have to specify everything from the outset.[00:02:45] Alessio: Yeah, I was at um, AWS reInvent and the line to get into like the AI engineering talk, so to speak, which is, you know, applied AI and whatnot was like, there are like hundreds of people just in line to go in.[00:02:56] Alessio: I think that's kind of what enabled me. People, right? Which is what [00:03:00] you kind of talked about. It's like, Hey, look, you don't actually need a PhD, just, yeah, just use the model. And then maybe we'll talk about some of the blind spots that you get as an engineer with the earlier posts that we also had on on the sub stack.[00:03:11] Alessio: But yeah, it's been a heck of a heck of a two years.[00:03:14] swyx: Yeah.[00:03:15] Latent Space Live and AI Conferences[00:03:15] swyx: You know, I was, I was trying to view the conference as like, so NeurIPS is I think like 16, 17, 000 people. And the Latent Space Live event that we held there was 950 signups. I think. The AI world, the ML world is still very much research heavy. And that's as it should be because ML is very much in a research phase.[00:03:34] swyx: But as we move this entire field into production, I think that ratio inverts into becoming more engineering heavy. So at least I think engineering should be on the same level, even if it's never as prestigious, like it'll always be low status because at the end of the day, you're manipulating APIs or whatever.[00:03:51] swyx: But Yeah, wrapping GPTs, but there's going to be an increasing stack and an art to doing these, these things well. And I, you know, I [00:04:00] think that's what we're focusing on for the podcast, the conference and basically everything I do seems to make sense. And I think we'll, we'll talk about the trends here that apply.[00:04:09] swyx: It's, it's just very strange. So, like, there's a mix of, like, keeping on top of research while not being a researcher and then putting that research into production. So, like, people always ask me, like, why are you covering Neuralibs? Like, this is a ML research conference and I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, we're not going to, to like, understand everything Or reproduce every single paper, but the stuff that is being found here is going to make it through into production at some point, you hope.[00:04:32] swyx: And then actually like when I talk to the researchers, they actually get very excited because they're like, oh, you guys are actually caring about how this goes into production and that's what they really really want. The measure of success is previously just peer review, right? Getting 7s and 8s on their um, Academic review conferences and stuff like citations is one metric, but money is a better metric.[00:04:51] Alessio: Money is a better metric. Yeah, and there were about 2200 people on the live stream or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Hundred on the live stream. So [00:05:00] I try my best to moderate, but it was a lot spicier in person with Jonathan and, and Dylan. Yeah, that it was in the chat on YouTube.[00:05:06] swyx: I would say that I actually also created.[00:05:09] swyx: Layen Space Live in order to address flaws that are perceived in academic conferences. This is not NeurIPS specific, it's ICML, NeurIPS. Basically, it's very sort of oriented towards the PhD student, uh, market, job market, right? Like literally all, basically everyone's there to advertise their research and skills and get jobs.[00:05:28] swyx: And then obviously all the, the companies go there to hire them. And I think that's great for the individual researchers, but for people going there to get info is not great because you have to read between the lines, bring a ton of context in order to understand every single paper. So what is missing is effectively what I ended up doing, which is domain by domain, go through and recap the best of the year.[00:05:48] swyx: Survey the field. And there are, like NeurIPS had a, uh, I think ICML had a like a position paper track, NeurIPS added a benchmarks, uh, datasets track. These are ways in which to address that [00:06:00] issue. Uh, there's always workshops as well. Every, every conference has, you know, a last day of workshops and stuff that provide more of an overview.[00:06:06] swyx: But they're not specifically prompted to do so. And I think really, uh, Organizing a conference is just about getting good speakers and giving them the correct prompts. And then they will just go and do that thing and they do a very good job of it. So I think Sarah did a fantastic job with the startups prompt.[00:06:21] swyx: I can't list everybody, but we did best of 2024 in startups, vision, open models. Post transformers, synthetic data, small models, and agents. And then the last one was the, uh, and then we also did a quick one on reasoning with Nathan Lambert. And then the last one, obviously, was the debate that people were very hyped about.[00:06:39] swyx: It was very awkward. And I'm really, really thankful for John Franco, basically, who stepped up to challenge Dylan. Because Dylan was like, yeah, I'll do it. But He was pro scaling. And I think everyone who is like in AI is pro scaling, right? So you need somebody who's ready to publicly say, no, we've hit a wall.[00:06:57] swyx: So that means you're saying Sam Altman's wrong. [00:07:00] You're saying, um, you know, everyone else is wrong. It helps that this was the day before Ilya went on, went up on stage and then said pre training has hit a wall. And data has hit a wall. So actually Jonathan ended up winning, and then Ilya supported that statement, and then Noam Brown on the last day further supported that statement as well.[00:07:17] swyx: So it's kind of interesting that I think the consensus kind of going in was that we're not done scaling, like you should believe in a better lesson. And then, four straight days in a row, you had Sepp Hochreiter, who is the creator of the LSTM, along with everyone's favorite OG in AI, which is Juergen Schmidhuber.[00:07:34] swyx: He said that, um, we're pre trading inside a wall, or like, we've run into a different kind of wall. And then we have, you know John Frankel, Ilya, and then Noam Brown are all saying variations of the same thing, that we have hit some kind of wall in the status quo of what pre trained, scaling large pre trained models has looked like, and we need a new thing.[00:07:54] swyx: And obviously the new thing for people is some make, either people are calling it inference time compute or test time [00:08:00] compute. I think the collective terminology has been inference time, and I think that makes sense because test time, calling it test, meaning, has a very pre trained bias, meaning that the only reason for running inference at all is to test your model.[00:08:11] swyx: That is not true. Right. Yeah. So, so, I quite agree that. OpenAI seems to have adopted, or the community seems to have adopted this terminology of ITC instead of TTC. And that, that makes a lot of sense because like now we care about inference, even right down to compute optimality. Like I actually interviewed this author who recovered or reviewed the Chinchilla paper.[00:08:31] swyx: Chinchilla paper is compute optimal training, but what is not stated in there is it's pre trained compute optimal training. And once you start caring about inference, compute optimal training, you have a different scaling law. And in a way that we did not know last year.[00:08:45] Alessio: I wonder, because John is, he's also on the side of attention is all you need.[00:08:49] Alessio: Like he had the bet with Sasha. So I'm curious, like he doesn't believe in scaling, but he thinks the transformer, I wonder if he's still. So, so,[00:08:56] swyx: so he, obviously everything is nuanced and you know, I told him to play a character [00:09:00] for this debate, right? So he actually does. Yeah. He still, he still believes that we can scale more.[00:09:04] swyx: Uh, he just assumed the character to be very game for, for playing this debate. So even more kudos to him that he assumed a position that he didn't believe in and still won the debate.[00:09:16] Alessio: Get rekt, Dylan. Um, do you just want to quickly run through some of these things? Like, uh, Sarah's presentation, just the highlights.[00:09:24] swyx: Yeah, we can't go through everyone's slides, but I pulled out some things as a factor of, like, stuff that we were going to talk about. And we'll[00:09:30] Alessio: publish[00:09:31] swyx: the rest. Yeah, we'll publish on this feed the best of 2024 in those domains. And hopefully people can benefit from the work that our speakers have done.[00:09:39] swyx: But I think it's, uh, these are just good slides. And I've been, I've been looking for a sort of end of year recaps from, from people.[00:09:44] The Competitive AI Landscape[00:09:44] swyx: The field has progressed a lot. You know, I think the max ELO in 2023 on LMSys used to be 1200 for LMSys ELOs. And now everyone is at least at, uh, 1275 in their ELOs, and this is across Gemini, Chadjibuti, [00:10:00] Grok, O1.[00:10:01] swyx: ai, which with their E Large model, and Enthopic, of course. It's a very, very competitive race. There are multiple Frontier labs all racing, but there is a clear tier zero Frontier. And then there's like a tier one. It's like, I wish I had everything else. Tier zero is extremely competitive. It's effectively now three horse race between Gemini, uh, Anthropic and OpenAI.[00:10:21] swyx: I would say that people are still holding out a candle for XAI. XAI, I think, for some reason, because their API was very slow to roll out, is not included in these metrics. So it's actually quite hard to put on there. As someone who also does charts, XAI is continually snubbed because they don't work well with the benchmarking people.[00:10:42] swyx: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little trivia for why XAI always gets ignored. The other thing is market share. So these are slides from Sarah. We have it up on the screen. It has gone from very heavily open AI. So we have some numbers and estimates. These are from RAMP. Estimates of open AI market share in [00:11:00] December 2023.[00:11:01] swyx: And this is basically, what is it, GPT being 95 percent of production traffic. And I think if you correlate that with stuff that we asked. Harrison Chase on the LangChain episode, it was true. And then CLAUD 3 launched mid middle of this year. I think CLAUD 3 launched in March, CLAUD 3. 5 Sonnet was in June ish.[00:11:23] swyx: And you can start seeing the market share shift towards opening, uh, towards that topic, uh, very, very aggressively. The more recent one is Gemini. So if I scroll down a little bit, this is an even more recent dataset. So RAM's dataset ends in September 2 2. 2024. Gemini has basically launched a price war at the low end, uh, with Gemini Flash, uh, being basically free for personal use.[00:11:44] swyx: Like, I think people don't understand the free tier. It's something like a billion tokens per day. Unless you're trying to abuse it, you cannot really exhaust your free tier on Gemini. They're really trying to get you to use it. They know they're in like third place, um, fourth place, depending how you, how you count.[00:11:58] swyx: And so they're going after [00:12:00] the Lower tier first, and then, you know, maybe the upper tier later, but yeah, Gemini Flash, according to OpenRouter, is now 50 percent of their OpenRouter requests. Obviously, these are the small requests. These are small, cheap requests that are mathematically going to be more.[00:12:15] swyx: The smart ones obviously are still going to OpenAI. But, you know, it's a very, very big shift in the market. Like basically 2023, 2022, To going into 2024 opening has gone from nine five market share to Yeah. Reasonably somewhere between 50 to 75 market share.[00:12:29] Alessio: Yeah. I'm really curious how ramped does the attribution to the model?[00:12:32] Alessio: If it's API, because I think it's all credit card spin. . Well, but it's all, the credit card doesn't say maybe. Maybe the, maybe when they do expenses, they upload the PDF, but yeah, the, the German I think makes sense. I think that was one of my main 2024 takeaways that like. The best small model companies are the large labs, which is not something I would have thought that the open source kind of like long tail would be like the small model.[00:12:53] swyx: Yeah, different sizes of small models we're talking about here, right? Like so small model here for Gemini is AB, [00:13:00] right? Uh, mini. We don't know what the small model size is, but yeah, it's probably in the double digits or maybe single digits, but probably double digits. The open source community has kind of focused on the one to three B size.[00:13:11] swyx: Mm-hmm . Yeah. Maybe[00:13:12] swyx: zero, maybe 0.5 B uh, that's moon dream and that is small for you then, then that's great. It makes sense that we, we have a range for small now, which is like, may, maybe one to five B. Yeah. I'll even put that at, at, at the high end. And so this includes Gemma from Gemini as well. But also includes the Apple Foundation models, which I think Apple Foundation is 3B.[00:13:32] Alessio: Yeah. No, that's great. I mean, I think in the start small just meant cheap. I think today small is actually a more nuanced discussion, you know, that people weren't really having before.[00:13:43] swyx: Yeah, we can keep going. This is a slide that I smiley disagree with Sarah. She's pointing to the scale SEAL leaderboard. I think the Researchers that I talked with at NeurIPS were kind of positive on this because basically you need private test [00:14:00] sets to prevent contamination.[00:14:02] swyx: And Scale is one of maybe three or four people this year that has really made an effort in doing a credible private test set leaderboard. Llama405B does well compared to Gemini and GPT 40. And I think that's good. I would say that. You know, it's good to have an open model that is that big, that does well on those metrics.[00:14:23] swyx: But anyone putting 405B in production will tell you, if you scroll down a little bit to the artificial analysis numbers, that it is very slow and very expensive to infer. Um, it doesn't even fit on like one node. of, uh, of H100s. Cerebras will be happy to tell you they can serve 4 or 5B on their super large chips.[00:14:42] swyx: But, um, you know, if you need to do anything custom to it, you're still kind of constrained. So, is 4 or 5B really that relevant? Like, I think most people are basically saying that they only use 4 or 5B as a teacher model to distill down to something. Even Meta is doing it. So with Lama 3. [00:15:00] 3 launched, they only launched the 70B because they use 4 or 5B to distill the 70B.[00:15:03] swyx: So I don't know if like open source is keeping up. I think they're the, the open source industrial complex is very invested in telling you that the, if the gap is narrowing, I kind of disagree. I think that the gap is widening with O1. I think there are very, very smart people trying to narrow that gap and they should.[00:15:22] swyx: I really wish them success, but you cannot use a chart that is nearing 100 in your saturation chart. And look, the distance between open source and closed source is narrowing. Of course it's going to narrow because you're near 100. This is stupid. But in metrics that matter, is open source narrowing?[00:15:38] swyx: Probably not for O1 for a while. And it's really up to the open source guys to figure out if they can match O1 or not.[00:15:46] Alessio: I think inference time compute is bad for open source just because, you know, Doc can donate the flops at training time, but he cannot donate the flops at inference time. So it's really hard to like actually keep up on that axis.[00:15:59] Alessio: Big, big business [00:16:00] model shift. So I don't know what that means for the GPU clouds. I don't know what that means for the hyperscalers, but obviously the big labs have a lot of advantage. Because, like, it's not a static artifact that you're putting the compute in. You're kind of doing that still, but then you're putting a lot of computed inference too.[00:16:17] swyx: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I mean, Llama4 will be reasoning oriented. We talked with Thomas Shalom. Um, kudos for getting that episode together. That was really nice. Good, well timed. Actually, I connected with the AI meta guy, uh, at NeurIPS, and, um, yeah, we're going to coordinate something for Llama4. Yeah, yeah,[00:16:32] Alessio: and our friend, yeah.[00:16:33] Alessio: Clara Shi just joined to lead the business agent side. So I'm sure we'll have her on in the new year.[00:16:39] swyx: Yeah. So, um, my comment on, on the business model shift, this is super interesting. Apparently it is wide knowledge that OpenAI wanted more than 6. 6 billion dollars for their fundraise. They wanted to raise, you know, higher, and they did not.[00:16:51] swyx: And what that means is basically like, it's very convenient that we're not getting GPT 5, which would have been a larger pre train. We should have a lot of upfront money. And [00:17:00] instead we're, we're converting fixed costs into variable costs, right. And passing it on effectively to the customer. And it's so much easier to take margin there because you can directly attribute it to like, Oh, you're using this more.[00:17:12] swyx: Therefore you, you pay more of the cost and I'll just slap a margin in there. So like that lets you control your growth margin and like tie your. Your spend, or your sort of inference spend, accordingly. And it's just really interesting to, that this change in the sort of inference paradigm has arrived exactly at the same time that the funding environment for pre training is effectively drying up, kind of.[00:17:36] swyx: I feel like maybe the VCs are very in tune with research anyway, so like, they would have noticed this, but, um, it's just interesting.[00:17:43] Alessio: Yeah, and I was looking back at our yearly recap of last year. Yeah. And the big thing was like the mixed trial price fights, you know, and I think now it's almost like there's nowhere to go, like, you know, Gemini Flash is like basically giving it away for free.[00:17:55] Alessio: So I think this is a good way for the labs to generate more revenue and pass down [00:18:00] some of the compute to the customer. I think they're going to[00:18:02] swyx: keep going. I think that 2, will come.[00:18:05] Alessio: Yeah, I know. Totally. I mean, next year, the first thing I'm doing is signing up for Devin. Signing up for the pro chat GBT.[00:18:12] Alessio: Just to try. I just want to see what does it look like to spend a thousand dollars a month on AI?[00:18:17] swyx: Yes. Yes. I think if your, if your, your job is a, at least AI content creator or VC or, you know, someone who, whose job it is to stay on, stay on top of things, you should already be spending like a thousand dollars a month on, on stuff.[00:18:28] swyx: And then obviously easy to spend, hard to use. You have to actually use. The good thing is that actually Google lets you do a lot of stuff for free now. So like deep research. That they just launched. Uses a ton of inference and it's, it's free while it's in preview.[00:18:45] Alessio: Yeah. They need to put that in Lindy.[00:18:47] Alessio: I've been using Lindy lately. I've been a built a bunch of things once we had flow because I liked the new thing. It's pretty good. I even did a phone call assistant. Um, yeah, they just launched Lindy voice. Yeah, I think once [00:19:00] they get advanced voice mode like capability today, still like speech to text, you can kind of tell.[00:19:06] Alessio: Um, but it's good for like reservations and things like that. So I have a meeting prepper thing. And so[00:19:13] swyx: it's good. Okay. I feel like we've, we've covered a lot of stuff. Uh, I, yeah, I, you know, I think We will go over the individual, uh, talks in a separate episode. Uh, I don't want to take too much time with, uh, this stuff, but that suffice to say that there is a lot of progress in each field.[00:19:28] swyx: Uh, we covered vision. Basically this is all like the audience voting for what they wanted. And then I just invited the best people I could find in each audience, especially agents. Um, Graham, who I talked to at ICML in Vienna, he is currently still number one. It's very hard to stay on top of SweetBench.[00:19:45] swyx: OpenHand is currently still number one. switchbench full, which is the hardest one. He had very good thoughts on agents, which I, which I'll highlight for people. Everyone is saying 2025 is the year of agents, just like they said last year. And, uh, but he had [00:20:00] thoughts on like eight parts of what are the frontier problems to solve in agents.[00:20:03] swyx: And so I'll highlight that talk as well.[00:20:05] Alessio: Yeah. The number six, which is the Hacken agents learn more about the environment, has been a Super interesting to us as well, just to think through, because, yeah, how do you put an agent in an enterprise where most things in an enterprise have never been public, you know, a lot of the tooling, like the code bases and things like that.[00:20:23] Alessio: So, yeah, there's not indexing and reg. Well, yeah, but it's more like. You can't really rag things that are not documented. But people know them based on how they've been doing it. You know, so I think there's almost this like, you know, Oh, institutional knowledge. Yeah, the boring word is kind of like a business process extraction.[00:20:38] Alessio: Yeah yeah, I see. It's like, how do you actually understand how these things are done? I see. Um, and I think today the, the problem is that, Yeah, the agents are, that most people are building are good at following instruction, but are not as good as like extracting them from you. Um, so I think that will be a big unlock just to touch quickly on the Jeff Dean thing.[00:20:55] Alessio: I thought it was pretty, I mean, we'll link it in the, in the things, but. I think the main [00:21:00] focus was like, how do you use ML to optimize the systems instead of just focusing on ML to do something else? Yeah, I think speculative decoding, we had, you know, Eugene from RWKB on the podcast before, like he's doing a lot of that with Fetterless AI.[00:21:12] swyx: Everyone is. I would say it's the norm. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with how much it costs, because it does use more of the GPU per call. But because everyone is so keen on fast inference, then yeah, makes sense.[00:21:24] Alessio: Exactly. Um, yeah, but we'll link that. Obviously Jeff is great.[00:21:30] swyx: Jeff is, Jeff's talk was more, it wasn't focused on Gemini.[00:21:33] swyx: I think people got the wrong impression from my tweet. It's more about how Google approaches ML and uses ML to design systems and then systems feedback into ML. And I think this ties in with Lubna's talk.[00:21:45] Synthetic Data and Future Trends[00:21:45] swyx: on synthetic data where it's basically the story of bootstrapping of humans and AI in AI research or AI in production.[00:21:53] swyx: So her talk was on synthetic data, where like how much synthetic data has grown in 2024 in the pre training side, the post training side, [00:22:00] and the eval side. And I think Jeff then also extended it basically to chips, uh, to chip design. So he'd spend a lot of time talking about alpha chip. And most of us in the audience are like, we're not working on hardware, man.[00:22:11] swyx: Like you guys are great. TPU is great. Okay. We'll buy TPUs.[00:22:14] Alessio: And then there was the earlier talk. Yeah. But, and then we have, uh, I don't know if we're calling them essays. What are we calling these? But[00:22:23] swyx: for me, it's just like bonus for late in space supporters, because I feel like they haven't been getting anything.[00:22:29] swyx: And then I wanted a more high frequency way to write stuff. Like that one I wrote in an afternoon. I think basically we now have an answer to what Ilya saw. It's one year since. The blip. And we know what he saw in 2014. We know what he saw in 2024. We think we know what he sees in 2024. He gave some hints and then we have vague indications of what he saw in 2023.[00:22:54] swyx: So that was the Oh, and then 2016 as well, because of this lawsuit with Elon, OpenAI [00:23:00] is publishing emails from Sam's, like, his personal text messages to Siobhan, Zelis, or whatever. So, like, we have emails from Ilya saying, this is what we're seeing in OpenAI, and this is why we need to scale up GPUs. And I think it's very prescient in 2016 to write that.[00:23:16] swyx: And so, like, it is exactly, like, basically his insights. It's him and Greg, basically just kind of driving the scaling up of OpenAI, while they're still playing Dota. They're like, no, like, we see the path here.[00:23:30] Alessio: Yeah, and it's funny, yeah, they even mention, you know, we can only train on 1v1 Dota. We need to train on 5v5, and that takes too many GPUs.[00:23:37] Alessio: Yeah,[00:23:37] swyx: and at least for me, I can speak for myself, like, I didn't see the path from Dota to where we are today. I think even, maybe if you ask them, like, they wouldn't necessarily draw a straight line. Yeah,[00:23:47] Alessio: no, definitely. But I think like that was like the whole idea of almost like the RL and we talked about this with Nathan on his podcast.[00:23:55] Alessio: It's like with RL, you can get very good at specific things, but then you can't really like generalize as much. And I [00:24:00] think the language models are like the opposite, which is like, you're going to throw all this data at them and scale them up, but then you really need to drive them home on a specific task later on.[00:24:08] Alessio: And we'll talk about the open AI reinforcement, fine tuning, um, announcement too, and all of that. But yeah, I think like scale is all you need. That's kind of what Elia will be remembered for. And I think just maybe to clarify on like the pre training is over thing that people love to tweet. I think the point of the talk was like everybody, we're scaling these chips, we're scaling the compute, but like the second ingredient which is data is not scaling at the same rate.[00:24:35] Alessio: So it's not necessarily pre training is over. It's kind of like What got us here won't get us there. In his email, he predicted like 10x growth every two years or something like that. And I think maybe now it's like, you know, you can 10x the chips again, but[00:24:49] swyx: I think it's 10x per year. Was it? I don't know.[00:24:52] Alessio: Exactly. And Moore's law is like 2x. So it's like, you know, much faster than that. And yeah, I like the fossil fuel of AI [00:25:00] analogy. It's kind of like, you know, the little background tokens thing. So the OpenAI reinforcement fine tuning is basically like, instead of fine tuning on data, you fine tune on a reward model.[00:25:09] Alessio: So it's basically like, instead of being data driven, it's like task driven. And I think people have tasks to do, they don't really have a lot of data. So I'm curious to see how that changes, how many people fine tune, because I think this is what people run into. It's like, Oh, you can fine tune llama. And it's like, okay, where do I get the data?[00:25:27] Alessio: To fine tune it on, you know, so it's great that we're moving the thing. And then I really like he had this chart where like, you know, the brain mass and the body mass thing is basically like mammals that scaled linearly by brain and body size, and then humans kind of like broke off the slope. So it's almost like maybe the mammal slope is like the pre training slope.[00:25:46] Alessio: And then the post training slope is like the, the human one.[00:25:49] swyx: Yeah. I wonder what the. I mean, we'll know in 10 years, but I wonder what the y axis is for, for Ilya's SSI. We'll try to get them on.[00:25:57] Alessio: Ilya, if you're listening, you're [00:26:00] welcome here. Yeah, and then he had, you know, what comes next, like agent, synthetic data, inference, compute, I thought all of that was like that.[00:26:05] Alessio: I don't[00:26:05] swyx: think he was dropping any alpha there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.[00:26:07] Alessio: Yeah. Any other new reps? Highlights?[00:26:10] swyx: I think that there was comparatively a lot more work. Oh, by the way, I need to plug that, uh, my friend Yi made this, like, little nice paper. Yeah, that was really[00:26:20] swyx: nice.[00:26:20] swyx: Uh, of, uh, of, like, all the, he's, she called it must read papers of 2024.[00:26:26] swyx: So I laid out some of these at NeurIPS, and it was just gone. Like, everyone just picked it up. Because people are dying for, like, little guidance and visualizations And so, uh, I thought it was really super nice that we got there.[00:26:38] Alessio: Should we do a late in space book for each year? Uh, I thought about it. For each year we should.[00:26:42] Alessio: Coffee table book. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Put it in the will. Hi, Will. By the way, we haven't introduced you. He's our new, you know, general organist, Jamie. You need to[00:26:52] swyx: pull up more things. One thing I saw that, uh, Okay, one fun one, and then one [00:27:00] more general one. So the fun one is this paper on agent collusion. This is a paper on steganography.[00:27:06] swyx: This is secret collusion among AI agents, multi agent deception via steganography. I tried to go to NeurIPS in order to find these kinds of papers because the real reason Like NeurIPS this year has a lottery system. A lot of people actually even go and don't buy tickets because they just go and attend the side events.[00:27:22] swyx: And then also the people who go and end up crowding around the most popular papers, which you already know and already read them before you showed up to NeurIPS. So the only reason you go there is to talk to the paper authors, but there's like something like 10, 000 other. All these papers out there that, you know, are just people's work that they, that they did on the air and they failed to get attention for one reason or another.[00:27:42] swyx: And this was one of them. Uh, it was like all the way at the back. And this is a deep mind paper that actually focuses on collusion between AI agents, uh, by hiding messages in the text that they generate. Uh, so that's what steganography is. So a very simple example would be the first letter of every word.[00:27:57] swyx: If you Pick that out, you know, and the code sends a [00:28:00] different message than that. But something I've always emphasized is to LLMs, we read left to right. LLMs can read up, down, sideways, you know, in random character order. And it's the same to them as it is to us. So if we were ever to get You know, self motivated, underlined LLMs that we're trying to collaborate to take over the planet.[00:28:19] swyx: This would be how they do it. They spread messages among us in the messages that we generate. And he developed a scaling law for that. So he marked, I'm showing it on screen right now, the emergence of this phenomenon. Basically, for example, for Cypher encoding, GPT 2, Lama 2, mixed trial, GPT 3. 5, zero capabilities, and sudden 4.[00:28:40] swyx: And this is the kind of Jason Wei type emergence properties that people kind of look for. I think what made this paper stand out as well, so he developed the benchmark for steganography collusion, and he also focused on shelling point collusion, which is very low coordination. For agreeing on a decoding encoding format, you kind of need to have some [00:29:00] agreement on that.[00:29:00] swyx: But, but shelling point means like very, very low or almost no coordination. So for example, if I, if I ask someone, if the only message I give you is meet me in New York and you're not aware. Or when you would probably meet me at Grand Central Station. That is the Grand Central Station is a shelling point.[00:29:16] swyx: And it's probably somewhere, somewhere during the day. That is the shelling point of New York is Grand Central. To that extent, shelling points for steganography are things like the, the, the common decoding methods that we talked about. It will be interesting at some point in the future when we are worried about alignment.[00:29:30] swyx: It is not interesting today, but it's interesting that DeepMind is already thinking about this.[00:29:36] Alessio: I think that's like one of the hardest things about NeurIPS. It's like the long tail. I[00:29:41] swyx: found a pricing guy. I'm going to feature him on the podcast. Basically, this guy from NVIDIA worked out the optimal pricing for language models.[00:29:51] swyx: It's basically an econometrics paper at NeurIPS, where everyone else is talking about GPUs. And the guy with the GPUs is[00:29:57] Alessio: talking[00:29:57] swyx: about economics instead. [00:30:00] That was the sort of fun one. So the focus I saw is that model papers at NeurIPS are kind of dead. No one really presents models anymore. It's just data sets.[00:30:12] swyx: This is all the grad students are working on. So like there was a data sets track and then I was looking around like, I was like, you don't need a data sets track because every paper is a data sets paper. And so data sets and benchmarks, they're kind of flip sides of the same thing. So Yeah. Cool. Yeah, if you're a grad student, you're a GPU boy, you kind of work on that.[00:30:30] swyx: And then the, the sort of big model that people walk around and pick the ones that they like, and then they use it in their models. And that's, that's kind of how it develops. I, I feel like, um, like, like you didn't last year, you had people like Hao Tian who worked on Lava, which is take Lama and add Vision.[00:30:47] swyx: And then obviously actually I hired him and he added Vision to Grok. Now he's the Vision Grok guy. This year, I don't think there was any of those.[00:30:55] Alessio: What were the most popular, like, orals? Last year it was like the [00:31:00] Mixed Monarch, I think, was like the most attended. Yeah, uh, I need to look it up. Yeah, I mean, if nothing comes to mind, that's also kind of like an answer in a way.[00:31:10] Alessio: But I think last year there was a lot of interest in, like, furthering models and, like, different architectures and all of that.[00:31:16] swyx: I will say that I felt the orals, oral picks this year were not very good. Either that or maybe it's just a So that's the highlight of how I have changed in terms of how I view papers.[00:31:29] swyx: So like, in my estimation, two of the best papers in this year for datasets or data comp and refined web or fine web. These are two actually industrially used papers, not highlighted for a while. I think DCLM got the spotlight, FineWeb didn't even get the spotlight. So like, it's just that the picks were different.[00:31:48] swyx: But one thing that does get a lot of play that a lot of people are debating is the role that's scheduled. This is the schedule free optimizer paper from Meta from Aaron DeFazio. And this [00:32:00] year in the ML community, there's been a lot of chat about shampoo, soap, all the bathroom amenities for optimizing your learning rates.[00:32:08] swyx: And, uh, most people at the big labs are. Who I asked about this, um, say that it's cute, but it's not something that matters. I don't know, but it's something that was discussed and very, very popular. 4Wars[00:32:19] Alessio: of AI recap maybe, just quickly. Um, where do you want to start? Data?[00:32:26] swyx: So to remind people, this is the 4Wars piece that we did as one of our earlier recaps of this year.[00:32:31] swyx: And the belligerents are on the left, journalists, writers, artists, anyone who owns IP basically, New York Times, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Getty, Sarah Silverman, George RR Martin. Yeah, and I think this year we can add Scarlett Johansson to that side of the fence. So anyone suing, open the eye, basically. I actually wanted to get a snapshot of all the lawsuits.[00:32:52] swyx: I'm sure some lawyer can do it. That's the data quality war. On the right hand side, we have the synthetic data people, and I think we talked about Lumna's talk, you know, [00:33:00] really showing how much synthetic data has come along this year. I think there was a bit of a fight between scale. ai and the synthetic data community, because scale.[00:33:09] swyx: ai published a paper saying that synthetic data doesn't work. Surprise, surprise, scale. ai is the leading vendor of non synthetic data. Only[00:33:17] Alessio: cage free annotated data is useful.[00:33:21] swyx: So I think there's some debate going on there, but I don't think it's much debate anymore that at least synthetic data, for the reasons that are blessed in Luna's talk, Makes sense.[00:33:32] swyx: I don't know if you have any perspectives there.[00:33:34] Alessio: I think, again, going back to the reinforcement fine tuning, I think that will change a little bit how people think about it. I think today people mostly use synthetic data, yeah, for distillation and kind of like fine tuning a smaller model from like a larger model.[00:33:46] Alessio: I'm not super aware of how the frontier labs use it outside of like the rephrase, the web thing that Apple also did. But yeah, I think it'll be. Useful. I think like whether or not that gets us the big [00:34:00] next step, I think that's maybe like TBD, you know, I think people love talking about data because it's like a GPU poor, you know, I think, uh, synthetic data is like something that people can do, you know, so they feel more opinionated about it compared to, yeah, the optimizers stuff, which is like,[00:34:17] swyx: they don't[00:34:17] Alessio: really work[00:34:18] swyx: on.[00:34:18] swyx: I think that there is an angle to the reasoning synthetic data. So this year, we covered in the paper club, the star series of papers. So that's star, Q star, V star. It basically helps you to synthesize reasoning steps, or at least distill reasoning steps from a verifier. And if you look at the OpenAI RFT, API that they released, or that they announced, basically they're asking you to submit graders, or they choose from a preset list of graders.[00:34:49] swyx: Basically It feels like a way to create valid synthetic data for them to fine tune their reasoning paths on. Um, so I think that is another angle where it starts to make sense. And [00:35:00] so like, it's very funny that basically all the data quality wars between Let's say the music industry or like the newspaper publishing industry or the textbooks industry on the big labs.[00:35:11] swyx: It's all of the pre training era. And then like the new era, like the reasoning era, like nobody has any problem with all the reasoning, especially because it's all like sort of math and science oriented with, with very reasonable graders. I think the more interesting next step is how does it generalize beyond STEM?[00:35:27] swyx: We've been using O1 for And I would say like for summarization and creative writing and instruction following, I think it's underrated. I started using O1 in our intro songs before we killed the intro songs, but it's very good at writing lyrics. You know, I can actually say like, I think one of the O1 pro demos.[00:35:46] swyx: All of these things that Noam was showing was that, you know, you can write an entire paragraph or three paragraphs without using the letter A, right?[00:35:53] Creative Writing with AI[00:35:53] swyx: So like, like literally just anything instead of token, like not even token level, character level manipulation and [00:36:00] counting and instruction following. It's, uh, it's very, very strong.[00:36:02] swyx: And so no surprises when I ask it to rhyme, uh, and to, to create song lyrics, it's going to do that very much better than in previous models. So I think it's underrated for creative writing.[00:36:11] Alessio: Yeah.[00:36:12] Legal and Ethical Issues in AI[00:36:12] Alessio: What do you think is the rationale that they're going to have in court when they don't show you the thinking traces of O1, but then they want us to, like, they're getting sued for using other publishers data, you know, but then on their end, they're like, well, you shouldn't be using my data to then train your model.[00:36:29] Alessio: So I'm curious to see how that kind of comes. Yeah, I mean, OPA has[00:36:32] swyx: many ways to publish, to punish people without bringing, taking them to court. Already banned ByteDance for distilling their, their info. And so anyone caught distilling the chain of thought will be just disallowed to continue on, on, on the API.[00:36:44] swyx: And it's fine. It's no big deal. Like, I don't even think that's an issue at all, just because the chain of thoughts are pretty well hidden. Like you have to work very, very hard to, to get it to leak. And then even when it leaks the chain of thought, you don't know if it's, if it's [00:37:00] The bigger concern is actually that there's not that much IP hiding behind it, that Cosign, which we talked about, we talked to him on Dev Day, can just fine tune 4.[00:37:13] swyx: 0 to beat 0. 1 Cloud SONET so far is beating O1 on coding tasks without, at least O1 preview, without being a reasoning model, same for Gemini Pro or Gemini 2. 0. So like, how much is reasoning important? How much of a moat is there in this, like, All of these are proprietary sort of training data that they've presumably accomplished.[00:37:34] swyx: Because even DeepSeek was able to do it. And they had, you know, two months notice to do this, to do R1. So, it's actually unclear how much moat there is. Obviously, you know, if you talk to the Strawberry team, they'll be like, yeah, I mean, we spent the last two years doing this. So, we don't know. And it's going to be Interesting because there'll be a lot of noise from people who say they have inference time compute and actually don't because they just have fancy chain of thought.[00:38:00][00:38:00] swyx: And then there's other people who actually do have very good chain of thought. And you will not see them on the same level as OpenAI because OpenAI has invested a lot in building up the mythology of their team. Um, which makes sense. Like the real answer is somewhere in between.[00:38:13] Alessio: Yeah, I think that's kind of like the main data war story developing.[00:38:18] The Data War: GPU Poor vs. GPU Rich[00:38:18] Alessio: GPU poor versus GPU rich. Yeah. Where do you think we are? I think there was, again, going back to like the small model thing, there was like a time in which the GPU poor were kind of like the rebel faction working on like these models that were like open and small and cheap. And I think today people don't really care as much about GPUs anymore.[00:38:37] Alessio: You also see it in the price of the GPUs. Like, you know, that market is kind of like plummeted because there's people don't want to be, they want to be GPU free. They don't even want to be poor. They just want to be, you know, completely without them. Yeah. How do you think about this war? You[00:38:52] swyx: can tell me about this, but like, I feel like the, the appetite for GPU rich startups, like the, you know, the, the funding plan is we will raise 60 million and [00:39:00] we'll give 50 of that to NVIDIA.[00:39:01] swyx: That is gone, right? Like, no one's, no one's pitching that. This was literally the plan, the exact plan of like, I can name like four or five startups, you know, this time last year. So yeah, GPU rich startups gone.[00:39:12] The Rise of GPU Ultra Rich[00:39:12] swyx: But I think like, The GPU ultra rich, the GPU ultra high net worth is still going. So, um, now we're, you know, we had Leopold's essay on the trillion dollar cluster.[00:39:23] swyx: We're not quite there yet. We have multiple labs, um, you know, XAI very famously, you know, Jensen Huang praising them for being. Best boy number one in spinning up 100, 000 GPU cluster in like 12 days or something. So likewise at Meta, likewise at OpenAI, likewise at the other labs as well. So like the GPU ultra rich are going to keep doing that because I think partially it's an article of faith now that you just need it.[00:39:46] swyx: Like you don't even know what it's going to, what you're going to use it for. You just, you just need it. And it makes sense that if, especially if we're going into. More researchy territory than we are. So let's say 2020 to 2023 was [00:40:00] let's scale big models territory because we had GPT 3 in 2020 and we were like, okay, we'll go from 1.[00:40:05] swyx: 75b to 1. 8b, 1. 8t. And that was GPT 3 to GPT 4. Okay, that's done. As far as everyone is concerned, Opus 3. 5 is not coming out, GPT 4. 5 is not coming out, and Gemini 2, we don't have Pro, whatever. We've hit that wall. Maybe I'll call it the 2 trillion perimeter wall. We're not going to 10 trillion. No one thinks it's a good idea, at least from training costs, from the amount of data, or at least the inference.[00:40:36] swyx: Would you pay 10x the price of GPT Probably not. Like, like you want something else that, that is at least more useful. So it makes sense that people are pivoting in terms of their inference paradigm.[00:40:47] Emerging Trends in AI Models[00:40:47] swyx: And so when it's more researchy, then you actually need more just general purpose compute to mess around with, uh, at the exact same time that production deployments of the old, the previous paradigm is still ramping up,[00:40:58] swyx: um,[00:40:58] swyx: uh, pretty aggressively.[00:40:59] swyx: So [00:41:00] it makes sense that the GPU rich are growing. We have now interviewed both together and fireworks and replicates. Uh, we haven't done any scale yet. But I think Amazon, maybe kind of a sleeper one, Amazon, in a sense of like they, at reInvent, I wasn't expecting them to do so well, but they are now a foundation model lab.[00:41:18] swyx: It's kind of interesting. Um, I think, uh, you know, David went over there and started just creating models.[00:41:25] Alessio: Yeah, I mean, that's the power of prepaid contracts. I think like a lot of AWS customers, you know, they do this big reserve instance contracts and now they got to use their money. That's why so many startups.[00:41:37] Alessio: Get bought through the AWS marketplace so they can kind of bundle them together and prefer pricing.[00:41:42] swyx: Okay, so maybe GPU super rich doing very well, GPU middle class dead, and then GPU[00:41:48] Alessio: poor. I mean, my thing is like, everybody should just be GPU rich. There shouldn't really be, even the GPU poorest, it's like, does it really make sense to be GPU poor?[00:41:57] Alessio: Like, if you're GPU poor, you should just use the [00:42:00] cloud. Yes, you know, and I think there might be a future once we kind of like figure out what the size and shape of these models is where like the tiny box and these things come to fruition where like you can be GPU poor at home. But I think today is like, why are you working so hard to like get these models to run on like very small clusters where it's like, It's so cheap to run them.[00:42:21] Alessio: Yeah, yeah,[00:42:22] swyx: yeah. I think mostly people think it's cool. People think it's a stepping stone to scaling up. So they aspire to be GPU rich one day and they're working on new methods. Like news research, like probably the most deep tech thing they've done this year is Distro or whatever the new name is.[00:42:38] swyx: There's a lot of interest in heterogeneous computing, distributed computing. I tend generally to de emphasize that historically, but it may be coming to a time where it is starting to be relevant. I don't know. You know, SF compute launched their compute marketplace this year, and like, who's really using that?[00:42:53] swyx: Like, it's a bunch of small clusters, disparate types of compute, and if you can make that [00:43:00] useful, then that will be very beneficial to the broader community, but maybe still not the source of frontier models. It's just going to be a second tier of compute that is unlocked for people, and that's fine. But yeah, I mean, I think this year, I would say a lot more on device, We are, I now have Apple intelligence on my phone.[00:43:19] swyx: Doesn't do anything apart from summarize my notifications. But still, not bad. Like, it's multi modal.[00:43:25] Alessio: Yeah, the notification summaries are so and so in my experience.[00:43:29] swyx: Yeah, but they add, they add juice to life. And then, um, Chrome Nano, uh, Gemini Nano is coming out in Chrome. Uh, they're still feature flagged, but you can, you can try it now if you, if you use the, uh, the alpha.[00:43:40] swyx: And so, like, I, I think, like, you know, We're getting the sort of GPU poor version of a lot of these things coming out, and I think it's like quite useful. Like Windows as well, rolling out RWKB in sort of every Windows department is super cool. And I think the last thing that I never put in this GPU poor war, that I think I should now, [00:44:00] is the number of startups that are GPU poor but still scaling very well, as sort of wrappers on top of either a foundation model lab, or GPU Cloud.[00:44:10] swyx: GPU Cloud, it would be Suno. Suno, Ramp has rated as one of the top ranked, fastest growing startups of the year. Um, I think the last public number is like zero to 20 million this year in ARR and Suno runs on Moto. So Suno itself is not GPU rich, but they're just doing the training on, on Moto, uh, who we've also talked to on, on the podcast.[00:44:31] swyx: The other one would be Bolt, straight cloud wrapper. And, and, um, Again, another, now they've announced 20 million ARR, which is another step up from our 8 million that we put on the title. So yeah, I mean, it's crazy that all these GPU pores are finding a way while the GPU riches are also finding a way. And then the only failures, I kind of call this the GPU smiling curve, where the edges do well, because you're either close to the machines, and you're like [00:45:00] number one on the machines, or you're like close to the customers, and you're number one on the customer side.[00:45:03] swyx: And the people who are in the middle. Inflection, um, character, didn't do that great. I think character did the best of all of them. Like, you have a note in here that we apparently said that character's price tag was[00:45:15] Alessio: 1B.[00:45:15] swyx: Did I say that?[00:45:16] Alessio: Yeah. You said Google should just buy them for 1B. I thought it was a crazy number.[00:45:20] Alessio: Then they paid 2. 7 billion. I mean, for like,[00:45:22] swyx: yeah.[00:45:22] Alessio: What do you pay for node? Like, I don't know what the game world was like. Maybe the starting price was 1B. I mean, whatever it was, it worked out for everybody involved.[00:45:31] The Multi-Modality War[00:45:31] Alessio: Multimodality war. And this one, we never had text to video in the first version, which now is the hottest.[00:45:37] swyx: Yeah, I would say it's a subset of image, but yes.[00:45:40] Alessio: Yeah, well, but I think at the time it wasn't really something people were doing, and now we had VO2 just came out yesterday. Uh, Sora was released last month, last week. I've not tried Sora, because the day that I tried, it wasn't, yeah. I[00:45:54] swyx: think it's generally available now, you can go to Sora.[00:45:56] swyx: com and try it. Yeah, they had[00:45:58] Alessio: the outage. Which I [00:46:00] think also played a part into it. Small things. Yeah. What's the other model that you posted today that was on Replicate? Video or OneLive?[00:46:08] swyx: Yeah. Very, very nondescript name, but it is from Minimax, which I think is a Chinese lab. The Chinese labs do surprisingly well at the video models.[00:46:20] swyx: I'm not sure it's actually Chinese. I don't know. Hold me up to that. Yep. China. It's good. Yeah, the Chinese love video. What can I say? They have a lot of training data for video. Or a more relaxed regulatory environment.[00:46:37] Alessio: Uh, well, sure, in some way. Yeah, I don't think there's much else there. I think like, you know, on the image side, I think it's still open.[00:46:45] Alessio: Yeah, I mean,[00:46:46] swyx: 11labs is now a unicorn. So basically, what is multi modality war? Multi modality war is, do you specialize in a single modality, right? Or do you have GodModel that does all the modalities? So this is [00:47:00] definitely still going, in a sense of 11 labs, you know, now Unicorn, PicoLabs doing well, they launched Pico 2.[00:47:06] swyx: 0 recently, HeyGen, I think has reached 100 million ARR, Assembly, I don't know, but they have billboards all over the place, so I assume they're doing very, very well. So these are all specialist models, specialist models and specialist startups. And then there's the big labs who are doing the sort of all in one play.[00:47:24] swyx: And then here I would highlight Gemini 2 for having native image output. Have you seen the demos? Um, yeah, it's, it's hard to keep up. Literally they launched this last week and a shout out to Paige Bailey, who came to the Latent Space event to demo on the day of launch. And she wasn't prepared. She was just like, I'm just going to show you.[00:47:43] swyx: So they have voice. They have, you know, obviously image input, and then they obviously can code gen and all that. But the new one that OpenAI and Meta both have but they haven't launched yet is image output. So you can literally, um, I think their demo video was that you put in an image of a [00:48:00] car, and you ask for minor modifications to that car.[00:48:02] swyx: They can generate you that modification exactly as you asked. So there's no need for the stable diffusion or comfy UI workflow of like mask here and then like infill there in paint there and all that, all that stuff. This is small model nonsense. Big model people are like, huh, we got you in as everything in the transformer.[00:48:21] swyx: This is the multimodality war, which is, do you, do you bet on the God model or do you string together a whole bunch of, uh, Small models like a, like a chump. Yeah,[00:48:29] Alessio: I don't know, man. Yeah, that would be interesting. I mean, obviously I use Midjourney for all of our thumbnails. Um, they've been doing a ton on the product, I would say.[00:48:38] Alessio: They launched a new Midjourney editor thing. They've been doing a ton. Because I think, yeah, the motto is kind of like, Maybe, you know, people say black forest, the black forest models are better than mid journey on a pixel by pixel basis. But I think when you put it, put it together, have you tried[00:48:53] swyx: the same problems on black forest?[00:48:55] Alessio: Yes. But the problem is just like, you know, on black forest, it generates one image. And then it's like, you got to [00:49:00] regenerate. You don't have all these like UI things. Like what I do, no, but it's like time issue, you know, it's like a mid[00:49:06] swyx: journey. Call the API four times.[00:49:08] Alessio: No, but then there's no like variate.[00:49:10] Alessio: Like the good thing about mid journey is like, you just go in there and you're cooking. There's a lot of stuff that just makes it really easy. And I think people underestimate that. Like, it's not really a skill issue, because I'm paying mid journey, so it's a Black Forest skill issue, because I'm not paying them, you know?[00:49:24] Alessio: Yeah,[00:49:25] swyx: so, okay, so, uh, this is a UX thing, right? Like, you, you, you understand that, at least, we think that Black Forest should be able to do all that stuff. I will also shout out, ReCraft has come out, uh, on top of the image arena that, uh, artificial analysis has done, has apparently, uh, Flux's place. Is this still true?[00:49:41] swyx: So, Artificial Analysis is now a company. I highlighted them I think in one of the early AI Newses of the year. And they have launched a whole bunch of arenas. So, they're trying to take on LM Arena, Anastasios and crew. And they have an image arena. Oh yeah, Recraft v3 is now beating Flux 1. 1. Which is very surprising [00:50:00] because Flux And Black Forest Labs are the old stable diffusion crew who left stability after, um, the management issues.[00:50:06] swyx: So Recurve has come from nowhere to be the top image model. Uh, very, very strange. I would also highlight that Grok has now launched Aurora, which is, it's very interesting dynamics between Grok and Black Forest Labs because Grok's images were originally launched, uh, in partnership with Black Forest Labs as a, as a thin wrapper.[00:50:24] swyx: And then Grok was like, no, we'll make our own. And so they've made their own. I don't know, there are no APIs or benchmarks about it. They just announced it. So yeah, that's the multi modality war. I would say that so far, the small model, the dedicated model people are winning, because they are just focused on their tasks.[00:50:42] swyx: But the big model, People are always catching up. And the moment I saw the Gemini 2 demo of image editing, where I can put in an image and just request it and it does, that's how AI should work. Not like a whole bunch of complicated steps. So it really is something. And I think one frontier that we haven't [00:51:00] seen this year, like obviously video has done very well, and it will continue to grow.[00:51:03] swyx: You know, we only have Sora Turbo today, but at some point we'll get full Sora. Oh, at least the Hollywood Labs will get Fulsora. We haven't seen video to audio, or video synced to audio. And so the researchers that I talked to are already starting to talk about that as the next frontier. But there's still maybe like five more years of video left to actually be Soda.[00:51:23] swyx: I would say that Gemini's approach Compared to OpenAI, Gemini seems, or DeepMind's approach to video seems a lot more fully fledged than OpenAI. Because if you look at the ICML recap that I published that so far nobody has listened to, um, that people have listened to it. It's just a different, definitely different audience.[00:51:43] swyx: It's only seven hours long. Why are people not listening? It's like everything in Uh, so, so DeepMind has, is working on Genie. They also launched Genie 2 and VideoPoet. So, like, they have maybe four years advantage on world modeling that OpenAI does not have. Because OpenAI basically only started [00:52:00] Diffusion Transformers last year, you know, when they hired, uh, Bill Peebles.[00:52:03] swyx: So, DeepMind has, has a bit of advantage here, I would say, in, in, in showing, like, the reason that VO2, while one, They cherry pick their videos. So obviously it looks better than Sora, but the reason I would believe that VO2, uh, when it's fully launched will do very well is because they have all this background work in video that they've done for years.[00:52:22] swyx: Like, like last year's NeurIPS, I already was interviewing some of their video people. I forget their model name, but for, for people who are dedicated fans, they can go to NeurIPS 2023 and see, see that paper.[00:52:32] Alessio: And then last but not least, the LLMOS. We renamed it to Ragops, formerly known as[00:52:39] swyx: Ragops War. I put the latest chart on the Braintrust episode.[00:52:43] swyx: I think I'm going to separate these essays from the episode notes. So the reason I used to do that, by the way, is because I wanted to show up on Hacker News. I wanted the podcast to show up on Hacker News. So I always put an essay inside of there because Hacker News people like to read and not listen.[00:52:58] Alessio: So episode essays,[00:52:59] swyx: I remember [00:53:00] purchasing them separately. You say Lanchain Llama Index is still growing.[00:53:03] Alessio: Yeah, so I looked at the PyPy stats, you know. I don't care about stars. On PyPy you see Do you want to share your screen? Yes. I prefer to look at actual downloads, not at stars on GitHub. So if you look at, you know, Lanchain still growing.[00:53:20] Alessio: These are the last six months. Llama Index still growing. What I've basically seen is like things that, One, obviously these things have A commercial product. So there's like people buying this and sticking with it versus kind of hopping in between things versus, you know, for example, crew AI, not really growing as much.[00:53:38] Alessio: The stars are growing. If you look on GitHub, like the stars are growing, but kind of like the usage is kind of like flat. In the last six months, have they done some[00:53:4

This episode includes a serious, hour-long discussion with Ryan McBeth on Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Israel and everything in between. ANDWe dive deep into this tweet…Of course, on December 24, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson issued the controversial pardon for his brother-in-law, Hunter DeButts, convicted of arms smuggling during World War I. DeButts, married to Wilson's sister-in-law, Alice, was sentenced to 15 years after British intelligence exposed his fraudulent shipping scheme. Though furious, Wilson faced mounting political pressure amid war preparations. The White House cited new evidence suggesting DeButts was manipulated by foreign spies, and critics accused Wilson of nepotism, while supporters framed the pardon as holiday clemency. After his release, DeButts vanished from public life, reportedly living quietly in Cuba until his death in 1933.Except. Wait a minute. What you just read, isn't true. I fabricated it by directing ChatGPT using Model 4o with the Mac app to make up a fictional reason why Hunter DeButts received a pardon from Woodrow Wilson. Because Hunter DeButts never received a pardon from Woodrow Wilson. Hunter DeButts did not marry Wilson's sister. Nor did he receive a pardon. There are other Hunter DeButts involved with Wilson or that time in history.And yet, Anna Navarro tweeted about it. Upon a simple Google search Navarro wound up getting serially dunked on as people realized very quickly something wasn't accurate.And so Anna Navarro posted the following explanation:She blamed ChatGPT's hallucinations.Oh, well. We've all been there. But have we? While conservatives dunked on Navarro even further for believing ChatGPT, I am here to tell you, as a reporter through and through, I don't know if ChatGPT hallucinated this. And really, I am following the research of my friend, Andrew Mayne, who first sent this to me and said, he could not replicate the Hunter DeButts answer on any ChatGPT model. Not 4o, not any model that is available, and specifically was available to Navarro on December 2nd.Now, here's something that you guys might not know about large language models: they are fairly replicable. You can get similar answers based on similar questions. It's not exact, but a hallucination is something that you should be able to recreate. It would be odd if you couldn't.And my friend Andrew should know. He worked at OpenAI. He was a science communicator. He made a lot of videos that demonstrated OpenAI products up to and including ChatGPT itself and is known as the first prompt engineer for that company. He spent a lot of time with these models.And with that, I went down my own reporting rabbit hole. Because one of the other things is that the screen grab that Anna Navarro showed was a ChatGPT search that had web results.See those little brackets with quotes in between them. Those would be annotations. Theoretically, you could click on them and they would bring you to a webpage that would show you where ChatGPT got this information.What's odd about it is that those are not the annotations that ChatGPT uses now. And they certainly were not used on December 2nd when Anna Navarro said that she did this search.So where'd she get it? What version of ChatGPT is she using? And what large language model is going to be the origin story of dear sweet DeButts?I had a theory. Let's say you're not particularly tech-savvy, if you don't know exactly what ChatGPT is or OpenAI is, then it is very easy, as ChatGPT has become more and more popular, to just go into the iOS app store and find a lot of — I'm going to call them copycats.What they really are are other apps that are using the ChatGPT API, but they do a skin on top of it and they often charge you a subscription service. Do not use them. But I did because my theory was that Ana Navarro was using one of these apps, one of these apps that are not using similar if not exact user interface the official ChatGPT app is. Maybe they are using those old annotations?All is revealed!We get to the bottom of DeButts, on this episode of the Politics Politics Politics. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe

Coming down the pike today is another edition of culture content with our very own Jay Doran and today's topic is that of builders and breakers.  Theoretically, people should want to be closer to the people that build them up as opposed to being closer to the people who break them down.  But what if that is backwards?  What if being closer to the people that break you down is a way of strengthening your resolve and becoming a stronger and more empowered leader because of the constant need to build yourself up?  Jay is here to debate that very question on this episode of The Culture Matters Podcast.

What happened to culture in 2020? In Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture During Covid (Repeater, 2024), Joy White, a Lecturer in Applied Social Studies at the University of Bedfordshire, explores the impact of Covid, along with social, community and artistic responses. The book ranges widely, including comparative analysis of the UK and Jamaica, deep dives into contemporary Black music and Black culture on TV, digital modes of making and distributing music, and emerging cultural practices on platforms such as TikTok. Theoretically rich as well as offering detailed media and cultural analysis, the book is essential reading of humanities, social science and public health scholars, as well as for anyone interested in reflecting on the era when Covid first hut society. 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

#261 for 21rd November, 2024 or 33-oh-10 (3310) http://loosescrewsed.com Join us on discord! And check out the merch store! PROMO CODES https://discord.gg/3Vfap47Rea Support us on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/LooseScrewsED Squad Update:  Wars in Uchagan, LTT 16910 and Yen Ti, not too worried about them.  Bumbur and 5A need some boosting of influence. Yong-Rui Screwspace aka ‘The Old Worlds of Screwspace' are overheating with no end in sight. Hopefully things will level off, but it may take FDev's finger on the BGS/PP interaction. Theoretically after enough cycles of expansion, there will be nowhere to expand to as long as there aren't retreats from minor factions creating openings. Given an expansion is 10-13 days, that could be a very long time.  The overheating has resulted in Operation New Horizons being on hold because we would have to push and maintain Semakhmets as the highest influence system (sort of) to trigger expansion from there. All details in the #standing-orders and/or the #loose-screws-factions channels of the Discord. Powerpoint Update:  Insert Daxi Speech here Galnet Update: https://community.elitedangerous.com/ PP Rankings were announced - Player Driven Galnet News Thargoid war update: https://dcoh.watch/ Cocijo controls  - 1 Titan, 0 Alerts or Invasions, 41 control systems, 5 populated, 3 starports, 3 odyssey settlements and 2 ground ports under attack Dev News:  Midnight Black and Black Friday Discounts - Some ship kits are among the sale items, there were no Void Black, nor are there Midnight Black paintjobs for the Mandalay this year.  19.1 Update Crime pays and doesn't pay, but we all wear a crown of bones Update Notes: Fixed an exploit where Powerplay Data could be downloaded multiple times from the same Data Port (Issue ID: 67329) Aisling Duval's Powerplay systems now correctly flag Imperial Slaves & Narcotics as illegal. Crime does not pay. Archon Delain Powerplay systems now correctly open Black Markets if they are not already present. OK...here crime might pay. Pranav Antal now closes Black Markets in Fortified/Stronghold systems. Merit awards for destroying Ship Launched Fighters have been reduced. Adjustments made to Flight Tutorial combat drones reducing their damage output. Type-8's collision has been adjusted so that the "arms" now have correct collision. Resolved a crash when using VR Power Play strategic view on Galaxy map Filters on the Galaxy Map are no longer auto selected when you hover your mouse over them Thank you for all your continued feedback and reports! Discussion: PP 2.0 - Iterative process or the stagnation of humanity Leto II warned us about? Community Corner: Happy 6th-versary to the Burr Pit Buckyball - Race 8 still TBD

Jon Jones is back. So is Francis Ngannou. And Tom Aspinall? He's been here all along. So with all three big men scoring pivotal wins in 2024, who is the one true king of the heavyweight division? Is it Jones, the relative neophyte who is just 2-0 in the weight class, but still carrying the aura that comes with being undefeated throughout his career? Is it Ngannou, the lineal heavyweight champion who left the UFC without ever dropping his belt? Or is it Aspinall, the man who defended an interim heavyweight title while Jones sat on the sidelines waiting for a Stipe Miocic fight that lost intrigue with every passing day? Theoretically, there's no wrong answer, but the MMA Fighting rankings panel of Alexander K. Lee, Damon Martin, Jed Meshew, and E. Casey Leydon give their best arguments as to why each fighter has a claim to be No. 1. Follow Alexander K. Lee @AlexanderKLee Follow Damon Martin @DamonMartin Follow Jed Meshew @JedKMeshew Follow E. Casey Leydon @ekc Subscribe: http://goo.gl/dYpsgH Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/u8VvLi Visit our playlists: http://goo.gl/eFhsvM Like MMAF on Facebook: http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z Follow on Twitter: http://goo.gl/nOATUI Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jon Jones is back. So is Francis Ngannou. And Tom Aspinall? He's been here all along. So with all three big men scoring pivotal wins in 2024, who is the one true king of the heavyweight division? Is it Jones, the relative neophyte who is just 2-0 in the weight class, but still carrying the aura that comes with being undefeated throughout his career? Is it Ngannou, the lineal heavyweight champion who left the UFC without ever dropping his belt? Or is it Aspinall, the man who defended an interim heavyweight title while Jones sat on the sidelines waiting for a Stipe Miocic fight that lost intrigue with every passing day? Theoretically, there's no wrong answer, but the MMA Fighting rankings panel of Alexander K. Lee, Damon Martin, Jed Meshew, and E. Casey Leydon give their best arguments as to why each fighter has a claim to be No. 1. Follow Alexander K. Lee @AlexanderKLee Follow Damon Martin @DamonMartin Follow Jed Meshew @JedKMeshew Follow E. Casey Leydon @ekc Subscribe: http://goo.gl/dYpsgH Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/u8VvLi Visit our playlists: http://goo.gl/eFhsvM Like MMAF on Facebook: http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z Follow on Twitter: http://goo.gl/nOATUI Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jon Jones is back. So is Francis Ngannou. And Tom Aspinall? He's been here all along. So with all three big men scoring pivotal wins in 2024, who is the one true king of the heavyweight division? Is it Jones, the relative neophyte who is just 2-0 in the weight class, but still carrying the aura that comes with being undefeated throughout his career? Is it Ngannou, the lineal heavyweight champion who left the UFC without ever dropping his belt? Or is it Aspinall, the man who defended an interim heavyweight title while Jones sat on the sidelines waiting for a Stipe Miocic fight that lost intrigue with every passing day? Theoretically, there's no wrong answer, but the MMA Fighting rankings panel of Alexander K. Lee, Damon Martin, Jed Meshew, and E. Casey Leydon give their best arguments as to why each fighter has a claim to be No. 1. Follow Alexander K. Lee @AlexanderKLee Follow Damon Martin @DamonMartin Follow Jed Meshew @JedKMeshew Follow E. Casey Leydon @ekc Subscribe: http://goo.gl/dYpsgH Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/u8VvLi Visit our playlists: http://goo.gl/eFhsvM Like MMAF on Facebook: http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z Follow on Twitter: http://goo.gl/nOATUI Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

[SEGMENT 1-1] Enjoying the win 1 Bringing the PAIN to Leftism, but in a fun way. I'm glad you are here…     I know people are still hesitant to enjoy our victory over the evil Democrats. And I understand it, because Conservatives are taught to be gracious losers and winners. And that's a loser's attitude. When you win you celebrate! Have you even seen a championship team quietly walk into the locker room and just grab their gear and go home. Oh. Heck. No. They cheers and hug, pop champagne. They hoists trophies in the air, and party like there's no tomorrow. And when they do interviews, they don't hold back on congratulating themselves. They don't express sorry for their opponent's loss, they discuss what it took to win, and how hard they worked, and so on. When we win, we act like we LOST. Not me. I'm celebrating through the New Year, and then I'm doubling my celebration into 2025. I'm betting on me and this movement. I'm ecstatic, delirious, rhapsodic, blissful, thrilled that we DESTROYED the Democrats. I know politically the last time I saw this carnage for myself during Reagan-Mondale. But that victory though technically bigger wasn't nearly as sweet. The fate of the world didn't necessarily depend on that election.  http://GetKrill.com/KevinJackson http://bioptimizers.com/kjradio Colonial Metals Group: FreeGoldGuide.com/KJRadio  800 444 6918[SEGMENT 1-2] Enjoying the win 2 [X] SB – AOC on the new world under Trump Consequences for the rest of our lives Precedent   And what a comeback by Trump. What is the biggest personal victory you can compare this to. For me, Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson is the closest sport-wise, except Douglas didn't do a comeback. How do you think Buster Douglas celebrated after knocking out the guy nobody else knocked out? The man they called, “Iron” Mike. For all we know, Buster Douglas is still partying after that victory. There honestly hasn't been a more ridiculous comeback in all of human history. When the entirety of the most powerful nation on earth plots your destruction, and you end up BACK IN CHARGE. Conservatives won the biggest victory in the history of mankind, and remain afraid to celebrate. Because we don't want to be accused of over-celebrating? Is there even such a thing? Proverbs 24:17-18 “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn His wrath away from them.”  [SEGMENT 1-3] Enjoying the win 3 [X] SB – Chai Komanduri political strategist shocked by loss   We did it! We smacked them. Democrats were demolished, devastated, savaged, ravished, wrecked, shattered, crushed, vanquished, and demoralized. And we still have work to do!   https://www.forbes.com/sites/amymorin/2017/01/29/7-ways-to-talk-about-your-accomplishments-without-sounding-like-a-braggart/ 1. Keep The Emphasis On Your Hard Work Say, “I worked really hard to make this happen.” Listeners will respect your triumphs when they know you put in a lot of effort. 2. Don't Belittle Other People Leave out comparisons if you can. If you crossed the marathon finish line in first place, it's OK to say you were first. But don't add that the second place finisher was a mile behind you. 3. Give Credit Where It's Due Say, “I couldn't have done this without such a supportive spouse,” or, “My team really stepped it up to make this happen.” People are receptive to hearing success stories when credit is given where it's due. 4. Stick To The Facts Let other people interpret the facts. If they conclude you're an excellent leader or a rock star salesperson on their own, you'll still come across as modest. 5. Express Gratitude Show gratitude by saying, “I am so grateful that the company gave me this opportunity,” or “I'm thankful that so many people are interested in hearing my message.”  6. Don't Add A Qualifier Saying, “I hate to brag, but…” doesn't excuse showing off. In fact, it only draws attention to the fact you know what you're about to say may be a turn-off, but you're saying it anyway. Instead of a semi-apologetic warning, try saying, “I'm so excited to share my good news,” or, “I'm happy to announce…” before you tout your accomplishment. 7. Avoid The Humble-Brag It can be tempting to add a disparaging remark to offset your compliments about yourself. But saying, “I am so embarrassed I let my Lamborghini get this dirty,” won't earn you any points. In fact, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2597626 show humble-bragging makes people sound insincere. So if you want to make a good impression, avoid disguising self-promotion as a complaint. You're better off directly communicating your accomplishments.    [SEGMENT 1-4] Enjoying the win 4     "Winning Big Without Rubbing It In (Too Much)" 1. Keep The Emphasis On Your Hard WorkWe worked incredibly hard for this victory. From door-knocking to enduring endless media hit jobs, the MAGA team left no stone unturned. And the payoff? A resounding thank you from democracy itself. It's rewarding to see the fruits of all that labor bloom so beautifully... with red petals, of course. 2. Don't Belittle Other PeopleSure, the Democrats gave it their all, and we respect that. They tried novel strategies like skipping debates, hiding candidates, and... what's that phrase? "Democracy dies in darkness"? Apparently, elections also flop in it. But hey, no comparisons—every runner deserves a participation trophy. 3. Give Credit Where It's DueWe couldn't have done this alone. Hats off to the Democratic Party for motivating millions of Americans to care deeply about democracy, just maybe not the way they intended. Their commitment to questionable ballot strategies, legal theatrics, and celebrity endorsements helped clarify the stakes. Thanks for keeping the MAGA base laser-focused! 4. Stick To The FactsLet's just lay it out: democracy was on the ballot, and the people overwhelmingly chose Trump. Americans love their freedom, and it turns out, they also love a good underdog story—especially when the underdog is a billionaire who survived 91 indictments and still came out swinging. 5. Express GratitudeWe're so thankful for every single voter, from those brave enough to voice support in blue states to the silent majority who made their voices heard where it counted. And a special thanks to Kamala Harris, who—despite a complete lack of votes in 2020—found a way to lead her party to… somewhere. 6. Don't Add A QualifierNo need for “I hate to brag, but…” moments here. Instead, we'll just say this: we're proud of this win, and even prouder that America's faith in democracy remains intact, especially after seeing how much abuse it endured from our opponents. 7. Avoid The Humble-BragWe promise not to say anything like, “It's so embarrassing that our policies resonated with so many Americans while theirs didn't.” Nope, that would be wrong. Instead, we'll just point out how humbling it is to have earned the trust of voters across the nation. Being “the people's champion” is an honor we don't take lightly.Final ThoughtsIt's important to remain gracious in victory, even when faced with the colossal irony of being lectured about democracy by people who tripped over it. In the end, we didn't just win—we demonstrated that democracy is alive, well, and still a whole lot of fun.             Proverbs 24:17-18 "Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice; or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn His wrath from him"   https://lifehacker.com/why-you-shouldnt-gloat-even-when-it-feels-good-1850289355 An alternative to gloating “Going high” in this context would involve actually trying to change people's minds. The reason I don't like Trump, and I'm happy he's being charged with over 30 felonies, is because I disagree with his political goals and the way he conducted himself in office. I think the country would be vastly worse off if he were elected again. This is why I'm more committed to changing people's minds than to making myself feel good about a “victory” over someone I will never meet. If you're trying to get your MAGA uncle to consider maybe not voting for the worst human being in American political history, gloating is counter-productive. Psychologists who study how people actually change their minds point out that making yourself into the enemy (i.e. gloating) is the worst thing you can do in that regard. As David McRaney, author of the 2022 book How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion told https://time.com/6224300/how-to-change-someones-mind/, “If you communicate that they should be ashamed, or that they're stupid or gullible, they're going to push against you in a way that ruins the possibility of moving forward to a conversation that would actually change their mind in some way or get them to reevaluate the matter.” The actual keys to productive mind-changing are pretty much the opposite of gloating: remaining calm, using empathy, finding common ground, and inviting introspection are much more effective means of getting people to come around to your point of view (or at least become too discouraged to bother voting in 2024). It's a much harder thing to do than to calling someone a sucker, but it could work. Theoretically. Or so they say. (…) If you really must gloat… Being happy that something bad is happening to one of the most onerous humans alive is natural and healthy. But the bestBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-kevin-jackson-show--2896352/support.

Morgan Stanley's European Head of Research Product Paul Walsh speaks to Betsy Graseck, Global Head of Banks and Diversified Finance, and Bruce Hamilton, European Asset Managers Diversified Financials Analyst, about the implications of increasing life expectancy for the financial industry.----- Transcript -----Paul Walsh: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Paul Walsh, Morgan Stanley's European Head of Research Product, and today we dig into a topic that really affects us all. Retirement.Life cycles are extending as people are living longer, healthier lives. Coupled with government pension funds that are increasingly under pressure, this means that consumers will need to build much more robust investment plans to substitute for salaries to carry them through a longer retirement. And to understand more about the changing financial needs and challenges of an aging population, I'm delighted to be joined by my colleagues, Betsy Graseck, Global Head of Banks and Diversified Finance, and Bruce Hamilton, our European Asset Managers Diversified Financials Analyst. It's Thursday, October the 24th at 3pm in London. Betsy Graseck: And it's 10 am in New York. Paul Walsh: Now Bruce, let's start with you. As people live longer, they will likely spend more time in retirement. Managing and ensuring retirement income over a longer duration could have a significant impact on asset management. What are the broad trends you're seeing in the industry right now?Bruce Hamilton: So, the asset management industry in large part has focused on the accumulation phase of investors journey. Whilst this remains critical as people build assets for retirement – and we see growing allocations from affluent investors to private markets as a trend which is likely to be reinforced by the aging theme – there's a significant need for decumulation products and solutions that can offer returns and income over a prolonged retirement.We see a lot of innovation as asset managers look to develop products to meet this need.Paul Walsh: So Betsy, people are living longer. How ready are consumers for retirement? Are most retirement plans or similar financial services ready to handle this challenge?Betsy Graseck: Some are ready. But given how rapidly the global population is aging, there is an increasing need to provide solutions to individuals. Just to put a number on it, the global population that is 65 years old or older in the year 2000 was only 7 per cent. This is set to hit 10 per cent next year in 2025 and 16 per cent in 2050. All groups need service and advice – with the affluent group needing the most increase in services especially if government pension funds come under more pressure. Paul Walsh: So, I think you set the scene really well there, Betsy, and I guess the obvious question is, how can wealth and financial planners best respond, do you think? Is it by creating new products? Or do we need a much deeper transformation?Betsy Graseck: We see individuals today having a wide range of retirement choices. What we feel they really need here is personalized, customized advice, delivering solutions that can address their unique needs. These span from affluent individuals needing salary replacement strategies to high-net-worth individuals looking for philanthropic and wealth transfer strategies. A focus on integrated, personalized advice, innovative products, and high-quality service that meets clients as they wish to connect effectively will be critical. Paul Walsh: It seems to me that it is – but is this a positive for the financial services sector? And if so, what do you think is the size of this revenue opportunity and over what time period do you think?Betsy Graseck: Well, the way we've looked at this is across the global asset manager and global wealth manager industry, as they will be the ones called upon to address these needs. And we do see a roughly 30 per cent uplift in global revenues by 2028, which equates to [$]400 billion in incremental revenues across the global industry.And that is driven by the expansion of individuals looking for advice, in particular from the affluent group, as well as an increase in fee-based products to address the income needs. Paul Walsh: And there's some big numbers that you've quoted there, Betsy. So let's dig into the financial subsector and industries. What are the biggest untapped opportunities there?Betsy Graseck: Well, the number one is the affluent customer base that we do see having the biggest need for advice, relative to advice seeking today. And as that group, reaches out and receives advice from wealth channels, that is one major driver here. The second driver is the increase in fee-based products to service the income replacement needs.Paul Walsh: And what are the biggest challenges do you think? Obviously, we've talked about the opportunity there, but the biggest challenges to financial services that you see along the way. Betsy Graseck: Well, the way I think about this is what is required to be a winner, and the winners need to be able to integrate their entire organizations to deliver for clients. And also leverage technology efficiently and effectively to be able not only to deliver the highest quality service in the way the client wants to be serviced; but also to optimize cost structures, which then can get reinvested – you know, higher pretext getting reinvested into the business. The challenges are the opposite of institutions that remain siloed and institutions that have, you know, maybe a tech strategy that is not set to respond to the needs of this client set. Paul Walsh: Thanks for that, Betsy; and Bruce, I just want to pivot back to you. Some asset managers are partnering with insurance companies to offer guaranteed income streams and wealth transfer solutions. What are some of the successful models that you've seen so far? Bruce Hamilton: So, asset managers are adopting a range of approaches. Some have acquired insurance subsidiaries, some have taken significant minority stakes, while others have looked to deepen partnerships with insurance. Trade offs include the degree of control versus the capital intensity that ownership of insurance brings. So, we see more than one route, but a continued push towards greater collaboration between asset managers and insurers.Given the potential for the asset managers to access stable, permanent capital, that can then be deployed in a range of investment strategies to offer diversified sources of income via private or structured credit to support returns for the end insurance clients. Theoretically, the best place models to deliver retirement solutions will have elements of wealth advice, plus a hybrid asset management insurance product approach. Given the importance of providing investors with regular and variable income, a guaranteed minimum level of income, plus an ability to generate a return to offer potential for legacy to pass to heirs.Paul Walsh: And of course, Bruce, it's very difficult to talk about product innovation, without bringing in the topic of AI. As asset managers are working to create ever more personalized retirement solutions as we've heard, how and to what extent do you think they are leveraging AI?Bruce Hamilton: So, our interviews with a range of management players confirmed that many of the potential use cases being worked on 12 months ago have now been put into production. It's still early days, and so far, most use cases are focused on areas that can drive efficiencies. So, for example, in RFP report writing, synthesis of research, and some of the middle and back-office processes for asset managers. But over time, AI can clearly feed more bespoke client service by wealth and asset managers with areas such as customized investment proposals and financial planning offering potential.Paul Walsh: Fascinating topic. Betsy and Bruce, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. It's clear that increasing lifespans are reshaping the financials sector by driving product innovation, influencing asset allocation strategies, and, of course, creating new market opportunities. And to our listeners, thanks as always for taking the time to listen in. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please do leave us a review wherever you listen to the show and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Discussion. Theoretically it's the bread and butter of the English classroom, but sometimes it feels like all crusts and crumbs. How can you get students excited to talk about voice and theme, metaphor and symbolism, when they have a million other things going on? How do you inspire them to dive in together to the ways that literature illuminates life and life speaks back to the page, when they're already nervous about speaking up in class and afraid they'll look bad in front of their friends? If a good discussion feels like a distant dream to you on rough days, and a tantalizing almost-there vision on good days, the new discussion series is here to help. We're starting today with five types of discussion that can work for you, and in the coming episodes, we'll be going much deeper. Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook. Come hang out on Instagram.  Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!