Podcasts about Wyeth

Send us a textThis week on Stitch Wish Radio, I'm joined by Anna Hultin—artist, teacher, and the founder of Olander Co. In this quiet and grounding conversation, we talk about the power of doing something just because it feels good, the meditative nature of repetition, and the intentional choice to build a creative life that honors your limits.Anna opens up about how motherhood shaped her boundaries, how she built a thriving embroidery business without burning out, and how she continues to stay connected to her why—even in seasons of fatigue and uncertainty.Whether you're a seasoned maker or just picking up a needle for the first time, this episode is your reminder that your pace is enough—and your art doesn't have to be perfect to be worthy.In this episode, we talk about:The importance of boredom and margin in creativityHow embroidery became Anna's daily anchorLetting go of perfectionism and finding freedom in limitationsBuilding a business that honors your rhythms instead of burning you outFind Anna at @olandercoembroidery and explore her work, courses, and patterns at olandercoembroidery.comMy latest book, The Art of Embroidery Design: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/christi-johnson/the-art-of-embroidery-design/9781635867664/Anna's Website: https://www.olandercoembroidery.com/ Anna's new book, The Stitched Landscape, available for pre-order: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/anna-hultin/the-stitched-landscape/9781635868456/(00:01:50) Transformative Embroidery Art: Colorado Nature Inspiration(00:11:24) Transforming the Ordinary: Artist Inspired by Wyeth(00:15:08) Embracing Profound Beauty in Everyday Moments(00:16:31) Embroidering Nature's Ever-Changing Patterns in Art(00:21:06) Sanctuary for Creative Evolution in Art(00:29:31) Embroidery Book Focusing on Mindful Nature(00:35:13) Transformative Influence of Everyday Beauty(00:39:05) Substack Platform for Artistic Expression and Connection

HOLLYWOOD - Broomall, Pennsylvania artist David Hoffrichter is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest and was honored along with ten other artists and twelve writers at the Taglyan Complex in Hollywood, California on April 10th. His art is published along with the other writers' and illustrators' stories and art in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41 which will be officially released on April 22nd 2025. David grew up in Broomall PA, right outside of Philadelphia and not too far from several museums that would direct his love of illustration for the rest of his life. David was raised on adventure stories, magical tales of Lions, Dwarves, Elves, and heroes of all ages. The one thing these stories had in common were amazing pictures illustrated by artists who lived very close to where David first learned to love art. From N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and Jessie Wilcox Smith, to the artistic legends who are alive today. Still brightening the world with every brushstroke they make, David revels in his appreciation of art and how it has shaped his foundation from an early age. David loves to create narrative paintings that tell the stories between the lines. There is a mystery to be found in his works, that represents who he is as an artist, and how he sees the world. He cannot wait to share his world with you. The Illustrators of the Future Contest judges include, Bob Eggleton (11 Chesley Awards and 9 Hugo Awards), Larry Elmore (Dungeons & Dragons book covers), Echo Chernik (graphic designs for major corporations including Celestial Seasonings tea packaging), Rob Prior (art for Spawn, Heavy Metal comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Ciruelo (Eragon Coloring Book). devil can ever be justified. “The Rune Witch” is Jefferson's first sale. He hopes you enjoy it. The Contest, one of the most prestigious writing and illustrating competitions in the world, is currently in its 42nd year and is judged by some of the premier names in speculative fiction. The Writers of the Future Contest judges include, Tim Powers (author of On Stranger Tides), Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert (Dune prequel series), Robert J. Sawyer (The Oppenheimer Alternative), Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn series, The Stormlight Archive), Larry Niven (Ringworld), Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game), Nnedi Okorafor (Who Fears Death), Hugh Howey (Wool), and Katherine Kurtz (Deryni series) to name a few. The Illustrators of the Future Contest judges include, Bob Eggleton (11 Chesley Awards and 9 Hugo Awards), Larry Elmore (Dungeons & Dragons book covers), Echo Chernik (graphic designs for major corporations including Celestial Seasonings tea packaging), Rob Prior (art for Spawn, Heavy Metal comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Ciruelo (Eragon Coloring Book). Following the 1982 release of his internationally acclaimed bestselling science fiction novel, Battlefield Earth, written in celebration of 50 years as a professional writer, L. Ron Hubbard created the Writers of the Future (writersofthefuture.com) in 1983 to provide a means for aspiring writers of speculative fiction to get that much-needed break. Due to the success of the Writers of the Future Contest, the companion Illustrators of the Future Contest was inaugurated five years later. In the 41 years of the Writers of the Future Contest, there have been 571 winners and published finalists. The past winners of the Writing Contest have published 2,000 novels and nearly 6,300 short stories. They have produced 36 New York Times bestsellers, and their works have sold over 60 million copies. In the 36 years of the Illustrators of the Future Contest, there have been 418 winners. T

Jeff Kindler was the CEO of Pfizer, the largest research-based pharmaceutical company in the world. Jeff oversaw Pfizer's $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth and led an organization that generated more than $60 billion in annual revenue. Jeff is currently the CEO of Centrexion Therapeutics. Jeff joins Adam to share his journey and his best lessons and advice. Jeff and Adam discuss leadership and managing the challenges that come with it, career success and how to attain it, and much more.

In this episode of The MedTech Talent Lab, Mitch Robbins sits down with Elena Mack, Chief Quality Officer at Sanisure, to discuss her career journey and insights into the world of quality and regulatory leadership in the medical device industry. With over 25 years of experience, Elena has held key executive roles at companies like Olympus, BD, and Teva Pharmaceuticals. Now, as part of Sanisher, she is leading the charge to build and maintain a world-class quality program for the bioprocessing and biomanufacturing sectors.Elena shares her early career experiences, including her shift from medical technology to microbiology and how she got started at Wyeth in a regulatory compliance role. She reflects on pivotal moments in her career, including taking on a leadership role as a director at ACUPAC and the invaluable lessons she learned about leadership, delegation, and the importance of empowering her team.Throughout the conversation, Elena also delves into the challenges of being a quality executive, emphasizing the responsibility of ensuring that quality is a shared value across all levels of an organization. She highlights the critical importance of having a robust quality system and talks about the ongoing efforts at Sanisher to move from ISO 9001 to ISO 13485, aiming to meet the highest standards of quality required by their customers.With her unique perspective on quality as a critical but often underappreciated function in the industry, Elena offers valuable insights into the role of quality professionals and how they can drive real impact within their organizations.Key Takeaways:The importance of leadership by example and empowering teams.The challenges and rewards of stepping into executive roles and delegating responsibilities.The need for robust quality systems in bioprocessing and biomanufacturing, especially in meeting regulatory standards.Elena's personal connection to quality through her experiences with her son's health challenges.Links:Elena on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-mack-bb57855/Sanisure Website www.sanisure.com

Joe Pardavila sits down with Merle Symes, author of The Innovation Edge: How Large Companies Lose It and How to Get It Back, to explore the challenges and nuances of fostering innovation in established organizations.Merle breaks down the critical differences between incremental and strategic innovation, explaining why traditional project management methods often fail when applied to groundbreaking ideas. The conversation delves into the "S-Curve Paradox," where companies at their peak success are most vulnerable to disruption, and the concept of "intelligent failure"—how to fail purposefully and learn from setbacks without stifling creativity.Joe and Merle also discuss the cultural barriers to innovation, including short-termism, the "check-the-box" mentality, and the need for leadership to embrace an "ambidextrous" approach—balancing immediate goals with long-term vision. Through real-world examples like Kodak, Blockbuster, and Intel, they highlight the consequences of resting on past successes and missing emerging opportunities.Touching on the role of AI and the importance of organizational mindset, this episode offers actionable insights for leaders aiming to reignite innovation in their teams. Whether you're navigating corporate inertia or looking to build a culture of continuous reinvention, Merle's expertise provides a roadmap for staying ahead in an ever-evolving business landscape.Merle Symes works with senior management teams to help them realize their aspirations through agile strategy, high-impact innovation, and business performance. He has assisted senior management teams in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to early-stage ventures.Mr. Symes has developed a number of leading-edge principles and tools for enhancing business success. It includes a process for creating Innovation by Design® in strategically targeted areas, project management methods and active risk management tools for managing high return/higher risk innovation, and business performance initiatives and guidelines for helping management teams develop a more entrepreneurial and innovative culture.In his 50-year career, Mr. Symes has held a number of executive positions and he brings real-world knowledge and experience to leading-edge methods and practices. Most recently he has served as CEO of the tech venture, Graematter. His previous positions include President of Ulrich Medical, a U.S. subsidiary of a German medical device company. Prior to that he held the position of Vice President, External Technology for Bausch & Lomb where his organization established a process for locating and acquiring external technology that was recognized by the Corporate Executive Board as being one of the top five best practices, as identified in their research of major companies.Mr. Symes has served in executive positions in both the U.S. and Europe, including turnaround situations. Prior to Bausch & Lomb, he held positions in Wyeth (now part of Pfizer), Monsanto and Dupont. He regularly advises boards of directors and has held board director positions on both public and privately held companies as well as university and charitable organizations. He is affiliated with and serves as a Managing Director of The Walden Group, a boutique New York investment bank specializing in M&A in the medical industry.Mr. Symes has an MBA from the Wharton Graduate School and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology where he has been honored with their Distinguished Alumni Award and serves as Chairman of their University Advisory Board.

In a recent post, Cole Wyeth makes a bold claim:. . . there is one crucial test (yes this is a crux) that LLMs have not passed. They have never done anything important. They haven't proven any theorems that anyone cares about. They haven't written anything that anyone will want to read in ten years (or even one year). Despite apparently memorizing more information than any human could ever dream of, they have made precisely zero novel connections or insights in any area of science[3].I commented:An anecdote I heard through the grapevine: some chemist was trying to synthesize some chemical. He couldn't get some step to work, and tried for a while to find solutions on the internet. He eventually asked an LLM. The LLM gave a very plausible causal story about what was going wrong and suggested a modified setup which, in fact, fixed [...] The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: February 23rd, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GADJFwHzNZKg2Ndti/have-llms-generated-novel-insights --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Lancaster, California artist CL Fors is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest earning her a trip to Hollywood for a week-long master-class workshop, an awards event and her winning art will be published in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41. CL Fors—Cherrie to her friends—was born to a mad-scientist and a mad-artist, so it's no surprise she's cultivated lifelong dual passions for art and science that shape her career in writing and illustrating science fiction and fantasy. Cherrie has lived all over the US and now calls the Southern California desert her home, where her family tethers are. She shares her life, love, and creative endeavors with her husband, four clever children, and beloved art family. Marina, California writer Robert F. Lowell is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest earning him a trip to Hollywood for a week-long master-class workshop, an awards event and his winning story will be published in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41. Robert F. Lowell's complicated relationship with reality began when he was born between two movie studios in Burbank, California. In previous professional lives he researched and wrote about international relations, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism. He taught at universities in the U.S., Costa Rica, and Switzerland and was kissed by a dancing horse in Siberia. Now he expands the universe of online learning as an instructional systems designer and writes about swords, sorcery, robots, aliens, and magic rabbits as a member of the Wulf Pack writer's group. He, his wife, and at least one dog live in a town with very expensive weather on California's Central Coast and travel in search of enchantment. Step into his universe at www.worldsofrobertflowell.com. Broomall, Pennsylvania artist David Hoffrichter is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest earning him a trip to Hollywood for a week-long master-class workshop, an awards event and his winning art will be published in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41. David grew up in Broomall PA, right outside of Philadelphia and not too far from several museums that would direct his love of illustration for the rest of his life. David was raised on adventure stories, magical tales of Lions, Dwarves, Elves, and heroes of all ages. The one thing these stories had in common were amazing pictures illustrated by artists who lived very close to where David first learned to love art. From N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and Jessie Wilcox Smith, to the artistic legends who are alive today. Still brightening the world with every brushstroke they make, David revels in his appreciation of art and how it has shaped his foundation from an early age. Mesa, Arizona writers Ian Keith is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest earning him a trip to Hollywood for a week-long master-class workshop, an awards event and his winning story will be published in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41. Ian Keith went to philosophy school to learn how to tell the truth, and to law school to learn how to tailor a story to suit any set of appearances. Both trainings have helped him to write fiction, about equally. He lives with his partner and their two children in the Phoenix area, where he works as a ghostwriter. “Blackbird Stone” is his first professional publication.

Mullica Hill, New Jersey author Lauren McGuire is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest earning her a trip to Hollywood for a week-long master-class workshop, an awards event and her winning story will be published in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41. Sandra Skalski's love of fantasy ignited when her kindergarten teacher read Ozma of Oz to the class. Growing up, she spent most of her allowance in the Bookmobile. During the summer, she walked nearly two miles to the nearest library to devour every fantasy and science fiction book she could find. She wrote her first SF story when she was thirteen. It wasn't very good, but she was determined to keep writing. Attending Viable Paradise workshop helped improve her craft. The first time she got the courage to hit submit, it was to the Writers of the Future Contest. Her stories have appeared in Factor Four Magazine, Wyld Flash, Ruth and Ann's Guide to Time Travel Anthology Vol. 2 and 100-Foot Crow. Sandra lives with her husband in suburban New Jersey. She recently retired from a career in chemical engineering, leaving her with actual time to write. When she's not writing, you can find her in the butterfly garden or traveling with her husband. Her greatest joy is spending time with her daughter, son-in-law, and her two beautiful grandchildren. Minneapolis, Minnesota artist John Barlow is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest earning him a trip to Hollywood for a week-long master-class workshop, an awards event and his winning art will be published in the international bestselling anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41. John Barlow is an illustrator and educator creating rich illustrations with a focus on storytelling. A Minnesota resident, John was raised on fairy tales, fiction, and forests. He's strongly inspired by Golden Age illustrators like N.C. Wyeth and Arthur Rackham, as well as many contemporary illustrators. Each illustration is an exercise in atmosphere and texture, creating a world you can easily get lost in. John tells stories with a variety of clients in the tabletop gaming industry as well as fantasy

First up on today's wide-ranging show, Ralph speaks to political scientist Adolph Reed about how American politics has started taking its cues from professional wrestling and how the left can rebuild itself. Then, we welcome Steve Silberstein from National Popular Vote to update us on their interstate compact's progress. Finally, we're joined by three interns from the American Museum of Tort Law—Dylan Bird, Gabriel Duffany, and Rachel Donovan discuss a rather unique summer assignment.Adolph Reed is Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and an organizer with the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute's Medicare for All-South Carolina initiative, and co-host of Class Matters Podcast. His most recent books are The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives and (with Walter Benn Michaels) No Politics but Class Politics.One of the things that struck me, especially, is during the pandemic it was striking to see how much full-blown animus toward government— or toward the idea of public and public goods—that there is out there in society at large. And we know Heritage (and the rest of the reactionary, the Koch brothers) have been fueling that and stoking that kind of resentment for as long as they've been around, frankly, right…But what's different is that since the Clinton years, the Democrats have been just as likely to attack the idea of government or public goods and public services, right? And they're more likely to do it backhandedly…So there hasn't been any space for people to connect even the fact that they like to go to the public library or like to use the public park with this bipartisan, full-bore attack on the idea of government. And that has gone so far and so deeply within society.Adolph ReedSteve Silberstein founded and served as the first president of Innovative Interfaces Inc., a leading supplier of computer software for the automation of college and city libraries. Mr. Silberstein sold his interest in the company in 2001 and now devotes his time to philanthropic and civic matters, one of which is sitting on the Board of Directors of National Popular Vote.Of the states that have passed [the National Popular Vote compact], it's mostly been with Democratic votes. Because for a while there's been a theory that Republicans couldn't win the national popular vote. That's why they opposed it. But now that they have actually won the popular vote this time around, that theory which caused some of them to oppose it has gone by the wayside.Steve SilbersteinThere's no reason for [Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan being “swing states”]. You know, those states didn't even exist when the constitution was established. It's just purely an accident…Those states are not typical of the United States—each state is unique in some way. So, Wisconsin has a big dairy industry. Pennsylvania has coal mining or fracking or something like that. So the candidates just concentrate on those—what are really very obscure issues to most of the people in the country. These states are not typical. They are not representative in any way shape or form of the rest of the country.Steve SilbersteinDylan Bird is a sophomore at St Lawrence University, pursuing a double major in Global Studies and Spanish on a Pre Law Track. Gabriel Duffany is a sophomore at the University of Connecticut, pursuing a double major in Human Rights and Communication also on a Pre Law Track, and he is an intern at the American Museum of Tort Law. Rachel Donovan is the Outreach Coordinator at the American Museum of Tort Law, and she is pursuing studies in education. All three recently worked as summer interns at the American Museum of Tort Law in the VoxBox Civic Engagement Summer Course, and they participated in Ralph Nader's Dictionary Pilot.It's a very daunting task when somebody hands you a full dictionary—over a thousand pages or so—and asks you to read it front-to-back. Once you start to actually sink your teeth into it…I actually found it to be a very positive experience. Rather than simply looking up individual words and ending your journey there, the goal really becomes the exploration of knowledge.Dylan BirdFor me, what really did stand out wasn't the individual words. It was more so the process of defining that I found the most compelling. So it showed up to me in the linguistic sense that these aren't exact definitions here. They're more so measurements, gauges of people's public opinions and definitions that would shift over time. So it was interesting to see how the evolution of words came, how meanings evolved over time with new technologies, new cultural moments. And as a news writer, I found that fascinating—the complexities of a word, the connotations that go with it, they can make or break the framing of any certain topic.Gabriel DuffanyI think that this project could be very important for students of all ages because it's not often that you would use a physical dictionary very much anymore—versus just going online and looking up a word. And now multiple definitions could come up—you may not even find exactly what you're looking for, because words undergo new meanings on a near-daily basis. And I think having the chance to read the original definition may give students new meanings to words that they may have thought they had the knowledge of due to social media.Rachel DonovanNews 12/25/241. On December 19th, the Teamsters announced they would launch “the largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history.” This strike covers nearly 10,000 Amazon workers who have joined the Teamsters, with workers taking to the picket line in New York City Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Skokie, Illinois. Teamsters President Sean O'Brien is quoted saying “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon's insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it…This strike is on them.” Scenes from this strike went viral over the holidays; one video posted by Labor Notes journalist Luis Feliz Leon shows NYPD officers guarding a path for Amazon trucks to depart after clearing away a blockade by striking workers – in case you were wondering whose side the cops are on.2. In more Amazon union news, INDY Week's Lena Geller reports that on December 23rd Amazon workers filed for a union election at the RDU1 warehouse in Garner, North Carolina. These workers are organizing under the auspices of Carolina Amazonians for Solidarity and Empowerment, aka CAUSE, which states that “despite an illegal campaign of intimidation by Amazon, which is desperate to keep unions out to continue paying poverty wages and failing to improve dismal work conditions,” the union believes they have “easily” exceeded the 30% card check threshold to demand an election. If successful, RDU1 would become the first unionized Amazon facility in the South.3. Independent investigative journalists Ken Klippenstein and Dan Boguslaw are out with a report on a potential conflict of interest in the Luigi Mangione prosecution. Apparently, “Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker, who is overseeing pre-trial hearings for…Mangione, is married to a former Pfizer executive.” Judge Parker's husband, Bret Parker, had served as Vice President and assistant general counsel at Wyeth, and held the same titles after that company was purchased by Pfizer. According to financial disclosures, Mr. Parker still collects a pension from Pfizer in the form of a “Senior Executive Retirement Plan.” The Parkers also own hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of stock in Pfizer itself, along with other pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and healthcare companies. These holdings raise grave questions about the impartiality of this judge.4. In more news from New York, Gothamist reports New York Governor Kathy Hochul has vetoed a bill which would have “reversed New York's longstanding ban on jury service for anyone convicted of felonies at any point in their lives. If enacted, the bill would have allowed people with felony convictions to serve only after completing their sentences, including parole.” This bill passed with the support of the New York Civil Liberties Union and Phil Desgranges, an attorney at The Legal Aid Society, called this bill “common-sense legislation.” State Senator Jabari Brisport wrote “Fun fact about [New York] politics. The Governor has until end of year to sign bills so she usually waits until [the] holiday season and vetoes a bunch right before Christmas, hoping no one notices.” The Gothamist piece notes that Hochul vetoed 132 bills over the weekend.5. Turning to Israel, a remarkable story in unfolding around the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. According to Democracy Now!, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to skip the anniversary “out of fears he might be arrested for committing war crimes in Gaza.” As we have documented on this program, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant in November, and since then various countries have grappled with their obligations under international law to arrest the pair. While certain ICC signatory nations like Germany and France have sought to weasel out of these commitments, according to this report, “Poland's deputy foreign minister recently confirmed Poland would comply with the ICC arrest warrants if Netanyahu visited.”6. On the domestic front, newly elected Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar has sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin demanding that the Biden administration withhold new transfers of offensive weaponry to the Israeli military. In this letter, he and other progressive members of Congress make clear that the administration itself has “correctly identified steps the Israeli government must take in order for continued transfers…to be in accordance with U.S. law,” and that “the Israeli government has failed to take sufficient action or change course.” This letter is signed by 20 members of Congress including Casar himself along with Summer Lee, James McGovern, Mark Pocan, Pramila Jayapal, Sara Jacobs, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and others.7. In a stunning story picked up by POLITICO, Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger – chair of the critical House Appropriations Committee until last April – has been missing in action for months. Despite continuing to hold her Texas seat, she has not cast a vote at all since July. Calls to her office went unanswered and unreturned. Visits to her office found it vacant. And when investigative reporters sought her out, they wound up finding her in an assisted living facility wracked with dementia. This story is tragic; Granger's son has spoken out since publication, addressing how rapidly his mother's mental decline has progressed. Yet, this is just the most striking example of the gerontocracy that has gripped Capitol Hill. And at least Granger had the sense remaining to recuse herself from votes; rebellious Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky is quoted saying he's “more concerned about the congressmen who have dementia and are still voting.”8. Moving to some good news, the Federal Trade Commission announced last week that they, along with the Attorney General of Illinois, have reached a $25 million settlement with food delivery giant GrubHub, stemming from the firm's engagement in “an array of unlawful practices including deceiving diners about delivery costs and blocking their access to their accounts and funds, deceiving workers about how much money they would make delivering food, and unfairly and deceptively listing restaurants on its platform without their permission.” In addition to the monetary penalty, the company must make significant changes to its operations model, including “telling consumers the full cost of delivery, honestly advertising pay for drivers, and listing restaurants on its platform only with their consent.” This is a victory for consumers, workers, restaurants, but perhaps above all, the rule of law. As FTC Chair Lina Khan puts it “There is no ‘gig platform' exemption to the laws on the books.”9. On December 23rd, President Biden announced that he would commute the death sentences for 37 out of the 40 federal prisoners on death row, in a major victory for ending executions by the state. These sentences have been commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In a statement, Biden wrote “I've dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system…Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss. But… I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.” He ends this statement by alluding to the fact that as president he has imposed a moratorium on federal executions and fears that the incoming Trump administration will resume state-sponsored killings. Per AP, the three inmates whose sentences were not commuted are: Dylann Roof, the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooter, Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Tree of Life Synagogue shooter Robert Bowers.10. Finally, on Christmas Eve, Bernie Sanders issued a statement laying out “How to Make America Healthy Again,” echoing the language used by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Under Bernie's plan, this initiative would include Medicare for All, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, paid family and medical leave, a 32-hour work week, raising the minimum wage, and reforms to the food industry itself, such as banning junk food ads and stronger warning labels on high-sugar products. As with Bernie's qualified embrace of the “Department of Government Efficiency” this should be seen as a savvy move to call the Trump team's bluff. Will they really go after big sugar? Or will they bend the knee to their corporate benefactors yet again?This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Send us a textJoin us for a lively discussion of some of the best books published this year. At the breakfast table to discuss their poetry and fiction choices are poet Adam Wyeth and novelist Henrietta McKervey. Plenty of stocking filler ideas here, and Peter and Enda also get to mention some of their own favourite books of the year, or ones they finally got around to reading this year. This is a double espresso and multiple pastry episode, so get that pot on the stove and get the earbuds in!This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry' from The Hare's Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Adam's picks for 2024: Crash Centre by David McLoghlin , All the Good Things You Deserve by Elaine Feeney, High Jump: An Icarus Story by Gustav Parker Hibbett, We Go On by Kerry Hardie  Honorable Mentions: Four Thousand Keys by Linda McKenna , American Anthem by Kelly Michels , Dismantle by Anne TannamHenrietta's Fiction Choices: Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything, John Boyne, Fire , Christine Dwyer Hickey, Our London Lives , Katja Oskamp, Half Swimmer  , Michael Frayn, Among Others Books mentioned by Peter: Lesley Chamberlain, Rilke, The Last Inward Man, Pushkin Press, Guillevic, Selected Poems, 1974, tr. by Teo Savory, Salvatore Quasimodo, Debit and Credit, tr. by Jack Bevan, 1972, Richard Zenith, Pessoa: An Experimental Life , Stanley Moss, Goddamed Selected Poems .Books mentioned by EndaDeborah Levy,  The Position of Spoons , Samantha Harvey, Orbital,, Grace Wilentz, Harmony (Unfinished), Aifric Mac Aodha, Old Friends,  James Harpur, The Gospel of GargoyleSupport the show

We announce the New Zealand finalists for the 2025 Zanda McDonald Award — a transtasman honour that recognises and nurtures exceptional talent in agriculture. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of Molecule to Market, you'll go inside the outsourcing space of the global drug development sector with Peter Stevenson, Independent Director and Pharma industry veteran. Your host, Raman Sehgal, discusses the pharmaceutical and biotechnology supply chain with Peter, covering: Bringing an outsourcing model from UpjohnPharmacia into Pfizer and then driving manufacturing out of Pfizer into CDMOs without compromising on quality or IP Behind the scenes of Pfizer's mammoth acquisitions of Wyeth and Hospira The failure to spend too much time setting up a reliable, high-quality outsourcing network in China The different perspectives of being 'the mayor of one huge site' to having a diversified, helicopter view across several Switching from buy-side external outsourcing to running Pfizer's CDMO division Pfizer CentreOne Don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish when balancing the onshoring manufacturing conundrum and how price controls in the US will impact all aspects of the industry Peter Stevenson is a leader in the pharmaceutical industry with extensive manufacturing and commercial experience. He was a Pfizer's Global Manufacturing Leadership Team member, responsible for global procurement, global external supply, and a portfolio of Pfizer's internal manufacturing sites in North America, Europe, and Asia. Today, he is a Non-Executive Independent Board Member at Piramal Pharma. Later, Mr. Stevenson served as General Manager of Pfizer's contract manufacturing business and Value Stream Leader for the Injectables and Hospital Products Value Stream. Mr. Stevenson recently retired from Pfizer and serves as the Board Vice-Chair for Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases and Chair of the Governance Committee. Earlier in his career, Mr. Stevenson held positions at Rhone Poulenc and Celanese, including a 3-year expatriate assignment in France. He has a Bachelor's degree in Arts from Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania.   This episode of Molecule to Market is sponsored by Vetter, a global leader in aseptic filling solutions for injectable products in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Discover more about Vetter's comprehensive services, from early-stage development to commercial production, and how they support clients in delivering high-quality therapies to the market.   Please subscribe, tell your industry colleagues and join us in celebrating and promoting the value and importance of the global life science outsourcing space. We'd also appreciate a positive rating!   Molecule to Market is sponsored and funded by ramarketing, an international marketing, design, digital and content agency helping companies differentiate, get noticed and grow in life sciences.

Guest: Dr. Shankar Musunuri - Ocugen, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Co-founder Website: www.ocugen.com Ticker: OCGN Bio: Dr. Shankar Musunuri is Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Ocugen. The company (NASDAQ: OCGN) is a publicly traded biotechnology company focused on discovery, development, commercialization of gene therapies, cell therapies, biologicals, and vaccines, based in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Dr. Musunuri transformed Ocugen from a start-up into a cutting-edge science-based biotech powerhouse with three distinct first-in-class platform technologies focused on ophthalmology with a first-in-class modifier gene therapy platform targeting rare as well as large blindness diseases, orthopedics with a regenerative cell therapy platform, and infectious diseases with an inhalation vaccine platform targeting Covid-19, flu, and a combination vaccine for both COVID-19 and flu. Ocugen anticipates launching products from these game-changing platform technologies within the next few years. The company's mission is to develop cutting-edge innovations for people with serious diseases and conditions with a commitment to ensuring global market access. Dr. Musunuri is a seasoned biotech veteran with 30+ years' experience advancing and commercializing a diverse portfolio of products. Prior to co-founding Ocugen in 2013, he held leadership roles at numerous companies ranging from large multinational biotechnology companies such as Wyeth and Pfizer, to novel start-up biotech companies. During his 15 years at Pfizer, he gained extensive product launch and life-cycle management experience including leading the Global Operations Team for Prevnar 13, the world's best-selling vaccine. Dr. Musunuri then founded Nuron Biotech, Inc., which grew into a commercial company in less than three years. Dr. Musunuri obtained his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Connecticut—where he also received a Distinguished Alumnus Award. He also received an MBA from Duke University, where today he serves on the University's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Board of Advisors. Dr. Musunuri serves as both CEO and Chairman of the board of Ocugen. He has received numerous leadership awards including Most Admired CEO Award by Philadelphia Business Journal, the 2023 Healthcare Power 100 (ranked 22nd) in PA and the 2023 AAPI Power 100 (ranked 11th) in PA. He is also a Board Member of the Musunuri Family Foundation, a non-profit that provides college scholarships for high school students. Dr. Musunuri has a passion for addressing diseases and conditions which lack effective treatments. This commitment is reflected in Ocugen's mission of relentlessly pursuing courageous innovation on behalf of patients with unmet medical needs. About Ocugen, Inc. Ocugen, Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing novel gene and cell therapies, biologics, and vaccines that improve health and offer hope for patients across the globe. We are making an impact on patients' lives through courageous innovation—forging new scientific paths that harness our unique intellectual and human capital. Our breakthrough modifier gene therapy platform has the potential to treat multiple retinal diseases with a single product, and we are advancing research in infectious diseases to support public health and orthopedic diseases to address unmet medical needs. Discover more at www.ocugen.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/smartmoneycircle/support

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWapato Park is pretty great, partially because it's easily overlooked and therefore never crowded. Its full name is Wapato Access Greenway State Park. It's a sleeper park, the kind you stumble on if you like studying maps. The small gravel parking lot trailhead is on a dead end road, and easy to miss. Interestingly, it's the only trailhead on Sauvie Island that you don't have to pay $10 ($30/yr) to park at. In the winter the trail can be quite muddy, in the late spring and summer it can get buggy, and if you're really unlucky, your car can get busted into. Still, it's worth a visit.On a mild February day earlier this year I strolled around its shores, and down to the dock on the river. This soundscape records the wildlife and ambience of winter. You'll hear Common Raven, spirited and unusual vocalizations from Stellar's Jays, a Pileated Woodpecker, Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets, and all kinds of water birds. Sometimes you even see Tundra Swans in small numbers here.Reminiscences of Louis Labonte (1900) recalls life on Scappoose Creek near Sauvie's Island, as a teenage boy, from about 1833 to 1836. Labonte [Jr.] was the son of Astor expedition member Louis Labonte [Sr.] and his native wife, daughter of Clatsop Chief Coboway.Game on the ponds of the island was very abundant, consisting of deer, bear, and panthers and wildcats; and beaver were still plentiful; but the waterfowl of the most magnificent kind, at their season of passage, and, indeed much of the year, almost forbade the hunter to sleep.Indeed, the lake was so covered by the flock as almost to conceal the water.So we can forgive Capt. William Clark for his 1805 journal remark referring to the swans, geese and cranes: “they were emensely numerous and their noise horrid.” Here we have another recollection of wildlife din riotous enough to make sleeping difficult.And, here I am thinking about this place prior to Euro-American settlement again, prior to industrialization and the inescapable anthropogenic noise coming from the commercial aircraft corridor above, the highway to the west, and the motorboats in the channel.Now, you might be thinking to yourself, boy Chad sure brings up indigenous people a lot, for being a field recording and music guy. It's true. I think it's because I get so tuned into natural soundscape, that I'm curious to imagine all the details of what life was like two hundred-plus years ago. When I'm editing my field recordings with splices and EQ filters and cut & paste techniques to approximate a pre-industrial quietude, I can't help but think people used to be much more in tune with wildlife and weather. In the vicinity of Wapato Park, human history goes deeper than is often discussed. According to amateur archeologist Emory Strong, there are three archeological points of interest nearby:MU 6. Cath-la-nah-qui-ah. six houses and 400 inhabitants.  Nathaniel Wyeth built Fort William near this town but the residents had all died in the pestilence by then. Dr. Mclaughlin had all the houses burned.  Excavations reveal everything covered with a film of cedar charcoal.MU 7. The site of Wyeth's Fort WilliamMU 8. One of the prehistoric sites that appears to be very old. There are no game or fish bones, and the midden has a different character from the more recent sites. (Stone Age on the Columbia River, 1958)[“MU” here is just an archeological prefix indicating Multnomah County. The modern trinomial standard now includes a code for Oregon as a prefix: 35 MU 6 and so on.] Each is an interesting story. Let's discuss. (35 MU 6) Cath-la-nah-qui-ah (or Gat-la-na-koa-iq), was a Multnomah tribe village on Multnomah Channel. The size estimate of 400 inhabitants belongs to Lewis and Clark. This would have been about half the size of the main Multnomah village on the other side of the island, in that time period. This is what that milieu looked like on the day I visited.This is what the plank houses looked like 200 years ago. They varied in size from 15' x 30' all the way up to 30' x 400':This is what the inside of a plankhouse looked like:Today, if not obliterated by erosion, or dike building, one would only expect to see slight depression in the soil on the site where one of these plankhouses stood. In the early 1800's there were hundreds of them on the lower Columbia. The pestilence of the 1830's is now widely regarded to have been a malaria epidemic. Sauvie Island tribes—perhaps owing to the marshy landscape— were particularly devastated. The Indians believed it had been introduced by an American ship involved in the salmon trade, the Owyhee, commanded by John Dominis. They may have been right, as the ship had visited malarial ports before sailing to the Columbia. The impact of fever and ague on Native people in Oregon was earthshaking. In the 1820s, they had been by far the majority population in the region; by the early 1840s, they were in the minority. (Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s)Dr. McLoughlin was the Chief Factor of Fort Vancouver, upriver about 10 miles. This was the center of operations and trade for the entire Pacific Northwest, on behalf of French-Canadian Hudson's Bay Co (HBC). In addition to the to the Cath-la-nah-qui-ah village, HBC men also burned the larger Multnomah village (35 MU 2, 800 inhabitants, originally much larger) on the east side of the island, presumably in an effort to curb the epidemic.In an 1895 article for The Oregonian, pioneer John Minto reminisced about the “old Multnomah nation” and its appearance fifty years before, in 1845. We landed and camped for the night at the site of the last Multnomah village, but at which that time there were no Indians nor sign of recent Indian life. There was however an extensive city of the dead, a cemetery laid out in streets as wide as the plat of Riverview Cemetery at Portland. The dead were deposited on structures of wide split cedar boards three or more inches thick, set upright; sometimes three tiers of horizontal boards one above the other, mortised into and secured by twisted inner bark of cedar. On these the dead were laid wrapped in cedar bark. He included this remark about what he heard:It was rare that a traveller should pass a village at night without hearing at the same time the women wailing for the dead and the monotonous beat of a tom-tom. Now, I know that maybe this all seems like a tangent. But, these are testimonials both to the look and sound of that time that I think is not just interesting, but worth sharing, particularly on public lands where these events happened. And for my part, why not include them with narratives about my soundscape recordings also bearing witness to the land?Just 8 years after Minto's observations of the Multnomah village site, in 1853, Simon Morgan Reeder settled the donation land claim (originally belonging to one N. D. Miller) on which once stood the largest village of the island. Today the main road on the east side of the island, Reeder Road, bears his name. Now let us turn to (35 MU 7) Fort William, the abandoned effort to set up a trading post on Sauvie Island by Nathaniel J. Wyeth, rivaling HBC, on behalf of American investors in 1834. Two roadside monuments have been erected nearby. Let's be clear: these are monuments to a failed business venture. Upon arrival, Wyeth saw opportunity in the Natives' misfortune, writing in his journals "providence has made room for me and with doing them [Natives] more injury than I should if I had made room for myself viz Killing them off."[3]Wyeth had many setbacks in his attempt to establish Fort William. In 1835 one of his men was killed at the hands of another. Reading a correspondence from his investors, one might surmise Wyatt was a poor communicator, if not lacking the temperament of a leader.Finally there is (35 MU 8) “a prehistoric site that appears to be very old. There are no game or fish bones…” Here we are to understand the bones decomposed in the intervening time span. These weren't the original vegans of the Portland basin. My best attempts to research this further yielded nothing. Were these the ancestors of the Multnomahs, the Chinookan peoples? The landscape holds a lot of mysteries. I think about them when I listen to it. Thank you for reading and listening. I hope you enjoy Wapato Park Soundwalk. Wapato Park Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) tomorrow, Friday, October 18th.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Open Problems in AIXI Agent Foundations, published by Cole Wyeth on September 13, 2024 on LessWrong. I believe that the theoretical foundations of the AIXI agent and variations are a surprisingly neglected and high leverage approach to agent foundations research. Though discussion of AIXI is pretty ubiquitous in A.I. safety spaces, underscoring AIXI's usefulness as a model of superintelligence, this is usually limited to poorly justified verbal claims about its behavior which are sometimes questionable or wrong. This includes, in my opinion, a serious exaggeration of AIXI's flaws. For instance, in a recent post I proposed a simple extension of AIXI off-policy that seems to solve the anvil problem in practice - in fact, in my opinion it has never been convincingly argued that the anvil problem would occur for an AIXI approximation. The perception that AIXI fails as an embedded agent seems to be one of the reasons it is often dismissed with a cursory link to some informal discussion. However, I think AIXI research provides a more concrete and justified model of superintelligence than most subfields of agent foundations [1]. In particular, a Bayesian superintelligence must optimize some utility function using a rich prior, requiring at least structural similarity to AIXI. I think a precise understanding of how to represent this utility function may be a necessary part of any alignment scheme on pain of wireheading. And this will likely come down to understanding some variant of AIXI, at least if my central load bearing claim is true: The most direct route to understanding real superintelligent systems is by analyzing agents similar to AIXI. Though AIXI itself is not a perfect model of embedded superintelligence, it is perhaps the simplest member of a family of models rich enough to elucidate the necessary problems and exhibit the important structure. Just as the Riemann integral is an important precursor of Lebesgue integration, despite qualitative differences, it would make no sense to throw AIXI out and start anew without rigorously understanding the limits of the model. And there are already variants of AIXI that surpass some of those limits, such as the reflective version that can represent other agents as powerful as itself. This matters because the theoretical underpinnings of AIXI are still very spotty and contain many tractable open problems. In this document, I will collect several of them that I find most important - and in many cases am actively pursuing as part of my PhD research advised by Ming Li and Marcus Hutter. The AIXI (~= "universal artificial intelligence") research community is small enough that I am willing to post many of the directions I think are important publicly; in exchange I would appreciate a heads-up from anyone who reads a problem on this list and decides to work on it, so that we don't duplicate efforts (I am also open to collaborate). The list is particularly tilted towards those problems with clear, tractable relevance to alignment OR philosophical relevance to human rationality. Naturally, most problems are mathematical. Particularly where they intersect recursion theory, these problems may have solutions in the mathematical literature I am not aware of (keep in mind that I am a lowly second year PhD student). Expect a scattering of experimental problems to be interspersed as well. To save time, I will assume that the reader has a copy of Jan Leike's PhD thesis on hand. In my opinion, he has made much of the existing foundational progress since Marcus Hutter invented the model. Also, I will sometimes refer to the two foundational books on AIXI as UAI = Universal Artificial Intelligence and Intro to UAI = An Introduction to Universal Artificial Intelligence, and the canonical textbook on algorithmic information theory Intro to K = An...

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Peter Ralston. Peter is a marine photographer, photographing the coast of Maine since 1978, drawn especially to the working communities that define the coast's enduring character. Instrumental in forming the Island Institute in 1983, Peter Ralston served as its executive vice-president until 2010, and contributed most of the photography and served as art director for the Institute's Island Journal since its inception. Peter's work has been reproduced in many books and magazines, exhibited in galleries, collections and museums throughout the United States and abroad. He is currently working on a major book about the Maine coast. Although, as a young man, Ralston studied very briefly under Ansel Adams, he acknowledges the greater artistic influence of a lifetime of association with the Wyeth family: close friends and life-changing mentors. He continues to spend as much time as he possibly can on and around islands.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Free Will and Dodging Anvils: AIXI Off-Policy, published by Cole Wyeth on September 1, 2024 on LessWrong. This post depends on a basic understanding of history-based reinforcement learning and the AIXI model. I am grateful to Marcus Hutter and the lesswrong team for early feedback, though any remaining errors are mine. The universal agent AIXI treats the environment it interacts with like a video game it is playing; the actions it chooses at each step are like hitting buttons and the percepts it receives are like images on the screen (observations) and an unambiguous point tally (rewards). It has been suggested that since AIXI is inherently dualistic and doesn't believe anything in the environment can "directly" hurt it, if it were embedded in the real world it would eventually drop an anvil on its head to see what would happen. This is certainly possible, because the math of AIXI cannot explicitly represent the idea that AIXI is running on a computer inside the environment it is interacting with. For one thing, that possibility is not in AIXI's hypothesis class (which I will write M). There is not an easy patch because AIXI is defined as the optimal policy for a belief distribution over its hypothesis class, but we don't really know how to talk about optimality for embedded agents (so the expectimax tree definition of AIXI cannot be easily extended to handle embeddedness). On top of that, "any" environment "containing" AIXI is at the wrong computability level for a member of M: our best upper bound on AIXI's computability level is Δ02 = limit-computable (for an ε-approximation) instead of the Σ01 level of its environment class. Reflective oracles can fix this but at the moment there does not seem to be a canonical reflective oracle, so there remains a family of equally valid reflective versions of AIXI without an objective favorite. However, in my conversations with Marcus Hutter (the inventor of AIXI) he has always insisted AIXI would not drop an anvil on its head, because Cartesian dualism is not a problem for humans in the real world, who historically believed in a metaphysical soul and mostly got along fine anyway. But when humans stick electrodes in our brains, we can observe changed behavior and deduce that our cognition is physical - would this kind of experiment allow AIXI to make the same discovery? Though we could not agree on this for some time, we eventually discovered the crux: we were actually using slightly different definitions for how AIXI should behave off-policy. In particular, let ξAI be the belief distribution of AIXI. More explicitly, I will not attempt a formal definition here. The only thing we need to know is that M is a set of environments which AIXI considers possible. AIXI interacts with an environment by sending it a sequence of actions a1,a2,... in exchange for a sequence of percepts containing an observation and reward e1=o1r1,e2=o2r2,... so that action at precedes percept et. One neat property of AIXI is that its choice of M satisfies ξAIM (this trick is inherited with minor changes from the construction of Solomonoff's universal distribution). Now let Vπμ be a (discounted) value function for policy π interacting with environment μ, which is the expected sum of discounted rewards obtained by π. We can define the AIXI agent as By the Bellman equations, this also specifies AIXI's behavior on any history it can produce (all finite percept strings have nonzero probability under ξAI). However, it does not tell us how AIXI behaves when the history includes actions it would not have chosen. In that case, the natural extension is so that AIXI continues to act optimally (with respect to its updated belief distribution) even when some suboptimal actions have previously been taken. The philosophy of this extension is that AIXI acts exactly as if...

As we step into the back-to-school season, we're diving deep into one of America's most iconic academic institutions: Princeton University. In this episode, I'm joined by W. Barksdale Maynard, an architectural historian and author, to explore Princeton's storied architecture and the rich history that has shaped its unique aesthetic.From the stunning Gothic Revival buildings to the meticulously planned quadrangles and gardens, we'll uncover the architectural marvels that define Princeton's campus. Barksdale will share insights into the evolution of the university's design and the ongoing challenges and decisions that impact the preservation of this historic campus.Join us as we celebrate the institution's legacy and its influence on American architecture and academia. Whether you're a history buff, design enthusiast, or simply curious about the beauty of one of the nation's oldest universities, this conversation promises to offer a fascinating look into Princeton's architectural heritage.Resources:Book: Princeton: America's CampusBook: Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to PresidencyUniversity of Delaware's W. Barksdale Maynard Photographs of Delaware CollectionBook: Artists of Wyeth Country: Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, and Andrew WyethBook: The Brandywine: An Intimate Portrait

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Sherlockian Abduction Master List, published by Cole Wyeth on July 13, 2024 on LessWrong. [Radically updated with many new entries around 07/10/24] Epistemic status: The List has been tested in the real world by me (with mixed results) and extensively checked for errors by many commenters. The Background section is mostly speculation and anecdotes, feel free to skip to The List once you understand its reason for existence. tldr: This is a curated list of observable details about a person's appearance that indicate something useful/surprising about them. Ideally, studying this list will be an efficient way to cultivate more insightful observational/abductive abilities, approaching the fictional example of Sherlock Holmes. Please contribute in the comments section after reading the Rules. Background Is it possible to develop observational abilities comparable to Sherlock Holmes? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective has many enviable skills, including mastery of disguise and some expertise at unarmed combat, as well as generally being a genius, but we will focus primarily on his more well known observational power. Though Holmes is often described as a master of logical "deduction," this power is better described as (possibly superhuman) abduction. That is, Holmes perceives tiny details that many people would miss, then constructs explanations for those details. By reasoning through the interacting implications of these explanations, he is able to make inferences that seem impossible to those around him. The final step is actually deductive, but the first two are perhaps more interesting. Holmes' ability to perceive more than others does seem somewhat realistic; it is always possible to actively improve one's situational awareness, at least on a short term basis, simply by focusing on one's surroundings. The trick seems to be the second step, where Holmes is able to work backwards from cause to effect, often leveraging slightly obscure knowledge about a wide variety of topics. I spent several of my naive teenage years trying to become more like Holmes. I carefully examined people's shoes (often I actually requested that the shoes be handed over) for numerous features: mud and dirt from walking outside, the apparent price of the shoe, the level of wear and tear, and more specifically the distribution of wear between heel and toe (hoping to distinguish sprinters and joggers), etc. I "read palms," studying the subtle variations between biking and weightlifting calluses. I looked for ink stains and such on sleeves (this works better in fiction than reality). I'm pretty sure I even smelled people. None of this worked particularly well. I did come up with some impressive seeming "deductions," but I made so many mistakes that these may have been entirely chance. There were various obstacles. First, it is time consuming and slightly awkward to stare at everyone you meet from head to toe. I think there are real tradeoffs here; you have only so much total attention, and by spending more on observing your surroundings, you have less left over to think. Certainly it is not possible to read a textbook at the same time, so practicing your observational techniques comes at a cost. Perhaps it becomes more habitual and easier over time, but I am not convinced it ever comes for free. Second, the reliability of inferences decays quickly with the number of steps involved. Many of Holmes' most impressive "deductions" come from combining his projected explanations for several details into one cohesive story (perhaps using some of them to rule out alternative explanations for the others) and drawing highly non-obvious, shocking conclusions from this story. In practice, one of the explanations is usually wrong, the entire story is base on false premises, and the conclusions are only sh...

Some call it Freedom Day; some call it Emancipation Day; some call it Juneteenth. Learn more about this important holiday that celebrates the end of chattel slavery in the United States in this Step 3 History Reader.On June 19, 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, a group of enslaved men, women, and children in Texas gathered. US General Gordon Granger read an order proclaiming that Blacks were no longer enslaved; they were free. People danced, wept tears of joy, and began to plan their new lives. Juneteenth became an annual celebration that is observed by more and more Americans with parades, picnics, family gatherings, and reflection on the words of historical figures, to mark the day when freedom truly rang for all. Step 3 Readers feature engaging characters in easy-to-follow plots and popular topics--for children who are ready to read on their own.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/avant-garde-books/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/avant-garde-books/support

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Peter Ralston, who has been photographing the coast of Maine since 1978, drawn especially to the working communities that define the coast's enduring character. Instrumental in forming the Island Institute in 1983, Peter Ralston served as its executive vice-president until 2010, and contributed most of the photography and served as art director for the Institute's Island Journal since its inception. Peter's work has been reproduced in many books and magazines, exhibited in galleries, collections and museums throughout the United States and abroad. He is currently working on a major book about the Maine coast. Although, as a young man, Ralston studied very briefly under Ansel Adams, he acknowledges the greater artistic influence of a lifetime of association with the Wyeth family: close friends and life-changing mentors. He continues to spend as much time as he possibly can on and around islands.

On this episode of the American Art Collective we are joined by H. Alexander Rich, Ph.D. Executive Director and Chief Curator at the Polk Museum of Art. He talks with us about the museum's ongoing exihibtion, Rockwell/Wyeth: Icons of Americana. The exihibit features 40 orgininal paintings from Rockwell and Wyeth and 321 Saturday Evening Post Covers. Plus, Alex takes us behind the scenes and shows us what it is like to make all the pieces of this show come together! The show runs through May 26. Learn more at https://polkmuseumofart.org/exhibitions-1.

Writers can learn a lot about structuring a narrative from visual storytellers, and that's what Barbara explores in this episode of Writing for Immortality. She visited the Schoelkopf Gallery this spring to see "Enter Andrew Wyeth," a rare look at 25 works from 1939 to 1994 that examine the emotional resonance of Wyeth's work during his marriage to his wife, Betsy.  Wyeth's paintings are in permanent collections in most major American museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition also provides unprecedented access to Andrew Wyeth's unframed drawings and watercolors. To make an appointment, please contact Alana Ricca at alana@schoelkopfgallery.com or Andrew Schoelkopf at andrew@schoelkopfgallery.com or call (212) 879-8815. Not in the market for a Wyeth original? Head over to Instagram to see art from the show. https://www.instagram.com/writing4immortality Additionally, Barbara has an update about Jane Goodrich, founder of Picsello and early guest of the pod, as well as news about future guest Kent Saunders! Jane launched her podcast, "Focus on Business," for photographers looking to grow their businesses. Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Cxe8X3TcgVowD6NgUoMfX Kent Sanders hosts "The Profitable Writer" podcast and invited Barbara to chat about ghostwriting--you can hear their conversation here: https://www.theprofitablewriter.com/blog/the-entrepreneurial-journey-of-a-full-time-writer-ghostwriter-barbara-richter and watch this space for Kent's interview! Want to write your life story? Head over to DIYBook and get started! https://www.diybook.us/

In 1986, Andrew Wyeth was the most famous painter in America. He was a household name, on the cover of magazines and tapped to paint presidents. And then he revealed a secret cache of 240 pieces of artwork, many provocative, all featuring the same nude female model. This collection, called The Helga Pictures, had been completed over 15 years and hidden from his wife, until they were revealed and wound up on the covers of both Time Magazine and Newsweek. The implication of these paintings were clear: Wyeth must have been having an affair, but then the story got complicated. Was it a genuine sex scandal? A hoax? Or something else entirely?  Some of the voices you'll hear in this episode include Doug McGill, former New York Times reporter; Neil Harris, author of Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience; Cathy Booth Thomas, former Time Magazine correspondent; Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, art historian and curator; Jeannie McDowell, former Time Magazine correspondent; Chris Lione, former art director at Art and Antiques; Joyce Stoner, Wyeth scholar; Peter Ralston, Wyeth photographer and friend; and Jim Duff, former director of the Brandywine River Museum. This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Benjamin Frisch. It was edited by Benjamin Frisch and Gabriel Roth. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. A very special thank you to Paula Scaire. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. If you're a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate's website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1986, Andrew Wyeth was the most famous painter in America. He was a household name, on the cover of magazines and tapped to paint presidents. And then he revealed a secret cache of 240 pieces of artwork, many provocative, all featuring the same nude female model. This collection, called The Helga Pictures, had been completed over 15 years and hidden from his wife, until they were revealed and wound up on the covers of both Time Magazine and Newsweek. The implication of these paintings were clear: Wyeth must have been having an affair, but then the story got complicated. Was it a genuine sex scandal? A hoax? Or something else entirely?  Some of the voices you'll hear in this episode include Doug McGill, former New York Times reporter; Neil Harris, author of Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience; Cathy Booth Thomas, former Time Magazine correspondent; Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, art historian and curator; Jeannie McDowell, former Time Magazine correspondent; Chris Lione, former art director at Art and Antiques; Joyce Stoner, Wyeth scholar; Peter Ralston, Wyeth photographer and friend; and Jim Duff, former director of the Brandywine River Museum. This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Benjamin Frisch. It was edited by Benjamin Frisch and Gabriel Roth. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. A very special thank you to Paula Scaire. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. If you're a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate's website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1986, Andrew Wyeth was the most famous painter in America. He was a household name, on the cover of magazines and tapped to paint presidents. And then he revealed a secret cache of 240 pieces of artwork, many provocative, all featuring the same nude female model. This collection, called The Helga Pictures, had been completed over 15 years and hidden from his wife, until they were revealed and wound up on the covers of both Time Magazine and Newsweek. The implication of these paintings were clear: Wyeth must have been having an affair, but then the story got complicated. Was it a genuine sex scandal? A hoax? Or something else entirely?  Some of the voices you'll hear in this episode include Doug McGill, former New York Times reporter; Neil Harris, author of Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience; Cathy Booth Thomas, former Time Magazine correspondent; Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, art historian and curator; Jeannie McDowell, former Time Magazine correspondent; Chris Lione, former art director at Art and Antiques; Joyce Stoner, Wyeth scholar; Peter Ralston, Wyeth photographer and friend; and Jim Duff, former director of the Brandywine River Museum. This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Benjamin Frisch. It was edited by Benjamin Frisch and Gabriel Roth. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. A very special thank you to Paula Scaire. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. If you're a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate's website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1986, Andrew Wyeth was the most famous painter in America. He was a household name, on the cover of magazines and tapped to paint presidents. And then he revealed a secret cache of 240 pieces of artwork, many provocative, all featuring the same nude female model. This collection, called The Helga Pictures, had been completed over 15 years and hidden from his wife, until they were revealed and wound up on the covers of both Time Magazine and Newsweek. The implication of these paintings were clear: Wyeth must have been having an affair, but then the story got complicated. Was it a genuine sex scandal? A hoax? Or something else entirely?  Some of the voices you'll hear in this episode include Doug McGill, former New York Times reporter; Neil Harris, author of Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience; Cathy Booth Thomas, former Time Magazine correspondent; Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, art historian and curator; Jeannie McDowell, former Time Magazine correspondent; Chris Lione, former art director at Art and Antiques; Joyce Stoner, Wyeth scholar; Peter Ralston, Wyeth photographer and friend; and Jim Duff, former director of the Brandywine River Museum. This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Benjamin Frisch. It was edited by Benjamin Frisch and Gabriel Roth. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. A very special thank you to Paula Scaire. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. If you're a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate's website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After five years of planning, the “Jamie Wyeth: Unsettled” exhibit makes its debut at the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art.‘Unsettled' showcases more than 50 fascinating and somewhat disconcerting paintings from throughout Jamie Wyeth's career.For this edition of Arts Playlist, Delaware Public Media's Quinn Kirkpatrick and Kyle McKinnon visited the Brandywine for the preview tour of “Jamie Wyeth: Unsettled,” with Wyeth and Brandywine senior curator Amanda Burdan.

Episode SummaryErin and Rachel explore Treasure Planet (2002), the biggest flop in Disney animation since The Black Cauldron. The hosts discuss what went wrong with this pet project of veteran directors Ron Clements and Jon Musker, beyond just the usual misogyny, that is. Episode BibliographyAguilar, C. (2022, December 28). ‘Treasure Planet' at 20: Disney's failed space odyssey deserved to soar. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/movies/treasure-planet-disney.htmlArmstrong, J. (2014, June 3). Buried Treasure: The ill-fated voyage to Treasure Planet 2. Animated Views. https://animatedviews.com/2014/buried-treasure-the-ill-fated-voyage-to-treasure-planet-2/BREADSWORD. (2017, August 31). Treasure Planet - Disney's Biggest Mistake. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9sycdSkngABooker, M. K. (2009). Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films. Praeger.Claudia, P. (2002, November 26). See 'Treasure Planet' for looks, not charm. USA Today. https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2002-11-26-planet_x.htmClayton. (2009, March 30). TREASURE ISLAND AS IT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. Scene Magazine. https://web.archive.org/web/20090330210757/http://www.scene-magazine.com/archive/filmarchive.php?filmarcid=38Crazy Nate. (2020, November 27). Disney's Treasure Planet Everything You Missed. (Easter Eggs and Secrets). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0w5Jz4RhLADaiches, D. (2008, June 9). Robert Louis Stevenson. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Louis-StevensonDiamond Boy's Disney DVD Overviews. (2023, November 27). Treasure Planet 2003 DVD Overview. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANOkTVpj6tIDonaldson, K. (2022, November 27). The History Of Treasure Planet, Disney Animation's Biggest Ever Flop. Slash Film.https://www.slashfilm.com/1072674/the-history-of-treasure-planet-disney-animations-biggest-ever-flop/Droney, M. (2003, January 1). Avast and Away! Mix Online.https://web.archive.org/web/20090326043304/http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_avast_away/Ebert, R. (2002, November 27). Treasure Planet movie review & film summary (2002). Roger Ebert. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/treasure-planet-2002Fritz, S. S. (2018). In space no one can hear you cry: Late Victorian adventure and contemporary boyhood in Disney's Treasure Planet. In S. K Day & S. S. Fritz (Eds), The Victorian Era in Twenty-First Century Children's and Adolescent Literature and Culture (pp. 55-71). Routledge. Gibson, N. P. (2023, January 1). Treasure Planet: The Complicated History Behind Disney Animation's Biggest Flop. Looper.https://www.looper.com/1151101/treasure-planet-the-complicated-history-behind-disney-animations-biggest-flop/Gleiberman, O. (2002, November 27). Treasure Planet. Entertainment Weekly. https://ew.com/article/2002/11/27/treasure-planet-2/Klein, A. (2002, November 24). Treasure Planet. Variety. https://variety.com/2002/film/awards/treasure-planet-1200544703/Lee, A. (2003, February 4). Films - interview - Joseph Gordon-Levitt. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/02/04/joseph_gordon_levitt_treasure_planet_interview.shtmlMarkowitz, A. J., & Ryan, R. M. (2016). Father absence and adolescent depression and delinquency: A comparison of siblings approach. Journal of Marriage and Families, 78(5), 1300-1314. DOI: 10.1111/jomf.12343Musker, J., & Clements, R. (Directors). (2002). Treasure Planet [Film]. Walt Disney Animation Studios. Ness, M. (2016, April 28). When Your Dream Project Is A Financial Failure: Disney's Treasure Planet - Reactor. Tor.com. https://reactormag.com/when-your-dream-project-is-a-financial-failure-disneys-treasure-planet/Pallant, C. (2010). Neo-Disney: Recent developments in Disney feature animation. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 8(2), 103-117. doi: 10.1386/ncin.8.2.103_1Radulovic, P. (2020, July 21). Treasure Planet was a visionary box office bomb for Disney. Polygon. https://www.polygon.com/animation-cartoons/2020/7/21/21319228/treasure-planet-disney-cast-characters-making-of-box-office-bombs-animationRossio, T. (2007). The One Hundred Million Dollar Mistake. Wordplayer. http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp47.100.Million.Mistake.htmlScott, A. (2002, November 27). FILM REVIEW; 'Treasure Island' Flies Into Neurosis. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/27/movies/film-review-treasure-island-flies-into-neurosis.htmlStevenson, R. L., & Wyeth, N. (n.d.). Treasure Planet. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_PlanetTreasure Planet. (n.d.). Box Office Mojo. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2759296513/TREASURE PLANET Q&A with producers / directors / co-writers RON CLEMENTS & JOHN MUSKER. (2012, February 15). Phase 9.https://web.archive.org/web/20120215162334/http://www.phase9.tv/moviefeatures/treasureplanetq&a-ronclements&johnmusker1.shtmlVerrier, R. (2002, December 6). Disney's 'Treasure Planet' an Adventure in Losing Money. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-dec-06-fi-treasure6-story.htmlWhite, C. (2002, November 25). The creators of Treasure Planet sail the animated spaceways. Sci Fi Weekly.https://web.archive.org/web/20090402065305/http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw9163.htmlZurcher, J. D., Brubaker, P. J., Webb, S. M., & Robinson, T.  (2020). Parental roles in “The Circle of Life”: Representations of parents and parenting in Disney animated films from 1937 to 2017. Mass Communication and Society, 23(1), 128-150. doi: 10.1080/15205436.2019.1616763

In this episode Source Weekly publisher Aaron Switzer spends time with Nate Wyeth, VP of Marketing & Communications at Visit Bend. They talk about Nate's long tenure with the organization and how it has evolved over the years. In the lively conversation the pair also talk about destination management, sustainability, AI, golden retrievers and wanderlust!

On this VERY special episode of the podcast we are lucky enough to sit down in person with the namesake of the Twilight League Championship Trophy, Steve Ehrlich. Steve has been coming to camp every year in some capacity since 1959, helped start the Nate Wasserman Camp Fund, and has been the commissioner of Fantasy Camp since its origin. Steve is now the heartbeat of our alumni network. We talk about how camp changed and evolved over the decades, what Nate Wasserman was like, stories about camp legends Al Lewis, Bob Bender, Koz, and Jim "Buzz" Wyeth, where a lot of our traditions, sayings, games, and songs come from, the first ever Kawaga competition, the Meat Man and much more. After the 90 minutes were over we both shared how much we didn't even touch on…but this is a great start!

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Byronic Hero Always Loses, published by Cole Wyeth on February 23, 2024 on LessWrong. Why do we root for the antiheroes? Walter White, Light Yagami, Lucifer Morningstar, Doctor Frankenstein... It seems to be natural to root for the bad guys, and perhaps even more natural for rationalists. "I must confess I have always had some sympathy with villains. Heroism makes fine entertainment but sooner or later someone has to get things done." - Bayaz, Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy. I think this is the reason, at least for me. Villains (particularly the most beloved villains) are agentic. They know what they want and they attempt to obtain it through their own actions. Sometimes those actions are even reasonable. This is notable because it's usually untrue of heroes. Heroes tend to be called to adventure, accepting a goal thrust upon them by circumstances or a bearded stranger or both. Then they pursue it, but often alongside a handful of other eclectic goals which cause internal conflict when they can't all be satisfied (getting distracted rescuing some civilians when the fate of the world is at stake). There's also something fairly un-agentic about following an absolute "honor" code, which is much more common among heroes than villains. Finally, heroes have teams of friends instead of minions, and are often forced to go out of their way to help their friends. A hero's friendships might even change his terminal values! So, why do we often find villains so fascinating? I think it's the same reason that rationalists don't run the world. Being highly agentic just isn't easy in real life, because it's inherently individualistic. Individuals tend to be outcompeted by large organizations. Large organizations are approximately agentic, but the people making up a large organization don't necessarily have to be. In fact, it might be better if they aren't! The military seems to optimize much more strongly for loyalty and discipline than agency - in fact, an army of agents with diverse goals seems tricky to control, since most will instrumentally value their own survival (though an army of agents with one cohesive goal may be even more formidable). In industry, principles of comparative advantage can imply that it is best for each employee to become highly specialized, which seems opposed to developing their agency. A more capable agent might generalize (building the type of skill set that a startup found might need, including "executive nature" as in Competent Elites). Though agentic employees can create a lot of value, I think it is typically more cost effective to create additional cogs in the machine than it is to increase agency. I think this is also why politicians are not very clever (epistemic status: I don't know any politicians). The things we value in a leader include costly trustworthiness signals (see https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/). In fact, the risk of an actively corrupt leader may be great enough that some would prefer a candidate with actively irrational beliefs (say, expecting moral judgement in the afterlife). I would almost go so far as to say that the idea of becoming a Machiavellian scheming mastermind and changing the world (for better or worse) through sheer cleverness is a childish fantasy. Maybe that's not a bad thing; children might be naive, but at least they aren't bitter. Perhaps it's just my American upbringing, but I think I want to live in a world where agents can get what they want, even with the world set against them, if only they are clever and persistent enough. So when I read about another despicable villain sacrificing it all and throwing the natural order out of balance in the name of cursed immortality or to avenge their family or to grasp untold riches, I can't help but root for them a little. In a way, Milton's Lucifer is the ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Noticing Panic, published by Cole Wyeth on February 5, 2024 on LessWrong. In Competent Elites @Eliezer Yudkowsky discusses "executive nature," which he describes as the ability to "function without recourse," to make decisions without some higher decision maker to fall back on. I do not have executive nature. I like to be well prepared. I like to read every word of every chapter of a textbook before a problem set, take a look, give the last chapter another skim, and then start working. Being thrust into a new job and forced to explore a confusing repository and complete an open ended project is... stressful. The idea of founding a startup terrifies me (how could I settle on one business idea to throw years of my life at? And just thinking about the paperwork and legal codes that I would have to learn fills me with dread). There's a particular feeling I get just before freezing up in situations like this. It involves a sinking suspicion that failure is inevitable, a loss of self confidence, and a sort of physical awkwardness or even claustrophobia, like trying to claw my way up the sheer wall of a narrow shaft. In a word, it is panic. I believe that this is, for me, the feeling of insufficient executive nature. It may sound a little discouraging, but the very consistency of this feeling is, perhaps, a key to overcoming my limitations. The rationalist technique that I've found most useful is probably noticing confusion. It is useful because it is a trigger to re-evaluate my beliefs. It is a clue that an active effort must be made to pursue epistemic rigor before instinctively brushing over important evidence. In a way, "noticing confusion" is useful because it links my abstract understanding of Bayes with the physical and emotional experience of being a human. It is not, by itself, a recipe for correct epistemic conduct, but it provides a precious opportunity to take hold of the mind and steer it down a wiser path. Perhaps noticing panic is for planning and acting what noticing confusion is for belief. So how should one act when noticing panic? I do not know yet. But I do have a guess. I think that I panic when there are too many levels of planning between me and an objective. For instance, a simple task like performing a calculation or following a recipe has zero levels of planning. Solving a more difficult problem, for instance a routine proof, might have one level of planning: I do not know how to write down the proof, but I know I can (typically) come up with it by rereading the last couple of sections for definitions and reasoning through their conclusions. Solving a harder problem might require an unknown approach; I might have to consider which background I need to fill in to prepare myself to undertake it, and the correct route to a proof may not be clear; this is of course the third level. At the fourth level, I might not even know how to reason about what background I might need (sticking with mathematical examples, if a very difficult problem remains open for long enough, conventional approaches have all failed, and becoming an expert in any mainstream topic is unlikely to be sufficient - one strategy for succeeding where others have failed is to specialize in a carefully chosen esoteric area which no one else has realized is even related. Of course mathematicians usually only do this by accident). I actually suspect that many engineering tasks are pretty high up this hierarchy, which may be one reason I am less comfortable with them than theoretical work. Though much of an engineer's work is routine, roadblocks are often encountered, and after every out-of-the-box solution fails, it's often unclear what to even try next. A lot of mucking about ensues until eventually a hint (like a google-able line in a stack trace) appears, which... leads nowhere. The proc...

Terrific guest joining the show today and long-time friend of our magazines: John Fawcett, who paints Western and Native American subjects from the historic Old West. John also has some insight on the Wyeth artist family since he is on the board and the Brandywine Museum. We talk about the Wyeths, watercolor, veterinarians and also John's own work on this episode. It is sponsored by Western Art Collector magazine. Learn more about this exciting monthly art title at westernartcollector.com.

Tonight's guest had his first Bigfoot sighting in Alaska, but he's had sightings in several other places, as well. His most frightening encounter happened in Wyeth, Oregon, in the Columbia River Gorge. He was only 8 years old, at the time, and was out with 4 of his friends. Two of the boys were brothers. The plan was that tonight's guest and two of the other boys would ride their bikes, that day, to the house where the two brothers lived. Due to all of the fun things there were to do close to where the brothers lived the boys expected to have a lot of fun that day. Not long after leaving the brother's house, things took a drastic turn, though. You see, the boys planned to climb up to a rock-slide area that was visible from where the two brothers lived and after about 30 minutes of climbing, they made it to the boulder field. At first, they were glad they'd made it up there, to the boulder field. Not long after that, however, they wished more than anything that they'd never gone up there. We hope you'll tune in and find out why. If you've had a Bigfoot sighting and would like to be a guest, on the show, please go to https://MyBigfootSighting.com and let us know. We'd love to hear from you. Premium memberships are now available!If you'd like to be able to listen to the show without ads and have full access to premium content, please go to https://MyBigfootSighting.com to find out how to become a premium member.If you'd like to help support the show, by buying your own My Bigfoot Sighting t-shirt, sweatshirt, or tank top, please visit the My Bigfoot Sighting Show Store Page, by going to...https://dogman-encounters.myshopify.com/collections/mens-my-bigfoot-sighting-collectionShow's theme song, "Banjo Music," courtesy Nathan BrumleyI produce 3 other podcasts that are available for listening on your favorite podcast app. If you haven't checked them out, already, here are links to them… Bigfoot Eyewitness Radio https://www.spreaker.com/show/bigfoot-eyewitness-radio_1 Dogman Encounters https://www.spreaker.com/show/dogman-encounters-radio_2 My Paranormal Experience https://www.spreaker.com/show/my-paranormal-experience Thanks for listening!

Seth Fite is a classical painter born in England, who grew up in the United States. From the new world, he is inspired by American Golden Age illustrators, Andrew and N. C. Wyeth, and the Cincinnati master Frank Duveneck. From the old world, he has studied masters such as Rembrandt and Velasquez. In 2019 he was a student of Odd Nerdrum. Fite has been told to "find his own voice" and "do something new", as well as other clichés, but he sees little use of this. He strives to strike the vulnerable spot of humankind, the same spot found by masters before him.

Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you in the heart of a mystery. All stories are structured to challenge you to beat the detective to the solution. These are arrangements, which means instead of word-for-word readings, you get a performance meant to be heard. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes.This is Season 7, Games People Play. Games are about competition conducted according to rules with participants working toward a goal. Games are a part of every culture and are one of the oldest forms of social interaction and engagement. Games can be fun, challenging and exhilarating. They can also be intense, cutthroat, and lethal. This season, our authors have fashioned deadly games and unscrupulous villains to test your detection skills. This is Episode 1, the card game faro is the featured game. This is Who Killed the Faro Cheat? by Larry M. KeatonDELIBERATIONCaptain Rake Caldeen doesn't want to play sheriff, but he's the only one who can do the job of solving Sweeney's murder…with our help, of course. Here is a list of the camp folks who aren't dead, in the order Caldeen met them:• Java, nephew of saloon owner whose mother was killed in San Francisco.• Boots (deceased), miner who Sweeney owed money.• Boston, the Faro dealer who shares a tent with Java.• Mrs. Erin Quinn, the owner of the saloon, aunt to Java.• Mr. Wyeth, businessman who is trying to appoint himself leader of the camp.• Samson and Ezekiel, Sweeney's abused slaves.• Brown Brothers, miners with the claim next to Sweeney.Here are the facts Caldeen has to work with:• Boots fought with Sweeney over the debt and threated to stab him if he didn't pay up.• Boston caught Sweeney cheating at Faro and chased it out at knife point. Mrs. Quinn banned him from the saloon.• The copper Sweeney gambled with was the missing half to the one Java had. It was last scene with his mother before she was killed.• Mr. Wyeth reportedly battled with Sweeney over land. Sweeney claim was blocking the road Wyeth wanted to build.• Samson and Ezekiel were brought in to work the claim, though slavery is illegal in California. • The Brown Brothers didn't like their neighbor, Sweeney, saying he stole from them.• Sweeney was killed sometime during the night. Theodore Brown heard Sweeney argue with someone who he referred to as ‘boy'. Theodore was also the one who saw Samson standing over Sweeney's body the next morning. • Sweeney was stabbed with a large knife. Every suspect owns a knife. The blood pool has a small ball near it.• Sweeney bled out near his tent with the queen of hearts shoved in his mouth. The same card he had made a comment about during Faro. All right punters, on whose head are you going to put your gold dust?ABOUT FAROFaro is not a poker game but a card game all its own. Larry did a nice job in the story teaching us how it's played. According to Wikipedia, Faro originated in France with the earliest references found in the last 1690s to early 1700s. It seems the word came from the court of Louis XIV who picked the name from the image of a pharaoh on the French-made cards. The spelling changed but the pronunciation stayed the same. Faro spread throughout Europe and eventually into the US. It was very popular in the 1800s and could be found in nearly every gambling hall. An 1882 study cited Faro as the most popular form of gambling based on money bet each year. Faro was wildly popular and it was wildly common for the house to cheat. Played straight, the odds only slightly favored the house and the payouts were good. Hoyle's Rules of Games, a bible of various card games...

ABC #058 - Part 3 The Wyeth Brothers invented a machine that standardized the size of pills and tablets.  It changed the pharmaceutical industry. 

Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World is one of the most iconic paintings in the history of American art. It was Christina's World that turned Andrew Wyeth into a household name and claimed him one of the best American realist painters. But who was Christina? And what kind of world did she live in? Listen to ArtMuse's episode on Anna Christina Olson and the world she lived out her noble life in; the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. As a young child, Christina showed signs of an undiagnosed degenerative disease that slowly took away her mobility. While this presented unimaginable challenges, Christina never let her disability stop her from living a robust life nor compromise her unparalleled dignity and strength. Christina's story deserves to be honored in its entirety, beyond Wyeth and the painting that turned her into an icon. Christina was a remarkable woman in her own right, who showed extraordinary resilience in the face of continued challenges. ArtMuse is produced by Kula Production Company. Please FOLLOW and RATE ArtMuse on Spotify and SUBSCRIBE and REVIEW our show on Apple Podcasts. Instagram/ Website/BuyMeACoffee

This interview was held at the annual Power Networking Conference and this year came to Houston. Jason Fenwick is the Director of the Global Advisory Group of Windsor, Wyeth & Ward, and the Managing Member of an investment company and an Adj. Professor of Law and entrepreneurship at the University of Florida's law school. Reviewing more than 10,000 Business Plans he has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to raising capital and selecting the right investor. linkedin.com/in/jasonfenwick

In this episode, we talk with Director of Golf at Aurora University, Justin Wyeth.  Coach Wyeth has both the Men's and Women's programs on their way to Nationals and moving up in the rankings.  We talk about the fall season, what to expect in the spring and more about the Aurora program.  We hope you enjoy the episode!Support the show

About the Mansion St. Joseph is known for an extensive collection of beautiful mansions built in the late 1800s, and the Wyeth Tootle Mansion at the corner of 11th and Charles Streets is a prime example. Built in 1879 by William and Eliza Wyeth, this 43 room mansion was designed to emulate the castles along the Rhine River in Germany. The Wyeth family only lived in the home for approximately 8 years before the home was sold to Kate Tootle. The Tootle family remained in the home until 1947 when it was purchased by William Goetz (owner of Goetz Brewery) to be used as the St. Joseph Museums. With three floors, a tower and more than 40 rooms, it stands today as one of the best examples of St. Joseph's late 19th century wealth and opulence, featuring stunning woodwork, hand-painted ceilings and imported stained glass. ​ The first floor of the Wyeth Tootle Mansion has been partially restored to its Victorian grandeur. Old photographs of each room help visitors visualize the interior as it was around 1900. Each room's ceiling is impressively different, from the cherubs that float above the Louis XVI parlor to the dark rich colors that cover the Moorish room. Ornate parquet floors and walnut woodwork change from room to room. The upper stories contain museum exhibits. Exhibits Edifice:  The Architecture of E. J. Eckel. The architect of the Wyeth-Tootle Mansion and the founder of the firm responsible for 75 percent of the buildings in St. Joseph.  The exhibit focuses on his life and the lasting impact of his accomplishments. ​ Intersections:  Of Time and Buildings. This exhibit is housed in three renovated rooms on the second floor.  The exhibit explores the intersections of history, art, architecture, and humanities as well as the past, present, and future of the City.  Museum professionals, preservationists, scholars, and local artists all worked together on this innovative project.   Intersections is a combination art exhibit, exploration of St. Joseph's history, and imagining of the role of historic preservation in the City's future.   The exhibit was created by the St. Joseph Museum in partnership with the Missouri Humanities Council with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Friends of St. Joseph. ​ Confluence: The Great Flood of 1993. An exhibit that chronicles flooding in the St. Joseph area, including the flood in 1952 that covered much of Lake Contrary Amusement Park.  The details on the causes and impacts of the 1993 Flood will be included as a cathartic remembrance of those trying months in the summer of 1993 when much of the Midwest was under water.  The name of the exhibit “Confluence” refers to the merging of rivers and flood waters, as well as the coming together of communities in the face of one of the costliest natural disasters in history.  ​ History of the St. Joseph Museum. Step back in time through the extensive history of the St. Joseph Museum. Founded in 1927 as the Children's Museum, the St. Joseph Museum has called five locations its home over the near century it has been in existence. The items displayed in this exhibit are some of the earliest donations which were on display when the museum first opened in the annex of the St. Joseph Public Library. Come learn how our organization has grown and evolved over the years and what the future may hold. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/loren-alberts/message

We talk to Greg Ennis, Divisional Organiser with SIPTU.

Part two of our autumn 2023 edition of Unearthed! includes potpourri, repatriations, shipwrecks, art, and a few perfect October entries. Research:  “Early humans deliberately made mysterious stone 'spheroids'.” PhysOrg. 9/10/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-early-humans-deliberately-mysterious-stone.html Alutiiq Museum. “Archaeologists Recover 3,000-year-old Weavings from Ancestral Alutiiq Settlement.” Alaska Native News. 8/26/2023. https://alaska-native-news.com/archaeologists-recover-3000-year-old-weavings-from-ancestral-alutiiq-settlement/69558/ Australian National Maritime Museum. “Exploring South Australia's oldest shipwreck.” Phys.org. 8/15/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-exploring-south-australia-oldest-shipwreck.html Barker, Christopher. “Stolen van Gogh Painting Worth Millions Returned in an Ikea Bag.” Smithsonian. 9/14/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dutch-art-detective-recovers-a-van-gogh-stolen-in-2020-180982896/ BBC News. “Man finds 8,000-year-old dolphin bones in back garden.” 7/31/2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-66361506 BBC News. “Tiny Roman dog remains found during Oxford archaeological dig.” 7/25/2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-66294261 Beazley, Jordan. “ANU museum to hand back stolen 2,500-year-old vase to Italy.” The Guardian. 9/13/2023. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/sep/14/anu-to-return-2500-year-old-vase-to-italy-after-link-to-art-trade-exposed Bebber, Michelle R. et al. “Atlatl use equalizes female and male projectile weapon velocity.” Scientific Reports. 8/16/2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-40451-8 Beimfohr, Chelsea. “109-year-old survivor of Tulsa Race Massacre pens new book, speaks at King Center.” Atlanta News First. 9/26/2023. https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/09/27/109-year-old-survivor-tulsa-race-massacre-pens-new-book-speaks-king-center/ Ben Crump. “Ben Crump and Family of Henrietta Lacks Announce Settlement.” https://bencrump.com/press/family-of-henrietta-lacks-announce-settlement/ Binswanger, Julia. “Forgotten Winnie-the-Pooh Sketch Found Wrapped in an Old Tea Towel.” Smithsonian. 8/28/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/winnie-the-pooh-sketch-wrapped-tea-towel-180982800/ Briseida MEMA. “Archaeologists uncover Europe's oldest stilt village.” Phys.org. 8/11/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-archaeologists-uncover-europe-oldest-stilt.html British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog. “Showing Elizabeth I in a new light.” 7/15/2023. https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2023/07/showing-elizabeth-i-in-a-new-light.html British Library Press Office. “British Library researcher throws new light on Elizabeth I.” July 2023. https://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2023/july/British-Library-researcher-throws-new-light-on-Elizabeth-I?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=press&utm_content=camdens_annals#:~:text=Helena%20Rutkowska%2C%20DPhil%20student%20at,to%20explore%20hundreds%20of%20previously Cell Press. “Ancient metal cauldrons give us clues about what people ate in the Bronze Age.” 8/18/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-ancient-metal-cauldrons-clues-people.html Chappell, Bill. “Iconic female artist's lost painting is found, hundreds of years after it was created.” NPR. 9/25/2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/25/1201501653/artemisia-gentileschi-susanna-and-the-elders Cin, Muharrem. “Makeup materials from Roman era unearthed in ancient city of Aizanoi in Türkiye.” Andalou Agency. 9/24/2023. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/makeup-materials-from-roman-era-unearthed-in-ancient-city-of-aizanoi-in-turkiye/2999909 Delgado, Maria Jesus. “Oldest hunter-gatherer basketry in southern Europe, 9,500 years old, discovered in Cueva de los Murciélagos, Albuñol (Granada, Spain).” EurekAlert. 9/28/2023. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1003066 Dowell, Stuart. “Ghoulish remains of ‘vampire child' found in ‘grave of the damned'.” The First News. 8/7/2023. https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/ghoulish-remains-of-vampire-child-found-in-grave-of-the-damned-40397 Efford M, Taft S, Morin J, George M, George M, Cavers H, et al. (2023) Archaeology demonstrates sustainable ancestral Coast Salish salmon stewardship over thousands of years. PLoS ONE 18(8): e0289797. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289797 Flavell, Julie. “The Dog Who Served on Both Sides of the American Revolution.” Smithsonian Magazine. 8/25/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dog-who-served-on-both-sides-of-the-american-revolution-180982781/ Gillett, Francesca. “Ancient 2,000-year-old Roman shipwreck found off coast of Italy.” BBC News. 7/28/2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66337902 Gorski, “119-year overdue book returned by WVU Library.” 12WBOY. 7/27/2023. https://www.wboy.com/news/monongalia/west-virginia-university/library-book-returned-and-it-was-only-119-years-overdue/ Handwerk, Brian. “Famed 5,300-Year-Old Alps Iceman Was a Balding Middle-Aged Man With Dark Skin and Eyes.” Smithsonian. 8/16/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/famed-5300-year-old-alps-iceman-was-a-balding-middle-aged-man-with-dark-skin-and-eyes-180982744/ Hanson's. “Panko game made to aid suffragettes a century ago found during house clearance.” 7/18/2023. https://hansonsauctioneers.co.uk/panko-game-made-to-aid-suffragettes-a-century-ago-found-during-house-clearance/ Jarus, Owen. “2,200-year-old remains of sacrificed giant panda and tapir discovered near Chinese emperor's tomb.” LiveScience. 8/18/2023. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/2200-year-old-remains-of-sacrificed-giant-panda-and-tapir-discovered-near-chinese-emperors-tomb Kent State University. “Atlatl weapon use by prehistoric females equalized the division of labor while hunting, experimental study shows.” 8/18/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-atlatl-weapon-prehistoric-females-equalized.html Kindy, Dave. “Piece of wood found at garage sale was part of the sunken USS Maine.” Washington Post. 9/17/2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/09/17/uss-maine-mast-arlington-cemetery/ Kuta, Sarah. “‘Perfectly Preserved' Glassware Recovered From 2,000-Year-Old Shipwreck.” Smithsonian. 7/27/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/glassware-2000-year-old-roman-shipwreck-180982615/ Kuta, Sarah. “See Underwater Wreckage From the Battle of Midway in Stunning Detail.” Smithsonian. 9/22/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/battle-of-midway-shipwreck-photos-180982938/ Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “A Virginia Museum Repatriated a Nigerian Sculpture and Received a High-Tech Replica in Return. Could the Exchange Shape Future Restitutions?” ArtNet. 7/7/2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/chrysler-museum-factum-foundation-high-tech-facsimile-restitution-2332938 Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “A Woman Bought a $4 Painting at a Thrift Store for Its Frame. Now, It's Been Revealed as an N.C. Wyeth, Worth as Much as $250,000.” ArtNet. 9/6/2023. https://news.artnet.com/market/thrift-store-buy-nc-wyeth-2355493 Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “Two 10th-Century Stone Idols, Which Were Stolen From a Temple in India and Found in a Garden Shed in the U.K., Will Be Repatriated.” ArtNet. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/10th-century-idols-found-in-garden-shed-returned-to-india-2335670 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Ancient Amazonians intentionally created fertile 'dark earth.'” Science Daily. 9/20/2023. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230920152306.htm Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. “The scent of the afterlife unbottled in new study of ancient Egyptian mummification balms.” Science Daily. 8/31/2023. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230831121651.htm Mayorquin, Orlando. “Overdue Book Is Returned to a Library After Nearly 120 Years.” New York Times. 7/9/2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/09/us/massachusetts-overdue-book-119-years.html net. “Strange burial of 9th-century teenager reveals tragic story.” https://www.medievalists.net/2023/08/strange-burial-of-9th-century-teenager-reveals-tragic-story/ Miller, Ken. “Researchers exhume seven sets of remains in search for Tulsa Race Massacre victims.” The Oklahoman. 10/2/2023. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2023/10/02/tulsa-race-massacre-oklahoma-seven-graves-exhumed/71036617007/ MOLA Headland. “An Unusual Burial and a Tragic Story from Early Medieval Cambridgeshire.” 8/14/2023. https://molaheadland.com/an-unusual-burial-and-a-tragic-story-from-early-medieval-cambridgeshire/ Nowakowski, Teresa. “Historians Discover ‘Remarkably Intact' Shipwreck, Undisturbed Beneath Lake Michigan for 142 Years.” Smithsonian. 9/6/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-discover-an-almost-entirely-intact-142-year-old-shipwreck-in-lake-michigan-180982848/ Nowakowski, Teresa. “The Netherlands Repatriates Nearly 500 Looted Artifacts to Sri Lanka and Indonesia.” Smithsonian. 7/11/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/netherlands-repatriation-sri-lanka-indonesia-180982514/ Osborne, Margaret. “Archaeologists Uncover Oldest Evidence of ‘Curry' Outside of India.” Smithsonian. 7/24/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-oldest-evidence-of-curry-outside-of-india-180982589/ Parker, Christopher. “4,000-Year-Old Cemetery Discovered Beneath Future Rocket Launch Pad in U.K.” Smithsonian. 8/1/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bronze-age-cemetery-rocket-launch-uk-180982633/ Parker, Christopher. “Divers Pull Wreckage of Tuskegee Airman's Plane From the Depths of Lake Huron.” Smithsonian. 9/5/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/divers-haul-engine-of-tuskegee-airmans-plane-from-lake-huron-180982845/ Parker, Christopher. “Manchester Museum Returns 174 Artifacts to Indigenous Australians.” Smithsonian. 9/7/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/manchester-museum-returns-174-artifacts-to-indigenous-austrailians-180982853/ Pendergraff, Gavin. “State archaeologist provides another update on excavation work in Tulsa.” KTUL. 9/14/2023. https://ktul.com/news/local/state-archaeologist-provides-another-update-on-excavation-work-in-tulsa Pittalà, Maria Gaetana Giovanna et al. “Count Dracula Resurrected: Proteomic Analysis of Vlad III the Impaler's Documents by EVA Technology and Mass Spectrometry.” Anal. Chem. 2023, 95, 34, 12732–12744. Publication Date: August 8, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.3c01461 Potter, Lisa. “Daughters breastfed longer, and women accumulated greater wealth in ancient California matriarchal society.” EurekAlert. 7/12/2023. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/995404 Public Library of Science. “Stone Age artists carved detailed human and animal tracks in rock art in Namibia.” 9/13/2023. PhysOrg. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-stone-age-artists-human-animal.html Ritter, Moira. “Detailed mosaic floor — with Medusa's face — unearthed in ancient Roman villa.” Miami Herald. 7/27/2023. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article277706663.html#storylink=cpy Royal Collection Trust. “Lost Artemisia Gentileschi Painting Rediscovered in the Royal Collection.” 9/24/2023. https://www.rct.uk/about/press-office/press-releases/lost-artemisia-gentileschi-painting-rediscovered-in-the-royal#/ Schrader, Adam. “British Museum Director Hartwig Fischer Will Step Down, Leaving the Unresolved Parthenon Marbles Debate to His Successor.” ArtNews. 7/28/2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/british-museum-director-hartwig-fischer-step-down-next-year-2342951 Schuster, Ruth. “Synagogue From Late Second Temple Period Found by Black Sea in Russia.” Haaretz. 8/16/2023. https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2023-08-16/ty-article-magazine/synagogue-from-late-second-temple-period-found-by-black-sea-in-russia/00000189-fae4-d0b9-a5a9-ffef91b90000 Shaw, Garry. “‘Thunder floor' found at ancient Andean site in Peru.” The Art Newspaper. 7/18/2023. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/07/18/ancient-dance-floor-sounding-platform-andes-peru-archaeological-discovery Solly, Meilan. “Hidden for 400 Years, Censored Pages Reveal New Insights Into Elizabeth I's Reign.” Smithsonian. 7/18/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hidden-for-400-years-censored-pages-reveal-new-insights-on-elizabeth-is-reign-180982554/ Sullivan, Will. “Archaeologists Uncover Notched Logs That May Be the Oldest Known Wooden Structure.” Smithsonian. 9/22/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-notched-logs-that-may-be-the-oldest-known-wooden-structure-180982942/ Sullivan, Will. “Henrietta Lacks' Family Settles Lawsuit Over the Use of Her Cells Without Consent.” Smithsonian. 8/2/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/henrietta-lacks-family-settles-lawsuit-over-the-use-of-her-cells-without-consent-180982644/ The History Blog. “14th c. shipwreck cannon may be oldest in Europe.” 9/13/2023. http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/68252 The History Blog. “2,000-year-old synagogue found in southern Russia.” 8/16/2023. http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/68050 The History Blog. “8-year-old finds 1,800-year-old silver denarius in school sandbox.” http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/68120 The History Blog. “Giant panda found in Western Han imperial tomb.” 8/6/2023. http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/67972 University of Geneva. “New discoveries on the wreck of Antikythera.” 7/24/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-discoveries-antikythera.html University of Gothenburg. “Shipboard cannon found off the Swedish coast may be the oldest in Europe.” EurekAlert. 9/13/2023. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1001404 University of Montreal. “New evidence of plant food processing in Italy during Neanderthal-to-Homo sapiens period.” Phys.org. 6/29/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-evidence-food-italy-neanderthal-to-homo-sapiens.html University of Southampton. “Archaeologists reveal largest palaeolithic cave art site in Eastern Iberia.” Science Daily. 9/11/2023. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230911141015.htm University of Valencia. “Pigment production adapted to cultural changes and availability of mineral resources 40,000 years ago in Ethiopia.” PhysOrg. 9/11/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-pigment-production-cultural-availability-mineral.html Walls, Alex. “Salmon bones confirm sustainable chum fishery for 2,500 years under Tsleil-Waututh Nation.” PhysOrg. 8/30/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-salmon-bones-sustainable-chum-fishery.html Watts, Rachel. “Divers find long-lost artifact from sunken Empress of Ireland in St. Lawrence River.” CBC. 9/9/2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/divers-find-long-lost-artifact-from-sunken-empress-of-ireland-quebec-compass-platform-1.6959176 Weiwei Wang et al. ,Earliest curry in Southeast Asia and the global spice trade 2000 years ago.Sci. Adv.9,eadh5517(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adh5517 Yirka, Bob. “Arrowhead housed at Bern History Museum found to be made from meteoritic iron.” Phys.org. 7/31/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-arrowhead-housed-bern-history-museum.html Yirka, Bob. “Placement of ancient hidden lamps, skulls in cave in Israel suggests Roman-era practice of necromancy.” Phys.org. 7/14/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-placement-ancient-hidden-lamps-skulls.html    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In part one of our Autumn 2023 edition of Unearthed!, we have some oldest things, books and letters, projects specifically related to gender, edibles and potables, and animals.  Research:  “Early humans deliberately made mysterious stone 'spheroids'.” PhysOrg. 9/10/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-early-humans-deliberately-mysterious-stone.html Alutiiq Museum. “Archaeologists Recover 3,000-year-old Weavings from Ancestral Alutiiq Settlement.” Alaska Native News. 8/26/2023. https://alaska-native-news.com/archaeologists-recover-3000-year-old-weavings-from-ancestral-alutiiq-settlement/69558/ Australian National Maritime Museum. “Exploring South Australia's oldest shipwreck.” Phys.org. 8/15/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-exploring-south-australia-oldest-shipwreck.html Barker, Christopher. “Stolen van Gogh Painting Worth Millions Returned in an Ikea Bag.” Smithsonian. 9/14/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dutch-art-detective-recovers-a-van-gogh-stolen-in-2020-180982896/ BBC News. “Man finds 8,000-year-old dolphin bones in back garden.” 7/31/2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-66361506 BBC News. “Tiny Roman dog remains found during Oxford archaeological dig.” 7/25/2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-66294261 Beazley, Jordan. “ANU museum to hand back stolen 2,500-year-old vase to Italy.” The Guardian. 9/13/2023. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/sep/14/anu-to-return-2500-year-old-vase-to-italy-after-link-to-art-trade-exposed Bebber, Michelle R. et al. “Atlatl use equalizes female and male projectile weapon velocity.” Scientific Reports. 8/16/2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-40451-8 Beimfohr, Chelsea. “109-year-old survivor of Tulsa Race Massacre pens new book, speaks at King Center.” Atlanta News First. 9/26/2023. https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/09/27/109-year-old-survivor-tulsa-race-massacre-pens-new-book-speaks-king-center/ Ben Crump. “Ben Crump and Family of Henrietta Lacks Announce Settlement.” https://bencrump.com/press/family-of-henrietta-lacks-announce-settlement/ Binswanger, Julia. “Forgotten Winnie-the-Pooh Sketch Found Wrapped in an Old Tea Towel.” Smithsonian. 8/28/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/winnie-the-pooh-sketch-wrapped-tea-towel-180982800/ Briseida MEMA. “Archaeologists uncover Europe's oldest stilt village.” Phys.org. 8/11/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-archaeologists-uncover-europe-oldest-stilt.html British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog. “Showing Elizabeth I in a new light.” 7/15/2023. https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2023/07/showing-elizabeth-i-in-a-new-light.html British Library Press Office. “British Library researcher throws new light on Elizabeth I.” July 2023. https://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2023/july/British-Library-researcher-throws-new-light-on-Elizabeth-I?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=press&utm_content=camdens_annals#:~:text=Helena%20Rutkowska%2C%20DPhil%20student%20at,to%20explore%20hundreds%20of%20previously Cell Press. “Ancient metal cauldrons give us clues about what people ate in the Bronze Age.” 8/18/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-ancient-metal-cauldrons-clues-people.html Chappell, Bill. “Iconic female artist's lost painting is found, hundreds of years after it was created.” NPR. 9/25/2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/25/1201501653/artemisia-gentileschi-susanna-and-the-elders Cin, Muharrem. “Makeup materials from Roman era unearthed in ancient city of Aizanoi in Türkiye.” Andalou Agency. 9/24/2023. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/culture/makeup-materials-from-roman-era-unearthed-in-ancient-city-of-aizanoi-in-turkiye/2999909 Delgado, Maria Jesus. “Oldest hunter-gatherer basketry in southern Europe, 9,500 years old, discovered in Cueva de los Murciélagos, Albuñol (Granada, Spain).” EurekAlert. 9/28/2023. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1003066 Dowell, Stuart. “Ghoulish remains of ‘vampire child' found in ‘grave of the damned'.” The First News. 8/7/2023. https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/ghoulish-remains-of-vampire-child-found-in-grave-of-the-damned-40397 Efford M, Taft S, Morin J, George M, George M, Cavers H, et al. (2023) Archaeology demonstrates sustainable ancestral Coast Salish salmon stewardship over thousands of years. PLoS ONE 18(8): e0289797. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289797 Flavell, Julie. “The Dog Who Served on Both Sides of the American Revolution.” Smithsonian Magazine. 8/25/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dog-who-served-on-both-sides-of-the-american-revolution-180982781/ Gillett, Francesca. “Ancient 2,000-year-old Roman shipwreck found off coast of Italy.” BBC News. 7/28/2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66337902 Gorski, “119-year overdue book returned by WVU Library.” 12WBOY. 7/27/2023. https://www.wboy.com/news/monongalia/west-virginia-university/library-book-returned-and-it-was-only-119-years-overdue/ Handwerk, Brian. “Famed 5,300-Year-Old Alps Iceman Was a Balding Middle-Aged Man With Dark Skin and Eyes.” Smithsonian. 8/16/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/famed-5300-year-old-alps-iceman-was-a-balding-middle-aged-man-with-dark-skin-and-eyes-180982744/ Hanson's. “Panko game made to aid suffragettes a century ago found during house clearance.” 7/18/2023. https://hansonsauctioneers.co.uk/panko-game-made-to-aid-suffragettes-a-century-ago-found-during-house-clearance/ Jarus, Owen. “2,200-year-old remains of sacrificed giant panda and tapir discovered near Chinese emperor's tomb.” LiveScience. 8/18/2023. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/2200-year-old-remains-of-sacrificed-giant-panda-and-tapir-discovered-near-chinese-emperors-tomb Kent State University. “Atlatl weapon use by prehistoric females equalized the division of labor while hunting, experimental study shows.” 8/18/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-atlatl-weapon-prehistoric-females-equalized.html Kindy, Dave. “Piece of wood found at garage sale was part of the sunken USS Maine.” Washington Post. 9/17/2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/09/17/uss-maine-mast-arlington-cemetery/ Kuta, Sarah. “‘Perfectly Preserved' Glassware Recovered From 2,000-Year-Old Shipwreck.” Smithsonian. 7/27/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/glassware-2000-year-old-roman-shipwreck-180982615/ Kuta, Sarah. “See Underwater Wreckage From the Battle of Midway in Stunning Detail.” Smithsonian. 9/22/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/battle-of-midway-shipwreck-photos-180982938/ Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “A Virginia Museum Repatriated a Nigerian Sculpture and Received a High-Tech Replica in Return. Could the Exchange Shape Future Restitutions?” ArtNet. 7/7/2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/chrysler-museum-factum-foundation-high-tech-facsimile-restitution-2332938 Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “A Woman Bought a $4 Painting at a Thrift Store for Its Frame. Now, It's Been Revealed as an N.C. Wyeth, Worth as Much as $250,000.” ArtNet. 9/6/2023. https://news.artnet.com/market/thrift-store-buy-nc-wyeth-2355493 Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “Two 10th-Century Stone Idols, Which Were Stolen From a Temple in India and Found in a Garden Shed in the U.K., Will Be Repatriated.” ArtNet. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/10th-century-idols-found-in-garden-shed-returned-to-india-2335670 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Ancient Amazonians intentionally created fertile 'dark earth.'” Science Daily. 9/20/2023. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230920152306.htm Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. “The scent of the afterlife unbottled in new study of ancient Egyptian mummification balms.” Science Daily. 8/31/2023. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230831121651.htm Mayorquin, Orlando. “Overdue Book Is Returned to a Library After Nearly 120 Years.” New York Times. 7/9/2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/09/us/massachusetts-overdue-book-119-years.html net. “Strange burial of 9th-century teenager reveals tragic story.” https://www.medievalists.net/2023/08/strange-burial-of-9th-century-teenager-reveals-tragic-story/ Miller, Ken. “Researchers exhume seven sets of remains in search for Tulsa Race Massacre victims.” The Oklahoman. 10/2/2023. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2023/10/02/tulsa-race-massacre-oklahoma-seven-graves-exhumed/71036617007/ MOLA Headland. “An Unusual Burial and a Tragic Story from Early Medieval Cambridgeshire.” 8/14/2023. https://molaheadland.com/an-unusual-burial-and-a-tragic-story-from-early-medieval-cambridgeshire/ Nowakowski, Teresa. “Historians Discover ‘Remarkably Intact' Shipwreck, Undisturbed Beneath Lake Michigan for 142 Years.” Smithsonian. 9/6/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-discover-an-almost-entirely-intact-142-year-old-shipwreck-in-lake-michigan-180982848/ Nowakowski, Teresa. “The Netherlands Repatriates Nearly 500 Looted Artifacts to Sri Lanka and Indonesia.” Smithsonian. 7/11/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/netherlands-repatriation-sri-lanka-indonesia-180982514/ Osborne, Margaret. “Archaeologists Uncover Oldest Evidence of ‘Curry' Outside of India.” Smithsonian. 7/24/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-oldest-evidence-of-curry-outside-of-india-180982589/ Parker, Christopher. “4,000-Year-Old Cemetery Discovered Beneath Future Rocket Launch Pad in U.K.” Smithsonian. 8/1/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bronze-age-cemetery-rocket-launch-uk-180982633/ Parker, Christopher. “Divers Pull Wreckage of Tuskegee Airman's Plane From the Depths of Lake Huron.” Smithsonian. 9/5/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/divers-haul-engine-of-tuskegee-airmans-plane-from-lake-huron-180982845/ Parker, Christopher. “Manchester Museum Returns 174 Artifacts to Indigenous Australians.” Smithsonian. 9/7/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/manchester-museum-returns-174-artifacts-to-indigenous-austrailians-180982853/ Pendergraff, Gavin. “State archaeologist provides another update on excavation work in Tulsa.” KTUL. 9/14/2023. https://ktul.com/news/local/state-archaeologist-provides-another-update-on-excavation-work-in-tulsa Pittalà, Maria Gaetana Giovanna et al. “Count Dracula Resurrected: Proteomic Analysis of Vlad III the Impaler's Documents by EVA Technology and Mass Spectrometry.” Anal. Chem. 2023, 95, 34, 12732–12744. Publication Date: August 8, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.3c01461 Potter, Lisa. “Daughters breastfed longer, and women accumulated greater wealth in ancient California matriarchal society.” EurekAlert. 7/12/2023. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/995404 Public Library of Science. “Stone Age artists carved detailed human and animal tracks in rock art in Namibia.” 9/13/2023. PhysOrg. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-stone-age-artists-human-animal.html Ritter, Moira. “Detailed mosaic floor — with Medusa's face — unearthed in ancient Roman villa.” Miami Herald. 7/27/2023. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article277706663.html#storylink=cpy Royal Collection Trust. “Lost Artemisia Gentileschi Painting Rediscovered in the Royal Collection.” 9/24/2023. https://www.rct.uk/about/press-office/press-releases/lost-artemisia-gentileschi-painting-rediscovered-in-the-royal#/ Schrader, Adam. “British Museum Director Hartwig Fischer Will Step Down, Leaving the Unresolved Parthenon Marbles Debate to His Successor.” ArtNews. 7/28/2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/british-museum-director-hartwig-fischer-step-down-next-year-2342951 Schuster, Ruth. “Synagogue From Late Second Temple Period Found by Black Sea in Russia.” Haaretz. 8/16/2023. https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2023-08-16/ty-article-magazine/synagogue-from-late-second-temple-period-found-by-black-sea-in-russia/00000189-fae4-d0b9-a5a9-ffef91b90000 Shaw, Garry. “‘Thunder floor' found at ancient Andean site in Peru.” The Art Newspaper. 7/18/2023. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/07/18/ancient-dance-floor-sounding-platform-andes-peru-archaeological-discovery Solly, Meilan. “Hidden for 400 Years, Censored Pages Reveal New Insights Into Elizabeth I's Reign.” Smithsonian. 7/18/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hidden-for-400-years-censored-pages-reveal-new-insights-on-elizabeth-is-reign-180982554/ Sullivan, Will. “Archaeologists Uncover Notched Logs That May Be the Oldest Known Wooden Structure.” Smithsonian. 9/22/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-notched-logs-that-may-be-the-oldest-known-wooden-structure-180982942/ Sullivan, Will. “Henrietta Lacks' Family Settles Lawsuit Over the Use of Her Cells Without Consent.” Smithsonian. 8/2/2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/henrietta-lacks-family-settles-lawsuit-over-the-use-of-her-cells-without-consent-180982644/ The History Blog. “14th c. shipwreck cannon may be oldest in Europe.” 9/13/2023. http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/68252 The History Blog. “2,000-year-old synagogue found in southern Russia.” 8/16/2023. http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/68050 The History Blog. “8-year-old finds 1,800-year-old silver denarius in school sandbox.” http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/68120 The History Blog. “Giant panda found in Western Han imperial tomb.” 8/6/2023. http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/67972 University of Geneva. “New discoveries on the wreck of Antikythera.” 7/24/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-discoveries-antikythera.html University of Gothenburg. “Shipboard cannon found off the Swedish coast may be the oldest in Europe.” EurekAlert. 9/13/2023. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1001404 University of Montreal. “New evidence of plant food processing in Italy during Neanderthal-to-Homo sapiens period.” Phys.org. 6/29/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-evidence-food-italy-neanderthal-to-homo-sapiens.html University of Southampton. “Archaeologists reveal largest palaeolithic cave art site in Eastern Iberia.” Science Daily. 9/11/2023. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/09/230911141015.htm University of Valencia. “Pigment production adapted to cultural changes and availability of mineral resources 40,000 years ago in Ethiopia.” PhysOrg. 9/11/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-pigment-production-cultural-availability-mineral.html Walls, Alex. “Salmon bones confirm sustainable chum fishery for 2,500 years under Tsleil-Waututh Nation.” PhysOrg. 8/30/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-salmon-bones-sustainable-chum-fishery.html Watts, Rachel. “Divers find long-lost artifact from sunken Empress of Ireland in St. Lawrence River.” CBC. 9/9/2023. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/divers-find-long-lost-artifact-from-sunken-empress-of-ireland-quebec-compass-platform-1.6959176 Weiwei Wang et al. ,Earliest curry in Southeast Asia and the global spice trade 2000 years ago.Sci. Adv.9,eadh5517(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adh5517 Yirka, Bob. “Arrowhead housed at Bern History Museum found to be made from meteoritic iron.” Phys.org. 7/31/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-arrowhead-housed-bern-history-museum.html Yirka, Bob. “Placement of ancient hidden lamps, skulls in cave in Israel suggests Roman-era practice of necromancy.” Phys.org. 7/14/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-placement-ancient-hidden-lamps-skulls.html    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shop Talk this week looks at recruiter bias when it comes to interviewing and hiring entrepreneurs for traditional workplace roles. Caught My Eye announces that Cher will release her first Christmas Album and a $4 thrift store painting turns out to be a couple of hundred-thousand-dollar N.C. Wyeth find. Also, famed backpack inventor and innovator, David Kelty, is our Business Birthday. It's Criterion Month on The Focus Group. Listen along during our Deep Discount segment for your chance to win a Criterion Collection movie.We're all business. Except when we're not.Apple Podcasts: apple.co/1WwDBrCSpotify: spoti.fi/2pC19B1iHeart Radio: bit.ly/2n0Z7H1Tunein: bit.ly/1SE3NMbStitcher: bit.ly/1N97ZquGoogle Podcasts: bit.ly/1pQTcVWPandora: pdora.co/2pEfctjYouTube: bit.ly/1spAF5aAlso follow Tim and John on:Facebook: www.facebook.com/focusgroupradioTwitter: www.twitter.com/focusgroupradioInstagram: www.instagram.com/focusgroupradio

In today's episode, I'm thrilled to introduce Grant Wyeth, a talented writer based in Melbourne and occasionally Sweden. He joined me to discuss the intricacies of family court and share his knowledge about parental alienation. Grant wears many hats – he's a columnist for the prestigious Asia Pacific Affairs publication, The Diplomat, an editor at Asia Pacific Development, Diplomacy, and Defense Dialogue, and the creator of the Substack newsletter, International Blue. While Grant's main focus has been on foreign affairs, in recent years, he's taken a deep dive into a different subject – the behavior of family courts. One particular Substack piece Grant wrote caught my attention. He delved into the complex issue of parental alienation within the family court system. Grant shares his research, experiences, and thoughts on these important issues in this episode.   Featured topics include: How family court systems are failing to address abuse (4:17)  The global significance of child custody cases and violence against women and its reflection on societal health (6:36) The history of parental alienation (14:18) Family court judges often lack training in recognizing signs of domestic violence, which leads to dangerous rulings (22:56) Abusers use institutions like courts, mediation, and social services as weapons to maintain control (33:43) The danger and harm of reunification camps (27:09) We discuss the father's rights movement and gender bias (45:35) Debunking parental alienation (46:46) Learn more about Grant Wyeth: Grant Wyeth is a Melbourne (and occasionally Sweden) based writer. He is currently a columnist for the Asia-Pacific affairs publication The Diplomat, is an editor at Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue, and writes the Substack newsletter International Blue. Although his work primarily focuses on issues of foreign affairs, over the past few years he has taken a keen interest in the behaviour of family courts and has written extensively on these issues, as well as spoken at a number of public forums.   Resources & Links: Information and links may also be found at: https://kateanthony.com/podcast/episode-228-exposing-parental-alienation-in-family-courts-with-grant-wyeth Grant's Substack newsletter International Blue. Grant on Twitter Grant's Substack article: The Best Interests Of The Abuser ============================================================== DISCLAIMER:  THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVICE.  YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY, COACH, OR THERAPIST IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN ADVICE WITH RESPECT TO ANY PARTICULAR ISSUE OR PROBLEM. TODAY'S EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: THE REVISED SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? PROGRAM   An online coaching program designed to help you make the right decision about your marriage...once and for all.  In this groundbreaking online coaching program, you'll unlock the support, education and deep transformational work you need to finally answer to your most burning question: should I stay or should I go?   DISCLAIMER:  THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVICE.  YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY, COACH, OR THERAPIST IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN ADVICE WITH RESPECT TO ANY PARTICULAR ISSUE OR PROBLEM.

The Antiques Freaks went to a book fair! Tune in to hear about our haul, plus tips and tricks for finding cool vintage and antique books in the wild - including The Last Book on the Left; Dinotopia; N. C. Wyeth; autograph books; Moon-Cussers of Cape Cod; Arthur Rackham's illustrated King Arthur; and the Witch of Wall Street herself, Hetty Green.

Today is an extra personal and special episode. Catt is joined by her two longtime friends Jacey Duprie and Catalina Su. You may know them if you've been a longtime follower of Catt, but if not, you may also know them for their own impressive accomplishments. Jacey is an entrepreneur, published author, and creative director of Wyeth. Lina is a makeup artist who has painted the faces of the Kardashians, Britney Spears, and many others – and is now spending most of her time enthusiastically sharing about her new skincare venture Incellderm which you can learn more about on her blog.    In this episode, the girls come over to record Catt's final episode in her home studio before making the move to Malibu to merge lives with her partner Greg. They discuss this major life transition – reflecting on the past and romanticizing the future. This conversation marks the “in-between” and it's quite touching (and fun!)   It Sure is a Beautiful Day to think about the opportunity that change can bring!   Also, an important announcement you won't want to miss.

Li:Welcome Jon Kaufman and El Sawyer to Future Memory. Jon:Thank you for having us.El:Thank you, cool name. Li:So what's your origin story? How did Jon and El become Ming Media? Jon:It's an interesting story and there's not really one particular magical spark, but it definitely was an organic process from my perspective, right? El his own journey and perspective with it, but I never really considered filmmaking as a career at all when I was younger, I never wanted to be like a Hollywood person, never wanted to direct or anything like that, but I was always interested in storytelling and especially advocacy and just trying to combat the narratives that I knew were false. I didn't know how to do that. And then it wasn't until I went to Temple and took a class, which was, I forget the name of, it's something around community media, which was a film class. I wasn't a film major at all, didn't study a film at Temple, but this class took me to the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philly where El was teaching video production to neighborhood youth.And that was my first real exposure to filmmaking was this model that was completely outside of the traditional structure of what we consider to be like mass media and filmmaking in Hollywood storytelling, and just kind of fell in love with it. The idea that it was probably 2007 and cameras were just starting to get a little more accessible. Editing software was just starting to get a little bit more accessible to people. And so it was really this moment where I felt like, "Oh wow, this is something I could do." And I saw the power of it with what El was doing with kids in the neighborhood and just to be able to tell their own stories. Then I graduated Temple, El hired me to take over his position, actually The Village as the video instructor there and started teaching there, and I taught there for many, many years.And then we started doing our different projects together. At the time, I was just hustling music videos and whatever I could do to pay the bills with video. And I think our work really kind of solidified around 2010 or so when we started working with the Department of Justice in the US Attorney's office here in Philly to make Pull of Gravity. And that's what really kind of solidified our work and sort of joined us as a partnership and took our work to the next level. And we started Ming shortly after that. But that's a short version of it, and El has a different story for sure of how he got to The Village. Li:Right? There's always two sides to first encounter.El:There's three sides actually. Yeah, that's a good rendition. I think from that perspective, from my perspective, as you would see in "Pull of Gravity", I was introduced to film while I was in prison, and I had never wanted to be a filmmaker either. I was stabbed while I was in prison, and I didn't think I was going to go home. And there was an internal video crew inside the institution, and my plan was to kind of work my way onto the video crew in an event I didn't go home to basically make videos to send home to my son at the time.Not to be dramatic about it, but just like- Li:Like the archive of, yeah. El:... or a suicide note. I mean, it could be a lot of different things that way in event that I wasn't going to be there, it was something I would leave to him and I would sneak it out of the prison. And I did. I did about 10 videos. In that process, I was on the video crew just to get access to the cameras, and I had a chance meeting with Glenn Holsten, who was a Philadelphia filmmaker that came into the institution. And at no point, like I said, I was only on the video crew for that access to the cameras. And then he was accompanying Lily Yeh, who's the founder of the Village of Arts and Humanities into the institution, and he was documenting her work. She started a program at Graterford Prison, and in that he was allowed to come document her and her work there, but he wasn't allowed to bring camera crew or equipment.So they asked the camera crew internally, did anybody want to assist with him and nobody wanted to, and I volunteered to do that and it changed my life. So that was my sort of coming into film and even knowing that that was even an alternative that way. And in the process of doing that, I felt like there's this interesting quote, John Hendrick Clark, this author, and he said this quote, he says, "It's your duty to fashion your lived experience as a tool for liberation." And I feel like that's ... My elders used to say [inaudible 00:04:21] used to say that all the time to me. And I felt like in a lot of ways when I came home, that was my thought is how can I use my lived experience and who I am and my skillset to actually give other people the opportunity that I didn't have?So coming home, doing film with Glenn was really just like interning and trying to figure it out, navigate like that. And I had a job at the Village, and Lily Yeh gave me the opportunity to basically provide training and support to youth there at the organization and folks in the community teaching them what I knew about film. And I was kind of learning it as I go. And I did, so for a number of years and then in comes Jon, and this partnership I had with Temple and the professor at the time, Jon's professor, to bring that class. They had to learn along with the class that I was teaching at the Village. And it was love at first sight. I love him like a little brother or like a brother, honestly. And that's been our relationship ever since.Li:Well, that's a perfect segue to this next question about your relationship as working collaborators. What's your collaborative style like and would you say you've developed any kind of shorthand or secret language to get more effective with your process?El:Yes, and yes in every way, but I'll let Jon jump in on that. What you got, Jon?Jon:Yeah, there's a lot to that honestly, because I think neither one of us is really trained in any sort of traditional way. El, like he said, his first exposure was in Graterford, in prison using equipment that was probably way outdated and with very limited sort of technical training. But obviously Glenn was super helpful to him. And then for myself, I didn't study film in any traditional way. At the time I probably couldn't have named one director in the world besides Spielberg or whatever. I didn't know anything about that film world. I think just the fact that we don't come from the traditional filmmaking world has always been our thing where we're humans first. We just engage with people as humans and want to always take that approach where it's not about extracting a story or like, "Oh, how can we make the most exciting or dramatic stuff?"It's more about connecting with folks on a really human level and less about telling their stories, but really giving them a platform to tell their own stories and assisting people telling their own stories. We sort of see ourselves as a vehicle and as a tool for folks to leverage their own storytelling. So our process is super collaborative and sometimes to our detriment, it can be hard. It's not linear. None of this stuff is linear. And I think traditional production is like, oh, you write a script, you shoot it, you edit it. But we work with real people with real stories and a lot of our stuff, most of it is around trauma and very traumatic stuff and very heavy stuff and dealing with equity and violence and poverty and racism and it's really, really heavy stuff. So it's really important for us to connect with people on a really natural level first before doing any filming.We come from different backgrounds. I grew up in Germantown in the 90s, but I didn't grow up in poverty, but I experienced a lot of violence in my neighborhood and violence in the home and all kinds of stuff. And in college I tried to look at that experience through lens of urban studies and sociology, and I was like, "This is bullshit, putting people into categories, just labeling people." I was like, "This is bullshit." The academic approach to looking at what I was trying to understand about my experience growing up was not working for me. And then I think the sort of community filmmaking was just a way of like, "Oh wow, this is it. This is a way for real people to tell their own stories with some assistance from their own perspective," I think. So it was really just powerful to realize the power and the gap that community storytelling and community media could fill, not just in my own understanding of the world, but I feel just missing from the conversations that are happening in the newspapers and in mainstream media, so yeah.Li:Exactly. And are there additional folks that are working with you? Do you have an expanded team?Jon:We used to have a larger team. Covid kind of had us downsize a bit, but our main producer is Gabe Wiener. He's an amazing producer, filmmaker. He's been in Philly for about 15 years now, so he's our primary producer. But we work with a lot of folks all over Philadelphia and around the country and around the world too. But yeah, mostly we staff up as needed for different projects, but we could run down a huge list of names that are Philadelphia folks. But no, it's a collaborative effort, right? We work with so many different people and we're super grateful. It's not a solo sport. There's so many people. We've been talking about our film Music Vets, which we'll get to later, but when the credits roll in one of our films, there's like a hundred names or something of people. So yeah, that's the short answer.El:And to the point of just like you're saying secret language or how we operate together, a lot of it's nonverbal, like I say when I say Jon and I are like brothers, that's not an exaggeration at all. A lot of times it's so nonverbal. And then to bridge that to our team, a lot of our team either learned from us or learned with us, and I always look at it as like a Philly style. I don't know why. I associate it as a Philadelphia style. Philadelphia style has been for us as a sort of Guerilla style. We do it all. If somebody calls us to do, "Yep, we can do it," whatever, and we'll figure it out. And we're super resourceful and nothing is beyond us in the sense of we're not too good for a thing. If I'm a director, if we're directors, we go to a scene, I'll be cleaning up the block.It's like nothing's beyond you to do. But with that said, with respect to the team that we're working with, again, like Jon said, we staff up accordingly because sometimes we document in sometimes very compromising or very complex environments. So we're super conscious of the human there in their environment and everything. And our crew has to make sense and comprehend in which the environment we're going to be filming in. And we take that very serious and we're really honored when people give us interviews and just basically allow us into their world and we really caretake that. And again, like Jon said earlier too, our detriment a lot of times because we're just uber sensitive, because we uber understand how media can be hurtful and has been weaponized, and we control that in that way on behalf of the people that we work with.Jon:And our crews are really small. Like I was saying, we're filming super sensitive situations a lot of the times. We'll be in a city that we've never been to in the Deep South on a block that has an active situation going on. And we've been granted access to film there in the middle of the night and it's very active. And it's just El and myself, and we're trusting our host and they're trusting us and it is what it is, but we can't come in there with lights and boom mics and big crew. And sometimes we have to bring in a crew from New York and it's like they show up with a truck and lights and 15 dudes, and it's like, that's not our approach at all. We just can't operate like that at all.Li:You have to shape-shift to your environment and the communities you're in.Jon:Yeah, and I think we kind of start from that shape, right? Our shape is the sort of that community aspect and we scale up when we have to. But I think our style and what makes our work, you know, gives us so much of that access and that power is that we try to do it with as little as possible and just meet people where they are and not try to be invasive at all. And that can be in a lot of ways through the questions we ask or don't ask, but also how we come into someone's home or how we come into someone's neighborhood.El:And represent those things too. Very conscious that we're not going to ask certain questions. And again, our team and our staff has to understand that as well. And we can't have folks on our team just randomly, you know what I mean? So we do a lot of pre-prep and a lot of pre-production and around even information, around the topics that we're working on. If it's foreign to us, we source folks that know or we engage that particular community. We recognize that we're not of that community in a lot of times, so we respect that and we operate accordingly and empower from there and staff from there and everything like that. Again, that's why it's difficult to just say, "Oh, we're a production company. We just kind of write the script and just go do it." It's not the case at all. Our process is as important as the product that we create.Li:Now you mentioned "Pull of Gravity" as your breakout project and probably the first film where you got to flex your muscles as a team working together. Now in hindsight, almost a decade later, how has "Pull of Gravity" impacted MING's trajectory in the industry and where you are today as a team?Jon:That's a great question.El:I mean, it impacted us like crazy, and I can speak just personally. "Pull of Gravity" was never meant to be, ultimately what it was or have, even the reach that it had, that was never even on the forefront of that thought. It was originally seated in a thought I had years ago when I was in prison, when I first was introduced to film is I knew that once I started to be introduced to that world and started to think now, "Wow, I may go home and then how am I going to be successful going home?" I seen from the position I had being in prison that I seen people that were smarter than me, older than me. I went to prison at 17.I had just did two years in juvenile prior to that, hadn't graduated high school, never had a job. I had no source of foundation to come home and actually activate and become anything that I was imagining at the time. So I was conscious of that. So I was scared that if I go home, what do I have in my access that shows me where I'm coming home to so I can then tool up or position myself at least mentally to actually be effective and come home in an appropriate way? So that's what "Pull of Gravity" was sort of rooted in, is in that. How do we show people inside institution, how do we show lawmakers and whatever this world, there was a gap in the communications right across the board. That's how we seen it. So documenting "Pull of gravity" originally was meant to be what it was, but also it caught on fire that way. It really-Li:It did. I mean, as a witness, someone who got to see you all working on the film when you were in production and some of the folks that you interviewed and then to see it. I remember you had a screening, where was it? It was like-Jon:Constitution Center.Li:The Constitution Center.Jon:Yeah, I think that was our very first screening. Yeah.Li:Yeah. Oh my gosh. It was powerful because there were some special people in the room, powerful people I think it was on everyone's minds that, "Oh wow, this film is making an impact, and this is just the beginning." We could tell the film was going to go places and that you were going with it.El:Yeah, there was buses of folks that got turned away that there was just not a capacity for it. So that was important, and then in that, that was shock to us. And then it just spoke to the need of the disconnection that existed, and it taught us a lot. I mean, that exposure of traveling around to areas that I just would never, and Jon either I'm speaking for Jon, but we would've never thought that that was going to take off like that, and that need existed there, but it did, and it still does. And like you say, 10 years later, I don't know another film that's come out that matches in that genuine state that it was created in at all.Jon:Yeah, and the conversation around reentries and returning citizens, and it's huge now. There's so many programs, there's so many ways in the organizations. 10, 12 years ago, it was not the same situation. So at the time it was the film was made under a mandate from Eric Holder, the Attorney General at the time, and it was to ask local US attorney's offices to start thinking of different ways to do community engagement, but specifically talking about reentry, and that's the power of film. There's a way for people to come together in a room that would normally never have a conversation, never be in the same room at the same time. And the film provided a way that people are going to come see a film for entertainment, for education, for an experience. And that's just the power of what it can do is it can bring, you know, we had federal prosecutors in the room, we had former incarcerated people, we had community members. Mayor Nutter requested tickets [inaudible 00:16:29] was like, "I have to be there." It was a huge thing.Li:It was a huge thing.Jon:Yeah. And at the time there was very little resources in this space, especially resources created by someone who had been in prison that told the experience from an authentic way. And we toured the film around the country for probably three or four years. And like I was saying earlier, we thought we would have a little bit of interest in, oh, New York, la, Chicago. We found ourselves in Pensacola, Florida, Minnesota, Western Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, all over the country. California screening in federal probation in Northern California, we're like, "Wow, we had no idea," because there was such a lack of resources and education and knowledge in this space at that time. Li:Here's a clip from the trailer of “Pull of Gravity”. [ clip plays ] Jon:At the time we were comparing our film to reentry programs in prison, and the contrast is just absurd. The stuff they were making that was meant to prepare people to come home was probably still in use. It's literally a joke. And maybe El could speak to more to it, but once we found out about what was actually being used in prison at the time to prepare people to come home, we're like, "Oh, wow, this is not going to work."Li:This is not going to work.Jon:This is not going to work. And this film is not just a supplement, but almost an antidote to those terrible programs. And the film is used as a training program, not just for correctional officers, for social workers, for probation, parole officers, it's also used for people in prison all over the country as a tool to prepare them to come home. So it's really manifested in the vision that El had for it at the very beginning to help people prepare themselves because it's real out there.Li:Well, yeah, and as an educator too, one of the things that I recognized from the film when I saw it was how much I learned not just about reentry, but about this big word recidivism, which I didn't know much about. And understanding that it's not just about preparing folks for reentry into their community, but also preparing them to make sure they don't return to prison.Jon:I think also it's about preparing society to better accept people and know what to do, right? Because I think that was the biggest thing. It's like everybody is like, "How do we prepare people to return home? How do we help people succeed?" It's about the individual and their success or their failure or their path. But one of our goals was just educating society about back to trauma, the trauma, the lack of resources, and just how hard it is. So it's about helping people return, but also helping society better prepare itself and prepare all of us to better understand these experiences. Li:And even more intimately the families. Because one of the things I remembered so clearly is that even the families of these individuals had to make adjustments, had to have a deeper understanding of what these individuals were going through and how to be ready to accept them and make sure that they had the tools for themselves to deal because it wasn't an easy road for anyone. El:That's a really good point, and I would add to that too is like you were saying about the education of the recidivism rate in which people go back to prison. I think one is that what struck me the most and which is probably still at the cornerstone of why I need to exist, is the fact of, it was like an introduction to people, to real conditions in which people live in, the environment. We look at it as three what we call subjects, in this case, myself as one or folks that we documented in the film that were sort of main subjects in the film. And the fourth was the community, the built environment. And that built environment is as toxic and quartered off from grander society as one could imagine. And again, even the most well-meaning folks just have no earthly idea how toxic it can be when you're quartered off.And these [inaudible 00:22:00], and again, this is literally happening in a vacuum, but the decisions that are being made or even the thought around gun violence and all these different things, they're not made with the comprehension of cause and effect. They're not made with respect to understanding the true conditions in which people are under. So I can go on and on, but I'm just saying it's like that was the main sort of meat of it, was looking and how do we inform people? One thing is about the programs, other is like where's people coming back home to and those conditions and how do you expect them to actually survive and/or thrive based off of this information?Li:So what's your lifeline? Where do you find hope and what keeps you doing this work?Jon:Context. One of the things we've learned a lot in the past two years with “Pull of Gravity” and a lot of our other work, our work has always been around trauma in a lot of ways, but we didn't have the language and the vocabulary and the full understanding to have a full understanding of all that, right? In the past few years, we've learned this word vicarious trauma, and we've both experienced firsthand traumas in different ways, but then our work has been this collective experience of receiving so many other people's stories of trauma. And that takes a toll in itself, and especially hear stories of the first responders, therapists, all kinds of people have that do this work that is sort of parallel. It's a lot to take in these stories over years and years and years and years. All that to say, I would never take it back.It's an honor and a privilege to do this work. We've sat with people in just the most trying situations in some of the hardest moments and the hardest situations. And it's an honor and a privilege to be trusted to do this work and to tell these stories and tell stories with people. I think like a lifeline, I think it's just the resilience of folks. And we've talked a lot about this word resilience, and it's a lot of times it's framed as this magical thing and it's like this positive thing, but resilience is a response to survival. Resilience is a response to horrible conditions. Resilience is a necessity. So yeah, resilience is great, but it's not really by choice. It's because you're placed into a situation, you have to adapt to it. So I think a lot of our work now, especially with Music Vets, is moving this direction of just breaking down these labels like that. And you can talk to the Bruce Perry analogy, but I'll pass it over to El for a minute and then we'll come back to maybe Music Vets, if that works.El:That's interesting. I think, yeah, definitely agree with Jon. I think it has been traumatic, and I always talk about how it's actually in a lot of ways as for me, has been a sort of, it kind of kept me out of my own internalizing my own traumas too, or dealing with my own personal stuff until just recently. So yeah, so I feel like for a lot of times we looked at it as, and we see it as a sort of calling in a lot of ways and artistry that way, and just being with people and feeling like we're being a service. And I think that's whatever, but lifeline personally is my family, my babies. And I think that's huge. And that is a grounding, very regulating element in my life.So like it or not, they're present and you can't get away from that. So it's like at the end of the day, and there's this doctor, Sandy Bloom, says trauma is the inability to be in the present. And I think as much as my mind wanders and I get into a zone, my daughter's looking at me and just putting this sticker on my forehead and just like I'm like, "That happened." So it really is grounding at a time and I feel like it's being with, so being with my family and getting healthy I think is the sort of lifeline that I find myself in now. And I think Covid had its own effects and the work on top of that, but I feel like that's my personal sort of lifeline that way.Jon:Yeah. For me, it's similar. My daughter especially is just my life and just being with her and just seeing her grow and seeing her learn about the world and having her challenge me and push me and check me all the time is just, it's the most beautiful thing in the world and it's extremely grounding. And I think aside from that, we're going to talk about Music Vets eventually, but music has been a huge lifeline for me. Music and nature and somatic work, working with my body and just getting trauma out through physical stuff has been a huge lifeline for me.Li:And here's a clip from “Music Vets”. [ clip plays ] Li:I want to talk about Music Vets. Can you share a little bit about that project and any connections that you might have seen or felt that you made with this community of survivors that might have connected to say, the communities in Pull of Gravity or other projects that you've done?Jon:It's really interesting. We were approached by the board chair of a music school in Westchester, New York, the Music Conservatory of Westchester, who had heard of "Pull of Gravity", maybe I think had seen it. And he immediately saw the connection of people returning home from prison and people returning home from war. And they had a music therapy program and he was like, "Wow." Rodd Berro is his name, amazing, amazing guy, executive producer of our film Music Vets. And he said, "Wow, could we make a film that follows veterans coming back to society like Pull of Gravity through the lens of music and music therapy as their treatment?" Obviously different because in Pull of gravity, it wasn't really about treatment or recovery in that way or healing, it was more about stating the problem and getting a really interesting deep firsthand exposure to the environment and the human stories.But with Music Vets, it was really interesting because we had this sort of solutions based avenue as well, this solutions based lens, which is, here's an issue, but here's how people are using music to deal with this issue and to heal. So the parallels were really interesting. For me, I was immediately drawn to the music aspect. I think El was more drawn to the veterans aspect, but together it's been a magical experience to just dive into the world of neither one of us are veterans, and that's very different from Pull of Gravity, obviously, because that was about El's own personal experience. Neither one of us are vets, so we just take a few steps back and humble ourselves and really do a lot of listening, a lot of learning, a lot of unlearning and reading and just spending time with people. We spent about a year, maybe a year and a half just meeting with people and getting to know them before we did any kind of filming, a lot of research before we started filming that project. And we started in 2017, and it's 2023, and it's just starting to have light. It's a hell of a process.Li:Quite a process, right?Jon:Yeah.Li:You have to have stamina to be a filmmaker, right?El:I mean, yeah, stamina and a lot of other things I think. And then especially something like that. And again, we always emphasize the point of just in these days, anyone with a camera is a filmmaker apparently. And that's cool and empowering for people to tell their story and all about that. At the same time, just understanding media and understanding unbridled approaches is really hurtful, could be hurtful and damaging to individuals. And again, our approach, and again, up until the point of doing Music Vets, we've done a lot of work. We do work all over the world all the time, and we've made mistakes and we learn from mistakes. And again, we do our best to learn and grow and be iterative in our process. So that's why we took that time during that. I mean, just for common sense, we don't know much about that topic as much at the time, so we just took that time to actually learn and grow.And this is part of our process overall. And a lot of people may not necessarily do that. And I think even with that, just to be respectful to where someone is and the sort of knee-jerk reaction in creating content is the sensational whatever kind of approach. And our work is the opposite of that. And not necessarily intentionally anti-sensational, maybe it is, but just telling the human story is again, understanding media and understanding that how hurtful it could be. This is a permanent record. When people are documented, their kids are going to see this, forever. So you get somebody to talk about certain things that's really super personal, maybe that's not necessarily something that you want to live forever. And we try to encourage against or try to use our human approach to actually make sure people are aware of what we're doing and the impact. So not just from us, in the future, if somebody comes up and films them, like, understand the power of that too.Jon:You see all these films and media and stories around veterans and PTSD, and it's usually there's this sort of style where it's like hyper-masculine, in your face showing explosions or people with injuries on camera. And we really try to take a different approach. And really, one thing about Pull of Gravity, we never asked or focused on in the film what led people to go to prison in the first place, because that was like the knee-jerk reaction. And with Music Vets, we never asked people, how did you get injured or how did you get PTSD or whatever. But things came out in the film in the process, but that was never the intention of creating this linear story of this happened and then this happened and this happened.Because it's not like that. Healing is not linear. Healing is very non-linear in a lot of different ways. And it was just very important for us to not take that sort of knee-jerk approach, if you look at a lot of veterans films or issues around military, there's a style to it, and it's like the combat footage and things like that. And we had chose to use animations in the film instead of really showing any sort of footage like that. And it was a very intentional process. And then the music in the film too is also follows a very sort of soothing pathway, right? Li:I saw a clip. It does come across that way, very much so, yeah.Jon:Cool, cool, and so it was important for us to take the music that was played in the film by the veterans, and our composer Jesse Koolhaas from Amsterdam took the music and was able to integrate a score that basically blended their music with natural music that he was creating, so it flows, right? And it's intentionally not really any in your face, shocking stuff. There's some serious moments for sure. But we didn't want to have the film sort of lean into that direction of that sort of dramatic, overly dramatized sort of military culture kind of vibe at all.Li:No, you're right. There is kind of a standard way of dealing with that material. And it's great to see that you have found a way, again, bringing it back to that, just trying to have a human connection with the folks and the stories that you're telling. So with the work that MING does, how do you decide you want to tell a particular story? What kind of things have to be in place for you to pursue a project?Jon:That's an ever evolving thing?. I think there's a project we've done years ago that we wouldn't do now for sure because our standards have changed and our experiences have led us to not want to do certain sort of work that we've done a lot of work with philanthropy and foundations, and there's certain types of that work that we would not do anymore just because of the ethics involved and the power dynamic.Li:That's growth, right?Jon:It is, it is.Li:Learning and growth.Jon:Yeah, yeah, and it's not easy. It's like people think filmmaking can be lucrative and the way we do it, it's not always the case, right? It's very, very hard. It's like a six-year project, right? Music Vets. So we've turned down a lot of projects in the past few years that would've been maybe financially lucrative, but it didn't fit with our morals. There was a project last summer involving a big network that approached us about doing a project around juveniles in the system in Philly. And we turned it down because we've seen their work, it's a large network that everybody knows. I'm not going to state the name. And we knew that it was going to be sensational no matter what we did if we're handing off footage to a large network and it's about juveniles, we don't trust that relationship. So we turned that down.And there's a lot of other examples like that where we just feel, you know, we've learned the hard way. And years ago, we would probably do things that we wouldn't do now, but we've definitely grown. It makes it hard sometimes. It's hard to sustain in this sort of pocket of filmmaking. We don't really do a lot of commercial stuff. There's not really any big checks for commercials at all, which are kind of quick and shorter term projects.El:We do stuff for work in the sense of just, there's stuff that was just like, all right, it's a paycheck and it's a way to sort of pay some bills, but it's still ethical. And from our perspective, it's not hurtful. And if we're involved, we're just going to insist that certain things are done that way either way and push that boundary. And we feel like we can be a sort of [inaudible 00:35:12] that way. But I think even outside of that, despite the project and the contract kind of basis is it's standing the gap for the subjects and who would be documented or the people that in the subject matter and generally speaking.So it's really negotiating and making sure that we have creative decision a lot of times and making sure that we have that sort of, so a lot of times it's less about just doing the work. A lot of times we've at a place where people bring us in as a partner on a project. So as opposed to just being a sort of point and shoot kind of situation. [inaudible 00:35:46] I think if we can look at this as this, as a partnership. That way, it gives us enough leeway to push back and say, "We're not going to," you know what I mean? We're going to have some curatorial sort of control that way.Jon:And is it going to help? Is it push the needle? Is it going to help individuals? Is it going to benefit people in some way? Especially people that have maybe not had the opportunity to tell their story in this way. So, with Music Vets, I think one of the biggest successes for us is that the three main subjects of the film all love the film and embrace it.Li:That's important.Jon:And their families, that's the most important right thing for us because they've given us their stories, not just given their service to us in this country, but given their stories, which is, that's priceless. So I think that most importantly is do our subjects see a benefit for themselves or for a cause that they believe in? That's most important to us.El:And building that relationship and maintaining those relationships even at all costs too, right? Sometimes there's a huge success in that too. I think those relationships are really important to us and our clients are important too. A lot of times we're really, to me, it speaks a lot of a partnership with a client that sees our value of what we bring and even our being standing firm on the side of the topic and the subjects or subject matter that they're willing to work with us and understand that we may have a position that be a better vantage point or a different vantage point than what they have too, to have the better outcome and can support or amplify, help amplify the voices of the subject.Li:And what was it about Monument Lab projects that appealed to you? What were the ideas and the intentions that aligned between MING and Monument Lab that made that collaboration possible?Jon:Yeah, great question. I think that's like El was just saying. I think when the values are there and they're aligned, we've been following their work for a number of years and paying attention and we loved what we saw and the opportunity came up to start working with them, I believe maybe end of 2020 on a small project with the state of New Jersey. And it was just very clear from the beginning that our values are aligned. We all know we're living a big lie in this country. A lot of big lies. There's a lot of myths and a lot of histories that have just been created and set in stone. And we know that those aren't true. There's so many different sides to this story of this country and the histories here that are just forgotten and intentionally not recorded in history. So I think a lot of our work is already naturally aligned with flipping this script and trying to tell real truths and alternative histories that are actually the real histories.So I guess it was 2020, we started working daily. We had a small project and it involved three groups of artists in New Jersey that were retelling stories of the American Revolution through the lens of people of color. And there were three artists of color that did these short projects. And we made three short films with them. And right away, Monument Lab was just super receptive to our approach, and we were able to step outside the box. We were able to have creative freedom and it was just really impactful. And this felt like a natural connection, but when the values are aligned, it's very, very clear.And then we've been doing some great work since on the Regeneration project and now Beyond Granite in the National Mall in Washington DC. So, I think it's just about knowing that the accepted mainstream history that we're all living and being told is not true, or there's a lot of forgotten or intentionally left out stories and that's why we're here. That's why we've been doing what we're doing, and it's great to just be aligned like that. Yeah, their work is incredible. It's amazing to see where it's come from and where it's at now and where it's going. Li:If you could document any project or tell any story, what would it be? And think a little bit outside the box, maybe a departure from some of the projects that you've done in the past. This could be absolutely anything. Jon:It's a hard question. I think for years I've been wanting to do something that doesn't involve something traumatic, right? Something that's just happy and fun- Li:I can imagine that might be where you're leaning. Jon:No, but I don't see that happening anytime soon, honestly. Just that I would love to be able to, you know, I think art and music and healing, healing through art and music and creative arts therapies. "Music Vets" opened up all these avenues for us of just getting to be on military bases and see veterans using music and getting to go to places where people were making masks and painting and all these different creative therapies and dance therapy and different sorts of alternative therapies. And it's just opened up all these doors of there's a million ways to heal. And in Western medicine, we really only look at a few as being legitimate.But the truth is, society and all around the world, we've been using these ancient traditions to heal forever, right? And it's only in the past a hundred or 200 years we've been like, "Oh, take this pill or talk to this therapist or do this," and this is how you get better through this Western medicine framework. So I think personally, I'm really interested in looking at just different models of healing that are outside of the traditional Western medicine framework, but especially through music and dance and sound, I think. So really, really interested in doing more stories in that.Li:In the arts.Jon:Yeah. Li:How about you, El?El:Yeah, I don't know about a specific project. I think it's more about different processes. I think again, just the process of filmmaking sometimes can be really patriarchal and just very boiled down almost too much for my liking. And I feel like I really love telling a whole story or hearing a whole story as opposed to making a one-minute clip out of a one-hour conversation. And it's like the many people that we've documented over the years that's just not here anymore. I mean, just in "Pull of Gravity" alone, I think there's shame on me for not knowing, but I think there's 11 people I think maybe that we've documented in "Pull of Gravity" alone that's not here anymore, all to my knowledge by gun violence. And those were very personal relationships and very, very, very personal. So, seeing a short clip of something to me is just like, "Ugh."I think figuring out a way to document or work on something that is more well-rounded. I think there's a power and actually story arc narrative of filmmaking, but actually encompassing more sort of experimental aspects of installations or something that actually helps tell a bigger story and engulf someone in a reality for a time to give justice to the story. But specifically, there was this interesting story I seen recently, Glenn Holsten, who came in and taught me film in prison. He worked on this film called "Wyeth" about Andrew Wyeth, the painter, and I live now in the Westchester area and out that way.And I went to the museum finally the other day as a Brandywine River Museum. Very fascinating. And long story short, in the exhibition, they have this one thing about this artist who is also local named Horace Pippin. And it just blew me away to hear the story about Horace Pippin in the sense that Horace Pippin was just really quick not to bastardize his story or edit his story, but was in the self-taught artist, was in the army, was injured in the army, lost use of his right arm, which he was right armed.Li:I didn't know that.El:And he painted. How did he paint with his right arm? He learned painting as a therapy and he used his left arm to move his right arm to paint all the paintings that he painted.Li:Wow. Jon:Never knew that.Li:Me neither.El:I didn't know that either and he lived not far from where I live. And I'm just blown away by stories like that. And again, we're talking about resilience, but you're also talking about experiences and we're talking about in the 30s or 40s we're talking about folks that did it on that level, given all of the odds against them in that context of time and all of the dynamics that was happening then. So, I think that's a very fascinating story. Stories like that, that basically emphasize people's, again, resilience, but adding social sort of context to give another perspective of the environment in which they actually had to evolve and in a way they used art to do that. I think there's something fascinating in that for me.Li:That is a fascinating story. And like I said, I work in the arts, I didn't know that about Horace Pippin, so thank you for educating me on that bit there. So, what's next for MING Media?El:Evolution. No, it is always evolving. I think post Covid, a lot of things changed for everybody, and they gave us a lot of reasons to change and evolve, and that's where we are now. Even to work with Monument Lab, I think a lot of that is rooted in some of the evolution too, looking at, and it gives us the opportunity to spend time with stories from everybody, from indigenous experiences on a lot of levels, to being omnipresent with things that we've been bombarded with every day without knowing. So, all of our work basically evolves us in a way that would just, it gives us a moment to sort of pause and then decide and determine where we can apply that. So we have a number of cool projects on the horizon for clients coming to us now and stuff. So we're just growing and evolving. That's how I would say it. What'd you say, Jon?Jon:Yeah, and just seeing how it's all so connected too. The more and more we grow and the work with Monument Lab has been just so beautiful and an amazing experience. Just for talking about some overlap, so I had the opportunity to travel to South Dakota in October for a Monument Lab project with Re:Gen and got to work with an amazing group there, the Rapid City Indian Boarding School project with Amy Sazue and her team. And I was welcomed with open arms as an outsider, and they told me right away, "We don't really trust people with cameras too much." And by the time I left, we were family and getting hugs and hanging out with people's families and kids and-Li:Oh, that's beautiful.Jon:... It was beautiful. And just, it's such an honor and a privilege to be in that position, and it's humbling. It's really humbling. But one beautiful experience there, I went to the Black Hills pow wow when I was there, and the first 30 minutes of the entire pow wow, 30 minutes straight, maybe even an hour, the opening ceremony was honoring Native American veterans with music and dance. And then the connections just, wow, between "Music Vets" and Monument Lab and the work we've been doing and the amount, oh man, just the amount of connections.Li:So many connections.Jon:The statistics around Native American folks and indigenous folks in terms of incarceration. The numbers are out of control and they're high representation, the armed forces too. So, there's a lot of interesting connections and it's all starting to connect for us, all this different work. And there's an amazing story there, another one real quick is around this elder I met, Faith Spotted Eagle. She's incredible. She was one of the leaders of the Standing Rock protest in the Dakota Access Pipeline, and she was the first and only indigenous person to receive an electoral vote for president. And it's a whole story to look up. She's incredible.She works with veterans at the VA in South Dakota and uses traditional ceremony music to work with native vets within the VA.Li:Incredible.Jon:And so just the overlap here of just the work we're doing is just, it's monumental.Li:It's monumental.Jon:And it's beautiful. And again, it's an honor and a privilege and just so we're excited to see how these connections keep growing and the work keeps evolving between our personal experiences and our work history and where the future has taken us.Li:Well, it has definitely been an honor and a privilege to sit here with you all. I just want to thank you for the awareness that you're bringing to all of these issues. It's super important, and I can't wait to see what comes next for MING Media. Thank you, Jon Kaufman and El Sawyer. It's been a pleasure. Jon:Thank you. El:Thank you, Li.