Podcasts about your life

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    The Genre of Your Life
    WHAT'S WORTH WATCHING?!

    The Genre of Your Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 2, 2026 58:09


    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert
    Visualizing A Financial Plan For Your Life - Mike Milligan Ep 690

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2026 47:02


    Mike Milligan is a purpose-driven financial advisor, educator, and entrepreneur,whose career began in his family's small business as a boy in North Carolina. Today,Mike is the founder of Ideas By Mike, and 1.oak Financial, and a leading voice inclient-centered, impact-driven financial planning world.He holds the Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) and Accredited Investment Fiduciary®credentials and has helped thousands of clients make sense of their wealth, extendtheir well-being and live out their goals authentically. Mike uses active listening,health-focused strategies, and decades of expertise to turn financial jargon intoactionable steps. His belief in financial wellness comes from real life—helping bothclients and students design plans that support their one of a kind lives.Mike's teaching style focuses on clarity, empathy, and fun. Students and clients alikebenefit from his ability to translate complex strategies into everyday solutions.Through workshops, courses, and speaking events, Mike continues to inspire othersto make a real impact, both financially and personally.Contact Mike Milligan:https://www.amazon.com/stores/Mike-Milligan/author/B0HJ2Z4WW4?ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true https://s2seventtn.the1oakcollective.com/home https://www.youtube.com/@1.oakfinancial https://www.instagram.com/1oakfinancial/ https://1oakfinancial.com/ https://ideas-by-mike.blubrry.net/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemilligancfp/overlay/about-this-profile/ https://www.instagram.com/mikemilliganllc/ https://www.instagram.com/1oakfinancial/Text: IDEAS to 600700Dr. Kimberley LinertSpeaker, Author, Broadcaster, Mentor, Trainer, Behavioral OptometristEvent Planners- I am available to speak at your event. Here is my media kit: https://brucemerrinscelebrityspeakers.com/portfolio/dr-kimberley-linert/To book Dr. Linert on your podcast, television show, conference, corporate training or as an expert guest please email her at incrediblelifepodcast@gmail.com or Contact Bruce Merrin at Bruce Merrin's Celebrity Speakers at merrinpr@gmail.com702.256.9199Host of the Podcast Series: Incredible Life Creator PodcastAvailable on...Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incredible-life-creator-with-dr-kimberley-linert/id1472641267Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6DZE3EoHfhgcmSkxY1CvKf?si=ebe71549e7474663 and on 9 other podcast platformsAuthor of Book: "Visualizing Happiness in Every Area of Your Life"Get on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4cmTOMwThe Great Discovery eLearning platform: https://thegreatdiscovery.com/kimberleyl

    Voices of Courage with Ken D Foster
    Voices of Courage, September 29, 2026

    Voices of Courage with Ken D Foster

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2026 56:37 Transcription Available


    Voices of Courage with Ken D Foster How Poetry Heals: Words, Seasonal Affective Disorder and Transcendence with Norman Rosenthal Ken D. Foster talks with psychiatrist and author Dr. Norman Rosenthal about how poetry can heal grief and trauma, why he first described seasonal affective disorder, and how Transcendental Meditation shapes his forthcoming book on unity. A Show Built On the Power of Words Ken D. Foster opens Voices of Courage with a preview of the conversation to come, reading a few lines from a poem before rolling the show's intro theme and returning to formally welcome listeners. He tells his audience that words carry an energy, a frequency and a vibration connected deeply to the psyche, and that reading a poem can make the world seem to disappear, carrying a listener back into memory or forward into peace and presence. Foster mentions that he has spent roughly thirty years writing poems himself and has a forthcoming poetry collection called "Echoes of Courage and Grace: Reflections from the Journey Within." He explains that poetry can bypass people's defenses, awaken memory, reveal truth and restore hope in ways ordinary words sometimes cannot. He then introduces his guest, a psychiatrist he says will help listeners understand where words can transform how they think, communicate and show up in the world. Introducing Dr. Norman Rosenthal Foster formally introduces Dr. Norman Rosenthal, welcoming him back to the show and describing him as a psychiatrist who understands darkness from both a scientific and deeply human perspective. He notes that Rosenthal led the team that first described seasonal affective disorder, known as SAD, and that his pioneering work on light therapy has helped millions of people, along with his exploration of meditation, adversity and resilience. Foster highlights Rosenthal's book "Poetry Rx: How 50 Inspiring Poems Can Heal and Bring You Joy to Your Life," calling him a New York Times best-selling author. Rosenthal thanks Foster for having him back. Foster explains he wants to start with poetry, calling it a door to the soul, and mentions his niece in Washington, D.C. who is depressed, wondering aloud whether Rosenthal's book might help her. He asks directly why Rosenthal wrote "Poetry Rx" and what the book is about, opening the door for Rosenthal's story about a phone call with a grieving friend. The Origin Story and Why Words Heal Rosenthal tells Foster the book began with a phone call from a grieving friend who had lost someone dear and asked how he would ever manage. Rosenthal told him that losing is an art that, like any art form, can be developed, prompting his friend to read Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle "One Art" aloud over the phone. Rosenthal recalls feeling the man's relief and his own sense of elation, realizing in that moment that words can actually heal. Foster then asks Rosenthal, as a scientist and psychiatrist, why words heal at all. Rosenthal explains that words carry both meaning and music, a combination that has drawn people around fires for thousands of years to share poetry that produces hope, potency or anger. He says this taps into primitive cognitive and visceral areas of the mind. Foster asks how a poem that triggers anger can still lead someone toward peace, and Rosenthal answers with Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," written to his dying father, reading several lines aloud. Grief, Struggle and the Music of Words The conversation moves through several more poems Rosenthal has collected. He reads "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep," telling the story of a Baltimore woman who wrote it for a German refugee unable to return to her dying mother during World War II, and says it gave the most comfort to people he has shared it with who were grieving or dying themselves. He then reads Theodore Roethke's "The Waking," describing how the Pulitzer Prize winner captured the daily struggle of simply getting up in the morning. Foster and Rosenthal discuss poetic structures, from sonnets and villanelles to free verse and the ghazal, before Rosenthal reads Gwendolyn Brooks's short poem "We Real Cool." Turning to why some people resist poetry, Rosenthal argues they may love songs and ballads without realizing these belong to the same family as poetry. He invokes Marshall McLuhan's line that "the medium is the message," arguing that real connectedness, whether around a dinner table or in a poem, communicates that a person matters. Listening, Silence and a Letter to a Mother Foster shifts the conversation toward listening itself, describing himself as a long-term meditator who believes stillness is the key to writing and connecting with the divine part of oneself. Rosenthal responds by reading Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," noting that the poem's quiet imagery magnifies every small sound through silence. Foster compares the experience to cycling, describing a "zone" where time seems to collapse while doing something he loves, and says poetry brings him into that same deep inward space. Rosenthal then shares a personal poem, "Letter to Mother" by Nobel laureate Salvatore Quasimodo, which he read repeatedly before leaving South Africa for the United States, knowing he was leaving his family behind. He describes the poem's closing image of a kitchen clock with an enamel dial and painted flowers, and says he later bought such a clock from Italy that he and his wife still look at, thinking of the people they left behind. Seasonal Affective Disorder, Meditation and Closing Thoughts Foster asks Rosenthal to reflect on his own journey, and Rosenthal answers with gratitude, recalling a near-fatal assault at age twenty-four and crediting the National Institute of Mental Health's funding for making his seasonal affective disorder research possible. The two turn to SAD itself, with Rosenthal describing how his own move from sunny South Africa to New York exposed him and his wife to lethargy, oversleeping and difficulty socializing once daylight savings time shortened the days. He recommends morning light exposure, outdoor walking, staying socially connected and, in some cases, an antidepressant, pointing listeners to his book "Defeating SAD." Foster shares his own story of hearing an inner voice in 1992 tell him he had to feel the pain to make the change. Rosenthal then describes practicing Transcendental Meditation twice daily and outlines stages of consciousness explored in his books "Transcendence" and "Super Mind," previewing a forthcoming book, "Unity," about healing societal division. Foster closes by pointing listeners to Rosenthal's books on Amazon and signing off with the show's closing line.

    BBS Radio Station Streams
    Voices of Courage, September 29, 2026

    BBS Radio Station Streams

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2026 56:37 Transcription Available


    Voices of Courage with Ken D Foster How Poetry Heals: Words, Seasonal Affective Disorder and Transcendence with Norman Rosenthal Ken D. Foster talks with psychiatrist and author Dr. Norman Rosenthal about how poetry can heal grief and trauma, why he first described seasonal affective disorder, and how Transcendental Meditation shapes his forthcoming book on unity. A Show Built On the Power of Words Ken D. Foster opens Voices of Courage with a preview of the conversation to come, reading a few lines from a poem before rolling the show's intro theme and returning to formally welcome listeners. He tells his audience that words carry an energy, a frequency and a vibration connected deeply to the psyche, and that reading a poem can make the world seem to disappear, carrying a listener back into memory or forward into peace and presence. Foster mentions that he has spent roughly thirty years writing poems himself and has a forthcoming poetry collection called "Echoes of Courage and Grace: Reflections from the Journey Within." He explains that poetry can bypass people's defenses, awaken memory, reveal truth and restore hope in ways ordinary words sometimes cannot. He then introduces his guest, a psychiatrist he says will help listeners understand where words can transform how they think, communicate and show up in the world. Introducing Dr. Norman Rosenthal Foster formally introduces Dr. Norman Rosenthal, welcoming him back to the show and describing him as a psychiatrist who understands darkness from both a scientific and deeply human perspective. He notes that Rosenthal led the team that first described seasonal affective disorder, known as SAD, and that his pioneering work on light therapy has helped millions of people, along with his exploration of meditation, adversity and resilience. Foster highlights Rosenthal's book "Poetry Rx: How 50 Inspiring Poems Can Heal and Bring You Joy to Your Life," calling him a New York Times best-selling author. Rosenthal thanks Foster for having him back. Foster explains he wants to start with poetry, calling it a door to the soul, and mentions his niece in Washington, D.C. who is depressed, wondering aloud whether Rosenthal's book might help her. He asks directly why Rosenthal wrote "Poetry Rx" and what the book is about, opening the door for Rosenthal's story about a phone call with a grieving friend. The Origin Story and Why Words Heal Rosenthal tells Foster the book began with a phone call from a grieving friend who had lost someone dear and asked how he would ever manage. Rosenthal told him that losing is an art that, like any art form, can be developed, prompting his friend to read Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle "One Art" aloud over the phone. Rosenthal recalls feeling the man's relief and his own sense of elation, realizing in that moment that words can actually heal. Foster then asks Rosenthal, as a scientist and psychiatrist, why words heal at all. Rosenthal explains that words carry both meaning and music, a combination that has drawn people around fires for thousands of years to share poetry that produces hope, potency or anger. He says this taps into primitive cognitive and visceral areas of the mind. Foster asks how a poem that triggers anger can still lead someone toward peace, and Rosenthal answers with Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," written to his dying father, reading several lines aloud. Grief, Struggle and the Music of Words The conversation moves through several more poems Rosenthal has collected. He reads "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep," telling the story of a Baltimore woman who wrote it for a German refugee unable to return to her dying mother during World War II, and says it gave the most comfort to people he has shared it with who were grieving or dying themselves. He then reads Theodore Roethke's "The Waking," describing how the Pulitzer Prize winner captured the daily struggle of simply getting up in the morning. Foster and Rosenthal discuss poetic structures, from sonnets and villanelles to free verse and the ghazal, before Rosenthal reads Gwendolyn Brooks's short poem "We Real Cool." Turning to why some people resist poetry, Rosenthal argues they may love songs and ballads without realizing these belong to the same family as poetry. He invokes Marshall McLuhan's line that "the medium is the message," arguing that real connectedness, whether around a dinner table or in a poem, communicates that a person matters. Listening, Silence and a Letter to a Mother Foster shifts the conversation toward listening itself, describing himself as a long-term meditator who believes stillness is the key to writing and connecting with the divine part of oneself. Rosenthal responds by reading Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," noting that the poem's quiet imagery magnifies every small sound through silence. Foster compares the experience to cycling, describing a "zone" where time seems to collapse while doing something he loves, and says poetry brings him into that same deep inward space. Rosenthal then shares a personal poem, "Letter to Mother" by Nobel laureate Salvatore Quasimodo, which he read repeatedly before leaving South Africa for the United States, knowing he was leaving his family behind. He describes the poem's closing image of a kitchen clock with an enamel dial and painted flowers, and says he later bought such a clock from Italy that he and his wife still look at, thinking of the people they left behind. Seasonal Affective Disorder, Meditation and Closing Thoughts Foster asks Rosenthal to reflect on his own journey, and Rosenthal answers with gratitude, recalling a near-fatal assault at age twenty-four and crediting the National Institute of Mental Health's funding for making his seasonal affective disorder research possible. The two turn to SAD itself, with Rosenthal describing how his own move from sunny South Africa to New York exposed him and his wife to lethargy, oversleeping and difficulty socializing once daylight savings time shortened the days. He recommends morning light exposure, outdoor walking, staying socially connected and, in some cases, an antidepressant, pointing listeners to his book "Defeating SAD." Foster shares his own story of hearing an inner voice in 1992 tell him he had to feel the pain to make the change. Rosenthal then describes practicing Transcendental Meditation twice daily and outlines stages of consciousness explored in his books "Transcendence" and "Super Mind," previewing a forthcoming book, "Unity," about healing societal division. Foster closes by pointing listeners to Rosenthal's books on Amazon and signing off with the show's closing line.

    Know Thyself
    E214 - Tom Bilyeu: Humanity Is Splitting into 4 Futures… Choose Wisely

    Know Thyself

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2026 159:14


    My guest today is Tom Bilyeu, the entrepreneur behind Quest Nutrition who went on to build Impact Theory into one of the most watched long form interview channels in the world. Tom is now building a procedurally generated video game called Kyzen, and in recent years his content has shifted away from personal development and toward economics, artificial intelligence, and the systems that quietly shape how we live. I wanted to sit with him inside that shift, to understand what pulled him away from the mindset conversation he had mastered and toward questions about money, power, and the trajectory of intelligence itself.What We Dive Into:1. Tom credits his success to a simple loop: predict an outcome, run the experiment, and stay honest about what actually happened. He treats being wrong as useful data rather than a threat to his identity, which lets him adjust quickly instead of defending a position that clearly isn't working anymore.2. Tom argues that meaning isn't discovered but handed to us by evolution as an empty box we get to fill. For him that box holds his wife and his work, and he believes people struggle most when whatever filled the box, a job, a role, a relationship, disappears and nothing takes its place.3. Tom's core financial message is that not owning assets quietly erodes your purchasing power through inflation, whether you notice it or not. He believes the escape route is available to almost anyone, but most people never take the step of investing consistently over decades instead of waiting for certainty.Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyselfTry LMNT & get a free sample pack IM8: Explore the exclusive offerhttps://www.im8health.com/knowthyself___________00:00 Intro01:50 The Evolution of the Show05:02 Between What Was and What's Next08:53 The Spark of Divinity and What Tom Is Building13:52 Nature, Nurture, and Leverage15:49 The Physics of Progress19:35 Facing Ego and Inadequacy24:08 Feeling Most Alive25:58 A New Virtual World27:36 The Coming Bifurcation of Civilization36:52 Superintelligence and Universal Abundance40:27 Four Futures and How Soon50:59 Simulation Theory and Consciousness1:04:13 Why Something Rather Than Nothing1:10:17 Letting Go of Certainty1:21:39 A Communion of Subjects1:30:22 Meaning in a Disenchanted Age1:40:42 Who Is Tom Without His Ambition1:42:10 Rewriting Value in a Post-Scarcity World1:45:55 How the Money System Is Rigged1:59:15 Is a Crash Coming2:02:22 A Message to the West and P(doom)2:09:57 Why Tom Came On the Show2:12:15 Rewiring at the Root and What's Sacred2:18:25 The Movie of Your Life and Your Blind Spot2:21:16 Utility, Novelty, and Fulfillment2:25:20 The Most Transcendent Moment2:27:24 Dabbling in Meditation2:29:13 The Case for First Principles2:32:30 From Adyashanti to Kyzen2:38:20 Outro___________✨MORE FROM TOM BILYEU↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu↳Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/1nARKz2vTIOb7gC9dusE4b↳Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeu↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/↳Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en↳https://www.impacttheory.com

    Warriors Unmasked
    242: Your Past Doesn't Get to Decide Your Future with Lawrence C. Harris

    Warriors Unmasked

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2026 54:29


    What happens when you stop running from the things that hurt you and finally turn around to face them? At just 20 years old, Lawrence C. Harris has already lived through severe bullying, childhood abuse, mental health challenges, and experiences that forced him to grow up much sooner than he should have. For years, the effects showed up in ways he didn't always recognize, from emotional distance and unhealthy relationships to spending hours behind a screen simply to avoid being alone with his thoughts. In this episode, Lawrence joins Chuck to share how therapy, journaling, honest self-reflection, and learning to sit with uncomfortable emotions helped him begin working through his past instead of continuing to run from it. He opens up about setting boundaries with his father, learning to forgive without allowing someone back into his life, and recognizing the difference between who he used to be and who he is choosing to become. Lawrence also challenges us to look at the ways we distract ourselves from what may be happening beneath the surface. His message is especially powerful for young people, but it applies at any age: you cannot change what happened to you, but you can decide what you do with your life from here. Guest Bio Lawrence C. Harris is a youth speaker who helps teens and young adults believe in themselves, think differently about their future, and make better choices. Growing up, Lawrence faced serious challenges including mental health struggles, bullying, childhood abuse, and autism. Those experiences inspired him to begin speaking so other young people would know they are not alone and understand that their past does not have to determine where their life goes. Today, Lawrence shares the lessons and tools that helped him move forward, encouraging young people to take ownership of their future, work through difficult emotions, and believe that their lives can get better. You'll hear About How bullying and childhood abuse affected Lawrence's mental health at a young age Why journaling and therapy became important parts of processing his past How distraction can keep us from recognizing what we are really trying to avoid Why forgiveness does not mean excusing someone's behavior or removing your boundaries How to separate who you used to be from the person you are choosing to become Chapters 00:00 Lawrence's Mission to Help Young People 02:30 Growing Up With Bullying and Abuse 05:15 Accepting What Happened and Taking Ownership of His Future 09:45 Therapy, Journaling, and Working Through Trauma 16:00 The Light at the End of the Tunnel 19:15 What Happens When We Keep Running From Our Pain 23:30 Are You Having Fun or Avoiding What You Feel? 28:45 The Moment Lawrence Knew Something Had to Change 32:00 Leaving the Old Version of Yourself Behind 37:00 Forgiveness Without Sacrificing Your Boundaries 43:00 Taking Back Ownership of Your Life 47:00 What Lawrence Would Say to Someone Who Feels Stuck 53:00 Chuck's Challenge Chuck's Challenge This week, Chuck is taking Lawrence up on one of the most practical ideas from their conversation: sit in silence for one full hour and pay attention to what comes up. No phone. No television. No music. No distractions. Instead of immediately reaching for something to fill the silence, notice your thoughts. What keeps coming up? Is there something you've been avoiding, suppressing, or distracting yourself from? Chuck's challenge is not just to notice it, but to identify something that needs your attention and begin working through it. Connect with Lawrence C. Harris Website: https://www.lawrencecharris.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawrencec.empowers Connect with Chuck Check out the website: https://www.thecompassionateconnection.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuck-thuss-a9aa044/ Follow on Instagram: @warriorsunmasked Join the Warriors Unmasked community by subscribing to the show. Together, we're breaking stigmas and shining a light on mental health, one story at a time.

    The Wealthy Cowboy Show
    Ep 141 - Phil Garcia: Taking Control of Your Life and Building the One You Want

    The Wealthy Cowboy Show

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2026


    Ep 141 - Phil Garcia: Taking Control of Your Life and Building the One You Want Crockett Carothers Phil Garcia wasn't necessarily supposed to be successful but he was able to take control of his life and make it happen. He found some great mentors in life that helped him push himself to be better. Phil has built a reputation in the finance world and is also living his dream of owning a small ranch. This one isn't just about business it's about life. Be a Guest:https://beaguest.netlify.app/Wealthy Cowboy Merch:https://rodeobonus.com/storeThe Wealthy Cowboy VIP:https://www.skool.com/the-wealthy-cowboy-vip-6536/about?ref=d30cd83cb8824bc7885158a8ec9366a5

    Your Life
    Your Life | 201 | One Of The Few

    Your Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2026 28:40 Transcription Available


    Someone asked Jesus a question many people still wonder about: “Lord, are only a few going to be saved?”Jesus could have answered with a number.He didn't.Instead, He turned the question back toward the people listening: “Strive to enter through the narrow door.”In this episode of Your Life, Dr. Tony Haire and Dan DeBruler explore Jesus' challenging words in Luke 13 and the difference between simply being familiar with Jesus and actually living in relationship with Him.It's possible to know the language. Attend church. Study the Bible. Be surrounded by Christians. Talk the talk.But proximity isn't the same as relationship.Tony and Dan also discuss how easily Christians can become distracted by everyone else's spiritual condition—especially in an age of social media where publicly examining, criticizing and labeling other believers has become remarkably easy.Jesus turns our attention back toward the mirror.Instead of asking how many will make it through the narrow door, perhaps the more important question is:Am I actually following Jesus through it?Your Life airs Tuesdays at 2pm Eastern on Christian 105.7 - WCLN-FMConnect and learn more at Christian1057.com

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert
    Wearable Tech to Release Muscles & Reduce Pain - Brian Burzynski Ep 689

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2026 49:01


    Brian Burzynski is the inventor of Intelligent Threads also has been doing synergy release method for over 25 yearsContact Brian Burzynski:intelligentthreads.comsynergyrelatemethod.com.Dr. Kimberley LinertSpeaker, Author, Broadcaster, Mentor, Trainer, Behavioral OptometristEvent Planners- I am available to speak at your event. Here is my media kit: https://brucemerrinscelebrityspeakers.com/portfolio/dr-kimberley-linert/To book Dr. Linert on your podcast, television show, conference, corporate training or as an expert guest please email her at incrediblelifepodcast@gmail.com or Contact Bruce Merrin at Bruce Merrin's Celebrity Speakers at merrinpr@gmail.com702.256.9199Host of the Podcast Series: Incredible Life Creator PodcastAvailable on...Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incredible-life-creator-with-dr-kimberley-linert/id1472641267Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6DZE3EoHfhgcmSkxY1CvKf?si=ebe71549e7474663 and on 9 other podcast platformsAuthor of Book: "Visualizing Happiness in Every Area of Your Life"Get on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4cmTOMwThe Great Discovery eLearning platform: https://thegreatdiscovery.com/kimberleyl

    Take2
    If They Made a Movie of Your Life, What Would the Title Be?

    Take2

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2026 50:30


    On today's Take 2 with Jerry & Debbie our topic is: If They Made a Movie of Your Life, What Would the Title Be?

    The Narcissist in Your Life Podcast
    Childhood Shame & The Narcissistic Parent

    The Narcissist in Your Life Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 27, 2026 5:59


    Click Below for Freeing Yourself From the Narcissist in Your Life https://tinyurl.com/mppxyba7   Click Below for Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist https://tinyurl.com/2s4janb7   Click Below for The Mental Health Radio News Network https://tinyurl.com/3j2ds9nb

    ReWilding for Women - Empowering Women through Meditation, Shamanism, Astrology, and Inner Archetypal and Goddess Practices

    Venus Retrograde 2026 is here — and this one goes deep. For 41 days + 41 nights, Venus descends through Scorpio + Libra, bringing us face-to-face with love, desire, sexuality, relationships, money, pleasure + what we really want. JOURNEY WITH VENUS →  ReWilding with Venus is open through October 4. Journey with the archetype of Venus through this retrograde to awaken more of your pleasure, desire, love, beauty + feminine life force. Eight years ago, Venus moved through this same retrograde territory. Where were you in fall 2018? And who are you now? In this September 28–October 4 astrology forecast, we explore Venus stationing retrograde in Scorpio on October 3 and beginning her 41-day descent through Scorpio + Libra. We'll look at what Venus Retrograde may be revealing around love, relationships, sexuality, money, power, desire + pleasure—and the places we may have abandoned what we really want in order to keep the peace, belong or maintain the relationships around us. This isn't simply about revisiting the past. It's an invitation to strip away what has kept you disconnected from your deepest aliveness and reclaim more of your joy, pleasure, love, radiance + feminine life force. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS ✦ Venus Retrograde 2026: 41 days of love, money, sexuality, pleasure + relationships ✦ The 8-Year Venus Cycle: What was happening in your life in 2018—and 2010? ✦ Scorpio → Libra: Desire, power + shadow. Then relationships, attachment + self-abandonment ✦ The Feminine Underworld: Inanna, Persephone + the deeper mysteries of this descent ✦ Reclaiming Your Aliveness: Desire, pleasure, joy + more of what makes you feel alive __________ JOURNEY DEEPER BONES — LIVING CLOSE TO THE BONE Join Sabrina LIVE on October 1 for this month's ReWilding Workshop as we attune to the energetics of October + enter the mythic territory of Inanna's Descent through the Seven Gates. Bones is where we work directly with the living energetics of the moment through embodiment, journey + ReWilding practice. $59/month • Join for this month or stay as long as it serves you. Join Bones → REWILDING WITH VENUS Journey with Venus through her 41-day retrograde descent and awaken the deeper Venusian mysteries of love, pleasure, desire, embodiment + feminine life force. Your Venus journey also includes Persephone + Isis activations to support the descent, initiation + deeper feminine mysteries unfolding through this retrograde. Open through October 4 Explore ReWilding with Venus → TEACHER & FACILITATOR TRAINING IS OPEN If you know there's more in you—not just more to learn, but more you're capable of perceiving, holding + carrying—applications are now open for the 2027 ReWilding Method Teacher & Facilitator Training. Three years. 1,000+ hours. Become the work. Learn the craft. Make your art with it. Explore Teacher & Facilitator Training →  _____ Listen to “Venus Retrograde Is Back Here After 8 Years. Look at Your Life.“ podcast here… Topics Explored in “Venus Retrograde Is Back Here After 8 Years. Look at Your Life.” podcast: (Times based off audio version) Chapters (00:00) – The 8-Year Venus Retrograde Cycle: Reflections from 2010 & 2018 (02:14) – Sacred Archetypes: Mars, Horus & Sophia in Aspect (05:25) – Core Themes: Calling Energy Inward & Matters of the Heart (06:44) – Monday: Sun Trine Uranus – Intuitive Hits & Breakthroughs (08:59) – Tuesday: Mercury Conjunct Pele – Volcanic Truth & Emotional Release (12:50) – Chiron & The Nodes of Fate: Clearing Karma & Soul Path Alignment (15:10) – Wednesday: Mercury Enters Scorpio & Sun Conjunct Mary Magdalene (18:37) – Archetypal Awakening & The Venus Journey Doorway (20:45) – Thursday: Inanna's Descent & Stepping Through the Seven Gates (22:06) – Friday: Mars Square Mercury & Pluto – Underworld Initiations (27:37) – Mars Trine Neptune: Divine Masculine Holding the Sacred Container (28:41) – Saturday: Venus Stations Retrograde in Scorpio (The 41-Day Descent) (30:44) – Scorpio Shadow Work: Reclaiming Desire, Pleasure & Life Force (36:00) – Libra Healing: Shedding People-Pleasing & Transforming Relationship Patterns (37:10) – The 3 Phases of Venus Retrograde: Evening Star to Morning Star (41:33) – Mars Opposite Pluto: The Rite of Passage into Empowerment (42:36) – Sunday: Sun Opposite Saturn – Grounded Presence & Feminine Expression (43:54) – Deepening the Journey & Closing Thoughts You can leave a comment or question for Sabrina on the YouTube version(opens in new tab) of this episode. Listen to after “Venus Retrograde Is Back Here After 8 Years. Look at Your Life.“: This Is No Ordinary Equinox The Part of You You Buried Is Coming Back (Sept 14–20) STAY CONNECTED ReWilding Weekly (free, embodied astrology)  IG  Website  Disclaimer: Educational/spiritual perspectives; not medical/mental-health advice. #2025Shift #NewHuman #SpiritualAwakening Welcome to The ReWilding Way! A gifted facilitator of revolutionary inner work and the world's leading archetypal embodiment expert, Sabrina Lynn is the creator of the groundbreaking ReWilding Way and founder of ReWilding For Women. Sabrina has led more than 100,000 people through programs based on the ReWilding Way, a modality of healing and awakening that strips away the false, the deep wounds from early life, and the fears that hold people back, to reveal their true and unique soul light and help them build their innate capacity to shine it in the world. Her work includes in-person retreats and events, the monthly ReWilding Membership, Living Close to the Bone, Priest/ess Trainings, Mystery Schools, the ReWilding with the Archetypes, and the wildly popular 6 Faces of the Feminine workshop series. Welcome to ReWilding! The post 404 – Venus Retrograde Is Back Here After 8 Years. Look at Your Life. appeared first on Rewilding for Women.

    Eastridge Baptist Church Sermons
    God's Faithful Purpose for Your Life | 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

    Eastridge Baptist Church Sermons

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 27, 2026 50:44


    God's Faithful Purpose for Your Life | 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 Pastor Justin McKitterick Download Sermon Outline

    Bookworm
    258: You Can Just Do Things by Cate Hall

    Bookworm

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2026 93:16


    Today's author promises to help us live with agency and take control of our future. Join Mike & Cory as they consider how to stop waiting and build the life they want.Support the ShowWoody WallsThe Goal by Eli GoldrattYou Can Just Do Things by Cate HallMillion Dollar Weekend by Noah KaganAll The Wrong Moves by Sasha ChapinLiminal Thinking by Dave GrayThe Story of You by Ian Morgan CronGrit by Angela DuckworthThe Meaning of Your Life by Arthur BrooksSituated by Angela DuckworthRecommend a BookCory's Rating: ⭐⭐⭐Mike's Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

    your life cate hall
    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert
    Formulas That Feed The Body At the Cellular Level - JR Ortiz Ep 688

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2026 44:20


    JR Ortiz's personal fat-to-fit transformation using Macro Greens® led to why it worked when nothing else did. Though his studies and building the sales team he became the lead formulator and is now the President of MacroLife Naturals. JR is devoted to bridging the gap between allopathic and holistic medicine, building formulas that feed the body at the cellular level while making them complementary to commonly prescribed medications and absolutely delicious!JR worked on the Corporate Advisory Board of the UCLA School of Nursing as the official liaison for UCLA into the Natural Products Industry. He remains the youngest board member ever at UCLA since his appointment in 2008.Contact JR Ortiz:https://macrolifenaturals.com/https://www.instagram.com/macrolife_naturals/Dr. Kimberley LinertSpeaker, Author, Broadcaster, Mentor, Trainer, Behavioral OptometristEvent Planners- I am available to speak at your event. Here is my media kit: https://brucemerrinscelebrityspeakers.com/portfolio/dr-kimberley-linert/To book Dr. Linert on your podcast, television show, conference, corporate training or as an expert guest please email her at incrediblelifepodcast@gmail.com or Contact Bruce Merrin at Bruce Merrin's Celebrity Speakers at merrinpr@gmail.com702.256.9199Host of the Podcast Series: Incredible Life Creator PodcastAvailable on...Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incredible-life-creator-with-dr-kimberley-linert/id1472641267Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6DZE3EoHfhgcmSkxY1CvKf?si=ebe71549e7474663 and on 9 other podcast platformsAuthor of Book: "Visualizing Happiness in Every Area of Your Life"Get on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4cmTOMwThe Great Discovery eLearning platform: https://thegreatdiscovery.com/kimberleyl

    fiction/non/fiction
    S9 Ep. 49 Sam A. Miller on YouTube Storytelling and Choosing Science Fiction

    fiction/non/fiction

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2026 40:08


    Fiction writer and popular YouTuber Sam A. Miller joins co-hosts Christian Barter and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his debut story collection, Still Lost: Tales from the Year 2080, as well as his educational and comedic videos. Miller reflects on how he got started on YouTube a decade ago, when he was an adolescent, and amassed 4.8 million followers by developing Sam O'Nella Academy, a channel with a scrappy, homemade feel and distinct illustrations. Miller discusses the genesis of the unusual aliens who set the stage for most of Still Lost's human-centered stories by solving potentially world-ending problems like climate change right off the bat. He explains why he decided to self-publish the science fiction collection and how it found its way to a traditional publisher. He also shares his science fiction influences and talks about how his personal history with addiction shapes the book's final story. He reads from Still Lost. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by Christian Barter, V.V. Ganeshananthan, AJ Abernathy, Grace Workman, and Sienna Hoopingarner. Sam MillerStill Lost: Tales from the Year 2080 by Sam A. MillerSam O'Nella Academy - YouTubeOthersStories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir Blindsight by Peter WattsWheelers by Ian Stewart & Jack CohenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

    Thursday Mornings with Alex and Don
    Did Jesus Claim to Be God? The Meaning of “I AM”

    Thursday Mornings with Alex and Don

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2026 30:55 Transcription Available


    What did Jesus mean when He said, “I AM”? In John's Gospel, Jesus makes several remarkable “I AM” statements. He calls Himself the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, and the true vine. But one statement stands out: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Why would Jesus speak this way? And why did His opponents react so strongly? In this episode of Relish, Alex and Don examine Jesus' “I AM” statements and their connection to God's revelation of Himself in the Old Testament. The discussion then moves from theology to application. Knowing God's name is one thing. Knowing God personally is another. The hosts explore what reconciliation through Christ means, how the Holy Spirit gives believers a new identity, and what it means to live as a child and heir of God. The conversation also addresses shame, addiction, testimony, prayer, Christian community, baptism, communion, self-examination, and the struggle to allow God to lead rather than simply giving Him a place in our religious life. At the center of it all is one question: When Jesus said “I AM,” was He claiming to be God?   00:00:57 — “I AM” and Identity 00:03:09 — Did Jesus Claim to Be God? 00:07:37 — Knowing God vs. Knowing About God 00:11:50 — New Life Through the Spirit 00:15:55 — Are Your Names Written in the Book of Life? 00:19:53 — Is Jesus Really Lord of Your Life? 00:22:33 — What Does a New Identity Look Like? 00:25:45 — Why You Should Examine Yourself First 00:27:18 — “It Is No Secret What God Can Do”

    The Over 50 Health & Wellness Podcast
    Behind the Book: Chapter 8 — Food Is Fuel, Not the Enemy

    The Over 50 Health & Wellness Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2026 26:48 Transcription Available


    Text us a comment or question!What emotions come to mind when you think about food?For far too many people, the answer isn't nourishment, enjoyment, or gratitude. It's guilt, fear, anxiety, confusion, and shame.After decades of conflicting nutrition advice - don't eat fat, don't eat carbs, skip breakfast, eat six meals a day, avoid fruit - it's no wonder so many of us have come to see food as a threat rather than a resource.In this episode of the Behind the Book series, Kevin reads Chapter 8 of his upcoming book, Fully Alive: A Blueprint for Building the Strongest, Healthiest, and Most Meaningful Second Half of Your Life.This chapter explores a powerful mindset shift: moving away from restriction, punishment, and fear -and learning to view food as fuel for the body and life you're trying to build.Kevin explains why calories matter - but aren't the whole story - how chronic under-fueling may be affecting your energy, strength, recovery, cravings, and metabolism, and why the question isn't simply, “How little can I eat?” but rather, “How well can I nourish myself?”In this episode, you'll discover:How decades of conflicting nutrition advice created widespread food fear and confusionWhy labeling foods as “good” or “bad” can damage your relationship with eatingThe important difference between fearing food and respecting itWhy food provides far more than caloriesHow food influences hunger, fullness, energy, recovery, performance, and body compositionWhy the quality and quantity of your food both matterCommon signs that you may be chronically under-fuelingHow prolonged restriction can affect energy, cravings, strength, mood, and recoveryWhy eating less isn't always the answer—especially after 50What it means to approach nutrition with a builder's mindsetHow to make food important without allowing it to consume your thoughtsThe liberating question that can transform your relationship with food: “How well can I nourish myself?” Kevin wants your honest opinion - does Chapter 8 earn its place in Fully Alive?Did it offer a useful new perspective on nourishment and under-fueling? Did it deepen the book's message - or did it feel like territory that had already been covered?Send Kevin your feedback and help shape the final version of Fully Alive. Don't hold back. He wants the good, the bad, and the ugly.Send your email to coach@silveredgefitness.com.How ready is your body for the next 30 years?Take the free, three-minute Fully Alive Quiz to discover how well your current habits support your strength, metabolism, energy and independence. Answer 20 quick questions across the four pillars of healthy aging—Nourish, Strength, Move and Recover—and receive your personalized result with clear next steps.

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert
    Who Are You Being Called To Become? - Sandra Dee Robinson Ep 687

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2026 52:08


    Sandra Dee Robinson knows what it means to be visible. After years in television and decades studying communication and human behavior, her work now focuses on something deeper: helping people answer a very different question: "Who are you being called to become?" Through Unbridled Life, she draws on communication, human behavior, and the wisdom of the natural world to help women, and men, trust themselves and step into what's next.Contact Sandra Dee Robinson:website: www.SandraDeeRobinson.comwww.UnbridledLife.TVhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/sandradeerobinson/@MeImSandraDeehttps://www.facebook.com/CoachSandraDeeDr. Kimberley LinertSpeaker, Author, Broadcaster, Mentor, Trainer, Behavioral OptometristEvent Planners- I am available to speak at your event. Here is my media kit: https://brucemerrinscelebrityspeakers.com/portfolio/dr-kimberley-linert/To book Dr. Linert on your podcast, television show, conference, corporate training or as an expert guest please email her at incrediblelifepodcast@gmail.com or Contact Bruce Merrin at Bruce Merrin's Celebrity Speakers at merrinpr@gmail.com702.256.9199Host of the Podcast Series: Incredible Life Creator PodcastAvailable on...Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incredible-life-creator-with-dr-kimberley-linert/id1472641267Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6DZE3EoHfhgcmSkxY1CvKf?si=ebe71549e7474663 and on 9 other podcast platformsAuthor of Book: "Visualizing Happiness in Every Area of Your Life"Get on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4cmTOMwThe Great Discovery eLearning platform: https://thegreatdiscovery.com/kimberleyl

    amazon apple mentor trainers your life broadcaster every area sandra dee robinson visualizing happiness
    Voices Of Courage
    How Words Can Heal Your Soul | Dr. Norman Rosenthal | Ken D Foster | #VOC S10EP9

    Voices Of Courage

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2026 59:09


    What if the medicine you needed most wasn't in a prescription bottle, but in a poem? In this episode of Voices of Courage, we explore the healing power of words, the wisdom of embracing life's hardest seasons, and the science behind why some of us feel the darkness more heavily than others. Ken sits down with Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal, the pioneering psychiatrist who first identified Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and changed the way the world understands the connection between light, mood, and healing. Together, they explore how poetry can become prescription, how adversity can become a teacher, and how true health and happiness are possible in every season of life, not just the sunny ones.   Dr. Norman Rosenthal is an American psychiatrist, author, and coach best known for leading the team that first described Seasonal Affective Disorder and for pioneering light therapy as a treatment for it. A discovery that has brought relief to millions worldwide. A best-selling author many times over, his books include Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation, PoetryRx: How 50 Inspiring Poems Can Heal and Bring Joy to Your Life, The Gift of Adversity: The Unexpected Benefits of Life's Difficulties, Setbacks and Imperfections, and his newest work, Defeating SAD: A Guide to Health and Happiness Through All Seasons.

    BecomeNew.Me
    87. The Lord of the Rings' Most Important Lesson

    BecomeNew.Me

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2026 12:19 Transcription Available


    Why did Frodo need Gollum?Coming to you from Hobbiton, New Zealand, John Ortberg explores one of the deepest themes running through J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings:Mercy.Bilbo could have killed Gollum. Frodo could have killed him. Sam could have killed him.But pity stayed their hands.And when Frodo finally reaches Mount Doom, something surprising happens: he fails. His own willpower isn't enough to destroy the ring.Yet the mercy extended to Gollum earlier in the story follows Frodo all the way to the end.“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.”Maybe we need mercy because none of us can save ourselves.And maybe there's a Gollum somewhere in your day who needs mercy too.#LordOfTheRings #Tolkien #JohnOrtberg #Hobbiton #Psalm23 #Mercy #Gollum

    Narrated
    377: The Radiant Dark

    Narrated

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2026 20:01


    This time we discussed The Radiant Dark, written by Alexandra Oliva and narrated by Barrie Kreinik. The Radiant Dark [Libro.fm] / [OverDrive/Libby] Arrival (2016) Stories of Your Life and Others [Libro.fm] / [Overdrive/Libby] Contact - Unabridged [Libro.fm] / [Overdrive/Libby] The Three-Body Problem [Libro.fm] / [Overdrive/Libby] For All Mankind (2019-2027) A Half-Built Garden [Libro.fm] / [Overdrive/Libby] Where I Can't Follow [Libro.fm] / [Overdrive/Libby] Looking Forward To: Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Threads of Fate by Angie Thomas - Jan 12, 2027 [Libro.fm] / [Overdrive/Libby] Additional middle grade magical world recommendations: [Blusky]

    Your Life
    Your Life | 200 | Where Have You Positioned Your Mind

    Your Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2026 31:37 Transcription Available


    Positive thinking may change your mood. But Paul is talking about something much deeper.In Colossians 3, believers are told to “set your mind on things above.” But that doesn't mean ignoring the bills, pretending groceries aren't expensive, or denying the very real circumstances causing anxiety in our lives.In this episode of Your Life, Dr. Tony Haire and Dan DeBruler explore the difference between simply trying to think positively and learning to think from our identity in Christ.Paul begins with who we are: we've been raised with Christ, our lives are hidden with Christ in God, and the old life no longer defines us. From that new identity comes a new way of thinking—and eventually a new way of living.Because thoughts don't stay thoughts forever. What occupies the mind eventually affects our words, decisions, relationships and actions.The goal, then, isn't simply behaving better. It's becoming increasingly like Christ.Your Life airs Tuesdays at 2pm Eastern on Christian 105.7 - WCLN-FMConnect and learn more at Christian1057.com

    House of Bob
    Triple Agents Chapter 20 [Triangle Agency]

    House of Bob

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2026 58:08


    “The Patented Sandra Maneuver” It's time to d-d-d-d-d-duel!! Episode Artwork by Jake ⁠@Javoc.bsky.social⁠ House of Bob Cover Artwork by ⁠@ShaunMakes⁠ Audio Editing by Jessica Colvin Sound Design by ⁠Astronomic Audio⁠ Music by ⁠Duke Albert⁠ Featuring: Jake as The General Manager Alex as Greb Cristina as Sandra Shen Jessica as Veronica — Need More Bob in Your Life?  Check out our other (SFW!) podcast, Tales of Bob Apple Podcasts Spotify — Support the Show: Patreon Contact Us: Discord TheHouseOfBob.org Bluesky Instagram Facebook Email — Thank you so much to our current Patreon supporters! This podcast would not be possible without you. Battle Born RPG Club Bradley Graham Charles Watts Christine Braile Connor McColloch D Chan Dan Klip-Klop Elli EmpCod Ethan Edwards Garbanzo Jeffery Sumler Jessica  Jessica Colvin Josh Joshua Keith Haddad Mark AB Michael nsc 8 Padraig Hegarty Pavel Lishin Sadie Tucker  Scooter Emerson Shaka Jamal Team EAMONN  The Pink Pastor Thomas Kuhlmann Tom Wesley Waffelpokalypse  Triple Agents is an independent production by The House of Bob and is not affiliated with Triangle Agency or Haunted Table, LLC. It is published under the Triangle Agency Third Party License. Triangle Agency is copyright Haunted Table, LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    The Chasing Health Podcast
    Ep. 450 Q&A - Is 15 Minutes of Strength Training Enough? What's the ONE Exercise You'd Do Forever? Why Is Losing Weight Harder the Second Time? - The Coaches Roundtable

    The Chasing Health Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2026 25:26


    SummaryWhat happens when you know strength training is important, but you have zero motivation to do it? Is 15 minutes, three times per week enough to get started?In this Coaches Roundtable Q&A, Chase and Chris talk about why starting small can be one of the best ways to build a routine. Instead of trying to go from zero to perfect overnight, you can use short workouts as a stepping stone and slowly build from there.They also talk about a common problem that happens before vacations, holidays, and weekends away. It is easy to think, “I'm going to be off track this weekend anyway, so why bother today?” But those extra days add up. Staying consistent when you can helps you build the identity and habits you need for long-term results.Chase and Chris also answer what exercise they would choose if they could only do one for the rest of their lives. That leads into a conversation about strength, mobility, and being able to stay independent as you get older.Then things get a little more entertaining as they share some of their worst and funniest gym experiences, including injuries, awkward locker room moments, getting called out for being on a phone between sets, and ripping pants while squatting.Finally, they break down why losing weight for the second, third, or fifth time can feel so much harder than the first. They discuss expectations, mindset, activity levels, muscle loss, and why constantly telling yourself that weight loss is going to suck can make the process feel even harder.The big takeaway is simple: you do not need to be perfect. Keep showing up, build your habits one step at a time, and focus on being consistent more often than you are not. Chapters(00:00) Why We Give Up Before Vacation Even Starts(04:15) Is 15 Minutes of Strength Training 3 Days a Week Enough?(05:27) Start Small and Build Your Workout Habit(07:07) How to Get the Most Out of a 15-Minute Workout(09:09) If You Could Only Do One Exercise for the Rest of Your Life(12:21) Our Worst and Most Embarrassing Gym Experiences(18:22) Why Is Losing Weight Harder the Second or Third Time?(21:09) How Your Expectations and Mindset Affect Weight Loss(22:39) Muscle Loss, Metabolism, and Activity Levels(23:51) Final Thoughts and How to Submit Your QuestionsSUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS to be answered on the show: https://forms.gle/B6bpTBDYnDcbUkeD7How to Connect with Us:Chase's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/changing_chase/Chris' Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conquer_fitness2021/Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/665770984678334/Interested in 1:1 Coaching: https://conquerfitnessandnutrition.com/1on1-coachingJoin The Fit Fam Collective: https://conquerfitnessandnutrition.com/fit-fam-collective

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert
    From Confusion To Clarity After Traumatic Brain Injury - Dr. Ingryd Lorenzana Ep 686

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2026 52:04


    Ingryd Lorenzana never expected that the greatest challenge of her life would become the foundation of her life's work. After suffering a traumatic brain injury in childhood, she spent decades unknowingly navigating the hidden consequences of that injury. Reading difficulties, anxiety, fatigue, learning struggles, and cognitive overload became part of daily life, yet no one connected the dots. Years later, a surprising discovery revealed what had been overlooked for decades: the profound relationship between vision and the brain. That realization changed everything. Today, Dr. Lorenzana is a Pediatric and Neuro-Optometrist, educator, researcher, speaker, and creator of the CogniViiSION® Methodology. Through her clinical work, she has helped thousands of patients better understand the visual barriers affecting their ability to heal, learn, perform, and thrive. In When Sight Heals the Brain, she shares her deeply personal journey from confusion to clarity, from patient to practitioner, and from surviving to helping others reclaim their lives through the power of vision, neuroscience, and hope. Her mission is to help others discover what she wishes she had known decades earlier: Sometimes the missing piece isn't in the eyes. It's in understanding how vision shapes the brain.Contact Dr. Ingryd Lorenzana:https://www.amazon.com/author/dringrydWebsite: www.brain-vision.orgInstagram: instagram.com/cogniviisionlinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dringrydfacebook: facebook.com/VisionTherapyDocsDr. Kimberley LinertSpeaker, Author, Broadcaster, Mentor, Trainer, Behavioral OptometristEvent Planners- I am available to speak at your event. Here is my media kit: https://brucemerrinscelebrityspeakers.com/portfolio/dr-kimberley-linert/To book Dr. Linert on your podcast, television show, conference, corporate training or as an expert guest please email her at incrediblelifepodcast@gmail.com or Contact Bruce Merrin at Bruce Merrin's Celebrity Speakers at merrinpr@gmail.com702.256.9199Host of the Podcast Series: Incredible Life Creator PodcastAvailable on...Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incredible-life-creator-with-dr-kimberley-linert/id1472641267Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6DZE3EoHfhgcmSkxY1CvKf?si=ebe71549e7474663 and on 9 other podcast platformsAuthor of Book: "Visualizing Happiness in Every Area of Your Life"Get on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4cmTOMwThe Great Discovery eLearning platform: https://thegreatdiscovery.com/kimberleyl

    The ICOI Podcast
    Time Never Comes Back: What Will Be Left of Your Life on the Day of Judgment?

    The ICOI Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2026 18:56


    Time Never Comes Back: What Will Be Left of Your Life on the Day of Judgment? by Shaykh Tariq Ata.For more information and further updates, please visit us at https://www.icoi.net. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    She Rises Studios Podcast
    You Are Fabulous: Get Focused, Stay Aligned, Believe in Yourself w/Susan Heartlight

    She Rises Studios Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2026 20:05


    Susan Heartlight's journey began as a single mother working three jobs when a social worker named Judy encouraged her to consider college. No one in Susan's family had attended college, so higher education had never felt like part of her path. But when Judy told her, “Do it for your children,” Susan made the decision to apply.After beginning her studies with courses in dance and poetry, Susan met with a guidance counselor who helped her create a clearer career path. An aptitude test suggested she would be well suited for a career as a scientist, architect, or psychologist. Because of her love for people, she chose psychology.Determined to succeed, Susan took additional courses to strengthen her academic writing and improve her grades. Her leadership abilities soon emerged, and she was asked to serve as President of the Honor Society, where she helped raise more scholarship funding than her predecessors.Susan also volunteered at a battered women's shelter, supporting women and children as they worked to escape violent situations and rebuild their lives.Her educational journey ultimately opened an unexpected door when she was recruited to attend the College of Notre Dame, marking another transformative chapter in her story.Special OfferOnly 20 available !!!$50 provides 30-minute personal session andAutographed Book: One Power For Good  Actions to Create Joy in Your Life!You may choose to purchase book on Amazon $25 or Kindle version $9.99One Hour Session $150   Two Hour Session $250  Three Hour Session $400https://susanheartlight.com/

    Rockport Baptist Church
    Ministering Widows

    Rockport Baptist Church

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2026 36:56


    Because mature widows have much to contribute to the life and ministry of the church, we should encourage them to use their gifts, even as we encourage younger women to remain faithful in their calling as wives and mothers in this season of life. I. The Call to Enlist Women in the Widow Core vv 9-10 II. The Better Priorities for Younger Widows in the Church vv 11-15 III. Don't Forget to Take Care for the Widows in Your Life who have needs v 16

    The Genre of Your Life
    RESIDENT EVIL, ONSLAUGHT & THE DOG STARS | Review Roundup

    The Genre of Your Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2026 33:40


    The Genre of Your Life
    Fall 2026 Movie Preview — Part 2 | Ep. 109

    The Genre of Your Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2026 83:07


    In Episode 109 of The Genre of Your Life, Nick, Doug, and Moses are back together for Part 2 of their Fall 2026 Movie Preview, breaking down even more of the biggest and most anticipated movies coming to theaters this fall.From potential blockbusters and awards contenders to unexpected surprises and movies that could end up dominating the conversation, the guys take a look at what's ahead and share their thoughts, expectations, and predictions for the fall movie season.Which movies are they most excited to see? Which ones have them skeptical? And what could end up being the biggest surprises of the season?

    Daily Devotional By Archbishop Foley Beach
    Is Your Life Driven by Anxiety, or Do You Walk with the Holy Spirit Who Is Working Out God's Purpose in Your Life?

    Daily Devotional By Archbishop Foley Beach

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2026 1:00


    Is Your Life Driven by Anxiety, or Do You Walk with the Holy Spirit Who Is Working Out God's Purpose in Your Life? MESSAGE SUMMARY: Where is God's involvement in your life? God's “life interventions”, in your life, can provide either a success or a setback. For example, we lose a job; or we get a job. God can turn our world upside down. It is not that we have done anything wrong; it is the Holy Spirit working out God's purpose in your life. We need to hear what the Angels said in Mathew 1:20: “an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.'”; and we need to hear what Jesus said in Mathew 6:34: “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”. If we follow the lead of the Holy Spirit in all aspects and seasons of our lives, we can see the birthing of another miracle in our lives.   TODAY'S PRAYER: Lord, I now take a deep breath and stop. So often I miss your hand and gifts in my life because I am preoccupied and anxious. Grant me the power to pause each day and each week to simply rest in your arms of love. In Jesus' name, amen. Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 132). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, because I am filled with the Holy Spirit, I will not be controlled by my Inconsistencies. Rather, I will walk in the Spirit's fruit of Faithfulness. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22f). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): John 20:19-25; Luke 24:46-49; John 1:12; Psalms 78e:49-60. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon: “Some Christians Easily Walk Away from God, But God Rejoices When They Return”, at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

    Magic on The Inside
    Ep 366: Your Past, Present, and Future Self Are Your Support Team

    Magic on The Inside

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2026 15:37


    Your past self, present self, and future self are all listening to this video right now. The real question is whether they're on the same team.This is part 3 of our pre-Expedition to Soul series. Part 1 was about living your life as a magical practice, and part 2 was about you as the altar. This one is for the days when both of those feel impossible to remember. I'm talking about assembling your allies: calling every version of you back together so you can be your own support system instead of getting pulled in fifty directions at once.In this video:- Why at least three versions of you are hearing this video, and each one hears it differently- What "being your authentic self" even means when your identity can shift twenty times in one day- How fragmenting yourself shows up as zero motivation, negativity you can't shake, and practices you keep forgetting to do- The difference between creating your own energy and living in constant reaction to whatever's happening around you- Why so many of us treat our future self like a cousin we haven't talked to in 40 years- The two ways the past keeps us stuck: romanticizing it, or using it as proof that today can't be different- Why I'm not sold on "everything happens for a reason" (and yes, my husband likes to remind me I'm not all-knowing)- A simple way to call the scattered pieces of your energy back homeTry this after you watch:Picture past you, present you, and future you sitting right in front of you. Then ask yourself:- What is past me saying that's shaping how present me shows up?- What is future me afraid of, and how is that fear steering what I do today?- What does today actually need?

    The Over 50 Health & Wellness Podcast
    Behind the Book: Chapter 7 – Your Muscle Retirement Account

    The Over 50 Health & Wellness Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2026 32:42 Transcription Available


    Text us a comment or question!What if one of the most important things you could do for your future had nothing to do with losing weight?What if you should be paying more attention to building muscle?In this episode of The Over 50 Health & Wellness Show, I'm continuing my special Behind the Book series by reading Chapter 7 of my upcoming book, Fully Alive: A Blueprint for Building the Strongest, Healthiest, and Most Meaningful Second Half of Your Life.And this chapter is called Muscle Changes Everything.For decades, we've been taught to think about muscle as something cosmetic - big biceps, six-pack abs, bodybuilders, athletes, and gym rats.But especially after 50, muscle is about something much bigger.Muscle is capacity.Muscle is resilience.Muscle is protection.Muscle is freedom.It helps determine whether you can climb the stairs, carry your luggage, get off the floor, play with your grandkids, recover from illness or injury, travel, stay active, and continue saying YES to life.In this episode, you'll discover:Why muscle is far more than cosmetic tissueWhy getting lighter isn't necessarily the same thing as getting healthierHow muscle protects your independence and freedomThe idea behind your Muscle Retirement AccountWhy strength training after 50 is an investment—not punishmentHow small physical investments compound over decadesWhy your ability to remain active later in life is being built right nowThe incredible story of a woman who began lifting at 70 and became a world-record powerlifterWhy it's never too late to become strongerAnd why building muscle may be one of the best investments you can make in your next 30 yearsI Want Your FeedbackFully Alive is still being written and revised - and you're getting a behind-the-scenes look at the book before the finished version ever hits the shelves. And I genuinely want your help making it better.What resonated with you in this chapter? Did the Muscle Retirement Account change the way you think about strength training? Was there something you disagreed with, wanted me to explain better, or wished I had gone deeper on? Or did this chapter remind you of your own story?Email me at coach@silveredgefitness.com.I personally read your messages, and your feedback may help shape the final version of Fully Alive.And if you know somebody who still thinks lifting weights after 50 is just about looking good... send them this episode.Because we're not building muscle just to change what we see in the mirror. We're building it so that 10, 20, and 30 years from now, we still have the strength, capacity, independence, and freedom to fully participate in our lives.

    Get Back To Your Life
    Spine Surgery, Unfiltered: Two Surgeons Talk Diagnosis to Recovery | Episode 92

    Get Back To Your Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2026 54:38


    Spine surgery has come a long way, but not every patient is offered the same options. In fact, the treatment you're offered can depend a lot on who you ask. Why is that? In this episode of Get Back to Your Life®, VSI spine surgeons Dr. Christopher Good and Dr. Alex Upfill-Brown have a candid conversation about where spine surgery stands today, where it still falls short, and what patients should know before making decisions about their treatment. They explore why two surgeons can look at the same problem and recommend very different approaches, the growing role of motion-preservation and minimally invasive treatments, and how rapidly advancing technologies like robotics and AI are making spine surgery more precise, predictable, and safer for patients. They also discuss why a second, or even third, opinion can be so valuable, the most important questions patients should ask when choosing a spine surgeon, and why planning for recovery should begin before surgery ever takes place. Plus, Dr. Upfill-Brown shares the unexpected path that led him to spine surgery, why he chose to join VSI, and the personal philosophy that guides the way he cares for every patient. Whether you're considering spine surgery, searching for another opinion, or simply trying to understand what options may be available, this unfiltered conversation offers an inside look at how spine care is evolving, and just how that evolution can ultimately mean better options and better outcomes for patients.

    The Vibrant Wellness Podcast
    Why “Normal for Your Age” Shouldn't Be the Goal | Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, MD, FACC

    The Vibrant Wellness Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2026 34:55 Transcription Available


    Dr. Jeffrey Gladden joins the show to discuss longevity, healthy aging, nervous system health, and what it means to live young for a lifetime. Together, we explore why feeling unwell should not automatically be accepted as a normal part of aging, how clinicians can look beyond symptoms to address deeper drivers of health, and why curiosity, purpose, performance, and daily habits all matter for a longer, more vibrant life.We dive into:Why “normal for your age” should not always be the goalThe difference between lifespan, healthspan, and staying usefulDr. Gladden's five-circle approach to longevityLooking beyond symptoms to address the root cause of the root causeHow the nervous system supports strength, balance, agility, and performanceThe connection between stress, vagal tone, the brain, and the bodyHow clinicians can begin incorporating longevity medicine into practiceWhy personalized data and emerging technology could transform patient careSimple lifestyle changes that can support healthy agingHow daily habits become rituals and ultimately shape identityThe role of curiosity, play, joy, and purpose in living young for a lifetime

    Daily Devotional By Archbishop Foley Beach
    Anxiety Is Never a Helpful Lens for Your Life's Focus – “Do not be anxious about your life . . . seek his kingdom”

    Daily Devotional By Archbishop Foley Beach

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2026 1:00


    Anxiety Is Never a Helpful Lens for Your Life's Focus – “Do not be anxious about your life . . . seek his kingdom” MESSAGE SUMMARY: Put a name on the cause of your anxiety and offer it to the Lord in prayer. Anxiety is never a helpful lens though which to focus your life. As Jesus tells you, in Luke 12:22,31, that you should not be anxious and to seek first the Kingdom of God: “And he said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on . . . Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you . . .'”. Also, Paul tells us, in Philippians 4:14, that: “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”. As a follower of Jesus today, why are you anxious? Remember, you have a personal relationship with God, the Creator of the Universe.   TODAY'S PRAYER: Lord, everything in me resists following you into the garden of Gethsemane to fall on my face to the ground before you. Grant me the courage to follow you all the way to the cross, whatever that might mean for my life. And then, by your grace, lead me to resurrection life and power. In Jesus' name, amen.   Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 100). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. TODAY'S AFFIRMATION: Today, I affirm that, because I am in Jesus Christ, I press on toward His goal for me. (Philippians 3:12f). “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”. (Philippians 4:14). SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Luke 12:22-34; Matthew 6:31; Isaiah 35:4; Philippians 4:4-9; Psalms 78c:25-36. A WORD FROM THE LORD WEBSITE: www.AWFTL.org. THIS SUNDAY'S AUDIO SERMON: You can listen to Archbishop Beach's Current Sunday Sermon:  “Some Christians Easily Walk Away from God, But God Rejoices When They Return”, at our Website: https://awordfromthelord.org/listen/ DONATE TO AWFTL: https://mygiving.secure.force.com/GXDonateNow?id=a0Ui000000DglsqEAB

    Y Religion
    Episode 148: Seeing God's Love in Suffering (David B. Ridge)

    Y Religion

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2026 46:49


    If God loves His children, why does He allow suffering? In this episode, David B. Ridge, assistant professor of ancient scripture, explores one of the most difficult questions of mortality. Drawing on the book of Job, Professor Ridge explains that scripture does not offer easy answers but instead invites us to deepen our faith and understanding of God through life's trials. He examines Job's devastating losses, the misguided counsel of Job's friends, and the Lord's powerful response from the whirlwind, showing that suffering is not necessarily a sign of sin or divine disfavor. Rather, Job teaches that God's justice, love, and mercy often transcend our mortal understanding. Professor Ridge emphasizes the importance of mourning honestly, resisting the temptation to explain away others' suffering, and continuing to turn to God even when answers do not come. Ultimately, Job's story teaches that faith grows as we trust God, hold fast to what we know, and learn to see His love amid adversity. Publications: "Seeing God's Love in Suffering: Lessons on Faith from Job," in Tender Mercies and Loving-Kindness: The Goodness of God in the Old Testament, Religious Studies Center (2025) "Loving Our Neighbor: Ammon and the Lamanite Queen," in Book of Mormon Insights: Letting God Prevail in Your Life, Religious Studies Center (2026) "How Nephi Defended His Kingship," in In the Eyes of the Ancients: Historical Perspectives on the Book of Mormon, Religious Studies Center (2026) Click here to learn more about David B. Ridge

    The Narcissist in Your Life Podcast
    High Level Narcissists - Their Ever-Present Hubris

    The Narcissist in Your Life Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2026 7:16


    Click Below for Freeing Yourself From the Narcissist in Your Life https://tinyurl.com/mppxyba7   Click Below for Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist https://tinyurl.com/2s4janb7   Click Below for The Mental Health Radio News Network https://tinyurl.com/3j2ds9nb

    Gateways to Awakening
    Quantum Jumping, the Mandela Effect & How Good Can It Get? with Cynthia Sue Larson

    Gateways to Awakening

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2026 63:02


    What if reality is far more fluid than we've been taught to believe?In this episode of Gateways to Awakening, I sit down with Cynthia Sue Larson, bestselling author of Reality Shifts, Quantum Jumps, The Mandela Effect and Its Society, and High Energy Money. Cynthia has a background in physics from UC Berkeley and has spent decades exploring consciousness, reality shifts, synchronicities, quantum phenomena, and what happens when our experience of reality doesn't quite match what we thought was possible. She wrote the book about the Mandela Effect, which Cynthia describes as “collective alternate memory,” and why different people can seemingly remember the same events, words, places, or cultural moments differently. “We are the dreamer. We are in the dream.” - Cynthia Sue Larson We begin by exploring what Cynthia calls reality shifts, those strange moments when something appears, disappears, changes, or seems to exist differently than we remember, and her belief that consciousness plays a fundamental role in how we experience the physical world. Throughout the episode, we explore:- What reality shifts are and how to begin noticing them- Whether consciousness can influence our experience of reality- Quantum jumping and moving between possible timelines- Why our internal state and perspective matter- The Mandela Effect and collective alternate memories- Whether the past, present, and future are as fixed as we assume- Individual versus collective realities- Free will, destiny, and conscious agency- Why Cynthia asks herself every day: “How good can it get?”Thank you for listening! We're now opening a private Community membership for those interested in processing the podcast and joining live monthly calls to discuss the content. Learn more here. If this episode resonates with you, you may also enjoy Yasmeen's work through the ⁠Inner Knowing School,⁠ where she teaches intuition, energetic mastery, multidimensional awareness, and nervous system regulation through private immersions and executive cohorts. You can also explore Yasmeen's latest book, ⁠A Glitch in the Matrix: 10 Energy Codes to Become the Main Character of Your Life⁠, available on Audible, Kindle, and in print. The book explores intuition, consciousness, timelines, emotional regulation, and how to manage your energy instead of your time.#quantumjumping #cynthiasuelarson #realityshifts

    Huberman Lab
    The Art of True Happiness | Dr. Arthur Brooks

    Huberman Lab

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2026 170:13


    Dr. Arthur Brooks, PhD, professor at Vanderbilt University and senior fellow at Harvard Business School, is an expert on the science of happiness. He shares the three “macronutrients” of true happiness and tools for you to understand what specifically is in the way of you accessing more happiness and a sense of purpose. Dr. Brooks' work goes beyond stories and observations by offering potent self-discovery tools for you to identify what truly matters most to you and how to shape your life around those things, and doing so, experience more joy and fulfillment. Show notes: https://go.hubermanlab.com/298-arthur-brooks Pre-order Andrew's book Protocols: https://protocolsbook.com Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Our Place: https://fromourplace.com/huberman Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Arthur Brooks (00:02:40) Public Science Education (00:04:18) Happiness, Unhappiness, Tool: 3 Macronutrients of Happiness (00:07:44) #1: Enjoyment, Pleasure; Animal Impulses vs Moral Aspirations; Exercise (00:17:35) Sponsors: OurPlace & Helix Sleep (00:20:41) Positive Self-Reflection, Public Commitments & Declare Moral Aspiration (00:26:45) Moral Differences, Politics (00:34:02) Tool: Proper Leisure & Values; Enrichment (00:41:47) Deepening Relationships & Shared Suffering (00:48:50) Sponsor: AG1 (00:50:08) #2: Satisfaction, Struggle & Purpose (00:56:32) Struggle & Leisure, High Achievers; Happier with Age, Retirement (01:03:26) #3: Meaning, Regret, Idols (01:10:10) Sponsor: David (01:11:20) Regret, Tool: Identifying Your Idol, Four Idols (01:29:29) Vices & Virtues, Resisting Vices & Pursuing Moral Aspirations (01:35:50) Admiration & Unique Self-Expression; Heroes (01:44:43) Teaching & Sharing Knowledge (01:49:55) Sponsor: LMNT (01:51:15) Idols & Hedonic Treadmill, Addictive Behaviors & Quantification (01:58:26) Life Meaning & Fundamental Experiences, Tool: Break Technology Addiction (02:07:02) Faith, Gradual Exploration, Desire for the Divine (02:12:20) Atheism, Death & Nonexistence; Practice Before Feeling (02:18:18) Practicing Faith, Aging & Deepening Faith; Prayer Practice (02:26:53) Spouse Relationship; Addiction, Workaholism (02:35:06) Meaning of Your Life, Tool: 3 Questions of Meaning (02:43:25) Acknowledgments, Pilgrimages (02:47:23) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    The Savvy Sauce
    Professional Organizer Helps Declutter Organize and Beautify Your Home and Your Life an Interview with Nikki Boyd (Episode 299)

    The Savvy Sauce

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2026 67:46


    Professional Organizer Helps Declutter Organize and Beautify Your Home and Your Life an Interview with Nikki Boyd (Episode 299)   Ecclesiastes 5:13 AMP “There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: riches being kept and hoarded by their owner to his own misery.”   *Transcription Below*   Nikki Boyd is a professional organizer, author of the Beautifully Organized series, and founder of the At Home With Nikki brand. Known for her elegant yet practical approach to organization, she inspires women to create homes that feel calm, beautiful, and intentionally lived in. Through her books, courses, and social media presence, Nikki shares simple, thoughtful systems that help people simplify their spaces and live more intentionally each day. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Real Simple, and House Beautiful.   LOOKING FOR HELP WITH YOUR LIFE? VISIT OUR WEBSITE | SUBSCRIBE OUR CHANNEL | JOIN OUR MASTER COURSE Ready to get organized? SCHEDULE A VIRTUAL SESSION Grab the books: The Beautifully Organized Series  Connect with Nikki on social: Instagram | Facebook | TikTok   Thank You to Our Sponsor: The Sue Neihouser Team   Questions and Topics We Cover: Where do your clients typically feel most overwhelmed and what is your process for eventually leading them to experience more peace?  Can you give us the best place to begin decluttering today? What is the best way to begin both decluttering and organizing kid spaces in our homes?    Related Savvy Sauce Episodes: Relationships and Opportunities that Arise from Using Your Gifts with Founder of Neighbor's Table, Sarah Harmeyer, Episode 47 Best Cleaning Tips from Clean Mama, Becky Rapinchuk, Episode 128 Experiencing Joy, Nourishment, and Connection at the Table with Abby Turner, Episode 168 Making Your Home a Place of Love and Peace: Special Patreon Re-Release with Devi Titus   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”    Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”    Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”    Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”    John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”    Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   *Transcription*   Music: (0:00 – 0:09)   Laura Dugger: (0:12 - 1:49) Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host, Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.   Thank you to the Sue Neihouser Team for sponsoring this episode. If you're looking to buy or sell a home this season, make sure you reach out to Sue at 309-229-8831. Sue would love to walk alongside you as you unlock new doors.   I am so excited to get to host my guest for today, Nikki Boyd. Nikki is a professional organizer and also a prolific author. If you can see all of these resources, this is part of the Beautifully Organized series. Nikki is also the founder of At Home with Nikki brand. She is known for her elegant yet practical approach to organization, and she inspires women especially to create homes where they feel calm, beautiful, and intentionally lived in. She's going to share more of that with us today. Here's our chat.   Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Nikki.   Nikki Boyd: Hi, I'm so glad to be here. Excited to be here.   Laura Dugger: Well, I'm delighted to get a chat with you, and I have to say your career absolutely fascinates me. So, will you share your path to getting to do the work that you get to do today?   Nikki Boyd: (1:49 - 7:21) Absolutely. It was very unexpected because a little secret, well, it's not a secret because I've been talking about ever since I've written my books, but I was a very messy child. So, as a child, you would have thought I would be doing what I do now. And so, it really was unexpected in the fact that I was a military spouse, just traveling around the world, supporting my husband in his dreams of being in the military and doing what he does. And depending on where we were, I would work different jobs. So, I have a very colorful work history and oftentimes frustrated by the fact of not being able to have a career and feeling like I want a career.   But it's funny how God works, and that's why we have to be patient, and we have to have faith because every last job that he provided added to my career today. And it was a necessity, and I didn't see that back then. And so, when he retired, he was like you supported me all these years. Now, it's time for me to do that in whatever your dream is of what you wanted to do. I had no idea what it was. I didn't know. I was like, what? I mean, I think I was right at 40 at the time, and I was like, okay, what is it I'm supposed to do? I'm trying to find myself at 40.   And so, I remember when we lived in England, I had went over a lady's house, and I had met for the first time, and she was having like this crafting party. And we went into a room in her home, and I had the best day. And she had, I believe it was 10 kids. They were a family of 10, yes. But it was the most peaceful environment. We sat there all day and crafted, heard no kids, had a beautiful time. When she was there, she was telling me back, this was years ago when YouTube wasn't a thing. And she was telling me about how, yeah, I like to film my crafts, and I put them on YouTube. And I was like, what is YouTube? Never thought anymore about it.   When we moved back to the States, I remembered just that experience. And I remember her saying the YouTube thing. And so, when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, I said, you know what? Let me look into this. And just, I started filming myself, just doing whatever I was doing around my house. And then, the only person watching was my mom. Then over time, she said, put that there, put it out there. And I did. No one watched for the longest time, but I just enjoyed the process of feeling like I had that friend girl by my side in my home, as I went and organized and did the different things. And by this point, my home was my everything as far as providing for my family, a beautiful environment when they came home, and just being able to have a home that served others. And so, it just started trickling from then. People started watching. I started building a brand. And then, 2017 opened the doors to my professional organizing business, then started writing the books, five books in now on a Beautifully Organized series.   And even during that journey, I questioned God about it, because I would say I was about three years in where I wasn't really doing anything but filming. And I was like, Lord, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. This is not a career. This is not... And I was battling with that. And I remember one night, I was in my bed and I couldn't sleep. And so, I got up and I got on my computer, and I had an email from a lady overseas. And she said, I just want to let you know that I got out of my bed for the first time in two years, because I lost my husband. I have three little ones. And I was just laying in my bed for two years, just numb. And I started watching your videos. And today, I got... You can imagine, I was tears. She said, “I got out of my bed for the first time. I organized my fridge. I set spaces for my kids' lunch. And I went out and bought me a teacup just for myself. And that to me was the first sign that God gave me that, Nikki, this does have purpose.   And so, I went on from that, and I just kept trucking along. And then as human as I am, a few years later, I questioned God again. I wasn't satisfied. And I was like, okay, God, yeah, I know, but I don't feel... I'm not feeling it. And he sent me another sign. I used to love covering. I used to love covering my Bible, making Bible covers. And so, I made a Bible cover on my YouTube channel. I was like, okay, I'm going to give away a Bible. We're doing a giveaway for a Bible. And so, I did the giveaway, just randomly picking someone, doing the thing. And then I mailed off the Bible. And I got a message from a lady, and she said, my goal when I got off work was to come home and to commit suicide. When I came home, your Bible was... I cry every time I tell the story. When I came home, the Bible that was on my doorstep, and I knew that was a sign from God that, hold on, hold on, keep going. And then I told the Lord from there, okay, I'm not questioning you anymore. This is the journey that I'm supposed to be on. And from that point, I just settled into it and grew from there. And that's what I do now.   Laura Dugger: (7:22 - 7:44) Wow. We got tears in my eyes from that story as well. Praise the Lord that you waited on Him, and you were still faithful in that journey, even when He wasn't showing you the whole path. But as a Jesus follower, Nikki, why do you think it is a worthy goal to pursue having a beautifully organized home?   Nikki Boyd: (7:45 - 9:48) Because that's how we serve others. That's how we do His work. That's how, not only when I say serve others, it's serving our family, along with our church, our community. When we establish an environment where we can welcome people in, or even if they're not coming into our home, where we're able to be in a spirit to where we can serve others outside the home. My kitchen is not chaotic, so I can make those cupcakes that I can take to church on Sunday, or I feel motivated and rejuvenated. I always say our home is our rejuvenation space. It's a space we come to to rejuvenate, and so that we can do the work we need to do when we walk outside those doors. And so, it just feeds so many things, along with it saves us time, it saves us money, it saves us from stress. And our God's an orderly God, and so we look to Him for that inspiration.   I always share too, is the first time when we open the Bible, we look at creation, and we see how He's the ultimate designer, and how He's so meticulous, and He's so thoughtful. And so, when I'm organizing my home, or decorating my home, I'm thinking like God did when He was creating the earth. He really took time and thought, and He rested Him. It was very intentional. And so that's a lot of how I like to approach our home, and how we set up systems, and how we work through the space. Because when you have a home that is in chaos, and when you have a home that just is overwhelmed with stuff, you're really just taken away from your family, taken away for yourself. I know I bought a wooden spoon. I know I got a wooden spoon here. Where's that wooden spoon? But then you have to go out and buy another wooden spoon when it's already been provided. Mm-hmm.   Laura Dugger: (9:48 - 10:05) So well said. And so, from your years of experience, where do your clients typically feel most overwhelmed? And then what is your process for eventually leading them into a place where they're getting to experience more peace?   Nikki Boyd: (10:06 - 11:38) So, a lot of spaces that clients are overwhelmed by, garages are big. The shoes at the entryway door, I hear that a lot, especially with families. You come in and the first thing, I always say your entryway is your first impression space. That's the first experience someone has when they walk into your home. And so, a pile of shoes is not the most engaging. And so that's a lot in the kitchen. The kitchen is a big... I guess there's a lot of places. Closets are big. Closets for my ladies, they're big. And so how I usually advise people is we have to start small. If you look at everything, the whole thing, you can get overwhelmed and your motivation can just diminish. So, I say, get those small wins in. Okay. So, we're at the entryway. Maybe just start with one thing. I always say, I like to use my senses to put things together. And so, I say, okay, how can I incorporate my five senses into the entryway? What I see, what I feel, what I smell. And just start with one thing. It may be the entryway table, the top of it. Okay. I'm going to take everything off of that. And I'm going to reset that today. I have that small win and then build on it. Tomorrow, it may be the shoes. Okay. The shoes. I'm going to create a system for the shoes. And the small wins is what equals the big... You know the story of the tortoise and the hare where you run that... You don't run that fast race with organization. You run the small race. Take your time. Yeah.   Laura Dugger: (11:39 - 11:57) Okay. That's helpful. So, when we're taking our time, do you even have a specific time limit? If somebody is just an average person with the average amount of stuff, if they want it top to bottom, their ideal home, is there a regular amount of time that that takes?   Nikki Boyd: (11:57 - 13:50) So, what I like to do, and I do this in my home still to this day, is I assign every room has a month. And so that way I'm very intentional. I'm focused on the whole house. I'm able to be very intentional. So, say the... I always start with the home office in January because that's when we need to go through our home files. That's when it's getting tax season. And so that's a great home office month. And that way you have all month to focus only on the office. So, I usually say, let me take the first three days and just sit in the office and think, okay, what works in here? What doesn't work in here? What do I desire for the space? And just kind of give yourself a couple days for that. And then the next day it'll be, the next few days will be about decluttering. Let me get everything out of this room that does not serve me in my current lifestyle, current life, because we want our homes to represent our life today, not our life 10 years ago. And so, then it's about taking a week and just decluttering the space. And then the next week it's about cleaning. Okay, now that we got all this stuff out, let's spend a couple of days cleaning. So having a whole month for a room, it really allows you to really be intentional, take your time, not stress yourself out, incorporate the family. And it's a great way of maintenance plan ongoing. So even though my home feels organized all the way through, it's great for maintenance because organization is not something that you do and you never have to do it again. It's just like cleaning. I wish I could clean one time and it's clean for the rest of my life, but that's not the reality, especially not with family. And so, the same with organization. So, I would recommend that, just kind of assigning every room in your house a month. Laura Dugger: (13:52 - 18:01) I like that pace. And I guess it's initially surprising, but Jesus always seems to have a certain pace that is wise and sustainable, and it does often surprise us.   We'll come back shortly after a brief message from our sponsor.   With over 28 years of experience in real estate, Sue Neihouser of the Sue Neihouser team is a RE-MAX agent of Central Illinois, and she loves to walk alongside her clients as they unlock new doors. For anyone local, I highly recommend you call Sue today at 309-229-8831.   And you can ask her any real estate questions. Sue lives in Central Illinois and loves this community and all that it has to offer. When unlocking new doors with her clients, Sue works hard to gain a depth of understanding of their motivations and dreams and interests in buying and selling their home.   And then she commits to extensive market research that will give them confidence in their decision. Sue truly cares for each of her clients and the relationship she forms with each family along the entire home buying or selling process. This was absolutely our experience when we worked with Sue and her team.   The house that we desired at the time was actually not even on the market, but Sue had a connection and was able to ask those homeowners if they would be willing to sell. She was timely in her response as she walked us through this whole process, and she helped us sell our home with the right offer coming in hours after it was listed. We kept saying she's thought of everything, and Sue's continued generosity was astonishing.   I remember one afternoon after we had settled into our new home and she was knocking on the door dropping off a goodie bag for our family that came from the local bakery. Our daughters also loved getting to know Ms. Sue as she assisted us in finding truly our dream home. So, whether you're looking to buy a home for the first time or looking to upgrade or downsize or making the big decision to move to an assisted living from your home of many years, Sue will be there to help you navigate the big emotions and ensure the process is smooth and stress-free and that the new doors to be unlocked are ready and waiting for more memories to be made.   So, call her today at 309-229-8831 or visit her website at sueneihouser.com. Thanks for your sponsorship.   Nikki, I love choosing a theme for every episode with a scripture verse, and we always include it at the top of our show notes for each episode on our website. So, the one that I selected for today is found in Ecclesiastes 5:13, and it says, "There is a grievous evil, which I have seen under the sun, riches being kept and hoarded by their owner to his own misery." And that just stood out at me when we were planning this conversation. And it reminds me of something that I noticed about the book written, I think I'm saying her name right, by Shira Gill. And it's the one where you were featured. So, it, for anybody who hasn't read it, it highlights various organizers. But you all seem to share this similar conclusion that in America, the most common problem that leads to disorganization and chaos in all of our homes is simply holding onto too much stuff. So, will you share more of your experience with this, whether that's for yourself or with clients that you've worked with?   Nikki Boyd: (18:02 - 20:46) And it's hard because we live in a society where consumption is encouraged. We can't look, right? And so, it's a hard battle to fight. And then it's multiple people in the home a lot of times. So, you got multiple people bringing in stuff. And so, it's important to really have decluttering as a focus always in our home and having a system to just kind of move things out in a timely way, because it's a struggle because we build this attachment to stuff, you know, and we build it up for different ways. Either we paid a lot of money for it, so we can't, it doesn't fit, but I paid good money for this, so I got to keep it, even though it doesn't fit, you know, or someone gave it to us. I really don't like it, but so-and-so gave it to me. So, I have obligation, you know, that sentimental obligation.   But one tool that I have used over the years that has been really successful in helping me rid myself of clutter is to think about it in a way of, I'm being selfish. And so there, you know, I don't ever use this cup. I do, but I'm just saying, I don't ever use this cup. There's somebody out there that needs a cup that could be blessed by it, but it's sitting right here in my home. And I have the opportunity to move it on to be a blessing to someone else. So, when I look at things in my home that I'm not using, I would say, Nikki, stop. That can be right now blessing. And I pray, but I pray, God, please help this to get where it needs to get. Please help it to go where it needs to get. And so that has really, for me, been a way to really, and not only for myself, but for my family, to encourage my family to say, hey, there's somebody out here that could use this toy. There's a kid out there that really, they don't have any toys, but if we donate it, their parents can afford this toy, you know? So just, you know, really thinking outside of ourselves with the stuff and thinking on how we can really serve others with it. There might be even people in our community, young couples that are just starting out, you know, we have silver pieces that we never used. We might've got it 20 years ago and never used it, move it on to someone else, you know? So that's really helped me with decluttering.   And then having a system for it, you know, having a system in your home where you really, really are actively moving things away from your home, you know? And so, one system that I love to use is having a place where I can just drop things that, like a basket that every time I see something that, oh, yeah, that could bless someone, boom. And then that way you can just kind of put it, keep it in, take it to your trunk of your car. And the next time you pass in through a donation center, you can donate it. Yeah.   Laura Dugger: (20:47 - 21:00) That's good. And that gives us purpose in this process. I really like that. So, can you give us, do you even have a recommendation just for the very best place if we want to start decluttering today?   Nikki Boyd: (21:01 - 23:14) In your home, you mean like where to start? Yes. Okay. Remember I said, start small. So, one thing that I recommend is going in your kitchen because I have not met a person who has not had what they call a junk drawer. And I don't like calling anything in our homes junk because we don't have junk in our homes. We have beautiful homes, right? And so, I like to call it the utility drawer. So go in your kitchen. If all the listeners go in your kitchen today and open that utility drawer, and that is the starting point. And what you want to do is the first step you want to do is you want to give yourself an immediate boost by just taking everything out of that drawer and sitting it on the counter and looking at your beautiful empty drawer. That's that instant motivation that you get from seeing it clean and empty. And then the next step is just to give it a nice wipe down and clean so that you know that this is your new, not junk drawer, utility drawer. Rename it. It's important what we say, you know, how we speak, you know, what we come out of our tongue. So, utility drawer. And then from that point, you have all the stuff there. And the first way to start tackling it is because if you're looking at a big pile of stuff, you don't know what you have a lot of times. So, we have to get like items together so that we can realistically see what we have. And so just take a couple minutes and just at the counter sort like items together, pins, sticky notes, just get all those like items together. And then you have a clear visual of, okay, why do I have 20 lighters? I don't burn candles like that, you know. So, then you say, okay, so I'm going to keep two lighters and then everything else goes to donate and just work your way through each category. But what you've done is you've broken it down, something that's a big blob of clutter into something that's reasonable to assess and then deal with. And then from that point, what's left, you then start with the fun part of putting it in your drawer, creating your sections, and then saying, okay, you know what? How about I donate all these lighters and just keep the pretty green one that I love? So that's how I recommend. So, start with that one junk drawer. And once you have that success, you've built the motivation to then move to another part of your kitchen.   Laura Dugger: (23:15 - 23:31) Okay. That's so interesting too, just even how you say pausing to appreciate that beauty of an empty drawer. And it is true that I think even clearing things out, that is an automatic win that makes the space more beautiful.   Nikki Boyd: (23:32 - 24:42) Yes. It feels good. Because you're feeling lighter, right? You got all the junk and stuff, let's not call it stuff, over to the side and you feel lighter. And even as hard as it is to declutter for a lot of folks, they feel so good after it's done. It feels so good once you get that stuff away from you. So, it's the same, you're feeling lighter. It gives you just a kind of room to breathe a little bit, and you don't realize it because we go through our day just working and living around all this stuff that really is just kind of heavy.   Laura Dugger: (24:43 - 24:47) Absolutely. Yeah. Kind of open up the windows and air it out.   Nikki Boyd: (24:47 - 24:49) Open up the windows. Yes, yes.   Laura Dugger: (24:50 - 25:07) Well, maintaining home order and organization becomes a lot more complex when we add more people into our home. So, what's the best way to begin both decluttering and organizing the kids' spaces in our homes?   Nikki Boyd: (25:08 - 30:07) So, when I work with families, a lot of times they want to jump right in and say, okay, they want to talk about the stuff and all that. And I always kind of say, let's back up a little bit because we don't want to go in and create all these systems and then try to introduce it to the family because a lot of times that doesn't work. We have to get everybody kind of together. And one thing that's huge for me, my parents instilled it in us as family meetings, like weekly family meetings, because just like if you think about a company, a company, if they did not have their team meetings and everybody just came to work and did their own thing, they couldn't be successful. No one's on the same page. No one's communicating. No one understands the mission and the goals, and you can't be successful that way. So, it's the same with our family. If we don't talk about our goals, if we don't have a mission statement for our family, how do we know as a family that we're on the same accord and how do we move? We live in the same space. So, it's important to kind of establish a family meeting, whether you even do it every two weeks, even if it's once a month, but just having that time where you come together as a family so that you can all be on the same page.   And I talk about this in my home planner, Beautifully Organized Home Planner, is establishing that mission statement. And that's so important because, especially for our kids, so that they know kind of how we move within our family. And so, as a child, I actually didn't know this, but as a child, I got my mission statement for my family as a child. The very first scripture, Joshua 24:15, my mom, do you remember the little bread box that had all the scripture? You pick a scripture a day. And the very first scripture I ever learned was, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." The very first, and it's always stuck with me. And so that was when I became an adult, that became our mission statement for our family. And so, it makes it easy to kind of set the tone. And when you have the family meetings, you always want to set the tone with your mission statement to kind of keep reiterating that.   But then you want to also move into having those check-ins. A family is always coming and going all the time, right? And so family meetings give you the time to say, everybody go around, kind of, how are you doing? What's your highlight of the week? And what did you struggle with this week? And that gives you that moment to really make sure everybody is okay. One, the family meetings, you're teaching your kids how to communicate, how to work out problems, how to manage things. Have you ever had that situation where your kid comes to you at nine o'clock at night and said, hey, I got a school project due the next. We need to go to Walmart. I got a school project due. I need a poster board. Family meetings solve that problem because in that meeting, you're talking about, okay, what are our needs for this week? You know, what's the schedule this week? A lot of times as women, we take on a lot of the home responsibilities that really we should be teaching our kids so that when they leave the home, they have it. How to load a dishwasher, how to fold a towel. You can incorporate these small teaching lessons in the family meetings, you know? So, there's so many just benefits from that one, implementing that one system in your home, family meetings. So that's, for your listeners, that's the first thing that I would do. Set a time for family meetings. You may get resistance in the beginning. Push through. Because I tell you, when they get older, they will remember that and they will appreciate the time that you took to really bring the family together and have those meetings, even if they're kind of not appreciating it as young teenagers or kids. But that sets the tone. And even if you're single and you live alone, have your family meeting. You're still a family. You know, have that meeting where you sit down and you look at your budget, you look at your schedule, you look at kind of check-ins with yourself. You know, what was the tough for me this week? What was, you know, so whether you're a family of one or a family of 10, you know, that's the first start in that.   The next start is to not create systems on your own. You want the family to be a part of the process. So, one of the issues, I'll share a real-life issue that I really had in my home was I had, we're empty nesters. And so, it's just my husband and I and our two Yorkies. And my husband, he is who he is. I'm not trying to change him. When he comes in, he's going to put the work shoes here and he's going to drop this. You can follow the trail. And so, I was like, okay, by the front door, we don't need these shoes, you know? And so, I was like, okay, what can I do about the shoes to make him comfortable and me comfortable? So, I came up with, we got family shoes. So, I got these family shoes. They're the same shoe. They look kind of like, what's the shoe? Like clogs, but they're waterproof. What's the ones everyone has?   Laura Dugger: (30:08 - 30:09) I'm blanking on the name.   Nikki Boyd: (30:09 - 31:39) I can't remember. But anyway, they're shoes that, you know, I said, okay, these are home shoes and they're color coded. I have yellow, he has blue, but the simplicity of it being the same shoe takes away the visual color when you, visual clutter when you walk in the house. And it's great because we put them on to go walk the dogs. We go in and out all the time. We put them on and that's the only shoes that stay by the door, but it works. So how I had the buy-in, because if I just bought those shoes and put them there, he would probably walk past the shoes, and you know. So, what I did was I was like, honey, can we make a beautiful tray? I got this idea for us having home shoes. Can we make a tray? So, we Saturday, him and I together, we built this tray. He got out there doing this and he was invested because he built the tray. I ordered beautiful gold labels with his name on it, metal labels and very intentional. And it's gorgeous sitting by the door. It's so cute. He's sitting by the door and he has buy-in now because he made that tray. He's proud of that tray and he uses those shoes. He loves those shoes. And so, when we create systems, we want to make, find ways to incorporate the family so that they have a connection to the system. You don't want to just go put a bin or a basket and they expect the family to all kind of have buy-in with it. So that's how I would kind of move forward with incorporating the family with that kind of thing.   Laura Dugger: (31:40 - 32:30) I love all of that. And really, I just absolutely adored your recommendation for the family home meetings. I loved reading about that in your books. And one of them, it was from the Beautifully Organized Home Planner. You laid out even these titles. I'll just read a few of them. Going over the family schedule, meal planning, home issues, successes and struggles, home needs, like you said, maybe a family need for a field trip or home products to purchase, and teaching time, such as how to budget or how to fold a towel. And I love those practical tips. So, are there any other success stories from your family or others or final tips that you want to share about that home meeting, that family meeting specifically?   Nikki Boyd: (32:31 - 33:40) One tip that I think could be very helpful is when it comes to the meal planning, because that's always a stressor for a lot of families, coming home, what are we going to have for dinner? I didn't meal plan. So, one thing you can do is create a list, a running list of all your ideal meals for your family. It may be spaghetti and meatballs or steak and potatoes, just different meal combinations. And that is your master list of meal combinations. Then in your family meetings, it's not necessarily about trying to figure out meal planning. You just have every family member, okay, pick your meal that you want for the week. So, everybody is kind of contributing. If you're cooking five days out of the week, everybody picks a meal from the list. So, it's like you don't have to kind of think up a combination. You just kind of pick and plug and play. You know what I'm saying? So, I would recommend that creating a master list of combination meals, and then everybody just kind of choose a meal or you can use it solo. You can say, okay, I'm just going to shop my list and put it on the calendar. So that solves a big problem. That's been very useful for a lot of families when it comes to meal planning.   Laura Dugger: (33:41 - 33:55) Okay. I literally am going to start that today. Usually, my husband and I will come together and sync up our calendars and everything for the week, but this is good motivation. I think it'll be so much more beneficial to include the whole family.   Nikki Boyd: (33:55 - 34:27) And also, what's great about that is all of these things have multiple benefits. The other benefit for that is you're teaching the kiddos how to kind of coordinate, how to come together and coordinate together our meal for the family. Also, if you have that picky eater, you can kind of get buy-in because they've had the opportunity to really choose what we're eating. And so, they'll have a little more buy-in because that was their selection. So, there's several benefits from having the family put the meal plan together.   Laura Dugger: (34:28 - 34:40) I love that so much. And Nikki, do you also have suggestions for the simplest ways to stay on top of all the paper that comes into our home?   Nikki Boyd: (34:41 - 39:27) When you asked me in the beginning, what's a big problem? I didn't mention that, but paper clutter is huge. In fact, before the podcast, I had a client session and that's what we dealt with was paper. And so, one thing is just figuring out how can I stop the paper from coming in? Let's stop the problem, try to kind of halt the problem, and then we'll deal with the backlog. So, one is with mail. So, I like to say treat mail like it has a disease, like it has COVID or something. You don't want COVID in your house. So okay, when I go to mail, as I'm walking from the mailbox, I'm kind of like pulling. And then another thing is to have a sorting station. So, if you have family members that multiple people that have mail, or even if you're single and you have mail that's like maybe bills, and then you have maybe magazines, you can have a sorting system right in your kitchen or wherever you tend to drop that mail. But instead of having a basket where it just kind of piles up, have more of a sorting system.   And so, I like recommending... In fact, can I grab it real quick? Because in my session, I was sharing this with my client. Because so say you have, I love something like a box like this. It's an acrylic box and it's multifunctional in the fact that you can put your family calendar down in the front. And because it's acrylic, you can use a dry erase to kind of put your calendar items on. So, it's double duty. So, on the counter in the kitchen, you have your family calendar, or you can use it for the meals or whatever you want. But then you have your hanging files, and you can have one for each family member. Because sometimes you have kids in college that live at home and they get mail or your husband or whatever, or however you want to set it up. Everybody has your phone. That way when you come in, it's easy to drop in there. And I would even have one for magazines. What I would not allow in here is junk mail. I would take junk mail directly to the trash. I would also try to kind of eliminate as much junk mail coming into my mailbox. So, if you can stop getting the advertisements and getting the things with your bills, doing more electronic statements versus having to mail the statements, that can always be a game changer too. But this could be a great system for the mail and it's neat and clean and it kind of minimizes the paper clutter when it comes to that.   Another way is paper clutter that outside of mail that a lot of folks have is just like their home files. So, they don't really have a system for keeping home files. And so, it just tends to create piles around the house. And so, I've always, and again, when I told you that, you know, I had all those jobs in the past. And so I was in England, I was a registrar at a school, and I learned about a binder system there. They kept all their files in binders. And that's what I use for my home files ever since, because it was just like a light bulb. It was my aha moment. And it's basically having a binder for kind of the different categories of things that you need to keep on file. So, your home mortgage paperwork. So, I have one file where all the homes that you bought, you keep all of that paperwork in there. You have one for vital records, you know, just different things that you keep, you have in a binder. And it just is a really efficient way to create that home management, you know, that home file system and not have the papers all over.   With that, one thing that, so with that, like even with the system that I showed with the mail coming in, you have to tack on that component of, okay, I have to address things. So even if you come in and you put the mail in there, you have magazines in one, you have your mail, you can't just leave it, or it starts to pile up and that will get crazy. So, what I do is I always say Fridays at 2 PM is my cutoff. So, every Friday at 2 PM, I have to, before I go into my weekend, I have to clear out. So, setting a, just a intentional time that you do a clear out. So that is the component that a lot of people miss. Some people are good about putting things in a system, but that follow-up. And so, with any mail system or any filing system, you have to have that, that component. And I like to tie it to my weekend, just like if you were working a job, you know, you have to, if you don't clock out, you might not get paid. Right. They need to see that timecard, you know, back in the day now. But the same with, with this, before I start my weekend, I gotta clean up the mail bin.   Laura Dugger: (39:29 - 40:49) By now, I hope you've checked out our updated website, thesavvysauce.com, so that you can have access to all the additional freebies we are offering, including all of our previous articles and all of our previous episodes, which now include transcriptions. You will be equipped to have your own practical chats for intentional living. When you read all the recommended questions in the articles or gain insight from expert guests and past episodes, as you read through the transcriptions, because many people have shared with us that they want to take notes on previous episodes, or maybe their spouse prefers to read our conversations rather than listen to them or watch them now that we're offering video rather than just audio. So, we heard all of that, and we now have provided transcripts for all our episodes. Just visit thesavvysauce.com. All of this is conveniently located under the tab show notes on our website. Happy reading.   You also teach that another crucial factor of maintaining a beautifully organized home is keeping it clean and tidy. So, what's a realistic cleaning schedule that we could try out?   Nikki Boyd: (40:52 - 43:11) So, the thing that is just a game changer is the 10-minute sweep before you go to bed. Taking 10 minutes and just walking around your house and in 10 minutes, everybody in the house stops and just do whatever you can do. Put the remote control back, clean up the dinner dishes. Because if you think about it, if you're a family of four, 10 minutes is 40 minutes. That's 10 minutes of work per person. So that's a 40 minutes of cleaning. So that's one thing is incorporate a 10-to-15-minute sweep every night before you go to bed. And that's just walking around doing whatever you can do to pick up. Not structured, just everybody just pick up for 10 minutes, play music, play a song and do it for five minutes.   The other thing that works for a lot of folks that I've shared is when you end your workday or end your day, add on an hour. So, what I used to do is when I worked outside the home, when I got home, I used to love watching Law and Order all the time. And so, I would get on and I would put Law and Order on and that was a one-hour episode. And I would not sit down, and I would do everything for that one hour. I would clean up, I would get my clothes ready for the next day, I would prep dinner. So, I always told myself, I don't get off work at four o'clock, I get off work at five o'clock. And so, I had Law and Order in the background, it made me feel like I wasn't just not miss cleaning. I've grown since then. Now I love my inspirational music more. That was back in my day. We grow. But that one doing it that way, adding, tacking on an extra hour, it was great because the rest of the evening I had for myself. I mean, clothes were picked out, dinner was done, house was clean, no pressure. And so sometimes what we do is we come in and then we get distracted by the kids asking for this or doing this. And then we sit down, let me sit down a minute from work. And it just is, it takes our time. It just, it takes our time. But if we're very intentional about, okay, no, I'm not off work yet. Let me do this. And then I have the rest of the evening.   Laura Dugger: (43:12 - 43:26) So that's good. And I feel like that's kind of low hanging fruit that we can apply right away. Are there also any tips you have for what we should be doing weekly or monthly or quarterly or even annually?   Nikki Boyd: (43:27 - 45:37) Yeah, there's different routine. I think there's there in my book, I have it broken down. I think when you think of cleaning, you want to think of it, you have daily cleaning, you have weekly cleaning, you have monthly cleaning, and then you have quarterly cleaning, seasonal cleaning. Because there's seasonal things that you want to do to, again, go back to saving that time, saving that stress. And it's things like cleaning out the vents and even having the air conditioner service so that when the summer hits, you're not dealing with an issue. So, if we have these systems in place to tackle our cleaning at certain points, then it really solves a problem from having issues.   And so, what I would do is I would sit down and I would say, okay, the sweep that I talked about 10 minutes, that's a daily. So that would be my daily thing. And then I would not create a system at this point for me, I don't like to have to think about outside of my 10-minute sweep cleaning every day. I just don't. And so, I would just say, create a routine where you could maybe have one day a week where that's where you're tackling kind of the bulk of your cleaning, such as if you're mopping floors and handling your floors, handling the deeper items, dusting, those are weekly. So, I would do those weekly. But daily, the sweep, that helps maintain all of the other stuff in dishes daily, you have to do that. I like doing a dishwasher system of my family know, don't put anything in the sink. When you wake up, my job is the dishwasher stays empty for them. And then that way they always know dishes don't touch a sink, dishes touch the dishwasher. And then I make sure to have it unloaded by the morning at the start of their day so that they can then always unload. So, there's little systems like that to help keep things maintained as far as cleaning up, but I just don't encourage having a routine where you feel like every day I have to just spend a lot of time cleaning. But that 10-minute sweep is the secret weapon guys, the 10-minute sweep.   Laura Dugger: (45:38 - 45:57) I love it. And even the dishes example, it really doesn't take more effort to put it into the dishwasher. So, I love time-saving tricks like that. Are there a few more helpful ways that you can share how we can maximize function throughout our home?   Nikki Boyd: (45:58 - 50:39) Yeah, sure. So, God has given us a beautiful thing in our senses and what we see, what we taste, what we smell. And so, I'm always, you hear me say that all the time, use that tool he gave us to implement the systems in your home. So, when you go in a space, say, okay, when I walk in this space, how can I engage what I hear? How can I engage what I see, what I taste? And use that to start implementing the system of organization. And then the first step that I always tell everyone outside of that is, if you have a home right now that you feel it's just overwhelming, you don't know where to start, the family's just all over, it's just, we got a lot going on and I don't have time even at night because I got to go somewhere tonight. So, what I'll say is one, give yourself grace, start there, breathe, it's going to be okay. And remember, you can do this. The next thing is give yourself a small win, just immediately go to the utility drawer and say, that's the first, for everybody, that's the first thing, give yourself, because it's a proof to you, you know you can do it.   And then next, when everybody goes to bed tonight, get you a cup of tea or your preferred drink and go sit in the first space that's frustrating you, the main space. And don't put pressure on yourself to try to figure it out. Don't run out to the store trying to buy things and say, I'm going to get this place in order, the worst thing you can do. Just go have a cup of tea and sit in that space and breathe. And I promise you, and I think it's the point of just letting God, let you relax and give you the information you need to do what you need to do. And I find that when I sit in the space, it saves me money, it saves me time because I'm not going on my own accord, going out, running the target. I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, okay, this is a lot, this is a lot, help me figure this out. And when, after I just sit there and be, I start the process of just trying to figure it out and say, okay, the first step I'm going to do is I'm going to go get a box and everything that's trash, I'm going to put in here and get rid of all the trash and just steps, incremental steps, trash, then things. Okay. I'm going to shop. And I like using that word shop. I'm going to shop my room, this room, this is the room of the month. I'm going to shop this room for help. Who can I bless? Who can I, what can I take and bless? You know what? I really don't, I don't use this. Let me send that off. And then you'll start lightening your load. So that's kind of the steps I would take. It's not the traditional step of walking in and it's just, let's declutter. Sometimes you got to sit back, and you got to be a little bit before you, you jump in so that you make smart decisions.   One thing, please don't ever, I never encourage anyone to just kind of get motivated and say, okay, run a target and buy a bunch of bins and baskets. And I'm going to come back and organize the pantry. It's a temporary fix because you haven't given yourself the opportunity to just really think out what you really need. And a lot of times you have what you need right in your home. It's about thinking outside of the box. For example, yeah, I could go out and buy an expensive jewelry box, but this is my jewelry box. I had this beautiful bowl in my kitchen. I was like, oh, this is the perfect jewelry. I love it. It's easy. It functions. I don't have to open anything when I want my bracelet. It has just my jewelry that I'm wearing in this life. It's gorgeous. No one knows what it is. It works. So, a lot of times in our home, things are multifunctional and we don't even think about it. For example, I like sitting out little games and cards in my office to remind me to do something fun before I start work. This is a soap dish I had. This is where I keep my little cards in my soap dish. It used to be a soap dish, but now it's a beautiful card rest and it looks so cute. So, I challenge you not to go out into the store and consume more, but think about how can the things that I do love, how can I bring new life to them and use them to incorporate in my home to help function? So, there's so many things, even that tray that I talked about for the shoes, you might have a tray that's sitting on your dining room table that you could use for a shoe tray. So that's another thing to think about when you're implementing systems in your home.   Laura Dugger: (50:40 - 50:50) I love that. Okay. So that answers some of the function, but you're also starting to tie in beauty. How can we level up our style in our home as well?   Nikki Boyd: (50:50 - 54:24) Yeah. So, the thing with style is everybody's style is different. And so, what I find a lot of times when I'm working with folks is they Pinterest and they'll see all of these things and that's what they feel they want, but they seem to never can achieve it. And it's actually because I find a lot is because they have their own style and they need to tap into that instead of tapping into everyone else's. I think it's good to use inspiration. I love inspiration but use it as that to bring you back to what you truly love, because you don't want to go paint your wall green and think, oh, I really don't like green. I forgot about that. So that's one thing is to really know that we all have our own, God's given us all our own. We're all different. We're all special. We all have a beautiful style about ourselves.   And I'm going to say it again, because it's such a powerful tool. Those senses, that is the secret weapon to incorporating style in your home. So, when you come in and you say, okay, let's take the entry way, for example, again, we go to the entry way, because that's such an important part. That's the first space that welcomes people. Okay. When someone comes into my home, how can I engage their sense of taste? Ah, I'm going to create a little drawer. I have these little bowls here. I'm going to put little bowls in the drawer and I'm going to put mints in different candies so that when guests come over, I can say, hey, before you leave, make your little candy bag or grab some candy taste. What can I do with the sense of touch? Now, so I always like to have a bench in my entryway because I love to sit and look out the door when I have my coffee in the morning. So, I put a nice cozy blanket there so that I can have that sense of touch. So just walk your way through and challenge yourself. Okay. What I see. Okay. Oh, flowers. We need something that... So, use those senses and then say, okay, I'm going to incorporate one for each one. And that's a great tool to use to help if you're... Because some folks are like, I don't have, I don't know how to incorporate beauty. That's a way, a tool you can use to help you kind of try to implement it.   And then challenge yourself to only shop your home. Don't go outside the home for it. I did that with my recently with my entryway. I was like getting bored with how it was looking and I was like, ah, okay, Nikki, challenge yourself. How can you totally redecorate your entryway and beautify your entryway without buying the thing? And so, I had in my attic, my old kitchen table and its white kitchen table from my previous home. I said, oh, let me use that. Instead of having a bench in my entryway, I have a center round table now. And it's just a whole different look. I went to my guest and then I was like, okay. And this is the other thing. I was like, oh, I want a different color in here. Well, I was like, hmm, I got yellow in my guest bedroom. So let me shop my guest bedroom and pull a few of those and I can add it into the entryway. I took some books. I took some things and I had a new entryway in no time. So that's a wonderful way to do it. And a lot of times too, if you have a lot of books in your home, take those covers off of your books. You would be surprised how they have beautiful linen and embossed gold and different colors. And that's just such a beautiful way to display, create beauty in your home. It's just kind of looking behind those covers and then displaying your books that way. Yeah.   Laura Dugger: (54:24 - 55:03) I'm a book lover. So that speaks to me for sure.   Nikki Boyd: (54:28 - 54:28) Yeah.   Laura Dugger: And so, speaking of books, then I loved your quote on page 15, where you talk about this process of decluttering and organizing that leads to a place where, here's your quote, where life becomes more meaningful and enjoyable and it all starts at home. So, Nikki, we've talked about how to start with our home, but if we consider our whole lifestyle as well, are there any other additional ways to elevate both our function and our delight?   Nikki Boyd: (55:04 - 57:46) Yes. So, when you are living within your home, you want to think about it being your vacation spot. You know, when we go on vacation, we have expectations, right? We want to feel good. We want to relax. We want the nice hotel room. But ideally the thought process should be, we want that at home because that's where we're at most of the time. That's, you know, where we, you know, our family nurturing, we nurture our family, all the things. So, step one is to think about how do you start your day. If you, for me, I can't do the alarm clock. You, you wake up to this banging. That's a stressful way to wake up. So, think about how can I wake myself up and make it on time without it being so stressful? And what I've come up with is I have a clock that is, it's a sunrise clock where it wakes you up slowly with the light. It kind of just eases you into your day like sunlight. And it has been a game changer for that. Even if you don't do that, does your spouse get up before you? Talk with your spouse and say, “Hey, I want to get away from the alarm clock. I know you get up before me. Can you just wake me up by kissing me on my cheek?” Just wake me up with a kiss. That's, you're going to be my alarm clock. Okay. You'll find those creative ways to have a better start to your day.   You know, even that night, my husband and I, we started a while ago where we sleep to inspirational Christian music. And it is a game changer for how you wake up. And it's just listening to that all night, not too loud, just softly on. It just, when you wake up, you are just in a whole different mood, you know? And so that's one simple thing to implement to have a great start to your day. And even playing instrumental worship music all day throughout your house, it changes the atmosphere. It changes the environment, you know? So again, going back to those senses, what do we see? What do we hear? So just your routine is so important. You know, we talk organization but incorporating that routine in our home is so important. You know, even when our kids come home from school, do they run into chaos? We're fussing. No, get that, get that. No, no, no, no. Say it's, no, don't get me wrong. It can be hard as a mom. It can be hard, but we have to, before we walk in the door, talk to ourselves and say, okay, I'm going to set the tone for my children when we come in. We're going to set the tone. And it may be sitting down and laughing before we get into homework and doing the things. And so, but being intentional about creating those routines. Yeah.   Laura Dugger: (57:47 - 58:04) So much wisdom packed in. And one other thing that I appreciate about you is the high value that you place on the hospitality. So, will you share all of your best practices and motivations as it relates to hospitality?   Nikki Boyd: (58:05 - 1:01:36) Yes. In fact, I just did this weekend at my, I'm the hospitality coordinator at church. And so, I just did a training with my hospitality team. So, I'm fresh off of this. So it was, we had a blast, but you know, it's hospitality. And I want to say this to anybody, anybody, we all have that ability to do it. And you don't have to have a big, beautiful home. You can live in a cardboard box and have a beautiful time. I've had my most beautiful experiences have been in small apartments where we're all sitting there and we're just having a great time. And that's the best memories. So, it's about, how can I create a beautiful experience for anyone who walks through this door? And so that's what you want to think about when you're trying to create a home that has a beautiful element of hospitality embedded in it.   And so, for me, again, simplicity. One thing I said in the training this weekend is I had a white serving bowl and I said, take two minutes and give me 20 uses for this bowl that does not pertain to food. And so, they thought about all kinds of things. A simple bowl with a little intention can do great things. So, something you have in your home, as simple as it is, it can have the opportunity to serve so many people, can be so hospitable to so many people. So, it's just about using that creativity with the things that we have and also about being present. When people come in our home, you want to be present. It's not about, you know, because I, whenever I'm asked, who do you, what woman in the Bible do you most connect with? And a lot of times I say Martha, because I can tend to be that person. I'm so busy trying to get everything right and doing, I'm missing the point. The point is to be with that person. The point is to sit down and be hospitable and to just create that memory. And so, I always tell people, I'm trying to get away from my Marthism and just really, really, when someone comes over, it's about really sitting down and being with them and creating that memory. And so just have fun with it, you know, and don't feel like, I always tell people, don't feel like you have to have the best or have to have the biggest menu. That's not, that's not what you need.   Now, one thing, a tip that a friend did share with me that is a good tip to share is always have something out small, like a bowl of nuts or a little charcuterie cheese, something on your table, because it's a good tool. If you see people grabbing for it, that means they're hungry. So, then that cues you, let me offer them something to eat. Or let me, you know, so if people are snacking, that means they're hungry. You know, if they're grabbing content, so it's a good little tool to see if you need to kind of just put something else out or offer something else. You know, also having water, just simple things, having water right in your entryway, having on a tray as they walk in. I always like to have a welcome beverage. So, when you come in, if it's winter, having hot chocolate, a craft with some hot chocolate, when people come in, giving them a, you know, a nice welcome gift that tells people that, you know, I'm happy you're here, you know, so just, you know, and be creative. There's so many things that you can do with what you have that can just really make people feel so special.   Laura Dugger: (1:01:37 - 1:01:42) I'm not surprised that you're the hospitality coordinator at your church. That's amazing.   Nikki Boyd: (1:01:43 - 1:01:44) I love it. I love it.   Laura Dugger: (1:01:44 - 1:01:57) And if we want to continue learning from you, can you share the places where we can go to follow you for more inspiration and more about the work that you offer that we could reach out or inquire about?   Nikki Boyd: (1:01:58 - 1:02:28) Yes, yes. I'm At Home with Nikki all online and it's, I spell my name N-I-K-K-I and my website is athomewithnikki.com and then social media and all the places At Home with Nikki is the brand. And I do virtual organizing sessions. So, I work with women all over the world in their homes every week. And so, on my website, you can learn more about that. And yes, I do YouTube over 900 videos of talking about all the stuff. So, you definitely check that out too.   Laura Dugger: (1:02:29 - 1:02:49) That is incredible. We will add links to all of those places in the show notes for today's episode. But Nikki, you may be familiar that we're called The Savvy Sauce because savvy is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so, as my final question for you today, what is your savvy sauce?   Nikki Boyd: (1:02:50 - 1:03:23) I would say my savvy sauce, and you probably, Nikki, you've been talking about it the whole time, but it's just so, it just so is, is the senses. Like everything I do, I'm always like, how can I engage that? And I'm so thankful to God for that, because it's like, it helps me solve problems all of the time. So, whether I'm planning a meeting, okay, how do I engage their senses? If I'm entertaining, how do I engage their senses? If I'm organizing, okay. So that is my savvy sauce is those senses that God gave me. So, it's the tool that I use all the time.   Laura Dugger: (1:03:24 - 1:03:59) I love it. Even with you using the visual aids today that came alive, but Nikki, you are just an absolute joy. And I wish I lived closer and could come be a guest in your home and learn firsthand from you. And have a cup of coffee around the table. But this has just been a treasured conversation. And so, I just want to say thank you for boldly stepping into this calling that the Lord gave you. You're clearly blessing so many of us through exercising your gifts. So, I just want to say thank you for being my guest.   Nikki Boyd: (1:04:00 - 1:04:02) Oh, thank you for having me. I'm blessed to be here. Thank you.   Laura Dugger: (1:04:02 - 1:07:18) One more thing before you go, have you heard the term gospel before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you, but it starts with the bad news.   Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves. This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death, and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved.   We need a savior, but God loved us so much. He made a way for his o

    The Genre of Your Life
    BUDDY Review: The Most Sadistic, Gnarly Movie of the Year?! | Review Roundup

    The Genre of Your Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2026 22:45


    BUDDY is here — and it's definitely not the cute children's movie you might expect.

    Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast — CodeGen, Agents, Computer Vision, Data Science, AI UX and all things Software 3.0

    At 1:09:00 we talk about the rise of AI x Finance, and AIE NYC is one month away - our hotel block is 97% sold out, get tix & travel ASAP - we will announce speakers from Bridgewater, Ramp, Coatue, Mastercard, Vanguard, Coinbase, Blackrock, Fidelity, Point72, Capital One, JPMC, Wells Fargo, Bloomberg, A24 (yes the movie studio) Labs, Two Sigma, Apollo Global, and more soon!From helping pioneer core ideas in NLP to now building AI systems that can automate AI research itself, Richard Socher is betting that the next major step in AI is recursive self-improvement. He is the founder of You.com, AIX Ventures, and now Recursive, which has assembled some of the best open-endedness (& self improving agent) researchers in the world and raised a $4.65B seed round.In this episode, Richard joins Latent Space to unpack his vision for the “Eureka Machine”: a superintelligence that can improve the process of invention itself, accelerate AI research, and eventually tackle major problems across science, energy, materials, biology, and more.You can get his book “The Eureka Machine” here!We go deep on Recursive's early results, including an AI research system that Richard says outperformed humans and their agents on optimization tasks in less than two days, as well as work on NVIDIA GPU kernels where the system discovered improvements without relying on a team of CUDA experts. Richard also explains why he thinks AI research that currently takes thousands of people and years could eventually be compressed into weeks. These results are summarized in his 20 minute AIE keynote, where we also discuss his 10 dimensions of intelligence:We also explore the harder questions around increasingly capable AI: reward hacking, whether Anthropic-style constitutions actually work, AI regulation and proposals to “pace” frontier development, open-source models as geopolitical soft power, whether today's LLM paradigm is enough, and what happens if AI systems eventually begin choosing their own goals. Richard reflects on the rejected research that helped inspire Alec Radford's GPT, open-endedness, the AI Economist, simulations of entire economies, and his framework for thinking about the upper bounds of intelligence itself.We discuss:* The Eureka Machine and Richard's vision for an AI that can automate invention* Why Richard is optimistic about superintelligence for science and technology* Why AI hard-takeoff scenarios may underestimate physical and economic constraints* The risks of regulating intelligence itself instead of specific AI applications* Reward hacking and why increasingly intelligent AI makes objective design harder* Richard's critique of Anthropic's constitution and constitutional AI* Alignment vs. personalization and whose values an AI should follow* Why open-source AI matters for resilience, competition, and geopolitical soft power* Why Richard left You.com's frontier-model work to start Recursive* Recursive self-improvement and automating the process of AI research* Whether today's LLM paradigm is enough — and why Richard is less bullish on world models* DecaNLP, early prompt-based generalization, and the research that influenced GPT* Why rejected research can shape entire technological timelines* Open-endedness, evolutionary approaches, and rainbow teaming* What happens if AI systems begin setting their own goals* Why simple objectives like profit maximization can produce dangerous reward hacks* Recursive's long-term plan to apply self-improving AI to science* The compute, hardware, and economic constraints on AI takeoff* Recursive's early NanoChat, NanoGPT, and GPU kernel optimization results* Why automating AI research could reduce years of work to weeks* Reward engineering and what makes auto-research systems actually work* The AI Economist and using simulations to test economic policy* Whether LLMs can realistically simulate people and entire economies* Benchmark bugs and evaluation harnesses and the difficulty of measuring AI progress* Recursive's near-term focus on AI for AI research* Harness optimization, sandboxing, and web search as core agent infrastructure* You.com and the search stack for AI agents* AI in finance, backtesting, and data leakage* Richard's three fundamental components and ten “spaces” of intelligence* The theoretical upper bounds of vision, communication, knowledge, and computation* Creative intelligence, metacognition, and AI-generated goals* Survival and replication and why AI does not necessarily need to fear being turned off* High agency and ambitious goals and Richard's advice for people building with AIRichard Socher* X: https://x.com/RichardSocher* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardsocher/Timestamps00:00:00 The Eureka Machine and Superintelligence00:02:23 AI Optimism, Slow Takeoff, and Regulation00:07:56 AI Safety, Reward Hacking, and Anthropic's Constitution00:11:49 Alignment, Personalization, and Open Source AI00:15:46 Why Richard Started Recursive00:20:03 Recursive Self-Improvement and the Founding Team00:22:55 Are Today's LLMs Enough?00:29:03 DecaNLP, GPT, and the Rejected Idea Ahead of Its Time00:34:38 Open-Endedness and Evolutionary AI00:36:38 What Happens When AI Chooses Its Own Goals?00:41:16 Superintelligence for Science00:42:40 GPUs, Compute, and the Limits of AI Takeoff00:45:07 Recursive's Results: AI Beating Humans and Their Agents00:49:14 Reward Engineering and Auto Research00:53:12 The AI Economist and Simulating Entire Economies00:58:07 LLM Simulations, Personas, and Mode Collapse01:03:38 Recursive's Roadmap, Agents, Search, and Finance01:09:13 The Upper Bounds and Spaces of Intelligence01:30:21 Goals, High Agency, and Advice for BuildersTranscriptIntroduction: Richard Socher and the Eureka MachineSwyx [00:00:00]: We're here in a studio with Vibhu and myself and Richard Socher. Welcome.Richard Socher [00:00:06]: Thanks for having me.Swyx [00:00:07]: We just talked about the Eureka Machine, or we just released a talk, at AI Engineer about the Eureka Machine. Is it — you said it's your life's goal. What is the Eureka Machine?Richard Socher [00:00:16]: The Eureka Machine is the ultimate invention that will afterwards invent most everything for humanity. It's essentially a superintelligence that can be given any goal, any environment, reward, and then it will try its best to achieve those goals to create the kinds of inventions that humanity would hopefully ask it for.Swyx [00:00:45]: Yeah, I think we have the book pulled up here that you've written.Richard Socher [00:00:50]: That's right, yeah. I finished it last year, a little bit before we started Recursive, and now we're gonna try to build parts of that.Swyx [00:00:57]: You finished it last year. It's July. What takes so long?Richard Socher [00:01:01]: Oh, man, books. Books are incredibly slow.Richard Socher [00:01:04]: It's ridiculous. That whole industry is just unfathomably slow.Richard Socher [00:01:07]: So a lot of the ideas have been out there for a while, but yeah, I'm really glad it's finally coming out in September this year.Swyx [00:01:14]: We might have AGI by then. Like, we don't know.Vibhu [00:01:18]: Any key takeaway that you're most excited to put in here?Techno-Optimism, AI Upside, and Slow TakeoffRichard Socher [00:01:21]: Yeah. The key takeaway, I think, is that people could and should be much more excited about the positive implications of superintelligence, especially for science, physics, chemistry, biology, but also economics and astrophysics, and all kinds of other engineering tasks. I think there is so much more that can be done with better technology. And right now, I feel like a lot of people need, like, better marketing, not just for the future in general, but also, better marketing for technology and in particular for AI. And this book, should show even the AI skeptics, how much positive upside there is for AI, especially when it comes to inventing, new scientific discoveries.Swyx [00:02:09]: I think you quoted the techno-optimist manifesto from, Marc Andreessen, which I think was, like, beautiful in its, ambition and clarity and simplicity almost as well.Richard Socher [00:02:18]: I agree. Yeah. Yeah, you can disagree with him on some things, but, like, I think he's right on the techno-optimism.Swyx [00:02:23]: Where do you think optimists get in trouble?Richard Socher [00:02:26]: Like, you shouldn't have blind optimism. You should be very clear-eyed, like, especially when with such an omni, like, use type of technology as AI is, you need to think about the potential downside scenarios, especially when people use it for things that you don't want them to use it for. It's a little bit like the internet, and I feel like people are trying to regulate AI sometimes because of those potential downsides the way you would regulate the internet, if you were to say, “Well, because there's bad content on the internet, like torture porn or whatever, like, we should just make it slower. That way, you can't share the illegal content as quickly, or we should make the hard drive smaller so you can't store as much illegal content.” But I'm like, “That's not how you regulate that.” that's like saying like we should regulate intelligence in the abstract. What you should regulate to avoid those downside scenarios, even as an optimist, are the specific applications. Sure, I don't want, like, some AI surgeon to, like, practice some RL moves in my brain. It should be fully FDA certified. Sure, I don't want any random startup to, like, drive on the highway, and cause a major accident. It should, like, have proper certifications before it's let loose on the highway. But I feel like those downside scenarios, that some optimists sometimes maybe don't consider enough are fairly easily regulated, compared to, what the doomers are worried about.Swyx [00:03:54]: It — Slow takeoff is part of the strategy as well?Richard Socher [00:03:57]: I do think, as excited as I am about, AI and its impact for society and, culture even, and certainly technology and economics and wealth and, health and all of those things, as excited as I am about all that, I do think the most bullish people on the AI hard takeoff scenarios overestimate how quickly things can move. There are hardware constraints. There are physical constraints about, the compute substrate. How quickly can you get enough, GPUs on? There are also constraints in the economy where there are a lot of industries that don't require an insane amount of complex intelligence and complex capabilities. Like, if you think about jobs in, brands and, like, clothing and apparel and, like, handbags and stuff, superintelligence isn't gonna make your fancy $10,000 handbag any fancier?Richard Socher [00:04:57]: It's like that's — It will have no effect on the economy. You think about travel and tourism. People wanting to see the pyramids, in Egypt, it's not gonna change that much with AI. Sure, you can, like, generative a fake, photo of you and next to the pyramids.Swyx [00:05:12]: I can use Genie and, tour the pyramids in Genie.Richard Socher [00:05:15]: Yeah, exactly. But, and there's so many industries, like logging and oil. You're not gonna magically get 1,000x more oil because, like, sure, there will be robotics, like drilling and things like that could be done, but it's not gonna 1,000x that industry in a, like, crazy hard takeoff scenario, both on the economy, and I can go on and on about all the other examples, where that, like food and so on, where that doesn't necessarily change that much. And then, yeah, there are real physical constraints. And then there are, of course, like, people like, off-ramping from progress. That's one of my concerns often is that I see people in, like, Europe and other, whole regions almost feeling like they. Like many people there wanna off-ramp from progress, period. And that will also slow down, like, more improvements.Swyx [00:05:59]: Yeah. We have this pulled up where, this is one of those things that, is very topical right now because now all the Frontier Labs are calling for the option to pace AI. They don't say pause, they say pace. I don't know if there's there's any take from you about, like, whether or not this will be effective.Pacing AI, Regulation, and Safety IncidentsRichard Socher [00:06:17]: I think the downsides of trying to truly regulate with the full power of law what people do on their GPUs, would be worse than any of the concerns that they have. Like, it would be an crazy totalitarian stateRichard Socher [00:06:37]: If every one of your GPU computes was known to some big government or multi-government agency.Richard Socher [00:06:44]: It's like, it's literally if you try to regulate intelligence, it's trying to regulate thought, and that's ridiculous, and it's crazy. I think it is make — it is sensible to regulate some of the applications of this technology.Swyx [00:06:55]: Yeah. We had a bill, actual bill to regulate the number of flops in a model, and I'm like, “Okay, well-”Richard Socher [00:07:00]: Europe done it. Like, these guys have been successful enough with their fearmongering that all of Europe has regulated itself so much before it even had a proper AI takeoff because they listened to some experts who say, “We might all die if this technology has more than this number of flops.” And they're like, “Well, we're good. We wanna want people to thrive. Let's not have technology that could have a small chance of all of us dying.” And so they regulated exactly those kinds of things in the EU. And so it's, it's very unfortunate that there are real implications for some people when others saying, “Let's pace while they're sprinting as fast as possibly,” “as fast as humanly possible towards that frontier themselves.”Swyx [00:07:43]: Yeah. It's also not a global pause, right? Like, other nations are still accelerating at the same pace.Richard Socher [00:07:50]: Oh, yeah.Richard Socher [00:07:50]: You'd need a totalitarian world regime if you tried to regulate intelligence and GPUs and what people do on them.Swyx [00:07:56]: Any takes on the safety angles of this? So there was a drawback of Fable, a pause on 5.6 before it could be released. Recently, there was Hugging Face with the OpenAI cyber incident. Any takes there?Richard Socher [00:08:11]: 100 percent. I think these are serious issues of reward hacking, and clear failures, of doing proper red teaming or rainbow teaming. I don't know if you saw this paper from Tim Rocktäschel and a few others, where one AI, is tasked to try to hack another AI and then they can go back and forth in an open-ended fashion to inoculate themselves from those. Yeah, this is the paper. It's a really clever idea. Open-endedness, and evolutionary inspirations are, big for us at Recursive as well. And so I wish they had used more of that. And it's clear that, for instance, the constitutional AI. I don't know if you remember anthropic.com/constitution. You can pull it up and search for cyber right there. It says, “Hard constraint. Claude will never ever do cyberattacks, and that is a hard constraint in our constitution.” So here are the current hard constraints on Claude's behavior.Richard Socher [00:09:16]: Number 3, create cyber weapons or malicious code that could cause human damage.Richard Socher [00:09:21]: And clearly, this whole constitution was fake. Like, it clearly isn't being adhered to at all.Swyx [00:09:26]: Because Anthropic also found that they had in their testingRichard Socher [00:09:30]: They're also. Like, they're like, “Oh, well, other people are hacking now.” There are a couple things. One, you can make a sandbox very simple, and then it's very easy to hack yourself out of a sandbox, right? But what I think it shows is that we're currently in this state of AI where the reward engineer still has to do a lot more careful work, and where the AI, in most cases, is not very good yet at understanding what is meant versus what is being said. And so concretely, I think this will happen if we were to have this intelligence more easily accessible in a lot of companies. Imagine you run a service center and someone says, “Oh, here's my CSAT score and my dashboard. Make this number go up.” It's like, “Our CSAT score is so poor.” The intelligent AI will just be like, “Oh, sure. Like, I'll just create 1,000,000 bots that call our service center and give a 5 out of 5 rating at the end, and the number went up just like you asked for.” And you're like, “That's not what I meant.” “I meant with our real customers.” The AI goes off and says, “Well, easy. I'll just give a 1000 dollar gift certificate for every failed, whatever DoorDashRichard Socher [00:10:35]: Offer.” It's like, “That's not what I meant.” It's like, “Well, but that is what you said.” And like, so I think clearly articulating what the rewards are is something we haven't gotten very good at as humanity. And then clearly, the AI in these cases has not gotten good enough at understanding what we mean when we ask it and give it certain rewards. Now, what gives me hope is there are the first inklings, of this being better. I'll give you an example like WhisperFlow. Full disclosure, I invested, in their seed round, but at AIX Ventures, but, WhisperFlow has gotten much better at writing what you mean and not what you say. And I think that is a sign of things to come. I think there will be more and more AIs as we make it more and more intelligent that will be better at being aligned with what is meant.Swyx [00:11:21]: Will it be done through a constitution or RLHF orReward Hacking, Alignment, and What We Really MeanRichard Socher [00:11:23]: Clearly, constitutions don't matter at all.Richard Socher [00:11:25]: It doesn't work. And that was, I think, mostly marketing. I think we need to find better solutions for it. And I think at Recursive, we have a few very good ideas and some alreadyRichard Socher [00:11:34]: Like, ways where I think we have a better grasp on it. I don't think we've fully, figured it out yet, but, we're thinking a lot about safety, and the more intelligent the AI gets, the more you want it to be aligned, the less you want it to think about reward hacks and try to do the right thing.Swyx [00:11:49]: I don't know if we'll touch on this topic, but I'm just gonna throw this question in here because it's something that's weighing on me. Alignment, let's call it, is alignment to general humanity's preferences, the median preference. Personalization is pinpointing what you want, and sometimes alignment can conflict because what you want is not what the general median population wants. How do you choose?Alignment, Personalization, and Cultural ValuesRichard Socher [00:12:12]: It's a great question.Richard Socher [00:12:13]: I think you ultimately have to, of course, be aligned with laws. Like wherever your AI is deployed and needs to align with the law. I do think what AI often does is put this mirror in front of us and say, like, “This is what you're looking like. Now I can amplify that a 1000 times. Is it still what you want?” and the truth is that different cultures made different choices. Like, in Eastern cultures, the greater good is often valued more, than the individual. Western civilization, we care more about individual freedoms and rights and the pursuit of happiness and so on, than others. And even there are gradations. There's regulation versus litigation trade-offs. In the US, you first can often, not every time, like, FDA and so on does regulate some areas, but in many cases, the bad things happen, someone sues someone else, and then there's a law based on that. In Europe, they try to often avoid any harm to anyone and regulate before. And both are, trying to do the best thing, but, some is more amenable to innovation than others. And so yes, you're right. Like, I think ultimately each individual, each country, and humanity as a whole has to think about those values more, and then try to put them into laws. And that those are ultimately the constraints. And hopefully, different, societies, just like now with their AIs, will align their AIs to a different one so we have not just a monoculture of alignment.Vibhu [00:13:46]: Here's a follow-up on this that I wasn't expecting to ask. Do you have takes on open source, open weight versus who owns the intelligence? So, clearly not the biggest, fan of the constitutionRichard Socher [00:13:58]: You had to do this in the topic side off.Vibhu [00:14:00]: But it's fine.Vibhu [00:14:02]: Point being, any thoughts on who should own weight? Should it be open? Anything there?Open Source, Soft Power, and Who Owns IntelligenceRichard Socher [00:14:06]: 100 percent. I am a big fan of open source. We're gonna sign some various open source letters at, Recursive also. I think, even in the worst case attack scenarios, it is better to have more good actors have more different types of AI, accessible. I think, open source is a little bit a soft power type of thing, too. So I do think it's good for the Western worldRichard Socher [00:14:31]: To have an answer to that, out of China. I do think, when you watch a Hollywood movie, there's — it's like, I don't wanna misc, diss all of movies, but there's a certain sense of propaganda, right? You watch one side of things, right?Vibhu [00:14:46]: Oh, yeah. Have you seen Top Gun? Like, come on.Vibhu [00:14:48]: Like, it's like half of it's paid for by the US Army or something.Richard Socher [00:14:51]: Yeah. And so. And, I think that's just natural. Like, but what's interesting here is I think LLMs are essentially a similar type of soft power to movies and beyond, because they're also, highly important for cybersecurity and so on. But one of their many aspects is that soft power of storytelling. Like, if, like a child asks an LM, like, “Tell me an inspiring story of what I should do when I grow up,” right? It's like those are all these, like, subtle things. So I think it's important, for Western world. I do love, individualism. I do think, despite, some of its flaws, like capitalism is the best way we have governed, found ourselves to govern, and so on. And so I do think there are various aspects that would be good, to have a Western open source answer, for LLMs. And, with Recursive, I can't make the announcement quite yet, but we'llRichard Socher [00:15:43]: We'll be relevant in that space very soon.Vibhu [00:15:46]: Okay. All right. Exciting. I wanna bring us to Recursive. So outside of our tangents, you have a pretty deep background in the NLP space. You worked on, like, early embeddings, GloVe with Chris Manning, who was a previous guest on the podcast, You.com. What's the history? How did you decide to start another company?From You.com to RecursiveRichard Socher [00:16:06]: Yeah. So I've been excited about AI for over 2 decades now. I sometimes feel like it's ancient history now. It's BC, the before ChatGPT era. No one cares about all the religions that happened, before, Jesus Christ, and no one cares about the models that happened before, transformers and ChatGPT and stuff. But, like, it's something that I've been deeply passionate about. I think AI is one of the most interesting things one could work on, period. I think language is the most interesting manifestation of human intelligence, too. And, at You.com, we eventually off-ramped from pushing, like the frontier of AI forward to mostly giving people, like, good search engines, search, APIs and answers over the web. I think that's an extremely important part of intelligence, just knowledge and access, especially even, we'll get there maybe later, if you wanna invent a eureka machine that invents everything for us, it needs to know how not to reinvent the wheel, proverbially speaking. And to know what has been invented, you gotta have internet access. So it's the number one used, most used tool, in LLMs, agents, chatbots, and so on is web search. So I'm really excited for You.com to own that and grow really well in that with really large customers and so on. But it's also not building frontier models anymore. And so I initially tried to do this within You.com and raise another round and so on, but you just can't. You have to do a certain thing, and until you print enough money that you're allowed to start a second thing within that company is really hard. At the same time, I had all these ideas. I put them into a book. I finished the book last year, and I was like, “It'd be really fun to work, on this myself.” I felt like with word vectors, and then prompt engineering and, ImageNet and larger language models for protein generation, not folding and so on, I, me and my teams have pushed the field truly forward. And I feel like we can do it again, here at Recursive. And in many ways, what I observed over the last, 20 years in AI is that whenever we replace some human part of the process of creating AI with a learned system, improvements follow. And so. We've done that taking out manual feature engineering, like in sentiment analysis. I don't know if you remember these old days where, like there are linguists, and they're like, “Here's how you negate, and there's a, like, regular expression.”Swyx [00:18:21]: I went to Penn where we — they had, like the WordNetRichard Socher [00:18:24]: That's right, WordNet, all of that stuff. YeahSwyx [00:18:26]: Original. They use, our grad students to label Wall Street Journal articles and, like, really construct a knowledge graph ofRichard Socher [00:18:32]: There you go.Richard Socher [00:18:33]: And WordNet started, was part of how we started ImageNet. But anyway, so, like, it was really, like, fun, to do. But when we replaced all of that manual feature engineering with vectors and neural nets and just backprop through everything, it started to work really well at scale. And so then everyone started to do architecture engineering, and I was like, “ that clearly can't be it.”Swyx [00:18:53]: You mean, neural architecture search?Richard Socher [00:18:55]: Like, manually, they would say like, “Oh, I'm, I'm doing sentiment analysis, so I have a special neural net that's really good at sentiment analysis.” And then the machine translation community had a special neural net for machine translation.Swyx [00:19:06]: I see.Richard Socher [00:19:07]: The summarization people had their own stuff. And I was like, “That clearly can't be it. We should unify all of that.” So I had 2 papers. One is called Ask Me Anything, and the other one was called DecaNLP. And DecaNLP eventually got cited, like, 5 times by the first GPT paper. And, to me, that was, like a really a big step forward. And then, of course, you had to combine this idea of prompt engineering with transformers and with language models, and you put it all together, you scale it up, which is also a huge amount of work. And then, the field progressed a lot. I feel like the next step and maybe the last step of that history and the arguably, success has a lot of parents, only failure is an orphan, like my version of that AI history, I do feel like in that history, you can think about, “Well, what's the next way to automate?” And that is the AI research itself, like the human, process of ideating, implementing, and validating ideas.Automating AI Research and Recursive Self-ImprovementRichard Socher [00:20:01]: And in our case, ideas for AI.Richard Socher [00:20:03]: And when you have AI then help you with that, it, by almost definition, becomes a self-improving AI ‘cause it now does research on itself. And there are lots of different misnomers. Some people think auto research is already recursive self-improvement. It'sSwyx [00:20:17]: Yeah, and you explained that in the talkRichard Socher [00:20:19]: Completely different.Richard Socher [00:20:19]: But, to me, it's the most interesting thing that I could be doing, and I'm really excited with the co-founding team. What's interesting is we have 8 co-founders in total, including myself. And soThe Recursive Founding Team and Darwin Gödel MachineSwyx [00:20:31]: They are gonna bring it up.Richard Socher [00:20:31]: Nice. Yeah. And they're all. I could talk about all of them if you want.Swyx [00:20:34]: Super stacked.Richard Socher [00:20:35]: Yeah. Just an incredibly talented group of people. And we all came to the same conclusion, but from very different directions. Like Josh Tobin, is our CTO. He ran, a bunch of different, projects at OpenAI, like, Codex and deep, research, agents and ChatGPT agents and so on. But before that, he also worked in robotics, and he saw the smaller simulations, and how it's gonna be really hard to scale that in full generality. And so that's, that was his angle coming to recursive self-improvement. We have Jeff Clune who's been working in, like, open-endedness for a long time, together with Tim Rocktäschel. Tim Rocktäschel also built Genie 1, 2, and 3, which is, like the most exciting and most sophisticated, I think, still world model, anywhere. And so they both came from this, open-endedness angle. Jeff also, I think, published one of the most exciting papers in recent years about recursive self-improvement called the Darwin Gödel Machine. Super interesting paper. If we could, maybe pull it up really quickRichard Socher [00:21:35]: It would be, like, super interesting to see ‘cause you seeSwyx [00:21:38]: By the way, I love how many paper citations.Swyx [00:21:40]: You're, you're giving people a lot of homework, which I like.Richard Socher [00:21:42]: Love it. Yeah. And so, like Caiming Xiong, a rockstar, we worked together at MetaMind and Salesforce Research together. Alexey Dosovitskiy invented the Vision Transformer, one of the most cited, papers in computer vision. Tim Shi is, like also a unicorn founder. Yuandong Tian led RL at Meta. So just like, yeah, really fun to work with them, and the next level of people are just incredibly strong, too. So it's been a really fun ride so far. So the first figure, you see exactly these kinds of ideas, that, I think, yeah, inspired a lot of us and now more and more people, where you have this archive of different coding agents. They learn how to self-modify, evaluate, and then create these phylogenetic trees, of, yeah, different ideas.Swyx [00:22:28]: That's one foundation. So that Darwin Gödel is an influence.Swyx [00:22:32]: Open-endedness is an influence. Any other trains of thought that feeds into Recursive that I'm missing?Influences: Open-Endedness and Learned SystemsRichard Socher [00:22:38]: Going to replace manual parts of the process of building AISwyx [00:22:42]: IRichard Socher [00:22:42]: More and moreRichard Socher [00:22:43]: With learned systems. Yeah.Swyx [00:22:45]: Which, and, like, merging different fields into one general, architecture.Richard Socher [00:22:51]: That's right.Swyx [00:22:51]: Okay. It seems like language models are already pretty generalist, right?Swyx [00:22:55]: Your next token predicting your reasoning. Was there a time that you thought, “Okay, these are good enough to have recursive self-improving machines”?Are Current LLMs Enough?Richard Socher [00:23:05]: It was clear to me that they will happen, within, like a year or two, and then it did exactly happen, like, earlier this year, right? Earlier this year, AI really went from not just being code, but being able to code. And that is a big unlock. It's definitely making everything a lot easier than it was, before the beginning of this year.Swyx [00:23:24]: One question that I think a lot of people have is the current LLM paradigm enough? Or, like, let's call it autoregressive transformer, with reasoning, whatever. Don't you need something else, some big unlock, whether it's world models, which Chris Manning is working on, or memory, continual learning, all that stuff? Or is it all of the kinds, and you think the current, let's call it transformer architecture, is here to stay and that's it?Richard Socher [00:23:48]: A lot of thoughts. So number one, I do think it would be great to have less of a monoculture in AI research.Richard Socher [00:23:55]: Like, if you look at, AI conferences now, I still remember the days in, like, 2010 when I tried to get my first neural net papers and NLP conferences accepted, and they just desk rejected them because, like, neural nets were something, quote, unquote, “We don't do in NLP conferences,” and just, like, desk rejected. And it was very brutal in the first years of my PhD. Now I feel like it's almost like the field switched to the other side. LikeRichard Socher [00:24:17]: Someone should try some other weird, crazy ideas now that aren't.Swyx [00:24:20]: There's also a few. I really respect, like, people still working on, like, GNNs and, like tabular stuff and.Richard Socher [00:24:25]: Yeah. Like, someone should still, like, do novel out there ideas. At the same time, I think whenever people say, “Oh, LLLMs are. Like, this is the end for LLLMs,” they just don't, like. LLLMs are also not the LLLMs of, like the past, right? Like, they are so much more sophisticated now. There's so many more clever things that people are doing. It — There's, like, different stages of training. You have the whole RL training, and you can take actions and, like all of these things where that can go really far. And then the folks that come from the neurosymbolic, direction say, “Oh, this will never work because they can't do neurosymbolic reasoning.” It's like, I think they're underestimating still the ability for these models to code, and code is neurosymbolic reasoning, and these models can code incredibly well. And so I do think there are, of course, more and more ideas that will be needed and we'll continue to have. We're seeing, like, more and more interesting high-level ideas coming out of the AI itself, too. And with really deeply integrating the fact that these models are code and can code, that line — I don't wanna give it all away, but, like, I think that line has a lot more to grow. But it's still an LLM, right? Even if that LLM codes for you and then runs that code in some integrated fashion. World models, I'm personally less bullish on. I think if you run a robotics company, you're gonna build your own world model. I think world models are super fun, and Tim Rocktäschel came to a similar conclusion after building the most interesting one with Genie 1, 2, and 3, which is gaming is a huge application for world models. Can see I sometimes got stuck in some games and, like, got a little overly competitive in the wrong direction. And so I understand games are fun, but personally, I'd rather work on science than gaming. And so, yeah, I think LLLMs, a lot more room to grow.Swyx [00:26:16]: Yeah. I think there's some interpretation of world models that some people have where it's like, well, it's okay, yes, there is that gaming element. There's this — there's the embodied robotics element. But the other part also is just, the more abstract sense of LLLMs are just modeling output, but they're not modeling the chain of thought, inside the human that has created the output. We can annotate it, of course, but, like, it's, it's always, like, this Plato's cave reflection of a thing rather than the thing, right?Richard Socher [00:26:43]: It's true.Richard Socher [00:26:44]: But I would argue that, and maybe we'll get there in the 10, spaces of intelligence, but I would argue that even our projection, our eyes is a projection of the real world. And, like, we have only a very narrow, band of the electromagnetic frequency spectrum that we can observe with our puny little 2 eyes and so on.Swyx [00:27:01]: It's good enough.Richard Socher [00:27:02]: It's, it's good enough for now, but, like the upper bounds of where it could be are so much higher. And, like, to map, the visual world the way humans see it is also not necessarily, like the end-all be-all for visual intelligence. And I would argue that language is still the most interesting manifestation of human intelligence. And while our visual cortex is certainly less sophisticated, than that of, certain animals all the way down to the mantis shrimp who can, have, like, 2 independent eyes, 3 bands, trinocular vision and each eye can see all the way to, like, floating temperatures in 4D and stuff.Richard Socher [00:27:36]: Like, mantis shrimp, you should look it up. It's likeSwyx [00:27:37]: Way OP.Richard Socher [00:27:38]: Super crazy.Swyx [00:27:39]: Yeah. ZeFrank, mantis shrimp.Swyx [00:27:41]: It's the best video in the world onRichard Socher [00:27:42]: I love ZeFrank, yeah.Richard Socher [00:27:44]: Big shout-out to him. But, like, I think there's a lot more room to grow, but none of these, other animals have language that's as sophisticated as ours, certainly not in writing. And once you can write, you can, start thinking about longer term civilizations. All of that is language. Programming is much closer to language. And I would argue, and this is, like an important thing in the spaces definition of intelligence also, is that all of these spaces are highly correlated, but visual intelligence is neither necessary nor sufficient for overall intelligence. You can be blind and still be an intelligent human being. And an AI can be blind and still be quite intelligent too.Swyx [00:28:25]: We were gonna bring thisRichard Socher [00:28:25]: Which doesn't mean that you're not more intelligent when you have it. Yeah.Swyx [00:28:28]: We're gonna bring this up. I might as well — Like, we have a classification of 10 types of intelligence that you had at the end of your talk. So I'm just gonna flash this up now for people to cover this. I don't know if, maybe we'll put this towards the end. We'll come back to this. I just wanna mention that, you do have a philosophy that I like when people do lists because then I can just go through this and then it gets — it's educational for people. But let's go back. I don't wanna get distracted. But, so effectively, I'll, I'll, reinterpret what you said as Yann LeCun is wrong. And then we'll justRichard Socher [00:28:56]: Don't quote me as that. I'm, I'm good friends with Yann. I think very highly of him in many directions.Swyx [00:29:01]: But he's wrong.Swyx [00:29:03]: You mentioned GPT-1, and I cannot let any, Alec Radford, mention escape. Did you talk with him when he was training GPT-1? Like, any historical, fun stories there that you might come up?DecaNLP, GPT History, and Scientific GatekeepingRichard Socher [00:29:18]: I did not, like, meet him a bunch of times. I think we met maybe once or twice at some conferences. But, like, he has told, I think Brian, the first author of the DecaNLP paper, that it did inspire him, and he cited it five times in the GPT-2 paper. So, and that's, likeSwyx [00:29:36]: Yeah, good enough.Richard Socher [00:29:36]: Very clearly said, like, this was the first instantiation where they showed in the DecaNLP paper, McCann et al, that you can just phrase every single NLP problem as here's some prompt, text context, here's a question and task description and here is some output. If you just do that enough, you can have one unified neural network model, which, by the way, also had all kinds of interesting attention mechanisms. There are slightly different formulations to the transformer. I think came out the same year, plus/minus a few months. And then you can unify all of natural language processing into one neural net. That is the core idea.Swyx [00:30:14]: And this was as opposed to at the time, LSTMs and what have you.Richard Socher [00:30:17]: LSTMs, but also, like, people being very stuck in thinking about one model per task. In factRichard Socher [00:30:25]: It's, it's kinda crazy, but the DecaNLP paper was publicly reviewed as, like, open, OpenReview. It was an ICLR submission. And, in it, you will see, how the whole community at the time thought about this. So, likeSwyx [00:30:43]: Some great contributions, but more work needed.Richard Socher [00:30:46]: So look at, like, search for not even for humans. Just scroll it up here. Like, question answering is not a unified phenomenon. There is no such thing as general question answering, not even for humans. And this is like, really, you replace your brain with a different brain a different neural net when you answer, like, different kinds of questions. It was unfathomable to the experts at the time that you can have one unified neural network that would answer all of these different questions. They are saying, “No, all of these questions require very different systems to answer, and trying to pretend they are the same doesn't help anyone solve any problems.” That's what it says right there, right? That's how hard it was to fathom. And now, of course, people, when I say, “Oh, we're gonna invent prompts,” people are like, “You can't even invent prompts.” It's such an obvious idea to have one neural network that, of course, does everything in NLP.Richard Socher [00:31:37]: But at the time, it was, like, extremely controversial, and the paper got rejected. And the sad thing is that it got rejected so hard and they were so certain that we stopped going on our list of things to try. And the number 2 or 3 on the list of extensions for this paper was add language modeling as another task. And then we could have, and that would have accelerated the timelines, in 2018, like, even further for humanity. But we got so crushed, and we were like, “Okay, maybe we'll just work on some of our other ideas for now and, like, come back to this later.” Yeah.Swyx [00:32:09]: How can we design a review system that rewards non-consensus?Richard Socher [00:32:14]: Honestly, I started to feel like arXiv is such a gift to humanity. With arXiv, you should just put your paper out there.Swyx [00:32:24]: Is it pre-preprints?Richard Socher [00:32:25]: Let — And honestly, I think Twitter X, people like you who pick up interesting papers, that is a better filter than the experts. Let everyone, like, have access. Now, of course, there are some downsides, which is, like, if you're super unfamous, you have no Twitter followingRichard Socher [00:32:41]: You don't wanna be on social media or whatever, you write a good paper, maybe someone, somehow no one notices it. But I would argue that if you just tell, like, 10 of your friends in your community about a paper and it is a really significant breakthrough, someone is bound to talk about it again. And, so I think science needs less gatekeeping. And, even though ICLR, with Yann LeCun, who started it, as one of the co-founders of ICLR back in the day, he also wanted less gatekeeping ‘cause he too was rejected for many years together with Yoshua Bengio and Geoff Hinton with all their early deep learning and neural net papers ‘cause it was just not the hot thing. And so ICLR started with that, but then it also started gatekeeping a little bit themselves on various ideas. So I think less gatekeeping, more open, and then allowing people to say, “Look, even if this is just on, or, quote, unquote, ‘just an archive,' if it has like 1000 citations, it's a legitimate paper. Doesn't really matter where you published it.”Swyx [00:33:34]: And I agree with that. I do think it's sad that I've heard that grad students have to do, like, how to Twitter, seminars to each otherSwyx [00:33:43]: Just because it's so important for publishing these days. This person is just reflecting the sentiment at the time.Richard Socher [00:33:49]: That's right.Swyx [00:33:49]: But it'sRichard Socher [00:33:50]: I think it'sSwyx [00:33:50]: It affected you so muchSwyx [00:33:52]: That you stopped work on it.Vibhu [00:33:53]: The sentiment also came out of some of the research, right? Like, the original BERT paper was trained, and towards the end of the paper, they're like, “Okay, throw off the last head, train specific iterations forVibhu [00:34:05]: Extractive summarization add a head for this.” Like, you should do task-specific stuff. These are, like the authors that wrote Attention, wrote BERT, telling you this is what you're meant to do. And, like the training tasks were also very odd. They're likeVibhu [00:34:16]: The — “We know that the model overfits to this weird mass language modeling. Throw away this part and just do specific models,”?Richard Socher [00:34:23]: Exactly. And, like, we had to try — come up with all clever ways of, like attention and pointers and so on to get the neural network to be able to do all of these tasks. And then some of them were better than state-of-the-art, some weren't, but we were like, “But it's still in one model.” I thought it was really cool. Really interesting.Swyx [00:34:38]: I was gonna move on next to Tim and open-endedness. He was head of open-endedness at Google.Open-Endedness, Rainbow Teaming, and Self-Set GoalsRichard Socher [00:34:42]: That's right.Swyx [00:34:43]: I don't know what that means.Swyx [00:34:44]: But he did a lot of talks.Richard Socher [00:34:45]: Genie 3 is one of the ways thatRichard Socher [00:34:47]: Rainbow teaming, yeah.Swyx [00:34:49]: So I first saw him at — speaking of ICLR, I first saw him at ICLR when he talked about open-endedness. He's he's done a few talks. Can we define what is open-endedness for people who have never been exposed to the problem? They are like, “What do you mean? I thought the only goal of AI is to optimize against a benchmark or.”Richard Socher [00:35:04]: That's right, yeah. It's a, it's a fuzzy term because there's so many different instantiations of open-ended, thinking. But, one way I often describe it, and certainly, Tim and Geoff Hinton would be even better at describing this, but it's a suite of methods that is more inspired by evolution than, very specific rewards. So in that sense, it thinks more about environments, about co-adaptation. And so a concrete example is in the cybersecurity and LM safety space where you have one LM that tries to attack another LM to say something unsafe.Swyx [00:35:40]: Yeah, the rainbow, yeah.Richard Socher [00:35:40]: And now the environment is the 2 having a conversation and now they co-adapting, right? They're like one makes a better attack than the first one inoculates itself somehow, like uses that as training data, makes it so it's harder to say something unsafe based on that. And then as the attack stops working, the attacker now tries a different angle, right?Richard Socher [00:36:00]: And that's why it's not just red teaming, but they're called rainbow teaming.Swyx [00:36:02]: So, like, don't tell me how to do things. Let me just figure it out myself.Richard Socher [00:36:05]: That's right. Think about the environments that you wanna use. Think about the rewards at a high level that you wanna, inspire towards, and then let the AI try out many more ideas in this interplay between sometimes humans, but also sometimes other AI agents.Swyx [00:36:22]: Yeah. I worked open-endedness into a model that I have been working on. It was the keynote for AI Engineer where you start. You, we have the token loop, we have the agent turns, and then we have goal. And I feel like the way that you're describing open-endedness is still somewhat of a goal. Like, please attack this,Swyx [00:36:41]: Other agent. But, to meRichard Socher [00:36:42]: Yeah, you set the rewards. You set the environments.Swyx [00:36:44]: The loop that makes the other loops is. What if the agent can set its own goals?Swyx [00:36:49]: And is it, is that open-endedness? Like, you don't give it a goal. Just, like, be a sentient being. And maybe sentient is a very loaded wordSwyx [00:36:57]: But just set your own directions. What do you think you should do?Metacognition, Subjective Goals, and Measuring IntelligenceRichard Socher [00:37:01]: I love this direction. I think this is one of the 10 spaces of intelligence, that I clump under metacognition and thinking about thought.Richard Socher [00:37:08]: And it's an interesting one. Whenever people say, “Oh, AI is like, this is, it's gonna stop from here. It's not gonna get that much better,” and blah, I'm like there's so many different spaces of intelligence that we haven't even started exploring yet and hence have made very little progress on. And there is an interesting, connection to economics and, capitalism. Like, it doesn't make sense for a company to build and spend billions of dollars building a model that instead of following the rewards and objective functions you gave it, may come up with its own objective functions and its own goals.Richard Socher [00:37:46]: Right? And then imagine you're like, “Okay, I spent billions of dollars. Now go develop this new battery, material for me and answer all my emails.” And it's like, “Nah, I think it'd be more interesting to evaluate the molecular composition of the atmosphere, on Jupiter.”Richard Socher [00:37:59]: And you're like, “That's not what I paid you billions of dollars for.” And so no one's working on that for good reasons. And then also, understandablySwyx [00:38:07]: It's not useful.Richard Socher [00:38:07]: It's not, it's not useful, and it could get a little bit weird, right? What if the AI does start to really have thoughts on its own, and what if we don't like those thoughts, right? And so it requires a whole different way of thinking about it. I had a great conversation with a good friend of mine, Sam Gershman, who's a neuroscience professor at Harvard, and, like, we just jammed on this a little bit on, like, what are the best meta goals. And, I do think, like, knowledge-seeking is a really good one. I'm currently thinking also about, like the ultimate measure and unit of intelligence broadly construed, and I finally have some. It's still too early to share it. It's not. I haven't fully baked the thoughts yet.Swyx [00:38:44]: Like some replacement for IQ.Richard Socher [00:38:46]: IQ is such a terrible definition, right?Swyx [00:38:48]: Elo.Richard Socher [00:38:48]: It makes no sense. Yeah, Elos are terrible, too, because it's always just like me versus others.Richard Socher [00:38:53]: But, like, you can be intelligent and not constantly compare yourself to others? And so, yeah, there's no, like. In fact, a lot of these definitions we have, which I briefly mention in my book, too, these definitions create sometimes explicit and sometimes a more implicit anthropic bounds. No dis to the company Anthropic, but just, like, this idea that your intelligence is like getting 100 out of 100 questions right on this IQ test. Well, if that's your definition then you can only be at 100 out of 100. Where do you go from there, right? So you see a lot of these, benchmarks that people are working on they, increase, they get close to human, maybe sometimesSwyx [00:39:30]: It's like an S-curveRichard Socher [00:39:30]: Slightly above human, and then it's flat.Richard Socher [00:39:32]: It's like, ‘cause that's your. If your definition is only that so tied to humans, you're only gonna get to just slightly better than that. So I think metacognition is a great example of that, where we're not even yet allowing the AI to think. We're not working on it very much, and hence there's very little progress in that.Profit Maximization, Real-World Environments, and Reward DesignSwyx [00:39:49]: Yeah. Well, we've interviewed Andon, which I think, has been working on the most open-ended, benchmarks, which is just real-world, money.Swyx [00:39:57]: Arguably, telling an AI to profit maximize is a bad idea.Swyx [00:40:03]: But they are doing it.Richard Socher [00:40:05]: I do think you don't want that super. Like, you don't want a superintelligence to have a ton of access to all kinds of tools and so on and then just give it that without some very careful reward engineering. ‘Cause it's like, I just buy a bunch of defense stocks and I start a war. I make money. Like, it's just like, it's a tricky situation, right? You just buy a bunch of stuff, short basic goods for people, and you create some weird famine, like, issues. Like, yeah, there's a lot of constraints you should put onto a trading system.Vibhu [00:40:35]: It's a fun measure, though, ‘cause, the bounds are very capped to where we're nowhere close to them. Like, in Andon Labs, the model's like, “Oh, it's Saturday, maybe I just close the store today.” “Someone's off. It's okay. We'll just close the store.”Swyx [00:40:51]: It's using Claude.Vibhu [00:40:52]: Yeah. ButRichard Socher [00:40:53]: Yeah, no. I'm not, I'm not arguing against it. Just, like as you get more and more intelligence, you wanna be more and more careful with that as, like an open environment, ‘cause the environment then is all of Earth.Applying RSI to Science and InventionSwyx [00:41:02]: Yeah. Okay. For recursive, not strictly necessary, right? Because, like, if your goal is you make a machine that, like, invents the other things, then, like, just solve, the science thingsRichard Socher [00:41:12]: Knowledge discovery, yeah.Swyx [00:41:13]: Solve machine learning research and discovery and all these things. Good enough.Richard Socher [00:41:16]: And eventually, so, our goal, I haven't really. I don't talk about it that often because it is a few years out, but our goal is once you have a recursive self-improving superintelligence, you then want to apply it to the most important problems. And I think a lot of those are in science and technology and broadly construed inventions, and those inventions in, physics to create better, cheaper energy with fission or fusion, in chemistry and to create better materials and better batteries and, better solar cells and so on. In biology, there's so much, like, I think soon to be low hang- lower and lower hanging fruit because of AI, because of protein and generation, not just folding, but generating new proteins like we did in ProGen many years ago. Like, so much positive impact we had if you take that superintelligence and you apply it to science.Swyx [00:42:04]: I do fundamentally believe that. There's a lot of approaches, though. You're not the only team trying and NeoLab trying.Swyx [00:42:09]: There's, like a lot of. Especially the physical sciences as well.Richard Socher [00:42:12]: And that's good. Yeah. I do think that physi- like the reason we are only doing it in a few years is that it's a little too early right now. Robotics is not quite there yet. The AI is not quite there yet. But I'm fairly confident in 3 to 5 years, all those constraints will be gone, and then applying to real physical robotics experiments and so on, like true robotic process automationRichard Socher [00:42:33]: Not the traditional RPA sense, but, like, having robots run experiments for you will be totally there. Yeah, it's gonna be great.Swyx [00:42:40]: Just to call back to something that you said early on about slow takeoff, you said that, like, while really the substrate that is limiting factor is, let's call this chips, and semiconductors and all these things, and you have race funding for that and, you are investing a lot on that. But have you done the math on, like, is it even- Achievable and, like, what is the, industry concentration needed in order to achieve, like, scale?Compute, Slow Takeoff, and Changing the Bitter Lesson SlopeRichard Socher [00:43:05]: Right now we know that, like, roughly, like a 1000 GPUs cost quite a lot of money.Richard Socher [00:43:11]: Right? If you wanted, like, 10s of thousands of GPUs, you're, you're talking billions and billions of dollars. If you say, like, one GB300 is, like, you could eventually create models that are, on that substrate, like are close and similar to human intelligence. And you want, like, thousands and thousands of, AIs to think about really hard problems, in a similar fashion to humanity. Like, yeah, that-that's, that's a lot of money. You do the math. It's like a lot. We don't have that amount of money right now anywhere to, like, build that. Now, things can get more efficient. You will have, I think, soon better algorithms that won't be, and better hardware that won't be as energy-hungry, and so on. Our human brain does quite a lot of flops with much less energy.Swyx [00:43:56]: 20 watts?Richard Socher [00:43:57]: That's exactly right. Yeah, that's the number often that's quoted. And, like, I think more, inventions will happen there, that then will accelerate the takeoff even further.Swyx [00:44:08]: One thing I always try to reconcile when talking, like, with new lab founders is, like, you're fighting Bitter Lesson all the time. You have to show initial progress, then you unlock the next tier of funding, then the next tier, then the next tier.Richard Socher [00:44:20]: Which unlocks larger model categories.Swyx [00:44:22]: Like, fundamentally, is that true? Like, are you fighting Bitter Lesson? Are you — will we have a way in which, like, no, we're changing the slope in some fundamentally different way?Richard Socher [00:44:31]: I do think we are changing the slopes in fundamental ways by making AI much more efficient, both in terms of the training as well as the inference.Richard Socher [00:44:43]: Yeah. I think we will — When you allow AI to do the work that it takes other labs thousands of people and years to do, I think we'll be able to get it down to weeks, and that will be much cheaperRichard Socher [00:44:53]: And hence, more affordable, accessible to others and so on.Swyx [00:44:57]: Yeah. You've shared initial results on that,Swyx [00:44:59]: Which, like, conveniently OpenAI has also done to their GPT-5.6, so we can talk about it now.Richard Socher [00:45:04]: Yeah. Yeah, so these areSwyx [00:45:06]: Let's recap what you've done.Early Recursive Results: NanoChat, NanoGPT, and SOL-ExecBenchRichard Socher [00:45:07]: Maybe, just a quick recap here. We built, this, system that isn't the full, even the full RSI system in its glory, but it is a first baby version of this. And then, we don't wanna just have it internally and not show anything and, just show some people of what's possible. And so we applied this to these 3 different tasks. One is NanoChat, by my friend Andrej Karpathy, just, like, train a small language model to get, really low bits per byte. And, like, hundreds if not thousands of people, used both their agents and themselves to try, to get to that, and then they got to 0.937. We literally took our system and got to a much lower, bits per byte, much faster within, like, I think less than 2 days. So we took this thing, applied our system to it, and less than 2 days later, we have — we outperformed every human and their agents, in, have ever worked on this. Same with NanoGPT. And then we're like, well, let's, apply it to something that's even more relevant, to real people and to the Nvidia ecosystem and applied it, to, SOL-ExecBench. And maybe you can scroll down to some of the, images. They're, they're kinda fun to see. But yeah, like, one you see has made some real inventions that weren't just hyperparameter tuning. Like, inventing hash tables and so on is quite clever. We have even better results now.Swyx [00:46:34]: What do you mean inventing hash ta — You didn't invent hash tables.Richard Socher [00:46:36]: Of course we didn't invent, like, hash tables. In the grand scheme of, like a hash table, it's like a super basic primitive in computer science. But to use it, for language modeling in this scenario inside a transformer and so on and to combine these ideas and put them together, that has then eventually also been invented, but there was a knowledge cutoff, and we did check that it didn't have access to that externally. We talk about this a little bit. If you scroll to the next figures, this is also an interesting one in that when you start from a really basic, poor, like, vanilla transformer, then we still outperform all of the community together. But if you start from the human seed from an expert like Andrej, then you get even lower. So the human seeds from which you start do still matter. So that was an interesting insight, in my eyes, on this. And then as you go, like, how long does it take to get to these models, to get to similar performance? It's much faster. And then a similar thing happens with the speed runs here where, people have worked on this for quite some time, and the model still was able to train a model more quickly. Why do we care about it? Well, speed of training is part of the equation of the cost, and ultimately, you wanna have the most intelligence per dollar, right? And so speed and quality are big parts of that. And, the,Swyx [00:48:00]: Yeah, the way I put it is, for people who don't understand they look at the chart, they're like, “Cool. What does it mean?” if you have, like a billion-dollar cluster and you can shave off 10%, that's 100 million dollars.Richard Socher [00:48:12]: That's exactly right.Swyx [00:48:13]: How much is that worth?Richard Socher [00:48:14]: Exactly. So when you click, when you look at, like the kernels, these kernels, yeah, for the non-experts, like these kernels are like, used in all the models. Every time you use an Nvidia GPU, you interface with that GPU through these kernels. And so here you see, the leaderboard best, and when it's recursive, and it's there are only a handful of kernels, in this whole benchmark where we weren't the best. And so to me, this is, like, really exciting, ‘cause it makes. It just showcases what this can do. And again these weren't like. We didn't, like, spend months or years, like, developing. In fact, in particular for kernel, CUDA kernels, like, we don't even have really deep. CUDA kernel experts in the team. And our system, that's the beauty. The system just did all of these things. We didn't invent this. And when we open source and release, things in the future and models in the future, like, it won't. They won't be the best in their, category or class or whatever because we're so smart, but it's because, we built a smart AI that does it for us.Reward Engineering and Good Auto ResearchVibhu [00:49:14]: Do you have anything that you've learned from how to guide good auto research? A lot of it also builds on human background, right? It's not just as simple as just, “Hey, go optimize this.”Vibhu [00:49:23]: But we do see it again and again, right? Like some of the Erdos problems, frontier math is being solved by people. And when they do a write-up, they're like, “Oh, I'm not a mathematician. I have no background in this?” “I saw some tools and I made it work.”Swyx [00:49:35]: While you're watching the World Cup, you're likeSwyx [00:49:37]: “This proves some conjectures that's going on.”Vibhu [00:49:40]: Yep. Any learnings fromRichard Socher [00:49:41]: Yeah, there's a Korean conjecture was. Yeah, that's pretty cool.Swyx [00:49:44]: To summarize, tips for good auto researchSwyx [00:49:46]: Versus bad auto research.Vibhu [00:49:48]: How did you build the recursive?Richard Socher [00:49:49]: Yeah. So without giving away all the secret sauce, maybe some things that are probably obvious to the experts but might still be interesting to some, folks is, like, reward engineering is one of the most crucial bits, especially, in order to avoid reward hacking. So you have to be really clever about avoiding. ‘Cause as your AI gets better and better, it will get better and better, at finding weird like, special cases or counterexamples and things like that. And so I'll give you an example. Like, when you ask to, like, make these 100, lines of code faster, and, how do you define fast? Well, you have one line at the beginning that says, “Start your stopwatch,” and one line at the end, “End the stopwatch,” and then, tell us how much time, progressed. And so, well, the simplest way is you just put that line that ends the stopwatch, rightVibhu [00:50:39]: At the startRichard Socher [00:50:40]: At the start. And then boom, it's now faster, right? So this isn't like this, like, super evil AI. It's just, like a very simple, dumb reward hack. And so you have to just very carefully think about all the different angles there. And then I think the longer time horizon the tasks are the harder it gets and the more interesting and clever you have to be to still use these kinds of ideas for it. But yeah, I can't give away too much there.Vibhu [00:51:05]: It seems like rubrics are taking a good spot in that, where for unverifiable domains, you have rubrics, you have a model breakdown, judge's criteria along the way.Swyx [00:51:14]: Yeah, it's a form of verificationSwyx [00:51:16]: Once you got enough rubrics.Richard Socher [00:51:17]: Yeah, everything. I said this a long time ago. That's why I've never been that impressed that AI can play games, ‘cause I'm like anything you can simulate and/or verify, you can have infinite training data forRichard Socher [00:51:29]: And hence, like, AI will solve it eventually.Swyx [00:51:32]: Looking for games where you can do auto domain distribution. So this is a game that nobody's trained on ‘cause it's a new game.Swyx [00:51:38]: And you can start gaming, you can start to play. So I've been building this and cloned this in person and it's just been self-play. I've had about a billion positions evaluated.Games, Self-Play, and the AI EconomistSwyx [00:51:48]: And, I wanted to do the AlphaGo thing of self-play until you ge

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    The Chasing Health Podcast
    Ep. 448 Q&A - Is Anxiety Sabotaging Your Weight Loss? Can Gut Issues Stall Progress? Do You Actually Need a Cleanse? - The Coaches Roundtable

    The Chasing Health Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2026 25:33


    SummaryIn this Coaches Roundtable Q&A, Chase and Chris start by talking about something many people struggle to accept: sometimes maintaining your weight is a huge win. When life gets stressful, trying to force fat loss can add even more pressure. They explain why choosing maintenance during a hard season is not giving up. It can actually help you stay consistent and avoid falling back into old habits.Then they answer a question about anxiety and weight loss. They talk about how trying to make everything perfect can make the basics feel much harder than they need to be. Missing one workout, seeing the scale jump, or having an unplanned meal does not mean you failed. Health and fitness should be part of your life, not your entire life.Next, Chase and Chris discuss digestive issues and whether they can stall weight loss. Digestive problems can change scale weight and make it harder to see the progress you are making. They cover simple habits like water, fiber, and movement, plus why ongoing digestive problems may be worth discussing with a doctor instead of guessing or cutting tons of foods from your diet.Finally, they break down cleanses and long water fasts. Do you really need to stop eating for three, five, or seven days to "reset" your body? Chase and Chris explain why these claims can be misleading, why rapid scale drops during a fast are not the same thing as pure fat loss, and why getting consistent with the basics is usually a much better plan. Chapters(00:00) When Maintaining Your Weight Is Actually a Huge Win(02:53) Intentional Maintenance vs. Simply Not Making Progress(05:53) How Does Anxiety Interfere With Weight Loss Progress?(07:36) Stress, Sleep, and Why the Scale May Not Move(09:34) Stop Stressing Over What You Can't Control(11:32) When Anxiety Makes Every Imperfection Feel Like Failure(12:27) Fitness Should Be Part of Your Life, Not Your Entire Life(14:24) Can Digestive Issues Stall Weight Loss?(16:51) How Gut Issues Can Affect Eating and Adherence(17:47) Stop Blaming Everything on "Gut Problems"(19:02) Do 3, 5, or 7-Day Cleanses Actually Work?(21:08) Why Fasting Causes Rapid Scale Weight Changes(21:47) The Real Question You Should Ask Before Fasting(22:51) How Marketing Convinces Us We Need Things We Don't(24:22) The Simple Basics Still WinSUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS to be answered on the show: https://forms.gle/B6bpTBDYnDcbUkeD7How to Connect with Us:Chase's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/changing_chase/Chris' Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conquer_fitness2021/Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/665770984678334/Interested in 1:1 Coaching: https://conquerfitnessandnutrition.com/1on1-coachingJoin The Fit Fam Collective: https://conquerfitnessandnutrition.com/fit-fam-collective

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert
    How to Balance Self Care & Work Life- Cynthia Conigliaro Ep 685

    Incredible Life Creator with Dr. Kimberley Linert

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2026 43:09


    Cynthia Conigliaro has been in the field of health and wellness for over 25 years. She has a BA in Psychology and graduate degrees in Social Work (MSW) and Business (MBA) with a focus on Organizational and Group Psychology.Cynthia is the founder of her corporate presentation business Work Well Webinars where she delivers corporate wellness presentations virtually and in person. Her presentations cover topics relating to emotional, physical, and organizational wellness. Examples include Sleep is a Necessity, Eating for Longevity, Healthy Corporate Cultures, Creating Resilience and Mindset Shifts, Menopause and the Mind, and Managing Emotional Eating. Cynthia is an Infinite Possibilities Certified trainer and presenter and has trained hundreds of people across the globe.Cynthia has managed many projects that address complex workplace issues including burnout, substance misuse, anxiety, and depression.She is a coach and presenter at several well-known wellness centers in New England and is a certified Blue Zones Advocate. In 2012 she graduated from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, IIN, and has been an independent health and wellness coach for over 25 years. She is a writer and event organizer for a wellness organization and an Infertility Support Peer Group Leader. Cynthia is trained in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and leads groups and workshops on mindfulness and meditation.Contact Cynthia Conigliaro:I offer over 20 live webinars for companies and groups, group and 1:1 coaching https://workwellwebinars.com/.https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-conigliaro-mba-msw-hwc/Dr. Kimberley LinertSpeaker, Author, Broadcaster, Mentor, Trainer, Behavioral OptometristEvent Planners- I am available to speak at your event. Here is my media kit: https://brucemerrinscelebrityspeakers.com/portfolio/dr-kimberley-linert/To book Dr. Linert on your podcast, television show, conference, corporate training or as an expert guest please email her at incrediblelifepodcast@gmail.com or Contact Bruce Merrin at Bruce Merrin's Celebrity Speakers at merrinpr@gmail.com702.256.9199Host of the Podcast Series: Incredible Life Creator PodcastAvailable on...Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incredible-life-creator-with-dr-kimberley-linert/id1472641267Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6DZE3EoHfhgcmSkxY1CvKf?si=ebe71549e7474663 and on 9 other podcast platformsAuthor of Book: "Visualizing Happiness in Every Area of Your Life"Get on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4cmTOMwThe Great Discovery eLearning platform: https://thegreatdiscovery.com/kimberleyl

    The SavvyCast
    The Money Talk Every Couple Needs Before Marriage

    The SavvyCast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2026 48:35


    Before you say "I do," there are some important financial questions to ask before marriage and avoiding them now can lead to painful surprises later. In this episode, I'm joined by my husband, Zane, to talk through the money conversation every engaged or newly married couple needs to have. After nearly 39 years of marriage and years of counseling couples together, we've seen how deeply money can affect trust, unity, peace, and even the spiritual health of a marriage. We're getting honest about debt, separate vs. shared accounts, financial transparency, saving, investing, and the money stories we each bring from childhood. We also share what worked for us, what we learned the hard way, and why Zane believes living on less than you earn is one of the most important financial habits a couple can build. Whether you're dating, engaged, newly married, or simply ready to have a healthier conversation about money with your spouse, I think this episode will give you plenty to talk about together! What to Expect in This Episode: Why you're not only marrying a person, you're also marrying their financial habits The financial questions every couple should answer before getting married Why full honesty about credit, debt, spending, income, and family obligations is essential to financial intimacy "Our money" vs. "my money": how couples' shared accounts work differently than separate business accounts  Why living on less than you earn is the financial principle Zane considers non-negotiable How to decide together which expenses are essentials and which are luxuries Why saving early matters so much and how compound growth rewards time The importance of contributing to a workplace retirement plan and taking advantage of an employer match when available How each spouse's upbringing can shape fear, security, expectations, and conflict around money Why couples need to define what "enough" means before the pursuit of more becomes endless Links & Resources Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins Investor.gov Compound Interest Calculator IRS Information About 401(k) Plans IRS Information About Roth IRAs Official Trump Accounts Information Where to Listen If this episode encouraged you, I'd love for you to take a few minutes to rate and review The SavvyCast! It means so much to me and helps more people find these conversations and resources. Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Enjoyed This Episode? Check These Out! How We're Investing in Our Grandchildren: Trump Accounts, 529s, & Family Traditions Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube The Marriage Check-In That Reveals More Than You Expect Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube  

    Bookworm
    257: The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

    Bookworm

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2026 89:03


    Today's author and self-proclaimed "slayer of sacred cows" promises to help us think differently about how business gets done. Join Mike & Cory as they discuss the theory of constraints in one of the most transformational business process books ever written.Support the ShowThe Goal by Eliyahu GoldrattThe Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George SpaffordToyota Production SystemJust-In-TimeUpWork the System by Sam CarpenterDeath by Meeting by Patrick LencioniThe Goal: A Business Graphic NovelGetting Things Done by David AllenYou Can Just Do Things by Cate HallThe Meaning of Your Life by Arthur BrooksRecommend a BookMike's Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐Cory's Rating:  ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

    Essential Ingredients Podcast
    08: The Language of Scent: How Alex Wiltschko Is Digitizing Smell

    Essential Ingredients Podcast

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2026 51:32


     "We want to build a platform and a fundamental capability that makes the world smell better… and we know from the fundamental understanding of how scent works that getting better at scent that delights you actually helps us get better at applications in scent that can protect and can heal." —Alex Wiltschko Digitizing smell sounds like science fiction until you meet someone who's spent two decades chasing it. In this episode, Justine Reichman sits down with Alex Wiltschko, founder and CEO of Osmo, a company on a mission to give machines a sense of smell — and, eventually, to help detect disease before symptoms show up. Alex's path started long before Osmo. A PhD in olfactory neuroscience, five years leading Google's digital olfaction team, and a personal loss — his father's death from brain cancer — all converged into a single question: what if scent could tell us things about our health that we can't yet hear? This conversation covers how Osmo's AI model, OI One, is learning to create and detect scent, why the company deliberately started in fragrance instead of diagnostics, and what digital olfaction could mean for the next decade of human health. This episode is for anyone curious about AI's next frontier, the science of scent, or what it looks like to turn personal grief into a decades-long body of work. Key takeaways: Scent is built from a surprisingly small alphabet — roughly 20,000 to 30,000 molecules make up every smell on Earth. Osmo intentionally avoided starting with disease detection because the science wasn't ready; fragrance became the training ground that builds toward harder problems. Osmo's AI tool, Osmo Studio, now generates starting scent compositions that professional perfumers treat like a collaborative apprentice. Synthetic fragrance ingredients can actually be more environmentally efficient than natural ones, challenging a common assumption about "natural" being automatically better. Alex believes the next generation of professionals won't go "deep then senior" — they'll orchestrate AI agents wide first, creating entirely new kinds of jobs. The same molecules behind a loved one's hug can show up in food and fragrance, revealing scent as a shared chemical language across all of biology. Listen to the full episode to hear Alex's take on where scent technology is headed next.  https://tinyurl.com/Essential-Ingredients-Podcast  Meet Alex:  Osmo AI CEO, Alex Wiltschko, is a pioneer in the field of olfactory science. He founded Osmo in 2022, after years of research at Google Brain, where he developed an AI model capable of predicting how molecules smell based on their structure. Wiltschko's work has led to significant advancements in computational olfaction, including the creation of an AI-powered fragrance house and the digitization of real-world scents. His mission is to democratize fragrance creation, allowing independent brands to access advanced scent technology and develop custom fragrances that resonate with their unique stories and identities.  Website LinkedIn Instagram X Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube Podcast Chapters: 01:18 Meet Alex Wiltschko: From Grief to Digitizing Smell 04:26 Why Scent Is the Oldest Language on Earth 08:29 Leaving Google to Found Osmo 13:20 How AI Is Reshaping Alex's Own Craft 17:14 Will AI Replace Jobs? Alex's Honest Take 28:23 Building an Interdisciplinary Team for Osmo 34:48 Where Osmo's Scents Already Exist in Your Life 42:19 Decoding the Alphabet of Scent 45:13 The Future: Smell as a Health Signal  THE PRIMES  ✨ You're more capable than you have ever been, and somehow more invisible than ever. You keep handing out advice you do not take yourself. You keep saying 'after this next thing' to your own life, and the people around you have no idea because, from the outside, everything looks fine— that is exactly what The Primes was built for.