39 Burst results for "Rocky"
Dateable Podcast
A highlight from S17E4: Following Your Intuition (in Dating) w/ Nikki Novo
"Hi, I'm Yui Xu. And I'm Julie Kraftchick. We're active daters turned dating sociologists. Here to dive into everything modern dating and relationships. Welcome to the dateable podcast. Hi, hi, hi. Welcome back to another brand new episode. This is a repeat guest, but someone who we talk about constantly. She changed my life. Not only does she change your life, but she's been on our mind for three years since the last time we spoke to her. And I couldn't believe it when I was looking at how long I had been since she'd been on the podcast. And I was like, wait, feels like we just spoke to her yesterday because I think about her constantly. That's so weird. I also think about her constantly. She is my secret girl crush as well. Who are we talking about? Nikki Novo. Nikki Novo, we had her on the podcast back in 2020 season 11, episode 14. What's holding you back? So she's an intuitive, she's an author. She wrote a fabulous new book and she did readings for us. So she did readings back in 2020. And for me, I was at a very pivotal point that I had just ended my relationship with my on again, off again boyfriend of five years. We had done that final in COVID. We're either doing this or we're not. All the same issues came back and I realized that I wasn't doing this and actually, okay, so another part of why Nikki Novo is so important in my life that I'm not even sure if I really fully shared is with my ex. One of the things that was really challenging with that relationship is that he was very hot and cold. Like it was like, I'm in love with you. I want to be with you. And then I need my space. I need time alone. And that was really hard for me. Like I did not do well with the inconsistency. And of course he did that again. It was like we had this wonderful time together and then it was, I need that space. And I went to the park and I was so like upset about this cause I'm like, here we go again. It's the same shit happening. And I read Nikki Novo's book, The Final Swipe, her first book, because we were prepping to have her on the podcast. And I remember reading the book and I was just like, I don't want this relationship anymore. And that was such a turning point for me. I think it was like that final turning point for me. Like I had been building that up for a while and then like reading that, like reading whatever she wrote resonated with me so much. And I like came home and I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore. No, no. That was The Final Swipe. It was The Final Swipe. It was done. It was done. Well, she has this way of just putting thoughts in such a clear framework. That it's not like it's new for you. It's not like those the first time you ever thought about this as being this being final. But she just puts it in a way that you're like, yeah, of course. Like, I don't want this. If you put it that way, I don't want this in my life. And this is the final straw or the final swipe. So I appreciate her clarity in the way she expresses herself. And when she did my reading, you know, I was like, just celebrate my two year anniversary. We were kind of fighting that whole weekend on our anniversary trip about what is the future. And she said, listen, no need to be so anxious. You are going to live a non -traditional life. Your path is non -traditional. So stop trying to fit into that traditional future that you see. I was like, done. That's all I need to hear. That's really interesting because like I OK, like in the moment, of course, when you were going through that and you had that reading, you were really trying to make it work with your ex. And I heard that as like maybe you don't get married, but you have like a non -traditional life with him. But now, like looking at where it's going, that could just be a lot broader than with him. Yes. Yes. And I think it was still applied to our relationship. We had a pretty non -traditional trajectory. But, you know, when this relationship ended, I was like, that doesn't need to be the path I go on, you know, and her words came back to me and I was like, yes, I'm meant for a non -traditional life. I know. And, you know, because when I did the reading, I just ended this relationship and then I was really at a crossroads of, OK, what's next? And she really gave me hope that this was my year, that the person was around the corner. You know, I did end up meeting my partner in that year from that reading. It was like my year around my birthday, as she predicted. But more than anything, it was the mindset shift it gave me. It was the fact that I had the confidence that it was going to happen. It was just a matter of when, not if. And I think that was like a big shift for me, because in the past, like I definitely had that thought, like, what if it never happens for me or what if I never meet this person? And just changing that mentality, going into every date and being like, OK, is it this person? And if it's not, then just being like, OK, it's going to be the next person. And she did warn me, too, of, you know, you're going to go through that like rocky time. And I definitely did. I was able to get through it because I didn't get discouraged. And it kind of goes back to that perseverance again. Like, I think that's so important of you just keep going because, OK, I don't think dating is a numbers game in the sense that you need to be dating all these people at once. And, you know, you really have to be like churning through people in the sense of knowing what works for you. I do think getting clear is probably more time effective than going on date after date after date with no clarity and no intention. But I do think you have to be realistic that in today's world, the first person you swipe on is not going to be your partner for life. Like, right. I probably went on like 500 dates before I met my partner. I think that's what we calculated when we did the episode with your friend, you know, rough back of the napkin math. But, you know, like I probably swiped on like 10 ,000 people. What do you think about it? Like this didn't happen overnight. So you have to kind of go through it. But that knowing knowing that it's going to happen, it made me approach dating a lot more positively. Yeah. And it does make you think, too, because I think we should give that advice to you. It's like everybody who does come into your orbit serves a reason. Yeah. So if they're not the right person for you, you can still learn something from them and then move on from it because that's not your person. It's like not time wasted. And we're not just like sitting around waiting for that person to show up at our doorsteps. We still got to be out there learning from people with people before we meet the right person, which is a mindset I'm in now because it was I again foray back into dating. I've been a little gun shy with online dating, but now I'm going on this. I'm taking myself on a romantic trip to Greece. Yes. And I'm going to be taking all the condoms with me because I feel like maybe, you know, dating abroad, strangers, no strings attached. Maybe the best way to get myself back into some sort of like a romantic mindset. You know, I don't need to think about the future. No, I just think about the now and have a great time. That's where you are right now. And like, I think as long as your mindset is open and positive, then you'll attract people into that orbit. Yeah, for sure. Into my web, my sex web. I'm just like picturing you on this cruise, like, you know, like Titanic style, just like in the front of trolling for a day.
Stephanie Miller
Fresh update on "rocky" discussed on Stephanie Miller
"From Oregon. I thought pantries were for less fortunate people, but anybody could be less fortunate in a day or even a second. Claire from Virginia. The Feeding America Network of Food Banks helps provide over 6 billion meals to people in need each year. No one should have to worry where their next meal will come from. Together, we can end hunger. Learn more feedingamerica .org. This is WCPT 820 and I'll take back my life. 🎶 Music Outro 🎶 🎶 🎶 Music Music Outro His four criminal prosecutions on 91 different felony and misdemeanor charges will be defunded and delayed long enough to keep him from having to go before a jury of his peers before the 2024 election. And like flying monkeys on a mission for the Wicked Witch of the West, Trump's followers House in the now carry his messages out to the world. Shut down the government. Shut down the prosecutions. 🎶 Music Outro We'll see. Variety tweeted, Ocean Gates tightens submersible tragedy to be made into a movie a by blackening producer. Rocky Mountain Mike said, if I wanted to see something implode almost instantly, I'd watch Kevin McCarthy's impeachment hearings. Bruce. That joke is as topical and timely as one. Hey, speaking of sexy liberals, what is what's coming to L A. You want to be there for the only date of three for Stephanie Miller's sexy liberal comedy show. Welcome to California, buddy. It's happening in Los Angeles at the Saban Theatre, October 21st. Are you from L .A.? Nobody's actually from L .A. The only sexy liberal show show in 2023. Oh, wow. Starring progressive radio icon Stephanie Miller. I host John Fugelsang, the one and
Mark Levin
Rep. Ken Buck Eyes CNN Job While Criticizing Biden Impeachment Inquiry
"The probe launched last week in a Biden's alleged corruption including with a September 15 Washington Post op -ed that other Republicans said included glaring inaccuracies. Buck said privately last month that he was interested in a job at CNN. The source told The Post. After he weighed other options over the past year including joining a DC -based law firm or seeking Biden's nomination to the Federal Trade Commission. I guess he's gotten close to the Biden administration because he wants things. Buck 64 confirmed to The Post he's exploring his options and said it would be great to join CNN. That other head case, Kingsley, was CNN producer MSNBC one of them. Buck said in a phone interview quote I'm interested that recently. news organizations, I don't want to call them left, but sort of left center and having an opportunity to do that full time or do that as a contributor would be great Buck said in a phone interview. Congressman called back later in the day to say that he'd also expressed interest in a position of right -leaning Fox News or Newsmax. It didn't want to give you the impression that I've only talked to folks at CNN on the left. I've also talked to others about this and Buck represents a vast rural district that spans the entire eastern border of the Rocky Mountain State and said Tuesday it was unclear if he will leave office this Congress, Fox next Congress or whatever. I'd vote his ass out. If he's not sure he wants to represent you, then you should be sure that you don't want him to represent you because obviously his interests elsewhere. In my personal view, just my opinion is affecting his outlook. I want to say
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "rocky" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"Ensure that you protect your home for decades to come highest quality doesn't have to mean highest price this month get 50 % off installation of your new roof plus no interest and no payments for two years we do roof replacement the right way the long way isn't it time you got along this is Dr. Wolchinski from Rocky Gorge Animal Hospital. Rocky Gorge has decided to offer a ridiculously low price on a product that just about every dog owner used called NexGuard Plus. It is a single pill given monthly that prevents hotworms intestinal parasites and fleas and ticks and dogs. If you're a Rocky Gorge client, the cost for a year's worth will twenty be dollars a month after instant rebates. Incredible! Call Rocky Gorge for more information and thank you for trusting your pet's care to us. Back in the day many ventured to California in search of gold.
RADCast Outdoors
A highlight from Fishing New Waters with Patrick Edwards
"This episode of RadCast Outdoors is brought to you by P .K. Lures, Bow Spider, and High Mountain Seasonings. Fish on! Hey, RadCast is on! Hunting, fishing, and everything in between. This is RadCast Outdoors. Here are David Merrill and Patrick Edwards. Welcome back to another episode of RadCast Outdoors. I'm your host today, Patrick Edwards, and I'm on the road. So this is a special edition of Patrick on the Road. I'm heading out doing some traveling for my work. Wanted to talk a little bit about something that was brought up to me the other day. My friend Seth, he asked me to do a breakdown of when you're going to a new body of water, what are some things that you need to do? What are some things that you need to look at? What's the kind of gear you should take? And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a high -level overview of how to break down different types of water and maybe some ideas of things that you should do beforehand, some things you should take with you, and of course some things you should try while you're there. So we'll go through that, and then we're going to talk specifically towards the end about pike, because he was more curious about the pike fishing aspect of things. So we'll talk about that too. But first, I just want to say a big thank you again to PK Lures. They are our fishing sponsor for the podcast. They've been a great company to work with over the last few years. They have quite the arsenal of products, and if you're going to be going anywhere this year fishing, doesn't matter whether it's open water or hard water, make sure to grab some PK Lures. They've got applications for all of the above for ice fishing season. If you don't have the PK Flutterfish and the PK Spoon and the PK Predator in your box, you're missing out. If you're fishing the open water and the new PK Ridge Rattler, it's a rattling crankbait. You can use it through the ice too, by the way, but it works great in open water. If you're catching trout, bass, walleye, doesn't matter. It catches just about everything. They have some great trolling applications. They have some trolling crankbaits like the PK Ridgeline crank, and then of course their Wobbler Dakota Disc, ReefRig and other trolling systems for walleye specifically. Those things are absolutely deadly. And then year round, the PK Spinajig. How could I forget that one? That one's amazing. So go to PKLure .com if you use Ragcast at checkout, you get 20 % off your order. So let's talk about breaking down bodies of water. Really, there's a few things that you should do well beforehand. If you know you're going to be taking a big trip and you're going to make a big investment, especially right now when you got gas, it's four, some places, five bucks a gallon. You want to make sure that you've done your homework prior to going to this body of water to fish. It doesn't matter whether it's a river, a lake, a pond, a reservoir. You need to do your homework beforehand. So one of the things that I always recommend is number one, get a hold of the fisheries biologists that work at that body of water. They're going to be able to share important information with you, some reconnaissance on what kind of fish are there. What are the typical size? Maybe you're interested in the size classes. Maybe you're going after master anglers and you want to make sure that you give yourself the absolute best chance of catching that master angler fish. The best thing to do is say, hey, I want to go there and I want to catch a big fish. OK, they're going to be able to hopefully key you in on some good areas or at least give you some people to talk to. You can also do some recon on the computer or on your phone. So onX is a great tool. Google Earth, of course, is a great tool. I like to pull it up and just look at what I can see visually from the satellite view. Sometimes you get the bad luck of having a western reservoir after runoff and the whole reservoir looks like chocolate because all the sediments washed down the river, you can't really see like into the water. You can see some of the rocky points and structures, but you can't see much else. But some are super clear bodies of water and you can see really well. So what I recommend is pull it up, take a look at it, maybe drop some pins on some areas that you think look good. And so some areas that I look for is transitions from hard to soft bottom. So if you see like a rocky shoreline where it goes into like maybe a sandbar, that's a good spot. Any kind of point that has a drop -off, if you can see weed edges, transitions are typically where you're going to find fish most of the time. So I mark those and just get an idea of what I'm looking at and just get a feel for the reservoir. I also look at where can I put in, if I'm taking a boat, where's the boat ramp at? Where's the bathroom at? Those are important things. Where's the parking area? Maybe I'm just going to go take my waders and I'm going to fish the shoreline. You're going to have to look for a parking area. You also want to look at the properties surrounding that body of water to make sure that it's public, because if you need special access to it, you're going to have to request that beforehand. So if there's private access, you're going to need to make those phone calls, those emails, whatever it takes to get access to that area. So that's some of the pre homework that I would recommend. I would also recommend you maybe call a local bait shop and just say, Hey, I'm coming to fish for this specific species. What are people catching fish on right now? What's the hot bait or during the time of year that I'm going, if I'm going in September and I'm calling the bait shop in May, say, Hey, in the fall around September, what kind of things should I be bringing to catch whatever fish it is? Right. Could be walleye trout, whatever, but just be very specific. Ask those questions. Those bait shops are going to be more than happy to tell you because they want you to come and buy those lures from them. And I always try to do that. Support your local bait shops, go in there, buy a few lures. That's a great gesture. They really appreciate it when you do that. So do that. That'll get you set up for your trip. Okay. Now let's talk about some of the things you ought to take for most fresh water situations around the entire country here in the United States. These are some of the things I recommend everybody takes. Okay. You should have some kind of suspending crank bait anywhere you go in this country, especially if you're going to fish for anything predatory. So if you're going for bass, walleye, trout, panfish, they all eat suspending crank baits. I've caught them all on it. And I've even caught suckers and carp on them too. So you never know. You may catch one of the less desirables on it too, but a suspending crank is one of my number one things. So you want to have those, you want to have some kind of a jig set up. I always have jigs with me and usually they're the eighth ounce and 16th ounce size. I always have Baraboo jigs because those catch everything from yeah, carp all the way through to trout. So make sure that you have some kind of a jig set up. I also like the VMC Munai jig. Those are phenomenal. And of course, like I mentioned earlier, the PK spinner jig, because it's a hybrid between a jig and a spinner. And you can do a lot of cool things with it. You can swim it, you can jig it, you can do all kinds of stuff with it. I also make sure to take some kind of a soft plastic to tip my jigs with. I like to bring Berkeley Gulp. Gulp seems to work really well, especially on trout. I catch tons of trout on Gulp, but you can also bring the Power Minnows. You can bring Paddle Tails. I like the Walleye Assassin Paddle Tails quite a bit. So make sure to bring something like that to tip your jigs with. And then of course, depending on the body of water that you're going to and what the regulations are, you might be able to buy some live bait, which is great. It's always good to have some crawlers if it's during the summer, maybe minnows, like in the fall, spring and winter. So just check the regulations, make sure that you're doing the appropriate things and fishing with the right stuff. But jigs are essential to have in your kit. I like molded swimbaits too. So like Storm makes a molded swimbait. It's just, it's about two and a half, three inches long. I like to have those cause they're really easy to fish. All you got to do is tie them on, cast them out, let them sink down to whatever depth you want to fish and just slow reel them back, you can reel them and pop them back. But those work on just about every species that I fish for. So those are critical, but also spoons are huge.
Stephanie Miller
Fresh "Rocky" from Stephanie Miller
"Charges will be defunded and delayed long enough to keep him from having to go before a jury of his peers before the 2024 election. And like flying monkeys on a mission for the Wicked Witch of the West, Trump's followers in the now House carry his messages out to the world, shut down the government, shut down the prosecutions. 🎵 Raspin, Jamie star of Stage Screen, impeachment hearings, and of course, sexy liberal Variety tweeted, Ocean Gates tightens submersible tragedy to be made into a movie by a blackening producer. Rocky Mountain Mike said, if I wanted to see something implode almost instantly, I'd watch Kevin McCarthy's impeachment hearings. That joke is as topical and timely as today's headline. it Yes, really is, everybody. Hey, speaking of sexy liberals, what? Yes, what? What do you say? What, Mike? You want to be there for the only date of 2023 for Stephanie Miller's sexy liberal comedy show. Welcome to California, buddy. It's happening in Los Angeles at the Saban on theater October 21st. Are you from L .A.? Nobody's actually from L .A. The only sexy liberal in 2023. Oh, wow. Starring progressive radio icon Stephanie Miller. Don Fugelsang, the one and only Al Spock and your favorite comedy duo, Frangela. You're thirsty, we've got juice boxes, Hawaiian pie. Saturday, October 21st at the Saban in L .A. Special IP tickets allow you to meet the stars after the show. That is great. Total commit. You'll want to get to L .A. to see them back up. It might be an off election year, but the sexy
Op Persoonlijke Titel
A highlight from Caroline van der Plas
"Up, person de ketitel, a respect van vlees en bloot, for the keike die we luestern, and the luesterer die go keiken. Keike and luestern are... Caroline, van der Plas, welcome! Thank you! Eindeke eef rist? Euhm, neewen ik sie tom ik jou. Haha, there you are. Dit is heedleker eef een sprekjeso. Ja. Euhm. Euhm, dit is heedleker eef een sprekjeso. Euhm, neewen ik sie tom ik jou. Haha. Euhm, neewen ik sie tom ik jou. Haha. That doesn't happen all the time, but we do our best for it. That's a lot of work to do. So, since the general over -winning, with the rules... ...a club in the Netherlands... ...is it enough? No. No, the over -winning of 15 months... ...that took all the provinces together... ...and the United States... ...the formation of the colleges of the United States... ...the first came, and we said no. It was a long day for now. All uni, all cities and states... ...and all cities together... ...took a lot of time... ...and we came together in the same way. That's right. And Caroline for the Plus is the overall winner. Yes. You come to the overall table. So sick. Yes, yes, sicker. So we're going to take five or six years of Israel... ...in a module. Yes, clubs. What do you need? What do you need? Now, I have a lot of work to do. I work here, naturally... ...and a lot of work by income citizens... ...because, yes, I don't belong here. I come with my parents... ...and I also like to see that I'm still living here. I have a lot of work to do. Of course, Israel has a lot of work... ...by the opening of MBO here... ...and they say to me... ...you don't have time for that... ...but I'm still living here. I'm still living here. That's why I have a lot of work to do. It's a lot of work for people... ...a lot of work for people. I have a lot of input, so... ...yes, I still have a lot of work to do... ...with my kids. Well, that's it. We're really looking forward to it. You're a journalist. Yes. Are you more? No. I'm not more. No, you're not. You're more of a journalist... ...than a journalist. Yes. Who is more of a journalist than you? Yes, my father. My father was a journalist... ...a sports journalist... ...by David Dagblad... ...and, yes, at the same time... ...I also worked with a lot of sports... ...and so on... ...and I found out... ...that I really liked what he did... ...and that I really liked the Redaxi. What kind of sport was that? I've played a lot of amateur football... ...a lot of times in David... ...and I also played with the Eagles... ...because I think it's the most important thing... ...to be able to drive a motorcycle... ...and to be able to drive the Redaxi... ...and, yes, it's a little... ...but I also really liked the Redaxi... ...and I found out that I really liked... ...a lot of people... ...with a lot of spinners... ...and what -not... ...and coffee halls... ...for the journalists... ...and so on. I also liked the chocolate milk... ...because I thought... ...that I would also be able to help... ...with the KISS Rave. And so on... ...I really liked it. So it's a lot of fun. So it's not so much the journalistic... ...in the interest of where I'm going. No, my father gave me that offer. And he said... ...that you can't do anything... ...and you're not going to do anything... ...and you're not going to do anything... ...and you can't do anything else... ...and you have to pay for it. So it's a lot of the Redaxi work... ...and then the work comes up. So we all have to do something else. And... ...no, that's what I just said. Yeah. The question of whether or not... ...you're going to stick to it... ...can I ask? Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. I'm going to ask you to do something else. And say... ...you're not going to do anything else. No, no, no. I don't know if you know... ...the journalists... ...or the younger generation... ...with which I contacted China. I don't want to get into a Gladiator List... ...but I think it's also a big part of the younger generation. You know, younger generation always SCREAMS... ...about whether you're going to talk about their kind and... ... Their own states and things like that. So we can really talk about younger generations... ...who are going to talk about their own state. I always think that the criticism... ...and everyday else is applied to younger generations... ...so sometimes we think of younger generations as Russian... ...as being assume that it's not just you. We have had insane fish. They don't mind that that's not the best. We can do it without drugs. But we still have to find a way to double this on paper instantly In the mayoralpanels. Can you repeat the question in my context? Yeah well, our publictime support goes back to the start of the setup of the FC times, and to prevent so many types of emergencies. it works .pparang The pattern will break, in the states too fast. This will be ideal cherry grass, but that has to be done spiritually. They are very special for the society. This thing isDexter from the point of view of thephone. What about the speaker? There are several questions that you can answer. At least for a Rocky Buss. It's not that it's a big name, it's just a realistic name. But that's what we're talking about. Maybe if we're talking about problems? Yes. What do you think about that? I think that I'm 33 years old now. Yes, I'm not, but I'm an adult now. Yes, you are. Yes, I know, but... You don't have anything else to say? No, no, my ears are not really working. No, I don't have anything else to say. I'm not sure, but I'm not sure. But it was more that we were actually not really talking about the fact that we were talking about the fact that we were talking about the fact that this restaurant, the cafe, which is called Dina Weis, was a place that was closed for the first time. It was closed for the first time. And now that it's closed, the cafe is still closed, so it's hard to say. And you're from Bine, too? Yes, that was for him a question that is not working. There is no real time for it. No. There comes, well, a normal work up your ass. Yeah. And what you can do is take a stand from a bisturier to an angst for a new party. Yeah. The ground is open. Each year, at least, there's a tour back of the Bible, and stuff like that, so there's no real time for it. There is no real time for this party. It's open. So, it's a bisturier with the hand behind it. And that's what, what's the name of Caroline's bisturier? Her lance bisturier, that's what you're talking about. Yeah. No, it's a bisturier, but I think that we're seeing that we're already open to it. We're always open to it, that we're always looking at it, and that's what's next. And, of course, it's been a long time. And that's what we're seeing is the need for employees. And we're seeing employees that are always looking for a new job, a new job, a new job, a new job, So we're not too far away. So, we're not too far away. So, we're finally in the middle of the day. And, of course, we're having a good time with the candidates. We're having a lot of fun. We'll be doing some work with the candidates, we'll be doing some good things, and we'll be doing some good things. And we'll have a tour where we'll be able to get to know the candidates. So, yeah. Yeah, I think that I think that yeah, what is it? I think that it's a very important thing for the candidates. Because I see it on the wall. I'm not a fan of the wall. Yeah. I think that I think that we're not going to be able to do anything or do anything. Or, I guess so. But, what's your job for your audience? What's your job for your kids? Well, for my first job, I was really lucky. I thought I had a job, of course, and I thought I was very lucky. But I thought that it would be nice for my audience to be able to do something. And it would be nice to be able to do something if it were honest, if it were a technique, or something for my audience. What was it? Yeah, I think I was in the middle of the class. I was 13, 12, 13 years old. I was in the middle of the class. I was 13, 12, 13 years old. When I was really lucky. I didn't have any other things to do. I didn't go to school or other things to do. So, that was my thing. But, I did it. I got to have my own thing. And I was interested in it. I wasn't interested in it. I wasn't interested in it. I was very interested in music, pop stars, French, that kind of thing. So, what kind of music were you interested in? Aspen, ballet, and The Renderer, Ultra Fox, U2. That was the biggest thing. Were you interested in music? Yeah, I wasn't interested in music. I was interested in Spotify, so I wasn't interested in music. I thought, oh yeah, you can't do anything amazing. You have to do things in your head. You have to do everything amazing. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing that you have to do in your head. Yeah. on the other hand, you have to do things intuitively. Yeah. And that's another thing in politics. Yeah. No, I have a lot of things that in my head are the biggest things that the United States was in. The United States was free and I wasn't interested in music. I wasn't interested in music at all. I was interested in music. But I didn't have the best set of shows. I had a lot of things that I had done that the United States was free. I was not interested in music. It was good. Good. It was It was good. I was music. It was good. I didn't set of shows. The United States was free. The father was free. Man was free. The author was free. Most of the were free. In fact after that I was excited about my would you be more clear with the history of the place, the land and the state? Yes, I was at my base, but in the period before I came, I was in overland. My father was there in 2013, overland. So he didn't have much money. But my brother, my mom and my friend Henk, they visited as well. And they told me to come back. I was there in 2013, and I was there in 2013, and I was there in 2013. So I was there in 2013, and I was there in 2013. But I was there in 2013, and I was there in 2013. And they had a great experience. They came up with this idea of the Great Lakes. So, yeah. But who is that in the region that believes everything about it? And is there no state for it? Yes, then you have to think about what I'm talking about. Yes. Yes, it's a little different. If a person lives, has a loss of the right to be part of it, they have to go back home with a little bit of a miss. There's also the period that you're sick. It's going to be very difficult. Is it going to be very difficult? No, it's not. I think it's going to be very difficult. But, yeah, overland. In a health care process, I can take care of it. Yes, I think it will have a lot of impact on my health. I think that, with a lot of people, it's difficult to get enough of it. You have to take care of it. You have to take care of it. It's a little bit difficult to get enough of it. But if you see that you have a lot of pain and loss of health, that is a lot harder. That is not a good idea. That I think is a little bit hard. have That you a lot of pain and loss of health. That you don't have a lot of pain, that you're sick. And that's what I really want to hear, from the fact that it's over -layed, that it's all over the place. Is it a sort of good off -site? That you have a lot of pain? Yes, for sure. That's what I wanted to hear. A hundred percent. Overall, it's what I want to hear. That's what I want to hear. If someone has a heart attack and is sick, then they don't have the person who is sick. But you have to take care of it. That's what I want. That's what I want to hear. That's what I want to hear. And if they do that, then they will have a lot of pain. And that's what I want to hear. A lot of things can be explained. And it's sort of off -site, in the sense of, no, we don't have a lot of pain. We don't have a lot of pain. So that's a big deal. Yes, that's a big deal. A big deal. A lot of people do that. And that's a big deal. For someone who has a lot of pain, that they don't have a lot of pain. But I really want to hear it. And that's what I really want to hear. It's a very important moment that you have met Okaa. And you have to think about what it can mean in one day. And you have to work with it. You have to work with it. So you can take care of it. All of that will happen. You have to work with Okaa. And if it works, then it's not going to work. And that really is a real fact. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. So it's an important moment. Our lives and our practices will work together. So if you have a partner, or maybe even a partner, you have to think about it. If it doesn't work, it's not going to work. And realize that people don't have a lot of pain. No, they can't. No. And you don't have a lot of pain. Yes. You have to have a lot of pain. No, no. A lot. A lot of pain. A lot of pain. A lot of pain. Yes. Yes. No, but I've been very much involved in my family. My direct family. My sons. My mother. My brother. My life. That I really feel very good. That it's going to work. In the end, it's a very difficult thing to do. And how I want to do it. Is the state of your life, well, on your own right. Or on your own right. But if my own right is there, well, on your own right. That's it. I find it very difficult. That you have to be good at your own right. And after all, especially from my mother, my friend, my kids, have you ever felt yourself? Yes, it's a good thing. It's a good thing for me. It's a good thing that I'm on the court. I'm in a burnout. That I overcome my own right. That's what I'm talking about. Yes, I know. I'm a good man. I don't want to sit in the bibber as a rich guy at the bank. But if I'm going to be able to do it, it's a good thing. I'm a little bit of a man, but I'm a good man. If I can do it myself, I can do it myself. It's a good thing that my son can do it himself. I'm a big man. I'm a little bit of a man. I'm good at my own right. And I find it very difficult. I find it very difficult for people to do it myself. Yes, because you go to the middle, you have a hope in Bangladesh for a lot of people who are living in the States. That's a political point. But, it's a very big challenge for people to be in the States and be able to do it. And for people to be in the States, I think it belongs to you. Yes, it does. Yes, I think... ...you feel bad in your life, or have bad in your life, then... ...it's as if you make a thing out of it, that you think... ...is it really a bad thing, or is it a drug? And I think, no, it's totally not a bad thing. The people in my life are like a group. I have other things to do. That's why I think it belongs to you. But that's what's wrong, I think. I have a lot of talk about what the ungriving of my fund is... ...but now it's more about my base. My father was a journalist. He was a doctor. My mother was a reporter. She was a reporter. A CDR. A CDR, yes. You can't blame it. You can't blame it, then. No, yes, yes. I feel that it's really a bad thing. And we can work together. We can work together. But that's not the case. No, it's not that. I think it's a drug. I think it's a drug... ...to realize that people... ...who have a letter on their hands... ...have to pay for it. I think it's a bad thing. So I don't think it's a drug. There's no social media. But I think it's a bad thing. I'm a bit scared. But we don't have that. I think it's a bad thing. Yes, it's a bad thing. It's what you're saying. Yes, it's true. It's true. But it's true here. It's true. It's true. Like Savannah was talking about. Or like a little girl. I think it's a bad thing. I think it's a bad thing. I think it's a bad thing. And then there's politics. And then there's politics. I don't think it's a bad thing. But I'm aware of politics. That's what I'm talking about. People are asking for money and money. And that's what's coming out. Irish blood. Yes, I think it's a bad thing. Yes, yes. Is that a thing you're talking about? That you're not talking about Irish blood? In my personal life? Yes, of course. We have a lot of Irish blood. We have a lot of Dutch families. But I also have a lot of Irish families. And they say that I'm poor. But when they say that I'm poor, they say that I have a lot of other problems. In family, my my mother used to say that she had children. She used to work in a mail factory. She had a lot of children. And she had children. She was very poor. So she was very poor. But it was all right. It was all right. It was all right. Everyone was welcome. It was in the eyes of nature. She was very poor. She was very poor. She was the oldest. She was very poor. But she was very poor. That's what she thought. She was poor. And she was very poor. She was only eight years old. And she wasn't very old. She had two brothers of the Philippines. But she was very poor. And she was very poor. She was young. And she was very poor. She was straight and had a coma. And that was what she knew. She had three children. She was very poor. And she was very ill, she had a lot of children. Yes, she was very ill. No, she was very poor. She was a child. And in Limerick, she used to think that I that think the state of life, there is a state of life all over the world. The state of life in the middle of the channel. It's a big part of the roadblocks. It's a big part of the society with meteors. And that's why it's so much more controlled. And not only that, but also the IRAs. They were based on the boomers. And as we know, a boomers was created. There were a lot of strangers and strackers. That was a period when a lot of people... Yeah, a lot of people were in the Republic of Ireland.
Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
Fresh update on "rocky" discussed on Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
"Welcome to Gospel in Life. When it comes to marriage, we often use words like soulmate or the one. These words can reveal an underlying belief that to have a good marriage, you just have to find the perfect person. But the biblical vision for marriage is starkly different. It's a way for two imperfect people to help each other become who God intended them to be. Listen as Tim Keller explores the meaning of marriage. I will start. What we're going to do tonight is we're going to talk and talk and talk and you're going to sit and sit and sit. But in this way, we're going to be doing it sort of as a tag team. Our goal here is to lift up the historic Christian biblical vision for marriage. In doing that, of course, we're going to be looking at all sorts of things like ethics and we're going to look at some biblical passages. But the whole idea is there's and then essentially apply it to several different things. First of all, I'm going to just right now spend a kind of introductory time applying it to the crises of marriage in our culture. Right now we're at, and I'm going to show you right away in one second, that we're at a cultural moment in which most people recognize that marriage is struggling. And what does the biblical vision of marriage have to say for that? It's impossible for us to just sit down and think, what does it mean for me without asking, what does it mean for society? On the other hand, after that, we're going to actually have a section that Kathy and I are calling the biblical contours of marriage. And I'll tell you what those are, but Kathy and I will go back and forth and hit four of what we would call the biblical contours of marriage. So first marriage in our culture and then the biblical contours, in which case, those of you who are single, we believe that the biblical vision for marriage, if you grasp it better, will help you figure out whether to seek marriage or not and how to do it. If you're married, the biblical vision for marriage will help you not only work on your own marital problems, but in general improve what you have. So we're applying it to the culture, we're applying it to unmarried people, we're applying it to married people. That's almost everybody, isn't it? Is anybody out? I don't think I left anybody out. So let me start off with a kind of marriage in cultural context. Let me tell you something about what, there's a whole lot of things you've been reading and I've been reading about. Let me tell you four things, statistics, that tell us that marriage is in something of a crisis or at least it's in a time of transition. Most everybody knows that divorce rate today is just around 50%, just about 50% of all marriages end in divorce and that's double what it was in 1960. Double, so that's pretty big. Second important statistic, in 1970, almost 90% of all births were to married parents and now it's less than 60%. That's also a very, very big change. The third statistic, which I think actually in some ways is the most telling and you may not have heard of it. I didn't until I was doing research for the book. In 1960, just about 75% of all US adults were married and today it's about 50%. That's a big, big change. Only 50% of all US adults are married, whereas just 40 years ago it was three quarters and then the last one is, this is of interest, is today, of course, in 1960 cohabitation, which was partners living together who were not married. In 1960, it was statistically negligible. I mean, not that there was nobody, but the point was it was essentially 0% or so few. Today, one quarter of all unmarried women between the age of 25 and 40 are living with a partner, not married, 25%, one quarter. It's estimated that one half of women today will live at some point with an unmarried partner sometime before they're 40, one half. Those are monumental changes, statistically. Now, along with those changes go attitude changes. Let me give you three, this is again empirical stuff, it's not biblical stuff, it's just social science, let me give you three specific attitudes that are very important, they're very prevalent amongst younger adults, three specific beliefs about marriage and one general. The three specific beliefs are this, there is a very, very strong sense when they do studies of young adults that belief that most marriages are unhappy or yet become unhappy. Most marriages become unhappy. It's actually fairly logical. If 50% of all marriages end in divorce, surely the other 50% are not all happy. It makes sense to say that most marriages are pretty much unhappy, end up unhappy. That's a pretty negative view and that view is there. A second view, which again is negative amongst young adults is that the key, the reason why it's so hard being happily married is the key to marriage is finding a compatible mate. This is something by the way that say 30 years ago nobody even thought about, 40 years ago for sure not, but today when studies are done it's at the height of, it's at the very top of people's consciousness. What I'm looking for is a soul mate or a compatible, I'm looking for compatibility. We'll get into what that compatibility is. I'm going to get to that really quickly, but basically compatible means someone who I don't need to change much and someone who doesn't want to change me that much. Finding that compatible person is at the very top of people's understanding of marriage and they're having trouble finding it. That's the reason why they're negative. Third thing is there's a very prevalent view that if you have any chance of finding that compatible person, that cohabitation helps you do it. Having sex with people before your marriage, absolutely you need to have sex, otherwise you have no idea if you're compatible. The idea of living together, being good, having sex before marriage practically a necessity in order to figure out compatibility is also a belief. In general, as I said, those are three specific beliefs, but in general it is pretty striking when you read this stuff, the social science, how much younger people today feel that marriage is really a problem, a scary thing, a fearful thing. Right now, one-third of all high school students in this country, if you ask them, do you think that in general being married is better than being single or living together for most individuals? That's the question. Do you believe that being married in general is better for individuals than being single and living together? Only one-third say yes. Whereas we do know 50 years ago, the vast majority of people have said being married is better. Vast majority. So there's a big change. All right. Point one. Our attitudes toward marriage, our practices of marriage have gone through a sea change. Point two. Empirically, do our attitudes line up with reality? No, they don't. Now, here I'm still doing social science because we're talking about culture right now. Partly because marriage is going through all these sea changes, there has been a lot of research being done in the last 20 years on marriage. Here's some interesting things that you may find interesting. Did you know that those living together before marriage are more likely to divorce than people who don't live together before marriage? Did you know that? Secondly, oh, by the way, and most cohabitations don't lead to marriage. So most cohabitations don't lead to marriage and people who get married after cohabitation are more likely to divorce than people who have not. Secondly, in general, the earlier in a relationship that sex is introduced, the more likely that relationship is to break up and fail. Some social scientists have actually said those two facts are at such variance with what most young people believe. Most young people do not believe that at all. That social scientists actually struggle trying to figure out how it is that that's the reality on the ground and yet it's completely at variance with beliefs. And they have to say that most younger adults want to believe that cohabitation is better and that having sex is necessary to figure out compatibility. They want to believe that, but the facts of the matter is just it's not true. And they want to believe it so badly that they just filter out all the evidence that doesn't fit with their paradigm. It's a really big disconnect. Thirdly, here's another empirical fact. What about the idea that all marriages or most marriages are unhappy? Here's a couple of things that are important. First of all, it is true that the divorce rate is 50%, but the vast majority of divorces happen to people who get married before the age of 18. And you need to know that if you get married after the age of 25 and if you have a high school diploma, especially a college diploma, your marriage may not be as much a consolation to the many people, of course, who have been married over 25, college educated, and their marriages are broken. Plenty of people do, but the point is that 50% number should not be looming up in people's minds the way it does for most people. Secondly, 62% of all people for the last 15 years have said their marriage is not just happy, but very happy. If you can check happy, very happy, whatever, 62%, it's been holding up for years. It's been holding up across the time frames. Here's another one. Two-thirds of all people who check the box that their marriage is unhappy or very unhappy, if they stay together, five years later, they check the box happy. In other words, two-thirds of all unhappy marriages, if they stay together, become happy within five years. Two-thirds. And then, I guess I could say on top of that, there are just piles and piles of data that will tell you that married people have far higher levels of physical health, mental health, wealth accrual, even when you can control for the same age, the same ethnicity, the same educational background across the board. And the reason is most social scientists talk about what they call marital societal norm, pardon me, marital social norms. The simple fact is your spouse can force you into self-discipline in a way that your parents can't, your friends can't, your siblings can't. There is nobody that can force you into self-discipline like a spouse. There's nothing even close. And so in general, it's the reason why right away, if you're married, your automobile insurance goes down. Listen, they are not, these are not ideologues. Those actuaries do not care. They're not Republican or Democrat. They're not Christian or atheist. They don't care. They're not culture warriors. They don't care. They just know marital social norms. The fact of the matter is something happens when you're married that actually makes you save more, makes you better with your money, makes you better with all sorts of things. And yet, now, where I'm halfway done with this little part, this introductory lecture, I want you to see that what people think about marriage and the realities of marriage are utterly apart. They are completely at variance. There's an enormous disconnect, so disconnected. In other words, young adults' view of marriage is so much more negative than the reality on the ground that some, it's begging for an explanation. Now, the social scientists know that it's a problem. They just don't know where it comes from, but I will tell you, or at least I'll tell you what I think. Where the negative view comes from is obviously not from experience. Look, there's no doubt that probably if there is an experience, it's this. The fact that the divorce rate is higher than it was 40 or 50 years ago, twice as high, means that more people go through divorce, the kids go through divorce, and if more people go through divorce, there's no doubt that that's probably the main original reason why there's so much more of a negative view of marriage. Nevertheless, the facts on the ground are such that, like we said, your prospects of divorce are not that terrible. Marriages are not that unhappy. People who are married are, in many, many ways, are far better off. Well, I forgot to mention, as you know, the children are raised with two married parents have two to three times, two to three hundred percent better chance of positive outcomes than children who don't. There's all sorts of those statistics. Why the disconnect? Here's the disconnect. It's worldview. John Witte, who is a legal scholar, and he's a historian of history. In other words, he's a historian of legal theory and legal practice, and he teaches at Emory University. He's written a lot about marriage, and he basically sums it up like this. The older ideal of marriage was a permanent contractual union designed for the sake of mutual love, procreation, and protection. But today, the new idea of marriage is a new reality as a terminal sexual contract designed for the gratification of the individual parties. Now, let me translate that speak. The older view of marriage was, marriage was there to create a strong framework for lifelong devotion between husband and wife for three reasons. One, marriage was designed to help each party subordinate individual impulses to the greater good for the family, for the relationship. The purpose of marriage was for you to say, I want this and this, but as an individual, I'm going to put the greater good of the community, the greater good of the family, the greater good of my spouse, ahead of my own individual interests. So it's character forming. It was a way of basically getting you to subordinate your individual impulses. Secondly, it was to get male and female, despite their gender differences and because of their gender differences, to work together in a partnership. The whole idea was that men and women are very different. Marriage was always seen as a way to bring them together and get them to work together in spite of their differences and because of their complementary differences and so forth. And then thirdly, marriage was designed to create stability, long-term stability, which is the only place that children can really safely be raised. Witte says that what changed was probably the Enlightenment. Because before the Enlightenment, even in the West, the basic understanding of meaning in life was you get meaning in life through duty to higher things, higher than you. Your community is more important than you, your nation is more important than you, your family is more important than you, and your God is more important than you. And you are a good person and you get meaning in life by putting yourself lower than those things and living for those ideals. And that was how you got meaning in life. The Enlightenment says exactly the opposite. The way you get meaning in life is that you as an individual must be free to do what you find fulfilling. So it's completely the opposite, which means marriage becomes something completely different. Marriage now, and this is what John Witte said, marriage is no longer a way for me to develop character, it's no longer a way for me to create stability, it's no longer a good. That marriage is here for children, that marriage is here for my character, for marriage is here for the community, for society, to create stability. No, no, marriage is here to fulfill me as an individual. That's the change. And it's a big change. So for example, this is just near the end of 2010, there was an article in the New York Times by Tara Parker Pope, who wrote, this is the New York Times, and the name of the article was The Happy Marriage is the Me Marriage. And she seems to understand exactly about the change. She writes this, quote, the notion that the best marriages are those that bring satisfaction to the individual may seem counterintuitive. After all, isn't marriage supposed to be about putting the relationship first? Not anymore. For centuries, marriage was viewed mainly as a social institution, and the emotional and intellectual needs of the spouses were secondary to the survival of the marriage itself. But in modern relationships, people are looking for a partnership and they want partners who make their lives more interesting and who help each of them attain valued goals. And then she finally says, marriage used to be about us, now it's about me. In other words, I want to find a person, a mate, who accepts me as I am and enhances my freedom and doesn't put any shackles on me. In the old days, it was expected, I find a mate and then I serve the mate and I serve the family and I put myself second. That was the old idea. And she says, no, that's not the old idea. Now here's the irony. Now that explains the change, right? But does it explain the disconnect? No, not yet, but now I will. The new understanding of marriage as individually fulfilling has put enormous pressure on marriage that just wasn't there before. That's the irony. The new approach of marriage, I've got to find a compatible soul mate. My grandmother, now my grandmother, my Italian grandmother, when she was my Italian grandfather, my mother's father, emigrated from Italy, came through and worked, came through Ellis Island, worked, lived in Little Italy and worked on some of the early subway. My grandmother was born to Sicilian immigrants. I think she was born here, I'm pretty sure. But the point was that when she was 12 and my grandfather was 20 something, she was betrothed to him. That is, her parents said, this is the person, we've decided, he's a good man, you're going to marry him. This was like 1912 or something like that. And I often talk to her about this. She married him when she was 17. He was 35, they got married and they had a fine time. From what I can tell from my parents, my mom, all reports are that she loved him and they had a loving relationship. On the other hand, she would say, you go in there expecting, you learn to love. You get in there expecting that you're going to form a family and that's what's important, you're going to raise children, you're going to be loyal to each other, love is important, we're going to work at that, but what's important is faithful. She didn't go in with all the, I've got to find a compatible soulmate. Are you kidding? Can you imagine? Nobody thought like that. And as a result, they didn't have these ridiculous standards. They didn't say, oh my goodness, I've got to find somebody. Here's what a compatible soulmate is. Somebody who first of all doesn't need a lot of change. Low maintenance. Somebody is very pulled together. Obviously my job is I want to get into marriage, I want to be happy and fulfilled. Remember what she said, what Sarah Parker Pope said? In other words, I'm looking for a partnership and I want my partners to make my life more interesting and help me attain my goals. Well, this person needs all kinds of work. That's not going to happen. So you need a person who doesn't need any kind of work and you need a person who doesn't think you need any kind of work. And actually men are worse than women at this. So I should say men are better, men are stronger than women at this, but men all say, tell the social scientists that compatibility means a woman who doesn't want to change me. And by the way, thirdly, since sexual chemistry is so important, the person doesn't need change. The person doesn't want you to change. You're fine the way you are. And the person needs to be very sexually attractive. There isn't anybody out there like that. And you know what, listen, let me just say the average Christian single person, you have completely imbibed that. Even if you say, I only want to marry a Christian. Okay. Do you realize you're worse off than anybody? Because what you have said is, oh, I'm being true to the word of God. I will only marry a Christian. And you want all those other things on topic. Whether you know, you've imbibed it and it's hopeless. A person who doesn't need change, a person that won't change you, a person who's got looks and money, and he's got to be loving the Lord. And so you're, it's hopeless. Stanley, Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University, some of you heard me, this is such a classic text. If you haven't heard me, tell it to you. Somebody else has told it to you. Stanley Hauerwas says the assumption, this is the modern assumption on which our entire culture is based. And it's the reason for the disconnect and it's the reason for the crisis. He says, the assumption is that there is somebody just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough, we will find that just right person. This assumption overlooks a crucial aspect of marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that you always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we marry. We just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give them a while and he or she will change. For marriage being the enormous thing that it is means we are not the same person after we've entered it. So when you're looking for this person, this prospective mate, you see, he doesn't say, this is my, when you're looking for this prospective mate, you say, oh this person is great, but you're looking at a person who's not married to you yet. And as soon as that person gets married to you, the person is going to utterly change. And so will you. And so in the end, in other words, you can't, you have no idea who you're marrying. And then finally he says the primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you so often find yourself married. Now, does that sound like bad news to you? It's good news. The point is you don't have to find that perfect person and we're going to be talking about that tonight. Katty's going to be talking about it. We're going to be talking about it tomorrow. Because let me end like this. Christianity can be such a relief. Christianity, Ephesians 5 25, the key passage on marriage in the Bible and the key verse and the key phrase in the key verse. In the whole Bible of our marriage is this, husbands love your wives, and this will be true of course for wives, spouses love your spouses as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. It doesn't say Jesus was looking for a compatible church. He was looking for someone who would help him reach his goals. He was looking for someone who would enhance him. Being perfect, that would have been hard. Even non-Christian cultures have a better understanding of marriage than Western, even non-Christian cultures have a better grasp of what Paul says here than our Western culture. Because the whole idea is fulfillment through sacrifice. Jesus Christ gave up everything, but he changed us. And if you want to know Jesus Christ and you want to enter into a union with him, a marriage to him as it were, you have to give up everything. And then what? We're changed. Joy. But it's not because we look in there and say I don't have to do any changing and he doesn't want me to change. That's crazy. What a relief it is to start looking for a best friend and counselor instead of somebody who necessarily looks great and has a lot of money. What a relief it is to expect conflict. What a relief. I mean, our culture actually needs the Christian idea of marriage. All right. Now what we're going to do for the next, I think, 45, 50 minutes is Kathy and I are going to go back and forth on, and I didn't bring the notes up, but I think I can remember it. We're going to talk about the biblical contours of marriage, so we're going to lay out a kind of biblical vision. And Kathy's first going to talk about the power of marriage. I think I can remember. Kathy's going to talk about the power of marriage. I'm going to come back and talk about the essence, the power for marriage. Later. Okay. All right. So, power for marriage, then marriage and me, the essence of marriage. And Kathy will come back and talk about the mission or the purpose of marriage. And finally, we'll come both back and forth to talk about the three major means of marriage, truth, love, and grace. So, like I said, we're going to talk and talk and talk, and you're going to listen and listen and listen. Okay? So, I would like to introduce to you my wife. Yeah, I think so. Tim does this for a living. I don't, so. And I apologize to you. One of the things that you share in marriage is germs, and Tim gave me his coal last week, and I love him so much, I've just kept it. So, if I choke and have to take drinks of water, excuse me, ahead of time. I was told this was the power for marriage, not the power in marriage, so I hope that's what it is. You've heard Tim talk about compatibility not being possible, that it's not even something that you should expect. If we agree that there's no way in the world that two sinners are ever going to be compatible, in the modern sense of the word, so that they can sustain a rich and long-term relationship, then what hope is there for anybody's marriage? Have you seen, has anybody else besides me seen that internet dating commercial that's on TV where there's some guy that's saying, I won't tell you what company it is, some guy that's saying, yeah, I want to find a girl who just doesn't want me to change, who just takes me as I am. Has anybody else seen that besides me? Yeah, have you seen Harmony? I know I didn't want to out them. He said it before I said it. But I mean, that's just such a prevalent idea in our culture, and Tim has gone over that. But if you think about it, it's the most absurd thing that you could ever require of a relationship. You know that you have to change in order to grow, and you do it in every other area of your life. You go to the gym, you try new restaurants, you sign up for a learning annex course, you go to the theater even because you're trying to When we get to the point of our heart of hearts and granting access to our most inmost selves to another person who loves us and who may change us, oh no, no, no, we're not going to go there. And the belief that if you're compatible, you won't need to be changed is such a staggering assumption because if you're going to grow in every area of your life except the most important inward ones, the status quo, that's perfectly acceptable. I can just be whoever it is I am. I don't need to change. I think this is actually more motivated by a combination of fear and self-centered, selfish self-absorption. Is that enough emphasis on the word self, you think? Who knows? If I entrust myself into the arms of someone else, what might happen? What about that sickness and health clause that gets into that wedding service? Or maybe I'll be inconvenienced or maybe he'll snore or, you know, all kinds of things that John Tierney wrote a very funny article about years ago which I won't quote but you can go online and find it. Really, this is nothing less than just massive self-centered selfish self-protectiveness. It's also three other things. It's delusional, it's self-destructive and it's doomed. And I'll go through all this. Delusional. You're going to change, will you or nil you? You are going to change. Every cell in your body changes every seven years, right? I mean you learned that in elementary school. Change is inevitable. You are going to change. I mean, the roots start growing out. You just can't stop it. Change happens. And the toll that's going on, the change that's going on in your life is going to take its toll. Do you want that to be the result of a random process or do you want to have that guided? Do you want to have feedback from somebody that you trust, somebody who knows you intimately or just want it to sort of like take whatever course it's going to take? Perhaps you think that you have arrived this moment at the apex of human development and therefore you actually aren't going to be in need of any change. I don't think anybody believes that even for a second no matter what their other philosophical commitments are. Secondly, the belief that the perfect relationship won't require you to change is also self-destructive. To be unwilling to change begets a kind of hardness and a coldness and an inhuman self-absorption. You've all heard Tim, well maybe you haven't all heard but probably if you've been around for a while you've heard Tim quote the C.S. Lewis passage where he says that the only way to protect your heart from having any kind of pain is to lock it up in a little casket where it's dark and safe and it can grow hard and dead. And that's true if you really want to have no unpleasant encounters with either yourself or someone else you have to avoid everyone and that's deadly. That's self-destructive. You can't go through life. We are people who are made for community and to live a life of dedicated self-absorption is a way to actually not live at all. Also it's doomed because engaging in relationships that don't challenge you and dropping them the minute that they do is as good a recipe as I know for becoming stale and flat and unprofitable. And if you're going to ask the right question or if you're out there already asking the right question you're thinking okay okay I know that I have things that have to change in me but how can I launch out in any kind of confidence that this man or this woman is going to be wiser than I am about what those changes ought to be. I cannot tell you I really cannot tell you how many times I have had a conversation with a young man or young woman not even even that young and this is how it goes but how do I know this is the right person? What if I get it wrong? What if I marry the wrong person? He or she seems really nice and I'm almost sure but how can I be really sure that this is the perfect person? This fear of commitment it gets called fear of commitment a lot of times but what gets called fear of commitment is I think really less a fear of committing to the person and it turning out wrong than it's a fear of trusting God for your future. You think if you stay single you'll have more control over the circumstances of your life than if you marry and outwardly that could be seen to be true on a superficial level. If you're not married you don't have to consult anybody else about how you spend your money or your time. There's not any accountability for who your friends are or what your pastimes are much less on any other little ones who might come along to complicate matters but if we have a sovereign God who is in charge of all of time and space and history and you have entrusted your life into his keeping then the assumption that well if I stay single or if I get this set of circumstances right or maybe if I get my bank account big enough I can make sure that I am protected against whatever bad things might happen in the future is a rejection of not just God's wisdom but his love for you, his lordship over your life and his plan that he may have for you. It's as foolish as it is wicked. I forget who I'm quoting and saying that but who am I quoting when I'm saying that? He's my cultural librarian, John Gerstner. Okay, thank you. What's often billed as a fear of commitment is really a fear of the future and by extension a fear of that God's not going to get your life right. He's not going to get your future the way you have it visualized and that's true. He may not. Lewis has this great place and I can't even tell you where it is because I've read him so much that it all kind of melds together in my mind where he talks about we've all had this well not we haven't all had it but if you start renovating your apartment or a house or a summer home or something like that and you call a plumber in to do something about the drains that's Lewis's analogy and suddenly he's knocking out a wall and he's putting on a wing and there's a tower going up over here and you think what why I had this nice little cottage I just want to be a nice decent little cottage and Lewis's thing is yes but the king plans to come live here and he's making you into a palace fit for his own habitation so your vision of what your future is going to look like may not be at all what God's vision is for what your future looks like he has a much deeper richer higher one probably one that would startle you out of your wits if you knew what it was and not in a bad way in a good way so the answer to where we get the power for entering and sustaining a marriage and overcoming our fears and changing our selfishness to selflessness is that you have to enter marriage with the resources to face the future staying single is not the answer marrying the perfect person isn't the answer because the person doesn't exist what you need is to be filled with the love of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit David come on okay thank you we have friends that are here and he was gonna punctuate that for me um we have to be filled with the love of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit before you try to love another person now before you write that statement off it's just a lot of spiritual mumbo jumbo let me really practical the picture of marriage given in the bible is not of two needy people who through a lot of adversity find each other and fall into each other's arms finding their significance and their meaning and their love for one another because really if you put one needy person with another needy person you just get a whole lot of neediness and what you find or at least what i have found because i've been in relationship like this and i've been the cause of a relationship like this more than once is that it becomes a competition as to who's the needier no no no i'm the more messed up you have to take care of me oh no no no no i'm the messed up you have to take care of me has anybody else been in a relationship like that where you're who's had the worst day it can be just on that sort of a shallow level it could also be who's had the more traumatic life with more you know horrible things happen to you and it's a competition is to see who is the one who gets to say you have to take care of me because i'm the biggest mess here but while no christian lives a life of continual joy in god or the bible wouldn't have to tell us to keep on being filled by the holy spirit like it does in ephesians 5 18 which by the way is the first right before you get into the passage about marriage and i don't think that's a coincidence christians at least know where the source of their joy is to be found it's not in the other person it's in god now tim put it in the book and i'm just going to read this while we are often running on fumes spiritually we know where the fuel station is and even more important that it exists after trying all sorts of other things christians have learned that the worship of god with the whole heart is the thing their souls were meant to run on so having a source of joy that won't run out and dry up is what gives you the power to sustain a marriage if you're taking notes this is one you want to write down having a source of love that won't to sustain a marriage it's what gives you the power to abandon your lonely self-absorption and imitate jesus in his selfless servanthood you aren't crushing another person with the weight of your neediness and your need for meaning in life and love because you found it in jesus you found it in his love for you this love is experienced through the work of the holy spirit in your life and as the holy spirit turns your eyes towards jesus seeing his love for you you're filled with a supernatural grace and you're able to overflow with love into your spouse's life tim's called this love economics if you've ever heard him talk about that you know if you are walking down the street and there's somebody there and they have their little jar you know collecting money for this good cause and then another block and somebody else has their jar out or their coffee cup collecting money for me or collecting money for another good cause after a while you kind of get compassion exhaustion and also you empty your wallet there's nothing more to give because you haven't been stopping at an atm every block and refilling your pocket but what if you had like that magical purse in the grim fairy tale that no matter how much money you took out of it there was always something at the bottom there was always more that's what we're talking about as far as love in marriage if you look to the other person and you can love them just as long as they're loving you back because that way you keep i'm not real good at economics but that's how you keep it all balanced then the minute they go sort of off the reservation they have a bad day then you better step back because they might sort of drain you and you don't want to do that you have to be able to get as much as you give but if you have another source of love pouring into you another source of joy pouring into you then if you're being temporarily or even long-term drained by the neediness of another person it's not going to empty you because jesus is always going to be pouring into you i've counseled men and women women and men for years who really want to be married and they're not to abandon their crushing need which may have actually even turned into an idol because wanting to be married can be an idol like any good thing could be an idol excuse me and instead to concentrate on learning how to be overflowing with the water of life through the spirit of jesus in their lives as a byproduct this will make you a much more attractive person to marry but that's not why you're doing it but by then you're no longer going to be self-oriented you're going to be other oriented you will also be cured of the myth that what you need to be happy is to be married which is the greatest impediment to a happy marriage that i know of so the holy spirit filling us with the mind and heart of christ and expelling our selfishness is where we get the power to enter to endure and to exalt in our marriages and now you get tim again then you keep me here all night now the reason we did that first the reason we wanted to talk about the holy spirit and the power of marriage before i'm telling you now the definition in fact cathy said what shouldn't you start with the definition of marriage and then move to the power and actually the definition at first is so counter-intuitive to what where most people are that it could be a little discouraging if you didn't hear about the power but i'll refer to that again what cathy's saying is we talk about love economics or love philanthropy it's another way to do it and that is that the christian view of marriage assumes you're a christian it assumes that you've got a vital relationship with christ that there actually is a source of love that you don't just know about with your head but that you actually sense with your heart otherwise none of this stuff works so keep that in mind now what's the definition i'm going to call it the essence of marriage the essence of marriage is a covenant what makes you married is that you're in a binding covenant you may you take a vow you're in a binding long-term whole life covenant that brings two people together every aspect of their life together and the rest of their lives together if god is gracious to you and all so that covenant law and love together a legal binding intimate covenant now let me talk to you about why that's so important some years ago i remember hearing uh i think it was a it was a tv show i think it was i don't know it was a drama or a sitcom i don't remember but a husband and a wife were pardon me a man and a woman who were in a was that wanted and who didn't want but i do remember the person who didn't want said you don't need a piece of paper to love we don't need a piece of paper to love each other in fact the piece of paper complicates things meaning a marriage license and that got me thinking what's the essence of marriage if the essence of marriage isn't affected by the piece of paper then the essence of marriage is passion and feeling and the piece of paper can actually hurt that it certainly doesn't enhance it but the christian understanding is the piece of paper is the essence of the marriage that's what makes you a marriage you see how different that is and if you're sort of taken aback by that let me just point out a couple things first of all a covenant creates intimacy contrary to what that person was saying a covenant actually creates intimacy you say why when you are dating or when you're with each other even if you're living together but you're not married i i like to push you and say you are actually in a consumer relationship i have a consumer relationship with my grocer that is to say i might know the grocer i might say hi grocer and hi customer so we know each other very well but the fact is if i find another grocer that gives me better produce for a better price i am under no obligations to go this grocer i will go to that grocer consumer relationship is a relationship in which my needs are pre-eminent my needs are more important in the relationship i can change the relationship if i get better pro you know a better product for a better price and of course in order to get my uh my my business the vendor has to market has to has to advertise has to say compare prices and look at this and they do all sorts of things and there's music when you come in and things like that so they're okay when if you're not married you're essentially in a consumer relationship which means you're always in sort of marketing you can't you can only be so messed up or the person will just walk away from you you can only i mean in other words you you have to look good you have to be okay um you know you can't be too unhappy you can't be too taxing and therefore you can't really be yourself you can't you're still in marketing mode you're still in the consumer mode and that's not intimate the idea that you don't need a piece of paper to have intimacy is wrong as a matter of fact i think you do need a piece of paper to at least know you got the security to melt down a bit and just say oh my word look at this is what's happening to me and tomorrow leave no no the piece of paper covenant creates intimacy secondly covenant creates stability i already talked about this um let me just talk about it again remember what i when i said that studies show that two-thirds of unhappy marriages are happy five years later if people don't break up you remember ulysses when uh he knew he was going to get near the the island of sirens he told his uh the his sailors to put wax in the ears tie him to the mast and when he heard the sirens he was going to probably go nuts and tell him to this and that just ignore me just keep rowing until i come to my senses that's what a piece of paper does it ties you to the mast until you come to your senses and i want you to know that i'm not saying there's a whole lot of questions i immediately know that i'm not answering because we can't we're trying to move through a lot of stuff here but i mean is there are there biblical grounds for divorce sure absolutely in fact paul uh jesus jesus says there's grounds for i'm not saying that but in general we bail too fast especially in our culture where the whole idea is supposed to be that marriage is supposed to fulfill me marriage isn't supposed to change me it's supposed to fulfill me and if that's the case we're out so quickly and what well let me keep on going quickly just to show you in that case you will never have a happy marriage you'll just go from thing to thing to thing because sometimes you've got to get through the sirens and uh so it creates stability um w.h auden of all people said this and this is the heart of what i'm trying to get across i mean it's a remarkable statement when he says i must have left it yes w.h auden said now listen carefully any marriage happy or unhappy is infinitely more interesting than any romance however passionate any marriage happy or unhappy is infinitely interesting more interesting than any romance however passionate then he goes on and says because marriage is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will and we have got this backwards for us romance and passion is the ideal and marriage is boring or stifling but it actually creates the stability you need it creates the intimacy and i'll give you one more example it creates freedom and this might i know this is going to be weird that he said what do you mean creates freedom when you're bound to stick with this person even when things are going badly that creates freedom you know why kirigard and his stuff on love is fascinating with this kirigard says do you realize that he was talking to somebody who says i've just uh you know she doesn't she doesn't turn me on anymore i don't know however you said that in danish in the in the 19th century you know my guess is my my guess is losing something in the translation but anyway uh but basically kirigar was talking to somebody who said you know i i just don't love her anymore and i have to go and he says here's a man who is in the control of his impulses he says if you're not if you are not bound to somebody then you're actually a slave to your impulses because as soon as your feelings go you gotta leave you're not and you say i'm free now to leave no you're not free you're being pushed around by your feelings your feelings coming to go listen louis smeeds he was a an ethicist when i married my wife some of you heard this too but listen all the way to the end it's just too good i'm going to read it when i married my wife i had hardly a smidgen of sense for what i was getting into with her how would i know how could i know how much she would change over 25 years how could i know how much i would change my wife has lived with five at least five different men since we were wed and each of the five has been me the connecting link with my old self has always been the memory of the name i took on back there when i the day i said i am he who will be there with you when we slough off that name when we lose that identity we can hardly find ourselves again now listen when i make a promise a promise this is the legal binding when i make a promise i bear witness that my future with you is not locked into a bionic beam by which i was stuck with the fateful combinations of x's and y's in the hand i was dealt with out of my parents genetic deck when i make a promise i testify i'm not routed along some unalterable itinerary by psychic conditioning visited on me by my slightly wacky parents when i make a promise i declare that my future with my future depends is not pardon me my future with you is not predetermined by the mixed up culture of my tender years i am not faded i am not determined i am not a lump of human dough whipped into shape by the contingent reinforcement and aversive conditioning of my past i know as well as the next person i can't create my life de novo i am well aware that much of what i am and what i do is a gift that occurs from my past but when i make a promise to anyone i rise above the conditioning that limits me no german shepherd ever promised to be there with me no home computer ever promised to be a loyal help only a person can make a promise and when you do you are most free see what he's saying is he says if i promise i'm going to be there with you 25 years from now that means my emotions they no longer have control it means my genetic deck doesn't have control my parents don't no longer have control over me i'm not being pushed around i've made a choice and now i'm free do you think like that no modern people don't think like that but let's try so the essence of marriage is not the feeling because that actually makes you a slave suddenly it goes away oh now what do i do no no it creates intimacy it creates stability creates freedom let me and let me give you one more thing it also expands your understanding of love and here's the last thing i'll say under this heading one of the reasons why everybody gets upset with the idea of marriage many people say in the beginning it was it's great romance passion sexual chemistry but it always wears off birch and russell actually has a an essay about that where he actually says it just it always wears off and that's the process romance is good marriage is bad because eventually it starts with romance and wears off but i want you to think along these lines first of all remember what how i said when you first marry somebody you're thrilled but you don't know the person so what who are you in love with you know there's a place in lord of the rings where you you know movie or book aowyn falls in love with aragorn and at one point when she's i guess unconscious uh aragorn turns to her brother aomer and says this she loves you more than she truly loves me for you she loves and knows but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought of a hope of glory and great deeds and lands afar and what he's saying is this when you first well when you first get married probably when you first when you first kiss when you first hold hands when you first have the contact it's thrilling you know why because you're in love with the person no it's mainly ego it's the rush of knowing that this person likes you because you have no idea who that person is yet you have no idea who the person is now here's what you think they are you think they're cool you think they're good you know you wouldn't be with them unless they like look good or there was something about them that made you want to be with them and it is true there is nothing sexier than to have someone you admire admire you the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards so someone you admire admiring you that's thrilling but here's what will always happen in the beginning why do you admire the person and why is it so thrilling that this admirable person loves you because of how they look usually or because of their credentials or because they're so smart all the most superficial things all the things that initially attract you to a person and make you admire them and therefore fill your heart because this person affirms me and loves me that listen as time goes on it doesn't matter how good-looking they are doesn't matter how wealthy they are it doesn't matter how smart they are doesn't matter their connections in the end you're going to see their feet of clay and they're going to see yours and if five years from now and ten years now from now you're still going to admire that person more than anybody in the world it's going to be because of courage it's becoming our humility it's going to be because of wisdom it's going to be because of character and your romantic love that's thrilled with this person affirming you because you admire them so much but you're admiring them for almost all the superficial things has got to be transmuted into real romance and real passion a romance and a passion and it's yes a sexual thrill that will be there when you're both 70 because it's not based in the superficial things you admire this person more than anybody in the world now how does that happen it only happens when you've gone through it's not the resume anymore the talent or the connections or the personality or the brains or the looks it's having it's having learned how to it's by seeing the other person change for you and you changing for them do you get it if you really really really think that that first initial rush is love and now it wears off and that's what happens to marriage no no real love is the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards love is someone that you admire loving you and affirming you and making you feel like a million dollars but you will not be able to keep on admiring that person unless you change from the things you initially love them for to the things they really are and they have to change and you have to change and that happens through a covenant that happens through a covenant that happens through committing to one another marriage is one of the most significant human relationships there is but is also one of the most difficult and misunderstood in the meaning of marriage tim and kathy keller offer biblical wisdom and insight that will help you understand god's vision for marriage whether you're single considering marriage or someone who's been married a long time the meaning of marriage will help you face the complexities of commitment with the wisdom of god the meaning of marriage is our thank you for your gift to help gospel in life share the love of christ with people all over the world so request your copy today at gospel and life dot com slash give that's gospel and life dot com slash give so anyway um and let me just give you one other terrible example of this i you you you in the beginning of your relationship what happens is your spouse you're married your spouse says does something and you say well she's not really being the wife she ought to be so i'm not going to be the husband i ought to be she's pulling back i'm going to pull back she's not being what i want so i'm not going to do as much as you know i used to do and as the years go by you pull back from each other meanwhile you have children with children it's completely the opposite with children you get nothing for a long time you get nothing nothing eventually a smile after like no sleep for a year and then you get a smile so i mean in other words you're in a completely different world because what you're doing there is you're committed so you don't have a consumer relationship with the child it's a covenant relationship you never took a vow but you sense it see in other words this is about me committing to you through thick and thin no matter what even if i'm getting nothing out of it but what happens is the culture makes us relate to our spouse like a consumer and so she's not giving me produce at a good price i'm not i'm not going to give her you know in other words i'm going to pull back she's going to pull back and after 18 years you'll feel nothing for your spouse and you'll be absolutely committed to your children why because the feelings of love follow the actions of love they follow it follows the commitment of love even if your kids are a mess in 18 years you're going to love them because you gave to them because you operated with them as if it was a covenant relationship now act toward your spouse like it's a covenant relationship and you'll begin to see why it's the essence of marriage now we're going to move into well what's what's the purpose of marriage when you get married why why do you get married and kathy is going to pick that up that's right thank you forgotten how short i am um shorter every year um i just want to congratulate all of you on being extremely patient usually we like to do these kind of talks with lots of q a and we decided it was really the best thing to do a lot of the preliminary foundation laying talking tonight there will be so much time for q a tomorrow in fact after lunch there's nothing but q a i mean you can just pound us with q and a's but even the talks tomorrow we saved all the stuff to make you come back tomorrow the talks on sex and gender tomorrow which they'll both have q and a's so there'll be lots of time for you to talk just don't want you to get discouraged and think it's going to be more of the same tomorrow they're all right they're all right okay okay well just checking um the mission of marriage tim called it the purpose of marriage but i'd rather say the mission your your marriage should have a mission what's your marriage about is your marriage about anything if you're married or if you're not married what would you want your marriage to be about if you were to be married those might sound like a little bit like silly questions like duh you know love and happiness and sex and children and you know there's a lot of good answers to that but they really don't cover the whole spectrum of what a marriage can be about um three things i'm going to cover pretty quickly and then tim i'm going to be back up here friendship sanctification and service and one flows out of the other so i'll start with friendship marriage is a remedy for loneliness bear in mind that adam had a had an utterly perfect relationship with god in the garden of eden and yet god said it was not good because adam was lonely part of the image of god that adam was created in one of the ways in which he resembled the creator that he was made in the image of was he needed relationships he was a relational being and so having another person to relate to was something that was hardwired into him i mean literally hardwired into him when he sees eve he says here at last is bone of my bone flesh of my flesh he feels like he's meeting his his opposite number that his the complementary person that's like him but not like him his need of another person was part of the image of god in him c.s lewis has a book that you may have run into called the four loves and in it he discusses affection friendship romantic love and christian love and i'm gonna kind of talk about all of them but maybe in a different order i want to suggest that marriage is an amalgam of all of those things and that taken together you could find the mission for your marriage both its inward face what it is doing for the two of you in the marriage and also its outward face because your marriage has an outward face as well not everybody you know this is not positioned where i can make any noise with it um so a friendship is the bedrock foundation of your marriage the kind of marriage that the bible envisions is similar vision of life with similar joys similar sorrows common insights common passions for tim refer to it as the secret thread that runs through a relationship friendships between single people are really the best beginning for a marriage but they're also an end in themselves if you only go friend hunting as a prelude to spouse hunting you're going to end up with neither a friend really is an end in and of himself and herself there's someone who looks at things the same way you do sees what you see sees the same things that you see through their own eyes and enriches you with that perspective single people need to cultivate very strong non-romantic friendships and married couples need friendships as well and i may as well say it here because it's not going to come up anywhere else in marriage same-sex friendships or couple friendships should be the strongest you can have friendly relationships cross gender that's okay in moderation when you're married but only when both members of the couple are friends i count many men as my friends but they're all friends of tim's as well and i think you would say that the women friends that you would name all of them are my friends as well and anything else is kind of unwise and that doesn't really fit anywhere else but i shoved it in there just so that god said returning to the topic when the secret thread you have to get stuff in when you can't when the secret thread in a relationship is the love of christ then all the other commonalities or dissimilarities pale in comparison you can be friends with people with whom you have nothing else in common and i have a couple of illustrations of that i once had to go into the boards and blades skate shop on west 72nd street i'm not even sure it's still there any of you know whether it's still there still there okay my son's uh inline skates had popped a bearing or something like that and it was an unusual experience for me to be in a skate shop everybody was tattooed and pierced and i was this frumpy housewife coming in with an inline skate saying it needs something i'm not exactly sure what the guy who waited on me had a ring in the shape of a fish and i'm thinking hmm you know a little unusual so you do the little are you a christian dance you know yeah it's an interesting ring you have yeah he's australian too and really good looking um he says yeah i i christians used to use that symbol of finishing all the christians we sat and talked well we stood actually and talked for 45 minutes about the lord and how he came to faith and how i came to faith and where he went to church and his girlfriend coming to faith everybody else in the shop is going like what's this guy this hunk have in common with this you know dumpy frumpy housewife that walked in with one skate and didn't even know what to do with it but we had an instantaneous bond you know if i had found more occasions to go to the blades and boards place we could have become friends um maybe it's just as well all right all right all right i would have taken tim another illustration of this as to how your your common thread of your love for christ can really overcome any dissimilarity is my experience with well every fellowship group i've ever been in but especially the one that i've been in in new york and i see some dear members of group that i've ever been in and this is by the way is not paid for it's not a paid commercial for community groups i'll have to remember to call them community groups but something that's just been true in my own life every time i've ever started in a new bible study or fellowship group or community group i've looked around at the people and said yeah well the last time i joined a group i thought it was a pretty unpromising group of people and i would never really get to any warm friendships with any of these people i know i felt that way the last time but this time is really true i have really have nothing in common with these people i really miss my old group where i had these close friendships and this group will never take the place of my old group and of course over the course of time you're sharing what christ is doing in your life you're praying together you're weeping together you're rejoicing together and suddenly you're bonded to this group of people that you never had the slightest hope of ever being bonded to when we got to new york city this bible story 17 years ago started on the upper west side or upper east side with ladies who wore chanel suits and um i didn't even know where you bought chanel i mean i'm from pittsburgh and i thought to myself okay every other group i have ever been in eventually there has been a bondingness with me and the women who were in it this time it's really not going to be i mean there's nothing i have in common nothing nothing nothing these women have been the closest people to me i have i've come to them when i've been so ill and had you know just panic attacks that i couldn't even control and just lay on the couch and wept why they while they laid hands on me and prayed for me i mean they have they have been they're my sisters what can i say they're as closest to me as my sisters and that's because what we have in common with our relationship with christ trumps all the other things that are dissimilar about our backgrounds take tim and me as the last example when i met tim when i got to know him in seminary i found out that he had played trumpet in the marching band from junior high school through college and i liked classical music i also found out he knew all the words and lyrics to the musicals in which he had played in the pit orchestra you just try him sometime if enough of you gang up on him he can do the whole music man for you and i liked classical music but somehow what we had in christ trumps all of those differences there's a i've run into people who have this checklist of someone they're dating oh we have to like the same kind of music and it's definitely we have to i mean i watch rachel ray sometimes when i'm on the treadmill you know and she was just saying this morning she says yeah yeah yeah when you know when you're dating someone you have to find out does he like garlic or not because that's a deal breaker okay if you're really gonna use that as your sorting mechanism i think you're gonna have a small group of people anyway the friends to whom this book is dedicated we are a very diverse group of people you're going to meet some of them tomorrow in the q and a that's going to be a fun thing and we were diverse amongst ourselves and our marriages were very diverse and the book talks about that a little the point of all this is friendship when it's in the context of christian commitment becomes capable of the highest form of love that louis mentions which is koinonia or christian love when jesus was ready to die the last thing well not exactly the last thing but close to the last thing he said to his disciples was i call you my friends because sacrificial love for your friends is what makes them your friends your spouse is your best friend the bible calls a man's wife his halupa which probably is not the right way to pronounce it but i didn't take hebrew and this is surprising in an age when women were often seen as property in marriages for business deals or treaty ratifications it was pretty radical thought that your spouse should be your best friend the person who shares that secret thread with you who's knit to your soul in a common love of god and finally louis's first thing that he mentions i'm mentioning last affection the person that you can be most comfortable with that you can just be yourself with when you add all those things together you have the kind of friendship that can sustain a if you're single and you're hearing this go ahead and rejoice because it's not too late to recalibrate your spouse finding apparatus to sort for best friend and the book tim calls this a game changer when you're considering someone as a potential spouse if you're married and you find that the word best friend does not describe your relationship to your spouse you have different challenges but you don't have to despair if you've married a believer but you find yourself better friends with your buddies or your bffs it's time to invest in making your spouse your buddy slash bff doesn't mean you'll go fishing with him it doesn't mean he'll go get his nails done with you but that doesn't capture the essence of what your marriage is about or at least i hope it doesn't if you find yourself married to an unbeliever one who doesn't share your commitment to christ you have a much more difficult assignment but one which can glorify god and bring growth in your life and rather than getting into this right now it's a big subject if you want to know more about it bring it up in the q a tomorrow i think brent has already given you or is going to give you directions about texting questions in so friendships the first part sanctification is what the friendship leads to if you have this friendship in your common thread is a commitment to christ then you are well resourcing your your love and your affection inside your marriage then the internal mission of your marriage is for each of you to help the other one in becoming the future glory self that god intends for us to become yes we're new creations in christ legally and in god's eyes but we're not fully renovated yet i hate to keep quoting the marriage book but we did put our best stuff in it so the common horizon husband and wife look toward is the throne and the holy spotless blameless nature we will have there sometimes you have to look with the eyes of faith because we walk by faith not by sight and peer into your spouse and see perhaps what god is making him or her not maybe what you would have chosen or ordered up if you had been given a choice but thank god that you weren't this is the opposite searching for a compatible person you're committed to a person whom god is changing and you're committed to sticking it out for the long haul and the bumpy ride and the changes that will be necessary in yourself for you to become the person that god wants you to make and there's something i wanted to read when two christians who fully understand this stand before the minister all decked out in their wedding finery they realize they're not just playing dress up what they're saying is that someday they're going to be standing not before the minister but before the lord and they will turn to each other without spot and blemish and they hope to hear god say well done good and faithful servants over the years you've lifted one another up to me you've sacrificed for one another you've held one another up with prayer and with thanksgiving you confronted each other you rebuked each other you hugged and you loved each other continually and pushed each other towards me and now look at you you're radiant romance sex laughter and fun are the byproducts of this products of sanctification those things are important but they can't keep the marriage going through the years and years of ordinary life what keeps the marriage going is your commitment to your spouse's holiness okay lastly what's your marriage about externally that's all what your marriage might have the mission in internally is your marriage about anything what do the two of you bring to the world as a couple that individually you didn't have that's for you to discover perhaps it's a haven in your home for the lonely and the sorrowing perhaps it's hospitality to the body of christ or mercy to the poor in some difficult area of the city or the world where having a partner would be a really good thing the mission should you decide to accept it is to participate in god's redemption of the world and your marriage is comprised of individual gifts and something more the one flesh union that arises out of your commitment and enhances and the strengths that you would never have known that you had discerning this is really critical and if you're ever going to make any practical decisions about career choices moves child care additional education and it can change its appearance over time i mean there are seasons in your life that different people will be taking different parts of um of the economy of the household and i think i'll leave that illustration out never mind um tim has always been a support to me and i always looked at my job as being the support system for him i recognized a long time ago he had some unusual gifts he's been as supportive of me though otherwise i wouldn't be standing here but on the other hand he wouldn't be standing here while he's sitting he wouldn't be sitting here either because when i first met him tim was the one who is going to have a ministry in central pennsylvania where you started out as a minister with a three church charge riding the circuit in barrysburg grats and pillow where each congregation had 35 members i was the one that wanted to move to the city you know city ministry now motherhood made a coward out of me and you all know how that sort of flopped over and he was the one who wanted to come to new york and i was the one that had to do the big wrestling match with god before i got here but now that we're here it's because we were both supporting one another we both had a vision for what our marriage could be and what god wanted us to do with it so if you're married god brought you with your strengths weaknesses and unique destiny together with your spouse for a reason and helping each other get to the throne of god is one part of that reason but what else figure it out okay now here's we're at the home stretch because we're now going to do three short little sprints short five or six minutes each hear that right uh sprints the three things that you bring to bear in your marriage um on one another that make you into that future glory self kathy just said that the mission of marriage is not just your happiness and fulfillment though of course that'll be the end result it's to turn each other into the great glorious self that god is making the person when kathy and i love to go to uh um parts of britain the pretty parts of britain which tend to be to the west western isles of scotland whales cornwall places like that but it always rains there so sometimes you go to a place and you know there's a mountain out there and you sit and you look but you don't see anything but clouds and you're there for like four days and for three hours on one day suddenly the clouds go away and the sun comes out and there's the mountain it's gorgeous and then of course within three hours it starts raining again um most of us are like that every so often the clouds part and you see people who love you and people who know you especially your spouse sees what you're becoming sees uh the not the parts that eventually hopefully will fall off which is your sins and your flaws and and the distortions but what god's making you suddenly get a breathtaking picture of the of the person's future and and to become uh to get if you're ever going to really have uh truly love your spouse you have to develop comprehensive attraction that is not just attracted to the more superficial things but to that and you say i just want to be there the day that it comes out the sun comes out and the clouds roll away and they never come back now how do you get there truth love grace marriage has got a power to it and it's got the power of truth which is to show you who you really are that's very important for helping you grow secondly it has the power of love which means uh through your spouse your self-image can be reprogrammed and thirdly grace which is through repentance and confession the truth and the love grow together let me let me give you this quick overview and then i'll talk a little about truth kathy will do love and i'll come back and do grace what i mean by that is this uh marriage on the one hand is uh uh it's the most intimate of all relationships and it brings you into a closer connection with another human being than any other relationship can in some ways um parents and children do get to know each other extremely well but you're on different planes and children do grow up and leave and there's a certain sense in which the the parent child relationship though you get to know each other is not that is not as inescapable siblings friendships but there's something about marriage that's inescapable and in marriage you find you see each other's flaws what are those flaws let me give you i'm gonna take 90 seconds but for example you may be a fearful person with a tendency to be anxious you may be a proud person with a tendency to be selfish you may be an inflexible person with a tendency to to be demanding and sulky if you don't get your way you may be an abrasive and harsh person more respected than loved you may be an undisciplined person with a tendency to be unreliable and disorganized you may be an oblivious person tending to be distracted unaware of your surroundings or your impact on people you may be a perfectionistic person who tends to be very judgmental of others and even down on yourself you may be an impatient irritable person tending to hold grudges you may be a cowardly person tends to twist the truth to look good you may be an independent person who just you just don't like responsibility for others you don't like making joint decisions you may uh you may be a person who just wants so badly to be like that you're always shading the truth you can't keep secrets you may be a thrifty person but you tend to be miserly or you use money to manipulate people now in every other relationship some people can see those things in you but those sins don't create enormous problems see if you have a tendency to hold grudges that's bad for friendships but it will kill you in marriage so what what happens is that your sins not only create problems for your spouse but your spouse sees them more clearly than almost anybody else and as a result when you get into marriage it won't be long before you'll be in conflict and what you're going to think especially if you've been affected by our culture is i married the wrong person because if i married a compatible person this wouldn't be happening but as kathy has said and i've been trying to say you can't get two self-centered people which is what sin is into a marriage without this sort of thing happening and it's not really marriage bringing you into conflict with your spouse it's marriage bringing you into conflict with yourself marriage takes you by the scruff of the neck sticks your nose in the mirror and says look it's not pretty is it that's marriage and i want you to know that that's good because every counselor in the whole world will say the one sin the one flaw the the one thing that you can never overcome is the thing you're in denial about it's you know what to be an alcoholic will not destroy you to not admit you're an alcoholic if you're an alcoholic will destroy you it's the same thing of true of everything every single one of the things that i just mentioned and therefore marriage has got the power to show you who you are in a way that nothing else does embrace the power but it's not enough because it will destroy you you just be fighting each other unless you also realize that now that the truth is out now each of you have to love one another as well as speak the truth and kathy's going to talk briefly about that how do you do that how do you use that power very briefly five minutes six top you laugh but it will be it will be brief one of the most practical concepts i ever learned about giving and receiving love is the concept of love languages i hope many of you have heard that term before are familiar with it it's as practical and useful in an office as it is in a home it's as applicable to relationships between parents and child roommates and as it is to a husband and wife you can use love language in any relationship but it's critical that you use it in your marriage love language is that combination of words and actions that communicate love to a person we all have one and they aren't the same the most common and the most stupid and the most destructive thing you can do as a newly married couple is to say well if he loved me he would know he'd know i wanted to go out for my birthday he'd know i didn't want him to watch tv when i had so much on my mind she'd know i needed some downtime with my buddies and there's a corollary to this which is even worse well if i have to tell you what i want then it doesn't mean anything you should know that's a two for one you know you get you get to make them feel guilty for not knowing and also they're not allowed to ask so memorize this okay write it down tattoo it on this planet at least no one is a mind reader despite our fascination with telepathy and esp it just doesn't work that way love does not enable you to know what another person is thinking unless you put in the hard work the study and yes the actual conversations that it takes to find out if a person comes up to me and says in finnish i love you in a very sincere and truthful way i would communicate with me i'm afraid they're pretty much going to have to use the language that i know which is english or maybe they could get away with ich liebe dich and that's about as much german is is left from yeah i know my accent is even worse than my than my vocabulary i first heard about love languages from rc investor sproll rc told this story about his investors miscommunication and bear in mind if you didn't know this they fell in love in fifth grade and they got married when they were in college so they knew each other pretty doggone well for his birthday rc was hoping that vest would give him a pair or a new set of golf clubs he loves to play golf if you know rc about anything about rc you know he loves golf well she's a very practical person and so she was thinking in terms of being helpful and practical and giving him a gift he could really use so she gave him six white shirts he was a speaker he was always needing white shirts she bought him six white shirts she was being very loving but he was disappointed so for her birthday rc wanted to give best is something really special and he bought her a mink coat really frivolous expensive but she's a very practical person and what she was really hoping for was a washing machine true story so they were both disappointed despite investment of a lot of money and time and thoughtfulness and the best of intentions they weren't speaking each other's love language okay on the matter of birthday presents you can survive that but if it's a constant undercurrent in your marriage that you are trying to send love to another person and they don't recognize it and they're trying to send love to you and you don't recognize it it's going to be really deadly in spite of knowing about this teaching about this for years i made a colossal error in our marriage and i will tell you about it and tomorrow by the way there'll be lots of personal stories with sex and gender so you must come back tomorrow um i have always thought the most helpful loving thing i could do for tim was to be his wingman to point out where all the potholes in the road might be my friends are up there nodding their heads yes that's gabby where any plan might have a weakness show him a better way to do pretty much everything choose his clothes how he should eat his food whatever little miss helpful hints i was unaware that all of this was being received by tim as a negative assessment of his ideas abilities competence and even his manhood it's no good my protesting that i only meant it for the best to be helpful to support him and make sure other people respected him honey please don't spotless because this is where you can fall into a vicious cycle of hurt feelings anger and resentment even when you both are actually trying to love each other you offer love in the language you know it's ignored or at least it goes unrecognized by the other person who then feels unloved but you have been loving at least you thought you were so you're hurt that your loving gestures gone unappreciated when it was really unrecognized i mean it was a staple of mid 20th to do some romantic loving tender gesture and he comes home all exhausted from being the good provider and sits in the chair like this you know and says why is she bugging me about this romantic stuff i i'm the provider i'm i'm showing her that i love her they're not connecting because they're not speaking the same love language i've told you i could do this in five minutes i recommend to all of you get your pants out to buy a book by gary chapman c-h-a-p-m-a-n called the five love languages you need to get it and study it and study your spouse and become proficient in his or her love language you can even take a test where you rate what you think are the most important love languages in your spouse and then they look at it and tell you have you missed out very frightening actually and very revealing and someone from the counseling set brent is that part of the prepare and rich thing that they do yes it is it's part of the prepare and rich thing that the redeemer counseling center offers where you test your love languages to see where you might be miscommunicating so at the beginning i said you have to learn to recognize another person's love language and it's something you can benefit from and use um people around you benefit from it even more than you do in any relationship once i learned about love language it became clear to me that my rocky relationship with my mother was due in large part to the fact that we had very different love languages mine was leave me alone i was the oldest of five and i was responsible for keeping a lot of balls in the air from a very early age and all i wanted was some time to read and think and be alone and my mother's love language was include me tell me all your thoughts i need to be important in life learning to give my mom what she needed which is not synonymous with what she wanted made a huge difference in our relationship and similarly i made a terrible error once with another christian woman who'd invited me to an event that she was in charge of i went thinking she wanted me to critique her and give her pointers after all that's my specialty right that's my special gift but she had invited me because she felt i needed someone to care for me rather than me doing ministry all the time so when we got together for lunch afterwards and i presented her with a long list of ways to improve her ministry what do you think happened it wasn't pretty i'm not going to belabor this point get the chapman book study your spouse talk to each other see five minutes that was eight minutes and i i'm just trying to be helpful i'm just trying to be helpful um yeah well i just i just throw the i just throw the time out the window i let me give you a love language illustration even and this does not count on my six minutes it's part of her eight minutes when we had our first child as our background was in kathy's family because kathy's mother actually had a stroke when she was 42.
Evangelism on SermonAudio
A highlight from Session 5 Evangelism
"Another somebody item just asked me coming in said is there any, I forget his wording, but is there any problem if we happen to disagree with some of the material in the books? Absolutely not. I probably disagree with a whole lot of it. That was particularly in connection with leading the church into the 21st century by Dr. Stoll. I think there's good material in there for us to consider whether we agree with everything or not. I think it's excellent material on how there's a difference today. We don't want to let that difference make us think that we have to abandon biblical principles. There's the idea abroad today you cannot do door -to -door work anymore. I'll tell you it's a whole lot harder. It's a lot more difficult. I started a church in Aurora, Colorado in 1952, a new church, the Church of Hoffman Heights Baptist. There were 8 ,000 houses in that community. It was East Aurora. It wasn't even incorporated into the city of Aurora at the time. 8 ,000 new houses and my wife and I were able to work out a deal with a finance company that we got one of those and started a church in the living room of our house. I made it a policy to just knock on doors and I knocked on doors. I tried to hit a minimum of 50 doors a week. I didn't always make that, but I tried to do that. If I knocked on 50 doors, you know what? I would have five new people in church the next Sunday. One out of every ten, I'd get a new person in church. That was in 1952. I've knocked on a lot of doors in Tucson and I don't hit that at all. Door after door after door after door, but we do find some. We've not done a whole lot of door -to -door work. That's really going to get going now in September in a definite way. When we came to Tucson, I used the telephone. Oh, Barna's book says the telephone doesn't work like people think it does. Well, it did for us in Tucson. We used the telephone when we first came. We had nine people in the church besides my wife and me. We used the telephone, got some of the people to call, worked it out. We used it, what's that program you can purchase? Telephones, forms for you. We used that. I didn't use all of their ideas. That's New Evangelical too, but the idea was there and I used it. For week after week after week, we had four new families in our church every Sunday. I'd say that lasted for three months. Week after week after week, we had four new families. Now, we didn't keep many of them. One dose was all they could take. They came the first time and they said, this is not for us and we'll not be back. Some of them wouldn't turn in a visitor's card. Some of them wouldn't go to their door and we made all of our visits by appointment. We'd get those phone calls and we'd make our visits by appointment. When they showed up for church, we made their visits by appointment, my wife and I. There were people who said, no, you don't need to come. When we got there, they told us we were wasting our time coming. But we stayed with it and we did keep some who became the Corps. In fact, we kept some that had stayed with us the whole time. Some decided after a while this is too much for them. But you just stay at it and use every means that's right and proper. I've tried the phones again since then and they aren't working as well now since we're going. Phones for You is built on the idea of a new church getting started. It goes along with the idea of the market -driven church where you find out what the people want, which is absolutely contrary to Scripture. You don't decide what people want, you give them what they need. But it did work. By the way, I mentioned that I started a church in 1952. I have had the privilege of starting 30 churches. Most of them I did not pastor. I'd go into a town for three weeks to a month as an evangelist, rent a building, put up a tent, whatever, and preach the Word of God out of it, get a church started, get a pastor called, and move on. I'd go out in revival meetings and let my love offerings build up until I had enough money to go start a church. Then I'd spend all the money I'd saved on starting a church and be back in revival work. I did that primarily in the West, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, that area, Rocky Mountain region. I did see churches started and still going for the Lord, so praise God. Some of them are not still going, but many of them are. We'd knock on doors, just knock on doors, and get people to come and get a nucleus to work with. You're not going to agree with everything in these books. Yes, sir? When you were knocking on doors for church planting, were you going soul winning or were you doing imitations to your church? The question was, was knocking on doors for church planting, was I doing soul winning or was I just getting them to come to church? When you're starting a new work like that, I made it soul winning. Now when I send our people out today from our church, it will depend on the situation. There are times when we say you knock on the door, you leave them the information, you're not there to win a soul, you're there to find out if there's any prospect possible so we can come back with a soul winning team to win them. There are other times we send them out and say, and we always say this, we ask them to cover a certain number of streets. We give them the street and how many houses are on each side of the street and how many we expect. We tell them that's their assignment for that day and we say we'd like to get this covered, but if you come to a house and it looks as though they're interested, don't go another door. You get inside the house and witness to them and endeavor to win them to Christ. But your main goal out here today is to get us contacts that we can follow up with soul winners in our regular visitation program to win them to Christ. But do use whatever opportunity you have. Do you think the day will ever come when door -to -door visitation will not be effective when other forms may be advisable or necessary or more effective? Well, the day may well come when you won't be able to do door -to -door visitation. It's getting close to that now where the apartment complex is. By the way, the question was, I'm sorry I didn't repeat it. The question was, do I think the day will ever come when we'll find that door -to -door visitation is not effective and we'll need to go other routes. I think we ought to use other routes now, but I do not believe we ought to do what a lot of fellows are saying, and that is abandon door -to -door visitation. I believe we need to stay at it and we're still having people saved. It isn't as easy as it was in 1952, I'll admit that, but I don't believe we ought to give it up.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
A highlight from The Jets in Despair, a Wide-Open AFC East, and the Big UFC-WWE Merger With Sean Fennessey, Ben Solak, and Nick Khan
"Coming up, how is the jet season already over? Plus Nick Khan, next. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. The sports calendar is packed. There's no better place to get on in the action than FanDuel. We have so many sports to bet on, NBA, MLB, NHL, PGA Tour, a little tennis coming up later, safe, secure, easy to use app. FanDuel has exclusive offers, boosts, and more all month long. And when you win, you'll get paid fast. Lots of ways to play. Spread money line over -unders, team totals, player props, so much more. Jump into the action at any time during any game with live betting. Combine multiple bets from the same game and the same game parlay. Try out same game parlay plus as well. Download the FanDuel app today to start making every moment more. You must be 21 plus in select states. Gambling prompt, call 1 -800 -GAMBLER or visit fanDuel .com slash RG in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, or Virginia. 1 -800 -NEXTSTEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 Arizona, 888 -789 -7777 or visit ccpg .org slash CHAT in Connecticut, 809 with it in Indiana, 800 -522 -4700 or visit ksgamblinghelp .com in Kansas, 877 -770 -STOP in Louisiana, 800 -327 -5050 or visit mahalpline .org slash problemgambling in Massachusetts, visit mdgamblinghelp .org in Maryland, 877 -8 -HOPE -NY or text HOPE -NY in New York, 800 -522 -4700 Wyoming or 1800gamber .net in West Virginia. This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Patriots promised me they'd win the Super Bowl. That'd be pretty legendary. When CarMax offers an unrivaled 30 -day money back guarantee up to 1 ,500 miles, well, that's legendary too. CarMax never wants you to settle on a car. They want you to love your next car. That's why every car from CarMax has upfront pricing and an unbeatable love it or return it. 30 -day money back guarantee up to 1 ,500 miles. Shop at Nationwide Inventory on your terms. That's car buying reimagined. Start shopping now to find a car you'll love at carmax .com. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. It is an all -time one for us. We did Black Cat, Me and Chris Ryan, Michael Mann movie. We were running out of Michael Mann movies. We don't care. We love this movie. We're probably in the minority. I also went on the big picture with Sean Fennesey. They did a Denzel Washington movie draft and I was on there with Sean and Amanda Dobbins and Chris Ryan and Van Lathan. That was really fun. I got over competitive. I'm sorry. I apologize to everybody in the room. Coming up on this podcast, well, the Jets, that happened. We're gonna talk about what happens now at the AFC East with Benjamin Solak. We're gonna bring in our guy, Sean Fennesey, diehard Jets fan to walk through his emotions the last 12 hours. And then last but not least, Nick Khan, who was running WWE, but today they merged with UFC. And we're gonna talk about that merger, what it means, what it means for the business, what's Vince McMahon's role in the whole thing. And then we're gonna talk a lot of sports media stuff as well. ESPN versus Charter, what the NBA rights are gonna be. So this is an action -packed podcast. Dare I say it's a TKO for you, the listener. Let's bring in Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this on Tuesday morning, we got the words that Aaron Rodgers, out for the year, torn Achilles, Sean Fennesey, who I've worked with for 11 plus years at this point, diehard Jets Mets fan, Knicks, been a rough ride, rocky road. After Rodgers went down five minutes into the game, you just tweeted goodbye and it didn't respond to texts. We didn't know. I was saying it was like, Marcuson's gone. There is no Marcuson. It's like, Sean's gone. There is no Sean. How are we feeling today? Thanks for having me on the show, Bill. Really kind of you to have me on. I feel justified in all of my melodramatic curse talk. I'm sure I feel similar to how you felt in 2002, 2003, you know, with the socks and feeling anxiety. I feel bad. I feel even worse, actually, because they won for a variety of reasons. But we got a chance to see, like, this is a really cool, fun, exciting team. And they, I don't know if they were Super Bowl bound, but it's easy to imagine a world in which they could have been Super Bowl bound. So yeah, I feel I feel very bad. Very bad. Well, I think the revelation from last night was that Breese looked like 95 percent of where he was last year, which I was not expecting. He was a weird fantasy football guy. It was people like, when's he going to be 100 percent, is it going to happen? So the fact that he looked like that almost made the Rogers thing worse as the game was going on, if it was even possible to feel worse about it, because it's like, oh, this guy is like a guy again. Yeah, even at the very beginning of the game, it's stupid to nitpick the first four play calls. But I was like, wow, they're really throwing a lot coming out of this game. I thought the whole point of this season was to actually use the running game to power Rogers. Obviously, the injury is a freak injury. Nothing could have prevented it. He's an older player. That O -line is obviously problematic, but it was painful actually watching Breese play so well because that could have been really the focal point of the offense. And then Aaron Rodgers just needed to be competent and then this would have been a really competitive team. So it's like I'm legitimately depressed about it. On the other hand, I tell you what I really don't like about it.
The Aloönæ Show
A highlight from S13 E07: Sardor's Journey and Jafton.com Excellence
"Hello, welcome to The Loney Show. I'm your host, John Mayolone. In this episode, don't have regulars because reasons as always, sadly. As for our guest, he's from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, currently in Miami, Florida. He's a serial tech entrepreneur and a public speaker, currently holding a position as a CRO and managing partner at Jaffton .com. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Sodor Akhmedov. Hey Peter, thanks for having me on. Anytime. So, how's life? It's great, yeah. Super, super good. Very grateful to be where I'm at right now with everything both professional and personal life, so can't be happier. Alright, fabulous. And have you been up too much recently? Up too much? Yeah, I mean, meaning like what I'm up to these days? Yes, what are you doing right now? What am I doing right now? Yeah, a lot of things. So mainly work -wise, busy with currently scaling our sales, hiring more people for our agency and making sure that every lead that we get is being serviced properly. That's my main thing right now outside of that, running a weekly AI event, networking, helping others find a community, building a community, all the AI enthusiasts and professionals here in South Florida. And yeah, that's mainly what I'm doing right now. Alright, fabulous. And what was life like growing up? What was life like growing up? So I grew up in Uzbekistan. I came here to the US when I was 16, nine years ago, and I've been a student here in a couple of years and then I dropped out. I went into work here, but I grew up in Uzbekistan and it was a good life. I mean, I've been fortunate to have great parents that gave me good education, gave me a set up for life type of thing. And yeah, it was a good childhood. Well, that's nice. And in terms of your journey, what inspired you to take the path that you're currently on right now? So yeah, to me, I'm in business, I'm in technology, both of these things. I think, first of all, the entrepreneurship, the business route, to me, that was more inspired by my father who is also in business. He's a businessman himself and I think his journey inspired me to do the same because I always wanted to be like my dad. I really wanted his attention and I looked up at him and I think I chose entrepreneurship as my path because for as long as I remember myself, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And as far as technology, I think it was more of a thing that when I was growing up, it was the time of the rise of personal computers and internet in our country. So it was a very limited throughout access the country to internet and technology. So I really liked spending time on a computer playing video games, but I had a very limited access because my parents never got me a computer thinking it's not good for your health. So I think that kind of kicked me and pushed me to be passionate about technology. So those are the two, I think, reasons that inspired me to find my passion and stick to it unconsciously at that time. And now I think it's actually been a gift to me. Fantastic. And have you ever thought about going back to Uzbekistan and do business there at some point? In a way, yes. I mean, not necessarily doing business there. I mean, currently my business is also involved with Uzbekistan in a way that our current employees and developers are mainly in Uzbekistan. So even though we don't sell to Uzbekistan, we source talent from there. So definitely, I would say, legally also, we have a company there registered. So yeah, I definitely have like a business there, but it's not necessarily selling to Uzbekistan, but it's more like exporting Uzbekistan's talent. Oh, okay. I can see that. So if you could live like anywhere in the world, where would it be? At the current moment, it'd probably be the same place where I'm at right now. If we're not talking any fiction, if we're talking fictional places included, then I'd probably say New York City, but with a combination of Miami weather. Alright then. If you were to start another business, what kind of business would that be? It'd probably be, at first, also an agency, similar to the business I have right now, but maybe more specialized in a different type of development. Or it would probably be like a marketing agency. That's second option. But honestly, it's hard for me to imagine like what I would start right now, because I'm so deeply ingrained within this current business. There are certain areas that I'm passionate about that I would want to go long term in, which is like the part, consumer social like building my own social media app. But that's more longer term down the road. But yeah, if we're talking again, ideally, that'd probably be like the end goal is to build my own social media app. Oh, that's pretty cool. Where do you see yourself 20 years from now? 20 years from now, I actually do see myself, yep, have successfully built a social media application that is globally renowned and big, bigger than Facebook and Instagram and all these. That's where I see myself career wise, family wise, I see, you know, having kids and having a pretty big family, and being able to spend as much time as I want with my family, probably be on a personal level, goal wise, and being able to start more of social projects, in terms of live social projects, you know, bringing people together creating communities, I love doing that. So doing what I'm kind of doing now, but more on a bigger scale of like, you know, hundreds of millions, if not billions of people impacted by that. Ah, very good. If, if you could ask one question, and you want to know the unfiltered truth to it, what question would you ask? From anyone? Yes, from anyone. unfiltered truth to any question. Interesting. I probably want to know who runs the world. Hmm, I would want to know that question, too. Yeah, it's definitely an intriguing one. Yes, it sure is. What should they teach in high school, but they don't? Many things, including personal finances, how to do proper budgeting, and how to understand certain financial structures, and things like that. I wish they taught that at school, doing your taxes properly and everything. And that would probably be the biggest thing. And then I would say also maybe starting an actual business, not like working for a business, necessarily, but actually starting as an entrepreneur, starting your own business, and understanding capitalism properly, through that. Okay, so those things, I would say, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. What has taken you the longest to get good or decent at? Can you repeat that question? What has taken you the longest to get good or decent at? Hmm, the longest to get good and decent at? Hmm, that's a good question. Probably being disciplined. You know, it was a hard take for me. When I moved to the US, it was like difficult to stay disciplined and living on my own. So that's probably been a long shot for me. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Discipline is always the key. Yep. If you could, sorry, go on. No, she said, yep, I agree with that. Okay, yeah, indeed. If you could see one movie again, for the first time, what movie would that be? If I could see one movie again, what movie that would be? It's only one that would probably be Mr. Nobody. All right, then. If you had a song every time you entered the room, what song would that be? Probably All The Way Up. Nothing Can Stop Me. I'm All The Way Up. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, sweet. What improved your life quality so much you wish you did it sooner? Very question. Give me a second to really think of this one. Probably. Yeah, moving to Miami. Actually, I wish I did that sooner. Not too soon, because living in New York also helped me. But living in Miami has been one of the top choices that I made that has been definitely a really good improvement. Yeah, it's great to live in warm climates. 100%. Yeah. Oh, yes. If someone wrote a book about you, what do you think its title would be? I'd want it to be titled with my name, which literally means leader. So I want to stand for leadership and title would be something along the lines of leadership. And how, you know, to actually be a good leader. Fabulous. What's your favorite season? Summer. Oh, yes. It all makes sense. You're in Miami. You love it there. Exactly. Why wouldn't it be summer? Yeah, that's why I moved here. Yeah, I definitely understand that. Yeah. What's the best way to start the morning? Doing your workout in the morning. It's something that I barely do myself, to be honest. But I think it's like, by far, usually the most amount of energy in the morning. Oh, yes. It's always good to stay fit. Yeah. Every day, any day. 100%. Yeah. If you could get an exotic pet, what kind of companion would you like to have? Exotic pet. Yeah, I'm not too much into pets, but if I were to get an exotic one, especially, it'd probably be maybe a lizard. Plenty of those here, but it'd be interesting to have one. The tab that actually, I don't know if that's called a lizard, but the tab that actually changes colors depending on the environment. Ah, okay. That'd be pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. I was always fascinated as a kid by those when I saw them on TV. All right, then. If you could get rid of one holiday, which one would you get rid of? I'd probably get rid of, in my culture, we celebrate, we call it properly now, the May 9th as like the Memorial Day. But in a lot of Russian -speaking countries and Russia itself, they call it the Victory Day, which they mean that the Second World War, victory of Soviet Union. Which I actually disagree with because it is almost like celebrating war. So I'd probably get rid of that one. Oh, yes. Yeah, that's understandable. Yeah. And I would rename it to Memorial Day everywhere because it's good to memorialize the people who have gone through the war, but not necessarily celebrate. There's no winners in the war. That's what I think. Only losers. Exactly. Yeah. What is one app that you hate so much, but you still use it anyway? Plenty. Probably the top ones would be something that has to do with the government services. That really sucks, but we have to use it. So utilities app, any government utility apps are pretty bad. They're outdated and I wish they were remade. I would probably, you know, I have to use it because I have to pay my bills, but they completely are not good. Yep, absolutely. You've got to get somewhere in life. What's your favorite quote? Oh, there's many. If I were to name one, it would probably be around systems that you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. So that's a quote by James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits. And it's a fascinating quote because it makes you realize that, you know, you may have big goals all day, but if you don't have proper systems in place, that ain't going to happen and you're not going to achieve anything. Ah, very inspiring. Thank you. You're welcome. If life is a game, like some people say, what are some of the rules? What are some of the rules? I think all the rules are pretty much, I mean, they're all made up by us, by humans. But obviously there are some common sense things that I think everybody has to follow, such as being respectful. I think that is a rule to play long term in this life and being respectful to others. And thinking of them when doing certain actions, anything you do toward, that involves other parties, to consider their feelings, to consider their interests. I think that has to be a rule and it will always be a rule in life. But if it were truly a game, the rules, I mean, that's the beauty of life, unlike a game, right? I mean, every part of life you go to, you get to experience different rules. I think for me, for my game though, the rule number one would be actually that you can create your own rules. And you can have your own quote unquote game that you can create in this world and have your people play by those rules. Like we create companies, you know, we create cities, countries, regimes. So that would be my number one rule for this game that I learned, I think, is that you get to create your own rules. Nice. Would you rather not be able to open closed doors or not be able to close open doors? I would rather not be able to open closed doors or close opened doors. I hate open doors. I mean, when they're left open when I'm inside, at the same time, if I'm not able to open closed doors, that's also problematic. So that would probably be worse. So I would actually choose rather being able to open closed doors and not being able to close opened doors. And so that would make me very thoughtful of what I choose and what doors I open. Ah, all right, then. Brilliant. You're welcome. What is your usual from your favorite fast food place or a place where you eat normally? Yeah, I don't really prefer fast food, but if I were to name my go to place for something that I want a quick bite of. I'll name two because I live in two countries almost. So in Uzbekistan, I would do plov, which is the traditional Uzbek food. And in the US, I would probably, in Miami, I would choose kausa, which is this Cuban dish with potato. Ah, sweet. What's your favorite kind of dessert? Oh, probably ice cream. And to be more specific, rocky road ice cream. Oh, nice. That's pretty cool. You're welcome. What fictional item do you wish you owned in real life? Harry magic Potter's wand. Probably would be one or actually, no, no, I take that back. I would want to own Iron Man's flying suit. Okay, that's pretty cool. Decent. Thanks. You're welcome. What has been the longest trip you have taken? Longest trip I've taken? Probably the trips I make quite often actually. I don't think I've done anything longer than that yet. Is when I go from or to Uzbekistan from the US. I mean, it's very long flights of like total travel time of over 30 hours. Wow. That is madness. Yes. That's very long. That's like over the double the time duration it takes for me from where I am from to visit my family in Brazil. That's like... Yeah. But it's with the stops, I'm saying. You'd be stopping and you'd be flying for like 12 hours, stay in Turkey, and then after a day fly again for another six hours to Uzbekistan from there. Total flight time is 18, but I'm saying like if you stay in Turkey for like 12 hours, which I usually do... Oh, layovers. Yeah, that's why I'm counting too. So yeah, 30 hours of flight would be madness. Yes, I would not stand up for something like that. That is crazy. That's like a whole day. Yeah, you could probably make a whole round trip around the globe in that time. Yeah. If you had to bury a treasure chest, where would you hide it? On the second page of Google. I love it. That's a good answer. No one would know who goes that far in Google. So that's a good place. If you see a puddle on the ground, do you walk around it, over it, or through it? Is it a puddle? Yes, a puddle on the ground. Puddle on the ground. Is that like you're saying like a hole? Not a native speaker, sorry. That's alright. I'm talking about like, you know when it's raining and there's like, there's a bunch of wet puddles that like minute, very small ponds. Oh, I see. Yeah, those kind of puddles. Okay, okay. Puddles. Now walk over it, through it, or what's the third option? So around it, over it, or through it. I jump would over it. Okay, that's cool. Yeah. What is something popular now, but in five years, everyone will look back on it and be embarrassed they even liked it in the first place? 99 % of AI tools that are popping up, maybe. No, I'm kidding, but probably, hmm, I hope smartphones, because there's going to be better alternatives with the glasses and augmented reality. Oh yeah, of course. Technology is a good thing, but it does have its downsides and concerns. Yeah. What app can you not believe someone hasn't made yet? Oh, there's many have a ton of ideas for those, but if I were to name the latest I've been thinking of, that would be a marketplace app where you can hire offshore professionals on demand. And on a monthly basis, so I think there's a huge opportunity in offshore arbitrage that is still not being utilized. Many people that live in the first world countries like US, Canada, UK, Australia, they have very expensive labor and a lot of people are either overpaying or they're not able to afford a virtual assistant. And somewhere in Uzbekistan or Philippines, you can hire a virtual assistant for $400 a month and get a really good quality virtual assistant. So on demand, any kind of offshore work outsourcing app. Quality? That would benefit so many people in many ways in one. Yeah. We create opportunities for people that want to work online and for those who want to hire people online, but pay less than they would pay in their own country. That makes a lot of sense. If your mind was an island, what would it look like? It would probably be a very unique island of a lot of trees, dragons, water, sand, a lot of parties, a lot of science labs on that island too. And a mix of a ton of different things that you wouldn't be able to put in one island. Okay, cool. If you could travel back in time, what decade would you want to live in? I think we live in the best decade now and I'm very happy with how we ended. So if anything, I'd want to travel more further in time. But if I had to go back, you said decade, right? Not a century. I would probably want to see the time when the Scientific Revolution started, that decade of the 16th century around that time. So anywhere in the 16th century when the Scientific Revolution was at its peak. Okay, I could agree to that. Would you consider yourself to be an extrovert or an introvert? Extrovert. Sweet. Would you rather be able to breathe underwater or have the agility of a cat? I'll breathe underwater by all means. Okay, yes, I would choose that too. Yeah, so much more to explore. 70 % of the earth is water. Yeah, there's so much you can explore, especially the Mariana Trench. Yep, exactly. Yeah, sweet. What is something you can never seem to finish? Something I never seem to finish? I would probably say, up until recently maybe, setting up my new office, but I'm almost done with that, so I'm proud of that. Ah, alright then. Would you rather be transported 500 years into the future or 500 years into the past? I thought I was in the future for sure. Me too. The technologies that could have been invented by that time. Exactly, yeah. Oh, we would benefit so much from that. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And that is all we have for this episode. It was great having you on, Sodor. Talking about your journey, where you're from, Uzbekistan to Miami, you worked as a serial tech entrepreneur and a lot of other things. It's been fabulous. Thank you so much for having me on, Peter, and I really enjoyed it. It's definitely not a conventional podcast that I've been on before, so this was a very interesting experience for me. Thank you for having me on. You're welcome. And until next time, stay tuned for more.
Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
A highlight from Marriage as Commitment and Priority
"Welcome to Gospel in Life. When it comes to marriage, we often use words like soulmate or the one. These words can reveal an underlying belief that to have a good marriage, you just have to find the perfect person. But the biblical vision for marriage is starkly different. It's a way for two imperfect people to help each other become who God intended them to be. Listen as Tim Keller explores the meaning of marriage. The title of the sermon tonight is Marriage 3. I figured this is the summertime. At the end of the summer, you see a lot of sequels. There's Child's Play 3, there's Terminator 2, there's Rocky 85, and there's Marriage 3. I figured you'd be in the swing of it. Please turn with me to Ephesians 5. Those of you who have come to the evening service know that this is part of a series that we started 18 years ago or so on the book of Ephesians. And we're moving through the book of Ephesians at the pace of a geriatric slug pretty much. It's very, very, very slowly through the book of Ephesians. And we've come to maybe the classic text, the longest, the most famous text in the entire Bible on the subject of marriage. So let me read to you again from Ephesians 5 verses 21 to 32, and then we will take it from there. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Why submit to your husbands as to the Lord? For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so wives should submit to their husbands in all things. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body. And for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you must also love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. This is God's Word. There's a lot of stuff to say about this passage, but here's how we've been dividing it. Let me remind you of where we've been. Let me give you a quick recap of the headings. We're looking at marriage in this passage under five headings. We're looking at the power of marriage, the definition of marriage. You know what? It's six, isn't it? The power of marriage, the definition of marriage, the priority of marriage and the purpose of marriage, the structure of marriage and the mystery of marriage. We mentioned that last week. I won't tell you what all those are, but that's what we're doing. We're moving it through it. So far, we've only looked at the first two, and tonight I want to get to the third. And the first two are the power of marriage and the definition of marriage. Quick recap. Remember what the power of marriage was? The power of marriage is in verse 21. 21 is actually a bridge. For those of you who are here in May and June, when we were looking at the verses of chapter 5, verses 18 and following, or what it meant to be filled with the Spirit, verse 21 is a direct link from the passage being filled with the Spirit to the passage on what it means to be married. What is a good marriage? There's a link. The one assumes the other. You know what the link is? The link is cause and effect. The cause of a good marriage is being Spirit -filled. So verse 21, which is the end of the passage that we looked at, verse 21 is talking about the fact that when you're filled with the Spirit, there's a Spirit -created unselfishness, a willingness to submit to other people, a willingness to serve other people, not to be defensive, to have a servant heart. And that is the basis for any kind of healthy marriage. Now, we talked about that, but let me just, let me make a couple observations to make sure those of you who weren't here know where we're going, where we've been, and those who were here have it clearly in mind. There is a spirit of servanthood. There's a servant heart, which is the foundation for any kind of decent marriage. That's why verse 21 comes before everything else. Well, some people have asked me, what do you mean? What is the servant heart? What is that? It's kind of vague. All right, let me give you at least three critical aspects without which a marriage will not run. These three things, which are really just constituent parts of a servant heart, are like the oil in a car engine. Try to run an engine without oil. Just try it. Don't put any oil in there. No lubrication. What basically happens, of course, is that the friction, the tension will destroy the engine so quickly. It'll get so hot, it'll overheat so quickly. There's got to be something in there that in a sense acts as a buffer, because obviously friction is what an engine is all about, motion and movement. Something has got to absorb that. What absorbs it? What absorbs it is the servant heart. And let me give you three constituent parts to it. The ability to hear criticism without being crushed. That's a lack of self -defensiveness, see. Secondly, the ability to give criticism without being, without crushing, without crushing. Thirdly, the ability to forgive people without residual anger. In other words, to forgive people and really let it go. That's what I mean by a servant heart. The ability to take your mind off yourself when you're giving criticism, when you're receiving criticism, when you're forgiving. Where does that come from? As we said last week, well, we can't go back into all the spirit -filledness, but what it means to be spirit -filled means that the Spirit of God is illuminating your heart and making very real to you the work of Jesus Christ. And if you remember that from June and May, when Jesus' work for you becomes very real. The example that always comes to my mind is when I talked to that 16 -year -old girl years ago in my church and she didn't have any dates. Nobody was asking her out. And she says, yeah, I'm a Christian. I know I'm going to live forever in heaven. I know Jesus loves me and cares for me. I know he died for me. I know he gave himself for me. I know he lives in me. I know that I'm his child. I know that I have his ear. I know that he comforts me and will take care of me, but what good is all that if you don't have any dates? Now, she wasn't quite that eloquent, but you see, at that moment she was saying intellectually, yeah, I know what Jesus has done for me, but right now my heart is overwhelmed with the beauty of, with the beauty of the prospect of being a desirable woman. That's what she was saying. Whereas when I think about the fact that Jesus loves me, cares for me, that doesn't thrill me. Being spirit -filled means you're in touch with reality. Reality is who cares what a drippy 16 -year -old boy thinks about you when the king of the universe says, you are mine and I will stand with you and for you for all eternity. What kind of absolutely insane person could possibly put those two things up against one another and have the pimply faced 16 -year -old win? And yet, I mean, there's nobody in this room that hasn't been through that. What does it mean to be spirit -filled? It means that your head is on straight, you're thinking, you're in touch with reality and you realize what Jesus Christ has done for me is everything. The Bible says that there's actually two, that every human being is religious. It says this in Romans 1, that there's actually a system, there's a systemic structure, there's a systemic religious structure to everybody's life. Every one of us down deep inside has a way in which we think that if we behave, things that if we get to them, then we'll be fulfilled, then we'll have nirvana, then we'll be saved. Every one of us says that I will be able to accept myself if I get this. We've talked about this before. Every human being, Romans 1 says, has got something, some form of religion, something they worship, something they say if I get that, then I'll be all right. The gospel says not your performance, not success, not relationship, not love, none of those things will ever satisfy you. You can know who you are, you can be secure when you realize that Jesus Christ has died for you and you're resting in what he's done for you. When that happens, and when you see the work of Jesus Christ for you, when you're spirit -filled, that gives you the ability to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. You see, when it says in verse 21, out of reverence for Christ, literally out of the fear of Christ, you can submit, you get this unselfishness because Christ is so real to you, you're continually in awe before the reality of him. So how can you receive criticism without being crushed in your marriage or anywhere? The way is because in your heart you're thinking this, well, Jesus is my priest, Jesus is my friend, Jesus is my king, Jesus is my brother, I can handle this. He loves me, he cares for me, he'll show me. And so you can take criticism without being destroyed. You've got a cradle of security for your moment of great vulnerability. Or how can you give criticism without crushing? Well, you think like this, you say, I was a sinner, I am a sinner, I should be cast off. So you're using the gospel on yourself. You say, I should be cast off, but Jesus, gentle, gentle Jesus has put up with me for so long and he continually shows me the truth and I continually turn my back on him, but bit by bit he's coaxed me and he's been patient with me and he's brought me along. How then could I be any harsher with this person than he has been with me? Now, somebody's out there saying, sure, sure. Yet your wife yells at you and you're sitting there thinking about Jesus Christ as your brother and your friend and your cradle of security is one of the greatest of vulnerability. Well, look, in the beginning, when you're trying to reorient your life, when you're seeking to live your life and have your relationships, living it out of the matrix of servanthood, out of the matrix of the gospel, you do have to talk to yourself like that. But I want you to realize that this is not a mindset that you can turn on this week right away. You better get started now because it takes time. I tried to refer to this in the sermon earlier, one of the earlier services. It goes like this, most of you realize, I guess, when I'm prepared, I quote from all sorts of people. When I'm prepared, I quote. Why? Because C .S. Lewis is somebody that I've read, I've read everything that he's ever written, over and over and over and over again, ever since I became a Christian. Now, some of you are like that. There's a couple of books that you just, you master an author. You know what it's like to do that. Another guy is George Whitfield, that I've just read his sermons and read his sermons and read his sermons. Now, what happens after a period of time is that you not only get to master the person's works, but you actually begin to understand how that guy's mind works. You know what he thinks, even though you've never read anything he said about the subject, you know what he would say, right? I mean, you meet a character and you say, I know what he would say about that. I know what George Whitfield would say about that in a sermon. Why? Because I've read thousands of his sermons, not thousands, but I've read his sermons thousands of times. What happens is you can get an author that really speaks to you and you just read the stuff and you read the stuff and after a while you've gone beyond just the words of the book or the sermons and you've come to penetrate to the way the guy's mind works. That's what happened in my case with a couple of these authors. And that's the reason why when I'm just speaking extemporaneously, when I'm just speaking out of my heart, he comes out. Why? He's in there. Now, that's an image. Most of you know how that works. A lot of you may have people like that in your life, authors, people that have just sunk down so deep that you know how they think, you know how to look at life through them and their ideas and thoughts are in there so deep they just come out spontaneously. Do you realize what would happen to you and what would happen to me if we started to relate to Jesus like that? If we were so saturated in his promises to us and his summonses to us and his encouragements to us and what he says about us in his word. If that had sunk down as deep as what I'm talking about to the place where not just the words but the very way his mind works and the very way he thinks about you becomes intrinsic, inherent, spontaneous, reflexive, instinctive to you. That's when you develop the servant heart. When somebody gives you criticism, of course you're not consciously thinking, Jesus is my brother, Jesus is my friend, he loves me. His opinion matters more than anything else. I don't have to be scared to receive this kind of criticism. This is not the end of my life. This isn't the end of the world. I know who I am in Christ. You don't think that consciously and yet you're thinking that because what it's doing is it's giving its cast to everything you do, everything. There's a stability I keep talking about. There's a poise there, a deep kind of cosmic spiritual poise, a sense like I don't have to be afraid of anything anymore emotionally. It's sunk down in there. It's part of you. You're thinking like he thinks. You look at yourself through his eyes. You look at the world through his eyes. It's only when you've taken the time through prayer, through Bible study, through coming to worship, through reflection, through meditation, through fellowship of other Christians and continually talking about these things together. As time goes on, it sinks and it sinks and it sinks until the gospel dwells in you richly and eventually, eventually that will become the power in all your relationships and the power for marriage. The ability to submit to one another, to really forgive, to give criticism without crushing, to take criticism without being crushed. Only possible if you believe in Jesus. But I don't just mean believe in Jesus, but that you're thinking about him and you're thinking through him and you're thinking of him continually, almost unconsciously. Otherwise, otherwise, otherwise, your heart, my heart is so hard and we are so prone to disbelieve anything Jesus says. Even though intellectually you do, you reject it at a deeper level. Then I'm afraid 16 year old pimply faced kids are continually beating Jesus out in our hearts. You understand what I mean. The power of marriage is an unselfishness which is created by the spirit. Secondly, we talked about the definition of marriage. The definition of marriage, and you know, since I spoke on that last week, I can give you a little concise thing. The essence of marriage is a covenant, a legal, legal commitment. Somebody afterwards said to me, but that still doesn't tell me, what is a legal, what makes a marriage a marriage? Is it a minister? Now, there's a difference of opinion on, between Catholics and Protestants on this and I'm absolutely, absolutely believing, believe that the Protestant approach is right. Catholic Church will say, only a priest can marry somebody. Isn't that right? Protestants will say, a priest can marry, a minister can marry, justice of the peace, marriage is marriage. It doesn't matter whether it's a captain on a ship, it doesn't matter whether it's a justice of the peace, marriage is marriage. Why? Because look in the Bible where marriage comes up. Marriage pops up. Originally it was given to Adam and Eve. It wasn't given to only Christians, it was given to human beings as human beings. And therefore, it's not a church ceremony that makes you married, though it can. It's not jumping over a broom that makes you married. It's not stamping on a glass that makes you married. It's not the rings that make you married. What is it that makes you married? What makes you married is this, a permanent and exclusive public legal commitment to share your lives together, all aspects of it. It's got to be permanent and it's got to be exclusive. Some people say, it's time to have renewable contract marriages. You get married for three years and you have an option for three more. You've heard that. Now, that might be interesting, but that's not a marriage. By the Christian definition, even a prenuptial agreement, to be honest with you, radically cuts at the root of the Christian definition of marriage. The Christian definition of marriage is a permanent and exclusive promise to share every part of your life with somebody else. It's got to be a public legal commitment, a permanent exclusive public legal commitment to share your life with somebody else, every part of your life. If you say, no, it's not permanent, it's for three years, that's not marriage. If you say, it's not every part of your life, just here and here and here, because prenuptial agreement, you don't get this or that. All those things get at the root of marriage. The Christian definition of marriage is permanent, it's exclusive, it's a legal public binding, permanent exclusive commitment to share every part of your life with somebody else. Now, how you do that, whether it's with a minister, whether it's with a captain, a justice of the peace, whether you jump over a broomstick, whether you exchange rings, it makes no difference. Therefore, even in this culture, which is deathly afraid of obligation and commitment and responsibility and discipline, it all likes to talk about self -realization and self -actualization and growth and potential, but it hates to talk about discipline and submission and obligation. Therefore, this is the place at which the Christian understanding of marriage has a head -on collision with the society. You should not give yourself to somebody unless you've got that kind of promise and unless you're willing to give them that kind of promise. See, if you're not willing to make a permanent and exclusive public legal commitment to share your entire life with somebody, then you don't really love them enough to really be married. And the Bible says you should not give yourself to that person until that person is willing to make that promise to you and you are willing to make that promise to that person. That's why I must tell you that a number of people question me about it because, see, the implications of what we said last week, the implications of this idea that marriage is a cleaving, that's in verse 32, it's that public commitment, and that essentially love is a commitment therefore. Well, somebody says, you've de -romanticized marriage in my eyes. So what does that mean? Well, what did I say last week? I said that therefore the essence of love is a commitment. Love is an action first. It's a commitment to invest yourself in another person and meet their needs. And it's a feeling second. One of the weird things about becoming a pastor is that when you become a pastor, for the first time in your life, you are bound and obligated to be friends with all sorts of people that you really wouldn't choose to be friends with. I don't know of anybody else who's obligated, you know, doctors, for example, have to treat people they wouldn't ordinarily like, but they don't have to like them. They don't have to be friends with them. I don't know of anybody else who basically suddenly gets a body of people and the job description is you have to be friends with a lot of people that you would not ordinarily choose to be friends with. Therefore, in a sense, pastors have a kind of unique experience to talk about. You would be surprised at how you don't spend time with. You don't invest yourself in them. You don't give yourself to them. You don't listen to their problems. You don't go to see them at 3 a .m. in the morning. Now, one of the things that I found interesting in my earliest days, you know, Kathy and I moved into a new situation. I got a job as a pastor. I had basically 100 to 150 people and I started to pastor them. And there's a good number of them or people that if I was just living as a private individual in that town, I would have chosen as friends. And there were a lot of people that would never have chosen as friends. Not so much I didn't like them because you don't have that much in common. You're not quite the same. You don't have the same interests. You don't have, there's no spark, you know. It doesn't matter if there's no spark. This person is a member of your church. You're the pastor in a small town. This person's got a problem, you're there. This person's in the hospital, you're there. This person's got to talk to you at 2 a .m. in the morning, you're there. This person's son runs away, you get in the car and go chase him. This man's this man wife has run out on him, you get in the car and go find her. And that's the way it is to be a pastor, especially in a small town, in a small church. You invest yourself. You give. You do the actions of love for people that you really have no particular affinity with. And then after a couple of years, a big surprise comes to Kathy. You know, our day off, which I took every couple of months, I take a day off. And on a day off she would say, what do you want to do? What do you just want to do socially? What do you just want to do for fun? And I would say, well, let's have, let's have John and Mary Doe over. And she would say, why? Why in the world would you want to have John and Mary Doe over? I mean, that's work, isn't it? The reason you see John and Mary Doe, I mean, everybody knows all the problems they have and how obnoxious they are and the difficulties they have and why when you don't have to be with John and Mary Doe, why in the world would you choose to be with John and Mary Doe? And I realized I'd come to like them. I was the only person in town that liked them. But I really did like them. Why? Is it just because, oh, obviously as a pastor, of course, you just have this natural ability to like people and love people because you're more holy, you're more godly. That's why you're a pastor. It's your job to be more spiritual. That's not true at all. It really happened. You know why? Because I'd been loving them, even when I didn't like them. And you see, you don't have to bother, whether you like somebody, that's not what a Christian worries about. What a Christian does, if you love people, eventually you come to like them. It works in reverse, too. Remember I told you the one thing I once read where it said at first the Nazis killed the Jews because they hated them, but then after a while they hated the Jews because they killed them. It works the other way around, you see. What happens is, in the beginning, you love somebody just because you have to. The more you love them, the more you love them. The more you give yourself, the more you make a decision to invest in them, the more you find your heart tied up to them. You know why? Because the Bible says where your treasure is, there will your heart be. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be. When you invest in somebody, you're putting your treasure, you're putting time, which is tremendously valuable. You're putting emotion, which is tremendously valuable. You invest and you invest in that person, and of course, you may still feel a hostility if that person absolutely tramples you and is very cruel and harsh. That's not usually what happens. Usually you find that people that aren't terribly lovely, if you love them, you will come to love them. Now, I'm using the word love in an equivocal way. The way the modern society thinks of love, you're thinking of a feeling, but that's not the way the Bible ever uses the word love. You love them and you come to like them. You invest in them and you find that they get more and more lovely to you. I'm trying to tell you this. You don't go ahead and get married to somebody who you don't like, but I can guarantee you this. Whoever you marry, you will fall out of like with. It is an absolute necessity. Not only that, you will start to fall out of like with that person in most cases before you marry them, in the courtship or in the engagement, and that's where most people say, I guess I shouldn't marry this person. I've fallen out of like with them. Well, friends, your emotions come and go, and if the essence of marriage is a covenant, a commitment, then you will find that in spite of the fact that you kind of love this person, you feel a lot for them, you might be attracted to them, you're great friends, the fact is your emotions will come and go, and at a certain point, a marriage will not work, or even a potential marriage will not work unless you make a decision to invest in that person, and when you find that your heart gets dry and you look at the person and you don't feel any particular like, you invest in them, you give to them, you love them, you are tender, you are cherishing, you listen, you serve, and what it does is it gets you through those dry times. Not only that, it begins over the years to eliminate the dry times. That's not the way most of us do it. When the dry times, when we fall out of like, when that happens, we start to say, I guess this isn't the one for me.
Psychic Christine Wallace Healing House
You Have the Power to Change the Dialogue
"Am NOT a person that wakes up every single day with my head held high I am NOT a person that wakes up super motivated energetic and this is going to be a rock star day every single day 365 24 7 it's not possible I agree with that there's gonna be some ups and downs absolutely but what you're saying about the part you know the negative intrusive thoughts and the speaking negatively about your life and your circumstances magnetizes only more of that and I think there are some Bible scriptures that speak to that as well where you know your words have power they do on an energy level and so do your thoughts everything is energy and I say that a lot to people as well that you know you've got you you have the power to change the dialogue you do even if you have to just and grateful is plays a big role in that when you start counting your blessings people will find it much easier to think about and speak about the good stuff yes very true and thank you and that kind of leads us into a part that I wanted to transition into for this the second half of our conversation here is it's sure I talked about being able to get into a space of feeling confident and comfortable to control our own thoughts and and the words that we say okay but we do not live in a world by ourselves and so as much as that would be beautiful sometimes to be able to operate on our own energy and just ourselves but we would be remiss if I didn't touch on the fact that it can be a struggle to decipher between other people's words and their beliefs of who we are and how we actually show up in the world and then what we actually believe in what we're hearing say and so I want to offer you this tool in this resource sometimes we can stop and say when we're when we feel ourselves overwhelmed and being bogged down with all the negative thoughts and a negative thinking we can say hey what is this tape actually playing what's the tape playing in my in my mind and so then take a pen and write it down when we're talking about a certain scenario or circumstance and then look at the reality facts versus what is actually playing in your head and then compare notes because a lot of times what other people are saying and then this what we're hearing in our minds and what we're feeling like it's different than than the facts if that can make sense so being able to decipher and say hey wait what is the tape playing in my head because how we hear things and how we perceive things and then what they actually are are sometimes often very different so just taking it five or ten seconds when you're in a scenario and say hey wait wait a second what is the tape actually playing what is real here is what this person is saying about me actually true how is this factual because it is very possible that we can have one belief of ourselves and an image and someone can work very hard because there again people suck to bring that down to break us down and we can counter that and say that's not true that's not true about me it's not it's not oh I don't want to believe that I won't accept that it's not happening but if we're not doing that self check in time and giving ourselves those opportunities to gain clarity on what we're actually filling our minds and our heads with that can be a rocky road it can be very dangerous
ACG - The Best Gaming Podcast
A highlight from Starfield Article Bias, Crazy Back and forth in gaming - Bonus Episode #7
"What's this a podcast on? What are we looking at monday? Yes indeed. We're going to talk about a bunch of stuff. I want to talk about the back and forth for the starfield discussion as well as a lot of other discussion that's going about around these games and around 2023 in particular and sort of the fundamental problems we're seeing with some of the coverage, some of the back and forth and why we're starting to see, I would say confusing messages on a lot of games and I want to dive into that and discuss it. So a little bit of behind the scenes baseball for the industry as well as just some excitement about games coming in 2023. Thanks for being a subscriber. We're over one million on youtube and podcast is always doing well. If you don't get a chance to watch it live, it'll always be on Spotify and itunes. First, let's talk about confusing coverage coverage that is definitely in 2023 is becoming sort of a heel turn. I would say to take a wrestling turn from a lot of video game fans. They're starting to see what they consider to be especially websites vice doing versa kind of articles where one day they'll say one thing and one day they'll say almost exactly the opposite and why that's happening more and more so. And it is, I've done a lot of SEO searches and this is something that's definitely grown in the last two or three years and we've seen an increase in maybe the last four. But in particular this year it's actually grown to the point to where it's about 500 % higher rate than it has been in prior years. Why is that? The first thing was a change or a continual adjustment that we see on a lot of mobile phones. A lot of mobile phones are starting to put news sites on their home page and with android I believe anything that runs and can interact directly with google. If you have your phone open to the home screen and I think it's if you swipe left, you immediately go to a news page and this page is curated news for you. Now ignoring that there's curated news sites for a lot of people and many of us with too many news sites, too many websites, too many review sites. We use curated sites anyway. You might use something like feed Lee, which allows for you to take a bunch of websites and say I only want their data, but a bunch of websites could be five for one person and 250 for somebody else. Nevertheless, regardless of how you get there, that has made a huge change to the SEO or the search engine optimization for a lot of websites. And I ended up talking to two people from two different very big PC and console gaming websites and they both stated that their companies are pushing for them to get onto that curated instant home feed even higher than they used to with google, especially with the worry about AI and how google might handle the search screens. These kind of pages won't necessarily be impacted right away by the AI search results that we might see in google and being and so forth as we move forward. So what are they doing? Well, they're doing a tip for tack kind of thing where they're doing a positive video or a positive article on a game and then a negative one and I've been asked a lot of times why exactly is that? What's the law of diminishing returns? Let me give an example. Let's say I do a video about starfield and I get 100 % of all fans watching it and it's a positive video talking about space guns and exploration. Then let's say I do another positive video and it's about companions and quests. Here's one of the problems, both of those being positive videos and or website articles. What ends up happening is you get a diminishing return of the same fandom and that fandom will start to look and say, hey, I don't want too much. This is getting into spoilers. I only want a particular thing. And so that 100 % will drop to 95 % or drop to 90 % and then 80 and then 70 and then 75. Additionally, if the title and the overall article skews too positive, then what will happen is the people who are negative against it, whether you or I agree with that kind of stuff primarily and certainly before a game has come out being a little bit questionable in our eyes, it doesn't matter. There's a lot of people like that and they won't read or watch that first one and that will continue on and on. So the idea that you can hit both sides and we see a lot of times where they will actually task writers to have one writer write a positive article and one write a negative article. Now you can also skew negative all the time because people can be mad about everything. In fact, you can be more enraged about anything because the enraged part doesn't really have any scientific fact behind it. The difference between let's say a positive video about quests, you have to use examples of those quests and how they work. But let's say you want to do a negative article about quests. You can just list things that the quests for sure don't have and pretend they're negative and there's an unlimited number of those because there is only a limited number of quests and how they're put together. So if you find them positive, there's only a certain amount of time you can talk about those before you run out of actual scientific data behind it of actual examples behind it. But there is no requirement for actual examples of things missing. You can say, Hey man, there's no pizza quest. Here's my giant article about that. If there is a pizza quest, well as a website, you can probably only write one article about it. But 10 people can say, well, there's no abbey's pizza quest. There's no pizza pizza quest and you can just continue to build on that negativity. And we've seen some websites that have done that right now where they've got 10 2030 articles negative about starfield. And this is something we see or used to see even more on the Youtube side where you see a lot of videos negative about a game negative about a game. But I would say that with Youtube, the sheer amount of creators on Youtube has made it so that curation becomes difficult if you jump into that kind of let's say bombastic over the top kind of negativity. And we've seen a real reduction in views in that kind of stuff. The drama that exists is usually Youtube drama that exists in the Jake paul kind of arena and games when they come out, you can certainly see videos about that. But we're talking again about pre about prior to the game releasing and that's why we're getting it. This is why we're getting the tit for tat. There are actual writers being tasked. You write a positive article about this game, you write a negative one and I'm mentioning starfield right now. That means nothing. I could mention any game and this is the kind of stuff that can happen. And the larger the game, the larger the chance that the SEO or the search engine optimization that numbers indicate there is going to be an audience for that. So as Spiderman comes up, this will be definitely something that you'll see with Spiderman as well. And that's why you're seeing this back and forth. And that's why it can be confusing, especially with video games. I do want to point something out, not just video games. We'll talk about Youtube itself with Youtube. There is a net history unless you delete your videos as well. So when I say something and record something in a Youtube video, there is a nested history that continues from that point on with me on camera or the game on camera and me talking. That is way different than an article where somebody has to parse the entire article and there is no video, there's nothing. It's very easy to lose yourself and 1000 articles trying to find one where somebody said something negative where it's actually quite easy to just go back to, let's say a C G and find whatever video or historic evidence you're looking for. It's one of the reasons why not always, but one of the reasons why, especially on Youtube, you see a little bit more of a historic pattern that goes on because there can be some searching or at least an easier to identify historic pattern that goes on with a video creator. And this isn't a he said, she said or against four kind of situation. This is quite simply looking up SEO and in the last couple days just searching for this and tracking it down. It's quite easy to see there is factual data that this is occurring. This is something that also when I talk to people who are journalists that I trust who have told me a couple of these stories, I'm just like, I get it. You know, the only real way, especially with a lot of these news websites being hit by other kinds of news around the world. If they're a website that handles all kinds of news, hitting video game news is quite difficult. You, you know, you want to talk about the positivity of sea of stars or something like that? Well, that's not going to have a huge SEO. But if you want to talk about the negatives for star field or the leaks, those kind of things will be big enough numbers that it's easy to sell to your editor. It's easy to sell to the group that's running your website. Now let's jump into the tech a little bit. I want to talk a little bit about FSR and DLSS, FSR three. In fact, that's coming out here soon and why it's a little bit disappointing to be honest. So one of the problems when you look at any of these upscaling techniques, which by the way, some of them work incredibly well and it also depends on the game and it depends on the initial resolution that you're going to use. And for anybody who whoops, I hit my mic for anybody who doesn't understand what these upscaling systems are. They take multiple samples from a number of frames prior and then they build a higher resolution frame for you to actually see displayed. And so this is actually faster than having the game render that higher resolution display. And what's interesting is because they're trained using AI and because they're so smart, a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times you'll actually see a output that has more detail than the native wood because it's building together patterns and stuff. So for example, a rocky face, people might say, how does it have more detail? Well, one of the reasons why is because that four K output is done and it's sampled from, let's say, the native actual frame. What goes on with FSR and with DLSS is they're taking multiple samples and they're building out data including, let's say the grooves, the cracks that you may see in the rock. And they're actually finding more data with more samples and they're using pattern recognition. And when they put up that four K picture, depending on what they're creating, but with all of their sample data from AI, looking at thousands of rocks, millions, probably of rocks, I should say millions. What you can get is actually a more detailed texture and we're starting to see that and it's great, but we're also starting to see a lot of games where people are worried that FSR and DLSS are crutches that companies are not optimizing. I would say that that is possible and it certainly happened with a couple of games. It's also possible as somebody who's read the steam survey forum during the podcast recently is that a lot of people want their ancient ass cards to run games where the cards are actually pre PS four or PS four pro at least. And we are getting this division that's occurring now. This is something that if you want an actual example of this where we can see this example play out perfectly, it's WMR, the VR system that Microsoft created. One of the problems developers talk about all the time with this is that there were no set structures with WMR. So you could have 50 headsets, all 50 headsets with a slightly different FOV, all 50 headsets with a slightly different resolution, all 50 headsets with different pixel per inch. square And you would end up having it quite difficult to deliver what you would consider to be an optimized headset optimized kind of delivery. And we're starting to see that here. This is something that I'm not too worried about. I see consoles do this where they're aiming for their own internal up resin. We see that work well, sometimes not so well in the case of immortals of avium, but we see it work quite well in other places and we'll see this continually be fixed and continually be checked. We'll see FSR used for upscaling and now FSR has their own frame generation as does DLSS, of course, with the new DLSS. One of the problems with FSR's frame generation is this though. So with DLSS, they want you to have a somewhat high frame rate before you turn it on. And one of the reasons why that is is because regardless of how many fake frames you create, let's say you want to go from 60 to 120, your pulling rate for your controller or your movement is usually at still the exact frame rate that you were getting delivered to you prior to using the frame generation. One of the problems I noticed with FSR and I read this and I did talk to one developer about it to ask them if my worries were correct and they said generally they are it's we'll just have to see how this plays out. But one of the issues with FSR three is they stated that you pretty much need to be at 60 prior to turning it on. Now they want you to be very high in DLSS as well, but I think there were people who were testing as low as like in 38 and forties and stuff like that and still getting very good results. But they do induce latency already. Both of them do. And then you also have this polling rate issue. Why is this a particular issue for FSR three? Well, FSR three is a software format. It is not done via the hardware like DLSS, which uses the Nvidia cards hardware. FSR is agnostic. It can be used on any single device, which is one of its biggest bonuses for upscaling. When you change a lower resolution texture or a lower resolution screen to a higher one when it comes to frame generation, though this is using compute, meaning it's actually going to be using your systems power when there are gaps. And so the idea is, is what they're hoping for is that you already have the power to get up to 50 or 60. So there should be a little bit more power to possibly get more frame generation. And that's a little bit different than the way DLSS does it. Now there's all these idiosyncrasies with both of them. But if you look at it, the hardware and the cores that actually work on the Nvidia hardware are built and made for this. And when it when you look at FSR, it's not really like that. It's just hey, these work on anything and you can throw it up and it should do something. We're gonna have to see how this plays out. But I would say when you look at games like Starfield that's locked at 30 and people are thinking, oh, Starfield is going to save the day by have or is going to have its day saved by having FSR turn on. And we've heard from Todd Howard who said it sometimes runs at 60. That's not the same thing as all the time. And one of the problems that you can get is let's say you lock your frame generation at 60 frames per second, but it drops as low as 30 and then goes up to 60. But you're always using frame generation between 30 and 60 to lock it at 60 on your console. The problem is is that you will actually be playing with latency polling data as low as 30 and then up to 60. And what that can actually do is induce a very weird feeling of not necessarily judder, but almost like legginess that occurs over a longer period of time than you may expect. It's not instant, it's something that occurs as you continue to play a game where you're running and you make a slight adjustment and one side one time that adjustment because maybe it's running at a great frame rate at that particular time, that adjustment seems to happen almost simultaneously with your movement of the game pad. But then the next time there's just a bit of leg and that can actually cause, I wouldn't say motion sickness, but it can cause a little bit of almost like a brain blurriness where you're playing it, you're like something's up. It just doesn't feel exactly as snappy as we want it to be now. I don't know if they'll do that. We may see an announcement that FSR three, you know, pops out the day that star field pops out. But this is just something that happens with star field or not star field that happens with FSR happens with the LSS happens with what is the intel one Xe SS. These are expected when it comes to software solutions versus Nvidia's hardware solution. I'm a big fan of not using hardware solutions, at least on the PC side because you're locking out a certain group. However, I will say, I think when you look at this, you can see that technically the hardware side is obviously the positive side at this point and is the better of the two or three options. So I want to also say again, thanks to everybody who's a subscriber. We're looking at a really tough time for coverage with all these previews and all these reviews. I've had a ton of coverage that I've had to pass up. It has been a gnarly 2023, especially in these last couple of weeks. One of the things I talk about all the time is, ah, you know, I love games and it's no big deal. I love being busy. I do love being busy. I think it's great, but this is ridiculous. I mean, it's ridiculous. There's games that are previewing for 2024 right now and you know, article ability or not article, but YouTube for ability a video game that may be out in February of 2024, but they just happen to pop it here right now. So it can be quite difficult. There's a lot of titles and a lot of titles don't know what other titles are doing with their embargoes. So you get that and speaking of embargoes, you guys might have seen my tweet about embargoes. So one of the things that it doesn't infuriate me as much as it shocks me, somebody would be okay with this, but we saw a lot of people saying, you talked to insiders who can't talk because they're under NDA, but they say Starfield is this or they say Spiderman is this or they say blah blah blah is this. And a lot of times I'll pop off on twitter and be like, dude, I don't know who is breaking NDA, but you're an idiot because I got pinged 30 times in the last three days about Starfield. Do you have Starfield? Yo, I love your stuff, bro. Your stuff so great person's not subscribed. Person doesn't follow person hasn't done a like on any twitter. Obviously they're not. They just found out that I might have Starfield and they're pinging out and they want written, they want written explanations of your experiences with a game. That shit will come back to burn you. So any new youtubers who are watching right now are listening. If you're thinking for even a second, hey man, you know what? I might talk about this because I could be known as an insider. Maybe this person will come back and talk to me again later. Watch out man because you're writing something down. That person can take a screenshot. We've seen nothing but unlimited examples of this shit. So if somebody is asking you to speak on a game that's under NDA, don't just don't tell them to fuck off man. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous and it's putting you on a hot seat that could come up at any time later. Let's say you love a person who's running a website or a youtube channel. You love them. You're talking to them. They ask you for some inside NDA data. So you tell them and then what happens? Maybe they get an editor and that editor doesn't like you and that editor starts looking back at chats. Maybe that editor leaks a little bit of data about something you've said in a tweet that kind or in a in a discord, that kind of stuff can happen. That kind of stuff happens all the time. I used to remember one of the jobs I worked at, I worked out for 13 years and you would get people who were really close to the boss and they would be doing shit that maybe for a year or two they'd get away with and then a new boss would replace that boss and everybody at the company would just be like that guy's gone. Like there's no, that person is going to find out, they're going to find out that there's, you know, little idiosyncrasies with the way they do their job or there's things that they haven't been doing that they should be, they're either going to be working really hard or they're going to fail and we saw it every single time and that kind of stuff can happen. We're speaking out of turn on NDA's and stuff. So I just want to point that out. If you're listening, just don't man, just don't, you know, I have people that will be like, do you have a game or blah blah blah and I'll be like, you know, yeah, depending on who the person is and then, you know, sometimes they'll ping and they'll ask more data and I'll just a lot of times I'll just be like, yeah, not going to answer until the game comes out because you never quite know, you know, there's a couple people, very few that I trust and that trust only lasts as long as that person is the same kind of person, the only real person you can trust is you. And I would say trust yourself to be OK with not telling everybody that you're in on the secret. Speaking of secrets. So for the last like couple years, pizza prices have been raising and I've been going to cheap pizzas and I realized a couple of days ago, I was like, oh, you know what? Abby's, they're a local brand, somewhat local, but they're there in a couple of places around, you know, other states. But I notice I'm mostly in Oregon and I was getting all these, you know, advertisements for Abby's and I had skipped out on them because they were expensive, but I hadn't realized that all the other pizzas had got as expensive as they did. So a couple days ago, I was like, yeah, I'm going to order an Abby's pizza. We got this pizza and I'm telling you, oh, my God, it's a secret. It's a secret that I want out. That pizza is so goddamn good. It was ridiculously good. And it's so funny because I was getting pizza from, you know, a lot of these places that are like, look at us. If you want your oysters on pizza, you can have it. You're like, listen, stupid. I want pepperoni or salami. I don't need your fucking seafood on a pizza. It doesn't exist on a pizza. Seafood on a pizza is accidentally spilling your surf and turf on to the pizza. That's it. It's the only reason you would ever see shrimp on a fucking pizza. I don't care what anybody says. So the idea that I want that kind of stuff, whatever. I was usually just getting your pepperonis, your Canadian bacons, that kind of stuff. And so I got it a couple days ago. I got the most generic pizza from them. It was a I got a pepperoni and I got a Canadian bacon and pineapple. And I got to tell you, man, I took a bite of that and I was like, oh my God, this is good. Leveled up my pizza game. Well, returned, really. Technically, you could say I was just in the down years because I used to love them and started going with other companies, just some cheap no names and stuff, because, you know, at that point when everything was so cheap and some places were so expensive, you're like, ah, it's fine. I don't need them. And then once everything sort of raised up to that price, it was like, yeah, I'll jump in. Why did I bring up pizza? Because I got more today and I cannot wait to bite into it. I got a bunch of games to review and sometimes you need a little snacky snack and pizza is the way to do it. Also, I did end up finding out that I can get some some cheaper prices on shirts. I have a coupon for if you go to what is that Teespring, I think is the company I use their spreadsheet. You can see it on the YouTube channel. There should be a code that you can use. ACG dash gaming and get shirts for about 10 or 15 % off. I did want to point out as one of the YouTubers, one of the few YouTubers with an all over shirt, meaning the printing is everywhere. It's not just a front square or something stupid like that. We do do more of the gamer style, the esports style shirts, and I know that's not for everybody, but I love them. I think some of those designs are wicked. There there's no profit, by the way, zero. And that's fine. I want the name of the channel out there. So I have no issue and I want somebody to have a cool shirt. But I'm surprised how expensive they are. Like, I mean, they're expensive. I saw somebody who was trying to find a cheaper shirt being made somewhere and shirt prices have gone up for getting created. But again, you should be able to see that. If you don't see the code and you need it, you can ping me on Twitter and I can give you the code for that for for cheaper shirts. Reason why I bring it up is in just one video, I saw 2200 people click on a shirt and I was like, oh, but 22 people, 2200 people didn't buy it. I'm like, yeah, it's probably because we're choosing that all over print, which is so expensive. But you know what? I love it. I love it. I've got a bunch of them myself. I just I absolutely love the all over kind of print style. I've never been a fan of T shirts with just the logo on the front. You know, Star Wars. I've been a fan of the art going all over the shirt since I was really young and we had a shirt place when I was a kid that did our baseball shirts and they faked it. They found a way because this is prior to the technology really being easy to do, not like just a tie dye where they're using dyes. But these guys, they were really smart with how they did designs and they were able to basically do the design all the way around the shirt. And I remember like everybody, I'm pretty sure we won a couple games just because our friggin jerseys looked so wicked. People were like, What the fuck? Now, of course, no big deal. I think it's time to wrap this one up. Yeah, it's only 23 minutes. But guys, I am swamped with games. I got to end up getting some of these videos out. I skipped out on two or three previews this week. Just because there were so many to do. It's a good problem to have, but I do have a bunch of work to do this week. So I'm going to skip out on this, get back to work, start taking care of dem dogs. If you are not a part of the patron, come on by. It supremely helps the channel. We are just absolutely demonetized for the craziest shit. Atlas Fallen got demonetized and I still to this. They never explain why. So when you come into the patron, five bucks gets you the discord and I think it's awesome. I mean, it's definitely become my social hub for everything. Games, movies, pizza talk. Right now there's been, you know, over 1000 posts already. People just yakking up games old and new. It's a great place. You can stream some stuff, hang out, do some D &D, some tabletop sim, discuss anything you want to discuss in a cool environment. Other than that, I want to say peace out to everybody. Once again, thanks for subscribing and you'll see some reviews and previews for me later this week. Peace out.
Mike Gallagher Podcast
A highlight from Guest Host Kevin McCullough Tackles The Return Of Covid Mandates
"The Mike Gallagher Show. For decades in this country, people have beaten a path to California. It's a beautiful state. And yet they never lost population until their current governor took office. Now they're hemorrhaging wealth. Now they're hemorrhaging population because you see things like what I saw the other day in San Francisco. I saw people defecating on the sidewalk. In the ReliefFactor .com studios, here's Mike. Some words I would rather not hear in the middle of my morning, but Governor Ron DeSantis is right, and that's part of the problem. We'll continue to take your calls about the evil that's being done and how they're not being quiet about it anymore, but willing to stick it in your face. We'll talk some more about that. But I want you to know that today is the last day that the Mike Gallagher Show audience has to assist the very vital work of food for the poor, especially in this hurricane season and it's just getting started. There's going to be a lot of storms through the fall, and what we are dealing with is the need to be ready to help those with emergency items, specifically food, as those difficulties come. Joining us here at the Mike Gallagher Show is Paul Jacobs of Food for the Poor, and Paul, a longtime friend of Kevin McCullough as well. It's good to hear you and see you this morning. Paul, there's been some major hurricane action that our media here in the States hasn't even really picked up. Well, since the very first day of this campaign with Mike Gallagher, we've been sharing a very important principle, and that is we must pre -position aid emergency relief supplies under blue skies. For three weeks in the month of August, we saw nothing in the Atlantic, nothing in the Gulf, and then here we are on really the final days that we're together with you listening, sharing this need, and there are storms on both, as we've seen, in the West Coast of the United States as well as two very powerful storms, Franklin that just pummeled the Dominican Republic and now Edalia that is going to crush the West Coast of Florida, possibly into the Panhandle and states in the Southeast. We really need everyone that's listening right now to understand that if you have listened and you've heard the passionate pleas of Mike Gallagher about these needs of these families, whether it's disaster relief kits or it's a gift of $500 to provide a generator, you are needed right now. There are two, no, sorry, three months left in this hurricane season, and there is more going on, and Kevin, you and I have traveled to Haiti. We've seen the effects of these hurricanes on developing nations, and so we know all too well the aftermath and how the victims like children are affected when the needs and the supplies are not made available. Yeah, I want to emphasize what you said there about developing nations. In highly developed nations, we have trouble with hurricanes in Florida and elsewhere and sometimes are caught a little off guard. Imagine being a country that has one -third or one -fourth or one -tenth the GDP of the United States and trying to survive under these circumstances. It is really, really a tough struggle, and I love the term pre -positioning because that's exactly what it takes, Paul, in order to save these people. There's not, the decisions have to be made in the splits of seconds in order to be able to save lives, and if food for the poor has put the supplies where needed, then those decisions are much easier to make. Last week we just celebrated, we just remembered the 31st anniversary of Hurricane Andrew devastating my home here in South Florida, and I remember all too well what that was like, but the thing that stuck out the most for us and why pre -positioning is so vitally important is that the when hurricanes strike, when the storms hit, when natural disasters occur, the supply chain lines are cut off. And not only that, but it's harder to get to these affected areas, our partnerships at Food for the Poor in these various countries. So when you give right now, just think, your gift is making a difference in delivering aid on day one versus having to wait through the disaster and get the supplies there on day 30. And you can imagine the vulnerable, the vulnerable populations that are waiting for that aid, waiting and praying to God, asking when will something come and having to wait 30 days. But right now, while things are favorable, while the cost of items are less because they haven't been driven up as a result of these supply chain disruptions, as well as a lot of the prices going up in the midst of these natural disasters, you can be a difference maker right now and help a family. You may not meet this side of heaven, but they will feel your compassion like never before. There is such a huge need for particularly the children in such circumstances. Here's the phone number, friends. It's 844 -860 -4673, 844 -860 -4673. And the much easier way to do it is just to text the word Mike to 911999, 911999, text the word Mike, and you can give your gift there. You can also go to MikeOnline .com, and you'll just click the red banner at the top of the page, Emergency Supplies. It's pretty easy to find on the website there. 844 -860 -4673, 844 -860 -4673, or text the range of need. There's lots of things that the people in the affected countries that food for the poor work in need on an ongoing basis. There's regular need for shelter and for clean water and so forth, but food and clean water specifically in the hurricane season are even more important. You mentioned the generator. You mentioned the ways people can get involved, but the real lifeline for these people is sometimes having a bowl of food that they wouldn't be able to have otherwise. Think of it. The most, the essence of life, the basics of life is food and water. And when you talk about a disaster that is just, that blows through a community that cuts off not only the power to a lot of homes where they cannot keep food fresh and they cannot keep the food items safely stored, then they need to have food on a regular basis provided to them. Stores are shut down, access to stores, and even these island nations and many of these countries where they depend on exports coming in, food coming being shipped in. Well, when they're not getting there on time, because as you see in the video that we're showing you for those that are watching on the live stream, you're seeing that the the streets and roads are cut off. There's no access to these communities outside of what is already there in the community. Families, children that need to eat every single day. Many of these children in countries like Haiti and like Guatemala, their only meal comes when they, their nutritious meal that is, comes when they go to school. Schools are closed down until the foreseeable future. And so your help right now, a gift of a hundred dollars, pre -positions a disaster food kit in these countries so that children and families can eat tomorrow and the day after until things get normalized and they can get back on their feet. You will effectively help these families survive another day. And survive is no overstatement. It is really truly what they are they're praying for. And friends, as we can sit and have discussion on the Mike Gallagher show about all of the things that are going wrong in the world and certainly the things that we need to be fighting for, the innocence and the protection of these children are something that if we are truly pro -life people, we believe in. If we believe that abortion is bad, then we have to believe that starvation of children is also bad because God is not not respecting one form of death over the other. He wants us to be caring about our brothers and sisters. And I will tell you, as Paul made mention, I've traveled extensively with Food for the Poor in Haiti and in Jamaica and in another couple of places where they have been doing their work. I've seen the houses they've built. I've seen the water filtration systems where they did not have any clean water to drink and all of the diseases that come with polluted water. And then within the installation of a water filtration system just a year later, thriving, beautiful, joyous community with clean water every day. But food, water, the basics, that's what you're helping with with these emergency supplies. And as we made mention, we're just getting started in the hurricane season. This is the beginning of the rocky road, and we've already had some activity in the Caribbean just even over this last weekend. So please pick up the phone. Call 844 -860 -4673, 844 -860 -4673, or text the word Mike, M -I -K -E, for Mr. Gallagher, Mike Gallagher, Mike, M -I -K -E, to 911999. Paul, just spend a minute with me on the importance of the fact that Food for the Poor is a Christ -centered organization and seeks to do Jesus's work amongst the people that they work with. For more than 41 years and into our 42nd year, Food for the Poor has been working hand in hand with the local church. We've named a number of countries that Food for the Poor works in Latin America and the Caribbean. And as I stand here in our headquarter office in Coconut Creek, Florida, I tell you this, there is no way that 350 employees working in this vast big building could reach all of those communities and all of those areas of the world in this region where we work for these many four decades if it wasn't for the local church. Pastors on the ground, their compassion because they live in the communities where they're helping these families. Pastors and ministry partners that are committed, they don't just help these families, they stay and work alongside them to build these families back onto their feet. In fact, one of my favorite scriptures, and I've seen it live and in full effect, is Galatians 2 -10. It was a letter that Paul wrote to the Galatian church about the help and the need of families. It says, all that they asked was that we remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do all along. That is the passion by which you are fueling right now with your generous gift in these countries where Food for the Poor works. So please understand, yes, you're helping feed a child. Yes, you're helping deliver disaster relief items, but you're resourcing the local church to do what they do best, and that is help the physical body, but as well as the spirit. As a Bible -believing Christian, I don't believe that there are accidents. And friends, if you're listening today or you're watching us on the Salem News Channel, and a thought crosses your mind that you had not heard about this before, that's no accident. I fully believe that God intended for the people that needed to hear this to be here right now. And the truth is, there will be children who will not make it through this next hurricane season without these emergency supplies being pre -positioned in the areas where they will be needed. And friend, if you have the ability to do something, that's not by accident either. God is obviously trying to touch your heart and say, hey, get involved, do my work, help me be the satisfaction for these children, the supplier of their needs, if you will. 844 -860 -4673, 844 -860 -4673. But imagine, even in your own family, if it was you, if it was your child, and you knew that they were going to run the risk of starving this hurricane season, to what length would you go to express to the people that are listening right now, would you help us, can you help us, please help us? Those are the cries coming from the families, the children, and the people in Latin America and the Caribbean, where Food for the Poor is at work. Again, the number is 844 -860 -4673, 844 -860 -4673. You can also just text the word Mike, M -I -K -E, to 911999, 911999, text the word Mike, and you can get there. And if you want to go to MikeOnline .com, you can do that as well. The banner is at the top of the page. It's a big red one that says emergency supplies needed, and asking you to help out today. Paul Jacobs of Food for the Poor, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for trying to inspire us to be involved. For what it's worth to the people of, listen, my family, the McCulloughs, we've given to Food for the Poor for almost two decades now. We love this organization, and we love what they're doing, and I've seen it with my own eyes do the good that Mike has been telling you about for these last many weeks. We're coming right back on The Mike Gallagher Show. Lots of news still to get to this morning, and lots more of your phone calls when we return. Stay here. Something has gone terribly wrong with the world economy. Before you lose faith, be sure to read the book, Life After Capitalism, now on sale from Regnery Publishing.
The Dan Bongino Show
Dan Bongino: Black Voters Are Like Anyone Else
"Weekend update. You know, so this I had a lot of time to concentrate this weekend. It'll make sense in a second. So, I was sitting around, there was a lot of sitting around, and I don't like watching TV because there's never anything on it. Sometimes I'll watch that Food That Built America or something show, but that's about it. There's not much else on to watch. It's typically boring. I think I watched Rocky, but my daughter too. It was the first time she'd seen it. It was great, but I had a lot of time to concentrate. So, I'm going around both Truth and Twitter, and I'm reading through, and there is this eruption of Republicans on the black vote, and it's weird. Forget about liberals. Liberals are just hardcore racists. I'm Forget talking about even among conservatives and Republicans, and a lot of black conservatives and Republicans, and I'm seeing commentary ranging from, it's the weirdest thing. Like, you shouldn't talk about the black vote because X, Y, and Z, and then you don't talk about the black vote enough, therefore you're going to ignoring black vote, and I'm like, what? That kind of sounds to me like Hobson's Choice. It's either this horse or no horse at all, right? Like, that doesn't sound like a choice at all. them. So I decided to say, they can just kiss my ass. I'll do whatever I want. I'll talk about what I want, and I'm just going to talk about black black voters like I talk about anyone else, because black voters are like everyone else. And I'm not going to treat people different because That's what it's like, the whole
THE EMBC NETWORK
A highlight from Why Wellness and Alcohol Do Not Mix and the New Consciousness in Corporate Team Building with Heather Lowe
"Welcome back to Energetically You, where we talk about all things optimal wellness, abundant mindset and wealth ownership. I'm your host, Megan Swan, a wellness coach and consultant and the founder of the Sustainable Integrated Wellness Approach. I help high performance women thread more wellness into their lifestyle so that it becomes a way of life and not a checkmark on their to do list. I design custom approachable wellness lifestyles because there is no one size fits all wellness. Today, I'm so excited to interview Heather Lowe. She is the founder of Ditched the Drink, a wellness company dedicated to helping professionals move away from alcohol and towards their highest selves. Heather is a certified professional life and recovery coach, certified addiction awareness facilitator and the director of marketing consumer products for the International Center of Addiction Recovery Education, acronym I -CARE. Driven by her education as a bachelor of social work and a professional of human resources, Heather provides content, knowledge, coaching and education to individuals and organizations. Heather is passionate about coaching, connecting people with alcohol free resources and creating a positive, sober community. Heather shares the bright side of sobriety as an influencer in the social media sober space at Ditched the Drink on Instagram. Heather's writing has been published in Thrive Global, Monument, Tempest, The Fix, Mashable, Corporate Wellness Magazine, Employee Benefit News and more. She has been featured on many podcasts, including Recovery Happy Hour, Redesigning Wellness and Decidedly Dry. She lives in Chicago's western suburbs as a proud girl mom of two teenage daughters, Lily and Charlotte, her husband Darren of 20 plus years and their adorable black and white cocker spaniel, Rocky. Heather is a voracious reader, a newish hiker and a seasoned yogi. For more, visit her website, ditchedthedrink .com. Welcome, Heather. I'm so excited for this conversation. I'm a huge fan of your work and I was reading the in -depth bio you have on your website and I feel like we have a lot of synchronicity going on here. So let's dive in. First of all, welcome. How are you? Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm just like thrilled with the opportunity to speak with you and your audience. And our topic is, of course, my favorite thing to talk about. So thank you so much. Amazing. Well, one thing I haven't talked about that recently on the podcast, but actually one of my opening episodes was really focusing on the mummy wine culture and that sort of very deep rooted narrative there is in society that, you know, kind of motherhood or parenthood goes with socially appropriate de -stressers. Amongst them are wine or alcohol at the end of your day. And what was the sort of, or can you paint the picture of sort of like one of the catalysts for you to like really reconsider that narrative for you personally? Yeah. Yes. Thanks for the opportunity because especially in our society, we protect alcohol so much, right? We don't want it to be the bad guy. We don't want it to be the bad thing. We want it to be in our bathtub at the end of the day for release and unwind. We want it to be in the workplace, a way to connect with others or celebrate success. So we really defend our alcohol. And as a drinker, I did too. I looked for anything else to be the problem in my life besides my wine habit. I wanted to protect that above all else. My drinking journey started, I'm from Wisconsin. So it was very normal and very regular to start drinking early. I mean, I teased that it was in my baby bottle, which isn't true. But my parents met in a beer tent at a local fair. That was very normal. And I met my husband in a bar in college. Like how else did you meet people back in 1997? So it was just very part of the coming of age journey in Wisconsin. I was an extrovert, party girl, had lots of friends. I loved drinking immediately. It was a great escape and it was a way to let loose and it was a way to be included in parties and social events and things like that. That continued through college. That continued through my early work career. Now I had a little more money to spend. So I wasn't drinking cheap beer. Well, maybe I was drinking cheap beer, but in better places. Going to Cubs games and going to work happy hours and feeling very grown up. I think going to restaurants and being of age and drinking. It also sort of fueled my career in ways I was in sales. I was often the only woman on an all male sales team. And it was a way to celebrate a success. It was a way to get access to decision makers and leadership. Sometimes if you were at a bar or a happy hour, you could have conversations that weren't taking place in the office. So I had two daughters and I worked part time and I stayed home part time and I didn't drink during my pregnancies, but as soon as they were born, I could have a little bit of wine in the afternoon. That felt very European to me. It wasn't until I had a series of deaths, three deaths in a row, where I did three eulogies in three years. Two of them were out of order and one was my dad. And this is where my drinking really started to take an obvious turn from a way to socialize or a way to unwind at the end of the day to self medication. You know, putting the kids to bed or trying to get them as close to the end of the evening as possible and then drinking wine on the couch alone to soothe my grief and my pain that I really didn't want to feel, telling myself that I should just get over it. And alcohol is a great numbing agent so it worked until it didn't. It just escalated over time and this was maybe going to happen anyways but it sort of picked up speed. I was unhappy in my jobs. And again, a great way to ignore my unhappiness was to just pour alcohol on it. I think my story is similar to many people's stories and now as a coach. I know that it's a very similar story. But again, alcohol is celebrated in our society as a way to manage and a way to cope, and it's not looked at as a bad thing. So, who are we not to look for an easy escape hatch with alcohol, and it works until it doesn't, you know, for 20 minutes, it takes the edge off, it takes the anxiety down. But then the consequences, of course, multiply after that. Yeah, well I really appreciated your transparency, that also, you know, you went to seek help with a psychologist, which I think is another really common way of, you know, starting this journey. And, you know, you're immediately, without too much chit chat, were prescribed a medication which may or may not have been, you know, your psychologist probably didn't ask you a lot of questions about your alcohol consumption in order to do that. And that's just like what a common story that is as well. And I, it's just so prevalent that people are taking either something for depression or anxiety, and I feel like it's a conversation that's not really openly had about the relationship between those two things and the commonality that most people are having something at the end of their day that might be, you know, have a specific interaction that makes their quality of life dramatically different based on that. Did you want to add anything? Yeah, absolutely. You are totally correct.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from THE HASH: Binance's Reported Russia Risk; Coinbase Squares Circle
"This is the hash podcast. Stay informed with the latest on Bitcoin, ETH, the metaverse, web3 and more. All on the hash for your ears. You're listening to the Coindesk podcast network. Hello and welcome to Coindesk TV. You are watching the hash. I am Zach Seward. That is Jensen Asse, Will Foxley over there. It's a three box Tuesday and we are going to do some stories, four of them even, to get you up to speed on what's going on in the world of crypto. I'm ready to start. Let's do this thing. We're talking about Binance now having potentially further issues heaped upon it, the world's largest crypto exchange by volume, alleged to have been serving folks in Russia despite a whole raft of financial sanctions relating to the war in Ukraine. This one could significantly harm Binance in the long run, but this report is now out saying that they have relationships with Russian customers and that is potentially an issue should Binance want to remain in good standing the world over. So let's talk about this one. I'm going to throw it straight to Jen. What's it out to you from this report? Well, if you read the report, there's this Russian businesswoman probably like halfway in the report who says that most people in Russia are familiar with cryptocurrency and use cryptocurrency. And I think the quote was everyone except her grandma. And I think when we look at these Western sanctions, it's obvious to see why so many people in Russia are looking at cryptocurrencies and using it to change their rubles into absolutely anything else. And so, yes, there are Western sanctions in Russia, but there are people who live there just like you and me who need money to do things. And so I can understand why Russians are looking for ways to change their fiat currency into crypto. Now, when we look at Binance, it's like probably the website is not available in Russia, but probably there are Russian people who have found ways to circumvent this. There was another Wall Street Journal article that came out earlier this month that spoke about China. Another, well, there's not sanctions for China, but crypto is just illegal in China. And it talked about how China is this 90 billion dollar market for Binance. Obviously, the website is not available, but the Wall Street Journal viewed documents that showed Chinese users how to circumvent some of the things in place so that they would be able to use Binance. And so I am just waiting for more information here. It is a wait and see story for me if Binance is outwardly showing people in a sanctioned jurisdiction how to take their currency and change it into crypto. I think that they are definitely going to run into issues with the regulators, but I'm just waiting to see if Binance responds to this more than what they've already said. Yeah, I think like the centerpiece of this is the peer -to -peer nature of what they're talking about here, like the peer -to -peer exchange of crypto assets. Russian citizens, of course, who have no involvement with the war, why should they be penalized for this? Well, it's because the Russian citizens and like the banking system that they were using beforehand is being pressurized and squeezed from all sides. And so those Russian citizens are sort of caught in like this in -between zone. So crypto is a natural outlet for them. And I think it shows you the promise of crypto very shortly, just with that war going on. Interesting to get a thought from Binance on this, they told us a spokesman for Binance told the Journal the exchange follows global sanction rules, but they did not return a comment of request from CoinDesk itself. I think this story just sort of follows up though in the eyes of politicians and regulators out there in line with the SEC and the CFTC and others who are pushing against Binance right now. And there's many open investigations and cases and lawsuits against Binance for their involvement in so many different aspects of the cryptocurrency market, from securities to working within the United States or other jurisdictions without licenses. And now you can just add to this list, this open look into what's happening with people possibly using their platform for exchanging assets in a country that right now is sanctioned by the global West. Now the question here, Jen, is like not necessarily like, is this a wait and see, but more of like, what is the reaction from politicians? Like, are they going to wait and see, or are they just going to make a decision and start going for it? And I could see them actually start pushing, especially on Capitol Hill. If we continue to see more issues with the crypto and more bear market pressures and scams, Binance is a pretty easy target just because of the nature of its global business. Throwback to you, Jen. Yeah, I'm with you there, Will. I think you have Russia news, Binance evading Western sanctions, and then just a few weeks earlier you have China news. I think that those are two things that I would be surprised if we didn't hear regulators talking about what's going on, especially given what's happening with Binance. So I'm right with you. Zach, what do you think? Yeah, quite risky for Binance, right? Should this stuff prove to be sort of demonstrably true? This is based on some analysis that I think the journal enlisted from outside blockchain sleuths, right? So should this be a significant thing, this would be quite damning, I think, as it relates to how the US regulatory apparatus is kind of trying to crack down on Binance. So certainly would be growing like list of pains that CZ is facing at the helm of Binance, you know, from the stuff that we talk about all the time, from, you know, hopping from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, to again, helping those who the financial system would not like to be served with the financial options that are available to other people, this is a pretty big one. So interesting to see what the more full response is from Binance. As noted, they've been pretty mum on the issue. History corner will be good. I mean, there's been great journalism from Coindesk on this in the past, talked about the movements of funds between the Chinese and Russian border tether, I think that comes up right here. And then over the summer as well, there was a lot of interesting disputes are back and forth with some senior people at Binance leaving the firm. And then there's, of course, like the layoff of a thousand people. Binance has certainly had a rocky 2023, but hard to pinpoint a crypto company that has not had a rocky 2023. Okay, let's go over to Coinbase and talk about the Circle Consortium, which is now being dissolved, as Coinbase has garnered a or purchased a stake within Circle itself. Circle earlier this year, actually sold some of its stake to Fidelity and BlackRock. So Coinbase joins those two firms. Was this mean? Well, I think Circle is really growing and they want Coinbase to look for the ride. Circle, of course, runs the USDC network. They're adding about six more blockchains for that crypto asset, which is quickly becoming one of the most important stablecoins out there. Zach, I'll throw this one over to you. Just kind of cool to look back and think about like how the Circle Consortium worked. It did its job for a few years, now that professionalizing a little bit more, putting it all under one hood and then Coinbase continues to have a stake in the company by purchasing a stake in Circle. Yes, I will correct you, sir. It was the Center Consortium, not the Circle Consortium. So the Center Consortium is the thing that's being nuked. I think, yeah, this is interesting. I mean, obviously, the addition of additional blockchains stands out, right? Having native USDC on various layer one networks is pretty catalytic for a lot of these networks, right? You want to have that stable unit of account that you can use to zap around money natively on these chains rather than having to rely on a bunch of sort of like, you know, duct tape bridge situations. That I think is super notable. But I think also that there's clearly some interesting behind the scenes here as to why Coinbase wanted to get in on this a bit more actively. I think if you looked at the low to no interest rate environment that a lot of stuff took place in, you know, in the last three, four years, suddenly these reserves are probably thrown off a good chunk of change, sitting in some bank account somewhere, generating interest, generating returns, right? I could imagine why Coinbase would want to be closer to that, because it might represent a decent business line, right? Circle, these are dollar backed stablecoins, they're sitting in reserve somewhere, they're doing that. And if you want to cash them out, you get that dollar back. I think the business economics of being a stablecoin issuer have certainly changed given the high interest rates that we see. So it's interesting that I would, I would imagine that that may have been sort of a catalyzing factor in this change to the approach. And that's certainly interesting to see Coinbase be a bit more active in pursuing it. But yeah, I think probably the new blockchain stuff will have the longest term ramification in terms of again, maybe jump starting some of those ecosystems a bit further. But yeah, interesting business story as well here, I'd say. Jen, what do you think? Well, I read this and this is complete speculation, but I read this and thought, you know, Coinbase has been working very closely with their lawyers, very closely with their legal advisors on the suit that's brought against them by the SEC. There's a stablecoin bill that's being debated on. And I just, I feel like this is, you know, them looking at the industry, looking at the growth of the industry. The consortium was created in, I think, 2018. I think that this is them seeing kind of where regulation is going and making their, making USDC look like other stablecoins that they think are going to make it. And maybe one of those is PiUSD, PayPal, stablecoin. It just feels like they are restructuring, they've looked at the industry, they've seen how it's developing, they've heard what regulators are saying when it comes to stablecoins, and they are being flexible so that they can carry on with the product and again, bring it to more blockchain. So that's my speculation while reading this. I think this is a regulatory response that has been carefully thought through. Well, any last words on this one? Yeah, I'm just wondering about the funding side of these things. So Coinbase has a pretty good books in terms of like revenues, cash flows, and debt on hand. They did recently announce that they're raising about $150 million in debt. I think as of like August 8th, they had about $50 million of that secured. And I'm wondering if that has something to do with this, but of course right now, that's only speculation. We don't really know how they purchase this or how large the stake within this whole new purchase was. So that'd be something I'd be curious about knowing. Coinbase, of course, just a huge company at this point, and they have stakes in so many different business lines, very professionalized company, but I'd be curious about the money side of things. Keep on trucking on. I have to say it every time we talk about Coinbase, despite this lawsuit, they keep moving forward and doing what I think is like really great things for the industry. So they are leading the charge. It's going to be less confusing when writing up stablecoin stories because you always kind of had to mention like center, but it was sort of like, wasn't really key to the story. So it is nice. It'll be nice, like simplistic because the center was circle and Coinbase, and now it's like, let's get rid of that. Yeah, just straight up circle now. That's great.
THE EMBC NETWORK
A highlight from Raising Girls to be Leaders and Live With Purpose with Tiffiny Roper
"Welcome to A Magical Life, Health, Wealth and Weight Loss. I'm your host Magic Barclay, Lead Practitioner at Holistic Natural Health Australia and number one best selling author. In this podcast I aim to give you practical tips on how to accelerate and sustain your health, increase your financial, spiritual and emotional wealth and to look at something that haunts many of us needlessly, weight loss. In some episodes I'll have guests available to give you even more tips but in others the floor is yours. Drop us a line at A Magical Life podcast on Facebook and let me know what you would like to know more about. Now sit back and enjoy because it is time for you to create and truly discover a magical life. Welcome back to A Magical Life, I'm your host Magic Barclay and today Tiffany Roper joins us. Now Tiffany is a mum before she is anything else. She's blessed to have two amazing young daughters who motivate her to be the best she can be every day. She loves learning, improving herself, serving others and growth. Tiffany loves to spend time with her girls and create amazing memories with them. She's been a project manager for 20 years in the corporate world before realising that's not what makes her feel fulfilled and it's not her purpose but it has given her a great background in helping others stay accountable to hit goals in a timely manner. Tiffany is now a coach of mums of young girls who want to hit goals and live a life on purpose so they can be the best role models for the young daughters and create leaders of tomorrow that we desperately need. Welcome Tiffany. Hi Magic, thanks so much and it's such an honour to be on your show. I'm just excited to be here and have a great conversation with you so thanks so much. It's my pleasure. Now I have sons so it's a bit of a different world but when you have daughters I guess there's a lot more onus on you as a mum to make sure that they're not only able to cope in this rather male led world but also to excel and follow their passions. What's kind of the biggest learning curve that you've hit being a mum of girls? Oh my god that is such a great question. So I came from a very strong dad and a mum that unfortunately wasn't very involved and or raising even though my parents were married through my high school and what I found and I thought it was just me is me and my two older sisters were all raised to have that you know take charge, go after everything, you don't need a man and don't depend on one you know and it's helped in certain ways especially in the corporate world and as you said it's very male -dominated especially in corporate IT very male -dominated still and it helped a lot but it also made me almost go on the error of too masculine if you will and losing a bit of my feminine energy because in the corporate world you're not allowed to show emotion you're not allowed to really go with creativity and intuition and that kind of stuff it's you know go go go and get to a timeline and get this done and this needed done yesterday and you know it's almost like you had to take on a persona or wear a mask and I thought it was just me and how I was raised but I soon found in different personal development stuff that I've done that it's really a generation of women that have been raised to you know really depend on ourselves and not depend on men and I think it's really affected the family unit and so when I'm raising my girls I want them to be strong leaders I don't want to create another generation of me too as you will and my daughters you know afraid to speak up and in that I also want them to not be afraid to fully be who they are and that includes you know we all have masculine and feminine energy but that includes to make sure that you're using your intuition your creativity your loud emotion that kind of stuff that I feel like in this generation that I was raised in maybe it wasn't something that we were kind of given permission to do and I think that's been one of my biggest learning curves is how do I create leaders and my daughters without having them see femininity being a woman as something bad or something you're not allowed to do and to truly embrace their full selves. That's great. Now I asked my guests the same three questions and I really can't wait for your answers for these so here comes your first one. What can your expertise do to accelerate health not just physical health but emotional and spiritual health? So I really think and especially because you know as moms we're absolutely the biggest role models for our daughters I really think it stems down to you know we have this like to -do list right and it never ends and you think as a mom you'll just get seven more things done and then if you get all this done tonight it'll make tomorrow easier and somehow that next day's list becomes just as long as not longer and there is no end and so after years of really lying to myself and saying well if I just get through their teething if I just get through this sickness if I just get through this project at work then everything will be okay and I'll have time to rest I'll have time for myself and I quickly found I was just lying to myself so I really think the health and us having a healthy mindset and then being able to be these role models for our daughters that they need is to start with ourselves and I think when we get you know we're exhausted from the day then we have to come up this whole other level of energy when we come home and start all over with our kids and helping with homework or getting dinner ready or getting ready for bed or getting time with them and we just fall down at the end of the day exhausted and we forgot that we're still a person a woman a wife before we were a mom and so we don't have the energy to do anything for ourselves and so we think oh I snapped at my kid today so tomorrow I'm just gonna love him harder that'll make up for it I'm gonna love him harder and it's not your children needing to love harder if you want them to love themselves and take care of themselves you have to love yourself and take care of yourself because if you only show taking care of others which is a great aspect of femininity and being a mom the nurturing side but then you only make them great moms which is awesome but you don't show them how to take care of themselves first and I think that's the big piece we miss as moms we can't go into the do as I say not as I do because it doesn't work we have to walk the walk and be in alignment and start with ourselves very much so now look we talk about wealth here and I think many people think that's just financial but it can also be emotional and personal wealth so what are your top three tips to creating wealth absolutely yeah I think it starts with yourself and it starts with mindset it starts with what you think about money if you grew up in a mindset of scarcity I grew up very poor and it took me a really long time to go oh I don't have to hold on to every little penny that I've actually opened my hand and let money go it will also allow money to flow in instead of desperately holding on so tight to it and so that's one thing is just making sure you have more of a mindset of abundance versus scarcity and then I think another way is to have that that confidence in ourselves that we add value whether it's you know in a corporate world whether you're a stay -at -home mom whether you're having your own business whatever it is don't undersell the value that you give and we often don't have that confidence or feel like we're truly worth it and so we're often undervaluing and discounting what we really should be charging whether that's negotiating at the in the corporate world or self -care we give ourselves or what we charge for a course or whatever that we actually do or product we sell and we really need to understand the value that we give to the marketplace and then charge as such and so I think that again comes back to worth and um and it's you will never make more than what you deem yourself worth making and so just make sure that you're in alignment with that as well so I think we just have to kind of see it holistically while it's great to understand investing and savings and all this kind of stuff um it's really again starts with having the self -confidence valuing yourself correctly and having a mindset of abundance instead of scarcity and so we know really when you give and you nurture you get so much more back than what you ever give in that serving and what we're so great to you know doing as moms so we really just need to have the right mindset in doing that and so we invite that wealth in and we're charging correctly as we're doing it and I think it really just sets you up for very different way of doing things when you change your mindset when it comes to money. I love that answer that's great now listen we do talk about weight here as well and as women we're often plagued by our own weight issues certainly as moms our bodies change so have you ever battled your weight if so what was the trigger to losing it and what can you offer their listeners in their weight journey and also to reduce stress which we know is a key factor and you hit exactly on it I love that because we catch ourselves in this world where of course we're always comparing ourselves with everybody else and it's generally in a negative aspect well I'm not as good as that person I'm not worth as much as that person I'm not as pretty as that person I'm not as skinny as that person whatever it is and of course anytime you're comparing yourself you're stealing joy from yourself and so it's just really important to and do this as well with your daughters I saw a statistic just the other day where they said eight -year -olds are now on diets and I've been really big about raising my girls to understand that your body will change throughout your life whether it's through puberty whether it's you know as you get older and you have kids of your own whether it's whatever it is your body's going to change and fluctuate and to honor that change so you of course still need to take care of yourself and put your health first in order to be there for everybody that you love and want to take care of and you know we all struggle with that and I have my own struggles with it I'm definitely not perfect but just be very careful on valuing yourself solely on your pant size and I think we do that too much and then we compare ourselves way too much and then we need to make sure that we're being very careful with what we say about our body to ourselves we think as we're saying it maybe in the mirror and you have little ears running by because then they start thinking of it that way oh are my thighs too big is my booty too big or whatever it is so I've also been very careful about not making those comments ever out loud no matter what I might be thinking inside at the time and just honoring the female body and knowing we all are going to fluctuate and you have so much value to give that has absolutely nothing to do with your looks with your weight with your pant size but still in that aspect you are worthy and you have so much value that you do need to take care of yourself and do that if nothing else you don't want to do it for yourself which we really should then do it so you're around longer for your kids and so you can still be that role model for them as long as you can possibly be some great distinctions there now we love freebies here Tiffany what can you offer the listeners and where can they find it so I have a a course but I set up a ebook that I have and so I would love to be able to give anybody who is interested it's helping moms get on their own to -do list so it's a top 10 tips for that and so we start really understanding the value of taking care of ourselves and why we need to in order to be the role models we need to be for our daughters and so I'm going to be getting a website and all this kind of stuff up but in the meantime feel free to email me at .com girlmomfamilycoachingatgmail and I will definitely get that to your listeners so I'm very excited to be able to offer that and there's some really great tips and things that I've found over years of you know just research and learning and personal development that kind of stuff that I would love to share with listeners. Terrific and we'll recap that at the end of this kind of roll on but having been raised by a mother that perhaps didn't see my worth as a female what can you suggest to moms that have made mistakes and how do they stop those mistakes becoming intergenerational? That's so smart and such a great question and it's one of the biggest things I want to change we obviously we need to forgive we have to forgive others we have to forgive our own moms for the mistakes they've made I've had a rocky relationship at times with my mom but I've also understood that she could only give what she knew what she had and so she did the best she could with the skills that she had and that's why I didn't want to be this resentful frustrated person I wanted to be someone that could forgive and show that people are you know valuable enough in your lives to not cut out to actually forgive them for it and it's also taught me to step on her shoulders and step on my dad's shoulders who kind of had to be the dad and mom and say this is what I learned from them and instead of repeating those mistakes and starting where they started I'm going to stand on their shoulders and start from there and I think too often because it's easy because we're exhausted because it's a lot harder being a good mom than we really ever thought when we started out and it's habitual we kind of do what we know and we're like I'll never say that to my kid and then all of a sudden you're saying that to your kid and so one forgive your mom and forgive yourself because you cannot give from what you don't already know and if you can't forgive yourself it's really hard to truly forgive others so forgive yourself for the mistakes you've made we'll make them every day anybody who's trying hard is going to make mistakes it's easy to not make mistakes if you sit on the sideline and don't do anything with your kids and don't make any decisions and you know be that type of mom you're not gonna make mistakes well great but you know what I rather be in the game and I rather make the mistakes and I rather learn from them and I rather apologize and show how I will do better because it also shows our kids how they can do the same so I think it's really huge and forgiving you know a mom that's maybe not great in the petting your history and then forgiving yourself and then learning and being determined that you're going to step on their shoulders and do better instead of repeating those mistakes and so we can stop the generational pandemic that we really have in just repeating a horrendous cycle and again it's not from an intention it's not from meaning to I think it's just we have so much on our plates now as moms we're not the moms from the 50s that just took care of the household and the kids and it's not saying that that's a not a huge job because it is that was a lot but now a lot of our mom these moms these days are also you know making the bacon bringing home the bread whatever you want to call it we're earning as well as having to do all the rest of it and it's a lot and so that's why it's just so key to forgive do yourself better the next day but start with loving you I promise you you're never going to be able to teach your kids to love themselves and take care of themselves if you don't show it first and you're never going to be able to love them as hard as you want to if you don't love yourself first because it all starts with you it does definitely now look this is going to probably come out controversial and I'm sorry podcast gods if I'm going there but I'm not sorry as well there's men and there's women and women were built very differently physically emotionally mentally how do we nurture girls to be happy to be girls because there's this you know you mentioned the episode but there is a pandemic of this gender confusion and I think we're losing the essence of what it really means to be female I know you know Matt Walsh did his documentary on what is a woman and so many people couldn't even answer that basic question of it's a chromosomal thing we're born as a woman so how do you help girls in this really gender confused world to know the worth to value being female and you know to make that work another yeah very insightful and great question and I think again it's giving ourselves permission to do it first and it's not even for me it's not even a sex thing we all have masculine and feminine it doesn't matter what your sex is it doesn't matter if you're gay or or whatever we all have masculine feminine and we feel more masculine or more feminine that's just our essence our energy and it's really about not denying it I think we again it's this generation of you go through the the bra burning femininity and I'm not taking away from what that gave us because we're able to kind of stand on those shoulders but I think because of it it's it was almost looked at like a man -hating and it's absolutely not what I feel I love the masculine and that masculine energy especially in a family unit is very necessary and I really think and you know even if it's not in a traditional household you know I'm saying or it's like you know man woman and kids or whatever you still have that masculine energy generally and so and if you don't you know you can have others around you an uncle whatever around you so I'm not taking away from that masculine energy I feel like they have such a want and a need to serve and I think because we were taught as a generation of women to not depend on a man because that's so negative that men have almost felt marginalized they were used to being able at least say okay my value is bringing home the money okay now you can do that so what's my value here and we're so used to saying well if you're not going to step up and figure it out I guess I've got to do it so I'm going to step up into my masculine and then often you have a masculine energy and a masculine energy going at each other and it's causing a lot of fights and a lot of division in families and a lot of families divorcing and splitting up and so I think it's really women you know we need to feel safe and feel like a man is going to lead if he wants to and serve really and a man needs to be able to be vulnerable as well and have that you know a bit of that femininity side if you will and interacting with us as well but it starts with us you can't control others right so I always try to think of how does it start with me and that means I have to step out of my masculine role more I have to trust more and let someone else lead sometimes I have to ask for help and be willing to ask for help even if it's not going to be done perfect if the dishes weren't done how I wanted if the meal wasn't made how I wanted if the clothes weren't folded how I wanted it's okay because they're at least trying to serve and we have to allow that instead of just saying oh well it's not done my way so I'll just do it and then shooing them aside so it's being vulnerable and it's coming with a sincere curiosity in and helping them see where they can serve and where they have value as well and also it's really big about honoring our feminine cycle I was raised unfortunately where I was made fun of anytime I had my period and so to me it was I wasn't until in my early 30s before I was comfortable going getting feminine products in the feminine aisle at the store and so I wanted to make sure for my girls they honored that it's like yes you have this and it's amazing the cycle that you have that allows you to have kids if you choose that's amazing and let's honor that and your body could change when you have kids and maybe never go back to what it was before but wow you just made a how amazing is that and we need to be able to honor our own femininity and be able to sit in it and be comfortable in it instead of always wearing the masculine mask that we put on for our own safety for our own you know trying to step up on the corporate ladder and we feel like it's needed there and so again it starts with us and what we can do and then making sure that we're a four -letter word and femininity is something that you can honor instead of being oh it's man -hating and it's about you know broad burning there's so much more to that and if we step into our whole being as the part masculine a lot of feminine in you know a lot of women as moms we are only going to honor that and I think it's coming back in style and if it isn't I'm going to help shove it back in style if I have to I'll use my masculine shoving energy instead of my flow energy to do that because it's so needed we have that's why I'm on the mission of really creating these female leaders we need tomorrow because again nothing is the masculine but they've kind of had a long time to you know rule the world and we are we are and I think if we have the feminine energy have permission to be the feminine energy and you know be the leaders that we can be for this world it's just amazing what it can become and I know it's been you know heading that way and I think it's really the time to to kind of take over if you will and be our full selves.
Evangelism On Fire
A highlight from Ghizlaine Taft's God Story
"Welcome to Evangelism on Fire podcast. My name is Mark Thomas, an ordained pastor, a teacher of the bestselling Book of All Time, your host, and most importantly, your evangelism coach. In each week, I bring you an on fire message to empower and coach you to live the most exciting life God has created you to live by actively sharing your faith in Jesus with others. I'm so thankful for our time together today. It's such an honor spending time with you, Evangelism on Fire nation. This podcast will truly inspire you, and I believe that it will inspire so many people that you know. And if you're inspired and feeling moved to share this, then please message some friends. Post this on social media and let people know about this episode so we can get this message out there more. I appreciate you and everyone listening right now. And a quick reminder, please subscribe to our evangelism on fire over on Apple podcast right now and leave us a review at the end of this episode of the part that you were inspired by the most and spread the message of evangelism on fire forward. The youth today represent the future of our country. Many of them are putting their hope in everything other than God, they are being deceived. Grandparents aren't taking their grandkids to church like they did in the past. The church has been dwindling, which means the younger generation is not hearing about God and his word nearly as much as they used to. That's why it is so important for us to get in front of them and make sure that worldly desire is not leading them astray. We want to let them know that there is hope for them through a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. In order to do this and to make an impact, we need your help. We need you to join us on this mission of being an inspiration for the younger generation. To do this, become a partner at evangelism on fire ministry. Being a partner means making a commitment to give whatever you can to help us on our mission. We can't do this without you. We can't do this without the support of God's kingdom. Let's reach the world with the most important message that exists, the gospel message. Join us for the plans we have for ministry in 2023 by becoming an evangelism on fire ministry partner by going to today's show notes and clicking on the giving link to become a monthly partner by setting up a monthly donation or go to our website evangelismonfire .com. Click on the donate button to give a monthly reoccurring donation or a one time gift. Thank you for joining us to give hope to the world. Welcome evangelism on fire nation. And this is your host, Mark Thomas. Welcome to episode 151. In last week's episode 150 and in today's episode, we are going to the evangelism on fire podcast archives and I am putting in your ear the top two rated God stories from all of the God stories in our podcast archives. Today, I want you to listen to this amazing God story of Gigi. She grew up as a practicing Muslim who now follows Jesus with a fierce love and passion as a Christ follower. This is one of your favorite all time God stories on evangelism on fire podcast. So I want you to sit back, listen to this amazing, amazing God story and enjoy evangelism on fire nation. I have a special guest with us today. Her name is Gigi and I'm so excited to have her on our podcast today. She has an amazing testimony of what Jesus has done in her life. So Gigi, say hello to evangelism on fire nation and tell us a little bit about yourself so we can get to know you. All right. Good morning evangelism on fire. I pray that my message blesses you today. Yes. Yes. Amen. Yes. So let me tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Ghislaine Labar Taft, but I'm known as Gigi as my close friends call me. I was born and raised in Morocco in North Africa. I am actually the product of a French Catholic mother and a Muslim Moroccan father. How crazy is that? Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. That is right. They met in med school. They wed and they had two boys and a girl. That would be me. And since I am the youngest, I had to toughen up at a very, very young age. So when I was three years old, my mom had had enough of not being fully accepted by my paternal family. She didn't want to convert to Islam. And my father, who was very cool and very opened while he lived in France, became very Muslimish, so to speak, when he went back home. And that's part of the culture actually. So while on vacation, she met an American and just up and left us. My dad, who was a prominent doctor, found us a nanny who loved us unconditionally. And Pastor Mark, I truly believe that that's where my unconditional love for others come from. She really felt that in me, you know, those back. Right. That's amazing. To this day, it actually touches me to the core that someone would be willing to leave her just family to care for us. It actually brings tears to my eyes, truly, you know, so that's sacrificed right there, you know. And the reason she did that is at first she would come and take care of us during the day, but I would cry and wouldn't sleep all night because I missed her so much. So she gave it all up and came to live with us. Wow. That is so amazing. And you're right, Gigi. I mean, what a great expression of unconditional love. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so when I was six years old, my father died in a plane crash. There were 60 doctors on board. One survived to tell the tale. Very sad story. My dad's younger brother, my uncle, and his wife took us in. They had three kids. We were three. And you would think we were the Brady Bunch, except we were not a happy family, unfortunately. So my uncle, and like my father, was a practicing Muslim and taught us to pray five times a day, which is how we pray, how Islam teaches you to pray, basically. It would yank us out of bed to ensure that we had prayed. So literally we would be asleep at night and he'd yank us out to make sure that we had prayed. Not having the time to pray meant that you would pile up your prayers. Islam requires the faithful to pray five times per day and allows you to make up those prayers if you are busy or if you forget, basically. Allah is the authority and he's not to be questioned. Actually, nothing is to be questioned, period. So I grew up really fearing and hating this punishing God who sat up in heaven and seemed to enjoy tormenting me, at least that's how I felt, right? Nothing was going right at that time. When I was 16, I found my mom through the embassy, the French embassy, and I ran away. I literally went to school one day and ran away. My mom lived in New York. She sent me a plane ticket and I came to the US with not even my toothbrush, I tell people. My brother, $20. And that's what I had in my pocket. So you not even a toothbrush and you had $20. That's all the money that you had with you. That's all I had with me. And I crossed the ocean and came to this country with absolutely nothing, an empty heart, broken empty heart. I had left my brother and that's what happened. So it took a few months because we had to wait for the visa. My mom had gotten me a visa and I left Morocco. I never returned until 2013 when my brother, who's biologically my cousin, but as I had said before, we were three and they were three. So we call each other siblings, brothers and sisters. When he got married, he insisted for me to go back. And that was my first time back, 80s. So of course being the way I was, I looked for love in the wrong places. And I met a young man and we had a very bitter divorce and I moved to Florida. I was an empty shell and I studied religion, trying to find gods all over the place. I thought, well, if it's not in a guide, there has to be a God somewhere. And I landed on an ashram studying Buddhism. And I felt like that Buddha's teachings were calm, loving, and that was something that I could follow. Meanwhile, I earned my degree in teaching in education, but couldn't find a job. So I had to move to Charlottesville, Virginia to teach French and Spanish at a local high school. So that's pretty much what happened, like how I grew up, so to speak. That's an amazing, unique story of your life. It really is very different. So let me ask you this, Gigi, like when you came to this country, to our country with only, again, you said no toothbrush, only $20 in your pocket. What empowered you to have the courage to make that move with only $20 in your pocket? My brother wanted me to leave. He knew, my older brother knew that my family was trying to marry me. So in Islam, they marry people at a young age, really, or something. And people were starting to look at me and ask my uncle for my hand in marriage. And he was considering it. And at the time I was 16 and my brother wanted me to study and be educated and do something with my life. So he's the one who pushed me, really. Yeah, that is so awesome. So how did you discover Jesus as your savior, as a once practicing Muslim? Well, one day my friend Bob and his wife invited me to Efford Baptist Church, which is a church here in Savannah County, for their daughter's baptism. I really didn't want to go because I didn't believe in Christianity. You have to understand, for Muslims, the Trinity is not only foreign, but it's absolutely horrible. How can you be God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, right? It's just not heard of. So I really wasn't interested in religion and Christianity, but remember, I had a big heart and love that was instilled in me. So I went with a gift, because I love to give gifts, and I really did not go for any religious reasons. After all, what kind of a God would allow a three -year -old to be abandoned by her mother? Or what kind of a God would allow a six -year -old to lose her father to be raised by an authoritarian uncle? emotionally, My uncle physically, and sexually abused me, and that was hard for me. Yeah, so of course you're thinking, if there is a God, what kind of God will allow that pain and suffering into my life? Right, absolutely. And so at the end of the service, the pastor made an altar call, which I ignored completely. Actually I was thinking, I need to buy food, I need to do this, I need to do that. And he then asked everyone to stand and sing, give thanks with a grateful heart. And honestly, I don't even remember what happened. All I know is that the flood of tears emanated from my eyes. I couldn't even stand, and I crawled to the altar. Oh, wow. You literally, you crawled to the altar? I could not walk, Pastor Mark, and that is the God's honest truth. I couldn't even carry myself. I crawled there, and while I was crawling, I felt all the guilt from years of sin, all the shame, all the hurt, all the anger leave my body. Wow. I just felt instantly renewed, like a renewed body. And it was all replaced with love, with hope, with gentleness, with kindness, with goodness. Really the fruits of the spirits just oozed out of my body. The love of God, that love and peace that really encompasses all understanding. And literally, I met Jesus, my Lord and Savior, at the altar that day. Wow. And you literally, you weren't going to let anything stop you, Gigi. You literally crawled to the altar to accept Jesus as your Savior. I really did. I really did. Physically, I couldn't even do it. I just crawled. That's the bottom line. Wow. That is what I'm talking about. Wow. So you weren't ashamed of the gospel. You knew that Jesus was calling you and you crawled to the altar to receive him. And on your way there, he is totally cleansing you. And you're being reborn with each inch that you crawl to the altar. Wow. I just absolutely love that. You know what? You got me fired up. Just tell me that story of you accepted Jesus as your Savior. Wow. It's amazing. I still sometimes have to pinch myself just to be like, wow, I can't believe this happened to me. Yes, I was saved. I didn't feel the big, you know, anything. It was big. Right. It was big. Oh, wow. Wow. So if there's anyone listening to our podcast right now and they're thinking about coming to Jesus and, you know, accepting him as your Savior, but something that's holding them back. I want you as someone who literally physically crawled to the altar to receive Jesus. What would you tell that person right now? I would just say, just go. What have you got to lose? Honestly. Yeah. What can you lose? Just run. Don't even think about it. Who cares what others think? You know, the whole time I was there, I was like, oh, my gosh, what if somebody sees me? What if somebody recognizes me and my sins? And I just run, crawl, do what you have to do. Yeah, that is so good. Gigi said run, crawl, do what you have to do. Just don't hesitate and wait to accept Jesus as your savior. If he is calling you right now, don't wait. Just crawl to him. Run to him. So Gigi, how long have you been a Christian? I've been a Christian since 2003 when I received baptism. Wow. Since 2003. So what was your life like before you made a decision to follow Jesus? So honestly, as a Muslim, I was very bitter. I didn't understand Allah. And since nothing was to be questioned, we just went through the motions and we followed the teachings. I was empty, though. I was a high school teacher, so I was a contributor. I was really contributing to society. But I felt numb on the inside. I loved on children, but I had no love for myself. I chose abusive men to fulfill a void and I would then leave them or they would leave me. And that gave me like a feeling of justifying my victimhood. I was just a victim basically in this world. It was a dark period in my life, to be honest. Yeah. But living without having a relationship with Jesus Christ is really rocky. It's a costly life. I mean, the Bible is clear. It says the wages of sin is death. And I was dying on the inside. Yeah. Yeah. And many times that spiritual death will lead to an actual physical death. Exactly. Exactly. And maybe not for me, because I was teaching, I was coming home, but I was dying on the inside. And so, of course, you have anxiety takes over, depression takes over. So, yes, eventually, you know, suicidal thoughts were my middle name at one point. Oh, wow. That is darkness. Hey, Gigi, if there's a Muslim practicing Muslim listening or anyone who is outside of the faith of Christianity and they've been searching or they're considering searching for Jesus as their savior, especially to a practice of Muslim, you know, what would you what would you say to encourage them? I would say read the Bible. It's very factual. The history doesn't you cannot you cannot refute history, right? It's written. And I would say so study it for sure. But but have an open heart and just just come and visit a church, just meet the people. There's no questions that will not be answered. There's no doubt that will not be answered. People will put their arms around you and not judge you. I remember saying to Pastor John, who was the pastor of the time, an effort Baptist, I remember saying, but I don't understand the Trinity. And he would say to me, he would put his arms around me and say, keep coming back. Yeah, I would say keep coming back. That is so good. That is so good. Now, I know evangelism on fire nation. You're probably wondering what I'm wondering, you know, about Gigi. So, Gigi, how did your life change after you became a Christian? So after I became a Christian, I felt really free from the inside out. I felt free from oppression. You know, we're in a time where people talk about oppression. I felt free from oppression, which I had created in my own mind. And I will venture to say anyone who feels oppressed is because they have created that in their own mind. I had been a victim as a child, but now I'm a victor. I'm victorious over everything. Yes. My self -esteem is stronger. And I did that really by speaking positively as well. The Bible says we are snared by the words of our mouth. And I choose to speak life every day around me, around the people that are with me so that I can continue to be a positive person. I don't feel broken anymore. I don't feel ugly. I don't want to commit suicide anymore. I don't pursue every broken man to try to fix their life. That was my thing, right? Let me find the most broken person so I can fix them. Yeah. So I actually stopped dating. So I had decided to stop dating for a while so I could date myself and get to know myself. Yeah. Say that one more time. That's so good. I want everyone to hear that again. For sure. I stopped dating, going from one man to another, and I started dating myself. I had a relationship with myself. I started loving on myself, taking care of myself. And I prayed to God. I wrote down actually what I wanted in a man. And a year later, I met my husband, Mike. And we have been married for 21 years now. We have an awesome kid together, which is a whole story with our son, actually. And I wish I could say that everything was easy and smooth since I've been a Christian, but that would be lying. Right. It's not that smooth. A lot of people think, well, I'm going to become a Christian and everything will be perfect. And that's not so. We had, for example, we had to, we tried to have a child for three years and nothing happened. And at the time, like I said, I was a teacher at a local high school and I would see these 16, 17 year old get pregnant. And I would say, God, I'm serving you. I'm here 100 % for you. Why am I not getting pregnant? Right. We depleted a bank account with in vitro fertilization. And I was praying one day and I heard God loudly and clearly say, be still and know that I am God. And then he said, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. And right then, right there. And then I went into all the fertility drugs and I flushed them in the toilet bowl. And I said, we're stopping this. God knows my heart and knows I want to be a mother. And that's what's going to be. Wow. So you totally trusted in the Lord with all your heart that he, not the fertility drugs, not anything else, that he was the one that's going to provide you with a child that you have a heart desire for. Yes, amen. Exactly. That's what I did. And I remember the devil one day saying to me, see, you're not pregnant. Like every month would pass. And you say, see, look at the God you serve. You're not pregnant. And I would literally open the front door. I could still see myself doing that. I would open the front door. I would put the Bible on the floor. I would stand on it and I'd say, devil, flee out of my house. I am standing emotionally, spiritually, and physically on the word. Amen. That's praise God. That is so powerful. So powerful. Two years later, two years later, I remember I even went and bought a pair of little shoes, like baby shoes, and I would put them in the living room because that was one thing with my husband. I'd always have to pick up his shoes. And that was very annoying to me. Right. So, so I bought little baby shoes and I would put them in the living room and pick them up and put them back. And it might sound crazy to some, but you have to visualize what you want in life. You have to speak it. You, if you want it to manifest, you have to manifest it by faith first, really. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That is so true. And I want to encourage everyone listening, Evangelism on Fire Nation, whatever dreams God has put in your heart right now, I want you to visualize those dreams like Gigi did with having the expectation of her child and speak those things which be not as though that they're going to be and trusting God for him to bring it to pass and for him to manifest your dreams. So that is so good, Gigi. Hey, what now? This is the question of the day. OK, what what's one thing about your testimony that you've never shared with anyone? OK, so I have I've never shared with anyone that I have had two visions of Jesus, and that was while I was a Muslim and Jesus was rescuing me. One, when I was nine years old, I tried to commit suicide and I was we had we had a house that was very, very high and I was upstairs and I thought I should throw myself from the second floor building. And and he appeared to me and told me that he loved me and that scared me so much that I just rebuked him right away. Like I was like, no, I literally said no, because there could not be a Christian God in a Muslim family. So that I mean, if my family had heard of that, they would have destroyed me. I don't even I can't even imagine what could have happened to me, honestly. So so I just rebuked that and let it go. And the second one was after I had graduated from from college and all, I was in my bed and I was just crying because I felt like there was nothing for me to do. No one loved me. I didn't care. I was a victim. Nobody cared. And I wanted to kill myself. And I closed my eyes and I pictured myself throwing myself in the abyss. And I felt this hand, this huge hand pick me up and put me back on this mountain. And it happened like three times that same day, that same moment. And when I looked up, there was a bright light around me. The room was all bright and actually my eyes were open. So it's a it's a true vision, like not a dream or anything. And and Jesus was telling me that everything was going to be fine. Wow, that's absolutely amazing. Hey, I want to thank you so much for, you know, sharing those two really their personal touches from God. And I just I considered an honor and a privilege that you're sharing that part of your testimony that you've never shared with anyone before. Gigi, thank you so much for having the courage to do that. Thank you for having me, Pastor. Absolutely. Now, if someone's listening to this podcast right now and they haven't committed to following Jesus, what's the number one thing you want to share with them? If someone is listening today and I hope they are, I urge you to give your life to Jesus Christ. Jesus died on the cross to show me and you have to love that unconditional love, really. You know, it's one thing to love, but it's another thing to have that unconditional love. He offers us forgiveness of our sins. He washes them all away as we confess with our mouth that he is Lord. He took someone like me. Sometimes I think God has a funny sense of humor. He took someone like me, a piece of coal, and turned it into a diamond.
KAILASH HAZARI IAS ACADEMY /ADMINISTRATIVE CONSULTANT SERVICE (WORLDWIDE)
Exoplanet
"Hello friends, yz city be a rocky earth sized exoplanet recently astronomers have detected a repeating radio signal from yz city be a rocky earth sized exoplanet rotating around a small red dwarf star yz city just 12 light years from earth. The discovery of a magnetic field around an exoplanet suggests that it could be a habitable planet. The radio waves were confirmed to exist by the interaction between the planet's magnetic field and the star. The existence of an exoplanetary magnetic field confirms the presence of a rocky exoplanet in close proximity to its star. The radio waves are strong enough to be picked up on earth. Intense bursts of energy from the yz city star exoplanet exchange produce spectacular similar auroral lights to the disruptions caused by energy search from the sun on earth and orbiting satellites. Astronomers hope that further research will confirm these results and help them learn more about the rocky netherworlds that exist in the deepest reaches of space.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from BIG CRYPTO NEWS! PAYPAL STABLECOIN ON ETHEREUM, BILL HINMAN SEC INVESTIGATION & RIPPLE XRPL CARBON MARKETS
"Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. This content is brought to you by Uphold, which makes crypto investing easy. I've been a user of Uphold since 2017, so I can certainly vouch for this platform. They have 10 plus million users, 250 plus cryptocurrencies, and they're available in 150 countries. You can also trade precious metals and equities on this platform. If you'd like to learn more about Uphold, please visit the link in the description. Well, folks, the big news of the day is, of course, PayPal launching their U .S. dollar stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain. This is massive, massive news. PayPal is a giant company, a well -known brand existed before crypto, of course, and they are building on the Ethereum blockchain. So there are multiple impacts to the crypto industry and market here. One further validation that the technology solves real world problems. You have a big name like PayPal adopting it further gives credibility to the crypto industry and the asset class. It will help usher in more capital from institutional investors and obviously more retail will enter the market. So let me give you some details here. PayPal launches U .S. dollar stablecoin pay USD, which is, well, the ticker symbol is PYUSD is designed to contribute to the opportunity stablecoins offer for payments and is 100 % backed by U .S. dollar deposits, short term U .S. treasuries and similar cash equivalents. PayPal USD is redeemable one to one for U .S. dollars and is issued by Paxos Trust Company. Now, remember, Paxos was the one working with Binance to launch BUSD. In fact, I interviewed the co -founder and CEO of Paxos last year, Charles Cascarilla. You can definitely check out that interview. And Paxos is a regulated entity. Now all of a sudden, six months later, Paxos was green lighted to, of course, manage issue and manage the PayPal stablecoin. Funny how that works out, right, guys? So they said here, starting today and rolling out in the coming weeks, eligible U .S. PayPal customers who purchase PayPal USD will be able to, one, transfer a PayPal USD between PayPal and compatible external wallets, send person to person payments using PYUSD, fund purchases with PayPal USD by selecting it at checkout, convert any of PayPal supported cryptocurrencies to and from PayPal USD. So another on and off ramp. And remember, PayPal already offers the ability to buy and sell crypto via the PayPal app as well as the Venmo app. So this is huge, guys. Once again, further validation, massive adoption here, very bullish. And, you know, one of the things I was talking about today and I was tweeting about it, we're seeing some big news items coming out here that it's almost priming for a pump. Right. And Bitcoin has been moving sideways for a long time. Kind of boring. It needs some sort of catalyst to drive it either up or down. So there's no guarantee which way it's going to go. We'll have to wait and see. But this news is almost looking like a primer for a move upwards for Bitcoin to continue its retracement. Now, some are calling for new all time highs this year. I hope it happens, but I'm going to default to how Bitcoin has played out historically. So here's a quote from Dan Schulman, the president and CEO of PayPal. The shift towards digital currencies requires a stable instrument that is both digitally native and easily connected to a fiat currency like the U .S. dollar, said Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal. Our commitment to responsible innovation and compliance and our track record delivering new experiences to our customers provides the foundation necessary to contribute to the growth of digital payments through PayPal USD. And it continues here, the article, which and this is really insightful. It says, building the bridge between Fiat and Web three for consumers, merchants and developers, PayPal USD will be available to consumers, merchants and developers to seamlessly connect fiat and digital currencies as the only stable coin supported within the PayPal network. PayPal USD leverages PayPal's decades long experience in payments at scale, combined with the speed cost programmability of block chain protocols as an ERC 20 issued token on the Ethereum block chain, PayPal used or PayPal USD will be available to an already large and growing community of external developers, wallets and Web three applications can be easily adopted by exchanges and will be deployed to power experiences within the PayPal ecosystem. Folks, big things are happening. I hope you recognize what is taking place here right before your eyes and what's on the horizon. What's going to take place here? Game theory, expect more players to come out with their versions of the stable coins or their stable coin, and I tweeted about it. I expect the stable coin wars to heat up, folks. And I tweeted about this in October of twenty twenty two. My predictions about what's going to happen this year and I said, expect stable coin wars to heat up next year. It wouldn't surprise me if the U .S. government was to select like Circles USDC for their digital dollar. And right now, Tether is the largest stable coin in the market. USDC is the second largest. But boy, expect P .Y. USD to jump up there because PayPal has millions of customers and they can easily get a lot of adoption overnight right in a very short period of time. And they have a trusted brand. People recognize it. They will want to use it. So huge, huge news. And one of the things I tweeted about is I'm curious if Elon Musk, he's going to create a stablecoin for X. Some people said he said he won't do that. But look, he could change his mind or he's going to use PayPal's stablecoin, given he was one of the founders of PayPal. That's where his pedigree is, right? Payments. And that's what he's trying to do with X. So this is has a lot of implications, guys, and very bullish for the market. Here's what Patrick McHenry, the House Financial Services chairman, one of the gentlemen who put out crypto regulations and much more. He said this announcement is a clear signal that stablecoins, if issued under a clear regulatory framework, hold promise as a pillar of our 21st century payments system. So big statements there, folks. Now, Chainlink God, many of you may follow this handle, did a great summary on why this is a big deal. So he said he did a whole thread. He said, why does PayPal launching a stablecoin P .Y. USD on Ethereum matters? First, P .Y. USD shows there's a clear demand from financial services companies to tokenize assets on blockchain. Tokenizing dollars is the most straightforward asset to tokenize and is directly relevant for payment processors like PayPal. PayPal has a majority share of online payment processing with 40 million plus transactions processed per day, over 400 million plus active users globally and 30 million plus merchant accounts. PayPal launching their stablecoin legitimizes crypto Web3 and stablecoins for normies and regulators. The fact that PayPal is issuing P .Y. USD on a public or the public Ethereum blockchain instead of a private PayPal chain shows the power of network effects. Folks, that is key. It goes back to what we've talked many times about and even I've shared thoughts from David Schwartz of Ripple. Wall gardens, you know, they're they're fine, but don't expect the public and people to use it, right, because it's just another centralized ledger. And we've seen JP Morgan try it with JPM coin. But who the hell is going to want to use it? It's a wall garden. So private blockchains will exist. That's fine. You can do your private blockchain, but that doesn't mean it's going to get mass adoption. And as Chainlink got highlighted here, network effects, Metcalfe's law, right, folks, the more adoption a network gets, the more participants, more builders, the stronger it becomes, the more valuable it becomes. So he said here, no doubt they will expand to other chains as well as other stablecoins have to obtain more market share. So we know USD and UST together, you know, they're on multiple blockchains. Expect P .Y. USD to do the same thing. He said the market cap of all stablecoins is over one hundred and twenty two billion dollars, peaking at one hundred and eighty billion a year ago. While amount circulating has downtrended during the bear market, it has held up much better than the price of most tokens or total value loss of most decentralized applications. The demand is sticky and P .Y. USD could be a major growth factor. Stablecoins are fundamentally a superior version of fiat, digitally native, programmable, low fees, fast settlement, zero borders, permissionless to transact in. Is this just the very beginning of PayPal stepping into Web3, which shares many of the same properties? Folks, I think so. I think they're going to do a lot more. So he continues here. But I want to just share some some of the thoughts. You know, this is a pretty long thread. So bullish news, bullish news for the market, whether you hold Ethereum or not. But I hold ETH. I've been holding ETH for a long time. I diversify. My number one holding is XRP. My number two is Bitcoin. My number three is Ethereum. And I stake ETH and I earn passive rewards. So great news here. Now, folks, speaking of Ethereum, we got some big news. We all know Bill Hinman and Jay Clayton did the backroom deal with Ethereum folks, Joe Lubin and Vitalik. Right. And Ethereum got the free pass. It was through the speech of Bill Hinman that Ethereum was said to not be a security. And that, of course, gave it an unfair advantage over the rest of the altcoins in the market. But we know this was an under the table backroom deal corruption. Right. I don't want to rehash all the details. You guys all know this. Well, Stuart Aldorati of Ripple, he's the chief legal officer. He tweeted out something very interesting today. And I couldn't believe it when I first read it. But he said, Crypto critic, ex SEC official John Reed Stark, who has blocked me, by the way, says there should be an investigation to Bill Hinman. This is a this is broader than Ripple. There could potentially be serious conflicts of interest by a government official. An investigation will either put it to rest or hold folks accountable. So even someone who is a critic of crypto, John Reed Stark, and he blocked me because I used to I share a lot of facts with him. He didn't like that. But even he can agree. Yeah, this does not look good. Yeah, of course. Anybody with a normal sense of logic and reasoning can see something is fishy here. And I think Jay Clayton should be investigated to these two corrupt government officials. Obviously, they're not at the SEC anymore. And it's funny, I often criticize both of them, especially Jay Clayton. He's the chairman. He rubber stamped everything. Then he filed a lawsuit against Ripple and ran out the SEC door the next day. Then he goes to work for a crypto company. These guys are scumbags. Right. They're supposed to have integrity. And serve the people. They're there, you know, working in government, using the taxpayer dollars. And yet they're doing all kinds of nonsense like this. But guys, I hope I hope Congress and some folks in the House Financial Services Committee take action and they, you know, go ahead and launch an investigation. I think we deserve that. And look, big shout out to John Deaton, who's been beating the drum on this for a long time and as well as the people at Empire Oversight, the nonprofit whistleblower organization, which did a lot of FOIA requests, sue the SEC to get the Hinman documents, emails and much more. And of course, we saw they were colluding with Joseph Lubin and Vitalik and much more. Right. So John Deaton did a full post on this. I'm not going to read through everything, but essentially saying, look, if crypto is going to stand back, Mifrides and Alex Mashinsky, we need to be held accountable. The cleanup includes the unelected bureaucrats who sold out. Well put, John. And look, people call John a scammer. They called him a liar. They call him a conspiracy theorist. But he was right all along. And the folks at Empire Oversight got a lot of the information, all the facts that we were looking for. And we know a lot of people who were attacking John were those trying to cover it up because they knew what happened. But the truth will come out. Everything done in darkness will be brought to light, folks. So I'm hoping Congress launches an investigation in order for us to get that. We have to keep using social media. We have to keep contacting a representative. So if you're not on Twitter, please get on Twitter. Follow me. Start retweeting John, myself, all these all these facts that we're putting out there to get the attention of Congress and to hold these folks accountable. Now, let's move ahead. Ripple and Rocky Mountain Institution are proud founding partners of Centragate Earth, a new open data platform that brings increased transparency, trust and integrity to carbon markets. Centragate powers the next evolution in carbon markets. So the TLDR here is there's a lot of tokenization on blockchains around carbon credits. And Ripple is working with different folks to get this done. And of course, the XRP ledger will be a solution for for these folks to do that. You know, they highlight that here in the article. Ripple, for example, they said Ripple and other industry players recognize that blockchain can be a catalytic tool for helping global carbon markets reach their full potential. As its core, blockchain enables more efficient transactions. Unlike proof of work blockchains, the open source blockchain technology that ripples that powers Ripple solutions, the XRP ledger is natively sustainable, requiring low amounts of energy and no cryptocurrency mining. The XRP ledger is the first major blockchain to achieve net zero status through the purchase of renewable energy for its remaining energy use. So pretty clear the goal here and with tokenization. So that's big unlocking new utility and use cases, folks. Now, we got news here of a new crypto fund about to launch. So CF Private Equity is building a blockchain fund. It appears to be the first fund dedicated specifically to blockchain investments for the business. So we're seeing all the TradFi hedge funds, investment firms, they're launching crypto funds. Of course they are. Right. We saw it with Paul Tudor Jones and Stan Druckenmiller and the list goes on and on and on. So the firm known as Common Fund Capital, prior to a rebrand at the beginning of this year, has hinted at its crypto interests since 2018. But CF Private Equity, according to an SEC filing from the beginning of August, is preparing to launch what appears to be the first fully digital asset private equity venture. The move is perhaps the most telling indicator yet of the firm's crypto ambitions. The vehicle's filing indicated an expected fund raise of one hundred million dollars. But it's possible the disclosed figure only pertains to the fund's first close. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment when reached. Folks, again, I know I ask this and I say this a lot. Do you see what's happening? Right. Watch what they do, not what they say. I see a lot of capital flowing in this market. I see building and adoption funds being launched, and that makes me very bullish. Now, let's end it with some news here. We started the podcast with some news about stable coins. Now we got some news around Huobi. So Huobi dismisses plunging stable coin reserves as FUD. Exchange spokesperson refuted claims that any team members have been detained by Chinese authorities. In my opinion, Huobi seems like a dying company. It's connected to Justin Sun, with Tron and much more. Look, I would stay away from Huobi, folks, and Justin Sun. I don't know what that dude is up to. I've just seen a lot of shady activity from him. So following speculation that Chinese officials detained some Huobi executives, the crypto exchanges stable coin reserves have dwindled as much as 34 percent in the past week. Local Chinese media reported that law enforcement detained at least three Huobi executives. Allegedly, some employees were sent an urgent notification advising them to depart the country at the earliest. Adam Cochrane, a partner of Sinem Hain Ventures, relayed information. He alleges came directly from a high ranking executive at Tron, stating that team members were facing a criminal probe tied to the activities associated with Huobi. So we'll see, folks. Things are not looking too good here. If you are a user of Huobi, I would highly recommend you be very careful here. You know, I would avoid this platform at all costs, guys. There's something happening here where there's smoke that expires, so please be careful. All right, folks, that's the news. Please be sure to check out my interview with Brock Pierce. He's a crypto OG and legend. Guys, we talk about everything. He's one of the co -founders of Tether. So, you know, he has great perspectives on the crypto market. Be sure to check out that interview as well. And let me know what you think about the PayPal news. I think this is very bullish for the crypto market. And we're going to see stablecoin wars heat up. We're going to see game theory play out other. Look, I wouldn't surprise me tomorrow if Amazon launch a stablecoin and they call it Primecoin, right? Because they already have Amazon Prime. Guys, the future is bright for this market. Ignore the FUD. Be prepared for the volatility that just comes with the market, but that swing, the swings that go very low also go very high, my friends, and it allows you to make money. But you got to be patient and you have to know when to enter the market and when to exit when there's blood on the streets and fair, you buy the dip dollar cross average when there's euphoria and everybody and your Uber driver and grandma are telling you about Bitcoin. That's the time to sell. We've we've seen this, right? If you've been here multiple times for multiple bull markets and bear markets, you know the deal. For those of you who are new, you got to put your emotions to the side. You got to spend time researching and educate yourself. That's super important. All right, folks, let me know what you think. Leave your thoughts and comments below. Hit the thumbs up button, hit the five star rating, and I'll talk to you all later.
RADCast Outdoors
"rocky" Discussed on RADCast Outdoors
"Times fishing and chasing muskies and brown trout and all kinds of other stuff. So yeah, it had some good adventures with him, too. Yeah. You got a lot more of them than I did, but it's good to be able to reflect back. A little bit. We had a lot of fun. We really did. We caught well, he caught a lot of fish, and I watched. I bought a lot of gear. And he never packed a lot of stuff. He had his favorites, and he had lots of his favorites, but he didn't, you know, me, I've got, you know, I've got, I can't carry all the stuff I've got. And maybe that's my problem. I got too many shiny things, but yeah, he had just his few little specialty things and je could just catch fish and if he said, hey, we should go somewhere. It was probably worth going. He introduced me to sunshine reservoir, and gosh, we just ice fish that a lot. And cow Lake, I've never, it's not on the map. And he said, I'll show you where it's at. And boy, we just add some good adventures. We really did. And we never, you know, I don't think we ever had any major car trouble or anything. It was fairly conservative with you. He wasn't, he didn't just barrel off into something. He had a plan and knew what he was doing. And he just was focused. So yeah, a lot of fun. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I gotta say, this has been a lot of fun. It's been really good to have you on the podcast and again, I just want to say thank you for me for all the years that you put in at Rocky Mountain, and of course getting Rocky Mountain into our community because that's been such an amazing store to be able to grow up in.
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"Society is way more like it is not subtle. Yeah that's true. I actually do think this movie is better written like society. The only the only time when this movie is like this is the of. The movie is when adrian when rockies like. I don't know what i'm gonna do. Like i don't know. Can i just go the distance. That's that's what i'm going to try for. That's the only time where he's like. They get really close in other parts where they're just like your bum up to. That's not very granted but it's also not like but it also wasn't a teacher figure looking at class in the eye and saying the meaning of this latin term days like it's not it's not like it's not robin williams essentially looking at the camera saying living by. I don't know. I want to take a second to break the fourth wall and stare at the camera. Yeah like i owe back and forth. I did save dead. Poet's society is my favorite movies. All time i hadn't seen this movie in a while in watching them both like close enough together hasley rocky is probably a better movie. And i might. I might like it were granted it is also a college student. I buy with this one more right now. I did give poets seven Did just wanna six fourth. I gave poets seven. And i give this. I thought you gave an eight and a half. i minded given it though. I'm surprised you liked this movie as much as you did. I too because i thought to show my hand. I wasn't actually excited to watch this movie. Yeah no. I didn't peg you as i honestly he. It's a really bad the first one. It's sequels definitely. Get a lot of what they deserve. Other b. is especially after four. There's only one after four. So i mean no six rocky down more than five. There's not six is there. A salvo is six. it's five and six albo and then there's creed creed to which i nine films in the rocky unit with ready to send more of like a re. No not as a reboot. It's more of a. Yeah it's more of like he's training creeds apollo creed son rocky so it's it's a different not the main character he very much is it's called creed for a reason so it's okay that's her anyway. I wanna problem with Assistance very much. I don't think it's like rocky where anybody can watch it very much. Epilogue it'd be a lot It'd be helpful. If i was african american maybe that might be my own biases speaking. Though i don't i've never seen it so bad you just recognizing i might be the target audience for them and like it's gonna hit. You can't fully connect with the character where it's like..
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"Because mickey you could see make. He's like he comes off kinda greasy or but then he like right at the end the acting so good because he comes off his like when he's like tearing up that he can't help rocky avoid the pitfalls that might face him he like tears up and he goes to leave and then it's done so well i just think make is one of a character from their time. Might be one of the problems. He has where i think. I think he's irish senate. I'm just gonna assume that. That might be as mickey that light. It seems like he's more like a new york guy whose family brought him here like he could probably be second or first generation And he's just got that old time. He thought he'd box during the war kind of thing so he's older. He's got an older look on things that might be. It's hard for him maybe to tell rocky Feels i think that's why he screams at rocky that is bombed so much to go along and also well. There's a lot of projecting raccoon. Well everybody kind of projects. Also they are back to our. You have a correct self view tying it together right and there's also just i think the other thing is. This is definitely a man's movie. I feel like i don't know how to describe it but like i did say earlier in the episode. That is for everybody. But you're right. It's boxing sports and traditionally and he's like defending honor. These traditionally masculine others say. Let me frame this in a way that allows us to still have an audience after this episode this happened. This wanted to know podcast. I am the pr guy for your life. As i described kind of with with my students well they haven't heard the whole thing. Yet when we get to the latkes but with the also by these one and things like that where i said socrates is talking to also buy these you need to be a philosopher wisdom loving man because courage was an important thing and the greek word for courage is on three yeah man. Ns because there's a there's a sense and so it's not that courage is more proper to men than it is to women but men are a better. They're they're are more direct symbol of courage. Even though men and women both needed to the fullness and so there's a sensor which like obviously the lessons the philosophy in the morality of rockies human in that it encompasses all of humanity in a way the saying like men women children l..
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"I was. My dad was born in the forty s. So my dad why well anyways are very much within grandparent. Range at this point parents literally grandparents. Yes hundred sorry without a making just plays that parental role and this almost feels more. Nietzsche freud where it's just like there's this father figure that's giving rocky crap and rockies just ignoring him he's just like screw. You didn't give me anything. And like i wouldn't be surprised if there's another of the movie where he has. That forty calls them dead or something because that's how it was to me that like this is rocky thinks at mc failed but mickey also kind of thinks that rocky failed him. Yeah it's fifty fifty for sure but it seems like and that whole like not knowing your value thing that mike talked about. I think mickey can see the value of people and at least making notes his own value as a washed up old old time archer and i think that makes wrong some points. But i think yeah. That's just where he is. Just a father figure he sees through the rocky. He wants to be better but he's just given up because rockies given up on himself he's i'm gonna use this literary term poorly but he's almost like a college student way almost a foil to rocky pauly's more of a foiled iraqi but i i think they both do it in different ways so he has like antigone. He's not antagonise. How do you say it like not an antagonist but ansa federal shing for but he provokes and prods at rocky like an antagon- antagonistic. Yeah so. I'm marseille nuts. I'm more saying he is something where i could see. Rocky turning into mic. And maybe create. I haven't seen creed. so maybe maybe does turn into mic basic. Okay so the reason so he could turn into mc mc was a fighter who didn't have a lot of prospects clearly because he talks about how he didn't have any promotion and he didn't go anywhere like he fought but he didn't go anywhere kinda like rocky in a way like he he has been fighting for all what ten years and he hasn't at least said he had mix jim for six years. He hasn't done anything like he didn't have management so in a way mic is kind of the foil rocky of being like don't turned into kind of and racial like the only thing that makes you knew now. The only aren't that he has left is. How do i stop people from turning into me. So maybe in creede if he turns into mic in a way it is different anymore of. I'm going to elevate you to us. I have been there. I know how to get there. I can elevate you there and mix more. I know what to do so that you don't do what i did. I just say father all. I think make replace that. Especially their bonds way closer in the second movie and i really like the second movie. There's this awesome scene where he gives. Rocky this lucky charm he has. Its doesn't give him a shunt remember. No it's not a shoelace. It's a a none of shorts shorts. Find nope no. He gives him a necklace. And it's got a little boxing glove on mixed like this is my lucky charm. If you take this you're going to be protected and you're going to win this fight..
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"Like almost she almost is the second one she is a kid and she's like oh they don't know if she's gonna make it has to go fight. Yeah oh my gosh yeah dude. Some of like emotional heartstrings. In the later ones do n some some major arteries later now four does it the most cheesy because a creed is and he's just like driving montage time. I just three. Helium defy actually ends. And there's a scene after where creed in rocky gal added again in their third and final bow and it cuts the kmart cut. Yeah the camera cuts. The fight starts. And i know that's other third. Apollo thirteen was good heart of that movie but then and then in the four. He's waving the american flag around 'cause communism bad that is the that is the antithesis of the fourth movie. Sure talking about my favorite team. Yes what is your favorite favorite scene. Where the short of wrong okay. So it's the night before the bat for the before the fight and he walks in and he sees the banner of creed and the banner himself and the guy who's like the promoter and he doesn't schwarzer wrong and the promoter says it doesn't matter which is hilariously good writing because that's like rockies phrase. Don't matter don't matter but it's used against him and rockies holt like a big part of the just rockies like a big part of the whole thing is self is like. Do you have an accurate self view. Yeah do you actually know who you are so like creed has a very inflated self you And ron compared to what he actually is in rocky has a very deflated. Self you compared to what he actually yes. Same with adrian. And things like that paulie just accurately knows that he's worthless anyway but in that scene we've we've established several things we've established that rocky has a really fragile self esteem. Yes he can get pumped up by like. It does not take a lot to break him again. We have established that the promoters of this fight are creeds. people there on his side and we've established that the trope of the media in this movie is cheap shots against rocky yup and so in that scene rocky goes there the night before. And he's had this really pivotal moment where we just saw the training montage. he's like riding a high And then there's this little seed of doubt that shows up and so he goes to the fighting ring and he sees the media. Promotion of the fight is wrong is wrong about him. It has incorrectly as portrayed him incorrectly and and he has the guts to say something about it. Finally to the media person and the media person says i don't care like it doesn't matter and then when he goes home that's that next scene is then when he's like i don't know fight him. I don't even know if i'm going to fight tomorrow like that. Like so that to me. I was like that was sort of the way that we wrapped up. I was like this is again. I think this is one of the best written movies. I have seen in a long time because the writing is so tight and good. I think the third act is amazing. I'll give you the third act especially some of the first and second act are a little bit. They go. I little bit long..
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"And just that i think rockies in that relationship for pleasure and that just as he talked to adrian like his it almost became like talking to himself in a way and he's just like he may be searched to realize that it's he just actually need. Somebody else lied. And i think he does actually start to adrian after she kind of no. No no. i'm right there with you. This is wrong and that adrian rocky kind of is like forthright that he's just like hey i'm just kinda lonely adrian but it's just the way i interpreted it as at eight rocky osagie and for like some pleasure and then he's just one lonely like if you ask you of relationship that would be cool and then and just like yeah. Let's just do that. And then they really build each other up with Rocky helps agent get out of her shell. Which is like a. That's just like my the numbers. If you've ever seen the nerdy girl come out of her shell story and then they build each other up. Kazan rocky has actually something to fight for. Because i think if there's an alternate take of the movie or agents not in it or a character like adrian that rocky would have been in it for the money and like let's say there's an alternate cutters no adrian and rocky wins the fight like rocky. Would it become like a guide just in this for the money and in the pleasure and like the clout like not fulfilling his purpose. I think i do think there's something somebody that knows something that i really liked about that. When he wins the fight rocky absolutely does not like the one and only thing on his mind at that moment is adrian He doesn't want to engage. Doesn't care engaging the media he's like in a sense he really actually like. He doesn't care like because it's not about the fight about living up to your purpose. Xactly pout pecans to def- to fall on. I can totally see that interpretation. I do think there is genuine..
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"Pretty one hundred percent self focused now. The one defense of i would have is rocky clearly needs a lot of work. He's not at the point where he could box apollo creed at the beginning of the movie. He's not iraq there until the night before right boxing apollo creed that that training montage he loses like the end of the movie theoretically pokers bill he's not there at the end of the movie he doesn't win and i think that's probably important films in one goodness because it means he's still has work to do and there is a notion that especially when you're like trying to help some like polly's big problems with alcoholism and whatever that you you set your house in order first before you worry about someone else's house getting set in order so in the defensive raqi granted like he doesn't have a genuine Conversation with people in a way that you were saying but he also is the person that needs like. He's the person that is getting worked on in the movie. So that's fair. I would say as he gets his house in order. I would have liked to see growth outside of his personal desires. The only one the only thing that ever happens is the rope thing. But that's kind of that's fair. Where he just says. Paulie you can make money on my name. And he absolutely frames it as dude. I don't care. I don't care about your life. Yeah that's a hundred percent. How he frames it now. That could have been a great scene. I wear we see. Rocky say look actually. Actually i want that for you. Know what he says is don't care now could it. Could it be does say disagree. But i would agree with me because rocky is shown throughout the film as he does. He says that was the week after thanksgiving He went on the accepts. The fight right where he says. I don't care what they care. What type holly and he takes sounds like. Hey that actually that stuff really cut. And then paulie tries to get each is to get some money or maybe some fame for himself just by talking to the news and getting the news record his fight and rocky is kind of hurt by that because he has been kind of made a laughing-stock way the media couple times at that point but da mic. Mickey says he does not want. rocky he is. I'm trying to phase rounds china..
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"Shoot a real job where i hold me his very cold and then it was like i wish i could be in the mob and break people's fingers right so he keeps it around. Canada fluff is ego up while he's above also neither of them have a ton of friends. It's a comfortable relationship. Do you say that The relationship between rocky and adrian is important. Success yes i do. Think so i. If it's such a like one of those weird parts of the movie where. I'm just like i don't know if they needed to include it. Yeah it's like one of the things we're like you could have the the actual impact. Adrian has on rocky could have been fulfilled by all kinds of other different character humanizes rocky. A lot i think is if he was just this lug just this idiot that nobody cared about like nobody would care about him but he he's trying to like care about people trying to do things Plus just in terms of psychology Developing a long-term romantic relationship is a really a big indicator of success are a say happy life because it's the wrong words for like a fulfilled life like starting a family is especially big for fulfilment so. I think i think adrian's pretty important to the film. Yeah the one thing. I'd like to see her as a character is. She's really one dimensional character. She has some growth. Don't wrong but he has some growth but her growth is just a changing environment for rocky to interact with yeah. I think it doesn't help that. She's very much just the nerdy lang. Take the glasses off. And she's really pretty exactly that stereoty before it really starts on. Its own i. We'd like to see thousands. And here's one thing i guess i don't know. Yeah one of the directions that just one of the things. I thought the movie was. The movie does a great job of describing like human like that fulfilling your purpose that sort of thing Through like the analogy of physical. Excellence in boxing. But they're like. I would argue that. There isn't a person who's ultimate purpose is just physical. Excellence right and so i like. It's not something that i think. This movie needs to like know otherwise but like that was the thing with like with her in so many ways. We don't see a lot of character growth of rocky ever working for the good of another without it being also a direct benefit to him like the way he the way he treats. Adrian is not that bad but he. I don't really if there's not really a lot of scenes where he is interacting with her and like her purpose and likes and things are the focus. It's always about him. He defends her honour. Yes he defends her on. And i think also like when he talks to paulie he is never interested in pali. He is constantly avoiding talking about polly's life and his desires and achievements. and it's always about him like that's my probably my biggest critique of the rocky movies rocky is.
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"Kind of redeemed. It doesn't excuse me i'm mad. Person does a good thing. Yeah that's what i made like. He's not really hate. Sin not the center type of deal because i think it's very clear that he struggled with alcoholism for a long long. That's really fair. Because they always center in like they don't there's a photo of him in the navy where he's like graduating His class i assume and it very seems a because it's always face towards the camera and you can always see. I think you're gonna go with the whole potential purpose thing. That maybe paulie somebody who just entirely missed the train at this point. It's too late because of his sins. He's very jealous rocky. When he starts his succeed and like he gets with adrian and he gets the chance at the title. And it's obvious that he's gonna take it serious at polish. Just trying to kind of try to ride off of rocky. Yeah you know. I love everything. You just sat. Because i think that really that encompasses so much more consistent. This is what was going on. You just said. It's certainly. Because i i've seen the whole series and polly doesn't get a ton better but it might just because he's like an inner city guy and there's only he it's not better in rocky through inter-city people but he's just rough very rough around the edges as a person and rocky does his best to raise polly up and i think he does eventually like start that long but probably also has to do a lot of the work of south with cutting out drinks and has a problem with that throughout the entire series. Until he's just no longer in it. I think in five. When i yeah and i think like in context of what rocky saying to the girl like i think there's a sense in which the reason that girls should stop hanging around. Those people are because they are making her worse. Paulie doesn't make rockies. Rocky really is not affected by paulie in that way and so i think there's also senate which like rocky doesn't really need to come out of his life because rockies not being negatively impact. I think not once he wants. He decides to get serious anyways. It's fair he definitely kind is at the very beginning of the movie. I not not. I dunno i think paulie is that voice that tells him. I'm good enough. That i don't need to push this thing anymore. Like that hunter saying because that's the movie rockies got the job where he's breaking people singers as alone as the muscle of the loan. Shark kinda like awesome mold in red and by is definitely assistant at like joe of go to.
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"I think about that. I'm gonna have to edit this episode. i feel like quite a bit. I just feel like you're gonna sit here going well damn well now clearly. I'm just not as good at this as i. i think. The context of the movies really important though in this case is rocky. Says he is thirty in the movie it up and he's quite clearly got this direction. He wanted to go down but he washed out of that or he didn't put in the full effort So that's very helpful. In this situation of being the best you can be Because rocky could be a great boxer. But i think a lot like apologies got this big weakness in the movie where he gets distracted super easily by the money and the all the little bureaucratic nonsense. That comes around Boxing and just sports like in general like with contracts and with advertising and the money and renting venues all that junkin Apollo doesn't even really focus on training for the fight. He doesn't ever look into rocky. He passed his name. Is the only reason rocky. Got a shot the titles because he had a funny name the italian stallion fights apollo creed and so they just have the same weakness where they get distracted easily. Say yeah and go back to the point of like. How do you discover what you should be doing are what is your. I want to say form. But i also don't because they don't think we're going to bring plato. What are you afraid of mark. I'm not afraid of ethics just annoys me. You're allowed to be annoyed by plato. To be fair if you're talking about individual forms really more talking about thomas but that's okay. I'm more comfortable with next. Thomas isn't like everything's just wisdom. My guy just just think about it. thomas.
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"With that. The reason okay rockies important also the reason why i say that is just because i just like the message and the way it presents it in terms of like a bicyc- movie i didn't know i liked boxing before i kind of fell in love with iraqi series so But no i think the message of living up to your potential going. The distance is a really important one. So that's just why. Personally i like it so i don't really want to get into the the actual movies year. I wanna watch cinderella man. You should watch man mark. Okay i just want to put that out there. Red as the resident movie critic group every movie that exists should be seen by you well know. Cinderella man is kind of similar. It's about being a father and a depression. One hundred dollars an actual movie critic who is bad opinions also technically answerable movie. We should not. We should not just slam some random person on this podcast designed to defend themselves do it. No i won't partake. Yeah you're definitely like the leader of this one. I have already questions about things. You've said but okay i won't get into the the actual movie parts starts out as just a bum. He is he works for the mob. He is clearly a good boxer but does not try and then he's just got no real direction because he doesn't he doesn't do anything with his life other than those three things like. I guess he's trying to do stuff with adrian but it's not like going anywhere transition to. He gets a a really lucky fight which he then turn down. He goes When he actually accepts a fight and takes responsibility decides to go the distance. That's where he finds his true kind of meaning. I guess so. I mean i don't know what questions i guess. What my so you said. The main message was living up to your potential and going the distance. Can you define those. So what do you mean by living up to your rental. What do you mean by going the distance living up to your potential. Everybody potential such a weird thing because it's not a tangible Thing but it's something that we all recognize so rocky clearly has the talents to box. You can see it in his first fight and then his trainer is like dude. You could've you could've been somebody like you could have been a contender bob. So he has this potential to actually do something and living up to that potential. He is using his talents to the fullest of their ability and actually meeting. What he's capable of. I guess so you would. You wouldn't want somebody who's got like one hundred and thirty. I q to end up being a store clerk and smoking weed all day. You know what i mean. You want them to to meet to educate themselves to a level that they should our our level that they are capable of because they They can and they can take on that. Responsibility is open to them for them to to move on. I guess pouvons a stupid word. But i used to move on but you should live up to the talents that you have been given by grace. Let's pause real quick Hundred fixture might and we'll cut this part and then they gotta do. I gotta do the.
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"I would say that rocky is better than almost every single movie. I've seen in the last five years dan. I thought it was better written than pretty much any movie. I've seen that was made in the last five years the dialogue is a little bit. Clunky Little clunky but rocky balboa's a moron. So i mean it kinda worked. What would you okay so before we get into like really talking about the message of the movie would you rate. It says we did that with the last one outta ten. I'm going to give it a nine. Yeah that's kind of where. I'm at nine. Yeah nine and a half out of ten. I thought it was one of. I thought it was a well written movie i will. I will say the reason. I don't give it a ten. I thought the first half hour was pretty rough was so like we were thirty minutes in the movie and i was literally thinking to myself. Oh gonna get to this podcast. I'm not gonna have anything good to say. Because i do not like movie. That's kind of like the first part of the movie because of the set life the second part it rains having now see there s movie i was like i wonder if re watching the first part of the movie i would like enjoy it see like i would get more out of it right because the first half of the first thirty minutes i i literally was just like. I'm not going to like this movie. It's going to be so unfortunate. Would you give it out of ten six now. I will say that you probably should watch. Rocky one of those culturally landmark movies. So i would wash it once at least and then personally having seen the whole series except five. I think he's only miss and you don't need to know anything about five other than i think. He starts a restaurant at the end of the movie because he gets his money and wealth back. I think the way and that. I think to just does everything rocky. One does better because and then rocky achy goes on to win his fight in the second movie. And i just way better and i think it's better shot from going off my memory. Now wherever watch renton will probably ease words. Like turds sandwich but It's just awkward but the fight. The message is good. The overall is good. Wash it once. That's what i would say so rocky. Two's pretty good as probably my favorite one in the series. So i'll give you that. That's why i just don't i haven't seen any bump honestly iraqis that the only reason i would give it like above six is because it is culturally a landmark movie. Honestly you don't really need to see any other ones 'cause it's pretty formulaic where it's literally rockies illo point he's got to fight some guy or i'm going to fight him on going really them guys. Don't worry about it then something happens. And he's like and off. I can fight them now. I can really. I really got to fight a really got to get in shape training montage here we go and then and then there's the fight and he's always good mon. I will say. I think i would give it a nine out of ten and i would say. I don't think anyone needs to see this movie. I think you can get everything you can get out of. Rocky you can get out of plenty of other things. I don't think rocky is attached to be the source that you that out of. You're going like that's fair. I don't think. I got anything out of watching rocky that i had not picked up from tens of other things just by being a human and engaging in normal media yeah it was..
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"Hall around a ipad to water movie. That's amazing actually i really. That's okay yes spoilers if you haven't seen iraqi but there's no way you're like me and you haven't becky. There's no way you of escaped the rattler every movie a. lot of movies reference rack. No i i knew several things about the spoil about rocky until that's true but actually i think the only thing you can spoil the results of the fight. Yeah i would say that is none. Which is what. I'm going to spoil right now okay. We walked away that night. And we're like dang he loses. What's the point. Excellent remember walking away. And then i watched it again later in high school. I was like seventeen on netflix. At that point. I would watch all of them in my dad's like doing watching these movies. That are like forty years old alcoholic dead. I don't understand. This is amazing. Rocky balboa about this and then watching it again last night i was like man just movie honestly think holds up better than dead. Poets society does interesting interesting. No i have probably said that. I think they would have been equal. They're very different. Audiences will like. I think the reason why i say that is because dead poet's society hit me in a really good time when i was in high school and to me is very much a movie for high school teenagers to like. Get them kick started. Your this movie is more of just like for anyone really like. that's why. I say it's held okay. That's so i like it more now. Because of where i'm at not because of the actual movie so thematically yeah i think it is more universally applicable but now the big thing i wanna talk about with rocky is we got started with dead poet. Society rocky is really a movie. philosophy in terms of like philosophy. Wise it's a movie about Living up to your potential. And that's what. I'm talking about so At the start of the movie rocky is i. Does he describe himself as a bum. The world not until later describes him as a bomb. Every he's he's kinda just he's got no terrible person they're not he. I know he's dating this podcast at twenty twenty one. He's he's rocking dated itself. All right..
Fair Winds Podcast
"rocky" Discussed on Fair Winds Podcast
"Are so cute. what else is cute. One attorneys do talking about rocky hundreds the one that gets us on diving. Time excellent we. Yeah no we're talking about rockets meta. That's the humor lacked. Don't matter don't matter which is just gonna air as A duty out of context clip it. Anyway yeah so you brought us here to talk so last last time. We're starting about starting movie thing. And last time we did the dead poet's society which is the movie would just extensively about philosophy and so it was really easy to record a to our podcast on the philosophy. We discovered in a little bit about yourself. Why you definitely discovering how much i have to critique in that movie compared to we discovered that we disagree on some things that we gotta figure out. Poets is that it's atten because a poet. Seven hundred ten terrible kid at move out of kilter because he can't be in the blade with al movie but now you've brought us to rocky two. Rocky balboa a movie that is host fifty years old yes g. was forty five years old and it kind of shows. Oh yeah does it a little bit aged pretty well it aged in my minded aged poorly really because of the first act so awkward but everything about everything about the actual movie movie in and of itself aged. Really well to me. It looks like one of those movies that set in the seventies but like it doesn't matter that it was made like right on. There's any there's nothing in the movie that made me say. Oh this was definitely made in the seventies and belongs in the seventy just set in the seventies because it was made the seventies but like to me like if someone had told me this movie was made like twenty years ago and set in the seventies. I'd be like. I can see this movie being made now like that. Yeah i think terms of that at age pretty well. I thought so. Yeah so this was the first time i've ever seen this movie. This is the fourth time. I've ever seen this movie. Third time was so that's right. That's right so i'm watched movie five times. Excellent in the fourth time was the last time the fifth time was this evening it was on amazon prime growing. We're going to culture ourselves. We're gonna want iraqi. It's a really famous movie so we stayed up late and they huddled around my ipad. I'd like to in the morning. Excellent in our bedroom and then we walked away. And we're like so. I was kind of boring and we just wasted three hours. Because i was like fourteen.
WFAN Sports Radio_FM
"rocky" Discussed on WFAN Sports Radio_FM
"Rocky can so you know, it's what kind of making jokes about this, But I think I gotta bring something to the air here because I could use some tweets because I am a little nervous. Tiki knows about this puts up on instagram about this having a little bit of fun, but there is a bear in our neighborhood. Yeah, that's scary. Dude, there is a bear in our neighborhood. And, um, you know, we're all sitting like names and joy, Yogi, you know, I mean, but I'm scared. Yeah, he's pretty damn big. You saw the size of a couple of yards down. I'm promise you, you'd rather be an alligator You ask a couple of weeks ago. Bear are alligators that you'd rather have an alligator Because, you know, an alligator's gonna go towards water. Eventually, it's got to because that's how it feeds and finds its survival. But there that thing's want to go in your house and find the food, trash and everything else. That thing wasn't small. Beatty was in that small. We don't know that was from your house. The picture that you took. That was from your garden hose from our security camps. Okay, Got it. But still, so it's perspective your house for sure. So that's like a couple of yards. That's not the York right next to it a couple of yards down and still look pretty pretty size. But I was thinking about this, like, you know, we had the weather was awful, but We had a little pocket on Saturday night. So we were hanging out by the fire pit. You know, we just had the backyard done. Yep. And E mean bears can climb trees, let alone a little six ft fan out there. They could jump that easy, easy, climb up and jump over it. Sniff, backdoor e don't know what I would do if I ever saw a bear. I don't know. I know what I'm supposed to think. I don't exactly know you're supposed to do what I'm supposed but convincing your your body to actually do what you're in your minds and get the hell out of there. That's a different story was true, you know, and the things and I read up on this. I know this from doing man vs Bear, but I've read up on it again. One day they say Don't don't stare at the bear. Do not lock eyes with the bears because they will view that as a sign of aggression and that might amplify their their desire to come in attack number. Okay, so I will look in the eye, they say get up his tallest humanly possible. And, you know, rant and rave and, you know, make noises and all right. And don't look at him exactly what you're not looking at. That doesn't make any sense, Reverently. If this thing is gonna buy me, you know by what I'm trying to sell. Yeah. Um Wow, that is that is terror. I mean, even like taking the garbage out. I went to pick up cold. But what to go hit golf balls at the club early. Want to get the kids in school? And like I walk out of the garage, I look around the girl like I would never thought about doing that. I'm terrified to go get the mail. I don't blame you, man. The American flag out this morning I looked around like before I went out on the porch and stuck my head out of his Gracie. Good luck and be safer. That's buddy. Thanks, man. Appreciate it as my daughter, daughter. Let's my dog into the room now. Listen. Bring the dog over here. This way. The bear have a little little appetizer. This dog. This dog is this cat C. J is a salute key. She's a scaredy cat. I don't care what it is Those little appetizers for bark bark at you, but she's a scared. Okay, I hear you. All right. Well, listen, The situation with the Lakers is very simple. If they don't have a Anthony Davis. They can't win. No. And if they don't have Anthony Davis of I don't mean just the championship of Anthony Davis. They can't win the Syriza. Yeah, This is interesting part of a BT because LeBron has never lost a first round Syriza 12, no 13, 14 and obesity 13 with the Cavaliers and the in the heat in the Eastern Conference and then won last year with the L. A Lakers And now this is this is the challenging one. It's interesting because, like you look at some of those heat teams and a couple of Lakers, uh, Cleveland Cavaliers team. They were good, like it wasn't even a question whether or not they were getting out of the first round, right? It was a guard. Who you gonna get in the second and then you're gonna get the Eastern Conference finals. Probably the same last year as well. But this year because of all their injuries, and the fact that there were seven seed or at least battling for the seven seed, we've kind of had this thought in our mind for a while, like, maybe they might not make it out of the first round. If if a if LeBron's not fully healthy if a D is compromised, and apparently he is because he had a knee strain before he heard his groin. How'd you hurt your growing on that move? I don't I don't know what Beatty honestly I think it was one. Remember when he jumped. He was like gliding. Cross the the key. Yeah, he jumped any like kicked his leg out in an odd way. He connected on somebody. Sneaker? Barely. Yeah, it was weird like it was. It was a jumped. It was a weird jump. It's not something you're used to doing so tissue paper. Yeah, Bad salesman. That's LGBT yesterday, right? And so at the end of the day, Anthony Davis is not going to be available. And so it's all back on LeBron. Like those early Cleveland days where there was Elite talent. Yet somehow he was always able to put his head down. Brine score 35 if he had to go and get a victory. I'm not so sure right now, mainly because Chris Paul look pretty damn good. Look that game four and you know it. Z if he's healthy, and Devon Booker's back doing what he's doing, DeAndre doing what he's doing is playing. The Lakers are not winning the Syriza unless unless LeBron Does what LeBron used to do. But LeBron is 36. Now he's not 24. Yeah, it's in a lot of ways it provides, you know. Those of us who really you crave these story lines an interesting chapter in LeBron's legacy, like Candy candy candy, flip it back to 12 13 years ago. That's right and do what he did for the Cavaliers. You know, £30 lighter. Ah, lot younger. Just this this youthful exuberance. My guess is like yours. My answer is no. But he spoke about this and shouldering the burden without a D. Here's LeBron on having to do that, at least for tonight. Well, I mean his next man up and obviously if he's not ready for Game five and forgets up blow.
Scoops with Danny Mac
"rocky" Discussed on Scoops with Danny Mac
"That he brought to a jackson state university tennessee state followed up with with eddie george and I think bring a lot of positive attention. It is really good. Football at these You colleges so. I think it's a situation exactly how you said I think marshall is trying to figure out if this is a you know a move that he could swallow no he had some conversations with my marks. He told me last night that he intends to talk to coach meal and some of his former or a college coaches. But you know. And i told him. I'd say hey you're just gonna have to you know commit yourself to it and that's the way marshall is anything he does. He commits himself. So i think he's weighing his options right now seeing that big If he put the golf clubs down. And i always joke with him because that's another situation where he was the worst opera ever seen in my life and he didn't like them he committed. Now he's one of the better golfers out there so if he decides this is something he wants to do he'll be good. I think you know. And i saw your your post. You talk about him. Being you know football guy. He's he's probably one of the more knowledgeable football guys. I've ever been allowed yet. I have no doubt and we all joke about having to give up golf but to your point. Here's a guy who had a stutter. Who became rochester. Who jerry clinton. I think made fun of his golf game and then marched At pissed off bought clubs and got really good if he does this I don't think he's gonna half asset. I think he's going to be intense Think he's got a lot to give to. I think the kids would. I think he'd be good at it. I don't know if he wants to do it. I got this feeling if he does it because he always had a great take on everything. And as i said no frigging tell you his opinion. He'll tell me how wrong. I am not wrong. You are but i think he might be good at. I think he look. I think in a he has equality to evaluate talent better than most. I mean i personally. I think that you know he'd be perfect to run an nfl team. Because i think he's got some really good qualities as far as evaluating talent. Which is you know really. I would say sixty to seventy five percent of the nfl if you do a really good job of evaluating talent in new. Can you know hit more picks than you miss on and you'll some of the right. Coaching staff I think that's that's the successful team. But i think with marshes ability to evaluate guys. I think he'd be perfect because it's a lot easier to coach a kid. That's a good. That's a good player than than the opposite than then the contrary so a lot of these teams you know say. Hey this coaches this coaches The best coach in. Nfl coach is not good. I think it starts with the talent. Those because i think you could coach a bunch of the guys that played for rams when they had the greatest. Your s now. To knock on mike martz dick meal. But it's just a lot easier to put guys in situation to be successful. You have better players. And i think that's the situation with alabama. I have a lot of respect. The nick sabin but he signs more five star guys than any other universities so think he showed win national championships at the pacers. When aren't final thought. Give me a draft a memory where you felt like everybody's wrong about your guy. They didn't take early enough. Maybe slipped into the middle rounds or you ever have draft day like man. Everybody's gonna regret skip it on my guy or they're all pass not on. They're going to eat it later. I think it was the sandy. Marsha was drafted in the first round We had a receiver that lately with marshall at san diego state. Darnay scott I was thinking. Darnay would be mid first round pick in at work cincinnati so hard to big marshall with the first fit I didn't realize they were watching more film on his team at san diego state than a bid on him because they had already made up their mind on dan wilkinson so i would say it's dr night. He didn't go in the first round. He wound up being the first in the second round to cincinnati in a had a really really good career with them. So i would think that's one One of my members a saint louis. Kit will franklin's uncle. If i'm not mistaken darnay snap i think number a great career. Over four hundred receptions of the bengals will rocky good to catch up. Good luck jomar chase. Maybe we'll catch up with him after draft and enjoy the night cleveland. Thank you always a pleasure man. Well i really loved. Hearing those stories about the stephen jackson pick Also the fact. That marshall faulk goes to the colts number two overall and they had no clue that they were taking him that the agent and the player had no clue. The team was about to make that pick. I don't think that happens anymore. With all the social media and the amount of coverage might have pre-draft coverage that takes place but fascinating story. And i am also intrigued by this marshall possibly becoming a football coach and gets back in the game who knows maybe ends up back in an nfl front office. I'm not sure if it will happen to put the clubs down. I joked about it rocky. Joked about it He loves to golf and doesn't need to do it but i think it might be a challenge. He's a guy who likes a challenge so it will keep close tabs on that as well kilcoyne conversation. You can always find at scoops. With danny mac dot com. All of a regular segments are posted on dan. mclachlan's website but also make sure you subscribe spotify. I tunes wherever you get your podcast. If you sign up with us it'll be delivered directly to you. The kilcoyne conversation presented as always by appliance discounters final online v. discounters dot com all the great merchandise. Right there online. Marie davila senior living clayton and wiedeman road. That's in west county in saint louis. Beautiful spot been there since nineteen sixty in our good friend. Rich lived there for years part of the villa estates but also on the board helped run things for many years with fred mary. Kay the legacy continues beautiful spot. Marie davila senior living and also triad bank. A local success story and bank that you want to do business with triad bank in franek clayton road. It's about a block west of lindbergh real close to highway forty and lindbergh. Easy to get to no matter where you are in the greater saint louis area try it. Banking dot com is the website happy draft. Everybody will talk to you..
Reel Chronicles
"rocky" Discussed on Reel Chronicles
"And then the last three rocky balboa what do you what do you think right Pretty good i'm gonna go Six thirty one. And what about you leo. Actually seventy nine seventy seven and the last two creed leo. what do you think. Ooh creed is gone. I think that's the number one. So i think it's gonna be What was what was rocky one again. So ninety six ninety five our ally you guess cre- to go for i'm gonna say eighty five and leo eight eighty three and then and then we are going to get. I think we are getting increased. Three hopefully not but we seemed like michael jordan redirecting creek through when ever. It comes out all right. Let's get into it fellas. What age best in rocky leo. Kick it off everything. Nothing the honesty straight up to fem- and the score h incredibly. Well i think even it's even it's just as recognizable as the actual actors in the movie Stallone as a person aged very well. He's probably he's he's he's in better shape as like sixty seventy year old and most twenty year old. Yes this movie defined the underdog trope like it. I think that aged ridiculously well to the point. Where like other movies now like they talk about that that affect like you're you're the rocky balboa something And the rocky steps in philly that asia pretty well. I think that everyone wants to do that when they're affiliate. That's possibly the most popular to do in philly. I've been there. I've done this. What about you. Riley iga The score all the performance and the training montage the fight. Awesome all right so for me. I have a few things here rockies loneliness in the opening i love that the score correlating rocky. You kind of see you know. He did win his for that fight at the beginning at the at the at the club but at the end rocky as a is a very lonely person. You kind of see that at the beginning of the movie. I really the that the score like you guys said the sequences rockies pickup lines very good pick up lines solid solid stuff like. I think they work well rocky walking on ice because i tried that it does doesn't work only in the movies The finale were rocky. Doesn't care about the winner..