Episodes

  • Predictions

    Predictions
    Jan 5 2025
    Show Notes: Predictions • Both wars will run out of steam and end, officially or unofficially. • There will be insurrections in Iran. • Neither the Dodgers, nor the Celtics, nor the Chiefs will repeat. • Electric car requirements and limits on ICEs will be lifted or eased. • Retinal scanning and fingerprints will allow many to circumvent TSA. • Attempts to copyright and/or trademark AI composites of text and images will eventually reach the Supreme Court. • A betting scandal will rock professional sports. • As China’s economy weakens it will engage in more limited military actions against Taiwan. • Universities will face a perfect storm: AI will enable cheating and plagiarism, students and parents will revolt against huge tuitions, government forgiveness of tuition debt will end, there will be attempts to fire tenured professors who teach radical and biased political views, and large cuts will have to be made. The biggest threat: Remote learning which will dramatically lower tuition and enable a greater choice of institutions. • As the population ages and the Millennials rise in business, the country becomes more conservative and centrist in its views and voting. • There will be more intensive recruiting and higher pay for police officers. • Two more members of Congress will be indicted for corruption. • The Taylor Swift phenomenon will begin to wane. • The largest contribution to population growth in the US will be from legal immigrants. • Hacking will accelerate, and will include all kinds of organizations. The government will grant immunity to convicted hackers to help them combat other hackers. • The smart Democrats will realize that it wasn’t that “their message didn’t get out,” but rather that most people didn’t like the message. • Not a prediction, but a wish: Term limits for all of Congress so we can finally end the incestuous power grabbing that has undermined progress for the people. • Happy New Year.
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    9 mins
  • Replacing Resolutions

    Replacing Resolutions
    Jan 2 2025
    Forget resolutions that are broken in 90 minutes. Try to focus on the good things that you do and that happen to you. Try a personal journal. You don’t have to be compulsive, but keep it handy, electronically or physically, to easily record things. These may be good acts done for you by others or good acts you perform, especially spontaneously and “in the moment.” Record experiences that were unplanned yet rewarding: a deer staring at you from the woods, a quick-reflex escape from someone else’s driving error, a baby smiling at you on a plane. We tend to default to the negative: what didn’t work, what disappointed us, what we did to disappoint others. Reverse that, and make note of the positives and the emotionally rewarding. Have you worked out without missing a session for 90 days; have you refrained from entering into a senseless argument with a family member; have you thanked someone seldom thanked who was appreciative of your recognition? Every so often, you can review your journal, not necessarily reread it all, but randomly choose some pages to remind yourself of the rewards in your life and the kindnesses you bring to others. We need to escape our “doom loop” mindsets and the normative pressures that attempt to make us feel guilty and unworthy. While it’s important to rely on others, it’s also important to rely on ourselves, and our recall isn’t always sufficiently complete or accurate. Did you throw your first snowball of the season, call a friend you haven’t spoken to in quite a while, or leave social media platforms that are simply irritating and unfulfilling? What did you do for your family, your business, your community, and yourself? Some people might call this a journal of gratitude, but I prefer a journal of reality and accomplishment. Life is not a slow crawl through enemy territory nor a random walk in the dark. It’s a thoughtful journey in what light we have.
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    4 mins
  • December 25, 2024

    December 25, 2024
    Dec 26 2024
    These are times of astounding incivility, harassment, and dismissiveness. These acts are based on a posturing of moral superiority, as if mere disagreement denotes an inferior being. There is a line in Morris West's The Navigator that states: "And that's the terror of the high place and the high man. Is it God he hears or the echo of his own mad shouting?" Hillary Clinton most probably sealed her election defeat with the observation that those who would vote for her opponent were the "deplorables." This time, it was Joe Biden calling Trump supporters "garbage." The arrogance of such statements and such positions is appalling. I'm not taking a political position, but rather a social one: We understandably reject people who feel our opinion is not to be respected but immediately rejected because it originates in some lower intelligence. But we are mostly filled with hubris. We live in an indeterminate universe, acting as if we understand infinity, light years, and black holes. We know virtually nothing of its origins or nature. (A "big bang" before which there was nothing? "Nothing" has no meaning if there isn't "something" to which to compare it.) When praised for discovering universal laws of the cosmos, Einstein replied, "Yes, but the question is really who made the laws?" During a recent scientific journey in Peru's Alto Mayo region in the Amazon rain forest, researchers identified 27 new species of animals and indications of another 48, all previously unknown to science. And, of course, we have very little idea of what lives in the abysmal depths of the great oceans. We do know that we live on a hunk of rock speeding through a vacuum at 85,000 miles per hour, around an exploding star. Don't tell me you have no faith. I'm not proselytizing, not suggesting a belief in a deity is required, though I would remind everyone that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I am suggesting that the arrogant, polarizing behaviors extant in the land are basically caused by low esteem, the fear of trying to confront the unknowable, and the comfort of kidding ourselves that we truly understand the arcane solar systems and galaxies. A little humility might go a long way this holiday season, and it just may be developed and instantiated during this time of purported tolerance and forgiveness, of presents given and received, and of church bells ringing and choirs singing, "Joy to the World." From Maria and me, my friends, whatever your beliefs, in the true spirit underlying it: Merry Christmas!
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    4 mins
  • All the Wrong Places

    All the Wrong Places
    Dec 19 2024
    Are you looking where it's easy or where you're more likely to succeed? We content ourselves with people who can say no and can't say yes. We seek affection and not respect. Remember "looking for love in all the wrong places"? You won't find love in a bar. A woman told me all the really appealing men in bars are married or gay! If you want to catch fish, go where no one else is fishing, not where all the fishermen (and bears) are. When you try to get into the fastest lane on a crowded highway, you usually wind up in worse shape. You won't find high-level buyers trolling the web. Cold calling is absurd. Email is surrounded by scammers, spammers, and noise. Most claims on the internet about building a business are bogus. Most certificates and initials after your name are worthless. This podcast is the right place because no one else is telling you this. Search for your keys where you dropped them. Use your iPhone to shine a light in your life.
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    7 mins
  • What You’re NOT Entitled To

    What You’re NOT Entitled To
    Dec 12 2024
    We seem to have a sense of entitlement. We believe we’re being “ghosted” (a ridiculous term) when people don’t return our calls because we didn’t sufficiently impress them or excite them in our earlier interactions. We’re not entitled to: • Clients who never change a schedule • Not having an opinion on business practices • Using non-validated testing instruments • Always ignoring the dinner check • Deducting the family car as a business expense • Using a client’s logo without permission • Showing me your “smile sheets” to impress me • Expect a client refund on a non-refundable ticket • Use or refer to others’ work without attribution • Expecting well-known people to be on your podcast • Contact people through an assistant for a favor • Coach for months with no results We seem to shift the blame for unpleasantness to the client, our family, the environment, technology, and the family dog. Dogs can bite. So, this attitude can bite you right back. Take some accountability. In fact, assume all of it as your accountability and you’ll truly be in charge of your fate. Otherwise, you may be running a solo business with the stereotypical toxic boss.
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    6 mins
  • Consistently Winning

    Consistently Winning
    Dec 5 2024
    You steer into a skid; you don't try to get out of it because then you lose control. We have to exploit opportunities and deal with setbacks resiliently—"bouncing forward." Blaming and complaining are for children and immature adults. Never let up. The key is to be at your best when you're under the maximum pressure. We should be able to make minor and major adjustments in our lives and work and constantly innovate to grow. The key is to never be complacent and to ask why we didn't succeed when we expected to (even with clients). This is how the best players can consistently make free throws in basketball. Why the best of us can improvise and extemporize. We can create historical memory where we are reinforced as "winners." We should seek respect, not affection. And never be embarrassed by winning.
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    11 mins
  • Relativism

    Relativism
    Nov 27 2024
    Relativism holds that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, and/or historical context and are not absolute. I’m not so sure (nor are a lot of other people). Let me speak of relativism today. There is an old Monty Python skit where a one-legged man auditions for a theatrical role as Tarzan. After some awkward movements, the people in the dark of the theater say, “Thanks, we’ll get back to you.” The man plaintively asks, “Do I have a chance at all of being considered?” “Well,” answers a producer, “I supposed we would come to you first before a man with no legs at all.” In Rhode Island, there are two public schools that stand out among all the others in terms of grade-point averages, performance on standardized tests, and admission to colleges. They are hailed as the avatars. Yet neither is in the top 100 of such schools nationally. A great many high school all-stars can’t make the team in college, and most college all-stars never make the pros. Some people snidely point out that a Chrysler or a Genesis looks just like a Bentley. Perhaps, until you place them next to a Bentley. A Campbell’s soup can painting or a banana taped to a canvas might go at an auction for seven figures, but they’re ludicrously considered against the Mona Lisa, The Nightwatch, The Scream, or Guernica. We tend to lose perspective if we don’t open our vistas, widen our interests, travel to new places, and gain new friends. You may well, rightfully, enjoy the view from a ski chalet, but the Grand Canyon is hard to describe adequately once you’ve been there in person. While I was trying to hide at a party, a college professor’s wife mentioned to me that her husband had published four books over 12 years. “That’s impressive,” I offered, looking for an escape route. “Impressive?!” she repeated in a stentorian voice, “It’s more than that! How many people do you know who have done that?”
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    4 mins
  • Letters and Columns

    Letters and Columns
    Nov 18 2024
    The post-mortems from those who did not back the winner in this presidential election seem to be two-fold. On one hand, we have a group of insightful people asking, “What did we do wrong, and how can we improve?” On the other, we have people whose heads are exploding in vitriol and venom. The latter’s basic premises are that those who voted for the winner were fooled, are ignorant and poorly educated, and are “f…ing” morons. The amount of profanity seems to be in direct proportion to the lack of an intelligent argument. The overwhelming number of people who didn’t vote for the Democratic candidate are not misogynistic, racist, or any other epithet. They just did not prefer that candidate. Perhaps “woke is broke.” Perhaps the price of consumer goods, the lack of any cogent immigration policy, and persistent, independent polls indicating that Americans didn’t like the direction of the country shouldn’t have been ignored. There’s too much arrogance around, too much self-illusion that one’s opinion is more than an opinion; it is the “moral high ground.” Maybe. Or maybe it’s something we experienced when we were young and won a game fair and square, but the other side complained that we won the game by cheating. We called them “sore losers.”
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    7 mins