Jimbo Radio

Transcript here

Fact check here

Quick-ish post recording response from Jimbo here

Transcript here.

Fact checking here.

Jimbo's pre recording notes and outline can be viewed here.

People & groups

• Gnosticism — Umbrella label for diverse early Christian movements that emphasized secret/experiential knowledge (gnosis) to awaken a divine “spark” within.

• Proto-orthodox — Modern term for the streams of early Christianity that later became mainstream “orthodoxy.”

• Sethians — A Gnostic school with elaborate myths about Sophia, a false creator, and rescuing divine sparks.

• Valentinians — Gnostic movement from teacher Valentinus; tended to see the creator as ignorant rather than evil and blended in with church life.

• Basilidians (followers of Basilides) — Early 2nd-century movement; reported to teach many “heavens” and often associated with Docetism.

• Marcionites — Followers of Marcion of Sinope who rejected the Hebrew Scriptures’ God as distinct from the Father of Jesus.

• Ebionites — Torah-observant Jewish-Christian group; generally skeptical of Paul and insisted on Jewish law.

• Justin Martyr — 2nd-century Christian writer who mentions churches reading the “memoirs of the apostles.”

• Irenaeus — Late-2nd-century bishop who argued for exactly four Gospels and wrote Against Heresies.

• Tatian — 2nd-century Christian who created the Diatessaron, a harmony of the four Gospels.

Links to References in the Episode

Read The Legendary Muhammad Ali” here.

Read the critical analysis of the Nag Hammadi story, "How Reliable is the Story of the Nag Hammadi Discovery?" by Mark Goodacre.

For more about the Nag Hammadi discovery click here, including a list of the texts discovered.

Read the review related to the tales of natives burning ancient texts here.

Timeline and Evolution of the Story

1948 (institutional notices): Early reports emphasize that new Coptic codices have been acquired / secured for study in Cairo—no legends attached. (For a museum overview, see the Coptic Museum’s summary.) coptic-cairo.com

1958/60 — Jean Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics:

First book-length account by a field scholar who saw the material early. He describes a peasant digging for fertilizer, a jar buried near the cliff at Jabal al-Ṭārif, the manuscripts going to Cairo—but no jinn, no blood-feud, no page-burning, and no oversized jar. Sober, minimalist. (English ed. 1960.) Internet Archive

1977 — James M. Robinson (editor), The Nag Hammadi Library in English:

In prefaces and later essays Robinson popularizes a vivid discovery vignette: a ~60 cm jar, the finder hesitating lest a jinn be inside, breaking it in hope of gold, and his mother burning some leaves. This is the version that “sticks” in popular accounts. avalonlibrary.net

1979 — Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels:
Adds dramatic local color: seven men, a blood vendetta with limb-cutting and heart-eating, and a 1-meter jar. This retelling helped propel the story into the cultural mainstream. Squarespace

1981–84 — Further embellishments & pushback:
Some later versions mention eight camel riders, torn codices during division, and a six-foot jar; then leading Coptologists Rodolphe Kasser and Martin Krause publicly question these field tales (1984). SAGE Journals

1987 — Channel 4 (UK) documentary The Gnostics:
On-camera Muhammad ʿAlī al-Sammān (the finder) tells a different sequence: he found and smashed the pot alone, called others after the break, still mentions fear of a jinn and his mother burning leaves—but key details contradict Robinson’s popular version. Variant Readings+2NT Weblog+2

2013–present — Scholarly reassessment:
Mark Goodacre collects contradictions across tellings, notes a lack of field documentation for the 1970s interviews, and urges caution; Brent Nongbri critiques the recurring motif of “locals burning papyri” as a self-serving trope in manuscript trade narratives. markgoodacre.org+2JSTOR+2

Click here for out pre-recording notes.

⁠Listen to Brendan's discussion⁠ with Dr. Kyra Bobinet about her book ⁠Unstoppable Brain⁠.

Here is a transcript of the episode.

Here is a fact checking of the episode.

For more from Brendan click here.

Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠EvgenyBardyuzha⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Pixabay⁠⁠⁠

Find more from Jimbo at his blog, ⁠⁠Jimbo Rants

"These results suggest that the self's capacity for active volition is limited and that a range of seemingly different, unrelated acts share a common resource."

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252–1265. https:/doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1252

For a fact checking of our episode click here.

Here is a full transcript with some minor spelling errors.

Here are Mike's 12 uses of plural Gods in the Old Testament.

Here is the article Mike mentioned: New Research: Belief in Jesus Rises, Fueled by Younger Adults

The book is Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams.

Read a fact check by ChatGPT 5 here.

Listen to Brendan's discussion with Dr. Kyra Bobinet about her book Unstoppable Brain.

Here are Brendan and Jimbo's pre-recording notes. The episode doesn't not cover most of the notes.

Next Episode: Brendan and Jimbo will discuss the psychology term willpower depletion. Message Jimbo with any questions or ideas about willpower depletion.

⁠⁠For more from Brendan Howard visit his link tree here, https://linktr.ee/brendanhoward⁠⁠

Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠EvgenyBardyuzha⁠⁠⁠⁠ from ⁠⁠⁠⁠Pixabay⁠⁠

Find more from Jimbo at his blog, ⁠Jimbo Rants

The last dive into epistemology and knowing for now. And an expansion of a previous comment about evolutionary psychology.

Here is a full transcript of the episode.

Here is a fact check of the episode.

⁠For more from Brendan Howard visit his link tree here, https://linktr.ee/brendanhoward⁠

Music by ⁠⁠⁠EvgenyBardyuzha⁠⁠⁠ from ⁠⁠⁠Pixabay⁠

Find more from Jimbo at his blog, Jimbo Rants

Read transcript here.

Fact checking here.

In Ep 43, I analyze the 1980 Topps #482 Rickey Henderson rookie card. I give my background, some basic history, simplified economics, and some speculations about the future.

Resources & Links

• Gem Rate Data
• Sports Card Pro Profile
• Wikipedia - Rickey Henderson
• ⁠PSA Population Report - Rickey Henderson #482⁠
• PSA Grading Standards

Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠EvgenyBardyuzha⁠⁠⁠⁠ from ⁠⁠⁠⁠Pixabay⁠⁠

Round two of childhood with Jon and I. This time we focus on a lot more positive aspects.

Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠EvgenyBardyuzha⁠⁠⁠⁠ from ⁠⁠⁠⁠Pixabay⁠⁠

In the episode, Brendan Howard and I discussed more about epistemology. Our conversation was based on a survey about epistemology I created with the assistance of GPT. We also listened and discussed an episode of Theories of Everything with Professor Jennifer Nagel.

Human Memory

In the episode, I slightly misremembered a study on memory related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Below are the main ideas related to my episode reference brought to you by GPT:

1. Memory decay slows after one year: Flashbulb memories (the personal context: where you were, who told you, etc.) and event memories (facts about the attack itself) both show a forgetting curve that flattens significantly after the first year.
2. Emotional details fade more than factual ones: Emotional responses associated with flashbulb memories (e.g., how shocked or upset you felt) are remembered less accurately over time than non-emotional details like location or the person who told you.
3. Subjective confidence remains high despite inaccuracies: By multiple follow‑up points (1 week, 11 months, 35 months), many participants recalled different details from their original reports—and yet they continued to express high confidence in their recollections. 

After the initial decay, both flashbulb and event memories tend to become more stable—though not necessarily more accurate—over time.

Cumulative Selection

Cumulative selection can explain how a small advantage can build over time through natural selection. Ronald Fisher, a relatively unknown genius and polymath, developed mathematics that explain how small mutations that increase fitness, even with a very small advantage, can survive over time.

Using population genetics, a gene with a 0.1% selective advantage can dominate a population of 10,000 within 20,000 generation. For humans, hat would be about 500,000 years.

In the podcast episode, I generally explained why babies should look like their fathers. In theory, if babies, who looked like their fathers, had even a very small advantage, like 0.1%, that advantage would dominate human populations after 20,000 generation, or 500,000 years. If the advantage was larger, it would dominate faster. 

Links 

• https://stankrants.blogspot.com/2025/07/notes-from-episode-41-knowing-about.html
• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mrMGHtNcRD3LMFhVeiMdlrqoEv-XXe-2XHwu4VIVVwA/edit?usp=sharing

• https://open.substack.com/pub/curtjaimungal/p/why-universal-skepticism-is-philosophys?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2925254/
  

Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠EvgenyBardyuzha⁠⁠⁠⁠ from ⁠⁠⁠⁠Pixabay⁠⁠