Month: December 2025

2025 is finally ending

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , ,

By Ande Jacobson

For the last several years, I’ve given up sending a holiday letter out or posting one on social media or my website talking about what I’d done over the course of the year. Instead, I’ve taken to writing a year-end essay looking at the bigger picture from my vantage point as an American. As I mentioned in my 2024 year-end essay, my personal accomplishments aren’t worth mentioning anymore as there are far bigger concerns that have overshadowed anything I as an individual may have done. Thinking back over the course of the year that is finally ending, too much has happened to us all, far too much for any one person to track though many are trying. It’s been a tumultuous year, one that has spawned far too much anxiety and concern because of the political situation that has unfolded here in the U.S. At the end of last year, much was unknown about how 2025 would progress. Now we know how this is unfolding, and it’s far worse than many of us had imagined it could be. We knew that a second Trump administration would be challenging to say the least, but it’s been far more cruel and chaotic than we thought possible. Continue reading →

The race to understand consciousness

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

The latest Dan Brown book, The Secret of Secrets, is a wild ride. This sixth Robert Langdon book was released in September 2025 and is a little longer than typical Dan Brown fare. Like the others in the series, this one too stands on its own. The only connection to the series is that Brown’s protagonist, Robert Langdon, finds himself in yet another mishap not of his own making but with much at stake. Brown starts with a note to readers that all of the science, symbols, artwork, organizations, and documents referenced are real, fantastic as they will seem. The premise of the book is that noetic research is reaching a critical point in proving that human consciousness is nonlocal, i.e., doesn’t emanate from within our own minds but is instead something that exists outside of individuals. In essence, although it takes some time to get to this point in the story, nonlocal consciousness implies that human minds are merely receivers much like radios. The consciousness is out there to be experienced, we just have to learn to tune our filters to let it in. Imagine the power that implies. As such, there’s an international race to both understand and harness that power, not necessarily all for good. Continue reading →

Understanding how to deal with extremism and intolerance

A Good Reed Review Book Review , ,

By Ande Jacobson

For several years now Teri Kanefield has been trying to help people understand how we got to where we are in the U.S. and the world, and more importantly, what we can do about it. After taking another deep dive in a lengthy blog post written over the course of several months explaining why extremism and intolerance happen, Kanefield decided to take a another look at the material with the intention of further focusing her presentation. Over time, she rewrote the piece and ended up with a crisp book of around 100 pages. The blog post now contains the content of the book, Why Intolerance and Extremism Happen: Understanding Our Deepest Divides.

Kanefield has given the public a great gift by offering the book through multiple outlets for free. She lists those outlets at the top of her post. She also offers readers a downloadable PDF version of the book through her website if they prefer to read it in that format. She’s not trying to profit off of this effort but is instead attempting to help the widest possible audience better understand the country, the divides we face, and what we can all do to improve the situation. Continue reading →