Hello, this is Eric with a few initial thoughts before this week's episode.

First, I want to briefly discuss a pair of mistakes and emissions on my part.

To begin with, we released a portal special episode recently about a speculative theory

of physics called geometric unity, which was partially recorded on April 1st.

We did this so as to make use of the opportunity to attempt to repurpose the tired and increasingly

irritating April Fool's tradition of which many of us have grown bored.

I had intended to single out and call particular attention to a man who is very important

to the geometric unity theory as well as the portal project itself.

This is a man I think of as my uncle and who means the world to my family, Michael W. Brown,

former farmer and commercial fisherman who became the CFO of Microsoft and then the head

of the NASDAQ.

Years ago during the financial crisis, Mike invited me and my family to take over his two

small islands in the Puget Sound Archipelago and lead a renegade research-oriented science

camp.

We did this every summer there for many years, and these islands, now under new ownership,

are in fact the origin of the so-called double island rules that we discuss from time to

time, in which allowed us to get past issues of ego and miscommunication between intellectual

and domain-specific silos.

In any event, we, that is I, rushed to get the episode out for April 1st, and in my haste

I forgot to include the segment of special thanks due to Mike for a level of generosity,

wisdom, selflessness, risk-taking, leadership and brilliance that I honestly had previously

only seen in movies.

...