No Way Out

Mark McGrath and Brian "Ponch" Rivera

Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.

  1. Warriors over Fobbits: LtCol Asad "Genghis" Khan, USMC (Ret.)

    3 DAYS AGO

    Warriors over Fobbits: LtCol Asad "Genghis" Khan, USMC (Ret.)

    Send us a text The story starts with a hard correction: observation isn’t enough—orientation wins.  A Marine who grew up in Pakistan and rose through the Corps brings a view you do not get in a briefing book. LtCol Asad “Genghis” Khan, USMC (ret) talks straight about war, culture, and the cost of bad decisions. No polish. No excuses. Orientation wins, always. He walks us through the real OODA fight, the one where context beats checklists and judgment beats slogans. He shows how cultural understanding is not a side quest, it is the ground you stand on. He lays out why leaders who skip the deckplates lose the plot, and why the people closest to contact often see the truth first. We talk warrior ethos, accountability, and the pressure of command when the plan meets a living adversary. Khan breaks down Afghanistan with a clear eye. The Taliban’s advantages were time, terrain, and tight social fabric. Ours were power and technology, often blunted by cultural blindness and shallow engagement. He explains how local respect and plain talk open doors that armor cannot. He tells the hard parts of combat, the weight of sending people forward, and the duty to come back and face them eye to eye. He does not spare senior leadership. Promotion games, safe consensus, and distance from ground truth reward the wrong habits. Strategy that ignores economics and social reality creates debts someone else must pay. We talk about reform that starts with contact, listening, and accountability, not new slogans. NWO Intro with Boyd March 25, 2025 Flow Learning Lab Find us on X. @NoWayOutcast Substack: The Whirl of ReOrientation Want to develop your organization’s capacity for free and independent action (Organic Success)? Learn more and follow us at: https://www.aglx.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@AGLXConsulting https://www.linkedin.com/company/aglx-consulting-llc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandrivera https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemccrone Stay in the Loop. Don't have time to listen to the podcast? Want to make some snowmobiles? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive deeper insights on current and past episodes. Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch: The No Bell Podcast Episode 24 ...

    2h 35m
  2. Bad Boyd, Good Receipts: Inside Snowmobiles & Grand Ideals with Ian Brown

    5 DAYS AGO

    Bad Boyd, Good Receipts: Inside Snowmobiles & Grand Ideals with Ian Brown

    Send us a text The myths are seductive: a Top Gun fighter pilot invents the OODA loop from the cockpit of his F-86 and spends the rest of his life proving it. The truth is better—and far more useful. We sit down with Ian Brown to explore Snowmobiles and Grand Ideals, a new Marine Corps University Press publication that explores John Boyd’s recorded presentations and pairs them with contextual essays by Frans P. B. Osinga. For the first time, you can hear Boyd’s voice on the page: the questions he fields, the slides he barely touches, the ones he can’t leave alone, and the jokes that make the hard parts stick. What emerges is a living flow. Orientation—not raw speed—sits at the center. Surprise is an outcome, not a lever. Implicit guidance and trust, not slogans, generate tempo. We trace Boyd’s ideas from Destruction and Creation through Patterns of Conflict, Organic Design for Command and Control, The Strategic Game of Interaction and Isolation, and The Conceptual Spiral, showing how the 1995 OODA sketch lands late as a synthesis, not a starting point. Along the way we connect flow and team science to cohesive action, revisit Vietnam’s CAP program to understand tempo, and dig into narrative, messaging, and the danger when words don’t match deeds in a world where every person is a sensor. This is Boyd without the folklore—no shortcuts, no decontextualized slides—just primary sources, carefully transcribed and annotated so leaders in business, education, policy, and the military can apply the real mechanics: build better world models, test them against reality, and keep them provisional. If you’ve ever been told to “go faster,” this conversation explains why you should get oriented first. Listen, share with a friend who cares about natural intelligence and if it challenges your priors, leave a review and tell us what changed. Ian Brown on LinkedIn MCUP Snowmobiles and Grand Ideals NWO Intro with Boyd March 25, 2025 Flow Learning Lab Find us on X. @NoWayOutcast Substack: The Whirl of ReOrientation Want to develop your organization’s capacity for free and independent action (Organic Success)? Learn more and follow us at: https://www.aglx.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@AGLXConsulting https://www.linkedin.com/company/aglx-consulting-llc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandrivera https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemccrone Stay in the Loop. Don't have time to listen to the podcast? Want to make some snowmobiles? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive deeper insights on current and past episodes. Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch: The No Bell Podcast Episode 24 ...

    1h 29m
  3. Military Hardware to Mental Health: Perceptual Control Theory with Warren Mansell, PhD

    1 OCT

    Military Hardware to Mental Health: Perceptual Control Theory with Warren Mansell, PhD

    Send us a text What if everything you thought you knew about human behavior was backward? Imagine discovering that we don't actually control our behavior at all—instead, our behavior is merely the observable side effect of our brains controlling what we perceive. Professor Warren Mansell, a clinical psychologist and expert in Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), takes us on a mind-expanding journey through this revolutionary framework developed by physicist William Powers. Drawing from control systems engineering, Powers recognized that living organisms operate fundamentally differently than most psychological theories suggest—we're not stimulus-response machines or prediction engines, but sophisticated control systems organizing our behavior to make our perceptions match our desired states. The implications are profound. Psychological conflicts arise when different control systems within us fight over the same variable—like wanting to both remember and forget a traumatic memory. Consciousness itself emerges as a spotlight moving through our hierarchical control systems, helping resolve these conflicts through reorganization. This explains why activities that temporarily downregulate our habitual control patterns—from deep conversations to meditation to psychedelics—can lead to transformative insights. For leaders and organizations, PCT offers a powerful lens for understanding human dynamics. By recognizing that people are controlling for different variables and experiencing different conflicts, we can create environments that help people explore what truly matters to them while aligning with collective goals. Whether you're fascinated by psychology, leadership, conflict resolution, or simply understanding yourself better, this conversation will transform how you view human behavior and interaction. Ready to see the world through the lens of control? Warren Mansell on Linkedin X: @warrenmansell NWO Intro with Boyd March 25, 2025 Flow Learning Lab Find us on X. @NoWayOutcast Substack: The Whirl of ReOrientation Want to develop your organization’s capacity for free and independent action (Organic Success)? Learn more and follow us at: https://www.aglx.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@AGLXConsulting https://www.linkedin.com/company/aglx-consulting-llc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandrivera https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemccrone Stay in the Loop. Don't have time to listen to the podcast? Want to make some snowmobiles? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive deeper insights on current and past episodes. Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch: The No Bell Podcast Episode 24 ...

    1h 32m
  4. Autism, Telepathy and New "Outside" Information with Dr. Julia Mossbridge

    25 SEPT

    Autism, Telepathy and New "Outside" Information with Dr. Julia Mossbridge

    Send us a text What if the key to unlocking human consciousness lies not in neurotypical experiences, but in the unique ways non-speaking autistic individuals perceive and interact with reality? In this captivating episode of No Way Out, host Brian "Ponch" Rivera welcomes cognitive neuroscientist, researcher, and spiritual seeker Julia Mossbridge, PhD, and special co-host Sarah Kernion, a mother of two non-speaking autistic children, for a profound exploration of awareness, precognition, and expanded human potential. Dr. Mossbridge shares insights from her pioneering research on precognition, demonstrating how scientific studies reveal that human physiology can anticipate future random events before they occur. She introduces the "informational substrate"—a foundational layer of reality rooted in information rather than matter—that may underpin phenomena like telepathy and non-local consciousness. Drawing on the intelligence community's Stargate program on remote viewing, she explains how these abilities tap into a universal information field, challenging conventional notions of time and space. Sarah Kernion offers heartfelt insights from raising her non-speaking autistic son and daughter, who exhibit remarkable abilities to process multiple streams of information simultaneously—such as absorbing podcasts, TV shows, and reading materials all at once—despite motor challenges, like difficulty opening a door. She recounts instances where her children demonstrated knowledge acquired through unexplained means, including apparent telepathic connections.  These observations align with Dr. Mossbridge's findings, and Kernion emphasizes how unconditional love and maternal intuition nurture their growth.  Julia Mossbridge, PhD Stimson Center Sarah Kernion Helios Rising  The Telepathy Tapes NWO Intro with Boyd Flow Learning Lab Find us on X. @NoWayOutcast Substack: The Whirl of ReOrientation Want to develop your organization’s capacity for free and independent action (Organic Success)? Learn more and follow us at: https://www.aglx.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@AGLXConsulting https://www.linkedin.com/company/aglx-consulting-llc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandrivera https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemccrone Stay in the Loop. Don't have time to listen to the podcast? Want to make some snowmobiles? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive deeper insights on current and past episodes. Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch: The No Bell Podcast Episode 24 ...

    1h 8m
  5. TOPGUN vs. Major Boyd: Humans Over Algorithms with CAPT Dan Pederson

    18 SEPT

    TOPGUN vs. Major Boyd: Humans Over Algorithms with CAPT Dan Pederson

    Send us a text In this episode of No Way Out , Captain Dan "Yank" Pederson, the "Godfather" of TOPGUN, shares the origin story of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, established in 1969 during the Vietnam War to address a 2:1 kill ratio that exposed deficiencies in aerial combat.  Pederson recounts how he selected eight experienced pilots and RIOs who, with limited resources, created a PhD-level curriculum in just 60 days by emphasizing the human element over technology. This focus challenged John Boyd’s Energy-Maneuverability (E-M) theory, prioritizing pilot skill, heart, and adaptability, leading to a remarkable 24:1 kill ratio by the war’s end.  Key innovations included vertical fighting tactics and a culture of psychological safety in debriefs, fostering a brotherhood that drove excellence. Pederson’s insights extend beyond aviation, offering lessons for organizations on building high-performing teams through mentorship, experiential learning, and human-centric leadership. As AI and automation reshape industries, he warns against over-relying on technology, advocating for human capability as the decisive factor. The episode connects TOPGUN’s principles to modern challenges, including AI’s role in human-agent teaming and the OODA loop’s relevance in cognitive warfare, urging organizations to prioritize people over systems. Dan Pederson Wiki TOPGUN: An American Story NWO Intro with Boyd March 25, 2025 Flow Learning Lab Find us on X. @NoWayOutcast Substack: The Whirl of ReOrientation Want to develop your organization’s capacity for free and independent action (Organic Success)? Learn more and follow us at: https://www.aglx.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@AGLXConsulting https://www.linkedin.com/company/aglx-consulting-llc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandrivera https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemccrone Stay in the Loop. Don't have time to listen to the podcast? Want to make some snowmobiles? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive deeper insights on current and past episodes. Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch: The No Bell Podcast Episode 24 ...

    1h 31m
  6. AI’s D&C Cycles Accelerate: Harmonizing Agents and The Big 'O’rientation with Mahault Albarracin, PhD

    4 SEPT

    AI’s D&C Cycles Accelerate: Harmonizing Agents and The Big 'O’rientation with Mahault Albarracin, PhD

    Send us a text What if we've been thinking about AI all wrong? What if endless scaling isn't the answer, but instead we need systems that understand context, embody knowledge, and grasp causal relationships like living organisms do? In this mind-expanding conversation with Mahault Albarracin, PhD, VERSES AI Director of Research Strategy – recorded on the 49th anniversary of John Boyd's seminal paper "Destruction and Creation" – we journey through the fascinating landscape where neuroscience meets artificial intelligence. Mahault shares how her background in social sciences led her to active inference, a framework that models intelligence after natural cognitive systems rather than linear engineering approaches, echoing Boyd's emphasis on breaking down outdated mental models to create adaptive new ones. The parallels between Karl Friston's active inference and Boyd's OODA loop emerge vividly, as both frameworks highlight prediction, orientation in complex environments, and harmonizing changing tactical actions with evolving strategic intentions. We explore why current AI systems struggle with tasks humans find intuitive – they lack embodiment within spatial-temporal reality and fail to grasp how context shifts meaning, much like the limitations Boyd critiqued in rigid, backwards-planning strategies. Perhaps most provocatively, we challenge the dominant AI doom narratives, tracing them to biases rooted in defense funding, colonial hierarchies, and adversarial worldviews. Could our fears of malevolent artificial intelligence simply reflect our own projections? What if, instead of building systems expecting friction, we created AI capable of empathy, resonance, and connection? As Mahault suggests, "The condition for AI alignment is to give it the ability to love us, to have empathy, to see us as kin rather than just objectives." The conversation ranges from the technical details of the spatial web (creating interoperable standards for meaningful, privacy-respecting data connectivity) to philosophical questions about consciousness, harmony in multi-agent systems, and NWO Intro with Boyd March 25, 2025 Flow Learning Lab Find us on X. @NoWayOutcast Substack: The Whirl of ReOrientation Want to develop your organization’s capacity for free and independent action (Organic Success)? Learn more and follow us at: https://www.aglx.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@AGLXConsulting https://www.linkedin.com/company/aglx-consulting-llc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandrivera https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemccrone Stay in the Loop. Don't have time to listen to the podcast? Want to make some snowmobiles? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive deeper insights on current and past episodes. Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch: The No Bell Podcast Episode 24 ...

    1h 7m
  7. Human-Agent Team of Teams: Active Inference AI & The Spatial Web w/ Dr. David Bray and Denise Holt

    26 AUG

    Human-Agent Team of Teams: Active Inference AI & The Spatial Web w/ Dr. David Bray and Denise Holt

    Send us a text The technological paradigm we've grown accustomed to—with centralized AI models hallucinating answers and requiring massive energy consumption—is about to undergo a profound transformation. This fascinating conversation explores how active inference AI, inspired by the principles of biological intelligence, offers a fundamentally different approach that could reshape our technological landscape. Dr. David Bray articulates the critical distinction between current AI systems that merely pattern-match based on past data versus the emerging active inference models that continuously predict, observe, and update their (Orientation) understanding of the world. These systems don't just regurgitate information; they develop mental models that allow them to navigate novelty and uncertainty just as our brains do. Meanwhile, Denise Holt explains how the newly ratified spatial web protocol creates the infrastructure for these distributed intelligence systems to operate across networks with shared context and meaning. What makes this shift particularly compelling is its potential to restore human agency in technological systems. Rather than the surveillance capitalism model that has dominated recent decades, active inference AI within the spatial web framework enables pre-compute permissions and constraints, allowing individuals to specify what they want to happen (or not happen) with their digital identity. This represents a fundamental realignment of power dynamics in our technological future. The implications extend beyond individual experience to organizational performance, national security, and global commerce. From detecting weak signals that might indicate emerging threats to managing complex adaptive systems like supply chains, this approach enables decentralized intelligence that can process information closer to where it's needed—at the edge. Ready to explore this new frontier of AI? Connect with Denise Holt at Learning Lab Central to join a community focused on active inference and the s NWO Intro with Boyd March 25, 2025 Flow Learning Lab Find us on X. @NoWayOutcast Substack: The Whirl of ReOrientation Want to develop your organization’s capacity for free and independent action (Organic Success)? Learn more and follow us at: https://www.aglx.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@AGLXConsulting https://www.linkedin.com/company/aglx-consulting-llc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandrivera https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemccrone Stay in the Loop. Don't have time to listen to the podcast? Want to make some snowmobiles? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive deeper insights on current and past episodes. Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch: The No Bell Podcast Episode 24 ...

    1h 5m
  8. Outmaneuver Complexity: AI Gold Rush 2.0 & Adaptive Capacity with David Woods, PhD

    29 JUL

    Outmaneuver Complexity: AI Gold Rush 2.0 & Adaptive Capacity with David Woods, PhD

    Send us a text What happens when our increasingly interconnected systems face unexpected challenges? Dr. David Woods, pioneer of resilience engineering, explores how organizations can build the adaptive capacity needed to survive in an age of growing complexity. Drawing from decades studying high-risk industries, Woods frames our current technological moment with historical perspective. The "second AI gold rush" unfolds with familiar patterns – promising seamless automation while overlooking the inevitable new complexities and vulnerabilities that emerge. Through compelling examples from Boeing's 737 MAX disasters to financial system collapses, he demonstrates how brittle systems eventually break when organizations prioritize short-term productivity over long-term resilience. Woods introduces core principles of adaptive organizations – graceful extensibility, the capacity to reconfigure and reprioritize under pressure, and the critical ability to anticipate approaching saturation points before collapse occurs. He challenges the linear thinking that dominates most organizations, explaining why reframing – updating our mental models to match changing reality – proves so difficult yet essential for survival. Whether you're navigating organizational challenges, interested in the future of human-AI collaboration, or seeking to understand resilience in an uncertain world, this episode provides essential frameworks for thinking differently about complexity, surprise, and adaptation when failure isn't an option. David Woods on LinkedIn Dept. of Integrated Systems Engineering, David Woods, PhD  NWO Intro with Boyd March 25, 2025 Flow Learning Lab Find us on X. @NoWayOutcast Substack: The Whirl of ReOrientation Want to develop your organization’s capacity for free and independent action (Organic Success)? Learn more and follow us at: https://www.aglx.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@AGLXConsulting https://www.linkedin.com/company/aglx-consulting-llc/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/briandrivera https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemccrone Stay in the Loop. Don't have time to listen to the podcast? Want to make some snowmobiles? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive deeper insights on current and past episodes. Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch: The No Bell Podcast Episode 24 ...

    1h 46m
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About

Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.

Information

  • Creator
    Mark McGrath and Brian "Ponch" Rivera
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    129
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 AGLX - No Way Out
  • Show Website
    No Way Out

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