One of the major exemplars of the philosophical movement known as Stoicism almost 2000 years ago, Epictetus, a former slave, had much to say about taking the right approach to life. Through his teachings, which culminated in the dictated works of his Discourses and Enchiridion, Epictetus expounded on what virtuous living meant and what it should look like - not through theory, but through actual examples drawn from real life and the psychological attitudes one can adopt to make for a more trouble-free life and a 'tranquil' existence.

On this week's MindMatters, we take a look at the very influential teachings of Epictetus. Much like Gurdjieff (and perhaps even an inspiration to him?) we see how even centuries after his description of the 'art of living', his wisdom and insights into the human condition could not be more relevant for our own thinking and ways of living today.


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"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary" — H.L. Mencken

As the global pandemic grips world attention, completely unnoticed by mainstream media was the release of a final report of an academic study pertaining to another previously calamitous event of international significance. On March 25th, the conclusion of a four year investigation by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks was published which determined that the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11th, 2001 was not caused by fire. The peer-reviewed inquiry was funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a nonprofit organization composed of more than 3,000 building architects and engineers who are a signatory to the group's formal appeal calling for a new investigation into the three — not two — WTC skyscrapers destroyed on 9/11. The researchers infer that the collapse of Building 7 was actually the result of a controlled demolition:

"The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building."

With or without a pandemic, it is likely corporate media would have ignored the study anyway, just as they have anything that contradicts the official story of 9/11. However, it is notable that many have drawn parallels between the COVID-19 outbreak and the 9/11 attacks based on the widespread changes to daily life as a result of the crisis going forward. Already there is talk of nationwide lockdowns as a "new normal" with many rightly expressing concerns over civil liberties, press freedoms, the surveillance state, and other issues just as there were following 9/11. By the same measure, a false dichotomy is being established by political gatekeepers in order to silence those who dare challenge the official account as to how the coronavirus began. It is a stigmatization that is all too familiar to those who have never believed the conventional narrative that 19 Arab hijackers loyal to Osama bin Laden armed only with box-cutters were solely responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that fateful day.

One of the most politically-connected yet scandal ridden vaccine companies in the United States, with troubling ties to the 2001 anthrax attacks and opioid crisis, is set to profit handsomely from the current Coronavirus crisis.

In August 2001, biopharmaceutical company BioPort faced imminent disaster. A series of company scandals, controversial federal bail-outs and severe, adverse health reactions among U.S. troops were causing both Congress and the Pentagon to reconsider its multi-million dollar contract to provide the military with an anthrax vaccine.

Formed for the sole purpose of acquiring a publicly-owned company in Michigan that held the exclusive license to manufacture the only FDA-approved anthrax vaccine in the United States, BioPort sought to quickly expand the size and scope of its contracts with the U.S. military. This strategy was made possible thanks to the former head of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William Crowe, who would prove highly instrumental in the rise of BioPort's vaccine monopoly and its subsequent, aggressive hiring of former government officials as lobbyists.

Yet, soon after scoring these multi-million dollar contracts and securing a monopoly on anthrax vaccines, BioPort would claim that they were flailing financially and would subsequently be bailed out to the tune of $24 million at the Pentagon's request, which cited "national security concerns" as justification.

However, Pentagon auditors had found that much of the money awarded to BioPort was unaccounted for and the money they were able to trace had failed to go towards renovating their vaccine production facility, which had lost its license until numerous sanitary problems (sanitary and otherwise) were fixed. Meanwhile, scores of soldiers who had suffered ill health effects from BioPort's anthrax vaccine, some disabled for life, began speaking out, bringing BioPort's most critical product and chief source of income under unwanted scrutiny.

The Gestapo was a very small organisation reliant on informers to denounce enemies of the regime, but jealous spouses and neighbours often used it to settle scores

The Gestapo was a key element in the Nazi terror system. The very word conjures up a nightmare image of an all-powerful Orwellian 'Big Brother' style secret police force keeping the German public under constant surveillance. Films, novels and TV documentaries have embedded this image in the popular mind. But is it true? In reality, the Gestapo was a very small organisation. In 1933, it had 1,000 employees and even at its peak in 1944, its active officers within Germany numbered 16,000, policing a population of 66 million. In Düsselfdorf, with a population of 500,000, there were 126 Gestapo officers in 1937. Essen had 650,000 inhabitants and just 43. The same pattern was repeated in all the other major German cities. Most rural towns had no Gestapo presence at all. The Gestapo was underfunded, under-resourced and over stretched.

The 75th Anniversary of the passing of American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt should give the world a chance to revisit the immortal life and courage of the man whom decades of revisionism have turned into a popular aristocratic cartoon character. The decades of intense of effort to distort the life of the true Roosevelt from the minds of todays' citizens has much to do with the fact that not only did he break from his own class loyalties during his lifetime, but powerfully challenged the structures of the financial oligarchy during a time of global crisis both within the USA and globally.

Even before the earliest days of America's entry into World War II, Franklin Roosevelt clearly and loudly defined the conditions upon which he chose to bring his nation into collaboration with Britain and other allied powers of Europe in the struggle against fascism: freedom and sovereignty for all nations, an end to want, and especially an end to all systems of empire and exploitation.

Hitler and the fascist axis powers were admittedly the greatest immediate threat to world peace and as such FDR agreed must be put down. However, very few today realize what stark contrast occurred between Roosevelt and Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill over what exactly the post-WWII order would look like. Even if the threat of fascism could be put down, FDR always knew that the evils of colonialism were just as great, if not greater, than the worst expression of fascism and this was the real enemy which he targeted as soon as America entered the war.

Bill Gates is a ruthless schemer who demeaned his employees and conspired to rip off his business partner, according to a memoir written by the co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen.

Mr Allen's forthcoming book reveals a deep-seated bitterness at the heart of the famous relationship that created the most successful software company the world has ever seen. In Idea Man: A Memoir, Allen also claims that Gates never gave him enough credit for his contribution to Microsoft's earliest development, nor a big enough share of the company. In effect, Mr Allen is accusing his friend of bullying him out of shares that would have been worth billions of dollars.

Mr Gates and Mr Allen first became friends in 1968 over their Seattle high school Teletype machine, on which they wrote their first software together. Mr Allen moved to Boston and Gates dropped out of Harvard University in 1975 so they could work on what would eventually become Microsoft. The company created what was to become the ubiquitous operating software of the personal computer, and grew into a business that's now worth $220bn (£137bn).

Starting in April, an about-4,000-year-old settlement will be excavated to provide insights into Early Bronze Age life. Settlements of this size have not yet been found at the related henges in the British Isles.

Pömmelte is a ring-shaped sanctuary with earth walls, ditches and wooden piles that is located in the northeastern part of Germany, south of Magdeburg. The site is very much reminiscent of the world-famous monument Stonehenge, and it is likely that the people there performed very similar rituals to those of their counterparts in what is now Britain 4,300 years ago.

In the immediate vicinity of the sanctuary, archaeologists from the State Office for Monument Conservation and Archaeology, together with fellow experts from the University of Halle, have found numerous remains of a settlement going back thousands of years during their last two excavation campaigns there. Starting in April, this settlement is to be uncovered as completely as possible.

A new radiocarbon dating technique, reported today in Nature, has been used to confirm the age of the most noteworthy group of Early Neolithic pottery ever found in London.

Our archaeologists found the extraordinary trove, comprising 436 fragments from at least 24 separate vessels and weighing nearly 6.5 kilos, while excavating at Principal Place in Shoreditch - the location of the new Amazon UK HQ - for Brookfield Properties.

It is extremely rare to find archaeology from this time in central London - let alone still in situ - and only a few individual fragments of pottery and stone axes have been uncovered to date, so the find fills a key gap in London's prehistory.

Using their brand new radiocarbon dating technique on traces of milk fats extracted from within the fabric of the pottery fragments, researchers from the University of Bristol were able to narrow the timeframe for the pottery collection to a window of just 138 years, to around 3,600BC.

Between the 14th and 19th centuries, there was a period of climate instability known as the Little Ice Age that mainly affected the northern hemisphere. This period saw an increase in storm activity and a fall in temperature of between 1º and 2º C, which, despite not being particularly severe, had devastating consequences. The mild climate throughout the previous centuries, which had brought about considerable population growth, turned into a harsher one that led to harvest failures and the death of animals; in short, hunger. And with the famines, the health of the populations became weaker and diseases spread. It is sufficient to recall the black death pandemic that ravaged Europe in the 14th century, resulting in the death of about one-third of the population.

Did the climate change and resulting diseases influence human genetics? In today's European population, the mitochondrial DNA lineage that is transmitted matrilinearly is more frequently of the H haplogroup. Why is that?

Today, it's a cutting-edge lab. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the center of the U.S. government's darkest experiments.

In 1954, a prison doctor in Kentucky isolated seven black inmates and fed them "double, triple and quadruple" doses of LSD for 77 days straight. No one knows what became of the victims. They may have died without knowing they were part of the CIA's highly secretive program to develop ways to control minds — a program based out of a little-known Army base with a dark past, Fort Detrick.

Suburban sprawl has engulfed Fort Detrick, an Army base 50 miles from Washington in the Maryland town of Frederick. Seventy-six years ago, however, when the Army selected Detrick as the place to develop its super-secret plans to wage germ warfare, the area around the base looked much different. In fact, it was chosen for its isolation. That's because Detrick, still thriving today as the Army's principal base for biological research and now encompassing nearly 600 buildings on 13,000 acres, was for years the nerve center of the CIA's hidden chemical and mind control empire.

Detrick is today one of the world's cutting-edge laboratories for research into toxins and antitoxins, the place where defenses are developed against every plague, from crop fungus to Ebola. Its leading role in the field is widely recognized. For decades, though, much of what went on at the base was a closely held secret. Directors of the CIA mind control program MK-ULTRA, which used Detrick as a key base, destroyed most of their records in 1973. Some of its secrets have been revealed in declassified documents, through interviews and as a result of congressional investigations. Together, those sources reveal Detrick's central role in MK-ULTRA and in the manufacture of poisons intended to kill foreign leaders.