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No Way Out

No Way Out

Written by: Mark McGrath and Brian "Ponch" Rivera
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No Way Out: The #1 Podcast on John Boyd’s OODA Loop, The Flow System, and Navigating UncertaintySponsored by AGLX — a global network powering adaptive leadership, enterprise agility, and resilient teams in complex, high-stakes environments.Home to the deepest explorations of Colonel John R. Boyd’s OODA Loop (Observe–Orient–Decide–Act), Destruction and Creation, Patterns of Conflict — and the official voice of The Flow System, the modern evolution of Boyd’s ideas into complex adaptive systems, team-of-teams design, and achieving unbreakable flow.


140+ episodes | New episodes weekly We show how Boyd’s work, The Flow System, and AGLX’s real-world experience enable leaders, startups, militaries, and organizations to out-think, out-adapt, and out-maneuver in today’s chaotic VUCA world — from business strategy and cybersecurity to agile leadership, trading, sports, safety, mental health, and personal decision-making.Subscribe now for the clearest OODA Loop explanations, John Boyd breakdowns, and practical tools for navigating uncertainty available anywhere in 2025.


The Whirl of Reorientation (Substack): https://thewhirlofreorientation.substack.com The Flow System: https://www.theflowsystem.com AGLX Global Network: https://www.aglx.com


#OODALoop #JohnBoyd #TheFlowSystem #Flow #NavigatingUncertainty #AdaptiveLeadership #VUCA


© 2026 AGLX - No Way Out
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Episodes
  • Unlocking Reality: OODA Loops, Emergence, and the Mind's Hidden Boundaries
    Jan 5 2026

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    Dive deep into the intersections of John Boyd's OODA loop, emergence, and the nature of reality in this mind-expanding episode of No Way Out. Hosts Ponch and Moose (Mark) welcome patent attorney and author Luiz von Paumgartten, whose book The Abstractionist's Papers (freely available at WelcomeToTheBlueSpace.com) reveals profound connections between Boyd's work and concepts like meaning vs. happening, red space (the mind's interpretive world) and blue space (raw reality), orthogonality, paradoxes, and flow states.

    Your mind’s map isn’t the world—it’s a living system that generates meaning from signals crossing a boundary we often miss: light, where inputs transform along neural pathways into interpretations. Luiz shares his journey from personal disruption to creating practical maps for navigating uncertainty, drawing parallels to OODA's Orientation—not a step, but the engine shaping perception, prediction, and action. We explore orthogonality (inside and outside on different planes), how paradoxes are gaps between interpretations and expectations (closed by reinterpreting, updating, or revising rules), and why novelty emerges when the cost of carrying mismatches exceeds reconfiguring orientation. Ties to Boyd’s Destruction and Creation, the free energy principle’s drive to minimize surprise, Eastern philosophy (like the Tao), quantum paradoxes, allostasis, and stability as an average of continuous reorientation amplify these insights.

    Discover how information is variation until a mind assigns meaning, why we never exchange meaning directly, and how viewing OODA as linear misses the spiral of learning. If you're into Boyd, active inference, or unlocking hidden dimensions of thought, this

    John R. Boyd's Conceptual Spiral was originally titled No Way Out. In his own words:

    “There is no way out unless we can eliminate the features just cited. Since we don’t know how to do this, we must continue the whirl of reorientation…”

    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
    ...

    Show More Show Less
    2 hrs
  • Trend Following Warfare: John Boyd's OODA Loop in Trading
    Dec 29 2025

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    Most investors want comfort. We make the case for discomfort. This conversation dives into trend following as a rule-based way to survive chaotic markets, mapped directly to John Boyd’s OODA Loop and the culture that made the Turtle Traders relentless. Instead of worshiping smooth curves and tidy narratives, we focus on process: cut losses fast, let winners run, and treat volatility as information rather than injury.

    With Jerry Parker and Mike Melissinos, we unpack what makes trend following so hard and so effective. Jerry traces the original Turtle training, where doing the right thing while losing in the short term was rewarded—a culture almost no client environment tolerates. Mike explains why “volatility management” often disguises feelings management, and how redefining risk as the chance of permanent loss changes everything from position sizing to patience. Together, we explore orientation—how beliefs shape what you see—and why a 40 percent win rate can still compound if your payoff distribution catches outliers.

    Jerry Parker on X: @rjpjr12
    Jerry Parker on Linkedin

    Mike Melissinos on LinkedIn:
    Melissinos Trading
    Michael Melissinos's Blog:
    Michael Melissinos on X: @mmelissinos

    John R. Boyd's Conceptual Spiral was originally titled No Way Out. In his own words:

    “There is no way out unless we can eliminate the features just cited. Since we don’t know how to do this, we must continue the whirl of reorientation…”

    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
    ...

    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Sun Tzu to AI: OODA Loop – Moral Conflict, Human Flourishing, or Dependency?
    Dec 17 2025

    Send us a text

    In this profound episode of No Way Out, hosts Moose and Ponch sit down with Dr. Mihaela Ulieru – robotics pioneer, AI ethics advisor, and governance expert – for a mind-expanding conversation that bridges military strategy, morality, technology, and consciousness.

    Drawing from her Romanian roots and personal experiences during the 1989 Revolution, Dr. Mihaela explores how the OODA loop can either trap us in dependency or propel us toward true human flourishing. The discussion dives deep into the moral stack (morality, ethics, justice) needed to prevent system capture by "takers," the isolating effects of modern media and AI on human connectivity, and why society often rewards extractive behaviors over creative "makers."

    They unpack historical lessons from Vietnam and Romania, the cypherpunk dream of digital freedom, epigenetics, plant-based medicine for expanding consciousness, and the potential of collective intent, telepathy, and universal patterns in shaping reality.

    Mindplex Podcast
    SingularityNET

    John R. Boyd's Conceptual Spiral was originally titled No Way Out. In his own words:

    “There is no way out unless we can eliminate the features just cited. Since we don’t know how to do this, we must continue the whirl of reorientation…”

    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
    ...

    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 51 mins
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