Sermons and events at Sherman Street Church in Grand Rapids, MI, USA
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For history lovers who listen to podcasts, History Unplugged is the most comprehensive show of its kind. It's the only show that dedicates episodes to both interviewing experts and answering questions from its audience. First, it features a call-in show where you can ask our resident historian (Scott Rank, PhD) absolutely anything (What was it like to be a Turkish sultan with four wives and twelve concubines? If you were sent back in time, how would you kill Hitler?). Second, it features lon ...
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First Reading: Psalm 23 Second Reading: I John 3:16-24 Sermon: Truth & Action Preaching: Pastor JenBy Sherman Street Church
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The 15-Hour Work Week Was Standard For Nearly All of History. What Happened?
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There’s nothing in human DNA that makes the 40-hour workweek a biological necessity. In fact, for much of human history, 15 hours of work a week was the standard, followed by leisure time with family and fellow tribe members, telling stories, painting, dancing, and everything else. Work was a means to an end, and nothing else. So what happened? Why…
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Pancho Villa’s 1916 Raid on New Mexico: The Pearl Harbor Bombing of Its Time
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Before 9/11, before Pearl Harbor, another unsuspected foreign attack on the United States shocked the nation and forever altered the course of history. In 1916, Pancho Villa, a guerrilla fighter who commanded an ever-changing force of conscripts in northern Mexico, attached a border town in New Mexico. It was a raid that angered Americans, and Pres…
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A Radical Abolitionist Youth Movement Consumed America in 1860, Elected Lincoln, Then Disappeared Completely
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At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners appeared as bodyguards to defend anti-slavery stump speakers from frequent attacks. The group called themselves the Wide Awakes. Soon, hundreds of thousands of young white and black men, and a number of women, were organizing boisterous, uniformed, torch-bearing…
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Socrates May Have Been Executed For Revealing Secrets of Athens’ Religious Rituals
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The influence of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates has been profound. Even today, over two thousand years after his death, he remains one of the most renowned humans to have ever lived—and his death remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries. There is another side to this story: impiety, lack of reverence for the gods, was a religious crim…
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The Age of Discovery Through American-Indian Eyes
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A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. So, when Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand, having developed differently from their own, and whose power they often underestimated. And no civilization came to a halt when a few wandering explorers arr…
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First Reading: Luke 24:36-49 Second Reading: I Corinthians 15:1-22 Sermon: Flesh and Bones Preaching: Pastor TonyBy Sherman Street Church
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A Short History of the Sioux Wars (1862-1890)
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War, Conflict, Victory & Defeat. These are all aspects of life that some may have to face. This was true for the various groups of the Sioux Tribes. On today's bonus episode from "Key Battles of American History" join host James Early as he discusses the multiple wars that took place between 1862-1890, collectively known as "The Sioux Wars"…
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The Deerfield Massacre: The Infamous 1704 Indian Raid That Left Hundreds Dead and More Captured
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In an obscure village in western Massachusetts, there lies what once was the most revered but now totally forgotten relic from the history of early New England—the massive, tomahawk-scarred door that came to symbolize the notorious Deerfield Massacre. This impregnable barricade—known to early Americans as “The Old Indian Door”—constructed from doub…
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The Dangerous and Thrilling Life of a 19th-Century Whaler
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In mid-nineteenth century New England, Robert Armstrong was a young man with the world at his feet. His family was wealthy and gave him the opportunity to attend the nation’s first dental school. But Armstrong threw his future away, drinking himself into oblivion. Devoured by guilt and shame, in December 1849 he sold his dental instruments, his wat…
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April 7, 2024 - Jim Wallis Event and Book Signing
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Jim Wallis talks about his recent book release, The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy. Rev. Joe Jones, former head of the Grand Rapids Urban League and pastor of Brown Hutcherson Ministries, provides a response to Jim's talk and Dr. Kristin Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne, mo…
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April 7, 2024 - Christ Makes Us Children of Light
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First Reading: Psalm 133:1-3 Second Reading: I John 1:1-2:2 Sermon: Christ Makes Us Children of Light Preaching: Rev. Darrell DelaneyBy Sherman Street Church
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Fiorello LaGuardia: Immigrant Son and Ellis Island Interpreter Who Became America’s Mayor
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Fiorello LaGuardia was one of the twentieth century’s most colorful politicians―a 5’2’’ ball of energy who led New York as major during the Depression and World War Two, charming the media during press conference and fighting the dirty machine politics of the city. He was also quintessentially American: the son of Italian immigrants, who rose in so…
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How the West Tried and Failed to Stop the Russian Revolution
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The Allied Intervention into the Russian Civil War remains one of the most ambitious yet least talked about military ventures of the 20th century. Coinciding with the end of the first World War, some 180,000 troops from several countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Italy, Greece, Poland, and Romania, among others…
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Easter Sunday! He is risen! First Reading: Isaiah 25:6-9 Second Reading: Mark 16:1-8 Sermon: Dawn Is Not The Day Preaching: Rev. Erika Dekker delivers Pastor Jen's Easter message.By Sherman Street Church
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Kings Were Inevitable and Untouchable Until They Suddenly Weren’t After a Few 1700s Revolutions
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At the turn of the nineteenth century, two waves of revolutions swept the Atlantic world, disrupting the social order and ushering in a new democratic-republican experiment whose effects rippled across continents and centuries. The first wave of revolutions in the late 1700s (which included the much-celebrated American and French Revolutions and th…
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The Fall Of Japanese-held Hong Kong in January 1945
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Commander John Lamade started the war in 1941 a nervous pilot of an antiquated biplane. Just over three years later he was in the cockpit of a cutting-edge Hellcat about to lead a strike force of 80 aircraft through the turbulent skies above the South China Sea. His target: Hong Kong. As a storm of antiaircraft fire darkened the sky, watching from …
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March 24, 2024 - A Not So Triumphal Entry
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First Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9a Second Reading: Mark 11:1-11 Sermon: A Not So Triumphal Entry Preaching: Pastor TonyBy Sherman Street Church
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WW1 German Spies Infiltrated America and Attempted to Start a Race War
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On January 30, 1918, a young man “with the appearance of a well-educated, debonair foreigner” arrived at the U.S. customs station in Nogales, Arizona, located on the border with Mexico. After politely informing the customs inspector that he had come to complete his draft registration questionnaire and meet a friend in San Francisco, he was approved…
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The Air Battles of the 1945 Eastern Front Forged Air Force Doctrines of the Cold War
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The last months of World War II on the Eastern Front saw a ferocious fight between two very different air forces. Soviet Air Force (VVS) Commander-in-Chief Alexander Novikov assembled 7,500 aircraft in three powerful air armies to support the final assault on Berlin. The Luftwaffe employed some of its most advanced weapons including the Me 262 jet …
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First Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34 Second Reading: John 12:20-33 Sermon: A Grain of Wheat Preaching: Pastor JenBy Sherman Street Church
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The First Pre-Columbian Explorers to Reach North America
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Have you ever wondered if there was a group to reach North America before Christopher Columbus? Find out more in today's bonus episode from another Parthenon podcast "History of North America." Join host Mark Vinet as he discusses the search for the first non-indigenous explorers to reach the North American continent prior to Christopher Columbus’ …
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A Classicist Believes that Homer Directly Dictated the Iliad, and Was Also an Excellent Horseman
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The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, and when was it composed and why does it endure? To explore these questions is today’s guest, Robin Lane Fox, a scholar and teacher of Homer for over 40…
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In 1860, Damascus Nearly Committed Genocide Against Christians. How Did it Pull Back?
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On July 9, 1860, a violent mob swept through the Christian quarters of Damascus. For eight days, violence raged, leaving 5,000 Christians dead, thousands of shops looted, and churches, houses, and monasteries razed. The sudden and ferocious outbreak shocked the world, leaving Syrian Christians vulnerable and fearing renewed violence. Rogan is today…
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First Reading: Numbers 21:4-9 Second Reading: John 2:23-3:21 Sermon: Nicodemus Preaching: Pastor JenBy Sherman Street Church
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Silk: The History of a Fabric That Was Civilization’s First Burial Cloth, Body Armor, and Much More
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Silk—prized for its lightness, luminosity, and beauty—is also one of the strongest biological materials ever known. More than a century ago, it was used to make the first bulletproof vest, and yet science has barely even begun to tap its potential. As the technologies it has inspired—from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to hologr…
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Frank Lloyd Wrong – When America’s Greatest Architect Created His Masterpiece While Written-Off as a Has-Been
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Nobody blossomed late in life like Frank Lloyd Wright. He was written off as a has-been by middle age after a promising start. Between 1909 and 1929, Wright’s career was marked by personal turmoil and a roller coaster of career-related ups and downs. In these years, before he completed the buildings, we know him for today, Wright’s career was so fa…
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First Reading: Psalm 19 Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 Sermon: Foolishness Preaching: Pastor TonyBy Sherman Street Church
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Frederick Rutland, Britain’s Most Beloved WW1 Pilot, Became a Spy for Imperial Japan
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Frederick Rutland was an accomplished aviator, British WWI war hero, and real-life James Bond. He was the first pilot to take off and land a plane on a ship, a decorated warrior for his feats of bravery and rescue, was trusted by the admirals of the Royal Navy, had a succession of aeronautical inventions, and designed the first modern aircraft carr…
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The Rise and Fall of the Global Age of Piracy (17-19th Centuries)
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Piracy didn’t spring into existence in the 18th century Caribbean. It has existed as long as there has been commercial shipping and people to steal the goods. There were medieval pirates. Vikings loved robbing ships in the Baltic and North Seas. The Romans dealt with pirates in the Mediterranean, and the Greeks and Carthaginians before them. Pirate…
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First Reading: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 Second Reading: Mark 8:31-38 Sermon: Taking Up Our Cross Preaching: Pastor JenBy Sherman Street Church
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A WW2 Polish Diplomat Forged Thousands of Paraguayan Passports to Save Jews from the Holocaust
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Between 1940 and 1943, Polish diplomats based in Bern, Switzerland, engaged in a remarkable – and until now, almost completely untold – humanitarian operation. This operation was one of the largest actions to aid Jews of the entire war and far eclipsed the better-known efforts of Oskar Schindler. In concert with two Jewish activists, these diplomat…
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Stories From Captives on The Last Slave Ship to America
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The Clotilda was the last slave ship to land on American soil, docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860—more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of slaves, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. Five of its passengers, ranging in age from two to nineteen when kidnapped, died between 1922…
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First Reading: Psalm 65 Second Reading: Acts 27:27-44 Sermon: Broken Pieces Preaching: Rev. Ricardo TavárezBy Sherman Street Church
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Was Union Support in the Confederacy Actually Widespread? The Alabamans Who Fought for Sherman Say 'Yes'
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As the popular narrative goes, the Civil War was won when courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But an aspect of the war that has remained little-known for 160 years is the Alabamian Union soldiers who played a decisive role in the Civil War, only to be scrubbed from the history books. One such group was the First Alabama Calvary, formed in …
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The Heroes, Legends, and Liars Who Fought in WW2
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Veterans of World War 2 are called the Greatest Generation for their uncommon courage and self-determination. Whether this descriptor is true or part of America’s self-mythologizing during the 20th century is a challenging question, one that Andrew Biggio, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, worked to answer. Biggio found that many were …
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First Reading: Psalm 50:1-6 Second Reading: Mark 9:2-9 Sermon: Listen to Him Preaching: Pastor JenBy Sherman Street Church
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Turning Okies Into New Dealers: How 1930s Technocrats Pushed Progressivism on Dust Bowl Refugees in Federal Farm Camps
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In the midst of the Great Depression, punished by crippling drought and deepening poverty, hundreds of thousands of families left the Great Plains and the Southwest to look for work in California’s rich agricultural valleys. In response to the scene of destitute white families living in filthy shelters built of cardboard, twigs, and refuse, reform-…
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Whistle-Stop Tours: When Trains Ruled American Presidential Elections
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For nearly two centuries, the beating heart of electoral politics was on the back of a train. William Jennings Bryan spoke to an estimated 5 million people from a train car in his 1896 presidential campaign. Yet memories of the pivotal role campaign trains played in American elections fade with the passing of each generation. Also forgotten are the…
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First Reading: Psalm 84 Second Reading: Mark 1:29-39 Sermon: A Solitary Place Preaching: Pastor TonyBy Sherman Street Church
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The Jewish Bankers Who Built Wall Street, Financed the American Century, and Spawned Countless Conspiracy Theories
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Joseph Seligman arrived in the United States in 1837, with the equivalent of $100 sewn into the lining of his pants. Then came the Lehman brothers, who would open a general store in Montgomery, Alabama. Not far behind were Solomon Loeb and Marcus Goldman, among the “Forty-Eighters” fleeing a Germany that had relegated Jews to an underclass. These i…
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In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs—including such future luminaries such as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey—landed in France to conduct a secret mission. From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army, conjured up phony …
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First Reading: Deuteronomy 18:15-20 Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 8:7-9 Sermon: Preaching: Pastor JenBy Sherman Street Church
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How Free Time Transformed From Strolls Through Aristocratic Gardens to Doomscrolling on TikTok
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Free time, one of life’s most important commodities, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the park for hours to “doomscrolling” on social media for thirty minutes? Despite the promise of modern industrialization, many people experience both a scarcity of free time and a disappointment in it.…
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Everyday Life In a War Zone: How To Live For Years With Air Raid Sirens and Tanks in the Street
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What goes through the mind of a mother who must send her child to school across a minefield or the men who belong to groups of volunteer body collectors? When living in a warzone, such questions become part of the daily calculus of life. This is an everyday form of war that included provisioning fighters with military equipment they purchased thems…
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First Reading: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 Second Reading: John 1:43-51 Sermon: Known Preaching: Pastor TonyBy Sherman Street Church
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Behind the Bulldog: Winston Churchill's Public Image vs. Private Reality, Based on Those Who Knew Him
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Winston Churchill remains one of the most revered figures of the twentieth century, his name a byword for courageous leadership. But the Churchill we know today is a mixture of history and myth, authored by the man himself. Today’s guest, David Reynolds, author of “Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him,” re-evaluates Church…
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American Anarchy of the Early 1900s and The First U.S. War Against Domestic Extremists
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In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private property. Militant and sometimes violent, anarchists were heroes to many working-class immigrants. But to many others, anarchism was a terrifyingly foreign ideology. Determined to crush it, gover…
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Why Armies Stopped Burning Libraries and Weaponized Them Instead
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Books are often seen as “victims” of combat. When the flames of warfare turn libraries to ashes, we grieve this loss as an immense human and cultural tragedy. But that’s not the complete picture. Books were used in war across the twentieth century—both as agents for peace and as weapons. On one hand, books represent solace and solidarity for troops…
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Shining Light on the British Dark Ages: Anglo-Saxon Warfare, 400-1070
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In a country fragmented by Roman withdrawal during the 5th century, the employment of Germanic mercenaries by local rulers in Anglo-Saxon Britain was commonplace. These mercenaries became settlers, forcing Romano-British communities into Wales and the West Country. Against a background of spreading Christianity, the struggles of rival British and A…
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