P100 Podcast

No community is complete without a library, so we're lucky to have them throughout our neighborhoods, thanks to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh system.   In this episode, we welcomed Andrew Medlar, the library's new president, to discuss his history in the profession, the important role of libraries in society, what the future holds for the system — and the surprising account of why our Carnegies were not the first Carnegies.   Visit Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh online at https://www.carnegielibrary.org/. 

Chris Posti started writing at 8 years old, but she only got to releasing her first novel six decades later.   Posti's “Falling Apart, Falling for You” centers on three women gathering for their 40th high school reunion in a fictional Western Pennsylvania town and their life-changing experiences. It the first of Posti's “Next Act” trilogy, her first foray into fiction after a career as an executive coach, nonfiction author and newspaper columnist, to name just a few of her endeavors.   After the book's release on April 29, Posti's 70th birthday, we discussed her latest career reinvention and the book's inspiration.   Order "Falling Apart, Falling for You" here: https://chrisposti.com/books/. 

Today, the doctor's office can be your own personal office... or your living room, or the dining, or even a public park, if you so choose. Telehealth visits, which many patients experienced for the first time during the past couple years, allow more flexibility in how Americans access their health care providers. And they're here to stay, as the type of visit has inherent benefits in convenience and comfort, particularly for mental health visits. To share expertise on telehealth and discuss what the future might bring, Jennifer Christman, president of Western Pennsylvania-based mental health and wellness care coordinator MyAdvisor, joined the P100 Podcast again. Learn more about what MyAdvisor can do for individuals, families and businesses at  https://www.threewiresys.com/care-coordination/myadvisor. 

In any Pittsburgh neighborhood, you're likely to find century-old buildings with deep history. Whether they are in good shape isn't as certain.   Preserving our past or, more specifically, finding new uses for it is central to the mission of the Young Preservationists Association, a nonprofit that shines a spotlight on underserved historic sites in the community and invites young people to have a voice in preservation. YPA Executive Director Matthew Craig joined us to discuss the group's goals and work in the community.   Learn more about the YPA here: https://youngpreservationists.org/    And check out their top 10 list of historic preservation opportunities here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvsS3DhzOUY 

As connected as the world is, it's still tough to meet people. Sure, there's online dating, but with a raft of options, algorithms and, oh, a pandemic complicating the in-person process, courtship is a little different these days.   Enter The Modern Matchmaker. Susan Dunhoff, a professional matchmaker and relationship expert, joined the podcast to chat about her Pittsburgh firm's 30-year history, successes, the ups and downs of the dating world, and how her business has changed to reflect today's environment. And for singles and soulmates alike, there are some great lessons about love.   Learn more about The Modern Matchmaker: https://www.themodernmatchmaker.com/ 

Data breaches. Chances are you've been a part of one. The hosts of the P100 Podcast can say so — as can thousands of businesses.   With the U.S. on pace for a record year in data breaches, welcomed Mark Parker of the technology company Three Wire Systems to discuss cybersecurity and why private businesses should consider more strict Department of Defense standards to protect their businesses.   Over the conversation, we learned just why our data is so valuable, why data breaches continue to proliferate and how cybersecurity is a lot like an onion.   Learn more about Three Wire Systems: https://www.threewiresys.com/three-wire-technology-information-assurance 

Along with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the subsequent fall of the country to Taliban forces came a flood of emotions from Americans who served in the two-decade war.   An Air Force veteran told the VA “it was a mix of disappointment and relief.” Another veteran said, “it makes you think of families that have made enormous sacrifices, some living with the effects of an ultimate sacrifice.”   In the latest P100 Podcast, Jennifer Christman, president of Western Pa.-based MyAdvisor/VetAdvisor, joined us to discuss supporting veterans' mental health today.   Learn more about MyAdvisor here: https://www.threewiresys.com/myadvisor. 

It's time to binge watch some Pittsburgh. With a new Netflix series, an action thriller featuring Aquaman himself and a premium cable prestige drama each hitting a screen near you in the near future, the list of western Pennsylvania-filmed projects just keeps getting longer.   In this episode, we sat down with Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office. We chatted about what makes the region so attractive to filmmakers, how cameras stayed rolling through COVID-19 and what needs to happen to take our film industry to the next level. To learn more about the film office, visit pghfilm.org. 

People come to Pittsburgh many ways — be they natives, transplants or expats returning to the U.S. Squirrel Hill author Dorit Sasson falls into the latter group, having moved from New York to Israel at 19 and serving in the country's military before coming to Pittsburgh nearly two decades later. She shares her story and the complicated feelings of being part of two worlds in her upcoming book “Sand and Steel: A Memoir of Longing and Finding Home." Learn more about Sasson in this episode.  You can preorder "Sand and Steel” here, and she's offering a 2-for-1 special featuring her first book “Accidental Soldier: A Memoir of Service and Sacrifice in the Israel Defense Forces. Email sassondorit@gmail.com for payment instructions, or to find her availability as a speaker for a book club or group. She's also a highly skilled professional SEO speaker and trainer (learn more here).

The four simple words that make up the title of this episode have immense power. And that's just one of the takeaways from our discussion with Jennifer Christman, president of mental health care services provider MyAdvisor.   With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, as well as Military Appreciation Month, we talked about the important role employers can play in helping employees who are facing crises. We also discussed MyAdvisor's history, which includes beginnings in providing care for military veterans.   Learn more about MyAdvisor here: https://www.threewiresys.com/myadvisor    And remember, we can all help someone in crisis. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.   You can also reach Jennifer directly at jchristman@myvetadvisor.com. 

After the pandemic threw a wrench in her 2020 plans, Kelli Komondor is thriving in 2021. She started her own marketing firm, K2 Creative, and is sharing her success story — along with 20 of her friends — in “Twenty Won.” The anthology collects stories about business resilience during the global crisis from 21 female entrepreneurs.   Kelli and Renee DiMichiei Farrow, who penned the forward for the book and inspired Kelli along the way, joined us for our latest episode. We discussed lessons and themes from the book and tips for business success during times of crisis.   Learn more about "Twenty Won" here: https://twentywonbook.com/ 

  A flutist, tubist and failed recorder player are talking music during this episode of the P100 Podcast, as we welcomed Dr. Brittany Trotter, whose skill with the flute landed her one of the two spots in Pittsburgh-based UniSound’s new Black Teaching Artist-In-Residence Program. We chatted about the convergence of classical instruments in modern sounds, how Lizzo created a flute renaissance, and how teaching music has changed in the past year. To hear more for Dr. Trotter, check her out playing Ian Clarke’s “Zoom Tube”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldoM6vQuao4&t=24s  Or visit her website here: https://www.brittanytrotterflute.com/ 

If there’s even been a time for comedians, it’s now. Around Pittsburgh, Arcade Comedy Theater is providing some much-needed levity with live online shows. Jason Clark, general manager of the popular Cultural District venue, joined the P100 Podcast to discuss the theater’s online shift, the deep respect Pittsburghers have for the art of comedy, and why supporting the arts is so important. (We also learn that one of our hosts has a long way to go before becoming a standup star.) Find Arcade Comedy Theater’s events schedule here, and you can help the great staff provide more laughs by donating here.

 The latest P100 Podcast is all about giving — giving blood, that is. Or the ways you can help Pittsburgh’s primary blood bank if you aren’t eligible to donate.We chatted with Mark Giaquinto, president and chief financial officer of the Blood Science Foundation, the fundraising and philanthropic arm of Vitalant (formerly known as Central Blood Bank).Even before the pandemic’s disruptions, our region faced a steep decline in regular blood donors, with collections dropping by 50% over the past decade. We got into the reasons why that is — and how to reverse the trend.For more, see: https://bloodsciencefoundation.org/donate/ and https://www.vitalant.org/feedfamilies.

In the latest episode of the P100 Podcast, hosts Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong and Paul Furiga interviewed… Paul Furiga. There was a good reason for the exceedingly familiar guest: the WordWrite president and chief storyteller recently released his first book, “Finding Your Capital S Story: Why Story Drives Your Brand.”The book takes readers on a journey into the art and science of story, as well as why a “Capital S Story” the most important marketing tool a business owns. During the episode, Paul introduces these concepts and offers some details on the process of writing the book."Finding Your Capital S Story: Why Your Story Drives Your Brand" is Available on Amazon now

Maintaining strong mental and physical health are crucially important, and that can be hard, especially during a pandemic. Accessing care that helps us stay at our best shouldn't be a hassle, which is why MyAdvisor help provide services to private and public sector employers, addressing clinical tele-behavioral health, holistic wellness, and family stability, allowing individuals to thrive in their career and family life. This episode we sit down with Jenn Christman, President of MyAdvisor, to talk all about how they’re helping those who need it most access holistic health services to make sure they’re able to stay happy and healthy. MyAdvisorhttps://threewiresys.com/myadvisor Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration Helpline1(800) 662-HELP (4357) National Suicide Prevention Hotline1(800) 273-8255

Halloween is around the corner and kids are ready to chomp down on as much sugar as possible. That’s right, trick-or-treating is on in Pittsburgh, albeit with a few COVID-friendly guidelines. We talk about why the candy-giving tradition is so important, as well as another tradition coming up – the election. Finally, we round out the episode with more talk of returning to somewhat-normalcy, specifically how the music scene will look in Pittsburgh even after the “new normal” isn’t so new anymore. Venues closing, social distancing and other COVID-related measures are making musicians have to get creative with their live music. Mentioned in the show: VotesPAThe 2020 Election: It’s “Virtually” Here – Its Impact On Your Business and Your WorkforceThe Show Must Go On(line)River City Brass 

Our socially distanced summer continues as the P100 Podcast welcomes James Meyers Jr., whose job at the Riverside Center for Innovation (RCI) now includes helping businesses get off the ground in a digital-focused environment. We discuss the issues disadvantaged business owners are facing during the pandemic, as well as how the digital divide has been affecting entrepreneurs. It all means RCI’s mission is more important than ever. Learn more at riversidecenterforinnovation.com. 

Pittsburgh is open again, but it is not the same as it was pre-COVID-19 shutdown. Reduced capacities and social distancing are going to be here for a while — and changes to our infrastructure could be around even longer.In this episode, we talked with Pittsburgh Department of Mobility and Infrastructure Director Karina Ricks’ role and insights from a task force meant to provide recommendations for reopening the city. The conversation also looked at the immediate and long-term solutions to the major crises facing the city, including one you may not have been thinking about.Check out the task force’s report here.

 Do you remember that there’s a census this year? How about a presidential election? (OK, it’s kind of hard to forget that one.) Still, the COVID-19 pandemic has definitely dulled how much attention we’ve all been able to pay to these major pieces of our democracy. These processes aren’t going anywhere, though, and the crisis is showing the need for honest public discourse. That’s why we invited Jessica Bayless, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s lead librarian for civic and social information, to discuss these topics and more. Reach out to the library!info@carnegielibrary.org412-622-3114 And be sure to sign up for the library’s virtual town hall on Pennsylvania’s election changes here: https://www.carnegielibrary.org/event/virtual-town-hall-2020-pa-election-changes/

 One of the few solaces we can take right now is the knowledge that pandemics are relatively rare. As we’re seeing, however, their impact is wide-reaching in the moment. Look to a century ago, when the 1918 “Spanish flu” — as it was popularly known, but a misnomer — swept the world and killed 675,000 Americans. In Pittsburgh, over 4,500 succumbed. In this episode of the P100 Podcast, we’ll compare the 1918 flu to today’s COVID-19 pandemic, recognizing the positive difference a century makes — and the all-too-similar human tragedy that we’re enduring. Thank you for listening and stay healthy. 

We’re living through an unprecedented time in American history. Businesses are closed, schools are shuttered, and gatherings are canceled, all because of an invisible, infectious agent that our modern world hasn’t been able to match — not yet, anyway.Marking the unique circumstances, we spent the most recent episode of the P100 Podcast discussing the effects of COVID-19 on daily life (including our own), how people and businesses can help their communities, and how they can communicate during a crisis.If you’re hitting the download button or streaming from your “office away from the office,” thank you for listening and stay safe. Full Transcript:Paul:Welcome back to a special edition of the P100 podcast, the audio companion to the Pittsburgh 100 e-zine. This episode, solely focused on COVID-19, the coronavirus. I'm Paul Furiga, your cohost along with my colleagues, Dan Stefano…Dan:Hey Paul.Paul:And Logan Armstrong.Logan:Hi Paul.Paul:And I want you all to know at home we are practicing safe social distancing. In fact, we are so far away from you while you're listening to us right now ... well, that's another story. Seriously though, given the times that we're in, we thought that we would devote this entire episode of the podcast to understanding how we, as a community can deal with this. I've never seen a situation like this in my lifetime and as Dan and Logan frequently remind me, I'm old.Dan:I think you got a point there. I mean, I've tried to think of this in context of my own life. I'm 33 and I would say the most impactful thing that has ever occurred in my lifetime was 9/11.Paul:Right.Dan:And I was in high school whenever that happened. That was a time whenever the stock market cratered. The next day all air traffic was suspended. It was severely drastic. It took a long time for American life to get back to normal then. Whatever the new normal was, I should say. But this seems like it could be something different. There's a lot of uncertainty in the air, which there was at that time in 2001 for sure, but when we're talking about a virus here, we're talking about something that we don't have a vaccine for, it's a little bit scary right now. And I feel like the streets are even ... it's weird to be walking downtown. At the WordWrite offices here, we're getting ready to practice social distancing and work from home.Paul:Work from home, yeah.Dan:I could say in some ways it feels similar to those days after 9/11 but it's very different too.Paul:Absolutely. Logan.Logan:Yeah. And I'm a little younger. So I'm only 22.Dan:Little.Logan:I was a young kid when 9/11 happened. But also especially with what we're seeing in the market right now, very reminiscent of the 2008 era, which of course this has a few different causes than in 2008. But we've seen people are going crazy at supermarkets…Paul:That's right.Logan:... and really trying to stockpile, which is good because they're themselves trying to self-quarantine but it's going to be interesting to see how the markets react and how local businesses and business owners will wade through the waters during this time. Dan:AbsolutelyPaul:So a couple of things we wanted to do, number one, we wanted to share some helpful resources, which certainly there are probably, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a consumer of a lot of things online and you may already have some favorites, but we are at WordWrite in the business of working with reliable news organizations. So we'll share a few of our favorite go-to sources for local information here in western Pennsylvania.Paul:And then we're going to shift gears a bit and we're going to talk about our own experience because it's a crazy situation, but a lot of our clients rely on us for our crisis expertise. In any given year, we handle about 12 major crises, 10 of which you never read about because they're effectively handled. And then two of them, sadly, for whatever reason, they're all over the news. So we actually have a lot of experience in this arena and we are currently working with several of our clients on crises related to the COVID-19 outbreak.Paul:So first let's talk about some go-to sources here in western Pennsylvania. Dan and I, we share this other disease called being former journalists. Dan, some of your favorite go-tos for reliable and accurate information on what's happening.Dan:Still trying to get over that. The journalism disease. No, it's no disease. I mean, some of my good friends are journalists. So, I appreciate them.Paul:Yes, likewise.Dan:As you said, I do respect just journalism and what they put in. So I mean, your two major newspaper news sources in the area would be Post-Gazette and then triblive.com, the former Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. And now just the regular Tribune-Review set in Greensburg. That's a great place to go for it. But I'd recommend, if you're talking locally, the Allegheny County Health Department. That's got pretty consistent and good updates.Paul:They have an entire page, Allegheny County-Dan:Yes, they do.Paul:... .PA.US devoted to COVID-19.Dan:Right. Everybody's got their own page on it now. I mean it's incredible. I think everybody has been a victim of getting all these emails now. And I mean fortunately I have an email from the CEO of Banana Republic to tell me that all their stores are safe, but that's also just ... that's best practice right now. And businesses are doing their due diligence to just show everyone that they're trying to do their best.Dan:But for right now, I mean, that gets a little bit away from our question and I'm kind of drifting here, but I would follow the PG and TribLIVE. But a lot of them, they're getting their information from the government sources here. But I would really trust the County Health Department and that's some of your most current information.Paul:Absolutely.Dan:Make sure you're following their Twitter accounts and everything you can.Paul:Logan anything you'd add?Logan:I'd also say that The Incline, they're usually a little more lighthearted, but they've been doing a really good job of grouping up various articles from multiple local publications.Paul:Yes, aggregating content.Dan:Yeah.Logan:Exactly. Yeah. Aggregating that and that's getting delivered to inboxes at 6:00 a.m. every day. If you need to be up to date on the latest news in the area, I would also say check out The Incline for that.Paul:I'm going to add a few more. So in the last few years, pretty much every television station in Pittsburgh has debuted some flavor of an online presence, sometimes up to and including live streaming of events. So one of the things we've been doing at WordWrite is we've been watching live streams of Governor Wolf, the Pennsylvania governor, and his press conferences, Rich Fitzgerald, the Allegheny County executive, the County Health Department. I believe the new director's name is Dr. Bogen, so that's available.Paul:I would also add, and this has not really gotten much attention because the debut occurred during this whole crisis, but Channel 2 KDKA, which is owned by a CBS Network, has debuted essentially I believe a local version of on-air all the time local news. So CBSN is the national network and there's some local connection. I'll be honest with our listeners, I haven't had time to fully understand all of that because we've been so busy with other things. Personally, I look at all of those. I also look at WESA-FM. One of the reasons for that is with everything that's happened in newspapers in recent years, the major foundations in Pittsburgh have poured a fairly substantial amount of money into building the newsroom at WESA and they have all of the same kinds of resources in terms of online delivery of news that we've just talked about.Paul:So those for me are all good services. Most of us, I'm of a certain age, I'm 61. I hate to say that in a room with somebody in their twenties and thirties but it's the truth, I can't lie, it's on my driver's license, anyway, even somebody like me can make use of the phone and I am getting a lot of alerts. So I rely on the alerts as well to remind me. Before we shift gears here and talk about some advice for our listeners, even in our own planning for WordWrite, as Dan mentioned, on Friday we were ready, Friday the 13th of March, we were ready to implement a phased work from home process where some people would be in the office. And by the time we got to Sunday of the weekend where mandatory, non-essential businesses are asked to close or it is voluntary but strongly encouraged.Paul:So things are just moving so fast now it's worthwhile not to scare yourself, and I think that's, Logan, why it's good that you mentioned The Incline. Really good journalists can have the right touch to put an uplifting spirit into their round up of things. Right? But you don't want to be consumed by the news, but you also want to be informed and up to date. You don't want to be headed out to go to an event or something like that when it's not going to happen. And it was just cancelled. I don't know. Anything you guys would add to that?Dan:Well I think if you're talking about cancelled events, just try to look up to see what one is actually on now. Pretty much the assumption should be that it's closed. But-Logan:Yeah. And one thing I'd add is that it is a little hectic with all of these things happening so fast. But one of the hopeful benefits of that is this quick action now is really going to be the precursor to slowing it down in the long run.Paul:Absolutely. And this is something that, for our listeners, that we've been talking about here at the company in terms of working with our clients and that is that we are at this inflection point where the number of people who might be contagious in our community is at its highest point at the same time that we have the least ability to test.Paul:So if we self-isolate for the next two weeks, what we'll be able to do is keep those who might be infected from spreading the disease. National news media is saying that the United States might be 11 days behind Italy, meaning that what's happened there could happen roughly two weeks later here in the United States. God forbid, we don't want that. Other folks I've seen on the national news talk about we want to be like South Korea where there was a lot of testing, the self-isolation and they seem to have, as the medical experts call it, flattened the curve, which is to say slow the growth of the virus so that the number of people who are sick doesn't exceed the capacity of the region's healthcare providers to treat those who are sick.Dan:One thing, Paul, I'd like to bring up, open the conversation to you and Logan is what's fascinating about this is similar, like we said, I mean I hate to keep making the comparisons to 9/11 because that was a very much different type of crisis, but that was a tragedy that affected almost everyone in the U.S. at some level. Corona possibly even more. Just in terms of even if you aren't getting the disease, I mean it's probably going to disrupt your life, whether how you're working or somebody that you know. Maybe your children are off of school right now. There's quite a bit going on. And Paul, yourself, I know you've had some, personal events that are affecting you, right?Paul:Oh absolutely. So I'll give you a few. Number one, one of our two daughters is getting married, we hope, on May 31st. There's been a lot of conversations with the venue and the providers. The baker and the flowers and everything else. And we'll see how things play out. May 31st might be okay, but let's just say that we're a little concerned.Paul:Our other daughter is getting her MBA at the University of Chicago and they have extended spring break, which has pushed their, they're on a quarter system, their third quarter deeper into the year. She's supposed to have an internship this summer. It was going to start June 1st. She won't be done with school on June 1st and we don't even know if she'll have the internship.Dan:Yeah, certainly, it's amazing how this is just disrupting lives. I mean it's putting almost everything on pause. It's amazing. Myself, my wife and I, we were planning on taking a vacation to Japan, it was going to be the first week of April and we were looking forward to this trip for an entire year. It was just something we'd planned. It's kind of a bucket list type thing and just a week ago we had to cancel it. Right now as we record here, there are no travel restrictions over there, but there's just no guarantee whenever you see the massive lines that are coming for people that are coming back into the country, at least from Europe. But just something we had to be take care of.Dan:And we were even planning on maybe having a backup trip to California. And now we're really seriously kind of rethinking that one. It feels selfish to say, well hey, this thing that was just a wonderful little pleasure trip for us here we're disrupting it. How horrible is that? But we don't know when we're going to be able to take that trip again. We planned for specific dates in our lives. We mapped around that. So it's just another area that it does affect things. But Logan, I know you've even had some ...Logan:Yes. Yeah. It's a similar situation. I had a trip planned to Italy. I guess I would've left last week. Yeah. But it is unfortunate that this is such a disruptive virus. But thinking on the bigger picture of things, I mean, it's much better to have these disruptions now and really put these policies in place, especially because not only on an individual level, but on a business level, as we touched on earlier, there's really a lot of things that business owners are going to have to prepare for. And there may be some crisis communications that business owners have to take into account and that's something that we've experienced here. Yeah, Paul?Paul:Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And we want to dig into that for the remainder of our time here on the podcast, this episode. And before I do that, I just want to give a quick shout out to your point, Logan, the retail and restaurant sectors are going to be particularly hard hit and in the local economy as well as the American economy, the percentage of workers who are hourly who have, let's just say less robust benefits packages, whatever we can do as a community to keep them in mind and help to keep them employed I think is really important.Paul:One of the other sources of information that I didn't mention earlier were members of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, the Partnership has articles in the Pittsburgh 100 frequently. Their weekly… they do a weekly sort of what's going on downtown email. And the one that I received just before we came in to record the podcast is all about this subject. So you can't dine in during the time that businesses are closed but you can still do take out. So there's things that we can do as a community to help our friends and our neighbors through. And I think it's something we should do.Dan:Yeah, I think before we take a deeper dive into talking about crises and crises management, what you said there kind of touches on an important point and one thing, one of the huge crises or huge problems that are coming out of this is whenever schools are closed there are a lot of students out there who might be on free or reduced lunch and these are kids who might rely on these school lunches to help themselves eat. It might be their biggest meal of the day.Dan:But one thing that you've seen is restaurants are coming out and offering free lunches to some of these kids. I believe some districts have, including I believe Pittsburgh Public, they have programs in place to help these kids to make sure that they have food, that they have resources.Dan:And that touches on your point there, Paul, about the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership in that…do something. If you're a business owner and you feel like maybe it's a helpless time right now, maybe you have to put pause on a lot of things, you can think of something to do and that's one way I think if you make yourself a goal and you have a mission, you can help yourself get through this, right?Paul:Oh, absolutely. We're going to shift gears now folks and talk about crisis. To Dan's point, this is one of the things when we sat down and we looked at this episode of the podcast, there were other segments and other things that we had planned to do perhaps, but we agreed that one of the ways that we could be helpful was to share with people what we know about this.Paul:So I'm going to kick off this portion of the episode here and Dan and Logan will jump in. So historically, one of the things that we've done a lot of at WordWrite is crisis communication. And one of the things we've learned is that there are only really four basic kinds of crises.Paul:So there are acts of God, there are acts of man, there are acts of God made worse by man, and there are acts of man made worse by God. That's it. You can think about pretty much anything bad that's ever happened in the history of the world. And there's going to be some element of one of those four categories. So certainly-Dan:If you asked my wife I think she would say that there are also acts of God made worse by Dan. But we'll leave it to four right now.Paul:Well Dan, the last time I looked, you are a human being, so we'll put you in one of the four categories.Dan:Got you.Paul:Anyway, certainly the viruses, if you want to call it that, an act of God, it's an act of nature. What we don't know yet is whether what's happened, our acts of man, let's call it, that it made it worse. When you go back to China we're not here to judge. We don't really know exactly where the virus spread began. But certainly there's humankind and there's nature mixed together in this crisis.Paul:So one of the things that's interesting in doing so much crisis communications at our firm that is both a positive and a cause for pause, is that most crises are predictable. This is not the first time that the world's been through an epidemic, a pandemic, a virus, and perhaps it's the 21st century technology-driven, I don't know if we've become a little bit lazy or we're just lulled into a sense of complacency, but what this epidemic is demonstrating to us that this can still happen in the 21st century.Logan:Yes. Even with all the technological advances, and medical advancements, and medical capabilities, something that moves this fast is very hard to control no matter-Paul:Absolutely.Logan:... how many technological capabilities we have. And it's something that we're probably not going to have a vaccine for, for a little bit. This vaccine isn't going to be coming in the next week or the next month.Dan:Testing's an issue too right now.Logan:Exactly.Paul:18 to 24 months is what people are saying.Logan:Right. So we're really going to have to figure out what the best course of action is. And I think that's going to be something that is going to be on the fly. Because, as you've said, we've seen these kinds of crises before, but there's no real way to account for all the variants in it and it's going to be on people and on the media to portray information in as close to real time as possible and as accurately as possible to try to help mitigate that.Paul:So one of the things that I think is true about this, 1918 the Spanish flu epidemic was just a terrible worldwide crisis. So that fits into what I just said about most crises are predictable. So we can learn from that. And to your point, Logan, this is fast moving, but we can learn from what's happened in Italy. We can learn from what's happened in China, within the more restrictive immediate window. So that's critically important.Paul:One of the other things that's important, and there are going to be people who are going to be picking over this for years, I'm sure, what we tell our clients is if crises are predictable, then you need to plan for them. So theoretically the world, especially the largest economies and countries in the world should have been planning for this sort of a thing. And there had been some, let's just say missteps, fits and starts.Dan:Yeah.Paul:Now for our listeners, even though this thing is underway, you can look at history and you can look at recent events to do your own planning for the crisis. So we're already in it. So to your point Logan, there's an element of every day is different and you can't predict for sure, but one of the things we do when we work with clients is scenario planning. What's the worst case scenario? What's the best case scenario, what's the likely scenario? And then you start to develop your communications around each one of those outcomes. And that guides you on a day to day basis in terms of what you need to be doing.Dan:Right in this situation, and I would just kind of play interviewer here with you Paul, with so many different businesses it's hard to gauge, exactly what are likely outcomes. Businesses right now we might think of they might have to do some layoffs, they might have to temporarily furlough some employees and whether certain bills pass out of our Congress here they may have wages, they may not. It depends on how large a company is. One thing here though, whenever we've had this discussion is we talk about, you start from a place of truth when you're communicating these outcomes. Can you elaborate a little more on that?Paul:Sure. So in a crisis like this, obviously if you're standing in front of the forest and the forest is burning behind you, you can't tell people that that smell in the air is a candle. You have to acknowledge even the hard truths.Paul:One of the things that we see time and again is that if you're straightforward with people up front and there's tons of university research on this that validates this point, they're going to give you the benefit of the doubt. If I own a restaurant in Pittsburgh that opened two months ago – I'm in a place that's not the same as a restaurant that's been around for 25 years. Right? And I need to say to people, look guys, we just opened. I can't guarantee you that we're going to ride through this unscathed.Paul:And then what you need to do is you need to communicate process. And that's where that scenario planning comes in handy. It's like, look, we don't know where this is going to end, but here's what we're going to do today. Here's what we're going to do next week. Here's our thought process and our plan, and there's a lot of university research on this too, that when you can't communicate content, if you can communicate process it calms people's fears and gets people organized around the common goal of moving forward.Dan:I guess that speaks to control. It might be the wrong word to say controlling, but trying to manage people's emotions here. I think we have to understand how everyone is feeling because we're feeling the same way on a lot of these things. I mean we can tell a business, a B2B business, okay, hey, this is how you want to talk when you're talking to your clients or something like that. But we have the same feelings whenever we're trying to listen to the government here. Are they going to tell us the process? Are they going to describe that?Dan:So can you talk a little bit about how to be a good effective communicator to work with the community and make sure that you're delivering this information not maybe necessarily in a doom and gloom way and just being an effective storyteller essentially?Paul:Right. So one of the things that we're big on obviously at our company is the process of storytelling. We have our own process that we help companies uncover what we call their Capital S story. And I do a lot of speaking around this. In a crisis there's no more important time for you to be thinking about your Capital S story and that story is this, it answers these questions. Why would somebody work for you, buy from you, invest in you, partner with you? If you're a nonprofit, why would they donate or volunteer with your organization? And that is the story above all stories for your company, your organization. That's why we call it the Capital S story.Paul:And you think about that in times of stress, a crisis like this, which is an enormous stressor. It doesn't matter so much what you say on a daily basis. It matters what people believe you to be as an organization. And I think Dan, that's kind of what you're getting at there.Paul:And in a crisis, what we find is whatever audience you're trying to reach, employees, partners, vendors, customers, that's where they go in their minds in terms of assessing whether or not to believe you when you say don't worry about this, or I need your help to do X, Y and Z so that we can pull through this crisis.Paul:Right now, all of us are being flooded with information and this story is like cast in concrete. It's bedrock. It's the granite of who your organization is and they're going back to that hard place that they can knock on, that they can sit on, that they can lean on, and that's the truth that they're looking for. To assess whether or not your organization in this time of crisis is an organization that can be believed.Dan:Now, not every business, well whenever we think of Corona individually, I mean I'm just thinking of the restaurant that's across the street from us right now but people aren't looking necessarily for Bruegger's Bagels to answer the crisis or come up with a vaccine or explain people how to feel. But how, if you're a business that isn't necessarily adjacent to the current crisis or if you're just you have nothing to do with it, but your business maybe is closed or something like that, how do you kind of manage these crises that you're not necessarily related to but it does affect you?Paul:So I think one of the things that we're seeing, and we started the episode today by talking about the news media and some other resources who are trying to be helpful. So you want to be helpful. And there's also an element of business as usual. A lot of the companies that aren't directly affected by the crisis, and of course I'm sure many of our listeners are saying, well everybody's affected by it, and certainly when we all need to be self-isolating, we all are affected by it, but if you're not directly affected by it in the sense that you don't run a restaurant or you're not a retail store or you're not an event space where hundreds of people would be expected to gather, this is a time to be helpful.Paul:One of the reasons why we're doing this specific episode of the podcast, we see many, many institutions in the community, there is an element of what they're doing, to your point, Dan, where it is on some level still business as usual. However they have the opportunity because of things being pulled in to reduce the spread of the virus, to have some time, to have some resources to be helpful in whatever way that they can be.Dan:Paul, all that stuff is really helpful here. And so I appreciate you especially sharing your expertise here in crisis communications and we encourage anybody who's listening at home to feel free to check out wordwritepr.com. We've got some really good information. There's some good stuff on crisis communications and certainly even one of our VPs here, Jeremy Church, just wrote a really interesting blog about effective crisis communication during outbreaks.Paul:Yeah. And Dan, we'll be putting up in the show notes, I wrote one in July of last year, Storytelling in a Crisis: Why You Need Your Capital S Story. And again, we're going to be sharing a lot more of the resources that we can. This is a time when we all need to pull together as a community. And certainly we have clients whom we work for and we have a lot of experience that we've developed over the years, and we want to be able to share that with the community in the spirit of helping everybody recover from this as quickly as possible. And to your point, Dan, if there's anything that we can do as people who believe in good, strong, authentic communications, we want to do that for the community.Dan:Absolutely, 100%. And as we wrap up here just the message from us here is hopefully everybody at home can weather this as well as they can. Every business can as well. It sounds cheery and optimistic to say, but we will get through this and we'll survive.Paul:Absolutely.Dan:Yeah. 

Pittsburghers love a parade and a chance to party. That’s coming in spades (or maybe clovers?) with the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration, one of the nation’s largest. We’ll being discussing the city’s Irish heritage and more in this episode. Also look out for:• In an illuminating discussion with an executive in the retail industry, we’ll learn why we shouldn’t have the coffin ready just yet for brick-and-mortar stores – especially not at The Waterfront.• We speak with the minds behind PECA Labs, who are changing the lives of children suffering from congenital heart defects. Now, they’re taking the next step.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.

We’ve got an eclectic episode of the P100 Podcast lined up for you, to be sure:— Mel Cronin, regional expansion manager at 412 Food Rescue, talks about the nonprofit’s mission of preventing perfectly good food from entering the waste stream and the growth into areas beyond the titular area code.— James Gourlay, the Scottish conductor and musical director of the River City Brass band, shares some musical stories in a special edition of our Pittsburgh Polyphony series.— We go down the tubes — you’ll have to listen to understand, and be sure to check out this unique website. This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.

This episode, we’re talking about people who are coming to Pittsburgh, whether it’s for work or just visiting.We’ll break down a report that suggests the city might be a better fit for tech workers than the mecca of the digital economy, Silicon Valley (gotta love our standard of living). We’re also talking about a recent article that probes the need for a new hotel at the convention center. (Hint: The answer isn’t very simple.)In between, we welcome the Breaking Brews Podcast’s host Jason Cercone for a chat about the business of beer and Pittsburgh’s place in the industry.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Logan:You are listening to the P100 podcast, the bi-weekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more. Because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story. Logan:Hello, and welcome to a brand new episode of the P100 podcast. You're here with myself, Logan Armstrong, and co-hosts Dan Stefano and Paul Furiga. Guys, how are you doing?Paul:Great, Logan.Dan:Emphasis on the co-host there. You're the host with the mostest there.Logan:I try to be. I do what I can, but-Paul:Yes he does and he does it well.Logan:I get my mostest from the people I'm surrounded with. On today's episode, we're going to be examining tech jobs in Pittsburgh, and there have been a few recent articles for some vying to leave and some vying to stay that you may have seen. So we're going to be talking about that and seeing how Pittsburgh ranks compared with cities and metros around the country in tech jobs.Logan:Then we're going to bring in our good friend Jason Cercone from the Breaking Brews podcast. He takes a drink from breaking, excuse me. He takes a break from drinking beer and talks about the business side of it.Paul:Wait a minute, that wasn't in this segment. There was no beer drinking?Logan:Unfortunately no.Logan:We asked him about it and he said that he'd be happy to rejoin us.Dan:Logan, let's remember we're talking to the CEO of our company within the office, so no. There's no-Paul:Well that's fine. Let's chat.Dan:We don't have a video of this, but if you could see the winking eye. No, there is no-Logan:No beer during this segment.Dan:Drinking during this segment.Paul:Of course not.Logan:Okay, and then finally we're going to wrap up with what's missing from downtown.Paul:Oh.Logan:Indeed, mysterious.Paul:Question.Logan:That's right. You'll have to stick around to see what we're talking about, but we're in for a great episode so we hope you stick around.Dan:I hope it's not my car or anything.Paul:Okay guys, time to do one of our favorite things on the podcast. Talk about Pittsburgh getting another great national ranking.Dan:Another list, right?Paul:We're on another list.Dan:Yeah.Paul:This one's a good one. Although, if you're in the Silicon Valley area, maybe not so good.Dan:Right.Paul:A couple of weeks ago, Wallet Hub, which is an online service provider that looks at financial things, very popular with millennials.Dan:They make many lists.Paul:They make many lists of many different things. Top places to live in the country for tech workers. Pittsburgh, number five. Silicon Valley, not so high, which caused the San Jose Mercury News, which San Jose's a community that's smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, to write sort of a cheeky little article. Pittsburgh is better for tech workers than Silicon Valley? Question mark. Well, yes, if you want to live affordably, apparently it actually is.Dan:That's completely accurate. Yeah. The Bay Area, it's got to be one of the highest costs of living-Paul:It is actually.Dan:In the country.Paul:It has the highest cost of living in the country. And Logan, you were looking inside some of the rankings, and Pittsburgh ranked in the top 15 in a number of categories, right?Logan:Yes. So the three categories were professional opportunities, STEM friendliness, and quality of life. And Pittsburgh ranked 13th, 14th, and 11th in those, respectively. And some of the reasons that places like San Francisco and the Bay Area didn't rank so highly is that they would rank very high in one or two of these categories. So for example, San Francisco ranked third in both professional opportunities and STEM friendliness but then ranked 63rd in quality of life for reasons we were alluding to earlier. So it's good to see that Pittsburgh ranked in these lists as being as an all around. Maybe it's not top five or the best in STEM friendliness or professional opportunities, but it's well-rounded and our quality of life here is, according to this list, far better than some of our counterparts.Paul:And certainly as the community here has continued to transform, and I'm thinking now of Uber, and Apptive, and Apple's got a good presence in the city. Facebook's virtual reality company, Oculus, is wholly sited here in the Pittsburgh region. We're trying to attract more tech workers and we've got these great university programs, CMU and Pitt at the head of the pack, but others as well, where we're building this tech community. And I guess it does still surprise people in the more traditional communities, but it's legit. There's something going on here.Dan:Right. For better or worse, Pittsburgh will always kind of bring that blue collar atmosphere, that blue collar mentality, a bit rough around the edges. I talk about it all the time, but my wife's family, who, they grew up in California, they all lived in California for a while. They came to Pittsburgh here and they said, "Wow, I had no idea it was this green." So there's always going to be a bit of a stigma that the city carries around, but I think these lists show that to that the news is catching on here. And Pittsburgh is basically known now for the meds and eds and now tech. The reputation is definitely growing here and starting to overcome that stigma.Paul:That perception.Dan:Yeah. But there's ... Well, not to be Debbie Downer or play devil's advocate here, there are still the legacies of that history here that carries on, especially in our environment.Paul:Yeah. We still have work to do, that's for sure. I can remember when I first moved back to this region from the Washington DC area. I had a job in the south side and what is now South Side Works was still a working steel mill, and as I would drive across the Birmingham Bridge every morning, the smell of burning coke was my appetizer before breakfast.Logan:Morning coffee.Dan:That'll wake you.Paul:And there's been plenty of coverage, and legitimately so, that we still have environmental problems in the region. And certainly one of the reasons why the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, is disadvantaged on a list like this, is because there's such a huge economic disparity there. It's the most expensive metropolitan area in the country. Ours is not. Part of the reason Pittsburgh's so affordable, the collapse of the steel industry and heavy industry. So there's all this housing stock and we didn't have the kind of inflation maybe that a place on the coast like San Francisco has had, but we have economic disparity too, and that's something that we have to work on too.Dan:Right. I think that's being recognized now. We talked about a couple episodes ago here, that the city is starting to take a hard look at itself, especially in terms of the racial inequalities that exist here.Paul:Yes.Dan:Again, the three of us aren't the best people to speak to this. We don't live the same experiences that a lot of people do in this city, but we can play a role by listening and being active and playing a part in recognizing that. And trying to create opportunities, being part of the solutions here. It's going to take a long time for Pittsburgh to completely shrug off some of the legacies that came from the 20th century here, some of the stuff that might be dragging down the city, but we can do it.Paul:We absolutely can. And if we can, we'll put in the show notes, there have been a couple of interesting public source articles that have dug into some of these issues, and I was reading-Dan:Quite a battle in tech, here.Paul:It was a battle in tech, and there's one written by a fellow named Noah Theriault, I believe that's how his name is pronounced, and he's at CMU. And the conclusion of this article, which you found, Dan, I thought was really interesting. He said "Here many of us who come here for opportunities in the city's universities, hospitals, and tech firms, do so in a state of willful ignorance. We take advantage of the low cost of living, we relish the walkability of the neighborhoods. We gentrify. Many of us smugly believe that we are the city's rebirth, the salvation from rust and blight. Too few of us learn about the historical and ongoing realities that make it most livable." And I think that's something that's really at the heart of what we need to remember. It's great to be on lists like this, but really there is no Nirvana -Dan:Right?Paul:That exists among places to live in this country. We have work to do too.Dan:It's hard to put a number on somebody's personal experiences here. I think that's the crux of what you were talking about there.Paul:Exactly. Exactly.Dan:All right. We're here with Jason Cercone. He's the chief brand officer at Breaking Brews, also the founder there and they're a content network and digital resource platform for people in the beer industry. Not only that, he hosts the Breaking Brews podcast, which takes a pretty unique look at the beer industry. They focus a lot on the business side of things. So Jason, thanks for being here.Jason:Thanks for having me guys.Dan:Awesome. Okay. As we mentioned, what you like to do with Breaking Brews your podcast and kind of spins off of your business. You look at a pretty different side of things in the spirits industry, in the alcohol industry there, that people don't think of all the time and that's actually selling the stuff and getting it out there, right? Yeah.Jason:Yeah. What I discovered was there are a lot of podcasts dedicated to drinking beer and reviewing and having fun and those podcasts are all great, but I wanted to bring something different to the podcast world. And I started looking at the fact that we don't have a ton of podcasts that are dedicated to the business side. Which talks about sales and marketing and distribution, all those different facets that are very important and very critical to the beer world. That was where it really started to ... or where I really started to make it take off. And I talked to a lot of industry professionals that felt the same way. They said when they're cleaning kegs and doing some of the horrible work that goes on in the brew houses that they want to put on a good podcast and listen to something that they can learn from, and that was the resource I wanted to put out there for them.Dan:Right, well the industry's really exploded as far as the craft production or the craft beer segment goes. I think ... I'm just looking at some facts here from the Brewer's Association, retail sale dollars of craft beer in 2018, I think the most recent year of stats was $27.6 billion. You said you've seen that since you started the Breaking Brews podcast yourself, you started about four years ago, or is that just your business?Jason:Breaking Brews itself started back in 2014. This is actually my third iteration of a podcast. I actually did one, like I was saying before, where we just sat around and drank beer, and that got old after a while.Dan:Why aren't we doing that right now?Jason:That's a very good question. I know. I was quizzed on that when I walked in the door, why I didn't bring beer and I'm starting to regret that.Dan:We'll just have our first kegger podcast, here.Logan:Yeah, well that'd make for some good conversation, that's for sure.Dan:That's a great idea.Jason:I'm always happy to come back for a second round if you guys want me to bring some-Dan:Right.Jason:Good drinks.Dan:Great idea. But yeah, as we were talking about the industry is just enormous right now. We're seeing that too in Pittsburgh, right?Jason:Absolutely. Yeah. I mean when I started things in 2014, there was probably maybe a dozen local craft breweries and now you look at the landscape, there's over 50 throughout the region. It's incredible. So many of them are doing great products and getting it out to bars around the area and also creating an awesome taproom experience too.Dan:Why do you think that is?Jason:Pittsburgh loves its beer, man.Dan:Yeah.Jason:But overall I think that ... I mean we haven't ... we hear the talk about the bubble a lot and has craft beer reached its saturation point. And I've always been a firm believer that we haven't even come close because we're not even close to the number that we had, or number of breweries we had before prohibition.Dan:Yeah.Jason:I mean we're creeping up, we're getting close, but the population of all these different cities and states across the country is so much higher. And when I go out to events and I do samplings and I talk to beer drinkers, a lot of folks still really aren't aware of what's going on in the craft beer industry. So there's still a lot of education that we can provide and that was one of the main drivers of Breaking Brews was putting some education out there so people can better understand what's going on in the industry and what's going on with these products.Logan:That's an interesting benchmark that you mentioned there that the number of brewers before the prohibition. Is that a common milestone in the craft beer business? And are there things that were happening back then that are happening now? The same way?Jason:I think it's, it's obviously changed a lot in regards to how beer is made. Brewers have pushed the envelope to the furthest degree possible and then a little bit more. You see a lot of crazy ingredients going into beers that probably pre-prohibition they weren't putting donuts into stouts and Twinkies-Logan:What were they doing?Jason:Breakfast cereal. I know it's like they weren't living their best life at all. However, a lot has changed. It's just the question of people's tastes have changed too and it's what do they want? And that's what these brewers are constantly trying to stay on top of, is what does the beer consumer want to drink today? And that's why I think you see such a variety out there in the market.Dan:Is it fair to say that it's easier to start a brewery round now or at least, somebody can be in their basement and actually trying to kickstart their own beer?Jason:That's probably the biggest misconception is that it's so easy to start a brewery because it's like any other business.Dan:Look, I've seen the Drew Carey show and he had a brewery in his basement. I know how this works .Jason:That's one of the big problems when you see some of these breweries that come out and their beer really isn't that great. They're standing around with their friends in a circle and all their friends are drinking their beer saying, "This is the best beer I've ever had. You need to start a brewery." And that's all well and good, but if they don't have a business sense that goes along with making a good product or even a subpar product, if they don't manage it properly, it's just not going to succeed. So it's just like anything else. I think that the barriers to entry are a little bit less because a lot of people have done it, but the smart thing to do would be go into it knowing that it's a business and you have to do all the things that you would normally do to run a business, or partner with somebody that can handle that end of your business for you.Logan:Partner with someone like Jason, Jason Cercone.Jason:I am for hire. I am here if anybody needs assistance. I'd be happy to help.Dan:Have you ever, you yourself, have you ever actually started ... Well maybe not started your own brewery, but have you ever brewed your own drafts?Jason:I've partnered and done some collaboration beers with a few different breweries across town. I did an event last year where I partnered with Yellow Bridge Brewing out in Delmont. I just went out and brewed with them for the day and I was able to say that I helped and I call that a collaboration. And I've done that with a couple of other breweries too. And that's fun. I mean that's the brewing side of it for me. I've always been more of a beer drinker and I like to obviously talk about it and promote it and market it. Brewing it just wasn't really something I wanted to do full time. It's a hard job. I think that's where a lot of people look at that like a glamorous thing and brewers will tell you, those are long days. It's very industrial and they work their asses off to put together a good product. End of the day, they are dog tired.Dan:Sure.Jason:So yeah, important. If you're going to be a brewer, know you'll be working hard.Dan:Right. We talk about hard work there. We're talking about having a good business sense. What do you see are some of the secrets to say these successful craft brewers and the people that maybe ... even some of these breweries that say are smaller, let's think about Southern Tier years ago, nobody knew who they were. Now they've got their own brewery on the North shore and what are some of the secrets to some of these businesses that have made it?Jason:I think it's understanding how to grow and being very deliberate about it and not trying to just shoot the moon right out of the gate. Obviously you have to establish a loyal fan base and make good product at the same time. But if you try to go too heavy, if you're a small local brewery and you try to make a statewide distribution, your number one priority, chances are you're not going to succeed because you don't have the liquid to supply the markets. So there's a lot of different aspects that you have to look at, but probably the most important is to use a popular phrase of our time, stay in your lane, and understand what it takes to build that brand from the ground up.Jason:Don't try to get too far ahead of yourself before you're ready. And then once the time comes where you've established that brand, then you can start looking at ... popular thing now other than distribution is looking at secondary spaces. We're starting to see some breweries in the Pittsburgh area open up secondary spots so they've proven that their brand is good enough to support it and we wish them the best in carrying that out.Dan:Who would you point to as some really good success stories in the Pittsburgh area then and what they've done successfully?Jason:Oh man, that list is long.Dan:Yep.Jason:Yeah. One of the breweries that I work with, the Spoonwood brewing in Bethel Park.Dan:I was there just this weekend.Jason:Awesome. What'd you think?Dan:I loved it. It was my second time there. I had a great time.Jason:Yeah, they're doing great beer. Great food. It's a great tap room atmosphere. You really can't ask for much more than that. They've been ... they're coming up on five years.Dan:Wow.Jason:And I've been working with them since pretty much the beginning and we've been building that brand and we don't do a ton of distribution, but a lot of the beer that we put out there ultimately was just to build that brand and give people an opportunity to taste it. To where they might say, "Wow, this is in Bethel Park. I'm going to go down there and see what else they have to offer." Another brewery I work with is Four Points Brewing out of Charleroi. They've ... just under two years old at this point, actually just about a year and a half now and they're killing it. They're doing some great beer and then you've got a lot of the names that people hear of all the time, like your Grist Houses and your Dancing Gnomes and Voodoos and Hitchhikers of the world. Again, we could sit here and do a whole podcast where I just rattle off the list because there's a lot of good beer happening.Dan:Well, you're in luck, our next segment, we're going to list breweries for the next 25 minutes. All right.Jason:Yeah. Close off with reading the phone book.Dan:Exactly.Jason:Riveting radio.Logan:Now you've learned a lot of these techniques and methods. You have over 20 years’ experience in marketing and sales. Did that start off in beer, or and if not, how did you navigate into the beer industry from that?Jason:That was ... I mean that was broken compasses for days, man, that was ... No, it did not start in beer. I've been working in the beer industry – counting what I did with starting Breaking Brews – for going on six years now. I sold cell phones right out of college, landed at Enterprise-Rent-a-Car for several years after that. Ran Hair Club for Men here in Pittsburgh for about four years. And with Breaking Brews, when I started it, it was ultimately just to build something that I felt was a good resource that could teach people how to gravitate to these beers in a very approachable way. Because as I learned, a lot of people just weren't aware of what was happening around them. So I was able to parlay my skillset from all my years in the professional world into a business that now I can help the breweries and help the different businesses that I work with do sales and marketing and create a good customer experience. All those good things, all things that are very important to building a good brand.Dan:Bring it back a little bit locally here to ... Pittsburgh I feel like is ... we've got a pretty special relationship to beer here. And it's some pretty big names in terms of, you think of Iron City, Duquesne, there's obviously Rolling Rock used to be around. How do you feel like the city's adopted and adapted to this craft brewing? I don't know if you could call it a Renaissance because it hasn't been around until right now, but this upsurge right now that people are ... they are doing with craft brewing.Jason:Yeah I think with the breweries now, I mean obviously as we spoke about earlier, we've got over 50 across the region now. It says a lot for the fact that people are going to go to a good brewery regardless of where they're at. It's become very neighborhood centric where you look like an old neighborhood pub, that's in some respects, being replaced by the local neighborhood brewery. You're seeing them essentially on every corner, quote unquote. And I think that helps with the fact that these guys are able to grow their brands so well because then it expands beyond their neighborhood as well. But yeah, we have a very rich history here in Pittsburgh with beer going back years and years back to ... I mean, Iron City was the beer.Jason:And I think now you're starting to see more of a shift towards the craft brands and many of them have been here for ... You look at East End, they've been here for 15 plus years now and they really were setting some good trends for what could happen and how people could gravitate towards a craft brand. Same with Penn Brewery. I believe 1986, was when they hit the scene. So a lot of good things have come along that have really helped push it forward. And now Pittsburgh is becoming one of those hot beds and I shouldn't say becoming it already is. And probably our closest rival in the state, just like everything else, is Philadelphia. And I think both of us have a tremendous beer scene that we can be proud of.Dan:Yeah. I think if you ever see a Penguins, Flyers game, it looks like more than a few people have beers.Jason:Well now, you see breweries have gotten in with the rivalries, like Grist House, and I'm forgetting the brewery that they partnered with out of Cleveland, they did a Browns, Steelers rivalry beer.Dan:Oh did they really?Jason:Rivertowne and Sly Fox had partnered up a couple of years ago for the stadium series. And they did a ... Glove Dropper was the name of the beer. And they worked together on that and sold it in both markets and worked out really well.Dan:All right Jason, well thanks so much for being here with us, for everybody at home. If you're listening, make sure to visit. If you're interested at all about starting a brewery and perhaps finding ways to market it and get it out to the world, you can go to breakingbrews.com. Look for Jason Cercone and also look for Breaking Brews podcast. You can find that on all the major platforms including Apple podcast, Stitcher, Google play, Spotify, iHeart, all the big ones where you can find us. And Jason, thanks so much for being here.Jason:Thanks again guys. Appreciate it.Logan:Sure thing.Dan:Great.Logan:Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections are made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest, or partner with you through our patented story crafting process, visit WordWritePR.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Paul:It's now time to talk about the biggest building that is not in the downtown skyline. We are talking about what is known in the travel trade as a headquarters hotel. In other words, if Pittsburgh were to host a very large convention, a large hotel would be designated as the headquarters hotel. In many cities, this is a large hotel that's attached to the convention center.Dan:Right.Paul:And that typically has somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand rooms.Dan:Right.Paul:Pittsburgh – yinz don't have one of those n’at.Dan:Oh, they do have a hotel connected to the convention center, right?Paul:Yes, yes. We do the Weston and actually Dan, I'm glad you mentioned that.Dan:Yeah.Paul:Because in the original plans for the convention center development, that hotel was supposed to be about twice as big as it is and if it were, it would be the size of a headquarters hotel.Dan:Sure. Well, I think that is, it's interesting that you're bringing this up and I think we rewind a little bit. The reason we're bringing this up is, on February 3rd, in the Post-Gazette, Craig Davis, who used to be the CEO of Visit Pittsburgh.Paul:Yes.Dan:Yeah. Visit Pittsburgh is the local-Paul:It's the Convention and Visitor's Bureau in part supported byPaul:Our tax funds and they promote the city to businesses like conventions.Dan:Right, yeah.Paul:But also to leisure travelers.Dan:Draw people into the city. Yeah, it's important. Yeah. This article, what it did with, again with Craig Davis here, he had a piece of parting advice for Pittsburgh is how Mark Belko, the writer introduced this and he did a really nice job with this piece. Craig wanted to build a convention center hotel.Paul:Right.Dan:And that's what we're talking about here. And there's a lot of back and forth about whether it should be done, whether ... what kind of impact it would bring on the city here. And he had some really good information about it, yourself, but a lot of people, they want to see more here. And that's what we're talking about today.Paul:Right. So in the tourism and convention industry in Pittsburgh, this is the third rail of politics. Nobody really wants to talk about it. And I look at this article in the Post-Gazette, Visit Pittsburgh, great organization. Craig Davis, very effective leader and he's been hired to run a similar organization in Dallas. Smart person. He's in Dallas now, so he can kind of say, what maybe he couldn't say before when he was in Pittsburgh. And for people in his business, his line of work, you need to have a convention center hotel. The thing is, to build that would cost about, Oh, kind of like the same amount of money to build PNC Park or Heinz Field.Dan:Right? Yeah. In this article here, they have an estimate of $350,000 to $400,000 a room to build.Paul:Or in other words-Dan:That's all.Paul:Yeah. $240 million.Dan:Right. That's for a 600-room hotel.Paul:Exactly.Dan:Yeah.Paul:It's a lot of money. And it was not easy to get PNC Park and Heinz Field built. There was actually a referendum on the ballot one year that failed. It was called the Regional Renaissance Initiative. I mean we put renaissance in the name of everything, don't we? And it was after that, that a deal was brokered. A lot of critics said behind closed doors and smoke-filled back rooms that wound up producing Heinz Field and PNC Park. There doesn't seem to be a lot of political appetite for spending that kind of money, again.Dan:Right.Paul:On something like a convention center hotel.Dan:Again here, Mark did a great job with this article here and he put it pretty succinctly here. He said, "In recent years, Davis' pitch has landed with all of the enthusiasm of a root canal."Paul:Yes.Dan:I don't know about you guys, I get too enthusiastic over root canals, but I suppose not many other people do, but the article does bring up a good point. That there's been a recent hotel building boom in the region, in the downtown area, particularly across the river. Some other smaller hotels that have cropped up here and there, the Marriotts and whatnot.Paul:Many. You could throw a rock from where we sit right now, we can hit the Monaco.Dan:Absolutely, yeah.Paul:Throw it across the way, hit the Embassy Suites. We've got the William Penn, which has been here for a long time. The Drury is in the old federal reserve building.Dan:Right and that's just a block away from the convention center. But the kind of full service hotel that, again, this is from the article here that Mr. Davis would see here, that would require huge public subsidies. And that's-Paul:Yes.Dan:I think the sticking point that it comes down to.Paul:That is the third rail part.Dan:Whether we want this here and I think it's one of those things where you balance. You say, "How much are these conventions going to be worth compared to the costs, the investments that you have to make in a city here." And it could take a while until the scales tip one way.Paul:Well, and what's very interesting about this is, there are statistics, there don't seem to be any statistics readily available to say, "Yes, Pittsburgh, you should do this." What we tend to fall back on, are a couple of really great seminal events. First was the Bassmaster Classic several years ago. And still of course people who don't know Pittsburgh want to depict it as a smoky mill town. And we had this freshwater national competition for bass fishing. And it went off really great. And that's led, as Mark Belko's article points out to Visit Pittsburgh getting into seeking sports events. And we've had, I can't believe this, I didn't even realize this number, 22 NCAA championship events have been held in Pittsburgh and we've got more coming.Dan:Yeah. Just recently they had the National Women's Volleyball championship out here.Paul:Yeah.Dan:And I think a big part of that comes down to, they now have a world-class arena to do it in.Paul:Yes.Dan:Where Civic Arena definitely showed its age after a while.Paul:Right.Dan:That plays a different part here. But certainly the downtown hotel building boom assists with that.Paul:Absolutely. Absolutely.Dan:Convention centers is ... that's a little different. And again, I think what, Craig Davis is trying to say here is, having it connected to the convention center, people love that. It's very convenient just to grab an elevator, have a little sky walk over to the convention center. It's not always a feasible immediately though, it's nice to think of these things, but it's hard to find room for it. And whether you're going to supplement what is already there or again, it takes money.Paul:Well, my point about Bassmaster, the other thing that happened of course was the G20 in 2009. Those two events put Pittsburgh, reputation-wise, on a world stage. In the article, Mark Belko talks about Milwaukee, which is a nice enough town and they have a baseball team that has a better record over the last decade of a postseason-Dan:They spend more than the Buccos, but that's a-Paul:They do.Dan:That's a whole other podcast.Paul:However, in terms of the hotel market, not quite the same size as Pittsburgh and they're getting the Democratic convention this year.Dan:Absolutely.Paul:Why does Pittsburgh not have that sort of convention? And if we did, aside from the monetary benefits of the convention itself, what would it do for the city in terms of raising the reputation even more and bringing more convention business to Pittsburgh? It's hard to say. It's also hard to argue that it was really cool to have Bassmaster or certainly the President and world leaders for the G20. That was awesome exposure for Pittsburgh. This is kind of a question of how much is the region willing to spend? And apparently it's going to have to spend something, in order to create that kind of environment.Dan:I think what's important when you look at these national conventions, particularly in the political arena, that is strategic by the parties too.Paul:Oh yes.Dan:Wisconsin's very important in this upcoming election to the Democrats. As is Pennsylvania.Paul:Right.Dan:But they were also in Philadelphia not that long ago, so do they want to spend so much more time in Pennsylvania and look, Wisconsin, the people ... whenever they do the Monday morning quarterbacking of that election, they did not spend all the time there. So it's ... they're showing ... it's a quite a statement that they are spending the time in Milwaukee for this upcoming convention. But it also shows that if Milwaukee can host something like this, then, so can Pittsburgh.Paul:Why not Pittsburgh, yeah.Dan:I think Pittsburgh actually held the very first Republican convention that was back in the 1860s or so. And we had the hotel rooms for that one, I guess. You know.Paul:We did.Dan:Yeah.Paul:Well, country was a little smaller then.Dan:Indeed. Yeah.Paul:Might be a difference, but I think this is a topic we're going to come back to again, so we wanted to put it out there for everybody. Again, props to Mark Belko and his article and the truth speaking, shall we say, of Craig Davis. We'll have to watch the skyline and see where this one goes.Dan:Well, most importantly, just as a final coda to this, and Mark's article did describe this a bit at the end, for the leaders that want to see this kind of change, that want to see a hotel down here, they have to show their work. It has to be ... You have to come to ... with studies from respected institutions, respected people, who are proving that, "Okay, hey, when Milwaukee hosted this type of thing, if they had a hotel here, this is the impact that they would have got."Dan:There are other areas here in Louisville and Columbus that are building hotels. What will those hotels do for their ability to draw conventions? Are they stealing them from Pittsburgh? You have to come up with that information. You have to present it to the leaders, not only in our government, but the community to approve ... like, "Hey, okay, some of tax dollars should go to this."Paul:Absolutely.Dan:And if you can do that, if you can convince enough people, then maybe it happens. But that stuff takes some time too.Paul:Well, and just a final thought on this since Craig Davis left Visit Pittsburgh, they are engaged in a search for a CEO. So I would expect that once a new CEO is named, one of the first things that we should be looking for, is some thinking around this topic.Dan:Absolutely.Logan:And we are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 podcast. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe at p100podcast.com, or wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Twitter at Pittsburgh100_ for all the latest news updates and more from the Pittsburgh 100. 

 Pittsburgh’s most famous magician, Lee Terbosic, visited the P100 Podcast for this episode, sharing stories from the road and close to home, the legacy of Harry Houdini and the success of the downtown theater Liberty Magic. Elsewhere in the episode:— A look at why Super Bowl ads aren’t always worth the multimillion-dollar cost incurred by the brands who can afford it.— We talk about the major investments being made in Oakland and what it means for one of Pittsburgh’s most vibrant neighborhoods.— Our next Pittsburgh Polyphony features a look at the compilation album "Pittsburgh City Limits," from the production trio One800.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Logan Armstrong:        You are listening to The P100 Podcast, the biweekly companion piece to The Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Paul Furiga:                  Welcome back to another edition of The P100 Podcast, the audio companion to The Pittsburgh 100 e-zine. I'm Paul Furiga. I'm the Publisher of The Pittsburgh 100, and the CEO of WordWrite Communications, alongside Dan Stefano, our Editor of The Pittsburgh 100 and brand journalist at WordWrite. Hey, there, Dan.Dan Stefano:                That's quite an introduction there, Paul. I normally just rush straight through it.Paul Furiga:                  I don't think you should, Dan. So Dan, what have we got coming up in this amazing episode?Dan Stefano:                I would say it is amazing.Paul Furiga:                  It's magical, isn't it, Dan?Dan Stefano:                Well, it's an exciting week because we are just ahead of Super Bowl Sunday here, so we're going to open up things with a discussion about Super Bowl ads.Paul Furiga:                  Yes.Dan Stefano:                Yeah. We're going to talk about how they might not be worth the money. I know few things are worth $5.6 million, although I wouldn't mind having some in my pocket.Paul Furiga:                  Sure.Dan Stefano:                I probably wouldn't spend it on that, but yeah. After that we're going to have a great conversation. It'll be me and Logan Armstrong who's not here right now, but he'll be joining us for a talk with Lee Terbosic. You could say he's Pittsburgh's most famous magician, and he's got some great stories to talk about, just basically magic in the area, Liberty Magic, new theater. He even gets into a discussion about David Copperfield, the time he got to meet him and really cool stuff.Paul Furiga:                  Great.Dan Stefano:                Following that, we're going to discuss some big developments in Oakland, and Paul, you're really interested in that, right?Paul Furiga:                  I am indeed. Oakland is home to Pitt, and not only where Logan went to school but one of my daughters, and been following Oakland for the better part of 25 years, first when I was editor of The Business Times, and now here at WordWrite. Still a lot going on over there.Dan Stefano:                Well, this WVU grad doesn't really hold that against your daughter or Logan.Paul Furiga:                  Well, thanks, Dan.Dan Stefano:                But Logan, he will also be joining us again with the Pittsburgh Polyphony segment at the end of the show here and we've got another great track for you to listen to, but yeah. I guess we're going to get to it then, right?Paul Furiga:                  Let's go.Dan Stefano:                Okay.Paul Furiga:                  All right, Dan, big weekend coming up, and I don't mean the list of home projects I have. I am talking about the Super Bowl. You going to watch?Dan Stefano:                Despite there not being any Steelers in it I supposed I will because that's just what you do as an American on Super Bowl Sunday. Right?Paul Furiga:                  It is what you do if you're an American male, now.Dan Stefano:                Females too, my wife's watching. We're actually going to host a-Paul Furiga:                  I agree. I do not want to be a sexist here at all. However, I do want to add that for those people who aren't as much into what's happening on the field, the Super Bowl has become, what we really want to talk about, the Super Bowl of advertising. Right?Dan Stefano:                That's very accurate, yeah. This year for a 30 second spot – $5.6 million, which is a pretty good chunk of change.Paul Furiga:                  It is. The game's on Fox, and we've got the San Francisco 49ers, and the Kansas City Chiefs. As you pointed out, two teams that most Pittsburghers don't care anything about.Dan Stefano:                We are actually hosting a Chiefs’ fan at our house for the game. She's a former co-worker of my wife, and she has not too many other Chiefs’ fans to watch the game with, so she's going to come over. I guess we'll have some sort of rooting interest.Paul Furiga:                  So, like it's a-Dan Stefano:                She's not a Patriots or Ravens fan, so we can root for it.Paul Furiga:                  Well, that's kind of the test. If the Steelers aren't in, and you just don't want to have anybody rooting for the Ravens, or the Patriots. Right?Dan Stefano:                Accurate.Paul Furiga:                  Now, Pittsburgh is in the game.Dan Stefano:                That's true. They are in the game.Paul Furiga:                  Kraft Heinz is going to do one 30-second commercial during the second quarter, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story by Teresa Lindeman, good friend of mine. It's going to promote Heinz ketchup, and a new experimental variation.Dan Stefano:                Right, this is what brings sriracha into the fold here, Ketcharacha, or something along those lines.Paul Furiga:                  HoneyRacha, my friend. Let's get the flavor blend correct there.Dan Stefano:                They've got too many blends these days, Paul. It's ridiculous.Paul Furiga:                  Dan, it's ketchup. The company's done very well for more than 100 some years on this very simple, enjoyable condiment.Dan Stefano:                That's right. There's nothing wrong with just plain ketchup.Paul Furiga:                  Well, they got pickles too, in the beginning.Dan Stefano:                I don't want mayo with it. I don't need all these other things.Paul Furiga:                  Dan, there's a Heinz flavor just for you. I am sure.Dan Stefano:                Yeah, it's called ketchup.Paul Furiga:                  Right, the point here though is, as you know, what about these Super Bowl ads? They cost so much money, and what really is the impact. This is kind of a perennial question in the marketing world, and we're marketing people, so maybe we can offer some insight, right? I must say that I get asked this question all the time this time of year. People want to know whether it's worth the amount of money that these things cost. The favorite answer of any consultant, including in our business, is it depends. Wouldn’t you agree, Dan?Dan Stefano:                I'd say that's accurate. The depending is really who you're advertising to, and what type of advertising you're showing here.Dan Stefano:                There's a really good study from Stanford. This is about five years ago, but they found that the most effective ads were the ads that could connect their products to the sports viewership, the people who view sports. The idea of watching sports, how many ads are we going to see for beer companies out there today.Paul Furiga:                  Only one beer company because for more than 20 years, Budweiser has been the only beer to advertise in the Super Bowl.Dan Stefano:                Absolutely, yeah.Paul Furiga:                  Which, the study you're referencing, I thought this was a fascinating conclusion of the study. They looked at, like you said, the brands that are associated with viewing sports, duh, beer, soda, snacks-Dan Stefano:                Pop, but yeah.Paul Furiga:                  Yeah, here in Pittsburgh it's pop, and that, but anyway.Dan Stefano:                Just catching you.Paul Furiga:                  Thank you very much for correcting my failure to use Pittsburgh-ese.Dan Stefano:                Before I interrupt you, yeah.Paul Furiga:                  Budweiser, they looked at Budweiser, and they estimated that the sales of Bud went up $96 million, or almost 16% in the weeks following Super Bowl. Now, they also looked at pop, Coke and Pepsi. Now Coke and Pepsi both advertise in the game during the years that the study covered. Guess what? They cancelled each other out.Dan Stefano:                Yeah, that's what the interesting part of the study here says is whenever there's competition in the ads that's whenever, as you said, it cancels each other out, and they don't really see a boost from this, and it becomes less worth it to advertise in the Super Bowl. That's fascinating to me. Why do you think that is?Paul Furiga:                  What of the other things, there's another study that was done in 2017 by a company called Communicus. Generally speaking people are watching the ads for entertainment value. In my view they're the best short films that you can see at any given time.Dan Stefano:                I saw Michael Bay is directing one this year.Paul Furiga:                  Yeah.Dan Stefano:                Yeah, that's pretty wild.Paul Furiga:                  Well, the Heinz, the Kraft Heinz ad, is being directed by Roman Coppola who I believe is the son of the legendary film director. His daughter, his son, maybe a few other family members are actively involved in doing films, and TV, and stuff like that.Dan Stefano:                Godfather Part 4 where we only have 30 seconds of plot left.Paul Furiga:                  There you go.Dan Stefano:                Yeah.Paul Furiga:                  Yeah, these things draw talent. The study that I'm referencing from 2017 found that 80% of the people watching the Super Bowl, eh, no impact whatsoever from the ads in terms of buying behavior although they found them entertaining. Really, this is kind of the stereotypical thing where we started this segment. The people who care about the football on the field watch for the football, and those who get dragged to the party where people are watching the football they have something to watch too, and that's the advertising.Dan Stefano:                True.Dan Stefano:                All right, we're joined by a very special guest. He might be Pittsburgh's most famous magician. He's toured all over the country, across the world. He's appeared in some big acts with big names in his profession, big celebrities, and importantly he's never forgotten his Pittsburgh roots, helping to open Liberty Magic downtown in the cultural district. It's been open for about a year now, opened in February, 2019. He is Lee Terbosic. Thanks for coming.Lee Terbosic:               Thanks for having me, man.Dan Stefano:                We're really happy to have you. As I just mentioned, Lee, Liberty Magic is a relatively new venue, strictly for magic. It's close quarters. About what, maybe 80 seats or so?Lee Terbosic:               We have 70 seats, right at that 70-seat mark.Dan Stefano:                70 seats, okay, so really intimate space. If you're seeing some magicians, and they're doing sleight of hand tricks you're right there to see it. It's really cool stuff. They bring in magicians all over the world.Dan Stefano:                Can you describe your role in helping get it started, and how it's been doing for a year?Lee Terbosic:               Yeah, we've been doing very well. I'm happy to report I did 100, let me see if I got this right. Yeah, I hit 100 shows publicly last year just at Liberty, so I did three runs. I did an eight-week run of my show, In Plain Sleight, which is essentially all my standup comedy magic, illusions, mentalism. It was my touring college show that I took, and reworked, and re-marketed, and flipped, and had fun with, so I brought that to Liberty this year. Then I brought the... We sold out. Every show sold out for that run for eight straight weeks. I was going to come back in the fall with the show as well, this fall. But during that, over the span of this past year, I had a TV series come out on Discovery Channel called Houdini's Last Secrets.Lee Terbosic:               When I wrapped on filming that, there was some stuff that I still wanted to work on offstage. As I was working on it I developed this idea of wanting to bring a Houdini show where I would play Harry on stage to life. Now I have this beautiful venue with all this creative freedom to come up with stuff, and so I decided to create a show called The Life and Death of Harry Houdini. We decided to run that performance. I was working on that all last year, all summer writing it, scripting it, scoring it, everything from filming a documentary, all kinds of crazy stuff. But, the idea was to bring it to fruition for two weeks in October, the last two weeks of October because they're always such a big magic month, and it always circulates around because of Harry Houdini's death on October 31st of 1926.Dan Stefano:                Oh on Halloween.Lee Terbosic:               Halloween, yeah. We originally promoted that show. We put tickets on sale for just the two weeks. The show sold out in one day, all two weeks of the run, so we decided. The trust came back to me, and said, "Hey Lee, there's a pretty big demand for the show." I said, "Okay, well let's do it another two weeks."Lee Terbosic:               The thing about that is that in the show I was doing a stunt. I do the upside down straight jacket escape in the show, and so by me agreeing to extend the show two more weeks that's me agreeing to extend me putting my life on the line every single night.Dan Stefano:                Right, to remind everybody, back in I think it was 2016 you did this over... Was it over Penn Avenue, or Liberty?Lee Terbosic:               No, Houdini 100 took place on November 6th, 2016 at the corner of Liberty and Wood, so just down, right there on the corner.Dan Stefano:                You were hung pretty high in the air on that one.Lee Terbosic:               I was 100 feet up, upside down in a straight jacket.Dan Stefano:                I know Liberty Magic doesn't quite have 100 foot ceilings.Lee Terbosic:               We don't have that high of a ceiling, but it's like a 25, 28 foot ceiling height. Then we were able to find this really, really ingenious rig that we installed into the theater. I was able to be about, when my feet were up there I was about a foot from the ceiling with my feet because of the contraption. Then my head was... If you look up in the audience you're three feet away from me. I'm really hanging over top of you doing the straight jacket escape. This is as close as you can get to having it done, and being able to see it, but it didn't start just this year. I've been doing residencies in the city since 2015. That was the time period where I told my agent, and my manager. I was like, "Hey guys, I've been on the road a lot. I want to come home."Lee Terbosic:               I came home, and I started doing residencies at Dave & Buster's with a show called Bamboozled. Then I have a residency still to this day, I still have it going. It's called 52 Up Close at Hotel Monaco. That's just for 52 people at a time, and I'm only doing the show 52 times a year now.Dan Stefano:                You grew up in one of the southern neighborhoods in the city.Lee Terbosic:               I was a city kid actually, so I was born and raised in the City of Pittsburgh, Lincoln Place. Then I went to, when I was in my teenage years I moved to Baldwin. I went to Baldwin High School. Then from Baldwin, I went to Robert Morris University.Dan Stefano:                It's nice to see somebody come back, and try to give back to the culture of the city here, and you touched on it. Is there... People don't think of magicians quite as often. Do you feel like the culture still has really an interest in it, the profession?Lee Terbosic:               It is more than ever right now. We are in – I call it the magic renaissance period. Every year something's hot, and Hollywood always... You always know it's hot because Hollywood jumps on it, and they explode it. When magic's hot there was a ton of magic movies. It has peaks and valleys, and sometimes standup comedy's the hot thing, but magic has definitely had its due, I guess. That's because of all these amazing shows that are now promoting magic in the right way, like America's Got Talent and these great magic themed shows on television. That's getting the audience's attention out there to see it live, and that's one of the problems. You can't see magic live. You only watch it on your phone, or on television because most people might know about the Magic Castle in Hollywood, but other than that they're like, "Oh, I can see a magician maybe in Las Vegas", but they don't know that we have it right here. It's in New York. It's popping up in every city across the country now.Lee Terbosic:               The same way how a comedian tours the country, and goes to comedy clubs, you're starting to see that happen with magic now. Magicians are literally getting the chance to go to the Chicago Magic Lounge, perform there, perform at Liberty Magic in Pittsburgh, hit the Magic Castle in Hollywood. It's like that circuit is starting to come alive.Logan Armstrong:        Yeah, and it's nice to have an intimate venue, like Liberty Magic, like you said, where it's more of that up close, sleight of hand kind of things. When you first got into magic was that your passion, those up close, intimate sleight of hand, or did you like doing those bigger stunts, or how did it all start for you?Lee Terbosic:               It really, for me, started with sleight of hand. I was drawn to a pack of cards, learning card tricks, and fooling people, my parents, and my sister. Then it slowly kind of morphed because you have to figure out who you are on stage, and that can take time, and especially when you're a young kid because I was just bouncing all over the place. I loved David Copperfield. I loved Lance Burton. I loved Penn & Teller. I loved all these guys, and they all had their own thing. I'm a young kid that's into magic, so I'm absorbing everything. I'm a sponge.Lee Terbosic:               Over those few years of coming up, I dabbled in a little bit of everything from making my sister disappear to mind reading stuff, to trying big illusions, and stuff like that. As I grew as an entertainer, and grew as a performer I realized what my strong suits were, and what the stuff I really dug, and so I veered into that type of magic in which, for me, was a pack of cards. I'm obsessed with doing card tricks, but over time I saw avenues like learning escapes, and my infatuation with Harry Houdini, and that comedy magic, and illusions, Amazing Jonathan, all these different personalities that were out there were in one hand or not shaping me as a performer for what to bring to the audience.Logan Armstrong:        You mentioned Harry Houdini as a big influence, and you obviously had the huge stunts, Houdini 100 back in 2016. Are there any other upcoming, crazy stunts that we can expect, or anything big for you on the horizon?Lee Terbosic:               Yes, I'm always working on something. My infatuation with him began in 2010. Every kid who gets into magic knows who Harry Houdini is, but I read his stuff as a kid, but I wasn't mesmerized by him back then because, like I said, I had so many magicians to look into, and figure out, and try to find out how all this stuff was happening. For me it was when I was in, it was in 2010. I was in New York City with my mentor, and fellow Pittsburgh magician, Paul Gertner, and Paul has had a big influence in my career. When I was helping him produce his show in New York before we left he asked me. He said, "Lee, do you want to see if we can find Harry Houdini?" At that moment I was like, "Wait a minute. We're going to go find Harry Houdini right now? What do you mean? Where's he at?"Dan Stefano:                That's quite a trick.Lee Terbosic:               That's quite a trick, right, like he's been dead for a long time. But, he goes, "No, he's buried I think in the cemetery right up in Queens." My history, the little history I had of Harry at that moment, I assumed that he had been buried in his hometown, which was Appleton, Wisconsin. I'm thinking, "Why would he be buried in Queens?" That's when Paul was like, "No, New York was a big part of his life, and helped shape him, and duh, daduh, daduh", and so we went and found Harry that day.Lee Terbosic:               That was in 2010. We went to his grave, and we stood there. It was kind of cool to be with another magician, and learning with him. When I got back Paul gave me a book. It's called the Taschen Magic Book. It's this giant coffee table book, very pretty. That night when I was going through the pages of that book I stumbled upon the photo of Harry Houdini doing the upside down straight jacket escape in Pittsburgh . And that was the moment that I went, "Wait a minute." It hit home. It came full circle. I was just at his grave in New York. Now I'm standing in my living room in Pittsburgh, and this dude played my city, and did the biggest trick I've ever seen in this city. I'm going, "Well, I have this information now. It's dated." I could figure out where it was in Pittsburgh. I was like, "I have to bring this back to life for this generation." That was when I set out to create Houdini 100. Then since then I've done the show, Houdini's Last Secrets, where I did a whole bunch more of his tricks on television, and then brought it to the stage with The Life and Death of Harry Houdini.Lee Terbosic:               We're working on a documentary right now from all the stuff that I was able to shoot over the summer. I shot at the Magic Castle in Hollywood with a guy named John Cox. I filmed at the Houdini Museum in New York City with Roger Dryer. Then I also got a special invitation tour, invite only, from the people that own Harry Houdini's actual home in New York. It's in Harlem. It's called 278 West 113th Street. He bought the house in 1905, and he lived there up until the day he died in 1926, so he lived there about half his life with his family, and his wife.Lee Terbosic:               I was all these things. I was so fascinated with his home, and so that's when I, when I was figuring all these things about his house I decided to make my live show a performance in his living room, so when you come to see The Life and Death of Harry Houdini at Liberty Magic you literally saw me on stage portraying Harry Houdini, but in his home at 278 in Harlem.Dan Stefano:                Did you recreate?Lee Terbosic:               Yeah, we did because it was all, the whole performance was centered around the bookcase. Now, if you remember in 2016 I recreated the photo of Houdini 100. That was one of the big things. I took the photo from 1916, and I got the exact same image of me doing it in 2016. It's the exact same spot Harry was hanging in the city.Lee Terbosic:               When I was doing my research about Harry Houdini's house I found this photo, which is an iconic photo, of Harry standing against a bookcase with all these books. If you Google it, it's one of the first photos that pop up. Well, I found out that photo was taken in his home at 278. That bookcase was very special to Harry Houdini. It housed all of his collection of secrets. It literally was the jewels of magic right there in that photo.Lee Terbosic:               Well, when he died all of his magic got broken up all around the world, and that house was obviously sold, but that bookcase in that home remained to this very day. But, in 2016, or 2017 when that house went on sale that bookcase disappeared out of the living room. And if you look at the photo it's a gigantic, beautiful bookcase, and you're going, "How did this disappear out of this photo?" Well, the one person that made it disappear was David Copperfield. He is now the biggest collector of magic in the world.Lee Terbosic:               Over the years, over the past 30 years, his collection, he has bought up everything Harry Houdini, and he's taken it all to a secret warehouse in Las Vegas, and that's where his collection lives. In the magic world we refer to it as the Smithsonian of magic because it is unbelievable, but yet it's still a secret. It's the secret where it's at. It's in the secret warehouse, and it's his museum. The only way to see this stuff is by David Copperfield. He's the only one that will allow people in and out to see it.Lee Terbosic:               Once I had figured out all these things about Harry's house, and this bookcase, and I was like, "Well, the only thing I got to do is I got to get into this. I got to go see David. I got to get into this museum." That's what I did. I hit up my... Going back, on the Discovery show I did that show with a guy named George Hardeen, and George Hardeen's claim to fame is that he is the great grand-nephew of Harry Houdini, so I'm friends with the family now. I'm in the family, so I know that if I took George Hardeen, a Houdini, and I put him in front of David Copperfield, the biggest Houdini collector out there, and lover of magic, and Harry Houdini, I knew that I would see something special something happen, so that's what I did.Lee Terbosic:               I hit up George. I said, "George." He lives in Arizona. I said, "Hey man, do you want to meet me in Las Vegas? I want to take you to something." He was like, "Sure." So, we all-Dan Stefano:                That's all you said, "I just want to take you somewhere."Lee Terbosic:               He's like, "Oh dude, Vegas, I'm in." He's such a fun guy. George met me in Las Vegas. My friends from England came over, and we all went and saw David Copperfield that night. We got front row tickets. Then I arranged for a meet-and-greet back stage. Then we went back backstage, and I introduced. It was really cool. I got to introduce George Hardeen, a Houdini, to David Copperfield. It was in that moment that David Copperfield was meeting George where I can see David literally becoming a kid. He's like, "Wow." You could see the resemblance, and so that night he took us to see the museum, a private tour by David Copperfield of his museum, and he let us see, and touch all the Houdini stuff, but that bookcase that was in the home. That bookcase is in his collection. What David Copperfield did is he took me to the exact same location on that bookcase, and he posed me, and he took a photo on my phone. He took the photo, and I recreated that photo from the bookcase from Harry Houdini.Dan Stefano:                Wow, that's pretty amazing.Logan Armstrong:        Wow, that's incredible.Lee Terbosic:               It's been a wild ride the last couple years, but obviously still working on more to answer your question. I still have some more stuff I'm working on.Logan Armstrong:        Well, once you visited that I'm sure you have a ton of secrets-Lee Terbosic:               Oh my God, man.Lee Terbosic:               It opened up a can of worms because getting to sit down, and talk to David Copperfield about Harry Houdini, and just his infatuation with him, and the stuff that he was able to uncover. These things are just implanting in me. I'm just going, "Oh boy, where's this going to take me next?"`Dan Stefano:                That's amazing the impact. Yeah, the impact he still has on that profession.Lee Terbosic:               Absolutely.Dan Stefano:                There's a lot of different types of magic. There are these big escapes. There's also the smaller sleight of hand. What do you think is the unifying theme of all of that, and why people are still into magic, and why people are going down to Liberty Magic, and selling out?Lee Terbosic:               You know what? That's a great question. I think it's the you have to see it with your own eyes because I think in this day and age people have become so skeptical of stuff. Everything, fake news, and deep state, and now there's videos where it's like Obama talking, but it was obviously made by some other algorithm. It's that type of skepticism that has come full circle where people are just going, "Screw it. I'll go see it live. I got to see it from my own two eyes."Dan Stefano:                Lee, can you tell us how people can follow you online, so your social accounts, and any way they can get online to see shows at Liberty Magic too?Lee Terbosic:               Absolutely, follow me at leeterbosic, L-E-E-T-E-R-B-O-S-I-C, on Instagram, Facebook. You can visit www.leeterbosic.com, 52upclose.com, and then for everything for Liberty, that's all run through the trust, so it's trustarts.org. Then /libertymagic. So, you can find all the upcoming shows, and other magicians that are coming to play that city, and when I'll be back as well.Dan Stefano:                That's great, well, Lee, thank you so much for coming, and everybody just try to get down to Liberty Magic. It's absolutely worth the trip. I've been myself.Lee Terbosic:               Come see me.Dan Stefano:                Thanks, Lee.Logan Armstrong:        Centuries before cell phones and social media human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, and minds, and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story, the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest, or partner with you through our patented story crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Paul Furiga:                  All right everybody, in this segment we want to talk about economic development. No, don't turn off the podcast just yet because we want to talk about sports, and we want to talk about medicine.Dan Stefano:                Sports, now you've got my attention.Paul Furiga:                  See, there you go, Dan.Dan Stefano:                And I've taken medicine before.Paul Furiga:                  I think you guys both have some perspective. You've taken medicine before?Dan Stefano:                Yeah.Paul Furiga:                  Dan, you're married to a doctor. You have a little bit more insight than that. Give yourself some credit, dude.Paul Furiga:                  All right, so recently in the news two fairly major announcements related to Oakland, University of Pittsburgh, UPMC. University of Pittsburgh has announced a $250 million campaign to upgrade its sports facilities dubbed by the athlete director, Heather Lyke, as Victory Heights, very cool thing. We're going to dig into that a little bit.Paul Furiga:                  The other thing we want to do is just offer a little perspective here. Most people don't know this, but where the universities are in Oakland, and where most of the region's major medical centers are is like the fourth largest employment center in the entire state of Pennsylvania. People from outside the region, they look at Pittsburgh, and they're like, "Oh steel, blah, blah, blah, blah." Some people are into the, "Oh, it's eds and meds", but they really don't understand, I don't think, what's happening in Oakland. It's now become a place where you've got these great universities, but you've also got a lot of economic activity.Paul Furiga:                  For instance, Victory Heights gets announced, and the same day UPMC Enterprises, which is the venture capital arm of UPMC, who knew a hospital system had that, announces one billion dollars in life sciences investments over the next four, five years.Dan Stefano:               That's enormous.Paul Furiga:                  It's incredible, right? Now, the thing about that is we don't see that as much as what we're probably going to see with Victory Heights. If you're listening to this podcast, and you don't even like sports I got to tell you. It's really bad up there, and Dan is a former sports journalist, and-Dan Stefano:                Currently, yes.Paul Furiga:                  ... Logan is a Pitt grad. I'm sure you guys have some perspective on that. Dan, what do you think?Dan Stefano:                Yeah, that area where Victory Heights is going to be, and I guess that's the upper campus. Logan, you're the grad. You know exactly, a little bit better than I do, but I don't want to say it's a depressed area, or anything, and they've definitely improved some aspects I believe in terms of their soccer stadiums, and their baseball, softball, but you've got the Fitzgerald Field House up there, which is decades old now. I think it pre-dates, maybe it goes beyond the '50s. I don't have the exact age on it, but I don't think there's any air conditioning there. I know teams are kind of, whenever they try to practice there, it's really crowded. I think what we saw on some of the reporting on this that the wrestling team – half of their team can practice at one time because they're worried about what if they get the entire team out there, the other weight classes, they're going to bump into each other.Dan Stefano:                This is needed to replace certain facilities, replace the Fitzgerald Field House with a 3,500 seat arena, where the wrestling team, the volleyball team, the other teams can compete, new arena there, a performance center, an indoor track. This will bring Pitt up to the level that other ACC schools are, and just other universities that are of the same level in terms of these public universities that have giant athlete departments.Dan Stefano:               These types of investments are needed from time to time at universities. A lot of people think, "Well, okay, it's just athletics", and you think volleyball, and wrestling, and gymnastics, and all of that. They aren't the revenue producing sports, but it helps enrich the university. I think a lot of this is going to be done with donor money. There's going to be some financing that's going to be involved in it. As any of these projects go it's probably going to go over budget a little bit. You hope not, but it probably will. You have to have this happen from time to time, and Heather Lyke, who's the AD there, kudos to her for actually bringing something like this to fruition. It's been talked about, maybe not in this exact structure for a while, for Pitt Athletics here. The Victory Heights label, I don't know how long that label has been on it, but she made this happen pretty quick in what has been a relatively short tenure right now with Pitt.Dan Stefano:                Logan, I know you've probably got be excited to see something like this happen as a recent Pitt grad.Logan Armstrong:        There's mixed emotion about it. There's a lot of things, and there's a lot of pros and cons in having a campus in a city environment, and one of the things that's going to happen is this new 3,500 seat arena that they're building on the lawn next to the Pete, that takes up a big area of green space that you don't really have much anywhere else on Pitt's campus.Logan Armstrong:        But, like you said, it's definitely needed that there's going to be some facility updates, and renovations because, yeah. The Fitzgerald Field House is old, and there's definitely some renovations that could be of great benefit to other sports teams even if they're not the most revenue generating, but they're also planning on replacing the student recreation center, the gym, and the Pete, and outsourcing that somewhere else. But, I'm hoping that the Fitzgerald Field House becomes a student, not a student athlete, but a student recreational athletic center where they're going to be able to replace some of the facilities that aren't needed to be quite up to standard for say the basketball team, or the football team, but for other gyms, and recreationally athletic facilities that are coming.Logan Armstrong:        Definitely excited for the investment in the athletic teams. I just hope that it's done with care.Paul Furiga:                  With students in mind.Logan Armstrong:        Yes, exactly.Paul Furiga:                  That's the perspective you have. Just a couple of statistics to give people some perspective. This billion dollar UPMC Enterprises investment and life sciences companies that's going to occur. It's going to be largely invisible compared to Victory Heights, and what you were just talking about, Logan. Here's where Pitt ranks nationally. It is number five in the country for academic research grants, primarily from the National Institutes of Health. We all love Pitt sports except for those of us, Dan, who went to WVU, or some other school. No Pitt team ranks there, and that's a big part of what Victory Heights is about.Dan Stefano:                Women's volleyball team was very good this year though.Paul Furiga:                  The women's volleyball team is fantastic. As you pointed out, the wrestling team is great. Heather Lyke, she's dynamic. I met her. I've seen her speak. She makes a great case for why this kind of investment is really relevant to the overall health of a university because you used this term, Dan, non-revenue producing sports, and however you feel about college athletics, a lot of the negative attention towards college athletics goes towards those revenue-producing sports, basketball, men's football. These non-revenue producing sports at Pitt, the Fitz. It's 68 years old. There's no air conditioning, and that's where just about every team does its training, and practicing except for basketball, and for football.Paul Furiga:                  To put some things in perspective, Craig Meyer from the Post Gazette did a really excellent story last August. In 2017 Pitt spent nearly $81 million on athletics. That's a heck of a lot of money, right?Dan Stefano:            Right.Paul Furiga:                  Ranked ninth of the 15 ACC schools, and while they increased spending 36% over a five-year span dating back to 2012, the third sharpest increase of any ACC school, they only ranked ninth. They are just way, way, way behind.Paul Furiga:                  There is an award that is given every year in collegiate athletics. It's called The Learfield IMG Director's Cup, and basically the top 150 largest division one universities in the country can compete for this cup. Pitt usually ranks around 135 or something.Dan Stefano:                Right, I think this kind of collates the success of all the athlete programs together.Paul Furiga:                  Yes, everything. It's how they recruit, how the students perform academically, how they rank, the win/loss record. I'm sure that's everybody's thinking about, "Oh, it's just win/loss record." It's a lot more than that. It's a point system, and it also is tied to how each sport performs in the NCAA championships. Again, just for perspective Pitt ranked behind Vermont, Middle Tennessee State, Montana State, Illinois State, and New Hampshire. If you're a Pitt fan, a fan of anything Pitt, that's probably not the competition set that you want to have yourself ranked-Dan Stefano:                That's not to knock those universities, but Pitt being a-Logan Armstrong:        Middle Tennessee State was the one that knocked off Michigan State in the first round of that March Madness a few years ago, remember.Dan Stefano:                That is true.Logan Armstrong:        Never forget.Dan Stefano:                We're not impugning these teams that are in the say 1AA ranks, but Pitt, if it's going to call itself a top tier school, and it's going to rank as one of the higher public universities in the U.S., as it typically does, probably your athletics should be up there too at a certain level. But, as you mentioned, in terms of development in Oakland we're not stopping at athletics here in the city. There's quite a bit going on, and the university's pretty deeply enmeshed in that.Paul Furiga:                  That's really the point that I think merits the segment on the podcast today is we're going to see stuff happen with Victory Heights. It's long overdue. Hail to Pitt for those of you who are Pitt grads, or care about Pitt.Logan Armstrong:        Yes.Dan Stefano:                Some people, Health Pitt maybe.Paul Furiga:                 I paid to put a daughter through Pitt, so HTP. For everybody else, remember this is part, like you said Dan, of a bigger picture where the universities, in this case Pitt, and affiliated institutions like UPMC, continue to be huge economic drivers.Dan Stefano:                Yeah, sure. Then we can clean up South Oakland next where Logan used to live.Logan Armstrong:        It has its charms.Paul Furiga:                   Sure it does. I do like the Mad Mex.Logan Armstrong:        The OG Mad Mex.Paul Furiga:                  Right.Logan Armstrong:        Okay, for this episode's Pittsburgh Polyphony where taking a step back from just looking at a single artists, and we're actually going to look at local production group that all went to California University of Pennsylvania together called One800. They've been doing some crazy work. They used to work solely with a Pittsburgh artist, My Favorite Color, who I believe I'm mentioned on here before, but they've just recently put out an album with a slew of Pittsburgh artists that range from hip-hop, to R&B, to pop, and they're doing some really cool things.Dan Stefano:             Is the album called Toll Free?Logan Armstrong:         The album is not called Toll Free, but I think we need to get in touch with them for the next tape they do.Dan Stefano:                There's many marketing opportunities here to be had, Logan come onLogan Armstrong:         Yeah, so the album is actually called Pittsburgh City Limits, which fairs well with the talent roster that they have on it, but it has artists from Clara Kent, to Mars Jackson, Pick Patek, Young Guy Burkett, some of these names that I've mentioned before, but, as I've said, they're all out of California University of Pennsylvania. Cody Maimone, Jeremy Rosinger, and Don Pomposelli, they're the three that have been working hard, and they've been doing some really cools things. A lot of times artists will tell you that the Pittsburgh music scene is supportive, and other times it's not so much, so it's nice to see these guys coming together, and really spreading some light onto Pittsburgh artists.Logan Armstrong:        It's the first thing, the first type of project I've seen like this coming out of the city.Dan Stefano:                Yeah, it sounds really great. As you said, people want to be supportive of each other in this community because it's hard to make it out from a city of this size, and really anywhere in the music industry, even if you're somewhere in Los Angeles, or something where there's a million people trying to make it the same way, or New York City, so it's something kind of special too that it comes from a small town, like California where I suppose, did these people meet in a university down there?Logan Armstrong:        Yeah, they met at university. They all went to Cal U together. I'm not sure if that's where they met My Favorite Color, but yeah. These three guys have been at it for a few years. And so how this album came about is they dubbed it the Pittsburgh Sessions. They would get these artists in there, in their home studio, and just vibe with no real preconceived notions of what kind of stuff they wanted to make. They just bring the artists in, and go with the flow with whatever happened. It came out with a really great project. There's some real nice songs on there.Dan Stefano:                What are we going to hear from Pittsburgh City Limits today then?Logan Armstrong:        We got a great one for you. It features the Pittsburgh artist Walkney, who I think I failed to mention earlier, but Walkney. The song's called Bad Reputation, so it's a nice upbeat tune, maybe a little reprieve from this horrible Pittsburgh weather we got here, so we hope you enjoy it.Dan Stefano:                You got a great reputation by my books there, Logan. 

 There was some Pittsburgh podcast synergy in the newest episode of the P100 Podcast, as we welcomed John Chamberlin and Rachael Rennebeck of the YaJagoff! Podcast. In a lively discussion, we talked about why Pittsburghers aren’t really rude, the many meanings of the term jagoff, and a special they group they support.In our other segments:We discuss the pain of seeing storefronts close — and why it’s not such a bad thing.Executive coach Dick Singer joins us to talk about leadership in 2020.We thank our winners of The Pittsburgh 100’s gift issue contest.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.

For the first P100 Podcast of 2020 (or the last of 2019, depending on when you listen), we’re taking a broad look at Pittsburgh over the past 20 years – then glimpsing at the future.We’ll talk about the ups and downs, the positive trends and the disappointments that need to be fixed to make Pittsburgh more livable for us all. Then we dive into a discussion on how the region might look very different by 2029.And don’t miss our latest Pittsburgh Polyphony with Steve Soboslai of Punchline, the great punk band from Belle Vernon performing an anniversary show this week.This episode is sponsored by WordWrite:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Full Transcript Logan:             You are listening to the P100 podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture and more, because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Dan:     Hey everybody, welcome back to the P100 podcast. I'm Dan Stefano, I'm here with Paul Furiga.Paul:                Hey, hey.Dan:                 And Logan Armstrong.Logan:             How you doing, Dan?Dan:                Okay. Depending to whenever you're listening to this, it could either be the last day of the 2010s, or it could be really early in the 2020s here. It's an interesting time, we're splitting decades finally.Logan:             Or it could be 2027 when you're listening to this, we don't know.Paul:                Could be, we have a really good archiving service, don't we?Dan:                Could be an alien listening to this as a history and saying like, "What was wrong with them?" No, it is an interesting time and Paul, before we get started here, you brought up a fun fact about changing decades.Paul:                 Yes, I am sure that many of our listeners will doubt this until I explain it, but I can speak with authority as the oldest host on this podcast because I've lived in parts of eight decades, but I'm only 61 years old.Dan:                That's really impressive though, eight decades.Paul:                Eight decades. But see, I was born-Dan:                 Two days into the new one, but-Paul:                 That's right. I was born in 1958, and I got the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, the aughts, the teens, and now I'm into the twenties.Dan:                 Pretty amazing. And myself I've lived in five. Well again, you know we're recording this I think before the 2020s begin, but I think I got a good chance of making it there. And Logan Armstrong, you as our youngest host, you still have lived in quite a few decades, so you're pretty long-Logan:             Yep. Repping four decades. Snuck into the 90s there for a few years. Yeah, I'm only 22 now, so it's kind of weird to think about.Dan:                That's impressive, a Clinton baby over there. All right, yeah it's fun to look at the calendar and think about these things. But the one thing we are going to do on today's episode is take a look back at where Pittsburgh has been, how it has changed within the 2010s and even the aughts that we talked about, and then we're going to talk about going forward here. What the 2020s might hold for Pittsburgh. Through it all there are ups and downs, and the city obviously has been on probably more ups than downs since we've gotten to 2000s. But there have been some really, some sad moments and there are a lot of important cultural things that I think are holding us back from being a more perfect Pittsburgh right now.Dan:                So we're going to get into all of that and then we're going to wrap it up, we're going to make a little bit of a hard right turn there, but we have a really exciting Pittsburgh polyphony segment. Logan, do you want to talk about that?Logan:             Yeah, sure. We're going to be sitting down with Steve Soboslai of Punchline, a band that's from around the Pittsburgh region out of Belle Vernon specifically, that's done some great things over the 20 plus years that they've been around, traveled the world. So it was great to sit down with Steve and kind of talk about what's coming up for them.Dan:                Yeah, that might be a band that's like four decade too.Paul:                There you go.Dan:                Yeah, they've been around for quite a while. Okay. We're going to stop having fun with the calendar, but we're going to get to it, and thanks for being with us today.Dan:                 All right guys, to start today's episode we are going to talk about the Pittsburgh of the past. Pittsburgh of the recent past here. Mostly it's a look back at the 2010s and we can include the aughts in there as well because it's been a really interesting 20 years for Pittsburgh. I think if you go back to the year 2000, for myself, I was 13 years old and it just seemed like this crazy future thing-Paul:                I wasn't 13.Dan:                 You were not 13?Paul:                No, I was not.Dan:                Okay, 15, 16? Okay. Pushing that?Paul:                No, I was not.Dan:                 Logan, I think you were about three.Logan:             I was about three years old, yeah.Dan:                All right. So for myself, whenever that was coming around, it seemed like this crazy future time. And there were a lot of cool things that were on the horizon at that time, we knew that the North Shore was going to be redeveloped. It was basically just a gravel lot and back then it was only called the North Side, but some new baseball and football stadiums were going up. And now 20 years later, there are a ton of restaurants, there are office buildings, and was kind of the start I think of taking back our rivers in Pittsburgh, and changing it around there. And Paul, I know you were around for that as well, right?Paul:                I was actually at the groundbreaking for PNC Park.Dan:              Were you really?Paul:                Yes. And it was my job to be the personal handler for Vince Lascheid, who was for decades, the organist for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who most people don't know lives on, digitally only. God bless Mr. Lascheid, he left us several years ago. The Pirates however recorded, I think pretty much everything he ever played. And somebody pushes a button somewhere in PNC Park when they want Vince Lascheid and out comes some organ music.Dan:                 Right. Well, you know, it's not just baseball and football stadiums that helped turn around this city here. Really it was the medical and the tech boom. And those hospitals are still around.Paul:                And also energy.Dan:                Energy as well, that's right. That's correct. Yeah, that's one thing we'd be remiss to say, in the 2010s it was really the shale industry as it exploded here in this region. You know, we're sitting on top of some valuable resources, especially in the rural parts, that's valuable land out there.Paul:                We got gas, Dan. And we have the okay kind.Dan:                Right, the okay kind.Paul:                At least in terms of economic activity.Dan:                 Yeah. It's better, let's put it that way. It's better, it might not be perfect, probably another 30 years from now we're going to be seeing a different type of energy. But for right now, it's I guess let the good times roll on that. But as we mentioned as well, the tech industry was a big part of what helped turned around the city in terms of how I think the rest of the country views it. And just in terms of the type of people that are attracted to it right now, it's a younger place. Logan, I think you'd agree with that. Slightly younger.Logan:             Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. And we've been able to kind of make Pittsburgh a healthcare hub, a cluster where we kind of finally have a face to a name as a sector or an industry. We have a lot of major healthcare players here. But as you noted, have a lot of tech companies coming in, especially to the Strip District. I mean, we have Uber here.Dan:                 We have Apple.Logan:             Yeah, Apple.Paul:                We have the Facebook Oculus unit, the VR unit is based here.Logan:             Oh, I see. I didn't even know that. We have ARGO-Paul:                 Stick with me Logan, you'll learn something.Logan:              Yeah, so we have a lot of tech companies coming in and-Paul:                Let's not forget, Duolingo.Logan:             Yeah, no, can't forget Duolingo.Paul:                Recently acknowledged as the first unicorn in Pittsburgh.Dan:                That's correct, and that's fantastic for them. That's so exciting to see. I've used their app before and it's a very fun way to try to learn a language. And it's useful, and so we're thrilled to see that for a company from here that really got its start here as well.Paul:                I'm waiting for the Yinzer language translation.Dan:                Exactly.Paul:                They have many languages on there and they roll out new languages quite frequently.Dan:               "Oh, it's slippy outside," you know?Paul:               That's right.Dan:                Try to pronounce that. What does that mean? But yeah, again, I suppose whenever I said earlier that we are a younger place, it might seem that way, but we really haven't made the population gains just yet. We've got a census coming up that'll probably explain a little more in detail of where we're at. But you know, I think there's a foundation that's being built here that they can use going forward. And basically it's going to be, as always in Pittsburgh, how these public/private partnerships work together to help foster new people coming to the city and just keeping those brains that come out of universities like Pitt and CMU, keeping them in town to build companies like Duolingo.Paul:                Yeah. And Duolingo for instance, has had a very well recognized campaign in San Francisco, a billboard campaign essentially saying if you lived in Pittsburgh you could afford this kind of a house, and you could do this and you could do that, in order to recruit talent. And that's been somewhat successful over the years. But if you think about Pittsburgh for a moment, kind of like a forest, get that picture in your mind, what you're saying Dan, is a lot of the older trees obviously they're dying. And as they come down in the forest, the forest is still smaller.Paul:                The population though, makes sense, it's the young trees. And so what we're seeing now is while the population of the city of Pittsburgh continues to shrink sadly, the population overall is younger. And one of the reasons is people who grew up in the region, but also people who have moved to the region just like you said, for the hipster vibe. We probably don't have enough man buns and pickle shops. But hey, we got charcuterie and we got all kinds of great restaurants and the club scene is okay. Right, Logan? I mean it's not New York, okay.Logan:             No, it's not New York, it's not LA, but you can have fun on weekends.Dan:                It's a cool place to be.Paul:                Yeah. So there's potential there, right, Dan?Dan:                Absolutely.Paul:                But there's still a lot of work that needs to be done if this is going to be sustainable and if we're going to grow.Dan:               That's right. And while it's exciting to see neighborhoods like Lawrenceville and the Strip District grow and become certainly different places from the way they were even at the beginning of the 2010s, or going back to the year 2000 itself. We'd be remiss to say, to leave out that this has also had an adverse effect on a lot of our population here. The housing in some of these neighborhoods is just untenable anymore. If you build these beautiful looking new apartment complexes, they are affordable only to a certain segment, and these are the challenges that are going to be facing Pittsburgh going forward here.Dan:                And just recently even, we had a really interesting and a really sobering development within the city government here where the city council voted to declare racism a public health crisis in Pittsburgh. And that sounds a little shocking, it sounds to some people like it might be extreme, but the stats here are, they came from a-Paul:                They're hard to argue with.Dan:                Exactly. Came from a report from Pitt earlier this year and again it's, they're hard to argue with. This is from a Post-Gazette article here, really helpful to kind of pull this out. I believe it's from the December 5th issue here, "African Americans compared to whites are living shorter lives, more due to conditions like heart disease rather than violence. They're suffering higher rates of infant mortality and extreme low birth weight. They're five times as likely to grow up in poverty."Paul:                You know, I came to Pittsburgh in '94, returned back here after living elsewhere, and I have to say that a lot of the statistics in that most recent report sadly build on earlier reports, some done by the same department at Pitt. And in some ways some things have gotten worse, and people from Pittsburgh are proud generally speaking of their hometown. As you pointed out though, Dan, we've got enormous pockets of, I would say embarrassing lack of economic attainment, that aligns with race and ethnicity. And that is just not the kind of place that I think any of us would want this region to be.Paul:                And it relates to some of the other things we talked about a few minutes ago, such as building a workforce of the future. If you're going to leave a significant percentage of the population that already lives in the region behind in terms of educational and economic attainment, how are you going to build the best region you can build for the future?Dan:                That's correct. And I think maybe the line that really describes this the best, this comes from Councilman Ricky Burgess, who is also a reverend within the city here. He was one of the authors of the bill that declared racism a public health crisis, and he said, "America's most livable city is also the least livable city for African Americans," and that's a hard thing to hear. And look, we three are three white men. We frankly we were born with a lot of privilege here. And I think an important... bills like this are important to try to set up structures that will help lift up all Pittsburghers, that will try to create an equal playing ground here for whenever people are born and whatnot.Dan:                And an important thing for people who are like ourselves here who, we've got certain just built in advantages. You got to listen, and have to understand some of these issues that are affecting segments of our society. And so whenever you see a great new apartment building going up in the Strip or another great new tech startup that's doing great but maybe only employees 40 to 50 people, need to understand that we're not... And need to try to make efforts to not leave behind everyone. People who are in poverty, people who are in these neighborhoods that are being a little left behind.Paul:                This is probably the most important issue the region needs to grapple with in the views of many leaders in the region. And really today in the podcast episode as we talk about Pittsburgh of the future, I believe personally this will be the most important measure of whether the next decade is successful, whether or not we've been able to address this problem.Dan:                That's correct. And we're going to be jumping into our next segment here pretty soon about Pittsburgh in the 2020s, but let's make sure that we don't forget these points as we discuss the exciting things that are coming. And hopefully again, measures like this that were just passed by city council, that they can help assist all Pittsburghers and again, make us a more perfect city going forward.Dan:                All right, Paul, Logan, we're going to talk about Pittsburgh in the 2020s now here. Again, an exciting time because Pittsburgh has come a long way in the past 20 years here, and this next decade, by the time we reach 2029 this place could look very different right now. And a lot of the stuff has already been kickstarted here, and within the next couple of years we're going to see this city is just going to look very, very different. And that's with a lot of big developments coming to the city, right?Paul:                Yeah. You know, we sat down and we did a preliminary list and we have half a dozen major regional developments that are coming up. Starting with the airport, which is a multibillion dollar renovation. When people enter the airport, it's going to be something they see immediately, because a lot of what's there now is coming down, going to be replaced with something very different.Paul:                You got the cracker plant, which if you travel the Southern beltway from the turnpike from the West down towards the airport, you are going to cross the river and you're going to see the cracker plant. It explodes on you in terms of its stature on the landscape, and you see this $5 billion infrastructure, and we really don't know how that's going to change things. Personally, in the last segment we talked about my eight decades of perspective, so I can remember when, to give the listeners a sense of how things have changed around here, because I think far too often we think things haven't changed in Pittsburgh. In an earlier job I was working around the closing of what was the cracker plant at the time, the Nabisco Bakery, which is now Bakery Square, and is the center and hub of most of the tech investment in Pittsburgh.Dan:                Which is where I used to live.Paul:                And people were gnashing their teeth at the time, understandably so. People in the Nabisco plant lost their jobs, but it was hard for people to see what that could possibly become. And now Google's there and a lot of other companies, it's been an amazing transformation. So we really don't know with this other cracker plant, which is not really baking cookies.Dan:                For natural gas, correct?Paul:                It's cracking the natural gas stream to create the basic ingredients to create plastics and a wide variety of other chemicals. We really don't know what's going to happen. I do think it's kind of interesting though, kind of the dichotomy, if the region's experience with what happened in Bakery Square is a good predictor that could be a really, really major difference.Dan:                Right. Well, I mean the cracker plant as you mentioned, I mean that's a significantly different industry. And this is adjacent to manufacturing, these are going to be more blue collar jobs, which is something that's been missing in American society here for quite a while since the 2000s here, and especially in our region since the collapse of the steel industry in the 80s. A lot of these big plants that require maybe skilled workers, people that aren't going to be sitting around coding all day, but they are very worthwhile jobs. They're jobs that are hopefully going to pay well.Dan:                This is going to be a massive plant. If anybody has not been up there, the size of this thing is just gigantic. So you have to assume that some people in our region are going to benefit from this. So that's an exciting thing to see, whether you agree with the environmental consequences or not, but this is going to be something hopefully positive for the region. As is the airport, as you just mentioned. People don't quite realize what it will be like to have a first-class landside terminal out here, and the improvements won't just be on that terminal, it will also be throughout the rest of the airport.Dan:                And hopefully we bring in more direct routes, and that has a great economic boost on the region here. More companies will be interested if they can get out here quicker from where their headquarters are, or perhaps they'll set a headquarters here knowing that they can get to other parts of the country easier. And that's going to be another, it's an expensive project but I think a lot of it is being paid for by say the airlines, and other non-public sources, and it's going to be useful for whenever it comes around, and it's going to be a huge part of Pittsburgh's future.Paul:                An important aspect of the major projects that are going to start to come online in the next year or so is how many are actually within the city limits. And when we talked about six or so major projects, we've talked about two, four are actually within the city.Dan:                That's right, yeah. Some huge stuff coming up here. One that was in the news story just recently is the big redevelopment that is happening at the Civic Arena, the former Civic Arena site I should say. But First National Bank is going to build an office tower out there, about 24 stories, so it might peek over the top and we might get another little part of our skyline here in Pittsburgh. But that's an exciting thing to see, it's good to know that big Pittsburgh company is going to be staying here, and a building like that will help anchor what they hope to be another great development, another great place for entertainment, retail, even residential areas, here in the city. And so that's exciting to see that that's starting up.Dan:                Some other big developments that we should see over 2020, the Hazelwood site that has been talked about for a long time. You know, we figure by 2029 there has going to be something there. It will no longer be a rusted frame of what was once a steel mill. The Strip District, they are well on the way to building up what was the produce terminal, and that development is only going to go straight down to the river. It's beyond just that, so hopefully within a couple of years, less than that, we're going to have a really exciting place in the Strip District to go. It's already a fun neighborhood, so I hope it retains some of that great personality that it has. I know Logan, you feel the same way.Logan:             Yeah, definitely. Specifically on the strip that's a great area to go. It has such a rich and varied history, and now culturally, retail and just kind of going there on the weekends. But yeah, as you said, there's a lot of great developments coming there. And you know, it's nice to see these apartments maybe bringing in a more polished clientele to some areas of Pittsburgh. And as we talked about, we kind of have to strike a balance with that. But definitely it'll be interesting to see, and I definitely want to see it keep that personality that you mentioned.Dan:                The other development that I wanted to bring up that is within the city limits here, and could be the most visually arresting of them all, would be in the Chateau neighborhood on the North Side just up from the casino a little bit, we've got a developer who wants to build a beach, a lagoon, and a Ferris Wheel on the North Shore. Which would be kind of nuts, but it would actually be pretty cool if it gets done, I'm still a little dubious about it, but-Paul:                In PR, we call it unique, not nuts.Dan:                I like nuts. I think we can be the agency of nutso. We can kind of go crazy.Paul:                No, you know, there's reasons to do what they're doing. And certainly, one of the things we've talked about in today's episode is the perceptions of Pittsburgh over time. And you certainly wouldn't think about there being a beach in Pittsburgh. And the jury's still out. Let's see how it gets built and take a look at the lagoon. Certainly though, a Ferris wheel. Ferris wheels have a lot of history in Pittsburgh.Dan:                That's right. The first Ferris wheel, I don't know if it was ... but George Ferris was from Pittsburgh.Paul:                Yes, he was from Pittsburgh. So technically invented here, so there is some unity of theme and thought there. With the Civic Arena site and also with the Chateau development, what we're really seeing, akin to what I mentioned earlier about the Nabisco cracker plant, is the fulfillment of a long term promise. The Civic Arena site belongs in terms of development to the Penguins, and it's been a long time coming to get that site redeveloped. A big part of the goal for the community is to reconnect the Hill District back to Downtown. So there's a lot of hope for that and I think that's really a very exciting development to see take shape as we begin the 2020s.Dan:                One more development that has been in the news lately that would be ... this would take us almost into like a Star Trek type of future here, except that we-Paul:                It will take us into another time zone, Dan.Dan:                Yeah, you're right. It would take us into the Midwest.Paul:               Chicago.Dan:                The proposed Hyperloop transportation system. This is basically high-speed rail on steroids. It would be a somewhat like a train, but it goes inside of a tube type of situation. That's a low pressure tube. Take you up to 500 miles an hour, which as you put, would get you to Youngstown very quickly. But this would actually take-Paul:                Yes, you would sneeze and you'd be in Youngstown.Dan:                Right, yeah. This would take you between Chicago to Cleveland to Pittsburgh in less than an hour, actually. Pittsburgh to Chicago in less than an hour is impressive.Paul:                And it would only cost $47 billion.Dan:                Right, yeah. Which is a little bit of scratch, but with inflation I think everybody will be making a little more by 2029. But obviously this is something that's a long way away. You know, it would have to get government approval. Basically what we have had lately are just feasibility studies. But at a certain point, infrastructure will have to change in this country here. And high-speed rail is something that's been thought about in other parts of the country, obviously California has had its ups and downs with it for sure. But it's something, if anybody's had a chance to go overseas, I've been on some high speed rail in Italy, I'll be taking a trip to Japan later this year with my wife and we're going to be, we've already get some tickets to take some of the high-speed rail between some of our destinations. And it's a really, it is an efficient way to get around, and it's a lower cost alternative to air travel.Paul:                It can be.Dan:                It can be.Paul:                And there's also environmental benefits potentially.Dan:                Sure.Paul:                I was talking to somebody the other day, a friend, and my wife and I, we have a daughter who lives in Chicago and my wife was lamenting that if there are ever grandchildren, that it would be difficult to be there for the grandchildren.Dan:                Right, you've got a daughter in Chicago, right?Paul:                Somebody was talking about the Hyperloop and said, "What's the big problem? Grandma can jump on the train in the morning and be there in time to take care of the kids."Dan:                Right. Well I think-Paul:                That sounds weird, but that might be possible.Dan:                That would be pretty cool, yeah. Just take a day trip over to Chicago, come home, be snug in your bed later in the day. I think the earliest they would begin building sections of this would be in the late 2020s here. And I believe even Chicago to Cleveland would be the first stage of putting this together. It's fun to think of, this Jetsons-like future. Obviously not flying cars, but the idea of a Hyperloop is definitely something you'd think of in mostly science fiction, but eventually these things will come to pass. And it would be really neat if Pittsburgh were at the forefront of something like this, and it would only again, provide a big boost to the city.Paul:                Yeah. And just again, as I said earlier in the episode, as the person with eight decades in perspective here, let's just remember when the Nabisco cracker plant closed down, it was extremely difficult for us to see what the future was going to be like. And now Bakery Square is a technology industry magnet. So these things that we've talked about in today's episode, we can't predict the future, but if we look at the past and how things have changed, we can be pretty darn hopeful.Dan:                Right. So I guess the only prediction is we don't know what's going to happen by the time 2029 rolls around, but we're excited for that.Logan:             Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S story, the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you, through our patented Storycrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Logan:             Hey everybody, we're here with Steve Soboslai, lead singer and guitarist of Punchline out of Belle Vernon, a band that's done some crazy things over the past 20 years that they've been playing. Steve, thanks for being here.Steve:              Thanks for having me, Logan.Logan:             Yeah, happy to have you. We also have my colleague Robin, who's been a longtime fan of Punchline, here to give her insights as a fan.Robin:             Yeah, I'm pretty excited. My favorite band Punchline, I met them back in 2006 when they had opened up for Taking Back Sunday. So I've been a huge supporter of the band for since 2006.Steve:              Thank you for your support, your constant support.Robin:             Yeah.Logan:             So as I said, you guys have been around for quite some time. Could you just give us a brief background of how you guys initially formed and what the story's been since then?Steve:              Right. So, we have been around a long time, 20 plus years and that's because this is virtually the first band that we started. We had two other bands that we started and kind of fizzled out, but Punchline was the first band that we ever played more than one show with. And I feel like a lot of bands as they got more serious would have changed their name, but we just kind of always stuck with our name. And we've put out, I think our next full length album will be our 10th record, aside from there's a bunch of EPs and singles and all that kind of stuff too.Steve:              But our story is that we formed in high school, and then we got more serious when we went to college and developed a fan base in Pittsburgh, which we've been super thankful to have. Thank you, Pittsburgh, if you're listening. And after the following in Pittsburgh developed, then we moved on to playing outside of Pittsburgh, which kind of grew into getting a booking agent, getting a record deal. Started touring the U.S., we made a couple of trips to Japan, we've been to Japan four times, and we've toured the UK twice.Steve:              So I lived in Nashville for about five years, and when I moved back, that was about two and a half years ago, and at that point we said, "You know what? Let's kind of revamp this Punchline thing and do it like we haven't done it in years," and we put out a record called Lion that was self-produced. And in the last two years we've done more touring than we have in the last probably eight years.Logan:             Wow, that's great.Steve:              Went out and we toured with the Gin Blossoms, we toured with Less Than Jake, we toured with The Spill Canvas. And it was really great to get back out there and see what can we do in the year 2019 and in the year 2020, to really make an impact like we never have before.Logan:             Yeah, that's great. And so how was that experience coming back after that break and touring LION? Did you see that it was a lot of your fans that kind of grew up with your music coming back? Or did you see an influx of younger fans in the crowd too?Steve:              So what I'll say about that is this: the band Gin Blossoms that we toured with, I'm sure that people listening have heard of them. They have five mega hit songs including Hey, Jealousy, Follow You Down and Found Out About You, which is a song that we covered on an EP that we put out last year called Songs From '94, which covers of all songs from 1994. I remember maybe a decade ago we became friends with the Gin Blossoms through an old manager that we had. I remember talking with the singer and he was telling us how they took a really long break from playing music, maybe they took 10 years off. They had these two huge albums, and then they took all this time off.Steve:              And when they stepped back into the touring circuit and into making new music, you would think, well yeah I mean they can just step back in and they'll be at the top of the charts and people will be coming to their shows because everyone loves those hit songs, and it's not really the case. They really had to like rebuild things for themselves. And I saw it over the course of the last 10 years. When they came back to it, they were playing like Rib fests and playing these more like you know, county fairs. And then a couple years later they were doing more prominent festivals. And I think it was last summer, we played a show with them. I looked at Robin, she confirmed it was last summer.Robin:             It was last summer, yep.Steve:              And last summer they had 3000 people there at Stage AE. And I talked with the singer after and he said, "Steve, we could have not have done this 10 years ago," and it's been just stepping back into the ring and kind of building back up. And over the last couple of years, that's been really inspiring for me. We're a much smaller band, but kind of in the same way stepping back into it. You can pick up kind of where you feel like you might have left off, and start building back up. So we've been doing just that and I think it's been a very fruitful for us. And that is the answer to that question.Logan:             I'm sure it's cool kind of stepping back into that circuit. Like you said, working your way up, getting through those bigger venues, more prominent venues. And I'm sure, Robin, I'm sure you're dying to hear some new music from Punchline.Robin:             Oh yeah. I listen to them almost every day, so yeah. What can we expect in the new year? I saw that you had traveled this summer, I think you went to a campsite or a cabin, right? To record new music?Steve:              Yeah. We rented an Airbnb in Amish country in central PA, Woodward, PA, and we had a long weekend of just being creative and coming up with new songs. Kind of just jamming, as they say, which it's hard to find the time to do that. Just getting together and being creative is such a beautiful thing, as opposed to like, "Okay, we're together now. We have to do this thing. We have to go play this show," but just having time to be like, "Let's see what we can come up with." So that was a great trip, and since then we went to Chicago and we recorded three new songs that we're going to be releasing in the new year.Robin:             Are we going to hear them in the January show?Steve:              We talked about playing one of them. One of the songs, the first one that's done, it's kind of a sequel to Friend From The Future from our last album, and I'm really excited about that. I'm not going to call it a full on sequel because I don't think song sequels necessarily exist, and that makes it sound like ... it's just, it's inspired by that song, kind of picked up where that one left off and kept going with it. It's pretty neat. I don't know if we're going to play it in the new year, but I think that it's going to come out shortly into 2020.Robin:             I have so many memories from, I've been to almost, I can't say all of them, but I've been to almost every single Punchline show since I've met you guys in 2006. And one of my favorite memories is when you played one of your anniversary shows and you played 37 songs and it was incredible. So I'm really excited for this anniversary CD, especially I mentioned before that one of my favorite lyrics is on this record. So I'm excited about the show.Steve:              Nice. Well we've been putting in a lot of work to refamiliarize ourselves with, she's talking about this album Delightfully Pleased that came out in 2010, so 2020 is the 10 year anniversary of that. And on January 3rd we're going to do a show at the Rex where we play the whole album front to back plus a couple of other songs. So we've been kind of getting back into Delightfully Pleased mode, getting familiar with the songs and we've been practicing a lot and we're really excited. I feel like we're going to do the album justice, and not just go up there and play the songs. We're trying to be really thoughtful about how to do it. I think you'll like it.Robin:             I'll love it.Logan:             Okay, Steve. Well we can obviously tell that Robin is very excited about the January show as she should be. It should be a great time at the Rex Theater, again on January 3rd. And we know that you have a song you want to play us out with today. Can you tell us a little bit about that?Steve:              Yeah, so the song is called Darkest Dark, and I think it was last year we released a music video for it that was shot in Pittsburgh.Robin:             At Kennywood.Steve:              Yeah, it was shot at Kennywood and all over the city. It's our tribute to Pittsburgh. We had this director capture Pittsburgh in a really beautiful way, so I would urge you to also check out the music video, the song is called Darkest Dark.Logan:             That sounds great. Once again, Steve, thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate you coming in.Robin:             Thank you, Steve. 

When we go on about pizza and the weather, you might think it’s going to be a quiet episode of the P100 Podcast, but our guests this week have anything but small talk to offer.• Nick Bogacz, founder of the award-winning Caliente Pizza & Draft House, has put Pittsburgh pizza on the global map, and he shares his story with us.• Tom Baker, an Allegheny councilman whose work with nonprofits in the region is an inspiration, talks about setting goals.• We examine whether the winter weather forecast’s a foregone conclusion.• We’ve got a preview of The Pittsburgh 100’s exciting gift issue. This episode is sponsored by WordWritePR:Centuries before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Transcript: Logan:             You're listening to the P100 Podcast, the biweekly companion piece to The Pittsburgh 100. Bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more, because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Dan:                Hey everybody welcome back to the P100 Podcast. I am your host, Dan Stefano. I'm here with Paul Furiga.Paul:                Hey there, Dan.Dan:                And Logan Armstrong.Logan:             Let’s get it started Dan.Dan:                Let’s get it started. Okay, well we got a fun episode for everybody today. For starters, we're going to talk a little bit about a special gift giveaway…Paul:                Yes.Dan:                ... that we're going to be providing through…Paul:                Stay tuned for the special four letter word I have for you.Dan:                ...through the P100 Podcast, and The Pittsburgh 100. Something special we're doing for the holidays here and we're really excited about. Following up after that we're going to be talking with Nick Bogacz of Caliente Pizza & Draft House, who is far more than just a pizza business owner, but they are definitely successful at that. So we'll be interested to learn more about the pizza business.Paul:                Yes. He wrote the book on that.Dan:                Absolutely, he did actually.Logan:             Literally.Dan:                Yeah, quite literally. Following that we're going to be talking with Tom Baker, who's an Allegheny County Councilman, but he does a lot more in the community.Paul:                So much more.Dan:                And we're going to be talking about goal setting, which is popular this time of year. A lot of people are thinking of new year's resolutions, but he goes a lot deeper into it. He's really got a lot of great insight into leadership.Paul:                Leadership, yeah.Dan:                And after that we're just going to chat about the weather.Paul:                I mean, because why not? We always chat about the weather.Logan:             We are in Pittsburgh.Paul:                We're in Pittsburgh.Dan:                Yeah and we're going to talk about the weather and that, but. We go a little bit deeper into that, and then somehow it devolves into a conversation about baseball. But yeah, everybody…Paul:                Stay with us, it makes sense.Dan:                Yeah. As Logan would say, buckle in, let's get it started, and thanks for being with us.Paul:                All right, listen up podcast fans. I have a four letter word for you.Dan:                Be careful.Paul:                It starts with F, but it ends with E. The word is, free.Dan:             Okay.Logan:             Now you're speaking my language.Paul:                There you go.Dan:                My language is the other four letter word, but we'll, yeah.Paul:                We're not going to have that. That's been edited out, Dan. So Pittsburgh 100 fans, P100 Podcast fans, we are giving away, thanks to our very generous sponsors, a wide array of fantastic gifts. All you have to do, we're all about 100 here, tell us in 100 words or so ... we got Dan here, Dan's a great editor, he'll make sure every one of our Pittsburgh 100 stories is exactly 100 words, we're not going to hold you to that. But what we want to know from you is, why is Pittsburgh such a great place and why should people want to come visit Pittsburgh? We'll explain this in our next issue. You send an email with your 100 or so words of why you love Pittsburgh to editor@thepittsburgh100.com. Correct, Dan?Dan:                That's correct.Paul:                We've got some great prizes. Dan, tell us about those prizes.Dan:                Yeah, it's a great list here. Lots of, pretty varied, I'd say. Runs the gamut from gift cards and some actual real tangible gifts. But really popular, well-known institutions around the area like Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, passes to Kennywood, gift certificates to restaurants, like Caliente Pizza, which we'll talk about them a little bit more in this episode.Paul:                That's right. More in this episode.Dan:                Restaurants at the Waterfront, tickets to Arcade Comedy, tickets to River City Brass, which that's a little bit of a shameless plug because our man Paul here has something to do with that, right?Paul:                I'm on the board and I am actually a recovering tuba player.Dan:                Wait, okay. Not recovering. Come on. Yeah.Paul:                Well, I get it out every now and then but it..Dan:                Retired.Paul:                ... it does scare the cat and the dog at home, so.Dan:                One of these days I'm going to hear you on the tuba. It's going to be great.Paul:                Yes. We'll put that on the podcast.Dan:                But also our top gift will be a stay at a Pittsburgh hotel and that's from our friends at VisitPittsburgh.Paul:                Unbelievable that folks, if nothing else, enjoy the opportunity for a great meal and a stay in this wonderful place we call home.Logan:             Yeah, and we'll have all the details and more, as Paul said, in our upcoming issue of The Pittsburgh 100. Tell you how to enter, some of the prizes we’re giving away, and what you need to do to find yourself with a few extra gifts this holiday season.Dan:                Right yeah. The contest will be running through December 19th. After that our panel of judges will take a look and that will..Paul:                Our esteemed panel of judges.Dan:                Esteemed, right. I don't think I've ever been called esteemed before, but.Paul:                You could be called many things.Dan:                And again, you will send your award entry, your little story or 100 word story to editor@thepittsburgh100.com. So again, we'll tell you more about it in our next issue on December 12th, but we're excited about it. Start thinking folks, start writing.Logan:             Hi everybody. We're back with a special guest on this segment of the podcast. You may know him from winning Best Pizza in America this year at The World Pizza championships in Parma, Italy, Nick Bogacz, owner of Caliente Pizza & Draft House here in Pittsburgh. How you doing Nick?Nick:                Great. Thanks for having me today.Logan:             Yeah, sure thing. Thanks for being here. So for those unfamiliar with Caliente, you have five locations in the greater Pittsburgh region.Nick:                Yup.Logan:             How long ago did that start and can you give us a brief background of how that got started and what you're doing now with Caliente?Nick:                Sure. So September 2012, I took the plunge and opened up my own business. I always wanted to have my own pizzeria. I worked in the business for about 16 years before then and we opened up in Bloomfield. Over the last almost, I guess seven years, we've opened up five locations.Logan:             So five locations over the past seven years. That's a pretty spectacular growth rate. What are some of the things that you did that you thought were unique to Caliente's building a brand that you utilized to grow that fast?Nick:                I think a lot of it was we weren't locked into anything in particular. We pivoted a lot while we were branding, and marketing, and opening up Caliente. A lot of times I think entrepreneurs have a set way of how they want to do things and they think, "This is how it has to be done." But then once you're in the grind of it every day, there are certain things you're like, "Hey, wait a second, I want to be this pizzeria and get known for my pizza." But the reality is we're a bar and craft beer is such a big, big presence here in western Pennsylvania, especially at that time seven years ago, that we latched on to craft beer and became one of the top destinations for craft beer in Pittsburgh. So we let that kind of be our brand for probably the first three or four years. Then when we started winning competitions, we got to be known for our pizza, so our brand kind of switched to being really known for the pizza. Now in the last year or so, we've been trying to really blend those both together to get known for both.Logan:             Mh-hmm, right. Yeah, well, you're still doing a lot of great things with craft beer. Just a recently released collaboration with Hoppin' Frog Brewery, out of Ohio, came out just a few weeks ago. Is that correct?Nick:                Yeah, that's correct. That was probably our 11th collaboration we've done over the last seven years. We're really working behind the scenes to have our own brewery as well. That's on the horizon for 2020. So I think there's a lot of different things that we're trying to do with the beer still, we never forget that that's what helped build the brand in the beginning. I think we're just happy that the pizza's been doing so well too. From the very beginning, people would come in, they'd get the craft beer, and then they'd eat the pizza, say, "Boy, I thought it was going to be bar food, but this pizza's fantastic." Now it's not just Pittsburgh's secret, we're internationally known as well.Dan:                Yeah talking about international, you guys obviously went out and done a lot of great stuff at The World Pizza Championships. What has been happening lately then in terms of the international travels of the Caliente crew there?Nick:                Sure. So we just got back about four days ago from London and there was an international competition over there. It was a great learning experience. A lot of times we go to these different competitions you're using ovens that you never used before, judges that don't speak English. You would think in London they'd have English speaking judges but they were Italian judges. So you know a great learning experience over there. We traveled with The World Pizza team, which is about 35 representatives from across the country. So guys that have been in the business a long time or guys who have a lot of different kind of locations. They may have slice shops or they may have shops in the stadiums across the country, you pick up different people's expertise when you're traveling with that team. I just think we've really done a good job of representing Pittsburgh, especially when we were back in Parma, in Italy, back in April. I thought we did a great job over there, come back with Best Pizza in America. So I think it's just been, the international part, it's been a lot of travel this year. Before this, I had never left the country, so three times in one year. I'm definitely getting the frequent flyer miles in.Dan:                Fantastic.Logan:             Yeah, you're not doing bad. You've had a lot of success outside of the World Pizza Championships as well. But back to growing Caliente. I know you talk a lot about building a team and kind of some unique things that you've done as the leader and owner of Caliente that you believe have really propelled your business and brand further than others. Whether it's with how you treat your employees or how you're running operations, and you're talking about a lot of these things in your new podcast, The Business Equation.Nick:                 Yes. I wrote a book called The Pizza Equation. It's on Amazon, it released in February. After I released it, I had a very successful book tour out in Las Vegas signing books and I've got another signing coming up here in about two weeks in Chicago. So that went really well and I said, "You know what, if I'm selling the pizza book in my industry, what if I took my small business tips and started to share them with the world?" That's why I wanted to go ahead and start The Business Equation Podcast.Nick:                Each week is a different tip or tactic. It's a 15 to 25 minute podcast that's just me talking about, "Hey, this is how we handle staffing and our issue," or, "This is how we handle staffing in our store, in our company." They're not quite pizza specific. We talk a lot about different topics. Another one that we talked about was cashflow. I think it's important for a small business. A lot of times you don't understand how cashflow works. It's just a big term or maybe there's a college book that you read about it. But in the real world there's a lot of different tactics you can use for cashflow. I get into that real in depth. I think what The Business Equation Podcast has done is, it's that real world I'm out there living it. It's not what you learn in college, it's not what's in a book. It's a lot of, "Hey, this is what I tried and it worked."Dan:                That sounds like some pretty awesome stuff there on The Business Equation Podcast then. So we definitely recommend anybody who's a budding business owner listening here today to subscribe to that and listen. We'd also recommend that they get out to the Caliente shops, especially for this time of year because it's the holidays and you guys have some fun stuff going on, right?Nick:                Yeah. This is our second annual food drive. Last year, I don't know quite how many pounds of food we collected, but we had a full suburban full of canned goods. So from now till Christmas we have where you can bring in three canned goods, give them to any Caliente employee and they'll give you a free cheesy bread for your next order, and it all goes to the Pittsburgh public food bank.Logan:             That's excellent. Speaking of contributing things to the community, you also have been generous enough to contribute a $50 gift card to any of your Caliente locations for our gift issue this year. We're giving away gifts, thanks to our generous friends and sponsors.Dan:                Yeah. As we talked about in the opening segment here, basically all people have to do is send an email to editor@thepittsburgh100.com telling us about why Pittsburgh, why you love it so much or why it's home for the holidays in 100 words or less. You can get that Caliente gift card that will be one of the gifts that you could possibly get out of that. Nick, we appreciate you playing a part in our gift giving issue here.Nick:                Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do it.Logan:             Yeah. So Nick, to finish up your work, can everybody find Caliente on socials and where can they learn more about The Business Equation Podcast?Nick:                Sure. So The Business Equation Podcast is on all forms, Spotify, Apple, Google Play. Then nickbogaczofficial on Instagram, and then pizzadrafthouse.com, and then calienteandpizzadrafthouse on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And then like I said, The Pizza Equation is available on Amazon.Logan:              Great. And Nick Bogacz here, owner of Caliente Pizza and Draft House. Nick, we appreciate you being here with us.Nick:                Thanks for having me.Dan:                Thanks man.Logan:             Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds, and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capital S story, the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest, or partner with you through our patented storycrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your capital S story.Dan:                Hey everybody out next guest is Tom Baker. He's an Allegheny County Councilman for District 1, which covers a lot of the western and northern suburbs. But Tom, you're involved in a whole lot more. Lots of nonprofits in the region working with young leaders in the area, and in particular, one of the reasons we want to talk with you today is you're the founder and chief program officer of Get Involved!. That's a nonprofit that educates and empowers young leaders. Tom, thanks for joining us.Tom:                Yeah, thanks Dan, thanks Paul. Thanks for having me here. I'm glad to be here with you.Paul:                 It's great to have you here. Dan, a lesson to be learned, elected officials are people too. They have interests outside of the county council room, right?Tom:               We do. Many interests, absolutely. That is true.Dan:                 This is all new to me. Wow, it's remarkable. I thought they just had letters next to their name and they sat around on boards on all the time. Okay that's…Paul:                No.Dan:                 No, Tom, yeah we do appreciate you being here. Can you tell us a little bit more about Get Involved!?Tom:               Sure. So Get Involved!, actually it started as a book in 2008. “Get Involved! Making the Most of Your 20s and 30s” came out and it was a really fun experience. Got the tour of the state, got the tour of the country a little bit talking on college campuses. Your colleague here, Robin Rectenwald, actually worked with us in the early days on getting the word out about Get Involved!. In the end we found that really the mission of the book was a much better fit as a nonprofit organization. We gave it a 501(c)(3) back in 2011.Tom:               We've been running the Pittsburgh Service Summit now for 10 years. We just had that event in September, September 12. It was great. We've had a few hundred people at the event every year. It's all about bringing people together. Our hope as Get Involved! is for people to say that they aren't bored in Pittsburgh, but they're on a board of directors in Pittsburgh. That can be a board of directors of a nonprofit that they care about, a young professional board, whatever it is, we want people to get off of their couches and into the community helping other people.Dan:                Right. You touched on it, there's a lot of regular events that you guys hold. There's one upcoming really soon, and that's the annual Goal Setting Event that you do. Everybody thinks about this time of year - new year's resolutions. But on January 6th you got a pretty cool one, can you tell us a little bit more about?Tom:               Yeah. I will say a few years back I did it for two years on January 1st itself. That was a little aggressive. People were like, "I like your momentum with the goal setting, but let's have it maybe not on New Year's day."Dan:                There you go.Tom:                So we're doing it on January 6.Paul:                They might have been out the night before.Tom:               They might’ve been.Dan:                The goal setting is get over this hangover. Yeah.Paul:                That's right.Tom:               So January 6th. A little bit they'll gotten back to work at that point. So the goal really is for people to come that night, and when they come every year, to think about their careers, to think about their civic lives. We talked a little bit about fitness as well and things that they might be doing outside of work and outside of their civic lives. We'll talk about family and making sure that they have good friendships too. We'll have different tables set up again this year with different pockets of their lives and they'll set goals at each little table to figure out what they want to do in 2020. So that night they will leave with hopefully a good sheet of goals in these different parts of their lives and also at least a few dozen accountability partners, people that can keep them accountable to these goals. It's fine to say you want to do things or achieve things, but unless you actually share it with somebody that cares about you it doesn't matter. So we're making sure that they share it with other people in that room that night and that we then become accountability partners for each other through the rest of 2020 together.Paul:                Wow. So how has that worked in the past few years that you've been doing this? What sort of results are you seeing?Tom:               We see a lot more people getting onto either young professional boards or boards of directors. Being in my professional and civic life with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, we've seen a lot of people step up to become Bigs through the Get Involved! community, which we're very appreciative of. My Littles are now getting pretty old. They're 28, 21, 17, and 14. I don't want to get married again, I've been married happily for 15 years, but if I did, all four of them would be in the wedding. They're all four of the best friends of my life. So it's been an incredible experience through Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Actually my 28 year old Little, that got matched with when he was 10, he is the godfather to our toddler, Lila June. Preston is still one of my best friends. This year he flew back from San Francisco to be the MC of my 40th birthday roast actually, which is really fun. So the friendships that have been…Paul:                He had a lot of ammunition there, didn't he Tom?Tom:               He did. He has like 18 years’ worth of things to share about me. But it's been wonderful. So if it is serving in an organization like Big Brothers, Big Sisters or some of the other ones that we've been involved with over the years, certainly the goal really is to find their passion. We always say within Get Involved!, if you hit the lottery and you can do whatever you want for the rest of your life to do good, to help other people, something that inspires you, motivates you, just find a way to volunteer and help others.Tom:               So I'll just say at the last Power Hour that we had ... so this Goal Setting Party is also known as Power Hour number 72. I will say each Power Hour has fun connotations, but it really is a leadership series, it is a leadership panel, where we bring in different guest speakers. So the goal of each Power Hour really is for people to learn from a couple of different community leaders, get to know each other, and then work together in some fashion. So we've had good success over the years with people getting jobs through the Get Involved! Network, with getting put onto boards, getting appointed to different leadership roles. It's been really wonderful.Paul:                Do you think Tom, the timing of the book and the growth of the organization, there's, let’s just say, well it's open to, to everyone, you are really targeting a particular demographic, which is say people of your age group, millennials. Do you see any trends with regard to leadership that are generational?Tom:                It's interesting. Starting, we talked about county council, it will be a much younger council come January. I've been the youngest one for the last six years, but there will be one person exactly my age and then two younger. So we are seeing more young people running for office. Even where my wife and I live, all of our elected officials, the two state reps and the Senator where we live, are all younger than me, younger than 40. So we do see more people running for office. But just in general to the school district where we live, when I was on I was the youngest by I think 20 or 30 years. Now there's five people that are all within the same age range in their '30s and even '20s. So you do see more young people running for office.Tom:               But in nonprofit boards, I mean nonprofit boards want young people to get involved. That's the fast track leadership program that we do within Get Involved!. That Robin Rectenwald, your colleague and your staff member, Paul, she was actually one of the first graduates of that program years ago. The program, it's always been geared towards just making sure that young people know that nonprofits, community organizations want them. They desperately want them to get involved in their work. I think sometimes a 25-year-old thinks, "I could never be on a nonprofit board. I can't write a $5,000 check or a $1,000 check." But there's so many skill sets, and strategies, and things you can bring to the table that nonprofits desperately want and need for their organizations.Dan:                That's fantastic. For a lack of a better way to say this, how does one get involved in Get Involved!?Tom:               How do you get involved in Get Involved!? Yes. So we have an active Facebook page. Our website is just getinvolvedinc.org. We do have the event coming up on January 6th. In the course of any given year we'll have another cohort of fast track community leaders next year. In 2020 we'll have four to six Power Hours as well. So by the end of 2020 we'll be up to almost 80 Power Hours that we've done as an organization. Then next year we'll have our 11th annual Pittsburgh Service Summit. So that's a great way to come together and really get to know people here in the community. I will say, anyone that would want to collaborate on events, we love working with other community organizations. We're happy to collaborate and partner with other community groups to do good and to get each other involved in the city.Dan:                Right.Paul:                That's great. And once again, that website is getinvolvedinc.org.Tom:               .org. You got it, yup, yup.Paul:                Okay, great.Dan:                Right, yeah. Tom, thanks so much for being here, we really appreciate it. Hey everybody, get involved.Tom:               Get involved in Get Involved!, yeah.Dan:                All right everybody for the last segment today we're going to chat about the weather.Paul:                Wither the weather Dan.Dan:                Wither the weather. Wow, you've such a way with words.Paul:                I'm telling you man. I've withered outside in the weather.Dan:                Right, yeah. This is the subject that everybody talks about. You know, you're alone in an elevator with somebody, you got nothing to talk about, you chat about the weather. "Oh, it's a nice day," whatever, but.Paul:                That's right.Dan:                No, right now we're finally starting to see snowflakes. It's getting cold enough, particularly in the Pittsburgh Metro region we're seeing them. If you're out west or up north you probably…Paul:                Out east. East Highlands.Dan:                All right, Westmoreland County should not be called Westmoreland County because I always want to call it west.Paul:                That's true.Dan:                That drives me nuts, but yeah. okay. If you say you're out in Westmoreland, or up north where it's just colder, or you got more hills, you've probably seen a lot more snow so far this year, but.Paul:                A little.Dan:                I finally had to actually wipe some snow off my windshield over in Mount Lebanon about a week ago and that was something, but. So I got a little curious about the weather. I said, "Okay, what kind of a snowy year are we going to have?" Apparently the Farmer's Almanac, that font of wisdom, said that it's going to be a frigid freezing snowy winter. So I got a little deeper into it and I took a look at the long range weather forecast. So you could check into January, 2020, which obviously isn't that long from now. But they're predicting rain to snow from January 11th to the 14th, it's going to be cold, more snow the week after that, more snow toward the end of January. I've always found this pretty amazing that they can predict this stuff and they claim that it's pretty accurate, it's like 80% accuracy, until I took a deeper dive here. I checked out a little more into, yes. It turns out a study from the University of Illinois, the great meteorologists over there, they say that the Farmer's Almanac's only, say, 50% accurate. The secret formula that these Farmer's Almanacs, which there's a couple of competing ones. I guess there's the Farmer's Almanac…Logan:             …competitive landscape, I didn't know that.Dan:                ... In the old Farmer's Almanac, the old one, yes.Paul:                The old Farmer's alm?Dan:                Right, yeah.Paul:                Is it an old farmer or an old almanac?Dan:                I don't. What was it, plural farmers, apostrophe…Logan:             Or both.Dan:                Farmers apostrophe or is it just one farmer apostrophe S. I guess we have to learn about that. But I always just find this stuff kind of fun and neat to talk about. Regardless, we've got some snow coming up this winter.Paul:                Yeah, but apparently there's fake news even in the weather, huh Dan?Dan:                Accurate, accurate, yeah.Logan:             So it sounds like the Farmer's Almanac is a 50% and they're just flipping a coin and going, "Eh, eh snow."Dan:                They call it 80% after that, it's great.Paul:                This reminds me of The Wall Street Journal article several years ago where they get all these esteemed prognosticators together about how the stock market will do.Dan:                Okay.Paul:                And then they gave a monkey darts to throw at a board and the monkey did better in picking stocks apparently than some of the prognosticators. It's the whole field of weather. In Pittsburgh we have some great weather forecasters, personalities, right?Dan:                Absolutely, yeah.Paul:                But think of this, what other business could you be in and be wrong 50% of the time and people love you?Dan:                You've seen my pitching…Logan:              Marketing.Paul:                Marketing, not at our firm Logan.Dan:                You've seen me pitching to clients, they're pitching to clients stories and stuff. Sometimes you're batting below 500 on that one, but.Paul:                Speaking of batting, I mean if we want to be honest about this and maybe something like the Farmer's Almanac is more entertainment than anything else. But when you talk about a very difficult line of work, think about somebody like Ted Williams, the long deceased, but best hitter ever in the history of baseball.Logan:             Sure.Paul:                I mean the guy had a .400 average. What that means is out of every 10 times he went to the plate, he made an out six times.Paul:                So to put things in perspective.Dan:                I'd maybe put Pete Rose on that pedestal, but he's not in the Hall of Fame so I guess you can't say anything about it.Paul:                I was actually there the night that he broke Ty Cobb's record. But that's another story.Dan:            Really? That's impressive. But somehow we got into baseball from a weather conversation here.Paul:                What we're talking about is, what the difference is, I mean, I can watch Ted Williams while, I can't watch him, but I can watch a hitter and they're either going to make an out or they're going to get a hit. But what I want to know whether I need to go outside in that and I need to know what to wear, I want a little bit more predictability. Don't I?Dan:               Sure. Yeah, well, I would say try to stick with the experts then and maybe you only pay attention, say, a few days in advance because even a seven-day forecast can change pretty quickly.Paul:                Yeah, I'm with that.Logan:             And we are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 Podcast. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe at p100podcast.com, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and follow us on Twitter @pittsburgh100_ for all the latest news, updates, and more from The Pittsburgh 100. 

 We’re past the “I can’t believe holiday decorations are already up” portion of the season. It’s time to celebrate the holidays, and Pittsburgh has two big events coming up that we’ll discuss in this week’s episode.For starters, we talk with some representatives from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership about Comcast Light Up Night on Nov. 22. Then we bring in the race director of the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh’s Turkey Trot.After that, Paul and Dan take a deep dive into a potential change to the U.S. immigration system, and we close out with a special guest for our Pittsburgh Polyphony series. ----more----This Episode is sponsored by WordWriteCenturies before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Here's the full transcript for this episode:Speaker 1: You're listening to the P100 podcasts, the biweekly companion piece to The Pittsburgh 100 bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Dan: Hi everybody. Welcome back to the P100 podcast. I'm your host Dan Stefano with my cohost here, Logan Armstrong. Our other co-host Paul Furiga will be joining us shortly.Logan: Ho ho, ho. Dan.Dan: I can't believe you just said that.Dan: Well, the ho, ho, ho, and all of the holiday celebration nonsense here fits in with our first couple of segments that we're going to have today. We're going to be discussing Light Up Night with a couple of people from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. They're the group that puts on the event every year and does such an awesome job, and then following that, we're going to have another discussion with another big holiday event. Logan.Logan: Yeah. We're going to be talking about the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh's Turkey Trot Race, one of the biggest races in the city. We're going to be sitting down with Catlyn Brooke, race director, and she's going to give us a lowdown on that.Dan: It's an important race too because it goes to a very... The funds from it go to a very big cause and a lot of important donations there. So following that, we're going to take a left turn there and go into a deeper dive into a recent story we had on immigration, and we have an attorney from a local Pittsburgh law firm here to discuss that. And it's a really interesting talk that affects not only people in our region but nationally. We're excited to have him in for that.Dan: Following that Logan, we've got a special Pittsburgh polyphony. It's not just us talking about an artist here. We have somebody pretty interesting coming in.Logan: Yeah, that's right, Dan. We're going to have Connor Murray here, a label manager of Crafted Sounds, a local Pittsburgh record label that's doing a lot of cool things in the region. And one of the coolest, he's trying to bring back cassette tapes.Dan: Cassette tapes. That's great. Yeah, I think there might be some at my mom's house here I could dig up. I don't know. We'll have to find out, but all right everybody, let's get to it.Dan: All right everybody, we're happy to have two members of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership here with us. We have Colten Gill, manager of marketing communications and Roya Kousari, another member of the marketing team there. Thanks for being with us.Roya: Thank you for having us.Colten: Thank you guys.Dan: Guys, it's a busy time of year for you here and can you tell us why that is?Colten: Yeah, for sure. So coming up in just a few days, it's going to be the 59th Annual Comcast Light Up Night. It's kind of the kickoff to the holiday season in Downtown Pittsburgh. It's a celebration that's been going on in Pittsburgh for almost 60 years now. It's what a lot of families around the region use to kickstart their holiday celebration. And we're just about ready to kick things off. Coming up Friday, November 22nd.Dan: Right. And what's interesting too about Light Up Night is it is not a night. It's a full day of just all the great holiday stuff and multiple tree lightings. What's it like for you? This brings in hundreds of thousands of people every year, and I got to believe it's kind of go, go, go.Roya: It is very much organized chaos in a lot of ways. As you said, it's a full day of events. So the first activity of the day is the Dedication of The Creche at noon, and then we keep going strong until 10:00 PM. So there are a lot of moving pieces. We have an amazing team put together to help things run as smoothly as possible. There are seven official tree lightings and ceremonies.Dan: Geez.Roya: Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, we end with the true Pittsburgh element of everything, which is Zambelli fireworks. The BNY Mellon fireworks finale is at 9:30 and that's sort of the culmination of the event.Dan: You guys as members of the downtown partnership, you're probably a big part of witnessing this, but the downtown neighborhood itself is vastly different than whenever I was a kid. Can you talk about maybe the Renaissance that we're seeing downtown? A lot of new buildings, a lot of new shops and how they just work with the Light Up Night's celebration too.Colten: Yeah, for sure. So, like you said, it has changed a lot, and it's a really good energy that's around downtown right now. We have 140 small businesses and retailers in the downtown community. So while you don't have that big keystone department store, you have these really great opportunities that you aren't going to find anywhere else in the city to visit these smaller shops that have these really unique gifts, items, apparel, and a really strong sense of community.Colten: One of my favorite things about all the shops in Downtown Pittsburgh today, if you go to one store and say, "Hey, I'm really looking for this very specific item," they're going to be like, "Oh. Hey, I might not have it, but go down the street to our neighbor store because you'll be able to find it there." So there's a really strong sense of community in the business community that's here in downtown right now.Dan: That's great. Kind of speaks to that Pittsburgh being a small-town feel with big-city amenities.Colten: For sure.Dan: We love that stuff. Looking at this year's though on the 22nd here, what are some of the big highlights that you guys see for right now? I know they've got a pretty big name on the main stage too at the end of the night here.Colten: Yeah, for sure. So on the Comcast main stage, we're bringing Adam Lambert to the city of Pittsburgh, which we're very excited about. He was here earlier this summer actually touring with Queen out at PPG Paints Arena. So we're happy to welcome him back to the city for this holiday tradition. In addition to him, on the EQT Jazzmaster stage, we have a really exciting new piece. The MCG Jazz Group is going to be presenting the music of Fred Rogers. There's going to be a really great legacy there in that jazz music that's being presented with special appearances by Daniel Tiger. So he's a character from Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. So a really great mesh of the old and the new Fred Rogers community there on that stage.Dan: Perfect timing too because I think the movie comes out too, the Tom Hanks movie. So yeah, a lot of just like perfect synergy with Fred Rogers.Colten: For sure.Dan: But looking beyond Light Up Night then here downtown will remain a hub for holiday activity too. Can you talk about just certain, some of the things going on there? And I've spent some time in downtown in the holidays, the season last year and there's just so much fun stuff going on.Colten: Oh, for sure. So returning is the Peoples Gas Holiday Market. So Market Square is going to be that big destination market where you're going to be able to stroll through an illuminated marketplace. You're going to be able to buy some really unique gifts and enjoy some time in this really, really traditional setting with the decor and everything going on there. Returning are some favorites like the Holly Trolley. So you're going to be able to stop at Fifth Avenue Place, get on the Holly Trolley and enjoy free transport around all the holiday hotspots, including the Heinz History Center, our home good shop, PG&H right here on Smithfield Street and to the Holiday Kids Play, which is going to be taking place holiday weekends. So a lot of really fun family activities going on as well all season.Roya: We also want people to know that with the Peoples Gas Holiday Market there's a lot of activities happening within that space. Even beyond just the shopping. We have a karaoke contest ... Oh yeah, Oh yeah. Come down, sing holiday best. There are also photos with Santa. So you can visit Santa's house and if you bring a donation for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, then you get a complimentary photo with Santa. So it's a way for us to engage the community and give back as well.Dan: Yeah, that stuff's hugely important. Even if you don't want a picture with Santa, I would suggest that everybody out there, if you get down there, try to bring a donation because that stuff's just so important. Guys, thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate you visiting, and is there anything else you'd like to mention? Happy holidays message for anybody or?Roya: We just look forward to seeing everybody coming downtown to enjoy both Light Up Night and the rest of the holiday season here in downtown.Dan: Right. And we'd be remiss to not mention this too. Where can people find you online?Colten: Yeah, for sure. So you can go to downtownpittsburgh.com for all the holiday activities but also everything happening year-round in downtown, including a list of restaurants, shops and things like that. We're also on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Downtown Pitt. So connect with us there and find out what's going on.Dan: All right. Be sure to go visit those channels, everybody. And thanks so much and let's hope that organized chaos of Light Up Night turns into just an organization and a fun night for you.Colten: For sure. Thanks so much.Roya: Thank you.Logan: Hey everybody, we're back here with Catlyn Brooke, race director of the YMCAs Turkey Trots. Of course a race almost everybody in Pittsburgh knows. Catlyn, thanks for being with us.Catlyn: Hi. Thanks guys.Logan: Yeah, sure. So we have the Turkey Trot coming up here in the next week or so. Can you just give us a little bit of a background on the race and kind of what you do as race director?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. So this is our 29th year doing the Turkey Trot here in Pittsburgh. This year our sponsor’s UPMC Health Plan, they are 5k sponsor and our overall race sponsor. So we're super excited to have them on board.Catlyn: Being race director, we can put it into a nutshell is I get people to sign up, and I handle race logistics. But I mean a little bit more than that. It's getting the word out to why we're doing the race. Obviously getting people to register, getting folks to participate in our food drive for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, and just doing race things like ordering thousands of shirts that you end up seeing around the city for the rest of the year. Making sure that we have enough food and water for our folks when they're done the race, so that we can have them refreshed after the fact. It's not too glamorous, but it's really rewarding knowing how many people come together on Thanksgiving Day to give back to their community and to try to end hunger here in Pittsburgh.Dan: Yeah, and in particular, this goes to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, right? And you guys have a set goal that you want to get for some donations this year, right?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. So my loft goal, my reach goal for this year, is to collect 10,000 pounds of food. Last year, unofficially, we reached that goal. I probably had around 8,000 pounds of food come into PNC Park just during our packet pickup days. And we do have donation locations as well at all of our YMCA branches. So unofficially last year we hit our goal, but this year I officially want to hit 10,000 pounds of food.Dan: That's great. And then unofficially we can try to like shoot for like 20,000 or something, right?Catlyn: Yes.Dan: It's all for the best. It's a great cause.Logan: Yeah. And I saw last year, according to you guys that you raised over $280,000 for the organization last year in last year's race, which is just incredible. But I was looking and it sounds like there's a few different things to do. You guys have the Fun Run, the Turkey Trot, and then the Double Gobble, which is the five mile plus a 5k run. So it sounds like there's kind of everything for somebody in the family, something for everybody to do, whether you want to bring your kids or just bring your spouse or things like that. It sounds like there's something for everybody to do. Is that correct?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. And we like to think about the day as more than just your exercise. You're coming out, you're supporting the 1.2 million people in Allegheny County, which nearly one in seven of them are facing food insecurity. So that's the point of the day. Our hashtag is #EndHungerPGH and that's really our goal. So while we do raise money for the Y and the programs such as summer camp, before school, after school, senior programs, men's housing, et cetera, we do also collect all that food. But like you said, there is something for everyone. So we start off our day with the Med Express One Mile Family Fun Run, and you can walk or jog or sprint that if you like. It's really excellent to see the little kids come through the finish line who are like just huffing and puffing. They gave it their all, and it's really cute to see that. And all of our kid competitors for that get a medal, which they're excited about as well.Dan: Logan, maybe you can try this out. You can do one mile. You can get yourself a medal.Logan: I could probably do a mile, yeah.Dan: I don't know if I could do one mile.Catlyn: You can walk. It's all good.Dan: Oh, perfect. Fun Walk. Oh, that's correct. It's a Fun Walk. I could just have fun by walking.Catlyn: Exactly. The most fun. After our one mile, we have the UPMC Health Plan 5K, that's our main event. We have the most people who run that. It's usually about 5,000 people who run the 5k event. And then after that we have our five mile event and that is sponsored this year by The Pirates who are also our gracious venue hosts. And like you said, the Double Gobble.Logan: Yeah, I would not be doing that one.Catlyn: The double gobble, you run the 5k first and then you just keep on running tack on the five mile after that. And our sponsor for that is a GH&A. So we're super excited.Dan: Yeah, well it's getting close to December. Obviously it is a Thanksgiving day on November 28th, nice and early in the morning at 7:00 AM. But that's one thing that I think is important about these days is people think about Thanksgiving and they get there and it's an entire day. It's not just the meal. It's having a big breakfast with your family, starting to cook early in the morning. So I think it says a lot whenever you can see families coming out taking a significant portion of their day, a big part of the morning there to come out and support a cause like this. And it says a lot about Pittsburgh. I think you'd agree with that.Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. We see people, the majority from Pittsburgh, but we have participants from almost every state in the country, which is really awesome to see. I'll get letters or emails from people like from California and they're coming in. And they're asking about packet pickup and things like that. So yeah, it's cool. We've even had participants from other countries, so it's a special race. And it's really awesome to see how many people come together.Dan: That's great. In 29 years, 30 next year. Have you already started thinking about that one?Catlyn: The big 30 is next year. Yes. We have started thinking. I'm not going to give anything away, but there'll be some surprises.Dan: Triple Gobble maybe?Logan: You'd be in a lot on Thanksgiving.Dan: Exactly right. Yeah.Logan: And so what kind of food items are you guys accepting for the Greater Food Bank? Is it just nonperishable or what kind of things should people bring to donate?Catlyn: Yeah, so actually you can bring more than just nonperishable food items. So they also collect household items, toilet paper, toiletries, baby products, things for seniors. Basically that is anything that's not in a glass container and that is nonperishable. If you do go on our website, our Facebook page, YMCA Turkey Trot, we have a nice little graphic showing everything that they collect. You think of nonperishable items and it's like, "Okay I'm going to go get chicken noodle soup and a can of green beans." But we like for people to think outside the box with that as well. Macaroni and cheese is great for the kids. Granola bars, pasta, pasta sauce that is in a plastic container. So just thinking more about, would you want to eat out of a can for every meal. There's so many more nonperishable things in the supermarkets that we can provide.Dan: Importantly too, you don't have to just register today. I mean if you want to, you can go to Pittsburghymca.org, and the link is very nice and right in your face for the Turkey Trot. But also you can register on race day, right?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. You can come up if you decide early morning, "Okay. I'm ready to run this thing." Just come on down to PNC Park. Our set up is on Mazeroski Way right past home plate. And just say hey.Logan: So where can we find the YMCA more than just a Turkey Trot on social media and give us that URL to sign up one more time.Catlyn: Yeah, so the URL to sign up is YMCApgh.org/turkeytrot. Also if you just do a quick Google search for YMCA Pittsburgh Turkey Trot, it should be one of the first things that pops up. And again, it's the 29th year, so that's the one you want to look for on active.com. We are on social media, Facebook, Twitter. It's just YMCAPGH, and we also have a Turkey Trot Facebook page, which is YMCA PGH Turkey Trot.Logan: All right. Well, Catlyn Brooke, race director of the YMCA's Turkey Trot here in Pittsburgh. Thanks so much for coming on and we appreciate you being here.Catlyn: Thanks so much, guys.Dan: Bye.Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capital S story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your capital S story.Dan: Hey everybody, we're back and we're going to be taking a little sharp turn here into a conversation about immigration. And we have here an attorney from Meyer, Unkovic, and Scott. They're a Pittsburgh based law firm here. Joel Pfeffer, he's one of the focuses is immigration in his practice. And thank you for being here.Joel: My pleasure.Dan: What we want to discuss is lead in to this with a talk about the Public Charge Rule. It's a new rule that we discussed very briefly in The Pittsburgh 100, and these legal issues, they need a lot more than 100 words to breakdown.Joel: Dan, you need a lawyer to explain it.Dan: A lawyer and more than 100 words, correct.Joel: Thank goodness we have one.Dan: Right. Precisely.Joel: Who's an expert.Dan: Yes. Okay. Joel, can you take us ... I mean again just on a brief overview of what the Public Charge Rule is.Joel: So going back 100 years when immigrants came to the United States to Ellis Island, they were in essence judged at that point by “are you going to be able to make a living in the United States without securing or being dependent on government benefits.” And in every family there is a legend about how that answer was given to the immigration officer. A strong handshake, a description of what the person's skill level was, his history in the country he came from, a smile. All of those things are part of everybody's family history.Joel: For the last 25 years or so, immigration has focused on what I'll call an objective standard. That if you can show that you have income or you've had income or your employer is going to pay you more than 125% of the poverty level, then there's no need for a handshake or a smile. There's no discussion. It was just you knew that that case was going to go through. There was a consistent standard depending on what your history of earning or what your projection of earning is, or if you did not have that, a relative could file an affidavit of support saying that they would support you. Or if you ever tried to get on government benefits, their assets would be deemed your assets, and you couldn't get the government benefit. And that process has worked for the last 20 or 25, perhaps 30 years. It was all on paper, and it was all objective. Didn't matter really what, anything about you, what your education was, what your level of English was, what's your job prospect was.Joel: Now immigration is divided between family immigration and business immigration or employment immigration. So if you are on the employment immigration side and you were coming because you had a job that no American could fill. So obviously you had some projection of income. You had some security of income. Those cases are still going to be pretty much the same, but family based cases will be impacted by this new rule, which essentially says we're going to view this on a subjective basis. We're going to look at you and we're going to see what is your education, what is your age, your health, your family status, your assets, your resources, your skill level. And we're going to take a complete picture of you and we're going to decide whether or not you are going to become dependent on government benefits to survive in the United States.Joel: It's moving from somebody looking at paperwork and giving you the opportunity in a letter to respond by saying, "Well, if that's not good enough, I'll get uncle so-and-so to give me another affidavit." To a situation where that's only going to be part of it. Whether someone's given you an affidavit, it's only going to be part of the total subjective picture of who you are and whether you're going to become dependent on public benefits.Paul: Seems like Joel, you're going to need an interview now, right? There's got to be some interaction in order to answer some of that.Joel: Well, it just so happens that one of the other initiatives of the Trump administration is called... It requires a total review of your situation, and almost every case today is interviewed. So in the past, the only cases that were interviewed were marriage cases, other cases. So for example, if you wanted to bring a parent to the United States, if you wanted to bring a child to the United States, there was no reason to interview you. In a marriage case, they interviewed you to see if you were really married.Paul: Subject of many popular films and literature, et cetera, et cetera. The sham marriage, right?Joel: Yes. But everything else was judged on the basis of a petition. Is the relationship true? Is there a birth certificate? But the Trump administration issued an executive order that said, "No, we want everybody to be vetted." That vetting process includes pretty much an interview for every single case, which is why there's become a serious backlog at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services because they weren't geared up for that.Paul: Wow. So, Joel, what's the impact? What are you seeing? I mean, obviously it's slowing things down, but how bad?Joel: It's slowing things down to a point that it's unpredictable when you're going to be seen by the US CIS and how long your case is going to take to be completed, especially if you are an employment-based case where historically they have not interviewed these cases. So it's taking, I would say probably an additional three to six months for them to get to you. I expect that it'll go to six to nine months pretty soon if it hasn't already. In a marriage case, married to a US citizen, I'm not seeing a serious slow down. Maybe two or three months backlog greater than before. But they officially like to get their cases completed in six months. I don't know that they can meet that target anymore.Paul: Now a lot of your clients are businesses with employment cases, correct?Joel: Yes. Many of our clients are employers who are either established or in the process of establishing that a particular employee from abroad is not going to impact the US labor market, that there is a shortage of this skill set.Paul: They're a specialist of some kind.Joel: Or they are a distinguished professor, researcher or a person of extraordinary ability. Somebody who is at the very top of their field and they've established to the satisfaction of the Department of Homeland Security that they are at the very top of their field and deserving to come to the United States as an extraordinary ability alien. So those are the kinds of cases, that the kinds of employment cases we handle.Dan: One thing that's important to point out with the Public Charge Rule here is that it was some federal courts pumped the brakes on it. They blocked the rule here, but that probably won't be the last time we hear of it. Correct?Joel: No, I would think it's fair to predict that eventually the rule becomes law and that this is a temporary setback for the Trump administration. In fact, there are two government agencies that apply the Public Charge Rule, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State. The Department of State processes cases that are where the alien is outside the United States and there is the Department of State is applying this rule and has been applying this rule since it was originally introduced even in the first stage of promulgation of the rule. Department of State picked up on it and there's been an uptick in denials because of public charge at consular offices, consular posts abroad.Joel: So not only is the Department of Homeland Security going to deal with these injunctions and eventually likely to overcome the objections but the Department of State is going to, to some degree or other, enforce this rule that sort of converts this from an objective to a subjective test.Dan: Right. Well, it's certainly a complicated process here, complicated law, but Joel, we appreciate you coming on and speaking with us and helping us break it down here. Definitely more than in 100 words.Joel: Yes.Dan: Hey, thanks again and hope to have you back on.Joel: Thank you for having me. Thank you.Dan: Thanks a lot. Bye.Logan: For our Pittsburgh Polyphony segment this week, we're taking a little bit of a different approach and instead of highlighting a specific artist, we're going to be talking to Connor Murray, the label manager of Crafted Sounds, a local Pittsburgh record label that has about six active bands on their roster right now. Connor, thanks for being with us.Connor: Yeah, thanks for having me, Logan.Logan: Sure. Yes. So if you could of just give us a little rundown of what Crafted Sounds is, kind of how you got into it, and maybe a little background on yourself, that'd be great.Connor: Yeah. So I started the label when I was 18, on my 18th birthday in high school. I tried to play music, try to make music or whatever, just like too stubborn. Didn't put enough time into it. It was also kind of, I don't know, getting frustrated of what I was missing out on as far as new music is concerned because I always like sharing new music with my friends and whatnot. Going to shows, et cetera.Connor: Once I kind of realized that like I personally didn't want to be a musician, I was like, "Okay, how can I be involved?" So there was a couple smaller labels but also like bigger labels that I was very aware of on like independent level. And I was like, "Oh, I'll just do that," without like knowing what goes into that. I mean, I think taking like engineering approach, it's just like once you have your problem statement, that's when you start to figure out what it is, you know how you're going to do that.Connor: So without knowing how I was going to do it, I was like, "All right, I'm just going to run this label." And I don't know. I guess running a label for me was just providing physical format copies to artists that were underappreciated that I really liked, that I felt could be recognized on a more grand scale. And that concept has changed and molded and adapted into other formats, other artists, other sounds, other communities because I'm not from Pittsburgh. So it's been really cool just to be like the, I don't know, number one fan in the back.Dan: Not from here. You're a senior at Pitt, correct?Connor: Yes. Yeah. I'm going to stay here though. As long as I graduate and get my things set straight, I'll be working downtown for a couple of years. So I accepted an offer and I don't know. I like it here. I'm trying to stay here. So yeah.Logan: Pittsburgh tends to pull people in once they get here. I love it. It's a great city.Dan: Steal off Godfather Three, "Once I get out, they pull me back.Logan: Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back.Dan: The only good part of Godfather Three is that line I think. Andy Garcia.Logan: That's something I can really appreciate though that you're saying that you're trying to take these underappreciated artists and kind of what you think is cool. And like you said, be that number one fan and not really worry how much clout they have at the time or how much presence they have at that time. But something that you could take and really mold and them to do. But so it sounded like you kind of just took a hands-on like dive-in approach. Like you said, you didn't really know exactly what you were doing. Kind of what were some of the first things and the first steps that you took that to develop some of your artists you look back on now.Connor: I guess far as like the label's concern, I mean the first thing I was... It's like the name of the label and the imaging. It has to be cool I guess. At least to me, it has to be something other people could stand behind. I made the logo a house because I was just sitting in my house, scratching on papers, little sketches here and there. And I was like, "Oh, I should just like make it a house because I'm going to be doing this inside my house anyway." We're not going to make money. So I just made a very simple geometric house, like very, very simple and put letters out of the chimney. I didn't do anything crazy. So that was kind of where I started with that, the imaging.Connor: I guess as far as artists and where to start with that. I guess at first, the first record was through a friend of a friend. She was in New Mexico and she was like, "Hey, this guy is making cool music." And it's like, "Yeah, I like it." I mean, at that point I had no standard. I mean the music... I mean, I still love that record, but I didn't really look at who's this artist; what are their goals; where do they want to be; what have they done in the past; how long are they going to be continuing this.Connor: I was just like, "Wow, I like this music. Let's do it." That project fizzled out real quick. And I was just like, "Oh, maybe there's other things I should consider when I work with people. Maybe like communication should be clearer. Maybe I should be asking more questions. Maybe I should be setting things... Being more transparent on both ends and kind of make it bit by bit." It took me at least a year to figure out ballpark estimate how to do PR in house. By now I'm very jaded but a lot of people have been through a lot of crap. They dealt with a lot of characters. And I guess kind of conveying a message or pitching something you believe in over email. You have to be very considerate and very persistent at the same time. So it's like there was that. I guess show booking was the thing that took like a year and a half after that. Little steps. What's another thing I can put on my utility belt.Dan: Something interesting about your business, we were talking about this a little bit before we got going here. But everybody's really into vinyl these days. It's gotten really popular. You are into cassettes, which Logan, cassettes were on their way out whenever you were born. I mean, I remember using them as a kid. I remember my parents had a ton of them and stuff. But why cassettes? Why are they back?Connor: So essentially there was the resurgence of vinyl and that was cool. It started with indie labels getting back into it and supporting the format. And those real music nerds, shout out. But eventually the major labels caught on and there's only so many plants. So the cost of manufacturing the vinyl is just skyrocketed. Minimums have gotten higher obviously, and it's hard for an independent artist or an independent label to bite that initial investment and keep doing it even if it is cool. There's a point where you got to kind of make money unfortunately.Connor: I mean, if you don't really make money, we break even on everything and happy trails. But because it got so expensive, tapes kind of slowly kind of became more feasible, especially because people were just adopting the format. They were like, "Hey, I don't really want a CD." Whether it's because you could just download the music or stream it or whatever, but tape kind of sits right in between a CD and a record. And sometimes if not more often than not, it's less costly than a CD I guess when you're buying it as a consumer. I don't know. There's a lot you can do as far as customizing it. It doesn't sound good. Tapes don't sound good. I'm not here to tell-Dan: That's what I was thinking, yeah.Connor: I'm not here to defend tapes. Tapes are literally built to like deteriorate, like the acid that is required to make the tape literally destroys it.Connor: But I have older tapes from like the '80s and stuff and they sound terrible. But-Dan: Do you find people buy them? You can find people that-Connor: Yeah, I mean, we've, I don't know. I keep mostly everything that I have as far as like paper receipts and electronic receipts. I have binders full of just notes, and I've duplicated over 1000 tapes.Dan: Wow.Connor: Over 2000 tapes. Yeah. And to think like, "Wow, I've sold over 1000 tapes." It's like pretty hilarious. Cool.Dan: Some cassette holders are actually perfect cases for your cell phone too, so you can just keep all your music on your phone and put the phone inside the cassette tape holder, and it's perfect. Yeah.Logan: That's funny. I appreciate you being here, Connor. And I believe there's a track that you wanted to end us off with today from one of your bands. Is that correct?Connor: Yeah, yeah. Last month we put a track out. We put an EP out with this band called the Zells, local band we mentioned earlier. This is one of their songs. Graze.Dan: Awesome. Can't wait.Logan: Appreciate you being here, Connor.

This week on the P100 Podcast, of course, we had to address the sinkhole that shook Pittsburgh (and fueled a day’s worth of memes). We dig deep to learn how sinkholes form and consider ourselves grateful to be above ground (it was only a few blocks away from us). Elsewhere in the episode:Alexandra Loutsion, a soprano singing the lead role in Pittsburgh Opera’s “Florencia en el Amazonas,” stops by.Priya Amin of Flexable discusses her childcare solution for working parents and gives a preview of an upcoming webinar.A Veterans Day tribute to those who served.----more----This Episode is sponsored by WordWriteCenturies before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Here's the full transcript from this episode.Logan: You are listening to the P100 Podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100 bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture and more, because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Paul: Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the P100 Podcast, the audio companion to the Pittsburgh 100. I'm Paul Furiga, here along with my colleagues, Dan Stefano and Logan Armstrong.Dan: Hey Paul.Logan: How you doing?Paul: Guys, we have a great episode today. We're talking about big black holes.Dan: Everybody's seen the hole now, but yes.Paul: Yes, we are. Singing a little bit, accurate gentlemen, Pittsburgh Opera.Dan: That's true. Yeah. We're not singing, fortunately, but there is singing in this episode.Paul: We have a great guest on, who's going to talk about a really cool initiative called Flexable.Dan: Yeah, it's a company that is involved in instant onsite childcare and it's an issue that affects a lot of working parents and I think you want to hang on for that interview. It's definitely interesting.Paul: And we're going to be talking about Veterans Day.Dan: Absolutely.Logan: Finish it off strong.Paul: That's right.Dan: Yeah. That's the way we love Veterans Day, actually, it's a great holiday.Logan: It's also (beep) birthday.Dan: Hey, that's supposed to be ... That's spoiler alert there, we don't want to talk about that.Paul: Is that how that wound up in this episode?Dan: I know. I can't do another little ... Maybe the last five minutes is just a celebration of (beep), or maybe it isn't. I don't know. We all have to hang on.Paul: I don't think so, folks.Dan: No.Paul: Stay tuned.Paul: All right, now we want to talk about holes, sometimes black holes, sometimes big holes, sometimes big holes, small holes.Dan: Sometimes famous holes.Paul: Sometimes famous holes. All of them, sinkholes.Dan: I feel like I've seen that in the news lately. I don't know.Paul: Yeah, something about a bus downtown, Dan, going into a hole somewhere.Dan: Bus, Dan, in the sinkhole.Paul: Dan, means the up streets [crosstalk 00:02:12].Dan: Well, you got to work on your [inaudible 00:02:15] accent, but you're getting-Paul: I don't think so.Dan: Yeah.Logan: The Cleveland is showing.Dan: Yes, exactly.Paul: All right, so, holes. I have a word for you gentlemen. You ready?Dan: Got you.Paul: This is not a Pittsburgh ethnic food, although it sounds like one. Karst. K-A-R-S-T.Dan: Yeah. I need a definition.Paul: All right. Karst, occurs in bedrock, that’s primarily limestone and it's like an underground cave system that water rushes through. The most common form of sinkholes is caused by karst. We don't really know yet which caused the sinkhole that happened downtown, what we do know is that the Allegheny River has a limestone bed. That is why the water in the Allegheny River is clear, whereas the water in Monongahela is brown because that's more of a mud bottom.Dan: You and I have varying definitions of clear, but yes, it is definitely cleaner than the stuff in the Mon.Paul: If you go upstream…Dan: Yeah. Oh, now like elegant Armstrong County.Paul: Yes.Dan: Beautiful.Paul: It is beautiful.Logan: Here's the thing, are we sure the Mon is only dirty because of the mud?Paul: I didn't say, only dirty because of the mud, I do know it has a mud bottom.Dan: Like, 40, 50 years ago, it was definitely ... I can only imagine how dirty it was.Paul: Guys, that's how that airplane disappeared into the Mon however many years ago.Dan: Correct.Logan: Oh yeah.Paul: Right into the Mon.Dan: Maybe it went down a sinkhole.Paul: Yeah. Okay. Paul: Back to karst, which is not like pierogi or kraut or any of the great ethnic foods we have in town here. That's the main reason in Pennsylvania that we have a lot of sinkholes and there are a lot of sinkholes in Pennsylvania. There's another reason. Mining. There's a lot of unchartered mines. We really have had an epidemic lately of things collapsing. The sinkhole that occurred in the South Hills. Big water main break.Dan: That's affected my house.Paul: Yes. That's another reason that sinkholes happen. Underground infrastructure. That might be the case here, we really don't know.Logan: Yeah. Either way, Pittsburgh, as you said, has had quite a history of some interesting sinkholes and there've been multiple cases in the past few years that have been documented. Around the world too, there have been houses that have been swallowed by sinkholes, but specifically here in Pittsburgh, an interesting story that I found just the other day, was a man who was actually just walking, and this has happened a few years ago, was walking underneath an underpass and just all of a sudden a sinkhole opened and he fell 10 feet into the ground.Dan: Where was this? What neighborhood?Logan: That happened in Glassport, he had to call 911 using his own phone and they came and rescued him an hour later when he was sitting 10 feet underground.Dan: You probably got a bad signal when you're in a sinkhole … no bars.Logan: I would think that was a prank call.Paul: One bar, which when they arrived they probably thought he'd been in a bar before he fell in the hole.Dan: Paul, I think you have some more insight though, right?Paul: This is such a big problem. There are two Pennsylvania state government departments, the department of natural resources and also the department of environmental protection, that have massive micro-sites including interactive maps all about sinkholes. So it's not your imagination, sinkholes are a real problem here. In fact, there is an Instagram account devoted to sinkholes in Pittsburgh. It's unofficial @pwsasinkholes, all one word. @pwsasinkholes on Instagram. Check it out, the bus picture's there, but so are a lot of other very interesting ones. I don't think the one from Glassport made it though.Logan: That's a shame. It might just be within city limits but-Paul: Might be.Logan: It would take quite a sinkhole to top what we saw last week.Dan: Oh it was incredible. Fortunately no one was hurt so we were able to make memes and social media was able to go crazy over this.Paul: Made the national news, international news.Dan: Right. It also reminds you though that it could have been a lot worse and that this is something that needs to be figured out. Infrastructure in Pittsburgh and all over Pennsylvania and the Northeast, it's just old.Paul: Your average water distribution system in an urban area like Pittsburgh is easily a hundred years old, so that may well be the cause. We don't know. One thing we do know, according to our government, our Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the average sinkhole in Pennsylvania is four to 20 feet in diameter. This is 75 to a hundred feet, so it's not your imagination, that is one big hole.Dan: For this next segment, we're going to be talking about childcare in the workplace. We have a really interesting guest here with us. It's Priya Amin. She's one of the co-founders of Flexable.Priya: Thanks for having me.Dan: Absolutely. We also have Keira Koscumb. She's one of our fellow WordWriters, and childcare is very important for her because…Keira: I'm pregnant.Dan: Okay. It's super exciting. Yes. Keira, you’re due in January, and this is definitely something we've talked about in the office, just important stuff about childcare here, the cost of it, the availability of it. Priya, can you tell us a little bit about Flexable and just what you guys do there?Priya: Yeah, so Flexable was launched in 2016. It was born out of necessity, quite honestly. My co-founder, Jessica Strong and I, we both have five kids between us, ages four all the way up to 12, almost five up to 12 and we both had professional careers prior to being entrepreneurs, but the common thread that we shared was that childcare was always getting in the way of our professional development. First off, I was a brand manager at Nestle for years. I ended up leaving my career because I just couldn't find the balance between traveling all the time and seeing my children. I felt like my husband and I were ships passing in the night and we barely got to see each other, let alone our kids. So I ended up leaving my career and moving to Pittsburgh and I started a consulting company here and it was great.Priya: It was going really well and I had my second child and unfortunately I kept running into the same issue, which was, I couldn't do this. I could not go to a podcast recording in the morning. I couldn't meet with a client. I couldn't go to networking events because I had a three year old and a baby in a pumpkin seat. It was distracting and it was unprofessional and it was just really stressful for me. So that kind of planted a seed in my head to say, how can I create something that marries work and life together? How can I fit life and work together better? That was the start of Flexable.Priya: Flexable provides on demand onsite childcare at offices, conferences and events to help parents, to help women be able to have a seat at the table, to not miss professional development events, to miss work or to even miss doctor's appointments. We have some really great strategic partnerships with some large organizations around town, but the pinnacle partnership that we have is with Allegheny Health Network. We provide childcare at their women's behavioral health clinic to help patients get the therapy that they need specifically for postpartum depression care. We're affiliated with the Alexis Joy D'Achille Postpartum Depression Care Unit, and our caregivers go and provide childcare so that women can get the care that they need and not put childcare ahead of their own needs.Priya: We employ 32 highly vetted caregivers. These are people that have background checks, clearances, first aid, CPR, and they pick up shifts pretty much like any other gig economy job. So it's similar to Uber or Lyft from that perspective. A caregiver goes onto our system, finds a job that's on a Wednesday afternoon, picks up that shift. They have all the supplies that they need. They have all the play supplies, games, toys, crafts, all of that stuff, but they also have all the safety supplies. So corner guards, outlet covers, first aid kits, rubber gloves, Clorox wipes, all of that. So they arrive on site, they set up, they take care of kids, they clean up and they leave.Dan: That's fantastic. Keira, I know that's got to be something that sounds pretty interesting for you. Once maternity leave ends for you, I know your husband, he's got a full time job that's pretty important. Yourself, you need to go on a lot of client calls and meetings outside of the office. How does something like this sound to you?Keira: It sounds great. Daycare is expensive, you're on a waiting list. I think this evolution has happened with companies where in the past, maybe 10 years ago, I always viewed being somebody that wasn't planning on getting pregnant anytime soon, single and working. I viewed the companies as the enemy, they won't let me do these things, they won't let me be flexible with my kids when it's really not that way anymore. Companies are willing to pony up and be flexible, but it is just a time thing for parents. You know what I mean? You have stuff to get done at your job and you're responsible for things. So how you balance that guilt of, not letting your co-workers and your company down, with spending time with your family and kids and your husband and making sure that, what's the point of having this kid if you're just going to shell out a bunch of money for them to be sitting in a daycare or sitting with a nanny?Keira: So, this is definitely something that's attractive. I guess my question for you would be is, it doesn't sound like this is ever permanent. It's more like a temporary thing. It's not like WordWrite could ever hire Flexable to have a daycare that, Dan or me or whoever could bring our kid in every day.Priya: You could. Right now though, the best scenarios that we've seen with organizations is having childcare when it's needed, so at events or at a conference or on that one specific day, if it's election day, for example. We're also a relatively new company and I think that's one of the reasons why we haven't had these long-term commitments with organizations, but we're starting to see that. Amazingly, we have a 100% contract renewal rate with all of our customers because they see that once they have our caregivers at one event, parents keep asking for it and they're like, why can't we have this during these days or whatnot? So that's what we're working towards. We're working towards creating more of a more, not permanent footprint, but definitely a more regular footprint in some organizations so that it becomes synonymous with the company's culture, with their benefits, for example, just something that is a part of their inclusivity package. So it just helps people be more productive and just be there.Dan: Priya, for our listeners at home here, they can hear more from you. You have a webinar coming up later in the month on November 21st, can you give us a little preview of what that's going to be about?Priya: Yeah, so with the GPMP, we have a webinar coming up later this month on childcare as an inclusivity driver in the workplace. We see that when parents take time off to take care of their children, actually roughly $6 billion hit to the workforce, the American workforce, and unfortunately the majority of that is women. It's about 75% of the women who have left the workplace because of childcare reasons, only about a quarter of them even come back and even those that do take time off of work, there is such a hit to their personal finances but also to the greater economy as well. So we'll be talking about some of that. We'll be also talking about how things like childcare could potentially help drive productivity and inclusivity at work and give some best in class examples of those, not only in Pittsburgh but across the country as well.Dan: That's great. We're looking forward to hearing more about that then. For everybody who is interested in that webinar, we'll be sure to include a link in the show summary and in the Pittsburgh 100 that's going to drop on November 7th, and again that webinar is on November 21st so plenty of time to sign up. If you want to hear more about Flexable, you can find them at flexablecare, all one word, .com and even if you need to hire somebody for some childcare, it's a great place, but Keira and Priya, I really appreciate you guys coming in and just this is a great conversation.Priya: Thanks so much.Dan: Thanks a lot.Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S story, the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented storycrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Dan: All right. Hey everybody. As promised in the introduction here, we've got a pretty special treat for you here and we're bringing a little bit of culture to the 100 today too. We're here with Alexandra Lucian of the Pittsburgh Opera. She's in town for a new show that's just starting this week.Alexandra: Thank you so much for having me.Dan: Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be exciting for you coming back because you're a local, right?Alexandra: I am a local. I'm born and raised in Canonsburg, PA. Went to Chartiers Houston high school and so it's always a joy to come back to my hometown.Dan: Great. Can you tell us a little bit about the show that you're going to be on?Alexandra: Yes. The show that we're doing at Pittsburgh Opera right now is called Florencia en el Amazonas, which translates to Florence on the Amazon. Basically, it is a Spanish language opera, which is the first that Pittsburgh Opera is producing. The piece itself, it's a very unique opera because first of all, it's very short. It's two hours with intermission. So it's kind of the perfect step into opera if you've never checked it out before. The music itself is almost like a Disney movie. It's very cinematic and lush and the setting is in South America, so it sounds very tropical and very accessible and very easy to listen to. It's very beautiful.Alexandra: The story is basically about Florencia, who is a famous opera singer actually and left her hometown of Manaus in Brazil a long time ago to pursue an opera career and 20, I think it's about 20 years or so, and 20 years later she's now coming back because she feels like her life hasn't fully been fulfilled. Part of the reason is because she left her lover behind and his name is Cristóbal, and she wants to come back and find him again and reunite with him.Dan: Right. You're playing the lead role of Florencia, right?Alexandra: Yes.Dan: Okay, that's awesome. One thing that's interesting, and again, I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to opera, but one thing that I find interesting about it, is it seems like there's always is a mix of fantastical and some grounded maybe romance that's involved. Do you see those big themes in a lot of operas?Alexandra: Absolutely, yes. There's a lot of fairytales in opera, I'd say, and kind of larger than life stories and sometimes stories that don't make a lot of sense. But the cool thing about this piece is that it really ... It was written by a Mexican composer and a Latin American librettist. They really wanted to celebrate their own culture, and a big part of that culture is magical realism, which is basically magic that kind of takes the form of something real. So, we're sitting in the studio, it would be like, if one of us started to levitate in that world, that wouldn't be anything weird because that's what magical realism is.Logan: That's very cool. As a musician myself, I know from a pretty young age, I really wanted to do something in music and I was always very entranced by it. Was that kind of your same experience? Did you always know that you wanted to do something in opera or at least musical or did that come a little later?Alexandra: Yeah, I always sang. I drove my parents nuts actually, because I would sing around the house and I would also sing in church with my dad, and basically they got to the point where they were like, we need to do something with this kid or else she's going to drive us crazy. So I auditioned for what used to be called the Children's Festival Chorus in Pittsburgh and is now the Pittsburgh Youth Chorus. I sang with them for six years, and that was the first spark of really being into classical music and singing. So I did that. I did high school musicals. I did the Junior Mendelssohn choir also. So all of these things, led me in this direction because I started singing in foreign languages from the time I was eight years old.Dan: Oh, wow.Alexandra: I also grew up Greek Orthodox, so we sing in Greek too in church. So I was kind of surrounded with that. So for me, I started to take voice lessons and I realized that I didn't sound like any of the people on the musical theater recordings, I sounded like the opera recordings, so I went to Pittsburgh Opera to check out an opera when I was 15, which was Turandot and I completely fell in love with it, and then almost 20 years later, I sang Turandot here two years ago. So yeah, it's been a cool journey.Dan: Well, something about that journey then, in my thinking, I would just assume that, a singer stays with the same company for a while or you're contracted or something. But looking at your history here, you've been all over. That's Minnesota, Chicago, Canada, New Orleans, pretty much anywhere and everywhere. This has got to be like ... It's quite the career I imagine, it takes you a lots of cool places.Alexandra: Yeah, opera is very unique in that way, in this country in particular. In Europe it's a little different, but here we are freelancers and basically we have managers mostly, but we're kind of our own entity. So this year I'm in Minnesota, here, Palm Beach, Chicago twice and then Austin, so yeah, you just kind of bop around and you get used to traveling and meeting new people every time, new cast, new company, and then sometimes you get to come back to old favorites, like here.Dan: Right. Is it exciting to come back to Pittsburgh then? Do you get a lot of friends and family in the crowd?Alexandra: Oh yeah. It's really great. I have a really supportive community. I'm very lucky and Pittsburgh Opera also has been very generous in working with me, in bringing in my community, which is the Greek community here. Last time for Turandot and this time they are doing a Greek night for all of the Greeks in the area, they're-Dan: Quite few.Alexandra: Yes, exactly. There's some ticket discounts for opening night and some backstage tours and things like that.Dan: Someone who isn't familiar with opera like myself, probably other people in this office and it's something that sometimes it might feel like it's inaccessible, like in my head I say, well I don't know these languages, but ... Why would you recommend someone who hasn't experienced it to just try it out, get to a show?Alexandra: Yeah. I think that first of all, you'll never be lost in the story, because there's always English super titles that are projected above the stage. That's first and foremost. So you were not just going to go in and hear the story and be like, what the heck are they saying? Because you'll know. We try to also provide synopsises and stuff, but the super titles are a huge help. I also think that in our digital age, we hear a lot of music through our computers and through our phones, but the cool thing about opera I think is that, it's like music in its purest form. We don't use any microphones, and that is something that's really cool. We're singing, like the opera I just did was a 90-piece orchestra and I did not use a microphone in a 2,500 seat hall.Alexandra: That's what we're trained to do and it's pretty cool to hear the raw human voice singing like that in a big space. The Benedum's almost 3,000 seats and it's kind of a way to bring all of the pieces together of lots of different art forms. So you've got singing, you've got instruments, you've got set design. This one has projections, so there's kind of like a movie going on behind the sets. There's costuming. So there's something for everybody, which I think is really neat. If you're into seeing interesting costumes, you can check that out. If you're into singing, you can check that out. If you're into the symphony, you can check that out. So it's kind of something for everyone.Dan: One thing that we'd be remiss to not point out here is that these shows are coming up here, going to be on November 9th, 12th, 15th and 17th you can still grab tickets at pittsburghopera.org. They're all going to be at the Benedum Center, which is an awesome venue, I imagine a lot of people have been there, but if you haven't, it's really great to see, and do you enjoy playing there as well?Alexandra: Oh yeah. It's so beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful venues in the city I think, and there's so much of our history as Pittsburghers in that venue, thinking of it as like a movie house back in years and years and years ago and then a performing venue. It's really amazing, and when you think about all of the different shows that have been on that stage, it's really cool to be able to share the stage with that kind of history.Dan: Alexandra, last thing we're going to ask you, can you hit a note for us?Alexandra: Sure. Okay. Let's see. (singing)Dan: I don't think we can end this segment any better than that. Alexandra, thanks for being here, and everybody try to get to the opera. At some point here for Florencia en el Amazonas or they've got a lot of great shows coming up in 2020 too, so thank you again Alexandra.Alexandra: Thank you guys so much.Dan: OK guys, we have another important holiday coming up here. Within the next week we'll be at Veterans Day, which is the day that obviously, we celebrate all our servicemen and women about, just the people who are serving and making big sacrifices for us here. Unlike Memorial Day, which is another important one, I think Veterans Day is an important one because it's about the living too.Paul: That’s right Dan, absolutely.Dan: Yes, and Paul, you just had an interesting experience though. You were over in the UK and you had a chance to really learn about how people over in Europe feel about our veterans.Paul: That’s right. I think this is really an important way to look at Veterans Day, Dan, because, given the geography of the United States, with the exception of the terrible 9/11 attack, we've never really been invaded or bombarded in the way that Europe was during the Second World War. Those events are fading further and further into history. We're coming up next year on the 75th anniversary of the end of that war, so it was surprising to me, as you mentioned, a group of about 40 of us from the States went over to my dad's old airbase and my dad was in the Eighth Air Force. He was a bombardier navigator, and of this group of 40 there were three veterans, each one of them, 96 years old. Two of them brought their significant others who were also not spring chickens, and then the rest of us were mostly kids of World War II veterans or in some cases grandkids.Paul: We had a few who were nephews and nieces as well. It was a very interesting group. So 75 years ago, 1944, was a time period when my dad's airbase was really up and running and my dad was actually there. I think that different perspective, and I did one article about this, I'll probably do another one in the 100, we went to the cemetery at Mattingly, which is the only cemetery in the UK that has American war dead from World War II, and there's 3,800 graves there and there's another 5,000 memorialized who are still missing 75 years after the end of the war. As you said, really Veterans Day is more about the living. Memorial Day is about those who lost their lives defending the country.Paul: The thing that was really interesting to me, Dan, about this whole trip was the way people overseas view what we as Americans did through our military service. There was a group of people, and I don't mean people who are like our veterans in their '90s, I mean people in their '50s, '60s, '40s, '30s, teenagers, that we met, who care about what happened 75 years ago. And the reason is, as one of the people said to me when he kept profusely thanking me for my dad's service, he said, "No, you don't understand. If your dad and his fellows didn't do what they did, we'd all be speaking German."Dan: To those three men you were there with, right?Paul: That's right. So I came away with this experience of understanding that, it's not just another day to put the flag up out front, it's not just another day when the post office is closed or governments or whatever are not at work. It's a day to celebrate what Americans can do in service of our country and also in service of democracy around the world.Paul: One of the other things I learned, there's a cemetery as well in Holland, there's a four year waiting list for volunteer families, guys, to take care of American servicemen's graves. Again, these ain't people who are 90 years old, we're talking about, families with teenagers, et cetera, et cetera. As we approach this Veterans Day, I think it's a very important perspective to understand that the service of our veterans, it's not just an American thing, it's something that extends far beyond our borders.Dan: That's awesome. That's great to hear. Again, talking about, you can help memorialize our war dead, which is fantastic, but again, Veterans Day and pretty much any day of the year is a day to support and recognize our current veterans. I've got two of my best friends, two friends who were in my wedding are veterans who served over in the Middle East, and I respect the hell out of them for being able to do that. I know for a fact that each of them saw things that I can't even imagine. That's going to have effects on them for the rest of their lives, and so it's important, whether you can find some support online, whether you can maybe donate to causes for veterans or just, hey, pat someone on the back and every now and then give them a call and make sure that they're feeling all right. That's important stuff. I can't say that I served, but what I can do is I can support my friends who did and try to do what you can to make these people recognized, let them know that we care about their sacrifice.Paul: And really, that's kind of, Logan, what I would say to people this time around and certainly, Logan, people in your generation are the people who are overseas right now, doing multiple tours. Again, more than the flag, more than the day off, is doing something to say thank you to veterans.Logan: Yeah, I totally agree. As you said, there's a couple of people I know that are deployed right now overseas. My dad's also a 10-year veteran of the air force. So I completely agree and I think it's very important to recognize both the Memorial and Veterans Day and as you guys both said, just do what you can to support and let them know that we do appreciate all the things that they've done for our country and that things might be very different if they weren't all there, similar to the story that, that gentlemen over in the UK told you. They do a lot of things for us that sometimes go, it can be out of sight, out of mind, because we don't always see them, obviously they're not fighting here on the homeland, but yeah, I think it's very important to recognize and to appreciate them for Veterans Day and every day.Dan: Right. Yeah. So we are very thankful to them, and to be a little tiny bit selfish, I would also say that Veterans Day is my birthday.Paul: Dan, I knew that that was why we really were talking about this day.Dan: It's awkward to bring up because if I'm at a restaurant or something, and they get free entrees, I can't ask for the free dessert or else then I'm just a jerk.Paul: Well, Dan, happy birthday. We'll buy you some ice cream and let's remember our veterans on Veterans Day.Logan: And we are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 podcast. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe to p100podcast.com or wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Twitter @pittsburgh100_, for all the latest news, updates and more from the Pittsburgh 100. 

 As Pittsburgh prepares to mark one year since the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue, we invited Maggie Feinstein of the 10.27 Healing Partnership to discuss the new center’s mission and how Squirrel Hill has healed over time.Also in this episode, we talk about fear-based marketing, future modes of journalism with a guest who has a special connection to the podcast, and hear a track from a promising singer from Sewickley.----more----This Episode is sponsored by WordWriteCenturies before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.The full transcript to this episode is here:Logan: You are listening to The P100 Podcast, the biweekly companion piece to The Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more. Because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Dan: Hey, everyone. We're back. I'm Dan Stefano, host of The P100 Podcast. I'm here with Paul Furiga.Paul: Dan, how are you, my friend?Dan: And our other co-host, Logan Armstrong.Logan: How's it going, Dan?Dan: All right. Yeah, great to have you guys here, and we're happy for everybody to be listening today because it's a special episode. We're coming up to the one-year commemoration of the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in our Squirrel Hill neighborhood here. And there's a lot of interesting things going on this time of year. It's been a year of healing, and that's a highlight of the interview we're going to have this week. We're pretty happy to have that. Paul, what are your thoughts?Paul: I'm really looking forward to hearing from Maggie Feinstein, who's now leading the healing center. As you said, this one-year mark is really important for the community. Not just here in Pittsburgh, but beyond as well.Dan: That's right. That's Maggie Feinstein, the director of the 10.27 Healing Partnership and we're really happy to have her today. Also, we'll be talking with Erin Hogan. She's a fellow WordWriter and we'll be talking about fear-based PSA. It's kind of based on a blog she recently wrote. After that, we'll hear from Chris Schroder, the founder of The 100 Companies.Paul: The 100 Companies, right.Dan: Paul, you've met him. You have a pretty deep professional relationship.Paul: We do. And I think folks will enjoy the interview, three ex-journalists sitting around the table commiserating about journalism's past and talking about the future.Dan: Right? Yeah. That's always a lot of fun. And then we'll follow up with a Pittsburgh polyphony and Logan, you have somebody pretty exciting we're going to be talking to, correct?Logan: Yes, I do. We're going to be talking about a young neo soul artist coming out of the city. So I'm excited to talk about that.Dan: Right, yeah we're going to be really happy to hear from, well, we're not going to hear from her I guess, but we'll hear from her in her recording from one of her singles and we're really happy to hear that, and let's get to it.Dan: Okay, everybody. As we mentioned in the introduction, we are nearing the one year mark of the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue. With us is Maggie Feinstein. She's the director of the newly named 10.27 Healing Partnership. 10.27 that being a reference to the date of the attack in which 11 worshipers were killed on a Saturday morning going to synagogue. It was an act of hate, but our city has responded with a lot of acts of love, including programs like this. So thank you for taking the time to be with us here Maggie.Maggie: Thanks for having me here.Dan: Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what you do with the healing center?Maggie: Absolutely. Thank you very much. My background is as a mental health clinician. I'm an LPC, a master's level clinician, and for the last 10 years or so, my work has really been around what we call brief interventions, working with medical doctors and working in medical environments and providing support to the doctors as well as to the patients when they come in for visits.Dan: Are you from Pittsburgh?Maggie: I'm from Pittsburgh. I grew up in Squirrel Hill. Yes.Dan: Oh wow.Maggie: I still live there and I'm currently raising my kids there.Dan: Being from there, can you tell us what that morning was like that Saturday?Maggie: Absolutely. I think that being from there – it is a very familiar place and it is actually somewhere where I've walked all those streets for many, many years. But that morning I was out for a run with a friend and usually we run through the park, but that morning because it was raining, we had run up and we weren't really paying attention. We ended up on Wilkins and we were running up Wilkins and remarked, Oh my gosh, we keep seeing people we know because that's sort of Squirrel Hill for you, people travel the same routes. And so people kept waving out the windows. So it was a morning unfortunately that I found myself outside of there, but was just about 20 minutes earlier and I was reminded of community really, which is what growing up in Squirrel Hill feels like, that it was hard to run down the street without having to stop and talk to lots of people. Which is a wonderful thing, though on that morning it did feel a little bit scary.Dan: That was an incredible day for all the wrong reasons. Can you tell us a little bit about the healing center then? When we talked previously, you'd mentioned being part of that community and now it's going to be a pretty integral piece I think.Maggie: So being from the neighborhood, it was this opportunity to try and serve the community that's been so great to me. And so after the shooting happened on October 27 there was a lot of amazing community activity going on, which I wasn't part of, but I'm really inspired by the community partners that stepped up to the plate. In Pittsburgh we have had such wonderful cooperation between the congregations, the nonprofits like the Jewish Community Center, Jewish Family and Community Services and the Jewish Federation. And so between the synagogues, those three major institutions as well as the Center for Victims, which is always ready and able to respond to community mental health needs, there was just this really amazing partnership that happened and then being able to eventually incorporate the voices of the victims and the survivors.Maggie: They all together created the 10.27 Healing Partnership. So I'm the director of it, but the truth was that it was the efforts that happened week in, week out afterwards of people really caring and people wanting to have their voices heard when it comes to what community recovery looks like since it was a community trauma.Dan: Right. And there is a level of a federal involvement with this?Maggie: Yes. And so immediately in the aftermath the federal government came, FBI, as well as the Office of Victims of Crime have offered a ton of support. They have people who were able to come in, help our community, help that group of people who were gathering to decide what to do next, help guide them through the process of creating what is generically known as a resiliency center. And those federal groups really were able to give perspective on how do we move forward, how do we gather, how do we anticipate what the community needs might look like, and then respond to those needs.Dan: Right.Logan: And so the, the healing centers recently opened, it opened on October 1st, correct?Maggie: It opened on October 2nd, yes.Logan: October 2nd, okay. And so it's been opened recently. Have you had a chance to gauge how they're responding to it now that it's open?Maggie: I think that opening our doors was a really awesome opportunity because what we say when people are feeling this sense of loss is that there's no wrong door and that the more doors that are open to people, the better. But I also think that before we opened our doors on October 2nd, a lot of people were accessing services through the Center for Victims or through JFCS. And so what we have seen in the last two weeks is that a lot of people are saying this is a relief to know this is here. It's good to know there's a door.Maggie: It doesn't mean that people were sitting and waiting to go just there because there are other places. But what a lot of people say is that I do have a therapist or I've been part of a support group and then there's just some days that feel really hard. And so knowing that I could come in here on those days that just feel hard to be with people, to gather, to maybe get some emotional support or maybe to practice some self-guided relaxation. People are saying, Oh that's really nice to know that's there.Logan: And going off that, I read that you guys actually have someone that will come to greet you when you get there and as you said, some days you're just feeling vulnerable or sad. How do you feel the importance of that is, just kind of having someone there to greet you and bring you in when you're going to the healing center?Maggie: I think it's so important. I think, I mean one functionally for the JCC, for people who are not members of the JCC, because that's where we are housed, we're using space within the JCC. For people who aren't members, it's helpful because they don't know their way around. But more importantly as humans it's nice to connect to people. And one of the things we know is that with trauma we kind of disconnect, we pull away. And so I think the earlier that people can connect and feel like somebody cares and feel like they're not alone, the better it is. And so the greeter role is a really important one where someone can come to the door and walk you up, make sure you have what you need and make sure you're comfortable.Dan: What do you see as a therapist, say the difference between an individual trauma and then traumas that might affect an entire community? I mean, there might be a guy who just works down the street who really, maybe he's not a Jewish person, but this tragedy, I mean, could greatly affect them.Maggie: Absolutely. And I think that's a really important point. And I think it's a good question because I've thought a lot about what is different than when something terrible happens to me and something terrible happens to the bigger community. And I think that there is a challenge because there are so many levels of grieving that can happen when there's a tragedy within the community and all of those different levels of grieving mean that people are hitting it at different moments and people are feeling different things. And so there's sort of these waves, but people aren't necessarily on the same wave as other people. And so that's one of the reasons that the federal government has thought through this, thought of having these resiliency centers and in Pittsburgh our resiliency center is the 10.27 Healing Partnership.Maggie: But to have these resiliency centers was thought out by Congress a long time ago after 9/11 when they realized that as communities continue to experience the losses that happened during a communal trauma, that it's very, the needs change and the needs need to be attended to. We have to keep ourselves aware of them. And one of the things that I would say is that the needs will evolve over time, that just like grief and like other experiences, that because it's a communal trauma, we want to evolve with the community's needs. We don't stay stuck. So the space that we created is meant to be as flexible as possible, but equally the services will be driven primarily by the people who come in and desire them. And the hope with that is that we can respond to what people are looking for rather than what I, with my mental health degree, believe people might be looking for because that's a lot less important than what it is that people are seeking.Dan: Maybe stepping outside of your professional role and just thinking of yourself as a Squirrel Hill resident. After this last year here, what do you see from the community and how do you see that either it has changed, good, bad, where people, where their heads might be and just where people are, how it feels there right now.Maggie: I think that this a high holiday season, Yom Kippur that just passed felt very different for most people. And I think that like most other grieving emotions, there's good and bad, they're complicated, they don't feel just one way. And the good part, I heard a lot of people say how relieving it was to go to synagogue this year and be around old friends, people that we haven't seen for a while and to feel that sense of connectedness. Like I was saying, that's one of the more important things. But for a number of the congregations there was also a sense of being displaced or the absence of the people who had been such wonderful community leaders in their congregations. And so I think that there is a lot of complicated emotions.Maggie: There's a lot of new relationships. There's also deepening of old relationships that are beautiful and wonderful to see and that people have connected not just within the Squirrel Hill community but within Greater Pittsburgh, like you were saying, there's a lot of people who've been affected from outside of Squirrel Hill of course, and a lot of them have come in to reconnect with old friends, to reconnect with community.Maggie: And so those are the moments that feel, we call that the mental health side, we call that the post traumatic growth. Those are opportunities where when something has been broken, there can be a new growth that comes out of it. But that at the same time there's just a big sense of loss. Like I was saying earlier with my morning that day when I came through Wilkins and it's just a small street, anybody from another city wouldn't consider it a major thoroughfare. But it is really hard to have the feeling of the change of the neighborhood with that building currently not being able to be occupied.Dan: What can you tell us with October 27th coming up here, what types of activities or events are going to be going on either at the center or just within the community?Maggie: There has been an effort by that same group of people that I'd mentioned earlier who helped to create the 10.27 Healing Partnership to create community events that happened on 10.27 this year, 10 27 2019. And that was something we learned from other communities was that it had to be owned by the community. And that there has to be something for people to do because there's often a lot of times where we have energy we want to give. So together that group's come up with the motto for the day is remember, repair, together. And those are lessons we've learned from other places. So there'll be community service, there's community service throughout the city. There's ways that people can sign up for slots, but there's also an encouragement that communities can gather on their own and create their own community service. It doesn't just have to be through organized community service.Maggie: And then also there'll be Torah study, which is really important in the Jewish tradition in terms of honoring people after death. And so the Torah study will be happening and there is a communal gathering at Soldiers and Sailors in the evening and throughout the day there'll be activities going on at the 10.27 Healing Partnership at the JCC, we'll be having for people who just don't really know what else they want to do that day. They're welcome to come and gather in community, sit together. The Highmark Caring Place will be there doing activities that are really geared towards being present with ourselves, being able to honor lives that were lost and also being able to support each other in this hard time.Dan: Right. And I'm not sure if we mentioned it earlier, but the Healing Partnership that's located, is that on Murray Avenue at the JCC?Maggie: Yeah, so the JCC sits at Forbes and Murray and Darlington.Dan: Okay, right.Maggie: It takes over that whole block. But yeah, so in Squirrel Hill, Forbes and Murray, and there will not be regularly scheduled activities that Sunday at the JCC. And the only real purpose for coming there will be people who want to gather in community. There won't be exercising or basketball or any of those other things that day.Dan: Right. Where can we find you online?Maggie: So the address is www.1027healingpartnership.org. And on the website we really tried to promote a lot of ways that people can do their own learning, exploration. Even some things that we can do on our own with apps and podcasts and things that people can do at home.Dan: Well Maggie, thank you so much for coming here and thank you so much for what you do in the community. We really appreciate you being here today.Maggie: Thank you so much for having me and thank you for highlighting the important things going on in Pittsburgh.Dan: Absolutely.Dan: All right, we're here with Erin Hogan, she's an account supervisor here at Word Write. And we wanted to talk with Erin here about one of her blogs that she just wrote for our storytellers blog. The title is fear based marketing campaigns are not always the right approach. A really interesting topic. It kind of sparked out of a conversation that we were having in the office and Erin, thanks for being with us and can you tell us a little bit about the blog?Erin: Yeah, thanks for having me. So really, this stemmed from a conversation I actually had with my husband. He sent me this video and asked for my opinion on it. I was, just had to be honest that I really didn't like it.Dan: Okay...Erin: I think it's from a-Dan: You didn't like the video. What's the video?Erin: So the Sandy Hook Promise PSA. It's basically this really dark play on a back to school supplies commercial. So it starts out with kids showing their folders and their backpacks and their skateboard and just general things that people and parents purchase their kids to go to school for the new year. And then it just starts to take a turn. You kind of see some shuffling happening in the background, and you start to notice that there's something happening at this school.Dan: There's an active shooter.Erin: There's an active shooter. And that's really what the video is supposed to get across, supposed to. The goal of this campaign is to show people, it's to encourage knowing the signs of gun violence before they happen. But the thing that really got me going with this video is that you're encouraging to know the signs about gun violence before they happen, when depicting an act of gun violence. That just seems to me counterintuitive to what they're trying to convey. Just in general, the whole concept of my blog, getting back to the point of this segment is fear based approach versus a positive tone of an ad. How do you, what's the best way to tell a story? I mean we're at WordWrite all about storytelling, finding the best way to tell a business story. But even in a general cause related marketing effort, what's the best way to tell a story?Dan: In advocacy, right.Erin: Right. And based on the evidence that I've found in the research, it really doesn't work. So sure everybody remembers the anti-drug PSAs in the ‘80s and ‘90s and 2000 that were funded by the Partnership for a Drug Free America. There was the your brain on drugs. That one was a big, everybody remembers that one. It was the guy in the kitchen saying this is your brain and he shows an egg. And then he hits it into a cast iron pan and says, this is your brain on drugs. And it's supposed to say your brain's fried on drugs. And basically over the years they had a bunch of variations, that it was basically saying if you do drugs, your parents won't approve. Well when was the last time a 14, 15 year old kid listened to what their parents do.Erin: They didn't work and in fact it caused the adverse effect. It encouraged kids to think that drugs were cool. There was something, it was the anti, going against my parents. Whereas they took a shift, a more encouraging shift in the mid 2000s, many of the younger generations will remember this, the above the influence campaigns. Which basically, instead of showing imagery of kids defying their parents and the consequences of their actions, it took a more positive tone, basically showing the positive ramifications of making an informed decision on their own and having the independence and the courage to say no without any oversight from their parents. Those actually performed far better.Erin: So it begs the question to me for a PSA like the Sandy Hook Promise PSA. Would it have had a more resounding impact or a better impact on the viewers if it showed the positives of stopping gun violence versus the negatives of what happens after gun violence occurs?Dan: One thing I think that's important that we'd be remiss if we didn't add here is that the ad itself within, I think a couple of days of it, I think had actually earned millions of dollars or a great sum for Sandy Hook Promise. So for that group, so-Erin: Donated ad spend.Dan: Donated ad, yeah there we go.Erin: Or ad, media placements.Dan: This is why we have Erin on because she can say the right words.Erin: I'm here all night.Dan: Exactly, this is going to be one of two hours now with Erin. No, but it did have an impact. It did, it did, it was successful. And I think something important right now that we have to think of is, do we have to be provocative today? Is that how you get people's attention or is there a way to balance that? Logan, you want to jump in?Logan: Yeah, sure. I think also this is just a microcosm of society at large where we've become less of, even in the media where 20 years ago it counted on who was reporting the right news at the right time and now it's become who's reporting it first, whether or not they have to issue corrections later or not. And so I think in that same kind of click-baity kind of way that that society on, especially on the internet has become, I think that this PSA may have fallen victim to that. And as you said, whether or not that was the right move is kind of debatable, but I think this is a small part of a society's directional move at large.Erin: Yeah, I mean certainly you have to cut through the clutter. No one would dismiss that. Especially any talented marketer. I'm also not insinuating or advocating for doing nothing. Doing nothing is never an answer either-Dan: Right.Erin: They certainly have an admirable cause that they're going after here. And obviously the genesis of the Sandy Hook Promise Organization, it comes out of, it was birthed from a really horrible, horrible tragedy in United States history. But in terms of the approach and just looking at it from a technical messaging standpoint that we as marketers do, I'm just not sure it fully executed what it’s intention initially was.Dan: All right. Well Erin, you definitely gave us a lot to think about here. We thank you for coming on and I think for sure we'll be seeing, as long as we have television, as long as we have advertising, we're going to see similar ads like this, so we'll be sure to keep our eyes on it and follow those trends. So thanks a lot.Erin: Yeah, thanks for having me. Bye guys.Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared, the stories have shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capital S story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your capital S story.Paul: We mark an anniversary with this episode of the P100 podcast, the audio companion to the Pittsburgh 100, and that is the second anniversary of the Pittsburgh 100 e-zine. Our podcast is a little bit younger here but we're pleased to have with us in the studio for this segment, Chris Schroder, who is the founder of The 100 Companies. Say hello there Chris.Chris: Good morning Pittsburgh.Paul: The Pittsburgh 100 and this podcast are one of more than 20 affiliated publications in The 100 Companies network. Chris is in town for a few days, visiting, working with us on a few things. So we thought it'd be a great opportunity to give the listeners a little bit of background on why we do the 100, why we do this podcast. And since Dan and I are both former journalists and so is Chris, to have one of those, “didn't journalism used to be great and now where the hell is it going”, sort of a conversation.Dan: Was it ever great?Paul: Dan, your experience might be different than mine.Dan: I wasn't in the Woodward Bernstein era, so I don't know.Paul: I had a tee shirt when I got into journalism, which was during that era. The tee-shirt said "If your mother loves you, if your mother says she loves you, check it out".Chris: Trust, but verify.Paul: That's right. That's right. So Chris, tell us a little bit about your background.Chris: My blood is full of ink. I was a high school newspaper editor, college newspaper editor, came up in the Watergate era, graduated from high school when Nixon was resigning and then worked for six daily newspapers, and then started my own neighborhood newspapers in Atlanta. And we built that up to about a hundred thousand circulation, had about three different titles. About 10 years ago I started working with some journalists in the Atlanta area who worked for the daily newspaper and they were unfortunately being downsized out of the daily paper.Paul: A common refrain.Chris: Yes, and so they, I helped them start a publication there that had a newsletter, website and social media platform. So I helped them start that. I'd developed a revenue model for them. It's doing great 10 years later. But I noticed three or four years in that people were not clicking on the read more link in the stories as much as they used to in the newsletter. They were seeming to be fine with a shorter excerpt. So I tried to come up with a newsletter where you did not have to click through, where everything was contained in the newsletter itself and so we started designing that, realized that might be about a hundred words. So we said, why don't we call it the Atlanta 100, every article be exactly 100 words, every video be exactly a hundred seconds. And we went to market, people really enjoyed it.Chris: And later I talked to a conference of PR owners, about 150 owners in the room, and was telling them the history of content marketing all the way through the rise of newspapers and the fall of newspapers and ended with a journalism project on the Atlanta 100. And at the end of it, 12 owners came up and gave me their business cards and said I'd like to start a 100 in my city. So that thus began the expansion into a network of The 100 Companies.Paul: So Chris, something that Dan and I get a question about quite often, and really Dan is the editorial director here, having come to us directly from journalism. Where do the 100 publications and podcasts like this sit on the journalistic scale? I mean we joked about Woodward and Bernstein, obviously we're not an investigative journalism enterprise. How would you describe what we do?Chris: Well, we are part of what I see as the new emerging marketplace in media where we've had a sort of disassembling over the last few years of the traditional media marketplace. So 1,800 newspapers have closed in the last 18 years. Tens of thousands of journalists have been let go to be put into other jobs or find other careers. We've had a lot of changes, a lot of new emerging media coming up digitally. There's a lot of interest of course in the last 20 years in social media, but now we're finding the problems in that with Facebook and other issues of privacy.Chris: So I think what we are is a part of the solution and part of the experimentation that we will in another five years start to see a lot of clarity as people start to organize and merge. And there will be some platforms that emerge and some that fall away as we're seeing now with the larger level of some of the streaming, a lot of organization going on with HBO and AT&T and Comcast and different people trying to organize who's going to win. There'll probably be three or four winners in the streaming of video. Disney's getting into it, so many other people are. But there's going to be a consolidation there. Eventually, there'll be a consolidation of, as there was in the beginning of traditional newspapers in America in the 1700s, there will be eventually a settling of the industry and we certainly expect the 100 platform to be one of the winners.Paul: So gentlemen, last question, biggest question. What is the future of journalism?Dan: Well, if I could jump into it first here. Obviously the 100 gives us again, just a small little piece of the media landscape here in Pittsburgh. We're not going to be, we're never going to be the PG. We're not that. And it's not what we're trying to be. But I see a lot of former journalists in Pittsburgh that have found websites that maybe five, 10 years ago people would've considered blogs and blogs maybe had a stigma compared to them. But now we're seeing really sharp good people with news sense.Paul: Yes.Dan: They understand what is newsworthy.Paul: Storytellers.Dan: They're good writers, they're storytellers and they're finding these outlets that people are starting to gravitate to. Not long ago we had Rossliynne Culgan of The Incline on. They're doing a lot of great work there. Between say Next Pittsburgh, we see good stuff from out of them. There are a lot of good small outlets that journalists are flocking to after they either lose their job or they just realize that, I hate it, there's not much of a route forward in the newspapers. So there's always going to be room for people that know how to write, I feel like.Paul: Yes. And tell stories and write information. Chris.Chris: I think storytelling is very primal. That's how we all learned to hear, store and retrieve information as children. And it goes back millennia, the storytelling tradition. So I think it's very important to do it in as few as a hundred words or as many as 10,000 words. I'd like to look at journalism on a continuum and I think what's going to happen, I like to think that it's all sort of a pendulum. And that while in the last five to 10 years, our attention spans have gotten much shorter, I think we're poised and ready for what I think might be one day a pendulum swing by a future generation who, attention spans will start to push to be much longer and they'll appreciate the longer read and the longer write. And I think that could happen. Right now we're still in the throws of people just getting very short morsels of information. Twitter did expand from 140 to 280 characters, but I think we're going to see two or three years from now, people start to settle in and realize that morsels are good, but it still leaves them hungry.Paul: Well, Chris, really appreciate the perspective. Thanks for being here in Pittsburgh and joining us for this segment on the podcast today. We will have to have you back at some time in the future and see how some of your predictions and Dan's have meted out.Chris: Well, you all are doing great work. You're one of the leaders of our national network, and so thank you for the work you're doing and the innovations you're doing with this podcast and other things. Keep up the great work.Paul: Thank you, Chris.Dan: Thanks, Chris.Dan: Okay, we're back for another edition of our Pittsburgh polyphony series here and really enjoy this one because we get a chance to learn about some new artists that are doing some great things in the region here and Logan, this is a pretty new, interesting artist that we want to talk about here and can take us to introduction.Logan: So we're going to be talking about Sierra Sellers today. Neo soul, RMB, jazz artist in the Pittsburgh region and she's been putting out some tracks, but she's really seen some recognition in the recent past and I had the opportunity to see her at Club Cafe about a month ago and she just really brings a lot of great energy to the room. She has a great voice and her and her band really interact well and she just brings a lot of positive vibes to the audience.Dan: Yeah, that's one thing I think, you talk about the energy here and that's an important part of a performer here. As a guy, as an artist yourself, what do you think that offers whenever somebody can kind of control a crowd?Logan: Oh, it's invaluable. I mean it's the same as any other kind of entertainer, whether you're a comedian or anything else up on stage. And being a performer versus doing a performance is the difference between getting up on stage and singing or rapping or whatever you're doing, all your songs or giving an actual performance and putting on a show to the audience. So, one is vastly more memorable and more connective than the other. And being able to do that on stage is something that, if you want to be a successful artist, you're going to have to learn how to do.Dan: When you talk about Sierra, what exactly is it that she uniquely brings to the stage?Logan: Yes. So initially it's just herself. She just has kind of a bubbly personality, but she also gets the crowd to interact and she tells some stories from inspiration behind the songs or inspiration behind the instrumental or the production and talks with the band and just really kind of gets a feel for the audience and kind of feels them out and is able to work the crowd.Dan: That's awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about the track we're about to hear?Logan: Yes. So we're about to hear a track of Sierra's called Shine. It's a recent track, the leader on Spotify's playlist. They have a set of astrological sign playlists, with a pretty prominent following, and this landed her on Spotify as Libra playlist. It's collaboration with fellow Pittsburgh rapper who goes by My Favorite Color, which is a great name. But yeah, we're going to lead you out with Shine by Sierra Sellers. A nice vibey track. Great for just a chill day. Just a little mood booster. So hope you enjoy. 

 In this episode of the P100 Podcast, our hosts Paul, Dan and Logan welcome Nicole Chynoweth from the Carnegie Science Center to discuss the center’s new exhibit on mummies. From there we move on to the science of fear, and then on to hockey with their guest, Jeremy Church. This episode wraps up with a review of some unique Pennsylvania town names. We bet you have your favorites.----more----Full transcript here:Logan: You are listening to the P100 podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news culture and more because sometimes 100 words just aren't enough for a great story.Dan: Hi everyone. Welcome back to the P100 Podcast, we're happy to have you back for another episode. I am Dan Stefano, I'm here with Logan Armstrong. Logan.Logan: How's it going?Dan: A pleasure to have you with us and Paul Furiga will be joining us in a little bit. Today's episode we're going to be talking about mummies. Not your mothers, not like that Logan. I see you, that's what you're thinking. No, just having a pleasant thought, thinking about dear old mom. No, Okay.Dan: Now, we're actually going to be talking about the mummies that you might think of whenever you think of ancient Egypt and other parts of the world here. There's a new exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center - Mummies of the World, and we're really excited to talk with someone from the Science Center about that.Dan: Afterward, we're going to be discussing the science of fear. Keeping with us, somewhat of a Halloween type of theme here. Then, we're going to be talking about, what everybody knows, it's the beginning of hockey season. Logan, you excited about that?Logan: No. Dan: No. You're not excited about hockey. Okay. Well, I am and some other people in the office, and we're going to be talking with one of them about the growth of youth hockey in the region, which is really something that's taken off in the past few couple of decades here in Pittsburgh. And we're going to finish up with Logan and I being just as serious we are now. We're going to talk about strange Pennsylvania town names. So if you make it to the end, you're going to be in for treat on that one.Logan: Oh yeah. Stay tuned.Dan: Okay, so let's get going. All right guys, for this segment we're going to talk about mummies. In particular, mummies of the world, the exhibition. It's a new exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center and from the Science Center, we have Nicole Chynoweth. Nicole, thanks for being here.Nicole: Thank you for having me.Dan: Absolutely. Thanks for being with us here. And can we talk a little bit about your own role within the Science Center here. Can you tell us your position and a little bit what you do?Nicole: Sure. So, I'm the manager of marketing, public relations, and social media with a focus on exhibits and the Rangos Giants Cinema.Dan: Great. What does that entail then? I mean, that I imagine you you are working with a lot of different positions there. Right?Nicole: Yeah, it's a really fun job. I get my hands in everything from new movies that we have coming out at the Rangos, educational films to the exciting new exhibits that we're bringing to the science center, from space topics, planetarium related things, and mummies-Dan: Really cool, it seems like a fun place to work. Right?Paul: Nicole, you've had your hands in the mummies?Nicole: No.Paul: Okay. The promotion of the mummies.Dan: The promotion of the mummies. Paul: I'm sure we'll talk about some of the technical aspects, but that would seem a little gross, but...Nicole: I don't think so. I find the exhibition more fascinating than I do creepy. And I'm not a fan of scary movies or I did not watch the Brendan Fraser mummy movie.Paul: You didn't?Nicole: No interest in that.Paul: I did watch those.Dan: You're missing out on a classic from the 1990s.Paul: Yeah. Well, classic is a little strong-Dan: I think it should have won an Oscar, but that's just me.Paul: Okay, Dan. We'll talk about that another time. So Nicole, when I think of the science center, I think about some of the other things you mentioned. Space, technology, mummies?Nicole: Yes, mummies are, especially this show, the mummies featured in Mummies of the World, the exhibition is, have so much to offer in terms of scientific, anatomical, biological information that we can still learn from today. So what I find really exciting about the mummies of the world is that it focuses on both natural mummification and intentional mummification. So, you might be more familiar with intentional mummification. That's the type that was [crosstalk 00:04:15] practicing in ancient Egypt. Correct.Nicole: And we do have some examples of Egyptian mummification in the show, but this also takes a look at the natural mummification process that can happen when conditions are at such a level moisture wise, temperature-wise that is able to naturally mummify a body, be it animal or human.Dan: Right. Well, it sounds like some pretty amazing things to see...Paul: Yeah, it's fascinating.Dan: What are some examples maybe of the intended mummification that we'd see there? I mean, is there anything from, I guess everybody knows about Egyptian mummies but then, they're also South American. What else might you see?Nicole: So an interesting example of the intentional mummification process that aside from like the Egyptian mummies that are featured in the show, there is Mumab, also known as the Maryland Mummy. In the nineties, two scientists at the University of Maryland decided that they wanted to try their hand at an Egyptian mummification process. A man had donated his body to science, and so they started the process of mummifying him. So, you can see Mumab in the show.Nicole: That's just an interesting way of seeing how we are still learning thousands and thousands of years later about how this process works and the tools that they had to use to complete the process and what the body has to go through for mummification to occur.Dan: That's really cool.Paul: Did it work?Nicole: I've been told that it's still in process, it's not completely... He's not completely mummified yet.Paul: Take some time?Nicole: Yes.Paul: Wow. Something I never knew.Dan: That's pretty awesome. Can you tell us what else is in the exhibit then? I mean, are there any, you say interactive portions to it. What should people and families expect whenever they're inside here. It's not just, as you'd be at a museum taking a look. I mean one of the great things about the science center is it kind of hands-on.Paul: Hands-on. Yeah.Nicole: Yes. So in addition, to the 40 animal and human mummies and 85 rare related artifacts, visitors will also be able to look through several interactives related to different topics within mummification. I think a favorite among children will definitely be the, what does mummy feel like a station where you can touch different types of mummified materials, so there's like frog skin, fur. Mummified fur, different things like that they'll be able to touch these like textile panels that are examples of what those things feel like.Nicole: Another great interactive is there's a large map that shows where different types of mummies have been found all over the world, which I think is really important to look at from the perspective of which, like you said, we are so used to just thinking about Egyptian mummies.Paul: Yes.Nicole: And really there are mummies all over the world, [crosstalk 00:07:15].Paul: So not to be surprised?Nicole: Yeah.Paul: You never know where you might find a mummy!Nicole: Right, right.Dan: Okay. Well, people will hear, we can see Mummies of the World through April 19th that's correct, right?Nicole: Correct. Open through April 19th. It takes about 60 to 90 minutes to get through the exhibition, for parents that are maybe wondering if the exhibition is appropriate for their children. We do have a family guide available at carnegiesciencecenter.org/mummies, that might answer some of the questions parents have before they take their kids to the exhibition.Nicole: But I really believe that it is appropriate for all ages and I think people will take something away from the show, be it a new interest in archeology or anthropology or just being able to connect with the backstories of the mommies that are featured in the show. You get to know them. They're more than just a mummy in front of you. You learn their story, how they lived, the way they lived, where they were from. So, super excited to have it at the science center and to be able to offer this experience to Pittsburghers.Dan: That's great. Anything else happen at the science center lately?Nicole: Yes. So, it's Halloween season.Dan: Yes.Nicole: What better time than to experience a scary movie on Pittsburgh's largest screen?Paul: Very good.Nicole: The Rangos Strengths Cinema teamed up with Scare House, this year actually for Rangos x Scare House. We co-curated some Halloween movies together to offer Pittsburgh a really exciting lineup for the Halloween seasons. So we have coming up the Universal Studios Classic Monsters. We're showing the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein and Dracula, on October 11th through the 13th.Nicole: We also have Dawn of the Dead 3D showing October 25th and the 26th. And that's a really exciting screening because they don't often show the 3D version. So if you've seen Dawn the Dead before, I can guarantee you have not seen it like this.Dan: This is the original one?Nicole: Yes. This is the original Dawn of the dead. Yes.Paul: In 3D.Nicole: In 3D.Paul: Have you seen it, Nicole?Nicole: I have not seen it. I'm not a huge fan of the scary movies, but I've been told that if there's one I should experience at the Rangos this year. It's probably this one.Dan: All right? Just how big again is the Rangos?Nicole: So we are a certified giant screen. The screen itself measures 72 by 38 feet.Paul: Wow.Nicole: We also have 45 surround sound speakers. Your average theater has 14.Paul: Dan, if you and I can get that past our spouses and into our basements. I think that'll be good.Dan: I might have to tear down a wall or two in my basement, but I think I can handle it.Paul: You know, it's all about the purpose, Dan.Dan: You know what, we're trying to fix more damage to begin with. So I think I could get this Rangos a screen down here. That'd be perfect.Paul: It'd be very nice.Dan: Nicole, how can people find out more about the Carnegie Science Center, both online and in social media?Nicole: Sure. Visit us at carnegiesciencecenter.org or find us on Facebook. Carnegie Science Center or Twitter and Instagram @Carnegie S-C-I-C-T-R.Dan: Okay. Thanks so much for coming on Nicole. We appreciate it.Nicole: Thank you.Paul: Yes.Dan: All right guys. We were just talking about mummies and now we're going to... mummies, if you'll look back at it, they're famous movie monsters, some of the old ones from the 30s, some of the more recent mummy movies and whatnot.Paul: Brendan Fraser.Dan: Exactly, yeah. I love those horror movies and I love being scared. I love this time of year whenever we get a chance to go out to a haunted house. Me and my wife try to do one at least once a year. She's not wild about them, but I have a great time. Even right now in a couple of days. I believe the scare house is going to be reopening the scare houses. One of the more popular attractions around the area of this third winter.Paul: Award-winning.Dan: Award-winning, correct. Yeah. They had to move from Etna and they're in the Strip District. I think they maybe even changed the name to reflect that, but I think, it's interesting that people love to go to these things and they're so well attended.Dan: You see the lines around the block just to be scared and so I've had a chance to go look at the psychology of fear here, and there's an interesting phenomenon that researchers have found called VANE. It's V-A-N-E, and it stands for Voluntary Arousing Negative Experiences. Logan or Paul, you guys ever felt anything like that? Do you have any voluntary experiences?Paul: Yes. Dan, some people call that work?Dan: No. Yes.Paul: I've absolutely. So, I mean, I'm the old guy in the room. You think back to when I was a teenager, the voluntary arousing negative experience was to take the date you really like to a scary movie.Dan: Okay.Paul: I think we're going to get into this Dan, some of the why this is in... Things that people will voluntarily do you, you might not have expected a certain level of affection from your date, but if you took her to a scary movie, there would be the involuntary reaction when something happened on the screen of-Dan: Them getting closer? There you go. That's clever.Paul: Yeah. Well, and it's all this time at least all the scary movies.Dan: I think, when you look at some of the research here, what they point at, one of the most important parts of that is that it `is voluntary and that people were making a conscious decision to go out and be scared. And a lot of that is about overcoming stress. And you might go in with another person, you're working together to try to get through this shared experience here, fighting the monsters, try not to punch the actors who are just trying to have a good time and scare you.Dan: But they get a chance to get outside of themselves, and as we said, face a fear and there's really a great quote here from a woman named Justine Musk. Her quote says, "Fear is a powerful beast, but we can learn to ride it". I think that's just a very good succinct way to put it. But our good friend Logan here, you were actually a psychology major for a couple of years at Pitt and you know a lot about fear.Logan: Yes. So, as you said, I was a psychology major for a few years. I really enjoy just kind of how humans work. But so basically what it is that you have a part of your brain and it's a little almond-shaped lobe called a medulla. But, so basically what happens is that you're, when you see emotions on people's faces or when you see something that would cause you to emote in a certain way.Logan: So, say you see you're out in the wild and you see a lion and you're like, well that's not good. So that message sends to your medulla, which then sends to your limbic system. And if you guys are aware of the limbic system, it's your fight or flight response.Dan: Yes, okay.Logan: When you experience these negative arousals, that kicks into high gear and that pumps adrenaline through your entire body, your pupils dilate, your bronchitis dilates, just you're in this hyper-aware zone, and that's where adrenaline junkies get it from.Logan: It's a similar thing to where you're experiencing fear where you might be scared, but your adrenaline is pumping so much and it's releasing so many endorphins and dopamine that you end up enjoying it.Dan: Well. Okay, now we know whenever we either go to a haunted house or if we go see the mummies exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center, none of us are going to be scared because we know all the science, and we just know what's going on in our brain.Paul: Well, I mean this is also why people like roller coasters shout out to the steel curtain at Kennywood. Because they know it's safe. Right?Dan: Right.Paul: The experience is scary, but it's safe. When you go and see a movie. Yes. You sure hope so. You see the movie, you know it's going to be an hour and 20 minutes or two hours or whatever and when it's over, you may have been scared during the movie, but you're okay. The same with the rollercoaster, three minutes and then you're back in line, right it again. Right? Because you've enjoyed that safe experience of being scared.Logan: And it's the same concept where it's going back to my earlier example. If you see a lion in the wild or you're going to be scared. But if you go to the zoo, you're going to think it's cute or whether somebody else tickles you, you get a reaction, but you can't tickle yourself because your brain knows it's not a threat.Dan: Well, we do see a lot of alligators on the streets of Pittsburgh these days, so I don't know. You know what I mean. Maybe we'll see a lion the next, but I don't know that's all there is to know about fear or at least a good introduction for it. So, yeah. Logan, thanks for the knowledge there.Logan: Sure thing.Dan: Yeah. Maybe you should have stayed as a psychology major.Paul: He won't be here helping us today.Dan: That's a fair point.Logan: Now he's like "you really should've stayed a psych major"Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections are made around fires. As we shared, the stories have shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At Word Wright, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency. We understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.Logan: Word Wright helps clients to uncover their own Capital S story. The reason someone would want to buy work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process, visit wordpr.com to uncover your capitalist story.Paul: All right guys. It's a fun time of year because the penguins are back in action. We're all hoping that they can get back to the Stanley cup this year. Who better to have on our vice president Jeremy Church here at one of our vice presidents here at WordWrite. Jeremy, you're involved with hockey and can you tell us a little bit about that?Jeremy: Sure. I've been fortunate to be involved with the game for nearly 40 years now as a player and a coach. Grew up starting about eight I guess in Michigan. Then we moved here in 10 continued to play, went away to prep school and played all through prep school Junior A, was fortunate enough again to play in college and then the last 17 years at various levels. I've been able to coach.Paul: That's awesome. Yeah, Who do you coach with?Jeremy: Right now, I'm coaching my younger son. With 11 Hornets, youth hockey organization. Prior to that, I helped with the high school in Mount Lebanon for five years. Coached at Shady Side Academy for a year and again using the word fortunate was able to go back to the Prep school. I played at Culver Military Academy and coached there for six years and it's a pretty storied program.Paul: That's fair and awesome. Well, Pittsburgh's got a long history in hockey going back to the turn of the century here, pretty much and but from a lot of people, the history and hockey didn't start until Mario Lemieux got here in the early eighties and Jeremy have a fun story about Mario Lemieux actually.Jeremy: I do. There've been two big booms locally when it comes to the growth of the sport. And certainly the first one had to have been when Merrill was drafted back in 1984 so we had just moved here from outside of Detroit and moved to the South Hills and we went to South Hills village one day and the mall was still there. At the time it was Kaufman's Department Store, which is no longer there.Paul: Oh yeah, the mall's there now just no Kaufmann's.Jeremy: So we're walking through and there's a little table set up and there are two or three people sitting there, one of them towers over all the others. And as we get closer and closer, there's no line at all. Mind you, it's Mario Lemieux sitting there signing autographs before he'd ever played a game.Jeremy: So, we walked up to the table, got his autograph. He still really couldn't speak English that well. But if you could imagine today the kind of stir it would create if Mario were around talking at to anyone in any environment. It was the exact opposite back then. I still have the autograph today.Paul: What did you get autographed?Jeremy: They had little teeny pamphlets of him in his Junior A Laval and from the Quebec Major Junior League Jersey, and that's all they had to sign. I think it was him. And it might've been Paul Steigerwald because at the time he was head of showing Mario around town and Mario, for those who don't remember when he was 18 actually lived with a host family in Mount Lebanon for the first year that he was here when he was 18.Paul: Yeah. Well, like I said it, whenever he first got here, he lived with Lemieux.Jeremy: Yeah, he returned the favor.Paul: Well, since that day, whenever there was no line at Kauffman's, today there was no more Kauffman's and you would have a gigantic line. But so what can you say about just seeing the growth of hockey? Especially from a youth hockey angle here, you've been front and center with it your entire life?Jeremy: It's pretty remarkable. Doing a little research earlier and in 1975 there were basically two rinks that you could play out of indoor rinks for Youth Hockey: Rostraver Gardens, which is still around and Mount Lebanon Recreation Center, which is still around.Jeremy: By 1990, when I was in high school, there were 10 and now that figure is roughly doubled to around 20 in the region. There are 62 high school teams and there are 28 organizations in the Pittsburgh Amateur Hockey League. And within the Pittsburgh Amateur Hockey League, there are now 5,600 players. And that's for those who are around playing in the eighties or growing up in the eighties and early nineties here, that's almost hard to believe there's, you know that there are 28 organizations, but if you go down through the ranks of 18 and under 16 and under 14, 12, ten eight and under age groups, there's dozens and dozens of teams at various levels all throughout that.Jeremy: So, for last year at the ten-year level, ten-year-old level, there were 80 plus 10 new teams in PAHL, Pittsburgh Amateur Hockey League League. So pretty remarkable.Paul: Right, Yeah. The majority of those kids, they're probably not going to be heading to the NHL, but a lot of kids want to at least, pretend that they're one of their heroes and get involved in the game. And I think one of the problems, maybe not a problem with hockey, but one of the issues surrounding it is there is a perception that there is a bit of a barrier to entry. You've got to have skates, you've got to have pads, you've got to have a good helmet, you've got to have a good stick. There's a lot of, there's a lot to that kit there. Jeremy, there are easier ways for kids to get involved in the game today though, right?Jeremy: Yes. Part of the Testament to the Penguins organization and certainly as Sidney Crosby has been, his emphasis and involvement with youth programs and youth hockey initiatives. And not just in Pittsburgh, but I know as well back when he returns to Canada in the summer and throughout the year, he likes to give back to the community.Jeremy: But a big initiative that started, it's now celebrating it's 10 year anniversary or 11 year anniversary is the little Penguins learn to play hockey, where Sid partnered with Dick's sporting goods to give, what is now I believe more than a thousand sets of free equipment out to kids who want to start playing the sport. So that goes hand in hand with a program that I think runs six weeks, eight weeks, in January, February to get kids introduced to hockey.Jeremy: But to your point in that, the big barrier to entry is the cost of equipment, which can be several hundred dollars even for kids that are five, six, seven years old. So that's certainly got a lot of kids involved in the game and has led to those massive increases in participation that I cited before.Paul: All right, that's awesome, Jeremy. Well, thanks so much for coming in and talking to us about hockey. We're hoping for another good season from the Penguins. Maybe a longer playoff run than last year. We got a bit of a break last year. I think they earned it after winning a couple of cups. But yeah, thanks again and yeah, we'll talk to you soon.Jeremy: No problem. Thanks to you.Dan: Right. This next segment. We're going to learn a little more about our co-host Logan Armstrong. Logan is from Eighty Four, PA.Logan: That I am.Dan: Now, we got talking about this and it got us, we started, you know, going down a rabbit hole and we got discussing why 84 was actually named 84? At first, I thought it was named after the construction company the-Logan: 84 Lumber.Dan: Yeah, 84 Lumber, and it turns out I was wrong. That 84 is named after 84 PA, and there's a lot of history and a lot of different theories about how the town was named. Logan, do you want to go through some of them maybe?Logan: Yeah, sure. So there are a couple theories. 84 is quite the town. There's not much in it other than 84 Lumber, but you know, it's nice. There are a lot of theories on how it was named, the most popular of which is that it commemorated Grover Cleveland's 1884 election victory. Some other theories were that it's on mile 84 of the railway mail service. My favorite though is that it's located at 80 degrees and four minutes West longitude. This seems like the most probable to me.Dan: My favorite actually is apparently in 1869 general David "Crazy Legs" Hamilton had an outfit of 84 soldiers with them and held off an attack of Outlaws. Now that just sounds fantastic. Yeah.Logan: That sounds quite heroic. If that is the case. I am proud to be from 84 PA.Dan: Maybe you're a descendant of general David "Crazy Legs" Hamilton here. Is that possible?Logan: Yeah. I believe I'm Logan "Crazy Toes" Armstrong.Dan: Okay, keep your shoes on man! We don't want to see anything. Well, after this, after we talked about 84 we also started taking a look at some other weird names for towns in Pennsylvania here and if you go online, you can find quite a few of them. Logan, what were some of the interesting ones you like you?Logan: There are quite a few to choose from. A couple of my favorites were, while the all known intercourse, PA, which is actually the most stolen sign in Pennsylvania, where it says "Welcome to Intercourse" for good reason.Dan: Obvious reasons.Logan: Right. Going along that same route, a rough and ready PA was, they named it after a California Gold Rush town, so I guess they're rough and ready to get some gold out there. Can't blame them for that.Dan: I imagine that sign is also been stolen many times.Logan: Right. Okay. Then, well, let's play a game here. I'm going to give you some Pennsylvania town names and you're going to tell me how you think that those names came to be. How's that sound?Dan: Bring them on. I'm a repository of knowledge.Logan: Okay, great. Peach Bottom.Dan: Peach Bottom. This is simple. This is extremely simple. Everybody in the town of Peach Bottom is very short, and they're, but they're also Peach farmers, so they can only see the bottom of the peaches that come from the trees. It's kind of a shame because they've never seen the peach tops.Logan: That is a shame. Those peach tops are so beautiful.Dan: We have an actual reason why it's called Peach Bottom?Logan: In fact, Dan, you weren't too far off, Peach Bottom. Got its name in 1815 from a peach orchard owned by a settler named John Kirk.Dan: John Kirk was very short, as we all know.Logan: Right? Yes. Okay. Shickshinny, Pennsylvania. What do you think of that?Dan: Schickshinny. Ah, got it. Okay. Shickshinny is named after a famous dance created by the person who created Schick shaving blades. Fun fact, a few people realize that he had a dance. Whenever he would cut his face on his old rusty blades, he would do a little jig-Logan: A little jig!Dan: In a big thing because it can... to get the pain away, and so he decided I've got to create a better, more comfortable blade and so he created the Schick shaving blade.Logan: Well, I foresee-Dan: Everybody knows this.Logan: I've foreseen the future...We had the Whip, we had the Nae Nae. Next, we're going to have the Shickshinny going on in all the clubs in Pittsburgh.Dan: I think this one is actually one of those Indian words that have made a lot of Pennsylvania names here.Logan: Yeah. Yeah. It looks like an Indian word that either means the land of mountains or land of the fine stream.Dan: Or land of the cutting your face on your favorite razor.Logan: Yeah, I think that's the most common translation. Yeah.Dan: Sure.Logan: We are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 podcast. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe at P100podcast.com or wherever you listen to podcasts, and follow us on Twitter @Pittsburgh100_, for all the latest news updates and more, from the Pittsburgh 100.

Welcome to another episode of the P100 Podcast. Today we cover our own Port Authority. Robin Rectenwald shares with us some local getaways inside tips. Director, Dawn Keezer from the Pittsburgh Film Office talks about on location in Pittsburgh. This episode winds up with Pittsburgh Polyphony spotlight - Flower Crown.This Episode is sponsored by WordWriteCenturies before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Here is the full transcript from this episode:Logan: You're listening to the P100 Podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more. Because sometimes 100 words just aren't enough for a great story.Dan: All right. Welcome back to another episode of The P100 Podcast. I'm Dan Stefano. I'm here with Logan Armstrong.Logan: Good to see you again, Dan.Dan: And Paul Furiga, who'll be joining us just momentarily.Dan: Today's episode, we've got four segments for you. First, we're going to be discussing public transportation in both Pittsburgh and other American cities. We're going to talk with Dawn Keezer of the Pittsburgh Film Office, which will be a lot of fun. It was a really good chat with her. We're going to discuss quick getaways you can take outside of Pittsburgh. Sometimes you got to get away, and we'll be talking with Robin Rectenwald of WordWrite for that one, and then we'll finish it up with talking about a good local Pittsburgh band for our Pittsburgh polyphony series. Excited to hear that, so let's get to it.PORT AUTHORITYPaul: All right guys. Let's talk planes, trains, and autonomous automobiles. A little shout out there to the old John Candy movie.Dan: That's a classic movie.Paul: It is a classic movie.Dan: Steve Martin too, right?Paul: Steve Martin, that's right. Yes indeed.Logan:Much before my time.Paul:Oh, you got to see that movie.Dan: Logan, you weren't even alive.Paul: You weren't alive, but you can stream it.Dan: Is it John Hughes?Paul: Yes. I think it's a John Hughes film actually, one of the-Dan: Okay. See, I know my movie stuff.Paul: ... few he did in that era when it wasn't all about teen angst. But speaking of teen angst and public transportation, it seems like a perennial topic in the news in Pittsburgh, is how to get from point A to point B. And I just don't mean the topography. For instance, if you drew my street on a map, it would look like a lasso, you know the old cowboy thing?Dan: Sure.Paul: You can get onto Courtney Place, the street I live on, and turn left on Courtney Place and go around a circle and turn left, and you're still on Courtney Place. That's another issue. What we're talking about today is, maybe because of things like that, how difficult it is to get from point A to point B. And the importance of public transportation.Paul: And so, recently Dan, Logan, we were looking at the news about the Port Authority starting or considering some 24-hour transit routes. And Logan, I know you're an Oakland denizen, some of those routes would head out that way, that we'd start with you. Thoughts?Logan: Yeah, I'd be a big fan of that. I know that they're only considering really the heavier routes, which obviously make sense. You don't want to have empty buses going all night, but I think that would be really helpful.Logan: I know there have been a few times where, whether I'm in Oakland or elsewhere past midnight or so, I mean, it gets pretty scarce trying to get to point A to point B, and there are Uber and Lyft, but Pitt students have Pitt IDs and they get free Port Authority rides, and so, I mean, you're going to expect college students to be out pretty late, so I think they should be able to take advantage of that. So I think it's a great idea.Dan: Well, it's not only for the college students too. I believe one of the aims behind the Port Authority trying this is to help people who might work late shift. Those late shift workers who, maybe they're not done until 2:00 or 3:00, and they're working at least on some areas near these routes and it really helps them, and I think they're important to have for modern city living.Paul: You know, one of the challenges that we've had in the last several years is funding for public transportation. I think that still is a huge issue. Now we have competition for public transportation.Paul: Logan, you mentioned ride sharing, Lyft or Uber. And of course Pittsburgh is a hotbed for autonomous vehicle development, and it made a bit of news a few weeks ago when the CEO of one of the companies here in Pittsburgh that are testing autonomous vehicles, Argo AI, wrote a medium blog post in which he said that that company will never build autonomous vehicles for personal use.Paul: And I think a lot of people were figuring that, again, remember my street, it goes in a circle, that Uber and all of them were here because they were ... If you can figure out how to drive in Pittsburgh in an autonomous vehicle, you could drive anywhere in an autonomous vehicle.Paul: I don't know. Dan, what do you think? Autonomous vehicles in your garage? Yes? No?Dan: I don't know. Maybe a personal vehicle…that'd be a difficult buy-in. I think it's one of those things where just in my life I've always had a car that I drive myself. I mean, obviously if, say in the future there are babies that are born that only know autonomous vehicles and might be used to it for them.Dan: But I can say that I have been in an autonomous car. And I've had the AI driving me around. I took an Uber once that was an AI car, and obviously there were two people in the front seats, one behind the wheel who just had, was a little bit hands-off, and then another with the computer taking in all the data. It was a really cool experience.Dan: But one part that, at one moment we were driving through, I believe it was Bloomfield or somewhere along Baum Boulevard, and we came to one of those classic Pittsburgh 19-streets-meet-at-once intersections. And there was somebody coming in the opposing lane who had made a sharp cut in front of us. And the car made a really sudden stop. And so, I was talking with the operators about it and they said one of the problems that, problems or issues or minor things is, these AI, they still have to take into account other people's decisions. And that's really where I think that that's where the work has got to be done yet, in autonomous vehicles here.Dan: And so, it's going to be tough if not every car out there is going to be driven by another robot, you know?Paul: Well, and you know, Dan, we were talking about this earlier, and if you think about it, if every new vehicle after some date and time were autonomous, you would still have, what did you say? 200 million?Dan: I couldn't tell you how many-Paul: Millions.Dan: ... cars are out there, but probably hundreds of millions of cars.Paul: Non-autonomous vehicles.Dan: Right. Precisely. So it's going to take a while before this stuff is at its scale and it's the only thing available.Logan: Yeah. You can map streets all you want, but you can't really map human decision making.Paul: Well, one thing we know for sure, the topic of getting from A to B here in Pittsburgh is not going to go away anytime soon. So on some distant future podcast, look for us to update our musings on getting from here to there.Dan: You're going to keep complaining about that lasso, aren't you?Paul: I am.GETAWAYSDan: All right. For this next segment, we have Robin Rectenwald. And she's an account supervisor here at WordWrite.Dan: Robin, thanks for being here.Robin: Thanks for having me.Dan: Absolutely. We wanted to bring you in because a couple of stories recently that we had in the 100 discussed some short getaways that you can take from Pittsburgh here. And there were both some really interesting luxury type locations, and Robin, one of those places that you went to was Bedford Springs Resort in Bedford, PA. And you talked about just being your first solo trip, but also just seemed like a really cool, unique place that was a quick little drive away.Robin: Yeah. My best friend had actually told me about the Omni Bedford Springs Resort. She needed some time away, she was going through a really stressful time in her life. And so, years later I finally was able to take the trip for myself. It was on my to-do list for a while.Dan: Sure. Well, it seems like it's pretty cool to take one of these trips, and it's really just in your backyard, too. And I think maybe a lot of people don't quite realize all of these ... You don't have to go all the way to the coast. You don't have to go to California or something, Florida, to find a really great vacation. And did you find that?Robin: Yeah, that's what I loved about this trip. I actually am someone who doesn't like to drive very far distances by myself. I'm a little bit of a drowsy driver.Dan: That's really safe, to be on a Pennsylvania turnpike as a drowsy driver!Robin: Yeah. But this one was quick and easy. It was literally on the dot two hours. So yeah, just getting there was super easy. I felt comfortable going by myself.Dan: Right. And was it as relaxing as it claimed to be?Robin: It was beautiful. I really did feel like I was in paradise. The hotel itself is beautiful, it's historic, so you go in, it's these big staircases, these old elevators, this creaky floors. It was just taking a step back into time into, like the 18 hundreds.Dan: It's kind of like The Shining hotel before it became The Shining hotel. Right?Robin: Much less creepy.Dan: Right, yeah. No Jack Nicholson bursting through your door. That's good to know.Dan: Logan, you recently wrote just recently in the 100 here about some pretty cool little cabins through a company called Getaway.Logan: Yeah, quite a fitting name. I had seen one of their ads on some social media, and-Dan: Social media has ads?Logan: I know, right? It's incredible.Dan: Wow.Logan: But so, they're these cabins, they're just 45 minutes from Pittsburgh. They're in Lisbon Creek, Ohio, tucked right next to a state park out there. And yeah, I mean, they're cabins across these 59 acres of land, and I'm definitely trying to make it out there. I haven't yet, but they look beautiful and they're nice and away from wifi so you can just let yourself go. But so, I had seen one of their ads on social media and I've now been barraged with Getaway ads for the past two weeks on every single social media platform.Logan: But yeah, it's 45 minutes, something just quick and easy, you can getaway. It doesn't take too much time off work if any at all. Just go out there for the weekend and just relax.Dan: Right? Now those cabins are actually next to Beaver Creek State Park. So very close. And I edited that story, so I have a lot of ads from Getaway right now, too. It's great.Dan: I think one thing that is cool to remember here is that we can take these small trips, and it's such a great time of year to get away and be into the country. Do you guys like going out, maybe doing some hiking, going to see some fall leaves? Robin?Robin: Yeah, I'm actually going on a train ride with my mom, the end of September. It's in Elks, West Virginia, and they have these four-hour train rides. So yeah, another quick getaway.Dan: Right? When I was a kid, I took a, it was all the way up in North Central PA. We took a trip through the --Robin: Oh, Kinzua Bridge?Dan: Yeah. Which, I don't think that exists anymore. I'm pretty sure it got blown down-Robin: No, it's still there. I was just there in May.Dan: Oh. I could have sworn it got blown down in a storm. I guess I'm completely wrong.Robin: It's partially did, so you can actually go there and see a partial bridge, and you can hike underneath it. It's pretty cool.Dan: Oh wow. That's really cool. Yeah, so I remember it being very high, so that's pretty cool.Logan: Yeah. I also love going out to Ohiopyle, or Ohiopyle depending on who you ask. But that's great. It's probably a two, two and a half hours. You can go out there and see Fallingwater while you're out there. Yeah. Lots of hiking trails.Robin: Kentuck Knob.Logan: What's that?Robin: Kentuck Knob is another Frank Lloyd Wright's house right nearby Fallingwater.Logan: Oh really?Robin: Yeah.Logan: See, I did not know that. I’ve got to put that on the list.Dan: Right. Well, I think the important thing to take away from this is, everybody, we've got some really great fall weather coming up, some really awesome leaves to see and foliage, and everybody should definitely take advantage of these locations that are just a couple hours away.Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story.Logan: WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.PITTSBURGH IN FILMPaul: Well, welcome back everybody. I'm Paul Furiga, I'm publisher of the Pittsburgh 100 and President and Chief Storyteller of WordWrite. And we are pleased today to have with us Dawn Keezer, who on September 24th will celebrate 25 years of running the Pittsburgh Film Office.Paul: Logan, that's just hard to believe, isn't it?Logan: Yeah, no, it's awesome. I'm glad that we have such a great organization here in Pittsburgh. It does wonders for the city.Paul: Dawn, welcome.Dawn: Thank you.Paul: Tell us a little bit about the film office and what you folks do.Dawn: Well, the Pittsburgh Film Office is an economic development agency that focuses on marketing Southwestern Pennsylvania to the film industry. And that includes everything from feature films, television shows that you see on TV, commercials, documentaries, corporate videos. Anything, I used to say, anything rolling any kind of film. Now it's anybody using their iPhone that's doing anything on a professional level. We're helping them make that happen here in Southwestern PA. We represent all 10 counties in the region. Some people don't realize how big a reach the film office has.Logan: Tell us a little bit about your day-to-day role in the film office and what you're doing on a day-to-day basis.Dawn: Well, we have a huge staff at the film office. There's three of us that work there full time and that includes me. We all do a little bit of everything.Dawn: I've been there a really long time, so I'm the go-to both for our relationships with the government officials who really help us make everything happen when we're closing streets and closing bridges and need help getting into places like SCI Pittsburgh, but essentially the film office is a one-stop shop for the film and entertainment industry.Dawn: Whether they need permits to close streets, whether they're looking for an office supply company to give them their copier machines, for lumber for to build their sets, to find local crew. Anything that's going to involve their project moving forward, they call the film office and we're the ones that help them make that happen.Paul: When Logan and I were talking about this segment, Dawn, we were talking about the history. One of the cool things that people always talk about with Pittsburgh is that so much happens here with film and with TV, but that didn't happen by accident. Tell us how the film office got started and why.Dawn: Well, the film office got started, as I was told, I'm the second director, Robert Curran was who actually was here when they started the film office under the Greater Pittsburgh Office Of Promotion. It was all being operated, I'm showing you guys, because I like to use my hands, but it was in the bottom drawer of a person working in Mayor Sophie Masloff's office at the time. He'd pull out a drawer, go, "Okay, what do we do with this one?"Dawn: And when Silence of the Lambs decided to film in Pittsburgh, they went, "Wow, we've really got to step this up."Dawn: So the Greater Pittsburgh Office Of Promotion created the Pittsburgh Film Office. Russ Streiner, who's our current board chair, actually founded the film office with a few others, and they really started professionalizing the whole approach. By the time I got here it was an established film office, but it was really about making sure the community is protected and the clients, the film companies, are getting what they want done and accomplished.Dawn: Pittsburgh looks great, but everyone feels good about it at the end of the day.Paul: I think, and Logan, chime in here, but most people in Pittsburgh, and I'm making a generalization here, but I think they're proud to see Pittsburgh in TV and film, but we don't really have an understanding as Pittsburghers of how this all really works.Paul: An economic impact of 650 million, you said?Dawn: Well, that's how much wanted to be spent here. And it is.Paul: Wanted it to be spent.Dawn: They wanted to spend here. We're going to be lucky to retain about 200 million of it.Paul: Oh my goodness.Dawn: And this is money spent throughout the entire economy. The big spend, of course, is on our local crew, which we have some of the most experienced, amazing craftsmen that work in this, craftsmen and women, who work in this industry throughout the region.Dawn: Our crew is so good people travel them. They take them elsewhere because if they're not working at home, they leave. And in the old days they were lucky to stay. I say the old days prior to the film tax credits, they were lucky to be here for one film a year, and then they would go work in different states, in different places. They've all been able to stay home now.Paul: Well, let's talk about that for a second, because, in Pennsylvania anyway, it seems like certain legislators get upset about the size of the credit. But from what I've seen, our credit's not really that big compared to other states.Dawn: Our credit is woefully underfunded and oversubscribed. We needed $127 million dollars to retain all the work that Southwestern Pennsylvania had for this year alone. And we have to share the film tax credit with our friends over in Philly. We're one of the only states that have two production centers, meaning two places where people film.Dawn: I equate the tax credit to a 25% off coupon you get at your local store. This is money coming in. We're giving them 25 cents on every dollar they spend after they've spent 60% of their budget in the commonwealth. And they have to prove this. They fill out forms, they're audited. We know where every dime is spent on every single thing they do well before they ever get their tax credit certificate.Dawn: We just keep having the conversations and hopefully, we'll get to the point where they go, "Oh, we really do need to increase the film tax credit."Dawn: Georgia has a 30% uncapped tax credit. I told you, we had topped 1.5 billion this last year, and that's since 1990. Georgia had six billion dollars’ worth of film work last year.Paul: Wow. Now that is just amazing.Dawn: And they're looking for other places to go. If you look at the level of content that's being created right now, with the growth in all the streaming channels and everything else, they're all looking for homes. It's Netflix, it's Disney, it's Amazon. All our clients, they've all been here, they're all coming back. They're all, it just ... We have an opportunity here to really grow it, and I'm really hoping we get to capitalize on it this year.Logan: Like you said, everything you're saying makes sense. I would think that just pounding the nail and then hopefully it gets through some people's heads and realize that there are two production centers here and that that would bring so much money into our economy that otherwise goes unspent.Logan: Through your 25 years though, it sounds like people have wanted to less have Pittsburgh as a double, and actually want their film set in Pittsburgh. Would you say that's correct?Dawn: It's really interesting. It's a great question because we've really seen a growth in the number of shows that set it here. And primarily we're getting more people to write Pittsburgh into the scripts. There's more work being created. It saves them money when they set it in Pittsburgh because then they don't have to worry about, "Oh, there went a police car that's got the wrong logo on it, there goes -Paul: Re-badging, resigning things, yes.Dawn: ... everything."Dawn: We've seen a huge increase in that, which has been fun and it makes life a lot easier for everybody. And it gives us some great marketing.Dawn: Sometimes not so much. Right? Sometimes it's not a storyline that Pittsburgh would want to promote, but again, it's a movie. We're not portraying real life here, or a TV show, whatever it happens to be.Paul: That's great. So, as Pittsburghers, what can we do to help the film industry here thrive and grow?Dawn: Well, what we're really lucky about, I always tell people there are three main reasons anyone films here. It's the tax credits, it's our crew, it's the diversity of locations.Dawn: The fourth unofficial one is the film friendliness of Pittsburgh. We welcome these projects with open arms. We still are excited about it. Yeah, sometimes they block your driveway. Sometimes they're in the way, and we deal with all this usually minor inconveniences that happen throughout the region, but for the most part, we're very supportive. So we'd love for that to continue when people really get to know how friendly our region is.Dawn: Our website is pghfilm.org. We're on all of the social media channels, Facebook, Twitter, everywhere else you're supposed to be these days. It's important that you go check in on what's happening, and if you want to be an extra, we put that information up on our website. We really try to keep things up to date and current as possible.Dawn: I mentioned we have three full-time employees. I have a full staff of interns, they're amazing, from all the local major universities in the region, and they're charged with getting all that stuff updated, so they've been doing a great job. But it's really just checking in and staying supportive.Dawn: And for the legislators that are listening, are you people out there who have friends that are legislators? It's important to remind them that the film tax credit affects the entire region. Not just the people who see the direct impact, but the entire region. We're all benefiting from this economic development generator. And the goal with the tax credits was to not only have an incentive but to build an industry sector. We've done that. Now we need to start building infrastructure and getting purpose-built sound stages and getting some things moving.Dawn: Just supporting the film industry as a whole, as a real viable business in the region, it's really the key.Logan: Great. Well, thank you so much for being here, Dawn. We really appreciate you being here and giving your info and knowledge and expertise on this. This has definitely given me an expanded view of what the Pittsburgh Film Office does. And so, yeah, just thanks for being here.Logan: This is Logan Armstrong and Paul Furiga with the P100 Podcast, and thanks again.Dawn: Thank you.FLOWER CROWN MUSICLogan: Okay, Dan, coming into our next segment, I want to take a couple of minutes to spotlight a local band, Flower Crown, who is on the Crafted Sounds record label, who is a local record label which is run by my friend, Connor Murray. They're doing a lot of great things. But Flower Crown is, I would call them dream-pop, very hazy, very ambient, chill.Logan: My first introduction to them was when I heard their song Bender Szn, it landed on Spotify's Fresh Finds Six Strings playlist, which is a pretty prominent playlist in the platform. It got them a lot of good exposure. As an artist, you're always looking to get on playlists like those.Logan: But yeah, I know you had a little chance to listen to them. What did you think?Dan: Yeah, I think that dream-pop is maybe a good way to describe them. I hadn't heard that term for a genre until you brought it up to me. Until you introduced me to this band here, but I'd agree with it. They'd be nice to just have, put them on for a good mix, a good playlist for a long drive or something like that. And just a nice, kind of soothing, but they do a pretty nice job with their instrumentation. They sound good. So yeah. Excited to hear some more.Logan: Yeah. Yeah. It's a five-member band. And what I like about Flower Crown is that while the music is, like you said, it's great for a long road trip. It's very just, you can kind of get into it. They create their own atmosphere. I haven't met them personally, but from what I've seen on social media and in the public, they're pretty likable guys.Logan: Their profile picture on Facebook has one of them in a big hot dog suit. One of their single covers has them taking off, the guy's in an alien suit, they're taking off his alien head, almost like a Scooby-Doo character. It's nice to be able to see bands that you're able to relate with and are still making music on that scale.Dan: That's awesome. What are we going to hear from them coming up?Logan: Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, I think a great introduction to them is Bender Szn, off their latest project called Sundries, which came out in May. It's a great little single to head out into your day. Very chill. Great for a day like this in October. So yeah, I hope you enjoy.

 For this episode of the P100 Podcast, we have a full house! Joining our regular hosts Logan, Dan and Paul are The Incline Director and author, Rossilynne Culgan who has just published the book 100 Things to do in Pittsburgh Before You Die. WordWriter Hollie Geitner stops by to review a new list of top hated business jargon buzzwords. Let's see how many you use regularly. Stick around to the end, as Dan and Logan discuss . . . aliens.----more----This episode is sponsored by WordWriteCenturies before cellphones and social media, human connections were made around fires, as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts, minds and inspire action.At WordWrite, Pittsburgh’s largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story – the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented StoryCrafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S story.Enjoy the full transcript from this episode below:Logan Armstrong: You are listening to the P100 podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing Pittsburgh news, culture and more, because sometimes 100 words just aren't enough for a great story.Dan Stefano: Hello everyone. It's Dan Stefano, back with another episode of the P100 podcast. I'm alongside my co-hosts here, Logan Armstrong and Paul. Good to see you guys yet again.Logan Armstrong: Yeah, good to be here.Paul Furiga: Thanks, Dan. Really looking forward to this episode. Let's get to it guys.Dan Stefano: Yeah, we got a lot of interesting topics here for you today. We're going to talk a little bit about why it's great to see Pittsburgh on some of these "best of" lists, but some of the reasons behind why you know they —Logan Armstrong: Might not continue forever.Dan Stefano: Exactly. We're also going to talk with Rossilynne Culgan, she's director of The Incline and the author of the second edition of 100 Things To Do In Pittsburgh Before You Die. Lovely title. We're also going to be talking with Hollie Geitner of WordWrite. We're going to discuss business jargon that we hate. And there's some of that stuff that we hate, we actually use so that'll be fun. And then we're going to end it with a conversation about aliens and I'll just leave it right there.Paul Furiga: All right, so one of the other things you want to talk about in today's episode is what a great place Pittsburgh is: Check out all the rankings, and what the future looks like. A couple of years ago, the Allegheny conference did a report on the population trends in the Pittsburgh region. It's a report called Inflection Point. It's on the Allegheny Conference website if you want to check out all the details. Very interesting.Paul Furiga: So here's Pittsburgh today, Dan and Logan. It's a place that's really great for millennials and Gen Z. It's like little Brooklyn, lots of guys with man buns, and curated pickle shops, and really hot restaurants, and that's all really great and cool. Oh, we got autonomous cars driving around on the streets and we love it, right? This is all really, really good stuff. What's interesting to me is how did that happen? And a part of the way that happened is because of the collapse of the steel industry. Essentially an entire generation of people left Pittsburgh.Paul Furiga: You know, I always love it when the national sportscasters say, Oh, those Steelers fans, they travel really well.Dan Stefano: They're not traveling. They just live there.Paul Furiga: Exactly. Dan, they're not traveling. Those Steeler fans are in Houston because in the 1980s, their entire family lost their jobs and they moved to Houston.Dan Stefano: Right.Paul Furiga: So, you know, that is what it is. How it matters, in terms of what's happening today, is that that generation is gone. My generation, the baby boomers, they're retiring and Logan's generation, your generation, there just ain't enough of you to fill all the retiring jobs in the region. The Allegheny conference report said something like 80,000 people are going to retire in the next five years, and there are not enough people to fill those jobs, and because all those people left and became great Steeler fans elsewhere, there's not a big enough talent pool to fill the jobs that we have today.Dan Stefano: Right. And I think where you'd think about getting some of that talent pool from the universities and colleges, which we have a ton of in this city. In this same survey, it said 50% of our 40,000 annual college graduates will leave the region, citing an inability to find a job as their number one reason. And I think that's maybe the crux of the problem here is how do you keep people in this city? You know a lot of these great amenities that you talk about are geared for people who are in college or just recent graduates. How do you keep them in place after that? And I think that's the really the big problem right here and we need to discover industries that are going to keep people.Paul Furiga: Exactly.Dan Stefano: You know right now it's a lot of, kind of niche industries or you know, just places that don't, quite ... types of industries that don't quite have the skills that people might be developing in high schools here or there just aren't enough of those positions available for them.Paul Furiga: Right. It is great that there are autonomous car companies here. How many of them could there be?Dan Stefano: Right.Paul Furiga: And you're not going to learn in high school, at least not today, how to program the software on an autonomous vehicle. That takes some additional training. Now, Logan, I thought it'd be interesting to get your perspective on this. I mean, you're a recent grad, you're in the demographic. You went to Pitt. You went to school with people from outside the region. What Dan shared about people getting a great education here at CMU, Pitt, some of our other schools, and then leaving. What have you seen?Logan Armstrong: What that survey said kind of hits the nail on the head. The inability to find jobs here. I think a lot of the majors that kids are picking aren't necessarily optimal for Pittsburgh, but I also think it's a more generalized problem now that I just think too many kids are forced into choosing college or university as a career path and that it's just overpopulated in general. I mean, I think we've gotten too far away from trade schools and things like that and actually crafts and trades that — you're not going to be able to find all these degree-level jobs in a city as small as Pittsburgh.And it's not small, but it's by no means like a Dallas or an Austin or New York or San Francisco or things like that. And so I think the problem is that it's a combination of things, that there is just truly an inability to find a job, and I also think that with so many options there are today, that kids kind of get overwhelmed as to what they're going to do. I mean, there's so many job paths and job options that you can take, and so many avenues online and everything that you can try to find a job, that it's much more accessible to a kid in Pittsburgh that wants to move to San Francisco, or wants to move to Brooklyn where they can look online, and get a job remotely, which that was impossible really 30 years ago.Paul Furiga: That's really an interesting perspective. And what you shared about maybe college isn't the right path for everybody is a national issue. In this report that I referenced and in a lot of the reporting, this is a big issue. The jobs that are wanting are not necessarily the jobs that require a college degree and you know, our audience, the people who are listening, we've got a lot of business leaders listening and one of the things that this study found is that as business leaders, and I'll include myself in this, frequently we might be pushing people in a particular direction that doesn't actually meet, you know, what's needed. There are certain professions that don't require a four-year degree that are, you know, pretty well-paying jobs, right? And those are always wanting, you know? It's a skills mismatch.Dan Stefano: Right. That's an interesting phrase to use there because on a national level we talk about a skills gap and the lack of people getting into, say, these technical biz industries. A big part of it is how culturally we think about education post-high school. The paradigm is shifting with the amount of student loan debt people are getting as Logan, you put it, it's overpopulated. I think, you know, within the next decade here, we're going to have to see a shift. That's going to be what changes the workforce around the country. Not only Pittsburgh but you know, especially here, this type of, you know, a change in education is probably what's going to drive it if we're going to continue to stay on these "best of" lists.Paul Furiga: I think that's, that's absolutely crucial. You know, one of the reasons why we wanted to discuss it on the podcast today is you know, we'd like to know what you, the listeners, think about these issues. You know, we want to hear from you on social and we want you to comment on the show.And I mean this is an issue that all of us can play a part in. You know, recently WordWrite moved to a new office. We got a new sophisticated office phone system, and it takes a long time for the owner of the growing small business that installed our phones to get to our office. And the reason for that is he cannot find a reliable 20-year-old, or 21-year-old employee who's not interested in college education but has technical aptitude, and is willing to work with him to learn the skills to help him maintain high tech phone systems and grow his business.And so, as a business leader myself, the way I would look at this is I would ask folks who are listening to do a little reflective thought and think about this and you know, we'd like to know what you folks think about this. I mean, I think we all want Pittsburgh to be at the top of these lists. Oh, maybe even we could win a sports championship again, once in a while. That might be nice.Dan Stefano: We are better.Paul Furiga: We are better, I know. Expectations, but you know, this is kind of like beyond the 100. Some of the issues behind the news that are driving what's happening.Dan Stefano: Okay. We're here with Rossilynne Culgan, the director of The Incline and the author of the second edition of 100 Things to do in Pittsburgh Before You Die, which is just a great title for a bucket list, I think so. It's perfect. Rossilynne, thanks for being here.Rossilynne Culgan: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.Dan Stefano: Absolutely. Yeah. You know, before we get going here, we could talk a little bit about The Incline itself. You know, it's really a unique news outlet in the city, and especially with a lot of different types of outlets beginning. So can you tell us a little bit about The Incline?Rossilynne Culgan: Yes. So the first thing is we are theincline.com, not the incline on Mount Washington, which is a common misconception that Pittsburghers tend to have. But we are a local news website. We deliver a morning newsletter every day and it is a roundup of everything you need to know in Pittsburgh for your day. So it's everything from the heavy serious news, to a little bit more lighthearted news. But we really like to think of it as the Pittsburghers' guide to their day and we do original reporting as well as share the reporting of other outlets.Dan Stefano: And what does your job involve as a director here? Do you find yourself wearing a lot of hats or ... ?Rossilynne Culgan: Yes, definitely many hats. I do write as much as I can as well as editing articles and then sort of charting the vision for what The Incline's voice and tone will be, the kinds of stories that we'll be telling. So definitely a lot of hats.Dan Stefano: That sounds great. I know you spent some of your career working in traditional news at a newspaper. How do you find this different and what do you enjoy about it?Rossilynne Culgan: Oh, good question. I did work in traditional newspapers for a while and I think I spent a lot of time sort of being the newspaper of record for a lot of communities. And The Incline is a very small staff, but we had the luxury of not being a newspaper of record. So essentially that means we don't have to tell every single story, you know? We can't and we don't make that a part of our mission either. So we really get to pick and choose, and our goal is to find the stories that are in the gaps, and it might be a that someone else has told, but we're going to approach it from a new angle or highlight a new voice. And that's really our goal.Dan Stefano: Well, you know, we talked about you wearing a lot of hats and another hat that you can put on now is the author of a book.Rossilynne Culgan: That's right.Dan Stefano: And that's pretty impressive. One day I'd like to be the author of a book, but I just have to figure out a subject to write about. Now, this is actually the second edition of this book. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved in writing this?Rossilynne Culgan: Yes. So the first edition was not mine. It was actually by a different author. And the publisher likes to keep these books really fresh and up to date. And Pittsburgh is changing so rapidly that there were many, many additions and deletions actually. So this is completely my take. The publisher was looking for an author and found me. I like to say it's a combination of good search engine optimization and a lot of luck, and it all worked out from there.Dan Stefano: All right. Well, Logan, we are all about 100, so I think, you know, it's exciting to see that there are 100 things in this book, but you know yourself.Logan Armstrong: Yeah, no, I love to see the hundred theme. Obviously we're all about the-Rossilynne Culgan: That's right.Logan Armstrong: Pittsburgh 100 and so you said there were some deletions and it's kind of your take to keep it at 100 exactly. I'm sure there are some things you probably had to delete out of there.Rossilynne Culgan: Yeah. Really with the deletions, it was mostly things that had closed, believe it or not, or things that had changed, but there were things that it pained me to leave out. So I started the process by asking friends and family and anyone on the internet for recommendations and then tried to pare down the list. And it was not easy at all.Logan Armstrong: Is there any particular experience that you remember? The first time you visited someplace and you were like, wow, I can't, I believe I haven't been here before?Rossilynne Culgan: Yes, so many experiences like that actually. I thought I knew a lot about Pittsburgh and I found out that I was wrong. But one, in particular, I'll talk about, is the Photo Antiquities Museum, which is on the North Side, and I used to work on the North Side. I walked past this place every single day and never ventured inside, but it is so worth it.It's a museum with photos of Pittsburgh from sort of its industrial heyday as well as photos from across Europe. There are photos of the Eiffel Tower. It was absolutely fascinating and old cameras, which was so cool to see. I mean thinking that we all have a camera in our pocket, you know, with our phones all the time. To see these old gigantic cameras is so cool. Highly recommend.Logan Armstrong: That's awesome. Back when cameras were a real feat of technology and kind of taken for granted now just walking around with that in our pockets. That's great.Dan Stefano: No one's seen my mom try to use a phone these days, so it's still a feat of technology.Rossilynne Culgan: It is, it is true. Dean Stefano: Switching gears a little, but what does the future of The Incline look like then? You know, as we go forward here, you know, everything has to stay fresh, including the 100 things we have to do about Pittsburgh, but for yourself, you know, looking as the director of The Incline, what do you see as the future there?We're a startup. We're a scrappy young startup. So for us, I hope that the future is growth. I hope that we're able to tell more stories because there are many stories that I know are not being told at this point. I have a Google doc going of 18 pages of story ideas. That's not a joke. So there are a lot of stories that I want us to be able to tell. So I think the future for us is, is growing.Logan Armstrong: Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much, Rosalyn. Once again, we're with Rossilynne Culgan and the director at The Incline and recent author. Where can we follow in subscribe to The Incline and where can we find your book?Rossilynne Culgan: The Incline is at theincline.com, and then the book is at 100thingspittsburgh.com.Logan Armstrong: Great. Well, thanks so much again. Glad to have you here, Roz.Rossilynne Culgan: Thank you.Dan Stefano: Thank you.Logan Armstrong: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections are made around fires, as we shared the stories as shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capitalist story: the reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your capitalist story.Dan Stefano: Right for our next segment here, we brought in Hollie Geitner. She's one of our vice presidents here at WordWrite, and we're talking about business jargon in particular. It's an article. It's a recent survey from GetResponse online. The title of the survey is The Business Jargon And Buzzwords You Love To Hate.And this one I think hits close to home for what we do here at WordWrite as a public relations agency, but sometimes I've seen some of these buzzwords that I love to hate here. But Hollie, for yourself, you know, you were the one who brought this up in our work Slack channel. And what stood out to you for this survey here?Hollie Geitner: Well, I think, you know, when you see these surveys and you're like, "Oh right, cool, I'm going to read this. You know, like I love these lists." You're like laughing when you start reading it and you're like, "Oh, Oh wait, Oh I use that one and that one. What? Why is this one on here?" And you know, so we got a little bit of a laugh, but then I think we were all like, "Hmm, all right. Maybe we need to rethink how we communicate here." So it certainly generated a lot of back and forth discussion amongst our team, which was kind of fun.Dan Stefano: It made me pretty self-conscious for like the next week and then I got right back to using some of these things in my email. So I'd like to go through some of these topics here, some of these survey questions, and just see what we use.And maybe you at home too, you can find you maybe some of these, you see and you realize, “Oh God, I use some of that too.” But first and foremost, the one that really stood out to me is because I send a lot of emails every day and this is the most passive-aggressive email lines. And there are about two phrases here that finished with about a quarter of the responses each. One was "as per my last email" and the other was "just a friendly reminder." I use both of these. I tell people I am friendly all the time online, and I didn't realize how passive-aggressive I'm being.Logan. Do you?Logan Armstrong: Yeah, I'm a big user of "as per my last email," and then it looks like the next one was, "please let me know if I misunderstood." I've probably at least used that once. Some of these, as Hollie said, I was finding it harder to believe that these were passive-aggressive. I had to kind of think about it for a second.Dan Stefano: Well I think the fun thing about, "please let me know if I've misunderstood," is generally you have misunderstood. You're just trying to tell the other person on the other line you sent me a complicated email, how do I understand this? And so maybe you're trying to help their feelings, but I guess you know, people can read between the lines pretty easily too, would you agree with that Hollie?Hollie Geitner: Oh yeah. I think, you know, in these instances usually you're sending these because somebody hasn't responded to you or you know, done what they said they would and the certain time frame. And I think those kinds of follow-ups are sort of that like that poke. “Hey, you know, pay attention to me. You didn't do what you said you were going to do,” and you know, I generally think that instead of using those, today we need to really break through the clutter, so say what you mean.Dan Stefano: I think that takes us into another really interesting question that people asked here. And this is the worst jargon to describe an ideal candidate. So this is discussing, say if you write a job description, what a company is looking for. And some of these I really agree with for some of the worst jargon. Number one on the list of the worst jargon was the word badass. Number two was rockstar, and number three was ninja. I'm none of those things. All right. You know, maybe I'm creative? I try to pretend that I am and that's also on the list. But Hollie, have you ever used any of these words in a job description?Hollie Geitner: No, we have never used those. But it is interesting I think with a lot of the startups that you're seeing here in Pittsburgh, sometimes you'll see those job descriptions and they will use those. And these might be the companies that have the cereal bar in the break room, you know? But it's difficult when you think of a ninja. I have a picture in my mind and I'm thinking someone, you know, like ziplining through the office or something.Dan Stefano: If we had a ninja in the office I would notice, you know? That'd be a strange thing to ask for.Logan Armstrong: Or would you if he's a good ninja?Dan Stefano: All right that's a fair point. Hollie Geitner: That's true.Secretly we've had a ninja at WordWrite for the last 10 years and nobody knows. Last thing we can talk about here is there is a giant list of least favorite business jargon terms and there's a list of 30 here. So I'll just read off the first five.Number one, synergy. Number two, teamwork. Number three, touch base. Number four, raising the bar. Number five, think outside the box. I use the phrase "touch base" every day of my life, because I like to touch base with people and I think-Logan Armstrong: I use all five of those.Dan Stefano: You use all five? I've never heard you say the word synergy before.Logan Armstrong: I definitely have used the word synergy. Yeah.Dan Stefano: We have bad synergy then, because I don't notice that.Logan Armstrong: I still can't believe that teamwork is the top five least favorite. I mean, it's teamwork.Dan Stefano: Right? I mean, I think, I guess part of these come down to is you just hear them all the time, so maybe people get exhausted by it. Hollie, whenever you see some of these names, some of these things on the list, what do you see? And I mean-Hollie Geitner: You know, teamwork and synergy. Those don't bother me as much. Touch base. The other one I hear often is let's talk offline. I don't know if that's on there, but that's another one I hear a lot.Dan Stefano: I don't see it. And I don't think I've ever used that, because I think I'm always online. As a former newsman, I used, "let's talk off the record" quite a bit. You know, I think that's kind of fun in a cheap little, a nice short cut there.All right, Logan, and I don't want to hear it, because I want to talk about this.Logan Armstrong: Okay.Dan Stefano: We're going to talk about aliens.Logan Armstrong: Okay. I can get into aliens.Dan Stefano: All right. Well, I'm a little disappointed because originally this was going to come just shortly before that there was going to be an event where people were going to actually not attack area 51, but they were going to basically kind of storm the Gates and say, "Hey, we want to know what's in there."Logan Armstrong: They want some answers.Dan Stefano: Yeah, hey, the truth is out there. That's what I know. Somewhere out there.Logan Armstrong: Yeah.Dan Stefano: And apparently it's somewhere in the Nevada desert, but now they've actually decided to change that event to two festivals that are going to be out in Nevada, so maybe we won't learn what's actually inside area 51, but you know, someday hopefully.Logan Armstrong: Yeah. I mean, I had seen that for sure. I think there was something like a million people that had signed up for the Facebook event, which I can't even imagine that site. But I mean, Hey, you know, you make it make a friendly event out of something that really started off as just a little meme that gained a lot of traction and went viral. I mean, you know, it's cool to see these things in the internet age, but you know, maybe, hopefully, they can crack an ice-cold beer in the Nevada desert now.Dan Stefano: I'm sure. Yeah.Well, okay. To be honest, though, I'm not actually ... I don't know if I totally believe in aliens. I think it'd be kind of neat if they existed. But what it did get me thinking about was what kind of sightings and what was going on in the Pittsburgh area, and I think one of the more famous sightings in the Pittsburgh area came in Kecksburg, which is a small community. It's unincorporated. I think it's part of Mount Pleasant and Westmoreland County. This was way back in 1965, when it seemed like a lot of people were seeing UFOs and you know, just kind of checking the stars, but a big fireball went across the sky, I think it was seen from, you know, a lot of the areas in the Great Lakes states down toward us. And it crashed and a lot of people said, you know, they may have seen a different hieroglyphics on this object. They saw different —Logan Armstrong: From the sky? They must have had some pretty killer sight.Dan Stefano: Ok after it crashed. Okay. That's the important part here. But you know, it was supposedly a large metallic object. There were a lot of different things that occurred with this Kecksburg incident, which since became known as Pennsylvania's Roswell. And it's just one of those, you know, legendary things. You know, one of those things that, you know, that probably built like a legend over the years. Ufologists and everything were very interested in it. I think the government line came that it may have been a satellite. There's a lot of-Logan Armstrong: Sure.Dan Stefano: Different theories. It's something we're never going to know. Sure. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. You know, what happened was an alien probably popped out there and you know, he became a Yinzer and nobody knows any different now.Logan Armstrong: Right.Dan Stefano: You know, he's acclimated to society. I've seen some people on my block that looked like aliens, so possible. We don't know. They could be out there. But you know, it also got me thinking too, you know, like what else has happened in Pennsylvania and it took me to the National UFO Reporting Center, which if you're looking for it online, you can find it at www.nuforc.org, and actually it lists a bunch of different sightings. People can just go, you know, but whatever they saw in the sky, a bunch of different UFO sightings. They're unverified of course, but there's been almost 4,000 in Pennsylvania, which is pretty cool.Logan Armstrong: Yeah. I mean you, you know, you always hear about them every once in a while and, and as you said, you know, it's kind of questionable to the validity of all of them. But there have been some pretty crazy sightings, you know? Not just in PA and Pittsburgh, but you know, some that, I could think there are aliens out there somewhere.Dan Stefano: I sometimes, I think people just forget what airplanes look like, especially that they have blinking lights. They have solid lights. I don't know, just reading a few of these here. This was just on August 12th of this year, happened down in Waynesboro. It was a duration of 45 seconds. This is the exact summary. It says large bright light that became stationary, then moved at a very high rate of speed, in parentheses here, many times faster than a plane.Logan Armstrong: Yeah, I mean, Hey, you know, you can never rule it out. That sounds like a UFO. Maybe, maybe a meteor or something like that. But yeah, I think out of, I mean I was looking at these too. Dan Stefano: Is this yours Logan? Were you ... ? You posted this didn't you?Logan Armstrong: Yeah. Where was I on the night of August 12th, 2019.Dan Stefano: You saw this alien. Where you abducted?Logan Armstrong: You know, I can neither confirm nor deny my alien abduction experiences.And we are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 podcast. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe to P100podcast.Com, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and follow us on Twitter at pittsburgh100_ for all the latest news, updates, and more, from the Pittsburgh 100.

This is our inaugural episode of the P100 Podcast, featuring hosts Paul Furiga, Dan Stefano and Logan Armstrong of WordWrite Communications. Here's a bit about how the show will work.As with The Pittsburgh 100, the P100 Podcast will be coming to you 25 times a year, the same week the newsletter hits inboxes. What can you expect? Every episode will have a quartet of roughly five-minute segments featuring not just the three guys in the room, but great guests, insightful segments looking at the region’s news, history and culture, and a deeper dive into stories from the newsletter. This episode covers the events and history around Labor Day weekend, including Pittsburgh’s ties to the holiday, another fantastic food festival to look forward to and, of course, the start of football season. We wrap it up with a discussion of the region’s surprisingly long musical history, including a look at a local who might have a big future on the scene: Pick Patek, a hip-hop artist with a big following over Spotify. He was also featured in a recent Pittsburgh Polyphony article.----more----Enjoy listening to this episode of the P100 Podcast, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.Special thanks to the folks at the Pittsburgh Technology Council for the use of their studio.And this episode’s sponsor WordWrite Communications:At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story, the reason someone would want to buy from you, work with you, invest in you or partner with you. Through our patented Storycrafting process, we’ll help you discover your own Capital S Story. Visit us at WordWritepr.com to learn more.Full episode transcript here:Logan Armstrong:You are listening to the P100 podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more, because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Paul Furiga:Welcome everyone to the inaugural episode of the P100 podcast, the audio version of the Pittsburgh 100. My name is Paul Furiga. I'm Publisher of the Pittsburgh 100 and President and Chief Storyteller of WordWrite. I'd like to introduce my colleague, Dan Stefano. Dan.Dan Stefano:Thanks for the introduction, Paul. My name's Dan Stefano. I am the Editor of the Pittsburgh 100 and the Brand Journalist at WordWrite. Spent some time in the media before this, before I got to WordWrite and happy to be here right now.Paul Furiga:Glad you're here, Dan. We also have a third member of the crew here today, the three Musketeers, and that is Logan Armstrong. Logan.Logan Armstrong:Hi guys. My name is Logan Armstrong. I'm a Staff Writer for the Pittsburgh 100 and also an Account Coordinator for WordWrite. A recent graduate from Pitt, so hoping to bring a 21st-century millennial, Gen Z perspective for everybody.Dan Stefano:Yes. Logan is at the low end of the millennial spectrum. You know you're pushing, I think gen Z there.Paul Furiga:I think he actually is Gen Z.Logan Armstrong:I'm '97 so ...Paul Furiga:Now, if that's the case, I'm pushing Gen A. I don't know what I'm pushing as a baby boomer. Whatever it is, I'm the opposite of.Dan Stefano:I think Henry Ford called it the Model T generation or something.Paul Furiga:Thank you, Dan. I appreciate that.Dan Stefano:You're firmly a Boomer.Paul Furiga:Well, as you can see folks, we don't like each other. We don't get along well. We don't have fun together. Actually we do. We're glad you've joined us for this first episode of the P100 podcast. Let me just tell you a little bit about how this podcast is going to work. As with the Pittsburgh 100, the P100 podcast will be coming to you 25 times a year. We'll be coming out during the same week that the Pittsburgh 100 comes out. What can you expect from the podcast? Every episode, four segments of scintillating content, not just the three guys in the room right now, but great guests, insight segments like Beyond the 100. I'll look at music and culture in the region, history. Four segments, about five minutes each, each episode, and we're going to mix it up for you. Every episode you can expect some variety in what we're talking about. And with that as an introduction, Dan, what are we talking about this time, brother?Dan Stefano:This week's scintillation ... This first episode is coming at a time that's ... It's the unofficial end of summer heading into the LaborDay weekend. So we'll be talking a little bit about Labor Day and it's history in Pittsburgh, the history of labor in Pittsburgh and obviously it's a former manufacturing center. Few cities in the country, I think, have a relationship with it quite like we do here. We'll also be discussing Pittsburgh's rule as a foodie city. There's a big food event coming to Pittsburgh this weekend that we're excited about. And just this past month we had more. We had Pittsburgh restaurant week, so we'll dig in a little more there. Also, this weekend Pitt football's going to get started and the week after that Steelers football is going to get started, so we're going to be talking a little about football and its role in the city, the impact that it has culturally and economically, and we'll wrap it up a little bit. We'll learn a little more about our friend here, Logan Armstrong, who is a musician, but we'll be digging deeper into a recent article that we had in the Pittsburgh 100, the Pittsburgh Polyphony series, which looks at local music artists and yeah. We're excited to introduce you to a musician and some of his own original works too.Paul Furiga:It's a great episode, folks. We're glad you're along with us. Where the first episode, let's kick it off.Paul Furiga:All right. Once again, I'm Paul Furiga, the publisher of the Pittsburgh 100 president and chief storyteller of WordWrite. This is the inaugural podcast of the P100 podcast, the audio companion to the Pittsburgh 100. Today this episode is recorded at the Huntington Bank podcast studio of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. We want to say thanks to the PTC in Huntington. We are members of the Technology Council, what a great facility. We're honored to be here today to talk about, because we're coming up on that weekend, Labor Day. Dan, you got some thoughts? You want to kick it off?Dan Stefano:Oh, lots of thoughts actually. But you know, I this is always one of my favorite weekends of the year because one it's-Paul Furiga:Picnics.Dan Stefano:Yeah. Picnics. Fantastic. Yeah, well it's a three day weekend. It's always wonderful. The weather is still great. You know, it's kind of the end of summer, a little bit. The unofficial end of summer. It stays warm, but it's just marking that progression into fall. But it's also important to think about whenever you get these three day weekends, think about why we're celebrating them and for labor day, you're celebrating the American worker and that matters a lot in this city. People have a history of ... People still reflect that blue-collar aesthetic, that blue-collar attitude that Pittsburgh has and-Paul Furiga:Steely McBeam.Dan Stefano:Steely McBeam. Yes. Yeah. I think he ... I don't know if he is a card-carrying member of United Steelworkers, but he should be. I think Labor Day is a good time to recognize that America's labor history at times was very violent and there's some of the stuff that we take for granted as far as a five day work week and eight-hour workday, -sick time off, holidays off. That didn't come easy. Especially for people that worked in manufacturing industries and didn't even have blue collars. They were wearing brown colors and maybe no collars at all at some of these positions.Dan Stefano:One moment that was kind of seminal in American history, especially as far as the labor movement goes, was in 1892 they call it the Battle of Homestead, where striking workers at Andrew Carnegie's Steel Mill in Homestead. They actually barricaded themselves inside of the steel mill for about six days. And it was incredible. By the end of it, Pinkertons who were basically private detectives-Paul Furiga:Right, from the company Pinkerton.Dan Stefano:Exactly. The company's name was Pinkerton. These detectives, they got violent and seven workers were killed, three Pinkertons were killed whenever tempers flared up. And that made a big impact around the country. At the time, not only was it happening at Homestead, Chicago had violent disputes between their workers-Paul Furiga:Detroit.Dan Stefano:And Detroit. It happened everywhere, you know?Paul Furiga:Pullman Strike in Chicago. You're talking about Dan. Yeah?Dan Stefano:Absolutely. Yes. And-Logan Armstrong:Yeah, it's interesting to see that people were this passionate about labor rights and working rights and unions, that they were willing to give their life for it. And I think that's just something ... I know from my perspective and my generation, that's not something we have really ever had to see firsthand. And to have that kind of perspective on it is just something that I think is forgotten a lot these days.Dan Stefano:Well, none of us who are sitting at this table were around in the late 1800s but-Paul Furiga:Let me check my driver's license, Dan.Dan Stefano:That's true, Paul. Yeah. You should really check that out. Ironically I have more gray hair than Paul does. That's the funny thing. I've got three decades less on him, but-Logan Armstrong:Paul has a gray head of hair, that's for sure.Paul Furiga:Well, thank you. To bad this is audio and you can't see that.Dan Stefano:Right?Paul Furiga:Yeah. I do think, Dan though that as people enjoy their picnics and whatnot this weekend, it is worth remembering the reason for the weekend and-Dan Stefano:Yeah, you know, those moments of history are all around us. Especially whenever you go to Homestead to do some shopping at the waterfront. Right now you can go and you can see those old smokestacks from the old Homesteads steel mill that was there and you think 130 years ago there was a battle there where people lost their lives. And it's an important thing to, to remember, Labor Day is not only about organized labor, but it's also about everybody that just goes out and works hard every single day of their life. You know, everybody's earned that day off. And so it's important to just kind of remember that. Kickback, relax, have yourself a beer or a nice cold Coke and maybe cook up some food and enjoy yourself on Labor Day, everybody.Dan Stefano:Well, another great thing about the Labor Day weekend here at this time of year is typically Pitt's first football game of the season. And right around Pitt's first football game of the season, we always have the Heinz Field Rib Fest and Kickoff Festival. And I love Rib Fest. It maybe is one of my favorite food festivals of the year. You know, Picklesburgh is great, but you don't get too many great ribs and you don't get some of the best rib makers.Paul Furiga:There's not enough meat in a pickle.Logan Armstrong:Yeah. You can't really dig into a pickle, but you can dig into some ribs.Paul Furiga:Precisely. A pickle is great as a garnish with my ribs. That's fantastic. So I love that. But yeah, one thing that I think you can say is, one Rib Fest is just a lot of fun because it brings a little bit at the south up here and it's just a lot of people getting together and it's a fun time of year.Paul Furiga:But it also just explains again that Pittsburgh is such a great city for food. And I think it always has been. I grew up on pierogi and haluski growing up in a Hungarian and Croatian type family, but we've really in recent years seen some extremely interesting restaurants open, some really classy places that get ranked among the best in the country. And even last year, a publication out of San Francisco named us foodie city of the year or best city in the US for foodies. And so that's special. And it just got me thinking, you guys, what do you like about Pittsburgh's food here? I think everybody loves talking about it. We just had Pittsburgh restaurant week a couple of weeks ago where everybody got to try new places. So do you have any favorites? And just your thoughts on the city and food. Logan.Logan Armstrong:Yeah, I love it. I think it's great. I'm a huge fan of food as these two know, but I think what's something good about Pittsburgh is that, for example, just a great example on the Southside, you have Mallorca, which is one of the best Spanish restaurants in town. And then you walk four blocks and you run into Dish, one of the greatest Italian restaurants in town. And so I think with Pittsburgh being such a melting pot of people that came here, you have the Germans and the Italians. This fusion of food, you can go anywhere in the city and find great restaurants. So there are some cities where there's like a cultural district where you're going to find the best restaurants in that particular area of the city. But I think with Pittsburgh is that you can walk to any neighborhood and go to any neighborhood and find a spot that is just excellent food.Dan Stefano:That's a great point. You know, I just moved to Mount Lebanon with my wife Lisa, and I didn't realize quite the amount of restaurants that they have out that way, and it's a ... I grew up in the Northside and we were living in the East end for a while and lots of good restaurants out that way, but you move South and all of a sudden there are great places like Pizziola, Bistro 19 just over in uptown. Lots of awesome restaurants. Just anywhere you go in the city. Paul, what do you think?Paul Furiga:Yeah, I'm thinking about, my family is originally from Pittsburgh, but I actually grew up in Cleveland and I'm sure we can do an entire segment on Cleveland jokes. We'll save that for another day. But when I came back to Pittsburgh in '94, the basic thing was what do you'ins want for dinner? Italian, Italian or Italian? And you know, things have really changed. It's quite different today compared to the way it was 25 years ago. Part of that is the generational change with the population of the city and Pittsburgh becoming more attractive to millennials, young people. Part of that is the changing complexion of the economy and the kinds of people who've been attracted to the city in the last two decades. And you know, I think people like Justin Severino and the several restaurants that he's put together in succession. We now legitimately have people in the restaurant industry here in town who can be followed and you can say, you know, "Kevin Sousa or Severino, when are they going to open their next restaurant and what's it going to be?"Paul Furiga:It didn't use to be that way. When I first got to Pittsburgh, there was everybody's favorite pizza joint or Italian or my heritage Polish, or there was the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern, which really in terms of Polish, it hasn't been replaced. It was much more of a meat and potatoes in an ethnic sort of town. You know, one other thing, we talked earlier today about labor and there used to be this thing called the Pittsburgh steak, and the old story was that guys in the mills, they wanted something special in the lunch bucket. They'd take a steak and throw it on some very hot piece of machinery and create this seared steak and I can remember when I first got to town, people were like, "Well, you have to have a Pittsburgh steak." People don't talk about that now. We're talking about farm to table. We're talking about organic, we're talking about locally sourced, we're talking about fusion. It really is quite a foodie town and it's a lot of fun. It really is.Dan Stefano:You know, Paul, you could come up with that right now. You could come up with just a hot pipe, get a bunch of millennials to come in and tell them, I'm going to cook your steak on this pipe and they would love it.Logan Armstrong:I would love it.Paul Furiga:You think so?Dan Stefano:I think we're onto something.Logan Armstrong:I think that'd be great. Logan's very susceptible to this type of marketing, I think.Paul Furiga:What's old is new again.Logan Armstrong:Anything with food, you don't have to sell me too hard on.Logan Armstrong:Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories have shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capitalist story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit WordWritepr.com to uncover your capitalist story.Dan Stefano:All right. The other great thing about this time of year, we mentioned it already a couple of times, but it's close to football season and I love football season. I could sit, basically from Saturday morning to watch college games to Sunday night and just enjoy myself and watch football the entire time and have my wife leave me because I get yelled at quite a bit for doing those types of habits. But you know, she understands and she lets me do it at least for a few hours each day. And it's just such a great time because football means a lot in this city as we all know. Whenever we think of football and Pittsburgh, I think a lot of people jump to the high school games, you know, Thursday nights, Friday nights, sometimes-Paul Furiga:Friday Night Lights.Dan Stefano:Friday night lights as they called them.Dan Stefano:So I went to a city school, so they also played on Thursday nights. Everybody had to cram into South stadium. But it really ... For the impact that it does make here, it's hugely beneficial financially. I mean, you think about what has happened to the North Shore since they built the brand new stadiums, including Heinz Field. When I was a kid, it was just three rivers and basically a pile of gravel. It was great to go down there because everybody could stand down there and watch the fireworks on the 4th of July. But after that, there wasn't too much to do. And so now, with what this franchise has meant to the city, and the advancements that we've taken in terms of rebuilding certain areas. You can really see the impact that football season has. And whenever it's a Steeler Sunday, it's just such a great time to be around and be downtown and be out in the North Shore.Paul Furiga:Yeah. You know, as we mentioned earlier today, we're recording from the Huntington Bank Podcast Studio here at the Pittsburgh Technology Council and it's on what is now known as the North Shore. Dan, when you were a kid it was probably still known as North Side.Dan Stefano:You know what, it took me a long time to adopt North Shore and there are probably still plenty of people that will not call it that. But it's always, I mean it's Northside. Yeah. And I think where we're at right now, you could call that Central North Side.Paul Furiga:You know, my perspective on this, and I wrote about this in the 100 a week or so ago as growing up as a Cleveland Browns fan. I can't really speak to the winning culture and a few other things there I guess. But what I can speak to, and I think that's why it's important to talk about this too, is that football is intrinsic to the culture of Pittsburgh. And you know, you think about a family like the Rooneys, they're not this celebrity ownership kind of a team. They are Pittsburgh blue-collar, you know? And I think about football, I can't separate the whole, the Rooney families from the Northside too. The team is from the Northside. How the grandfather in the family, Art Rooney, wound up with the team. Supposedly, in a card game or gambling.Dan Stefano:I think it was a good day at the track.Paul Furiga:A good day at the track. That's part of-Dan Stefano:That's the legend.Paul Furiga:That's the legend. It's also part of what people think about when they think about the character and nature of Pittsburgh. I don't know Logan, I mean, what's your perspective on that?Logan Armstrong:Yeah, I would have to agree. I mean I think Pittsburgh is one of the strongest cities where when someone first moves here if someone's visiting, going to a Steelers game is one of the ultimate activities that you can do. That it's really ingrained you in the culture. I mean, you go to a Steelers game and you're there, you're going to figure out what Pittsburgh culture is about. You know you're going to see the terrible towels waving and you're going to see the people that are really die-hard for the city in general and for the sports and a fun fact, actually, I don't know if you guys know this, but we actually cut Johnny Unitas in training camp. He didn't even make it out of training camp, which is just crazy to me. It's kind of odd and interesting the way you see things go.Paul Furiga:It is crazy.Dan Stefano:They skipped over Dan Marino too. They skipped over drafting him.Logan Armstrong:Yeah, the South Oakland boy.Paul Furiga:Yeah. For those of you who are listening who aren't deep football fans, it is kind of impossible to avoid the whole football season thing. I remember shortly after I moved to town, I saw this bumper sticker for the first time and it's certainly, I've seen it many, many times since, "Pittsburgh, drinking town with a football problem," and you know, that's kind of a little joke, but that is also kind of as Logan said, the way the town turns. At a previous employment where I was running a department, I had an adjustment problem because if the Steelers had a particularly tough Sunday night game, the attendance at work and the department the next morning, let's say it fluctuated and I said something to somebody about it and I said, "What the hell's going on? So-and-so and so and so and so and so aren't here." And they gave me this like dumbstruck look like, "What the hell's wrong with you? The Steelers had a tough game last night they're probably nursing a hangover or whatever."Dan Stefano:Well, Paul just a word of warning here then for you, the Steelers open their season against the super bowl champion, Patriots. So you might not see me the next morning. I don't know.Dan Stefano:Okay guys, for our final segment here, we're going to discuss Pittsburgh in the music industry and in particular take a deeper dive and do a column that we had recently in our Pittsburgh Polyphony series, which looks at local artists and one of those included Pick Patek who is a Philadelphia native who lives here in Pittsburgh now, attends Pitt and is actually making a name for himself in the music industry, but we're going to reel it back a little bit and talk about the city's history and music as well, especially in that, people don't quite think of Pittsburgh as a city for ... As part of the music industry here. People might think of New York City, they might think of the West Coast, they might think of Nashville, but Pittsburgh has had its role as well. And Paul, also a musician here. If you want to speak to that a little bit, maybe talk about your own history of music.Paul Furiga:Well, thanks, Dan. Yeah, one of the things that I think is great about Pittsburgh is the music scene. I think in American culture we tend to think of music centers as being those places where there are recording studios and while over time there have been some recording studios in Pittsburgh. It's really LA or Nashville or New York or places like that that have the studios. What's great about Pittsburgh music to me is that so many great artists spent a large section of their career here or they're from here. In recent years Stephen Foster has been more a subject of controversy in Pittsburgh because of some of his early lyrics. But over the years if you want to go back and get really far back into Pittsburgh music history, we can claim Stephen Foster and his talent. You know, doo-wop was another big genre here and in the 60s with The Del-Vikings and Lou Christie and Bobby Vinton and The Vogues and the Lettermen and we had DJ Porky, Chadwick and lots of other folks that help make music-Dan Stefano:Do you sing a lot to doo-wop there, Paul?Paul Furiga:I sing no doo-wop. However, I have a very good friend who is in a doo-wop band.Dan Stefano:Fascinating. We've got to have them on one day.Paul Furiga:We'll get them on some time. Yeah. And we'll get my friend David Goldman on. You know, jazz, the Hill District. In the history of African American culture in the United States, one of the top cultural centers was the Hill District right here in Pittsburgh. You have the Crawford grill. You had artists like our Earl "Fatha" Hines, Roy Eldridge, Kenny Clark, Ray Brown, Art Blakely. I mean I could just go on and on and rattle off names. And I think for a time people began to think that Pittsburgh wasn't really a music city. But truly it is. And one of the reasons why we're including the polyphony series in the Pittsburgh 100 and in the podcast is because there's great music out there today. People and tunes and genres are very much worth listening to. And you know, sadly current Pittsburgh music, the scene was traumatized a bit with Mac Miller and his passing. And certainly there are other artists out there today on the national stage that we know about, but one of the things we want to do is give some prompts and some exposure to musicians maybe that folks haven't heard about yet. And that's why it's so great to have you here Logan.Logan Armstrong:Yeah, and those are all great points that there's been a history of Pittsburgh in different genres throughout time. And I think similar to how we talked about the food earlier, is that Pittsburgh is kind of a melting pot of genres. I would say that the main genre of music right now in Pittsburgh is probably somewhere in the field of punk rock and kind of indie rock and that kind of a genre. But to counter that, the last Pittsburgh Polyphony column we had was an indie band, indie-folk band String Machine, and this Pittsburgh Polyphony is Pick Patek, as Dan mentioned earlier. A rapper/singer, I guess you'd say. Yeah, actually it was a funny story. I just happened to see him in the library one day while I was attending at Pitt and he was making some beats and I went up to him and kind of just hit it off.Logan Armstrong:And then you see and look on Spotify that he's making music from his bedroom and he's got over a million streams on Spotify and he's got 20,000 plus people listening to him every month. And it's just crazy. It's a time now we're in the internet age and the accessibility of recording software and of these resources that allow you to make music so ... I don't want to say simply because it is an art, but so accessibly. Like I said, he's making music from his bedroom and he's able to turn this, I guess you could call it a small business at this point. Kind of turn that into something that he wants to do as a career. And that is something that's accessible as a career for him. And any other time in history, I don't think that would be possible.Logan Armstrong:As Paul said, it kind of centered around being in recording studios in your city and having access to those. And even more than that, 20 years ago, if you didn't have a major label backing or if you didn't have major backing in the entertainment industry, it was next to impossible to actually get your name out there in the music industry. And with the internet now being as it is, where you can put your music on Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, wherever you want for free or very little charge, just the landscape of the industry has changed. And so in today's age, it's very interesting to me that you can balance that and still be successful as a modern musician.Dan Stefano:That's great. Logan, we're going to hear a little from Pick Patek at the end of this podcast, right? If listeners stay beyond the outro.Logan Armstrong:Yeah. So we're going to send you out with Blue October by Pick Patek. A soulful ballad that I had the opportunity and privilege to perform with him on Pitt's very own tonight show when I was still a student there at Pitt tonight. So yeah, stick around and I hope you enjoy.Logan Armstrong:And we are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 podcasts. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe at P100podcast.com wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Twitter at Pittsburgh100_ for all the latest news updates and more from the Pittsburgh100.