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Patrice Louvet, president and CEO of Ralph Lauren, knows a thing or two about growing with style. He's taken the fashion house's global and digital reach to new heights, all while preserving the brand's iconic look. In this episode of This is Working, Louvet talks to  LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Dan Roth about marketing finesse, the subtle alchemy of brand evolution, and the art of keeping a legacy brand both relevant and authentic — and his management style. When Louvet took over Ralph Lauren had a storied past, massive brand recognition and a particularly valuable, one-of-a-kind asset — founder Ralph Lauren himself. But the company had seen better days. Over the years, Patrice said, Ralph Lauren had lost its way in the U.S. In a nutshell, overdistribution in the pursuit of growth had led to dilution of the brand Lauren had launched with a single tie decades earlier, audaciously priced at three times competitors like Christian Dior. It was time for a reset. It wouldn't be easy, but the global tragedy that was COVID was forcing hands across every industry anyway, so at least the timing was right. How Louvet keeps Ralph Lauren as going as one of the fashion world's most successful dream factories was topic one. The idea that consistently creating fashion people want to buy starts not on a drawing board or what colors will be hot next year, but as the embodiment of a vibe that Lauren himself conjures, is a major differentiator. "He and I had a fascinating conversation a few months into my tenure," Louvet said. "The company was going through challenging times and it felt like we need to get back to our roots. And a lot of people would say, 'Well, Ralph Lauren, you do great dresses or shirts or ties. And we would say, 'Actually, no, that's not the business we're in.' We shut down about two thirds of our department store doors, and I don't regret it," Louvet said. "We took the hit, the numbers were ugly, but we weren't in this for one quarter or a year. We're in this for the next 10 to 20 years and felt like we absolutely had to do this reset, and it is serving us super well." To get more great insights from leaders direct to your inbox, subscribe to the free This is Working newsletter here.

The Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Green Bay Packers in the wild-card matchup 22-10. However, fans are 'concerned' about the Jalen Hurts and the Eagles performance. Is this an overreaction? -- Voicemail call in: (219) 413-9405 Instagram: @TheRunPodcast  Facebook: PodcastTheRun YouTube: The Run with Manny Wilson TheRunUSA.com -- Use the Promo Code: THERUNPODCAST for $20 OFF your first ticket purchase with SeatGeek. https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/teamseatgeek   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join us on Hearts of Oak for a powerful conversation with comedian and advocate Abi Roberts as we dive into her latest work, We The People: Letters from Dystopia. In this interview, Abi reveals the heart-wrenching stories behind her book—a collection of real-life testimonies from individuals affected by the COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates. More than just stories, these letters shine a light on the lasting impact of government overreach, personal loss, and the fight for freedom. Abi shares her journey of gathering these voices through her podcast Abby Daily, emphasizing the importance of truth and remembrance, especially in a time clouded by misinformation. With the evocative illustrations by Bob Moran, We The People stands as both a historical document and a beacon of hope. Tune in for a deeply moving and thought-provoking discussion that balances the weight of serious topics with Abi's sharp wit, underscoring her mission to give voice to those who suffered and to remind us all of the importance of freedom. Don't miss this interview—watch it now on Hearts of Oak. Interview recorded 30.10.24 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Connect with Abi Roberts: X |https://x.com/abircomedian Instagram |https://www.instagram.com/abirobertscomedy/ Website: https://abiroberts.com/ Connect with Hearts of Oak...

Webster University Criminologist Allison Gorga joins Megan Lynch and Tom Ackerman, taking a look at the crime rate statistics for immigrants. She explains that they are lower than the native born US population for a number of reasons.

In this episode, we dive into the common misconceptions about love that the internet often gets wrong. From the idea of someone being your "everything" to the notion that real love is overwhelming, we break down why these beliefs can be misleading. Real love is calm and integrates into your life, rather than consuming it. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/samvedh-vegi/support

"The constraint right now on factory farming is how far can you push the biology of these animals? But AI could remove that constraint. It could say, 'Actually, we can push them further in these ways and these ways, and they still stay alive. And we've modelled out every possibility and we've found that it works.' I think another possibility, which I don't understand as well, is that AI could lock in current moral values. And I think in particular there's a risk that if AI is learning from what we do as humans today, the lesson it's going to learn is that it's OK to tolerate mass cruelty, so long as it occurs behind closed doors. I think there's a risk that if it learns that, then it perpetuates that value, and perhaps slows human moral progress on this issue." —Lewis BollardIn today's episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Lewis Bollard — director of the Farm Animal Welfare programme at Open Philanthropy — about the promising progress and future interventions to end the worst factory farming practices still around today.Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.They cover:The staggering scale of animal suffering in factory farms, and how it will only get worse without intervention.Work to improve farmed animal welfare that Open Philanthropy is excited about funding.The amazing recent progress made in farm animal welfare — including regulatory attention in the EU and a big win at the US Supreme Court — and the work that still needs to be done.The occasional tension between ending factory farming and curbing climate changeHow AI could transform factory farming for better or worse — and Lewis's fears that the technology will just help us maximise cruelty in the name of profit.How Lewis has updated his opinions or grantmaking as a result of new research on the “moral weights” of different species.Lewis's personal journey working on farm animal welfare, and how he copes with the emotional toll of confronting the scale of animal suffering.How listeners can get involved in the growing movement to end factory farming — from career and volunteer opportunities to impactful donations.And much more.Chapters:Common objections to ending factory farming (00:13:21)Potential solutions (00:30:55)Cage-free reforms (00:34:25)Broiler chicken welfare (00:46:48)Do companies follow through on these commitments? (01:00:21)Fish welfare (01:05:02)Alternatives to animal proteins (01:16:36)Farm animal welfare in Asia (01:26:00)Farm animal welfare in Europe (01:30:45)Animal welfare science (01:42:09)Approaches Lewis is less excited about (01:52:10)Will we end factory farming in our lifetimes? (01:56:36)Effect of AI (01:57:59)Recent big wins for farm animals (02:07:38)How animal advocacy has changed since Lewis first got involved (02:15:57)Response to the Moral Weight Project (02:19:52)How to help (02:28:14)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio engineering lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongAdditional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa RodriguezTranscriptions: Katy Moore

We???re going to conclude our conversation about the meaning of the name Christ, and why it???s so significant.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

All four of my children were born at home. I feel extremely fortunate about this - they should too. Four wonderful experiences. I will forever be in debt to Louisa and Jolie.When, twenty-four years ago, my then wife, Louisa, told me she wanted to give birth to our first child at home, I thought she was off her rocker, but I gave her my word that we would at least talk to a midwife, and we did just that. Within about five minutes of meeting Tina Perridge of South London Independent Midwives, a lady of whom I cannot speak highly enough, I was instantly persuaded. Ever since, when I hear that someone is pregnant, I start urging them to have a homebirth with the persistence of a Jehovah's Witness or someone pedalling an upgrade to your current mobile phone subscription. I even included a chapter about it in my first book Life After the State - Why We Don't Need Government (2013), (now, thanks to the invaluable help of my buddy Chris P, back in print - with the audiobook here [Audible UK, Audible US, Apple Books]).I'm publishing that chapter here, something I was previously not able to do (rights issues), because I want as many people as possible to read it. Many people do not even know home-birth is an option. I'm fully aware that, when it comes to giving birth, one of the last people a prospective mum wants to hear advice from is comedian and financial writer, Dominic Frisby. I'm also aware that this is an extremely sensitive subject and that I am treading on eggshells galore. But the word needs to be spread. All I would say is that if you or someone you know is pregnant, have a conversation with an independent midwife, before committing to having your baby in a hospital. It's so important. Please just talk to an independent midwife first. With that said, here is that chapter. Enjoy it, and if you know anyone who is pregnant, please send this to them.We have to use fiat money, we have to pay taxes, most of us are beholden in some way to the education system. These are all things much bigger than us, over which we have little control. The birth of your child, however, is one of the most important experiences of your (and their) life, one where the state so often makes a mess of things, but one where it really is possible to have some control.The State: Looking After Your First BreathThe knowledge of how to give birth without outside interventions lies deep within each woman. Successful childbirth depends on an acceptance of the process.Suzanne Arms, authorThere is no single experience that puts you more in touch with the meaning of life than birth. A birth should be a happy, healthy, wonderful experience for everyone involved. Too often it isn't.Broadly speaking, there are three places a mother can give birth: at home, in hospital or – half-way house – at a birthing centre. Over the course of the 20th century we have moved birth from the home to the hospital. In the UK in the 1920s something like 80% of births took place at home. In the 1960s it was one in three. By 1991 it was 1%. In Japan the home-birth rate was 95% in 1950 falling to 1.2% in 1975. In the US home-birth went from 50% in 1938 to 1% in 1955. In the UK now 2.7% of births take place at home. In Scotland, 1.2% of births take place at home, and in Northern Ireland this drops to fewer than 0.4%. Home-birth is now the anomaly. But for several thousand years, it was the norm.The two key words here are ‘happy' and ‘healthy'. The two tend to come hand in hand. But let's look, first, at ‘healthy'. Let me stress, I am looking at planned homebirth; not a homebirth where mum didn't get to the hospital in time.My initial assumption when I looked at this subject was that hospital would be more healthy. A hospital is full of trained personnel, medicine and medical equipment. My first instinct against home-birth, it turned out, echoed the numerous arguments against it, which come from many parts of the medical establishment. They more or less run along the lines of this statement from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology: ‘Unless a woman is in a hospital, an accredited free-standing birthing centre or a birthing centre within a hospital complex, with physicians ready to intervene quickly if necessary, she puts herself and her baby's health and life at unnecessary risk.'Actually, the risk of death for babies born at home is almost half that of babies born at hospital (0.35 per 1,000 compared to 0.64), according to a 2009 study by the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence reports that mortality rates are the same in booked home-birth as in hospitals. In November 2011 a study of 65,000 mothers by the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) was published in the British Medical Journal. The overall rate of negative birth outcomes (death or serious complications) was 4.3 per 1,000 births, with no difference in outcome between non-obstetric and obstetric (hospital) settings. The study did find that the rate of complications rose for first-time mums, 5.3 per 1,000 (0.53%) for hospitals and 9.5 per 1,000 (0.95%) for home-birth. I suspect the number of complications falls with later births because, with experience, the process becomes easier – and because mothers who had problems are less likely to have more children than those who didn't. The Daily Mail managed to twist this into: ‘First-time mothers who opt for home birth face triple the risk of death or brain damage in child.' Don't you just love newspapers? Whether at home or in the hospital there were 250 negative events seen in the study: early neonatal deaths accounted for 13%; brain damage 46%; meconium aspiration syndrome 20%; traumatic nerve damage 4% and fractured bones 4%. Not all of these were treatable.There are so many variables in birth that raw comparative statistics are not always enough. And, without wishing to get into an ethical argument, there are other factors apart from safety. There are things – comfort, happiness, for example – for which people are prepared to sacrifice a little safety. The overriding statistic to take away from that part of the study is that less than 1% of births in the UK, whether at hospital or at home, lead to serious complications.But when you look at rates of satisfaction with their birth experience, the numbers are staggering. According to a 1999 study by Midwifery Today researching women who have experienced both home and hospital birth, over 99% said that they would prefer to have a home-birth in the future!What, then, is so unsatisfying about the hospital birth experience? I'm going to walk through the birthing process now, comparing what goes on at home to hospital. Of course, no two births are the same, no two homes are the same, no two hospitals are the same, but, broadly speaking, it seems women prefer the home-birth experience because: they have more autonomy at home, they suffer less intervention at home and, yes, it appears they actually suffer less pain at home. When mum goes into labour, the journey to the hospital, sometimes rushed, the alien setting when she gets there, the array of doctors and nurses who she may never have met before, but are about to get intimate, can all upset her rhythm and the production of her labour hormones. These aren't always problems, but they have the potential to be; they add to stress and detract from comfort.At home, mum is in a familiar environment, she can get comfortable and settled, go where she likes and do what she likes. Often getting on with something else can take her mind off the pain of the contractions, while in hospital there is little else to focus on. At home, she can choose where she wants to give birth – and she can change her mind, if she likes. She is in her own domain, without someone she doesn't know telling her what she can and can't do. She can change the light, the heating, the music; she can decide exactly who she wants at the birth and who ‘catches' her baby. She can choose what she wants to eat. She will have interviewed and chosen her midwife many months before, and built up a relationship over that time. But in hospitals she is attended by whoever is on duty, she has to eat hospital food, there might be interruptions, doctors' pagers, alarms, screams from next door, whirrs of machinery, tube lighting, overworked, resentful staff to deal with, internal hospital politics, people coming in, waking her up, and checking her vitals, sticking in pins or needles, putting on monitor belts, checking her cervix mid-contraction – any number of things over which mum has no control. Mums who move about freely during labour complain less of back pain. Many authorities feel that the motion of walking and changing positions can even enhance the effectiveness of the contractions, but such active birth is not as possible in the confines of many hospitals. Many use intravenous fluids and electronic foetal monitors to ensure she stays hydrated and to record each contraction and beat of the baby's heart. This all dampens mum's ability to move about and adds to any feelings of claustrophobia.In hospital the tendency is to give birth on your back, though this is often not the best position – the coccyx cannot bend to help the baby's head pass through. There are many other positions – on your hands and knees for example – where you don't have to work against gravity and where the baby's head is not impeded. On your back, pushing is less effective and metal forceps are sometimes used to pull the baby out of the vagina, but forceps are less commonly used when mum assumes a position of comfort during the bearing-down stage.This brings us to the next issue: intervention. The NPEU study of 2011 found that 58% of women in hospital had a natural birth without any intervention, compared to 88% of women at home and 80% of women at a midwife-led unit. Of course, there are frequent occasions when medical technology saves lives, but the likelihood of medical intervention increases in hospitals. I suggest it can actually cause as many problems as it alleviates because it is interruptive. Even routine technology can interrupt the normal birth process. Once derailed from the birthing tracks, it is hard to get back on. Once intervention starts, it's hard to stop. The medical industry is built on providing cures, but if you are a mother giving birth, you are not sick, there is nothing wrong with you, what you are going through is natural and normal. As author Sheila Stubbs writes, ‘the midwife considers the miracle of childbirth as normal, and leaves it alone unless there's trouble. The obstetrician normally sees childbirth as trouble; if he leaves it alone, it's a miracle.'Here are just some of the other interventions that occur. If a mum arrives at hospital and the production of her labour hormones has been interrupted, as can happen as a result of the journey, she will sometimes be given syntocinon, a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin, which occurs naturally and causes the muscle of the uterus to contract during labour so baby can be pushed out. The dose of syntocinon is increased until contractions are deemed normal. It's sometimes given after birth as well to stimulate the contractions that help push out the placenta and prevent bleeding. But there are allegations that syntocinon increases the risk of baby going into distress, and of mum finding labour too painful and needing an epidural. This is one of the reasons why women also find home-birth less painful.Obstetricians sometimes rupture the bag of waters surrounding the baby in order to speed up the birthing process. This places a time limit on the labour, as the likelihood of a uterine infection increases after the water is broken. Indeed in a hospital – no matter how clean – you are exposed to more pathogens than at home. The rate of post-partum infection to women who give birth in hospital is a terrifying 25%, compared to just 4% in home-birth mothers. Once the protective cushion of water surrounding the baby's head is removed (that is to say, once the waters are broken) there are more possibilities for intervention. A scalp electrode, a tiny probe, might be attached to baby's scalp, to continue monitoring its heart rate and to gather information about its blood.There are these and a whole host of other ‘just in case' interventions in hospital that you just don't meet at home. As childbirth author Margaret Jowitt, says – and here we are back to our theme of Natural Law – ‘Natural childbirth has evolved to suit the species, and if mankind chooses to ignore her advice and interfere with her workings we must not complain about the consequences.'At home, if necessary, in the 1% of cases where serious complications do ensue, you can still be taken to hospital – assuming you live in reasonable distance of one.‘My mother groaned, my father wept,' wrote William Blake, ‘into the dangerous world I leapt.' We come now to the afterbirth. Many new mothers say they physically ache for their babies when they are separated. Nature, it seems, gives new mothers a strong attachment desire, a physical yearning that, if allowed to be satisfied, starts a process with results beneficial to both mother and baby. There are all sorts of natural forces at work, many of which we don't even know about. ‘Incomplete bonding,' on the other hand, in the words of Judith Goldsmith, author of Childbirth Wisdom from the World's Oldest Societies, ‘can lead to confusion, depression, incompetence, and even rejection of the child by the mother.' Yet in hospitals, even today with all we know, the baby is often taken away from the mother for weighing and other tests – or to keep it warm, though there is no warmer place for it that in its mother's arms (nature has planned for skin-to-skin contact).Separation of mother from baby is more likely if some kind of medical intervention or operation has occurred, or if mum is recovering from drugs taken during labour. (Women who have taken drugs in labour also report decreased maternal feelings towards their babies and increased post-natal depression). At home, after birth, baby is not taken from its mother's side unless there is an emergency.As child development author, Joseph Chilton Pearce, writes, ‘Bonding is a psychological-biological state, a vital physical link that coordinates and unifies the entire biological system . . . We are never conscious of being bonded; we are conscious only of our acute disease when we are not bonded.' The breaking of the bond results in higher rates of postpartum depression and child rejection. Nature gives new parents and babies the desire to bond, because bonding is beneficial to our species. Not only does it encourage breastfeeding and speed the recovery of the mother, but the emotional bonding in the magical moments after birth between mother and child, between the entire family, cements the unity of the family. The hospital institution has no such agenda. The cutting of the umbilical cord is another area of contention. Hospitals, say home-birth advocates, cut it too soon. In Birth Without Violence, the classic 1975 text advocating gentle birthing techniques, Frederick Leboyer – also an advocate of bonding and immediate skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby after birth – writes:[Nature] has arranged it so that during the dangerous passage of birth, the child is receiving oxygen from two sources rather than one: from the lungs and from the umbilicus. Two systems functioning simultaneously, one relieving the other: the old one, the umbilicus, continues to supply oxygen to the baby until the new one, the lungs, has fully taken its place. However, once the infant has been born and delivered from the mother, it remains bound to her by this umbilicus, which continues to beat for several long minutes: four, five, sometimes more. Oxygenated by the umbilicus, sheltered from anoxia, the baby can settle into breathing without danger and without shock. In addition, the blood has plenty of time to abandon its old route (which leads to the placenta) and progressively to fill the pulmonary circulatory system. During this time, in parallel fashion, an orifice closes in the heart, which seals off the old route forever. In short, for an average of four or five minutes, the newborn infant straddles two worlds. Drawing oxygen from two sources, it switches gradually from the one to the other, without a brutal transition. One scarcely hears a cry. What is required for this miracle to take place? Only a little patience.Patience is not something you associate with hospital birth. There are simply not the resources, even if, as the sixth US president John Quincy Adams said, ‘patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish'. The arguments to delay the early cutting of the cord (something not as frequent in hospitals as it once was) are that, even though blood going back to the placenta stops flowing – or pulsing – non-pulsing blood going from the placenta into baby is still flowing. After birth, 25–35% of baby's oxygenated blood remains in the placenta for up to ten minutes. With the cord cut early, baby is less likely to receive this blood, making cold stress, infant jaundice, anaemia, Rh disease and even a delayed maternal placental expulsion more likely. There is also the risk of oxygen deprivation and circulatory shock, as baby gasps for breath before his nasal passages have naturally drained their mucus and amniotic fluid. Scientist W. F. Windle has even argued that, starved of blood and oxygen, brain cells will die, so cutting the cord too early even sets the stage for brain damage.Natural birth advocates say it is vital for the baby's feeding to be put to the breast as soon as possible after birth, while his sucking instincts are strongest. Bathing, measuring and temperature-taking can wait. Babies are most alert during the first hour after birth, so it's important to take advantage of this before they settle into that sleepy stage that can last for hours or even days.Colostrum, the yellow fluid that breasts start producing during pregnancy, is nature's first food. is substance performs many roles we know about and probably many we don't as well. Known as ‘baby's first vaccine', it is full of antibodies and protects against many different viruses and bacteria. It has a laxative effect that clears meconium – baby's black and tarry first stool – out of the system. If this isn't done, baby can be vulnerable to jaundice. Colostrum lines baby's stomach ready for its mother's milk, which comes two or three days later, and it meets baby's nutritional needs with a naturally occurring balance of fat, protein and carbohydrate. Again, with the various medical interventions that go on in hospitals, from operations to drug-taking to simply separating mother and baby, this early breast-feeding process can easily be derailed. Once derailed, as I've said, it's often hard to get back on track. I am no scientist and cannot speak with any authority on the science behind it all, but I do know that nature, very often, plans for things that science has yet to discover.Once upon a time, when families lived closer together and people had more children at a younger age, there was an immediate family infrastructure around you. People were experienced with young. If mum was tired, nan or auntie could feed the baby. Many of us are less fortunate in this regard today. With a hospital, you are sent home and, suddenly, you and your partner are on your own with a baby in your life, and very little aftercare. When my first son was born I was 30. I suddenly realized I had only held a baby once before. I was an only child so I had never looked after a younger brother or sister; my cousins, who had had children, lived abroad. Suddenly there was this living thing in my life, and I didn't know what to do. But, having had a home-birth, the midwife, who you already know, can you give you aftercare. She comes and visits, helps with the early breastfeeding process and generally supports and keeps you on the right tracks.It's so important to get the birthing process right. There are all sorts of consequences to our health and happiness to not doing so. And in the West, with the process riddled as it is with intervention, we don't. We need to get birth out of the hospital and into an environment where women experience less pain, lower levels of intervention, greater autonomy and increased satisfaction.A 2011 study by a team from Peking University and the London School of Hygiene found that, of 1.5 million births in China between 1996 and 2008, babies born in hospitals were two to three times less likely to die. China is at a similar stage in its evolutionary cycle to the developed world at the beginning of the 20th century. The move to hospitals there looks inevitable. Something similar is happening in most Developing Nations.In his book A History of Women's Bodies, Edward Shorter quotes a doctor describing a birth in a working-class home in the 1920s:You find a bed that has been slept on by the husband, wife and one or two children; it has frequently been soaked with urine, the sheets are dirty, and the patient's garments are soiled, she has not had a bath. Instead of sterile dressings you have a few old rags or the discharges are allowed to soak into a nightdress which is not changed for days.For comparison, he describes a 1920s hospital birth:The mother lies in a well-aired disinfected room, light and sunlight stream unhindered through a high window and you can make it light as day electrically too. She is well bathed and freshly clothed on linen sheets of blinding whiteness . . . You have a staff of assistants who respond to every signal . . . Only those who have to repair a perineum in a cottars's house in a cottar's bed with the poor light and help at hand can realize the joy.Most homes in the developed world are no longer as he describes, if they ever were, except in slums. It would seem the evolution in the way we give birth as a country develops passes from the home to the hospital. It is time to take it away from the hospital.Why am I spending so much time on birth in a book about economics? The process of giving birth is yet another manifestation of this culture of pervasive state intervention. (Hospitals, of course, are mostly state run.) It's another example of something that feels safer, if provided by the state in a hospital, even if the evidence is to the contrary. And it's another example of the state destroying for so many something that is beautiful and wonderful.What's more, like so many things that are state-run, hospital birth is needlessly expensive. The November 2011 study of 65,000 mothers by the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit looked at the average costs of birth in the NHS. They were highest for planned obstetric unit births and lowest for planned home-births. Here they are:* £1,631 (c. $2,600) for a planned birth in an obstetric unit * £1,461 (c. $2,340 for a planned birth in an alongside midwifery unit (AMU)* £1,435 (c. $2,300) for a planned birth in a free-standing midwifery unit (FMU)* £1,067 (c. $1,700) for a planned home-birth.Not only is it as safe; not only are people more satisfied by it; not only do the recipients receive more one-to-one – i.e. better – care; home-birth is also 35% cheaper. Intervention is expensive.So I return to this theme of non-intervention, whether in hospitals or economies. It often looks cruel, callous and hard-hearted; it often looks unsafe, but, counter-intuitively perhaps, in the end it is more human and more humane.When you look at the cost of private birth, the argument for home-birth is even more compelling. Private maternity care is expensive. For example, in summer 2012, a first birth at the Portland Hospital in London costs £2,880 (about $4,400) for a normal delivery and £3,790 (about $5,685) for an elective caesarean and for the first 24 hours of care. Additional nights in a standard room cost around £1,000 (about $1,500). You also have to allow for the fees charged by your private consultant obstetrician, which might be £3,000–£4,000 ($4,500– $6,000). So, in total, a private birth at a hospital such as the Portland could cost £7,500–£10,000 ($10–$15,000). There will be some saving if you opt for a ‘midwife-led delivery service' or ‘midwife-led care'. In this instance, you will still have a named obstetrician, but he or she will see you less often, and the birth may be ‘supported by an on-call Consultant Obstetrician'. London midwives charge £2,500–£4,000 (c. $4–6,000) for about six months of care from early pregnancy to a month after birth. The comparative value is astounding, I would say.To have a planned home-birth on the NHS is possible, but can be problematic to arrange, depending on where you are based. Most people, after they have paid taxes, do not now have the funds to buy a private home-birth, so they are forced into the arms of government health care, such is the cycle at work.I was first introduced to the idea of home-birth by my ex-wife, Louisa, something for which I will forever be grateful. She hated hospitals due to an earlier experience in her life and only found out about alternatives thanks to the internet. I, as well as my friends and family, thought Louisa was insane. But she insisted. And she was right to.Our first son was actually two weeks and six days late. Because he was so late, we were obliged to go to the hospital, which we did, after two weeks and five days. We were kept waiting so long in there, we decided to go and persuaded an overworked nurse that we were fine to go and we left. The confused nurse was glad to have one less thing to think about. The next day Samuel was born: a beautiful and wonderful experience that I will never forget, one of the happiest days of my life – exactly as nature intended.Simply talking to people that have experienced both home-birth and hospital birth, or reading about their experiences, the anecdotal evidence is compelling. Home-birth may not be for everyone – I'm not suggesting it is. Birthing centres seem a good way forward. But a hospital birth should only be for emergencies. Childbirth is a natural process that no longer requires hospitalization, except in those 1% of situations where something goes seriously wrong. If it does go wrong and there is an emergency, call an ambulance and be taken to hospital – that is what they are for.Returning to the original premise of Natural and Positive Law, it's pretty clear which category hospital birth falls into. Hospitals do things in the way that they do because of the pressures they are under, not least the threat of legal action should some procedural failure occur. Taking birth back home and away from the state reduces the burden of us on it and of it on us.Life After the State - Why We Don't Need Government (2013) is now back in print - with the audiobook here: Audible UK, Audible US, Apple Books. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

All four of my children were born at home. I feel extremely fortunate about this - they should too. Four wonderful experiences. I will forever be in debt to Louisa and Jolie.When, twenty-four years ago, my then wife, Louisa, told me she wanted to give birth to our first child at home, I thought she was off her rocker, but I gave her my word that we would at least talk to a midwife, and we did just that. Within about five minutes of meeting Tina Perridge of South London Independent Midwives, a lady of whom I cannot speak highly enough, I was instantly persuaded. Ever since, when I hear that someone is pregnant, I start urging them to have a homebirth with the persistence of a Jehovah's Witness or someone pedalling an upgrade to your current mobile phone subscription. I even included a chapter about it in my first book Life After the State - Why We Don't Need Government (2013), (now, thanks to the invaluable help of my buddy Chris P, back in print - with the audiobook here [Audible UK, Audible US, Apple Books]).I'm publishing that chapter here, something I was previously not able to do (rights issues), because I want as many people as possible to read it. Many people do not even know home-birth is an option. I'm fully aware that, when it comes to giving birth, one of the last people a prospective mum wants to hear advice from is comedian and financial writer, Dominic Frisby. I'm also aware that this is an extremely sensitive subject and that I am treading on eggshells galore. But the word needs to be spread. All I would say is that if you or someone you know is pregnant, have a conversation with an independent midwife, before committing to having your baby in a hospital. It's so important. Please just talk to an independent midwife first. With that said, here is that chapter. Enjoy it, and if you know anyone who is pregnant, please send this to them.We have to use fiat money, we have to pay taxes, most of us are beholden in some way to the education system. These are all things much bigger than us, over which we have little control. The birth of your child, however, is one of the most important experiences of your (and their) life, one where the state so often makes a mess of things, but one where it really is possible to have some control.The State: Looking After Your First BreathThe knowledge of how to give birth without outside interventions lies deep within each woman. Successful childbirth depends on an acceptance of the process.Suzanne Arms, authorThere is no single experience that puts you more in touch with the meaning of life than birth. A birth should be a happy, healthy, wonderful experience for everyone involved. Too often it isn't.Broadly speaking, there are three places a mother can give birth: at home, in hospital or – half-way house – at a birthing centre. Over the course of the 20th century we have moved birth from the home to the hospital. In the UK in the 1920s something like 80% of births took place at home. In the 1960s it was one in three. By 1991 it was 1%. In Japan the home-birth rate was 95% in 1950 falling to 1.2% in 1975. In the US home-birth went from 50% in 1938 to 1% in 1955. In the UK now 2.7% of births take place at home. In Scotland, 1.2% of births take place at home, and in Northern Ireland this drops to fewer than 0.4%. Home-birth is now the anomaly. But for several thousand years, it was the norm.The two key words here are ‘happy' and ‘healthy'. The two tend to come hand in hand. But let's look, first, at ‘healthy'. Let me stress, I am looking at planned homebirth; not a homebirth where mum didn't get to the hospital in time.My initial assumption when I looked at this subject was that hospital would be more healthy. A hospital is full of trained personnel, medicine and medical equipment. My first instinct against home-birth, it turned out, echoed the numerous arguments against it, which come from many parts of the medical establishment. They more or less run along the lines of this statement from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology: ‘Unless a woman is in a hospital, an accredited free-standing birthing centre or a birthing centre within a hospital complex, with physicians ready to intervene quickly if necessary, she puts herself and her baby's health and life at unnecessary risk.'Actually, the risk of death for babies born at home is almost half that of babies born at hospital (0.35 per 1,000 compared to 0.64), according to a 2009 study by the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence reports that mortality rates are the same in booked home-birth as in hospitals. In November 2011 a study of 65,000 mothers by the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) was published in the British Medical Journal. The overall rate of negative birth outcomes (death or serious complications) was 4.3 per 1,000 births, with no difference in outcome between non-obstetric and obstetric (hospital) settings. The study did find that the rate of complications rose for first-time mums, 5.3 per 1,000 (0.53%) for hospitals and 9.5 per 1,000 (0.95%) for home-birth. I suspect the number of complications falls with later births because, with experience, the process becomes easier – and because mothers who had problems are less likely to have more children than those who didn't. The Daily Mail managed to twist this into: ‘First-time mothers who opt for home birth face triple the risk of death or brain damage in child.' Don't you just love newspapers? Whether at home or in the hospital there were 250 negative events seen in the study: early neonatal deaths accounted for 13%; brain damage 46%; meconium aspiration syndrome 20%; traumatic nerve damage 4% and fractured bones 4%. Not all of these were treatable.There are so many variables in birth that raw comparative statistics are not always enough. And, without wishing to get into an ethical argument, there are other factors apart from safety. There are things – comfort, happiness, for example – for which people are prepared to sacrifice a little safety. The overriding statistic to take away from that part of the study is that less than 1% of births in the UK, whether at hospital or at home, lead to serious complications.But when you look at rates of satisfaction with their birth experience, the numbers are staggering. According to a 1999 study by Midwifery Today researching women who have experienced both home and hospital birth, over 99% said that they would prefer to have a home-birth in the future!What, then, is so unsatisfying about the hospital birth experience? I'm going to walk through the birthing process now, comparing what goes on at home to hospital. Of course, no two births are the same, no two homes are the same, no two hospitals are the same, but, broadly speaking, it seems women prefer the home-birth experience because: they have more autonomy at home, they suffer less intervention at home and, yes, it appears they actually suffer less pain at home. When mum goes into labour, the journey to the hospital, sometimes rushed, the alien setting when she gets there, the array of doctors and nurses who she may never have met before, but are about to get intimate, can all upset her rhythm and the production of her labour hormones. These aren't always problems, but they have the potential to be; they add to stress and detract from comfort.At home, mum is in a familiar environment, she can get comfortable and settled, go where she likes and do what she likes. Often getting on with something else can take her mind off the pain of the contractions, while in hospital there is little else to focus on. At home, she can choose where she wants to give birth – and she can change her mind, if she likes. She is in her own domain, without someone she doesn't know telling her what she can and can't do. She can change the light, the heating, the music; she can decide exactly who she wants at the birth and who ‘catches' her baby. She can choose what she wants to eat. She will have interviewed and chosen her midwife many months before, and built up a relationship over that time. But in hospitals she is attended by whoever is on duty, she has to eat hospital food, there might be interruptions, doctors' pagers, alarms, screams from next door, whirrs of machinery, tube lighting, overworked, resentful staff to deal with, internal hospital politics, people coming in, waking her up, and checking her vitals, sticking in pins or needles, putting on monitor belts, checking her cervix mid-contraction – any number of things over which mum has no control. Mums who move about freely during labour complain less of back pain. Many authorities feel that the motion of walking and changing positions can even enhance the effectiveness of the contractions, but such active birth is not as possible in the confines of many hospitals. Many use intravenous fluids and electronic foetal monitors to ensure she stays hydrated and to record each contraction and beat of the baby's heart. This all dampens mum's ability to move about and adds to any feelings of claustrophobia.In hospital the tendency is to give birth on your back, though this is often not the best position – the coccyx cannot bend to help the baby's head pass through. There are many other positions – on your hands and knees for example – where you don't have to work against gravity and where the baby's head is not impeded. On your back, pushing is less effective and metal forceps are sometimes used to pull the baby out of the vagina, but forceps are less commonly used when mum assumes a position of comfort during the bearing-down stage.This brings us to the next issue: intervention. The NPEU study of 2011 found that 58% of women in hospital had a natural birth without any intervention, compared to 88% of women at home and 80% of women at a midwife-led unit. Of course, there are frequent occasions when medical technology saves lives, but the likelihood of medical intervention increases in hospitals. I suggest it can actually cause as many problems as it alleviates because it is interruptive. Even routine technology can interrupt the normal birth process. Once derailed from the birthing tracks, it is hard to get back on. Once intervention starts, it's hard to stop. The medical industry is built on providing cures, but if you are a mother giving birth, you are not sick, there is nothing wrong with you, what you are going through is natural and normal. As author Sheila Stubbs writes, ‘the midwife considers the miracle of childbirth as normal, and leaves it alone unless there's trouble. The obstetrician normally sees childbirth as trouble; if he leaves it alone, it's a miracle.'Here are just some of the other interventions that occur. If a mum arrives at hospital and the production of her labour hormones has been interrupted, as can happen as a result of the journey, she will sometimes be given syntocinon, a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin, which occurs naturally and causes the muscle of the uterus to contract during labour so baby can be pushed out. The dose of syntocinon is increased until contractions are deemed normal. It's sometimes given after birth as well to stimulate the contractions that help push out the placenta and prevent bleeding. But there are allegations that syntocinon increases the risk of baby going into distress, and of mum finding labour too painful and needing an epidural. This is one of the reasons why women also find home-birth less painful.Obstetricians sometimes rupture the bag of waters surrounding the baby in order to speed up the birthing process. This places a time limit on the labour, as the likelihood of a uterine infection increases after the water is broken. Indeed in a hospital – no matter how clean – you are exposed to more pathogens than at home. The rate of post-partum infection to women who give birth in hospital is a terrifying 25%, compared to just 4% in home-birth mothers. Once the protective cushion of water surrounding the baby's head is removed (that is to say, once the waters are broken) there are more possibilities for intervention. A scalp electrode, a tiny probe, might be attached to baby's scalp, to continue monitoring its heart rate and to gather information about its blood.There are these and a whole host of other ‘just in case' interventions in hospital that you just don't meet at home. As childbirth author Margaret Jowitt, says – and here we are back to our theme of Natural Law – ‘Natural childbirth has evolved to suit the species, and if mankind chooses to ignore her advice and interfere with her workings we must not complain about the consequences.'At home, if necessary, in the 1% of cases where serious complications do ensue, you can still be taken to hospital – assuming you live in reasonable distance of one.‘My mother groaned, my father wept,' wrote William Blake, ‘into the dangerous world I leapt.' We come now to the afterbirth. Many new mothers say they physically ache for their babies when they are separated. Nature, it seems, gives new mothers a strong attachment desire, a physical yearning that, if allowed to be satisfied, starts a process with results beneficial to both mother and baby. There are all sorts of natural forces at work, many of which we don't even know about. ‘Incomplete bonding,' on the other hand, in the words of Judith Goldsmith, author of Childbirth Wisdom from the World's Oldest Societies, ‘can lead to confusion, depression, incompetence, and even rejection of the child by the mother.' Yet in hospitals, even today with all we know, the baby is often taken away from the mother for weighing and other tests – or to keep it warm, though there is no warmer place for it that in its mother's arms (nature has planned for skin-to-skin contact).Separation of mother from baby is more likely if some kind of medical intervention or operation has occurred, or if mum is recovering from drugs taken during labour. (Women who have taken drugs in labour also report decreased maternal feelings towards their babies and increased post-natal depression). At home, after birth, baby is not taken from its mother's side unless there is an emergency.As child development author, Joseph Chilton Pearce, writes, ‘Bonding is a psychological-biological state, a vital physical link that coordinates and unifies the entire biological system . . . We are never conscious of being bonded; we are conscious only of our acute disease when we are not bonded.' The breaking of the bond results in higher rates of postpartum depression and child rejection. Nature gives new parents and babies the desire to bond, because bonding is beneficial to our species. Not only does it encourage breastfeeding and speed the recovery of the mother, but the emotional bonding in the magical moments after birth between mother and child, between the entire family, cements the unity of the family. The hospital institution has no such agenda. The cutting of the umbilical cord is another area of contention. Hospitals, say home-birth advocates, cut it too soon. In Birth Without Violence, the classic 1975 text advocating gentle birthing techniques, Frederick Leboyer – also an advocate of bonding and immediate skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby after birth – writes:[Nature] has arranged it so that during the dangerous passage of birth, the child is receiving oxygen from two sources rather than one: from the lungs and from the umbilicus. Two systems functioning simultaneously, one relieving the other: the old one, the umbilicus, continues to supply oxygen to the baby until the new one, the lungs, has fully taken its place. However, once the infant has been born and delivered from the mother, it remains bound to her by this umbilicus, which continues to beat for several long minutes: four, five, sometimes more. Oxygenated by the umbilicus, sheltered from anoxia, the baby can settle into breathing without danger and without shock. In addition, the blood has plenty of time to abandon its old route (which leads to the placenta) and progressively to fill the pulmonary circulatory system. During this time, in parallel fashion, an orifice closes in the heart, which seals off the old route forever. In short, for an average of four or five minutes, the newborn infant straddles two worlds. Drawing oxygen from two sources, it switches gradually from the one to the other, without a brutal transition. One scarcely hears a cry. What is required for this miracle to take place? Only a little patience.Patience is not something you associate with hospital birth. There are simply not the resources, even if, as the sixth US president John Quincy Adams said, ‘patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish'. The arguments to delay the early cutting of the cord (something not as frequent in hospitals as it once was) are that, even though blood going back to the placenta stops flowing – or pulsing – non-pulsing blood going from the placenta into baby is still flowing. After birth, 25–35% of baby's oxygenated blood remains in the placenta for up to ten minutes. With the cord cut early, baby is less likely to receive this blood, making cold stress, infant jaundice, anaemia, Rh disease and even a delayed maternal placental expulsion more likely. There is also the risk of oxygen deprivation and circulatory shock, as baby gasps for breath before his nasal passages have naturally drained their mucus and amniotic fluid. Scientist W. F. Windle has even argued that, starved of blood and oxygen, brain cells will die, so cutting the cord too early even sets the stage for brain damage.Natural birth advocates say it is vital for the baby's feeding to be put to the breast as soon as possible after birth, while his sucking instincts are strongest. Bathing, measuring and temperature-taking can wait. Babies are most alert during the first hour after birth, so it's important to take advantage of this before they settle into that sleepy stage that can last for hours or even days.Colostrum, the yellow fluid that breasts start producing during pregnancy, is nature's first food. is substance performs many roles we know about and probably many we don't as well. Known as ‘baby's first vaccine', it is full of antibodies and protects against many different viruses and bacteria. It has a laxative effect that clears meconium – baby's black and tarry first stool – out of the system. If this isn't done, baby can be vulnerable to jaundice. Colostrum lines baby's stomach ready for its mother's milk, which comes two or three days later, and it meets baby's nutritional needs with a naturally occurring balance of fat, protein and carbohydrate. Again, with the various medical interventions that go on in hospitals, from operations to drug-taking to simply separating mother and baby, this early breast-feeding process can easily be derailed. Once derailed, as I've said, it's often hard to get back on track. I am no scientist and cannot speak with any authority on the science behind it all, but I do know that nature, very often, plans for things that science has yet to discover.Once upon a time, when families lived closer together and people had more children at a younger age, there was an immediate family infrastructure around you. People were experienced with young. If mum was tired, nan or auntie could feed the baby. Many of us are less fortunate in this regard today. With a hospital, you are sent home and, suddenly, you and your partner are on your own with a baby in your life, and very little aftercare. When my first son was born I was 30. I suddenly realized I had only held a baby once before. I was an only child so I had never looked after a younger brother or sister; my cousins, who had had children, lived abroad. Suddenly there was this living thing in my life, and I didn't know what to do. But, having had a home-birth, the midwife, who you already know, can you give you aftercare. She comes and visits, helps with the early breastfeeding process and generally supports and keeps you on the right tracks.It's so important to get the birthing process right. There are all sorts of consequences to our health and happiness to not doing so. And in the West, with the process riddled as it is with intervention, we don't. We need to get birth out of the hospital and into an environment where women experience less pain, lower levels of intervention, greater autonomy and increased satisfaction.A 2011 study by a team from Peking University and the London School of Hygiene found that, of 1.5 million births in China between 1996 and 2008, babies born in hospitals were two to three times less likely to die. China is at a similar stage in its evolutionary cycle to the developed world at the beginning of the 20th century. The move to hospitals there looks inevitable. Something similar is happening in most Developing Nations.In his book A History of Women's Bodies, Edward Shorter quotes a doctor describing a birth in a working-class home in the 1920s:You find a bed that has been slept on by the husband, wife and one or two children; it has frequently been soaked with urine, the sheets are dirty, and the patient's garments are soiled, she has not had a bath. Instead of sterile dressings you have a few old rags or the discharges are allowed to soak into a nightdress which is not changed for days.For comparison, he describes a 1920s hospital birth:The mother lies in a well-aired disinfected room, light and sunlight stream unhindered through a high window and you can make it light as day electrically too. She is well bathed and freshly clothed on linen sheets of blinding whiteness . . . You have a staff of assistants who respond to every signal . . . Only those who have to repair a perineum in a cottars's house in a cottar's bed with the poor light and help at hand can realize the joy.Most homes in the developed world are no longer as he describes, if they ever were, except in slums. It would seem the evolution in the way we give birth as a country develops passes from the home to the hospital. It is time to take it away from the hospital.Why am I spending so much time on birth in a book about economics? The process of giving birth is yet another manifestation of this culture of pervasive state intervention. (Hospitals, of course, are mostly state run.) It's another example of something that feels safer, if provided by the state in a hospital, even if the evidence is to the contrary. And it's another example of the state destroying for so many something that is beautiful and wonderful.What's more, like so many things that are state-run, hospital birth is needlessly expensive. The November 2011 study of 65,000 mothers by the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit looked at the average costs of birth in the NHS. They were highest for planned obstetric unit births and lowest for planned home-births. Here they are:* £1,631 (c. $2,600) for a planned birth in an obstetric unit * £1,461 (c. $2,340 for a planned birth in an alongside midwifery unit (AMU)* £1,435 (c. $2,300) for a planned birth in a free-standing midwifery unit (FMU)* £1,067 (c. $1,700) for a planned home-birth.Not only is it as safe; not only are people more satisfied by it; not only do the recipients receive more one-to-one – i.e. better – care; home-birth is also 35% cheaper. Intervention is expensive.So I return to this theme of non-intervention, whether in hospitals or economies. It often looks cruel, callous and hard-hearted; it often looks unsafe, but, counter-intuitively perhaps, in the end it is more human and more humane.When you look at the cost of private birth, the argument for home-birth is even more compelling. Private maternity care is expensive. For example, in summer 2012, a first birth at the Portland Hospital in London costs £2,880 (about $4,400) for a normal delivery and £3,790 (about $5,685) for an elective caesarean and for the first 24 hours of care. Additional nights in a standard room cost around £1,000 (about $1,500). You also have to allow for the fees charged by your private consultant obstetrician, which might be £3,000–£4,000 ($4,500– $6,000). So, in total, a private birth at a hospital such as the Portland could cost £7,500–£10,000 ($10–$15,000). There will be some saving if you opt for a ‘midwife-led delivery service' or ‘midwife-led care'. In this instance, you will still have a named obstetrician, but he or she will see you less often, and the birth may be ‘supported by an on-call Consultant Obstetrician'. London midwives charge £2,500–£4,000 (c. $4–6,000) for about six months of care from early pregnancy to a month after birth. The comparative value is astounding, I would say.To have a planned home-birth on the NHS is possible, but can be problematic to arrange, depending on where you are based. Most people, after they have paid taxes, do not now have the funds to buy a private home-birth, so they are forced into the arms of government health care, such is the cycle at work.I was first introduced to the idea of home-birth by my ex-wife, Louisa, something for which I will forever be grateful. She hated hospitals due to an earlier experience in her life and only found out about alternatives thanks to the internet. I, as well as my friends and family, thought Louisa was insane. But she insisted. And she was right to.Our first son was actually two weeks and six days late. Because he was so late, we were obliged to go to the hospital, which we did, after two weeks and five days. We were kept waiting so long in there, we decided to go and persuaded an overworked nurse that we were fine to go and we left. The confused nurse was glad to have one less thing to think about. The next day Samuel was born: a beautiful and wonderful experience that I will never forget, one of the happiest days of my life – exactly as nature intended.Simply talking to people that have experienced both home-birth and hospital birth, or reading about their experiences, the anecdotal evidence is compelling. Home-birth may not be for everyone – I'm not suggesting it is. Birthing centres seem a good way forward. But a hospital birth should only be for emergencies. Childbirth is a natural process that no longer requires hospitalization, except in those 1% of situations where something goes seriously wrong. If it does go wrong and there is an emergency, call an ambulance and be taken to hospital – that is what they are for.Returning to the original premise of Natural and Positive Law, it's pretty clear which category hospital birth falls into. Hospitals do things in the way that they do because of the pressures they are under, not least the threat of legal action should some procedural failure occur. Taking birth back home and away from the state reduces the burden of us on it and of it on us.Life After the State - Why We Don't Need Government (2013) is now back in print - with the audiobook here: Audible UK, Audible US, Apple Books. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns wants MPs to be back at Macquarie Street this Friday despite Parliament not being due to resume until after the March state election. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns wants MPs to be back at Macquarie Street this Friday despite Parliament not being due to resume until after the March state election. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you want more sales in your business? Do you want more profit? Do you want to 10x your results in the next twelve months? In this episode, Liam shares three top tips that'll supercharge your sales and drive you towards explosive, incredible growth and revenue. KEY TAKEAWAYS You need to get better at marketing! Marketing is based in sales, so when you become a better marketer, the leads will come to you. As a business owner, you need to understand the customer journey intimately. You need to know all of the facts, figures and selling points for your customer. Caring is the key to driving sales. It's not enough to simply say you care, you need to show that you care about the customers you have.  BEST MOMENTS 'Marketing, in fact, is sales!' 'Actually care for your customer' 'Make sure your product is suitable for your prospect'  VALUABLE RESOURCES The Dealmaker Podcast - https://omny.fm/shows/the-deal-maker-by-liam-ryan Assets For Life - https://assetsforlife.co.uk    ABOUT THE HOST You're listening to The Deal Maker podcast with Property Expert, Property Multi Millionaire and Joint World Record Holder Liam J. Ryan. If you want to become a master negotiator, close more property deals, become a great salesperson and live a better life then The Deal Maker podcast is for you. Liam is a property investor, business owner and Entrepreneur helping people make more money and live a happier life CONTACT METHOD Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/liamjryanwealth/ Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/LiamJRyan.AFL Facebook Personal - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010124928017

There are a few words that, when inserted into a phrase, change the meaning entirely. 'Actually' is one of them. Find out how in today's story.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Connor Leahy on Dying with Dignity, EleutherAI and Conjecture, published by Michaël Trazzi on July 22, 2022 on LessWrong. I talked to Connor Leahy about Yudkowsky's antimemes in Death with Dignity, common misconceptions about EleutherAI and his new AI Alignment company Conjecture. Below are some highlighted quotes from our conversation (available on Youtube, Spotify, Google Podcast, Apple Podcast). For the full context for each of these quotes, you can find an accompanying transcript, organized in 74 sub-sections. Understanding Eliezer Yudkowsky Eliezer Has Been Conveying Antimemes “Antimemes are completely real. There's nothing supernatural about it. Most antimemes are just things that are boring. So things that are extraordinarily boring are antimemes because, by their nature, resist you remembering them. And there's also a lot of antimemes in various kinds of sociological and psychological literature. A lot of psychology literature, especially early psychology literature, which is often very wrong to be clear. Psychoanalysis is just wrong about almost everything. But the writing style, the kind of thing these people I think are trying to do is they have some insight, which is an antimeme. And if you just tell someone an antimeme, it'll just bounce off them. That's the nature of an antimeme. So to convey an antimeme to people, you have to be very circuitous, often through fables, through stories you have, through vibes. This is a common thing. Moral intuitions are often antimemes. Things about various human nature or truth about yourself. Psychologists, don't tell you, "Oh, you're fucked up, bro. Do this." That doesn't work because it's an antimeme. People have protection, they have ego. You have all these mechanisms that will resist you learning certain things. Humans are very good at resisting learning things that make themselves look bad. So things that hurt your own ego are generally antimemes. So I think a lot of what Eliezer does and a lot of his value as a thinker is that he is able, through however the hell his brain works, to notice and comprehend a lot of antimemes that are very hard for other people to understand.” Why the Dying with Dignity Heuristic is Useful “The whole point of the post is that if you do that, and you also fail the test by thinking that blowing TSMC is a good idea, you are not smart enough to do this. Don't do it. If you're smart enough, you figured out that this is not a good idea... Okay, maybe. But most people, or at least many people, are not smart enough to be consequentialists. So if you actually want to save the world, you actually want to save the world... If you want to win, you don't want to just look good or feel good about yourself, you actually want to win, maybe just think about dying with dignity instead. Because even though you, in your mind, you don't model your goal as winning the world, the heuristic that the action is generated by the heuristic will reliably be better at actually saving the world.” “There's another interpretation of this, which I think might be better where you can model people like AI_WAIFU as modeling timelines where we don't win with literally zero value. That there is zero value whatsoever in timelines where we don't win. And Eliezer, or people like me, are saying, 'Actually, we should value them in proportion to how close to winning we got'. Because that is more healthy... It's reward shaping! We should give ourselves partial reward for getting partially the way. He says that in the post, how we should give ourselves dignity points in proportion to how close we get. And this is, in my opinion, a much psychologically healthier way to actually deal with the problem. This is how I reason about the problem. I expect to die. I expect this not to work out. But hell, I'm going to give it a good shot ...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Connor Leahy on Dying with Dignity, EleutherAI and Conjecture, published by Michaël Trazzi on July 22, 2022 on LessWrong. I talked to Connor Leahy about Yudkowsky's antimemes in Death with Dignity, common misconceptions about EleutherAI and his new AI Alignment company Conjecture. Below are some highlighted quotes from our conversation (available on Youtube, Spotify, Google Podcast, Apple Podcast). For the full context for each of these quotes, you can find an accompanying transcript, organized in 74 sub-sections. Understanding Eliezer Yudkowsky Eliezer Has Been Conveying Antimemes “Antimemes are completely real. There's nothing supernatural about it. Most antimemes are just things that are boring. So things that are extraordinarily boring are antimemes because, by their nature, resist you remembering them. And there's also a lot of antimemes in various kinds of sociological and psychological literature. A lot of psychology literature, especially early psychology literature, which is often very wrong to be clear. Psychoanalysis is just wrong about almost everything. But the writing style, the kind of thing these people I think are trying to do is they have some insight, which is an antimeme. And if you just tell someone an antimeme, it'll just bounce off them. That's the nature of an antimeme. So to convey an antimeme to people, you have to be very circuitous, often through fables, through stories you have, through vibes. This is a common thing. Moral intuitions are often antimemes. Things about various human nature or truth about yourself. Psychologists, don't tell you, "Oh, you're fucked up, bro. Do this." That doesn't work because it's an antimeme. People have protection, they have ego. You have all these mechanisms that will resist you learning certain things. Humans are very good at resisting learning things that make themselves look bad. So things that hurt your own ego are generally antimemes. So I think a lot of what Eliezer does and a lot of his value as a thinker is that he is able, through however the hell his brain works, to notice and comprehend a lot of antimemes that are very hard for other people to understand.” Why the Dying with Dignity Heuristic is Useful “The whole point of the post is that if you do that, and you also fail the test by thinking that blowing TSMC is a good idea, you are not smart enough to do this. Don't do it. If you're smart enough, you figured out that this is not a good idea... Okay, maybe. But most people, or at least many people, are not smart enough to be consequentialists. So if you actually want to save the world, you actually want to save the world... If you want to win, you don't want to just look good or feel good about yourself, you actually want to win, maybe just think about dying with dignity instead. Because even though you, in your mind, you don't model your goal as winning the world, the heuristic that the action is generated by the heuristic will reliably be better at actually saving the world.” “There's another interpretation of this, which I think might be better where you can model people like AI_WAIFU as modeling timelines where we don't win with literally zero value. That there is zero value whatsoever in timelines where we don't win. And Eliezer, or people like me, are saying, 'Actually, we should value them in proportion to how close to winning we got'. Because that is more healthy... It's reward shaping! We should give ourselves partial reward for getting partially the way. He says that in the post, how we should give ourselves dignity points in proportion to how close we get. And this is, in my opinion, a much psychologically healthier way to actually deal with the problem. This is how I reason about the problem. I expect to die. I expect this not to work out. But hell, I'm going to give it a good shot ...

Benvenuti in questo episodio numero 7 del podcast! In questo episodio- LET'S TALK: cosa faremo domani?- THE TOPIC: tech- A PIECE OF ENGLISH: actually- THE TIP: read in English - SEE YOU SOON: facciamo i saluti finali e diamo appuntamento al prossimo episodioMa chi ascolterai parlare in questo podcast?Mi presento: sono Vincenzo Schettini, creatore del canale youtube "la fisica che ci piace", docente di fisica, musicista ma soprattutto appassionato di lingue! La mia avventura con la lingua inglese è iniziata appena cinque anni fa e dato che mi sentivo a disagio nel non conoscere questa lingua ho deciso di iniziare un percorso tutto mio. La domanda che ho creato come titolo di questa podcast la dice tutta: come un podcast può cambiare il nostro modo di imparare la lingua inglese? Questa è una delle domande che mi sono sempre fatto da quando ho cominciato a praticare la lingua inglese perché ascoltare i podcast è stata una delle prime cose che ho fatto, tra l'altro una delle più efficaciAllora ho deciso di creare ora un podcast è tutto mio: un viaggio meraviglioso ed entusiasmante nel quale cambierete la vostra stessa prospettiva di imparare la lingua inglese: in questo viaggio speciale assieme a me una mia amica e language partner! Gina Romano statunitense di nascita, nonostante il nome tutto italiano (infatti le sue radici sono italiane), professoressa di matematica in New Jersey, madre di quattro figli ed appassionata di lingua italiana.In questa podcast condivideremo in maniera assolutamente naturale le nostre abitudini attraverso le quali io acquisisco l'inglese e Gina l'italiano. In ogni puntata condivideremo un nuovo topic, una nuova parola oppure un idiom o phrasal verb e daremo di volta in volta un consiglio ovvero un suggerimento per migliorare l'approccio con la lingua ingleseHave fun! ;) Vincenzo & Gina

Today on the JN Radio hour, we will dive into one of the single most important bands making music today: Deerhoof. This interview occurred during the first time all four band members of Deerhoof were in the same room nearly 2 years. They had just finished filming their new live-stream (their first ever in the band's history - premiering on Bandcamp Dec 12 2021). This is not a typical "live stream", but also a mini-documentary of sorts in which the band documents their experience of traveling and meeting up for the first time in ages, and performs many of their new songs live for the first time ever. During the interview we discuss everything from practical DIY touring tips, the difference between stadium and arena rock, their experience touring with enormous bands like Radiohead and RHCP while traveling in a Prius or minivan, and what it's like to start playing again after 2 years of isolation. The conversation was so fun in fact, that we had to split this into a 2-part episode. Featuring songs from the band's newly released album 'Actually, You Can', and one sneak peek at a live song from the new Bandcamp event. Visit Deerhoof's bandcamp page to check out this incredible live performance / mini documentary: https://deerhoof.bandcamp.com/merch/deerhoofs-first-show-in-two-years Hosted by Karl Hofstetter, founder and curator of Joyful Noise Recordings. Intro by David Woodruff, featuring music by El Ten Eleven. For more, visit joyfulnoiserecordings.com

Vendredi 3 décembre, Laure Closier a reçu Philippe Vivien , directeur général d'Alixio, ancien DRH d'Areva, Anne-Cécile Sarfati, présidente d'Actually, et Aurélien Herquel, fondateur de Hu-man. Ils se sont penchés sur sur la nouvelle génération de DRH, la difficulté pour réussir sa vie de couple et sa vie professionnel, ainsi que le nouveau label européen sur le bien-être au travail, dans l'émission Happy Boulot le mag sur BFM Business. Retrouvez l'émission le vendredi et réécoutez la en podcast.

There is still no set timeframe for when all students in level 3 will return to the classroom. Education Minister Chris Hipkins has indicated that primary school students could be back from November 15, but they're still working out the details. It is likely different year groups will attend on different days. So what effect does all this uncertainty have on children, and how do you keep them motivated? Parenting expert Nathan Wallis talks to Lisa Owen.  

THE DEEP CONTROL presents ... DJ Joma (Ireland) "For me, it's all about mood and a deep, hypnotic groove… playing those tracks that get you tapping your feet and nodding your head without you realising it, regardless of genre, tempo, style, or release date." The fact is I loved pop music years before I even heard of house. I was a child of the Madchester era and still listen to some of it. I like Depeche Mode, New Order, Bananarama and Simply Red and I'm not afraid to confess I own complete catalogues of the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure on vinyl and my favourite album as a kid was for many years Erasure: The Innocents - I wore the cassette out, which made my Dad invest in a CD player for me at Christmas time. The first 7-inch I bought was 'Never Gonna Give You Up' by Rick Astley, the first album 'Actually' by the Pet Shop Boys and the first 12" was 'Domino Dancing' by the Pet Shop Boys. Maybe this is not everyone's cup of tea, but it's who I am. So how did I get here? Well, 25 years ago a friend put into my hands on a Sasha BBC Radio One Essential Mix-tape, and that's when it all started to change. I didn't want to be a DJ to avoid dancing in public, to attract girls and get free drinks, I just liked playing good tunes to friends. In the years since I've DJ'd out and about occasionally and had the best night ever each and every time, but I'm honest enough to know I'm not really a high talented DJ and I really have been lucky to see a few at work and I'm glad for that. During these 25 years, both DJ's and labels have come and gone, and my success has been especially due to the faith and support of the people who are important to me. In recent years, I have taken my music to many places and Eastern Europe, especially Montenegro and Croatia, where in 2019 I was booked to perform for 12 nights consecutively at the the Croatian Open ATP Tennis Tournament in Umag within various Beach clubs and VIP cocktail lounges. As someone who has regularly up-dated his skills at London Sound Academy and has been playing progressively for the last 25 years throughout Europe, and also as someone who learnt with vinyl and now uses CDJ's, I can claim to know what I am doing in theory at least. Although I have developed a style that suits perfectly for the venues that I like to play (Beach Clubs, Cocktail Bars, VIP Lounges, Exclusive Restaurants), what I value the most is that I am always focused on enhancing the overall experience rather than imposing my own style as an artist, and I think that differentiates me from other DJ's. My weekly “Thru The Looking Glass” Podcast show seemed like the natural progression of what I have been doing, and thanks to the help of radio stations like Pure Ibiza Radio, Ibiza Global Radio, Boogie Bunker Radio, Data Transmission, Like That Underground and Ibiza Stardust Radio, it has developed brilliantly with a great following who really appreciate the deep melodic dreamy house music that I showcase each week, and I'm very proud of it's success. I am now starting to produce tracks also. With my production partner; stunning female vocalist: Moon Aton from Hamburg in Germany; we are producing some deep dreamy melodic house tracks with beautiful ethereal vocals. They aren't perfect, nor are they intended to be; but we enjoy making them and maybe some others may enjoy them too, let's wait and see! To date we have had great support from brilliant labels such as Colour & Pitch, Personal Belongings, Nordic Voyage Recordingsand Be Adult Music. ARTIST SC • @JomaDJay FB • https://fb.com/JomaDJay IG • https://instagr.am/JomaDJay CHANNEL SC • @the_deep_control FB • https://fb.com/TheDeepControlMusic IG • https://instagr.am/TheDeepControlMusic FREE DOWNLOAD - no download gates - keep it simple and keep us in your heart :)

Will Larson CTO @ Calm shares with us how to focus your time on what actually matters. You’ll hear about many of the common traps engineering leaders fall into and his frameworks to help you better target your time to focus on long-term, high-impact work. "A lot of times they'll be like, 'Oh no one's working on this... I can make a huge improvement here!' But then they'll get signals from leadership that 'Actually this isn't valued...' And so I think it's really important to understand what SHOULD be valuable, and then understand what IS actually valued, and then make your own decisions based on that in terms of where you want to put your time." WILL LARSON, CTO @ CALM Will previously working at places like Stripe, Uber, and Digg. He's been writing on his blog, Irrational Exuberance, since 2007 with 600+ different posts covering tons of topics on engineering leadership, management and career. He is also the author of “An Elegant Puzzle” and his *NEW* book “Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track” Follow Will on Twitter @Lethain Here is the interview Will referenced with Aaron Suggs (engineering sponsorship & being a ‘frequent first follower’) SHOWNOTES When Will confronted the existential question “Am I actually working on what matters?” (3:56) Where most people go wrong when evaluating how they spend their time (8:52) How to focus on long-term impact and avoid short-term “snacks” & “preening” (10:12) How to navigate a company that recognizes high visibility work over high-impact work (13:12) How to mitigate & reduce status-chasing in your teams (16:09) What high-visibility, low impact work looks like with engineering leaders (18:20) “Chasing Ghosts” and the trap of projecting familiarity onto problems (20:59) How to catch yourself “chasing ghosts” (27:31) Focus on what really matters by seeking the “existential issues” & where there’s “Room AND Attention” (32:10) How to identify and anticipate future existential issues with the “Iterative Elimination Tournament” (35:28) Creating “Room and Attention” & identifying your unique capabilities as an eng leader (38:20) Get projects unstuck and prioritized fast by “Lending Privilege” (42:11) Why Will wrote his new book - “Staff Engineering: Leadership Beyond the Management Track” (45:42) Takeaways (48:40) LINKS & RESOURCES Will's blog Irrational Exuberance: https://lethain.com/ Here’s the interview Will referenced with Aaron Suggs on engineering sponsorship & being a ‘frequent first follower’: https://staffeng.com/stories/aaron-suggs Will's book An Elegant Puzzle: https://lethain.com/elegant-puzzle/ Will's *NEW* book - "Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track": https://staffeng.com/book Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish! Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions. Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elc Looking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at sfelc.com! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message

It's another Friday, but this is not just any old Friday. This Friday diamond hands and rockets to the sun propel JB and Mike to welcome Lee Stamper as a special guest host this week. All three will discuss the next five albums of Rolling Stone's Greatest 500 Albums of All Time. This week: 435) Pet Shop Boys, 'Actually', 434) Pavement, 'Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain', 433) LCD Soundsystem, 'Sound of Silver', 432) Usher, 'Confessions', and 431) Los Lobos, 'How Will the Wolf Survive?' Follow the podcast on social with Facebook and Instagram, leave us a message using www.anchor.fm/thislistsucks or send us an email to thislistsucks@gmail.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thislistsucks/message

On today's episode Jaclyn opens up about her experience with chronic knee pain. After her initial knee pain during marathon training 5 years earlier, Jaclyn found her symptoms gradually spin out of control.  Jaclyn describes her experiences as her symptoms intensify, to the point of constant fear and anxiety whenever she had to move or even see other people walking! We dive into the impact thoughts and beliefs have towards chronic pain and how Jaclyn worked her way out of this spiral. She gave herself permission to heal and has started her running journey again feeling liberated and empowered. Listen to her entire story on today's episode. You can find Jaclyn's podcast by searching 'Actually, You are a real runner'. Click on the link to find Jaclyn's instagram Or e-mail Jaclyn at coachjaclyn@jaclynricchio.com   If you would like to support the podcast, participate in Q&As & access bonus material sign up for $5US per month at our patreon page For Brodie's running blogs, podcast episodes and online courses visit our Run Smarter Website  To follow the podcast joint the facebook group Becoming a smarter runner To find Brodie's running information on instagram @runsmarterseries

Palavras e Expressões em inglês que confundem os brasileiros Nesse episódio, vamos falar de algumas palavras e expressões que confundem (e muito!) os brasileiros. Isso acontece com frequência, mesmo entre alunos com um bom nível de fluência e compreensão do inglês. Mas não se preocupe my dear friend! Esse episódio vai tirar de uma vez por todas algumas confusões, e destravar ainda mais o seu inglês.Actually/Actual Muita gente acha que ‘'Actually'' significa ‘'atualmente'', enquanto essa expressão significa: na verdade! Colocando em uma frase você vai entender melhor como usar o ‘'actually'' Imagine que andando pelo supermercado você encontra com um colega de trabalho que não vê a muitos meses, e imagina que ele possa ter sido mandado embora, mas aí o colega te diz: - I'm actually working from home, that's why you don't see me anymore! (Na verdade eu estou trabalhando de casa, por isso você não me vê mais.) Actual = verdadeiro Ex: Temos dois quadros, um falso e outro verdadeiro. - This is the actual Picasso, the other is a fake. (Esse é o verdadeiro Picasso, o outro é falso.) Our actual knoledge of the universe i so small.(O nosso verdadeiro conhecimento do universo é tão pequeno. Library/BookstoreLibrary = Biblioteca Bookstore = Lugar onde você pode comprar livros.Where can I find a bookstore, please? Cafeteria/Café/CoffeeCafeteria = Refeitório, seja em uma empresa, hospital, escola... Café = Lugar onde se toma ‘'coffee'' Coffee = bebida quente e revigorante extraída dos grãos de ‘'coffee''I love to have coffee in the morning. (Eu adoro tomar café de manhã.)Where's the closest Café? (Onde fica a cafeteria mais próxima?)‘'I'll meet you in the cafeteria. (Eu te encontro no refeitório.) Mascara/Foundation/Lipstick/ Make Up Pense no queridinho das compras no exterior das Brasileiras. Quem respondeu maquiagem ou Make Up, acertou em cheio! Vamos dar uma olhada em alguns desses itens in english! Mascara = rímel Foundation = base para pele Lipstick = batom Make Up = maquiagem

Palavras e Expressões em inglês que confundem os brasileiros Nesse episódio, vamos falar de algumas palavras e expressões que confundem (e muito!) os brasileiros. Isso acontece com frequência, mesmo entre alunos com um bom nível de fluência e compreensão do inglês. Mas não se preocupe my dear friend! Esse episódio vai tirar de uma vez por todas algumas confusões, e destravar ainda mais o seu inglês.Actually/Actual Muita gente acha que ‘'Actually'' significa ‘'atualmente'', enquanto essa expressão significa: na verdade! Colocando em uma frase você vai entender melhor como usar o ‘'actually''   Imagine que andando pelo supermercado você encontra com um colega de trabalho que não vê a muitos meses, e imagina que ele possa ter sido mandado embora, mas aí o colega te diz: - I'm actually working from home, that's why you don't see me anymore!  (Na verdade eu estou trabalhando de casa, por isso você não me vê mais.)  Actual = verdadeiro Ex: Temos dois quadros, um falso e outro verdadeiro. - This is the actual Picasso, the other is a fake.  (Esse é o verdadeiro Picasso, o outro é falso.)   Our actual knoledge of the universe i so small.(O nosso verdadeiro conhecimento do universo é tão pequeno.  Library/BookstoreLibrary = Biblioteca Bookstore = Lugar onde você pode comprar livros.Where can I find a bookstore, please?  Cafeteria/Café/CoffeeCafeteria = Refeitório, seja em uma empresa, hospital, escola... Café = Lugar onde se toma ‘'coffee''  Coffee = bebida quente e revigorante extraída dos grãos de ‘'coffee''I love to have coffee in the morning. (Eu adoro tomar café de manhã.)Where's the closest Café? (Onde fica a cafeteria mais próxima?)‘'I'll meet you in the cafeteria. (Eu te encontro no refeitório.) Mascara/Foundation/Lipstick/ Make Up  Pense no queridinho das compras no exterior das Brasileiras. Quem respondeu maquiagem ou Make Up, acertou em cheio! Vamos dar uma olhada em alguns desses itens in english! Mascara = rímel Foundation = base para pele Lipstick = batom Make Up = maquiagem 

In this episode Jordan and Mitz sit down with 'Actually Ratchet' to discuss Toxic Friendships, What age is acceptable to be living with your parents and Dwayne Wade!

In the second episode of 'Actually... With Bishamber and Suhani', Bishamber and Suhani speak about knowing your purpose, choosing ‘risky’ careers, dealing with rejection and having a healthy sense of ambition. Both Bishamber and Suhani have taken slightly unconventional career paths, and contrary to how it comes across on social media, it’s not been all rainbows and sunshine!

Welcome to the first episode of 'Actually... With Bishamber and Suhani'. In Episode 1, Bishamber and Suhani speak about their experiences of body image in the fashion, pageant and entertainment world. Despite their contrasting body types, both Bishamber and Suhani have faced the pressure of meeting unrealistic beauty standards.

Jaclyn Ricchio is the first guest of our podcast pursuit edition. Jaclyn is the host of the podcast 'Actually, you are a real runner' and has faced a roller-coaster life of diet, exercise, health and wellness. Her podcast explores all these topics through her self-discovery and also through insightful interviews with guest speakers. In this episode we talk about how she committed her life to running and how your perceived identity could be detrimental. We also follow Jaclyn's podcast and blog journey. Jaclyn's personal website http://www.jaclynricchio.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaclyn.ricchio.stover/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jaclyn.ricchio.stover If you would like to learn more about the Breakthrough Running Clinic- Online physiotherapy for runners visit www.breakthroughrunning.com.au   If you would like to follow us on twitter go to https://twitter.com/BrodieSharpe  To follow us on insta go to https://www.instagram.com/brodie.sharpe/  We also have our own facebook group to interact with past guests and input for future episode. Click on https://www.facebook.com/groups/247962752500993/ 

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! Week Four and the final official episode of Submissions September!  We will be back next Monday for one more episode to answer some questions we received.  But for today’s episode, we’re talking about the other side of the submissions process.  Who is reading these manuscripts?  Do they have a process?  What are they looking for?  Rekka and Kaelyn discuss what is happening on the publisher’s side of this and Kaelyn goes on a few minor tirades. In case you’re just joining us, this month is Submissions September on the We Make Books Podcast, we’re doing seven (7!) episodes this month all about the process of submitting your novel.  We have a lot of awesome discussions lined up and even some special guests.  Here’s what will be coming your way for the month: Week 1 (9/3/2019): Is This Ready For Other People to See?- Submitting Your Manuscript Week 2 (9/10/2019): My Entire Novel in Three Hundred Words - The Dreaded Query Letter Week 3 (9/17/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 1: An Interview with Literary Agent Caitlin McDonald               (9/18/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 2: Interviews with Agented Authors               (9/19/2019): Agents of Literature Part 3: Interviews with Agented Authors Week 4 (9/24/2019): What is Going On Over There? - The Other Side of the Submissions Process Week 5 (9/30/2019): Now I’m Even More Confused – Submissions September Q&A Episode We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and your thoughts on Eli Manning as a future Hall of Famer.  It’s a minimum of six years off, but apparently the entirety of anyone associated with the NFL needs to have this discussion right now. We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast       Rekka:00:00   Welcome back to, we make books, a podcast about writing, publishing and everything in between. I'm Rekka, I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore. Kaelyn:00:07   And I'm Kaelyn. I am the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. And this is my episode. Rekka:00:12   It's all yours. I'll interrupt a couple of times, but you throw things at me right back down. Kaelyn:00:17   This is my wheelhouse. This is my end of things which we are talking about. Okay. We did all this submission stuff. I've sent my manuscript, what's happening to it? Is it being well taken care of? Is someone feeding it, taking it for walks? Rekka:00:28   No, it's all trampled through the mud. Kaelyn:00:31   No, we're very nice to manuscripts and submissions. We take excellent care of them. Rekka:00:35   Also they're digital. Kaelyn:00:35   Yeah, we have a little, it's a, it's like a playpen submissions portal. They all go there and play together it's adorable. You should see it. Yes. Anyway, so yeah, we kinda, that's what we talk about. This episode is what's happening on the other end. Um, and what I'm looking for, what I'm looking at, what I'm doing and when I say, I mean general acquisitions process kind of stuff. Um, we do, you know, we do kind of mention obviously everything and everyone is different, but there are some broad strokes that are pretty universal. Rekka:01:06   Yeah. Kaelyn:01:06   So, um, you know, this is, this is sort of the end of Submissions September. Um, we've mentioned in the episode we are going to do a questions, follow up episode. Rekka:01:17   Yeah, we've been collecting questions and so we'll take the ones that we have so far, um, time being what it is. There might be more that follow up later, but these are the ones that we've collected in time to record for this month. Kaelyn:01:28   God, that whole linear time. Rekka:01:30   Time can be wobbly. New Speaker:  01:31   Yes. Um, so yeah. Anyway, hope you enjoy this episode. We hope you enjoyed submissions September. Rekka:01:37   Yes. Kaelyn:01:37   It was fun. We enjoyed doing this. Um, I enjoyed doing it. Rekka:01:41   It was awful because a lot of work. Kaelyn:01:43   Yeah. It really was. Rekka:01:45   Between scheduling all the interviews you've heard and uh, and then editing them in different weird ways depending on how we recorded them. Yeah. So, um, yeah, it's, it's been a lot of production on our part. Kaelyn:01:56   I learned a lot about audio files. Like more than - Rekka:02:00   More than you ever wanted. Kaelyn:02:01   It's more than I ever thought would be necessary for me to, so we've all grown here. Yeah. Rekka:02:06   So after this we're taking off and we're going to go mini golfing and we're going to enjoy ourselves more. We have to edit all the episodes you're going to be hearing. Kaelyn:02:14   So, um, you know, thanks for sticking with us and uh, we hope you enjoyed the episode. Rekka:02:19   Thanks everyone. Speaker 4:       02:28   [music] Kaelyn:02:37   So, last episode Submission September. Rekka:02:41   It has been a long and winding month. Kaelyn:02:43   I have not come out of this in one piece. I'm falling apart. Rekka:02:46   Yes. And that's not because of submissions. Well, actually we don't know. Kaelyn:02:49   You don't know that. Rekka:02:50   We have no proof. Kaelyn:02:53   Okay. Um, yeah. I, when I was on vacation, I broke my toe and as a result of walking funny on it, I have now messed up my lower back. I'm currently sitting propped up with a lot of pillows behind me and trying not to move too much. Um, it's not the most comfortable I've ever been in my life. Rekka:03:11   And later we're going hiking. Kaelyn:03:13   We're going to play mini golf. Rekka:03:14   That's worse because you gotta bend over. Kaelyn:03:17   Yeah, I can walk,walking's well actually that's not true. I can't really walk with - Rekka:03:22   You can do a, an imitation of a walk. Kaelyn:03:24   Yes. It's fine. Rekka is just going to carry me on her back. Rekka:03:28   Yeah. Kaelyn:03:28   Yoda-style. Rekka:03:29   Because my back's in great shape too. Kaelyn:03:31   Exactly. Rekka:03:32   So there you go. Kaelyn:03:33   Perfect. Rekka:03:33   We've got to plan. Kaelyn:03:34   Our voices are still working. That's all that matters. Rekka:03:36   Hey, you know. Kaelyn:03:37   Actually for you that's touch and go. Rekka:03:38   Yeah, that's not necessarily true, I need water. Kaelyn:03:42   Um, so yeah, we're talking today about, um, you know, we spent all of September going over everything, leading up to turning your submission into someone. So here's what's happening on the other side. Now somebody gets those submissions and reads them and has emotional reactions at Parvus that someone is me. Rekka:04:03   Yes. Kaelyn:04:04   So, you know, as I said in the beginning of every episode, I'm, I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. So, uh, you're not sending your work into a black hole. You're sending it to me. Um, and I'm going to look at it and say, sure, let's move forward with this. Or thank you, but we can't accept this right now. Um, so before we really get into this, there was one thing I wanted to clarify and that was that I was surprised when I started getting into this that I'm actually a little bit of a rare breed. There are not a lot of strictly acquisitions editors, any- Rekka:04:43   Yeah. Kaelyn:04:44   Anymore. Yeah. Um, a lot of places now, especially especially in our genre and Scifi and fantasy, um, I'd imagine across most places, um, editors kind of are doing their own acquisition process. They're kind of picking what they want to work on. Um, larger publishing houses will absolutely have more of a system in place just because they have to. Um, but a lot of times editors, um, especially when dealing with agents will kind of pick and choose their own stuff. Now they still typically have to take it to a publisher, to a senior editor, and it still has to go before the committee, so to speak. Rekka:05:23   Right. Kaelyn:05:24   They don't get to just say, Yup, this one I'm taking this. Um, they still have to get it, I don't want to say approved - Rekka:05:30   But kind of, I mean, like it's a group decision, um, because it's for the entire company, you know, the, the book and its sales will benefit the company and it's a production costs will come from the company's coffers. So it's not just an editor can decide on their own in most cases. Now maybe there are editors who just get a budget and they're like, here's your budget, turn it into something for the company. Kaelyn:05:54   Those editors have have multiple awards. Rekka:05:56   Yes, exactly. Kaelyn:05:57   And the sales and marketing team's also gonna have like something to say about it. Rekka:06:01   Right. Kaelyn:06:01   But the whole point here is that, um, while there are definitely the acquisitions editors, acquiring editors, whatever you want to call them, absolutely still do exist. Um, especially if you're have having an open submissions period because someone's gotta be in charge of, it's me at Parvus. Rekka:06:20   Um, so in a way, would you say that an acquisitions editor is more like a project manager these days? Kaelyn:06:27   Um, I'm not sure project manager is the exact correct analogy, but yes, and similar. Rekka:06:35   I don't think so, but yeah. Kaelyn:06:36   Yeah. It's, well, because I really more of a filter. I'm the first one you have to get past, right? Rekka:06:45   When you delegate from there and you, you make decisions, having seen the broad landscape as a whole. Kaelyn:06:51   Yeah, it's definitely that. Yeah. And an acquisitions editor will also work very closely with a sales and marketing team to kind of determine like, Rekka:06:58   Is there a vision? Kaelyn:06:59   Here's what I think we can do with this book and here's the plan I have for it and here's who we can sell it to, et cetera. How to position it. Rekka:07:07   Yeah, exactly. Kaelyn:07:08   So on my end, I'm taking all of that into consideration when I'm looking at these things. So, you know, you submit online, I've got a submissions manager, I've got a portal that I log into and I see everyone's query letters and their submissions and um, and I just dive in and this is very typical. You're going to get into the submissions manager. They're going to give you, um, you know, the steps of how to do all of this. If you go to Parvus's website, we have a video up of, you know, here's how you walk through your submissions process. Um, usually it generates like a number, an ID of some kind, just so you know, you can reference that. Rekka:07:51   Yeah. I like an order number. Kaelyn:07:53   Yeah, exactly. I referenced them a lot because I have a notebook that I keep track of all of this stuff in and um, the, this is going to come as a galloping shock to everyone I'm sure, but a lot of the same words get used in titles and stuff. And so I sometimes actually just remember things by their number because you get so many of the same words popping up in titles. I don't want to confuse anything. Rekka:08:20   In the noun of Noun or something. Kaelyn:08:22   Yes, exactly The This of The Thing. Yes. Um, so we've talked a lot in previous episodes for submission, September about a lot of do's and don'ts and we'll get to some more of that at the end. But - Rekka:08:39   But this one isn't so much about what you would be doin, the writer as what Kaelyn is experiencing on the back end in terms of what she receives, what her process is, her thoughts and like the decisions she's making and how she comes to them.   Kaelyn:08:55   And of course I speak for all acquisitions editors. Rekka:08:58   Absolutely, 100%. Everything you hear is uh, like Ironbound. Kaelyn:09:03   We are a collective hive mind. I'm communicating with them right now mentally. Rekka:09:07   That is not true. This is the opposite, uh Kaelyn is an individual and works for one company and other companies may do things differently and contain other individuals who are not part of a hive mind, whatever, Kaelyn would like you to believe about her supernatural abilities. Kaelyn:09:22   Um, it's true. I'm only part of the only part of the Parvus Hive Mind. Rekka:09:27   Yeah. So, um, of course what we're saying is that your results may vary with another publisher. Um, that publisher will have their own practices and their own, you know, way of going about this. So, um, this is just to give you some insight, but it is not the end all be all encyclopedia entry on how this do. Kaelyn:09:47   Now, that said, I will say that some of the things I'm about to say right now, they're pretty universal across the board. One of the things is if I open your submission and you have not followed the submission guidelines, that's probably gotten tossed right away. Um, it's, yeah, we've talked about this a little bit, but it's one of those things that I have hundreds of these. Rekka:10:08   And you're not going to pick the person that's clearly not going to follow instructions even from the get go when they are supposed to be making their best impression. And can't even follow the instructions you have given and laid out for them. Kaelyn:10:23   It's harsh to say, but I don't have time for that. I don't mean that to be callous. I don't mean it to be rude. It's a business decision. Rekka:10:28   It's your first business decision of the query. Kaelyn:10:30   It's a business decision. But it's also, I mean, I literally don't have the time for this. Um, so if you have done something that, you know, you haven't followed the submissions guidelines, there is a very, very, very good chance, not just me, most anyone interested in acquiring books are just going to go in the garbage. Um, so that's sad. You know, let's say they've got your submission lined up and correct and everything. Um, this is something maybe everyone doesn't want to hear, but I probably have a list of things that I'm interested in. Rekka:11:05   Right. Kaelyn:11:06   It's not carved in stone. It's definitely not, you know, like pleasant surprises. Absolutely. I love pleasant surprises. Um, but every time we have an open submissions period, uh, we do put, you know, like Kaelyn is interested in this, Colin is interested in this and we do kind of say like, Hey, you know, these are what we're especially excited to look for. Pleasant surprises absolutely happen. Um, but I am kind of on the lookout for certain things and I, we'll come out and admit this, that there are certain things that I'm kind of like, I can't do anymore of this, or we just don't have a space for urban fantasy right now. Rekka:11:49   And some of this is going to be your bias, just to be clear, like you're human and if you are sick of certain kind of story, there's probably a good chance that it's not something that the team as a whole is really open to. Kaelyn:11:55   Yeah. And also it might be, well we just acquired two urban fantasies. I can't do another one right now. We have to change it up, be a little, you know, more diverse in our selections. Um, so that said, you know, I'm going through everything. Um, the Colin method is being applied here. Rekka:12:24   Before we get to that, can I ask? Kaelyn:12:26   Sure. Rekka:12:26   Cause I don't know the answer to this yet. Um, so say you put out a call for military science fiction. Kaelyn:12:31   Yes. Rekka:12:32   Is there anything in your system that indicates that that's in a query so you could like sort filter for the military science fiction? So when you log into our submissions manager and um, I would imagine a lot of places do this. Kaelyn:12:49   You can select which genre you're writing in. Rekka:12:52   Even down to the sub genre? Kaelyn:12:53   Oh yeah, well, I mean, we have, you know, for us, we have a lot of different sub genres you can pick from because you know, we only do, well, that's why I said even because it seems like there's a new one every day, so - Rekka:13:04   I didn't know if it was just, if you've got the basic, um, you know, book code, library codes, you've got custom ones in there. Kaelyn:13:12   Oh, we've got, yeah, we've got some interesting ones. I sometimes I want to go in there and just add things as a joke to see if anything, anyone picks up on it. Yeah. Um, so we, um, you know, I'm, I'm using the Colin Method, which for those of you who. Rekka:13:27   Passed that episode. Kaelyn:13:37   Missed that episode, I know we've run, your first sentence is buying me your first paragraph, your first paragraph's by me, your first page, your first page is buying me your first chapter. Every little bit I read that I like, I'm gonna keep going farther. Rekka:13:41   And back to the start of that, your query buys, the first sentence buys opening the document. Kaelyn:13:45   Yes. Rekka:13:46   And so you do read the queries before you? Kaelyn:13:48   Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and the reason for that is I need to know what I'm getting into when I'm opening the manuscripts to set up an expectation. Rekka:14:02   But also to like an energy sort of allotment. New Speaker:  15:09   I am not just purchasing your book. I am purchasing you as a person and a concept and a brand that sounds illegal. I am purchasing your personality. Rekka:15:21   You are investing in the author. Let's, let's choose some. Kaelyn:15:26   Okay. Rekka:15:27   2019. Kaelyn:15:28   All right. Rekka:15:29   Terminology. Kaelyn:15:29   Well I mean we are buying your book but we're buying into you. Rekka:15:32   Yeah. Kaelyn:15:34   And that you as an author are important as the brand. But also I need to make sure that you're not posting awful things, awful things. I need to like, you know, I think we will get to this more when I get to that, but that part of this, but I need to know about you. There's no such thing as writing a book in a vacuum. Rekka:15:59   Right. So let me ask, so you said that sometimes there are slush readers and sometimes it's just you. So if a slush reader turns away a book, do you ever go, oh wait, I want to look at that before we actually turn it away? Kaelyn:16:23   A lot of times with slush readers, okay. There, the parameters of, you know, them are completely, are different all over the place. Um, I tell them if this seems even a little interesting. Rekka:16:31   Okay. Yup, Yup. Kaelyn:16:32   Yeah. Kick it up. Um, a lot of times for slush readers, like the one we most used them for was when we did our anthology because short stories are easier to do and that was very important for anonymous submissions. One of the other reasons for that is I might send it to someone else. Um, I might send it to editors within our company. Um, we have freelance editors that work with us. Sometimes I might send it to them. So that's why I want to make sure there's no information on there because I just want them to get a manuscript that's come from me that I already said this is cool. Rekka:17:25   Yeah. Kaelyn:17:27   And circulate it to the other. So that's kind of the next step. If you're, if this is something that I'm very interested in, what I'll do is I'll say like, oh, okay, uh, Ryan Kelley, he likes this kind of stuff. I'm going to send this over to him and see if that's something he would be interested in working on. Rekka:17:45   Right. Kaelyn:17:45   Because as the acquisitions editor, I don't get to just you, you're doing this now. Um, editor isn't, you know, Rekka, I'm sure you can attest to this because you've worked with a couple of different editors just at Parvus now they've got to be passionate about the stuff they're working on. Rekka:18:02   Absolutely. Yeah. I would not want an editor who is only mildly interested in my story or not at all. Kaelyn:18:10   Yeah. If you're getting assigned things that's well like, okay for copy, edit the final copy, edit fine, get as many eyes on it as possible and someone can just go through and make sure the commas are in the correct place. Rekka:18:23   But yeah, if I'm working on someone with a developmental edit. Kaelyn:18:27   Yeah, no, they, they need to be passionate and excited about this. So this is where when I said earlier how editors kind of pick what they want to work on, this is where that comes in. So like, you know, let's say for the sake of round numbers, I started out with a hundred submissions. Maybe 10 of them were interesting enough. We're going to take three books. I will send the ones that I think would work best to the editor, I think would work best with them. Rekka:18:56   Right. Kaelyn:18:57   And they'll take a look and decide, okay, well I have room on my calendar for one more book. I want it to be this one. So that sounds like it's the end of the story. But here's the thing, it's not always, and I'm going to stop here because I want to backtrack a bit and say this is assuming an open submissions call and you don't have an agent. Rekka:19:20   Right. That's important to know. Kaelyn:19:22   Yes. We should've said that earlier. Yes. So if you have an agent, what's happening is instead of just going through this open submissions call, your agent is typically directly in touch with either like me and acquisitions editor or editors specifically that they work with and know, and this is when I said that, you know, editors a lot of times pick their own things frequently. it's through relationships with agents that they have or things that people send them directly to them. Rekka:19:50   Yeah. This is why you don't see a lot of open submissions calls at a lot of publishers because the editors have already developed relationships with agents and they're, they're getting their slate filled before they could even consider having an open submissions call. Kaelyn:20:06   Yeah. And a lot of them, a lot of editors will not take unsolicited manuscripts because they just, they'll be inundated. Rekka:20:13   Right. It's a lot of work to go through all these. Kaelyn:20:15   Yeah. So you have an agent that you've worked with before, you trust their, their taste, their um, screening process. Rekka:20:23   You know, you work well together. You know, that if they have an author in their stable, that chances are it's someone you could work with because you know that that author would have to work with this agent. So it's almost like a, it's an endorsement. Yes. It's a patronage, an endorsement sort of thing that, that they can trust you because they know your agent. Kaelyn:20:46   So, that's, you know, that's where a lot of editors are frequently getting it. And that's part of the reason, you know, we talked last week was all about agents and stuff and these mythical creatures, Unicorns, why they're so important. And you know, it's, it's hard to say because we do open submission calls a lot and I like that we do them, but having a literary agent is very good. Yeah. And it's, uh, if nothing else, it's a foot in the door. It's like a little badge you get. I've got a literary agent. Rekka:21:23   Yeah. It's a little more fast track to the front of the line. Yeah. It's, um, it's guaranteeing that there's somebody who's gonna speak for your book, um, more than just your query letter. Kaelyn:21:34   Right. Um, and I mean with Parvus, we've had every book that is released as of when this is coming out. Rekka:21:42   Right. You got to be specific. Kaelyn:21:43   We've gotten through our open submissions call, um, that will change soon. But every single one of our books that we've put out already have come through our open submission call. Rekka:21:54   And that was pretty intentional on Parvus's part. Kaelyn:21:56   Yeah. Um, it, I mean, I like it. I like that we do that. Um, I like that we can find books from people that just wanted to write a good book and submitted it. And we were like, yep, we'll publish that. Rekka:22:09   Which was kind of, I mean, having talked to Colin before in other interviews, that was sort of his entire concept. Kaelyn:22:14   Yeah. Rekka:22:14   For wanting to open a publishing house. Kaelyn:22:16   Exactly. Rekka:22:17   To find the books that are out there that he knew was out there that are great and written by passionate people who love writing. Kaelyn:22:23   Yeah, exactly. So, um, so we found a book by a passionate person who loves writing and - Rekka:22:30   Who is adorable. Kaelyn:22:31   And is adorable. And they found, we have an editor who's really interested in it. So what happens next? Rekka:22:39   You tear that book to shreds. We start over. Kaelyn:22:41   No. Well before that you're probably gonna get a phone call. Rekka:22:44   Oh yeah. Okay. Sorry. I just remember the painful part. Phone call with lots of fun. Kaelyn:22:49   Um, you're probably going to get a phone call from me, but then I need to know about you. I need to make sure that if I go to your Twitter feed, it is not full of horrible misogynistic jokes and pictures. I need to make sure that you're not writing about your favorite ways to torture animals. And yeah, I know we like to think that we write books in a vacuum. We don't, I don't care if you've written the greatest thing in the history of literature. If you're a shitty person, we can't publish that and we're not going to and we don't want to. And maybe some you listening are going, well, shouldn't the book just stand on its own merit? It doesn't. Rekka:23:48   It can't. Kaelyn:23:49   It can't these days. It can't because it's not, we're not simply purchasing your book. We are investing in you as a person, as a brand, as an author. Rekka:23:59   And when they invest in an author, that author's name becomes attached to the company. Kaelyn:24:07   Exactly. And we're small, but even the bigger places, we, no one wants to affiliate themselves with crappy people. Rekka:24:15   And you see this happening a lot, um, problematic or otherwise in social media where somebody spouts off and suddenly they've lost their contract. Kaelyn:24:25   Yeah. Rekka:24:26   And you know, better or worse. I mean, we're not going to comment on different - Kaelyn:24:28   Yeah. That's uh - Rekka:24:29   situations. Some go, some go sideways real fast, you know. Kaelyn:24:33   And that's, that's a whole other thing. But the other part of this is that besides just making sure that, you know, you don't have a secret life, um, you know, with the KKK, I also want to talk to you and get a feel for what I think working with you will be like. Rekka:24:48   Right. Kaelyn:24:49   Because if I get on a phone call with you and oh, it's about time you guys called. I was wondering when I was going to hear from you this, this a 90 day turnaround. I mean, I should have been right at the top of your list. I just called - Rekka:25:07   You just found yourself at the bottom. Kaelyn:25:11   I just called to say, we hope you're having a good day. Bye. Um, you know, I want to kind of get an idea also for what you'd be willing to do with the book because as Rekka said, tear the book to shreds that they've already got ideas. The thing is, before I call you, I've already talked to your editor, who I've already said, hey, so what do you think you're going to want to work with on this? What do you, you know, what's the scale of the changes and revisions you're going to want them to make? Um, so you're probably wondering, why doesn't the editor call me? They might, it depends. It's just, you know, I'm the acquisitions editor. I'm the one who kind of - Rekka:25:48   Spearheads this operation. Kaelyn:25:49   Yeah. And it's just a little more of a streamlined process where, you know, you're going to talk to me first. It's just, just how it goes. Your editor might be on the call with me. Very possible. Um, so once you get past that, then it's, you know, into contract negotiations and I won't go too much into that right now because we're kind of, that's moving out of the submission phase of things. But then that's, I mean that's the end of the story then. Rekka:26:14   Yeah. Kaelyn:26:17   Is the contract. Rekka:26:18   Then you, from the contract. Once that's all complete, it's get to work, you know, you get your revision notes from your editor and you move into the production and then you're done. This is this whole, uh, Submission September thing is behind you. At least for this book. Kaelyn:26:32   Yeah. So, um, that's, that's kind of like, I mean, it's weird to feel like we've come to a hard stop, but like that - Rekka:26:40   That's what happens. It goes off your plate at that point, unless you decide to be the editor yourself. Kaelyn:26:44   You know, it's the submissions process I think in general is, you know, well, how, how do you go through it? Slowly at first and then suddenly all at once. Rekka:26:54   Right? Kaelyn:26:55   It's, it's a lot of hurry up and wait. Rekka:26:57   And then, and then it's everything. Kaelyn:27:02   Things can progress very quickly.Um, so that's kind of where you end up. Uh, we did, you know, I wrote down some things just to, you know, sort of run through some do's and don'ts about this kind of stuff. Rekka:27:12   A couple of questions that, you know, pop up in my mind as I'm listening to you talk. Kaelyn:27:16   Yeah. Um, you know, again, please read the submissions guidelines. I know we talked about this already, but just the fastest way to get your book taken out of consideration is to not do what they ask you to do. Rekka:27:30   Is to display that you think you are above that process or that you don't know how to read. Kaelyn:27:37   And it is so easy to just do this. This is not, this isn't a monumental insurmountable task and no one is going to put submissions guidelines up there that are like now once you have killed to the owl, you must address the letter to us in its blood. Yeah. Rekka:27:55   Although that is a nice additional filter you could use. Kaelyn:27:58   I mean, um, I don't want people killing owls though. Rekka:28:01   I was just going to say as to figure out who is willing to kill an owl and you don't want those authors, but that's sort of backwards. Kaelyn:28:06   Um, I like owls. Rekka:28:07   Yeah. So like I know having gone through the process of submitting things before that it is nerve wracking to think like, am I doing this right? Are they gonna like me? Do I come off as - Kaelyn:28:22   Please like me. Rekka:28:22   Um, do I come off as someone who's, you know, professional, et Cetera. The most professional thing you can do is follow the set of instructions they give you and it makes it a heck of a lot easier to click send on something when you know, like, okay, I have done steps one through five out of five and now I can send to this because I've given them exactly what they asked for. There's nothing left for me to provide here. Kaelyn:28:47   You actually even then touched on something that I think also is overlooked frequently, which is professionalism. So in my company we publish science fiction and fantasy and there's certainly like a tone and attitude a, it's fun that comes along with it. Absolutely feel free, especially in email correspondence to joke around with me because you will frequently get email responses from me that contain ridiculous things. But part of that is I'll cop to it here and now part of that is a ploy on my end that I'm trying to put the person at ease. Like it's cool, like don't. Um, but that said, and when I was on a Rekka's, um - Rekka:29:31   Podcast. Kaelyn:29:31   Previous podcast, Hybrid, Author um, one of the things I pointed out that a lot of people don't think about is your email address. If you have an email address that you've had since like college and what do we call it? SnotMonster27, you know, whatever. Unless your book is about 27 snot monsters, maybe try to come up with one that's like just your name somehow. Um, you know, if you have like some kind of, I won't say ridiculous, but maybe like silly things that are like hold over from your early Reddit days that you know, you still use, it's not a bad idea when you're getting ready to go through this process, one, to have a separate email account to manage all of these things. Rekka:30:14   Right. Kaelyn:30:15   But two, also something just a little more. Rekka:30:18   Grounded? Neutral? Kaelyn:30:19   Yeah. Neutral's good. Just like maybe just your name or maybe you know, RekkaWritesBooks@gmail. Like, you know that you can still be fun with it and you know, but just something to kind of be aware of is, you know, like I got, I get some things some times and people have stuff in their signature that they don't realize is like things you should well, things you should maybe change before you send this to someone you're hoping to work with professionally. Rekka:30:47   Gotcha. Kaelyn:30:48   Um, so just kind of be aware of that and um, all kind of transition this into the next thing, which I think you were touching on, which is emailing and asking questions. Rekka:31:02   Yeah. Kaelyn:31:04   Absolutely do it. If you are unsure of something, I get - Rekka:31:08   I have not seen a submissions page, like the guidelines that don't include an email address for you to ask questions before you submit incorrectly. Kaelyn:31:15   Exactly. And um, I will say sometimes I do get questions where I'm like, did you read the submissions guidelines? But, um, we had a problem with our submissions portal this time, just something clicked off and wasn't supposed to. And I got a whole bunch of emails and we were like, oh shoot, that's a problem. And we fixed it. And I get right back to those people and say, thank you, we fixed it. Rekka:31:39   Yeah, go ahead. Kaelyn:31:40   Now, um, if you have a question about like, you know, listen, I'm not sure this is what you're looking for. I mean, my answer to that is always, I'm not either, send it over. Let's see. You know, I'm never gonna - Rekka:31:51   It is open submissions. Kaelyn:31:52   Yeah. So, yeah. Um, but along those lines and going back to the professionalism, don't start your emails off with Yo. Um, I'm - Rekka:32:04   Kaelyn is from New York. She gets that enough. Kaelyn:32:05   I am frequently taken aback by the crassness of some of the emails that I get that - take the time and write, you know, dear whoever. And you know, like at Parvus you can just write "Dear Hive Mind," and I mean, yeah, you can still be cute about it, but like light about it. This is to whom it may concern or, you know, I, I even get the ones that are like, "Hi, I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be addressing this to", but you know, just - Rekka:32:41   You've tried. Kaelyn:32:42   Yes. Um, Rekka:32:44   Don't lean far into like, I don't even care who this is addressing. Yo. Kaelyn:32:47   Um, I get emails that are just like the, hey, what do I do about this? Like take a minute and say hi, I'm so and so. I'm submitting to your open call. I'm having a problem with this. Be Professional, be considerate, be courteous, be polite. Rekka:33:06   Yeah. Kaelyn:33:07   Because right off that if you don't think I am mentally, I am not mentally making a note of this person and when I get to their submission, because what did I say before when I talked to you, I want an idea of what it's going to be like to work with you. Rekka:33:21   Right. So you've already provided your first clue. Kaelyn:33:25   Everything, every interaction you have with anyone in any professional setting really. But especially if it's something like this, you're, this is all information we're putting away about working with you. Rekka:33:38   This is like showing up to the job interview and you're ripped up sweat pants that you've been wearing for four days. Kaelyn:33:43   Yes. Yeah. So just, you know, be cognizant of that kind of stuff that yes, we're a fun organization. We're cool people we like interacting with and this isn't just Parvus, this is most places. Okay. We don't know you. Rekka:34:01   Yeah. Kaelyn:34:02   Yet. Not yet. So just be aware of that. And first impression first. Rekka:34:08   Yeah. There's a reason your mom and your grandma havetalked about that. Kaelyn:34:11   Yeah. And I know it sounds silly. It's really not. First impressions are very important. Um, so that's, you know, it's kind of the do's and don'ts a little bit, um, with, you know, other stray submissions related things. Rekka:34:27   Right. Kaelyn:34:28   Um, one thing and actually Rekka should be the one to talk about. This is uh organizing who you're submitting to and tracking that is very important, Rekka:34:41   Right. So they're um, depending on how you query, um, well, okay, so acquiring agents, there's a whole system for that. Kaelyn:34:49   Yes. Rekka:34:49   And much like the submissions grinder for short fiction submissions, it will kind of keep track of stuff for you. But this is the day and age where you never know what's going to strike on the Internet. You want to have a local copy that's tracing all this stuff. So I recommend if you can download, um, your submissions history, uh, in some way to like a excel file spreadsheet. Do that. But at the very least maintain your own spreadsheet and say, you know who, what story and if you have a tendency to keep working on stories after you submit them, like what revision, um, then what, you know the date, the publisher and if you like, you can copy paste your query letter into that, the next cell and in excel in the spreadsheet. And then you know what you've said to them last time. So the next time you submit you don't send them the exact same words again. And also, um, you know the, the salutation at the beginning, the little opening warmup, text. Kaelyn:35:55   Make sure you change that for - Rekka:35:56   Make sure that that is not identical with just the names, you've done, you know, find and replace for each, um, each place you submit it to. And then when they acknowledge it, what, um, what follow up conversations you have and the dates and stuff like that, just keep track of it. Because this is stuff you're going to want to refer back to at some point. And if you, um, you know, if you have questions for them, you can write those questions down and the answers and you can just all keep it in one basic like real simple spreadsheet dashboard where you have everything and you can do tabs at the bottom. So each piece, you know, each manuscript you work on has a different tab and, or each publisher has a different tab. Kaelyn:36:39   I think we're gonna have Rekka do some kind of like a youtube instructional video on the best way to do, Rekka:36:46   I don't know if I'm the best one because I don't really have a system I, I queried to Parvus and uh, it was accepted. Kaelyn:36:52   We're going to have you develop a system and um, and along those lines, one thing that I should've brought up earlier, one of the good things to keep track of is if they say expect a response within this time, if not, feel free to follow up.   Rekka:37:07   Yeah. So we've covered that in the previous one. You can even like add a formula to your spreadsheet that calculates the day for you. Like this day, you know from Column D add 90 days and column E displays the day that you sh- you can follow up if you haven't heard. Here's the thing, cause we can't do math in our heads, apparently not. Kaelyn:37:27   If you submit January sixth - 15th and they say 90 days, 90 days is not March 15th I know in that's three months in the calendar in your mind, but 90 days is April 15th ish, whatever it is. The way the, actually that is because of February. So - Rekka:37:45   February makes up for the third one. Kaelyn:37:47   So get out, like if you don't want to do in the spreadsheet, get out a calendar and count out 90 days because 90 days is not three months. Rekka:37:59   Yeah. Kaelyn:38:00   90 days is 90 days. Rekka:38:02   Right. And you can, if you find counting to 90 difficult because of distractions or whatever, or nerves, just Google. What's the date? 90 days from today, Kaelyn:38:15   Because there is, I don't know if this is just a pet peeve of mine, but when I get ones that are like, hi, I submitted 90 days ago and I go and look and I go, no you didn't. You submitted 60 days ago, but thanks. And the ones that I, it's amazing. It's always the people that submitted like the first week and it's like you could not have submitted 90 days ago. We were not open for submissions 90 days ago. And then it puts me in the position of I don't want to write the back and make them feel silly. Like I want like I don't want to have to go 'Actually you submitted 60 days. Like I'll talk to you in a month.'. Rekka:38:48   Yeah. Kaelyn:38:49   Um, so yeah, that's um, that's kind of the, the end of the submissions process is the contract then. So that's also the end of Submissions September. Rekka:39:02   Almost. Kaelyn:39:02   Almost. Cause we have one last uh, one last treat here. Rekka:39:06   Probably be a quick episode I think. Kaelyn:39:07   Very quick. We're actually going to try and keep it at, we keep, we always say we're going to and then we never, yeah. Rekka:39:13   Yeah. Kaelyn:39:13   We've got, we're gonna do one last episode. We are going to really try to keep it short. It's just we did, we got a few questions and we want to kind of round out Submissions September. Rekka:39:25   Yes. And thank you to everyone who did send the questions. If you feel like we skipped over your question, we promise you we didn't. Um, but we can cover it in another episode. Kaelyn:39:34   Yeah. Well, and I mean, who knows, maybe that could turn into an episode. Rekka:39:38   Yeah. I might end up being an entire episode on So-and-so. I'm, we hear you if you sent them. Thank you. And uh, we will get to your questions. Either you'll hear it in the next episode or we will, uh, talk about it in the future. Kaelyn:39:51   Yep. So, um, that's the end of the official episodes of Submissions September we will be back, uh, and I guess we're going to do less than a week because we're gonna yeah, we're going to put that up the last day of September. Rekka:40:04   Just to stick the whole - Kaelyn:40:05   Just to round it out. Yeah, exactly. Rekka:40:08   And then we will have- Kaelyn:40:09   We'll be back to our regular schedule. Rekka:40:12   Yes. Kaelyn:40:12   Of every other week. Rekka:40:13   Yeah. New Speaker:  40:14   So thank you for sticking with us all September. We know this was a lot of listening to us talk Rekka:40:19   Hopefully. It was exciting for you because these are the things that people are always wondering but not necessarily finding answers to. Kaelyn:40:25   Yes. So, um, you know, as always, if you have questions that, you know, after listening to this, you know, send them to us, we'll, we'll still talk about this stuff. It's not like we're never going to talk about submissions ever again. Rekka:40:38   This is it. Kaelyn:40:38   This is exactly everything. Rekka:40:42   Um, so you can find us @WMBcast on Twitter, Instagram, and on Patreon Kaelyn:40:47   And um, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. So we'll, we'll be back in six days now? Rekka:40:52   Yes. Kaelyn:40:52   This time with uh, with questions. So thanks everyone and we'll see you in six days. Speaker 5:       40:58   Thanks.  

Donaldson: H.W. Bush respected media's role; What a presidential funeral signifies; Sesno: Bush 'actually believed in government'; Piecing together the Trump-Russia story; Inside Miami Herald's Jeffrey Epstein exposé

Guest: Dillon Kearns: @dillontkearns | GitHub | Incremental Elm In this episode, Dillon Kearns joins the show to talk about techniques for experimentation with Elm, making those experiments safe, the concept of mob programming, why you would want to experiment with Elm in the first place, and how you too can begin to experiment with Elm. Resources: Grant Maki's talk on experimenting in your team "Types Without Borders" by Dillon Kearns @ Elm Conf 2018 Dillon's Elm GraphQL library How Elm Code Tends Towards Simplicity by Dillon Kearns The CSS as ByteCode Talk by Richard Feldman This show was produced by Mandy Moore, aka @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. Transcript: CHARLES: Hello, everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast, Episode 114. My name is Charles Lowell. I'm a developer here at the Frontside. With me today as co-host on the show is David. Hello, David. DAVID: Hey, guys. CHARLES: David is also a developer here at Frontside and we are going to be talking about something that we've been talking, I guess a lot about recently and we're talking about Elm. I think we first started talking about this several years ago and then it kind of simmer down a little bit but recently, it's been top of tongue. With us to talk about Elm today is Dillon Kearns. Welcome Dillon. DILLON: Thank you so much for having me. CHARLES: I understand that you are a full time Elm consultant. You have a background as a Lean and Agile coach but have recently transitioned to doing Elm consulting full time. Now, what exactly does that mean in 2018 to be an Elm consultant. DILLON: Actually a lot of my motivation for getting into Elm consulting in the first place is I kind of realize that Elm to me is just an extension of the things that I was passionate about with Agile and software craftsmanship. I'm trying to help teams have a better experience with their code, make it more maintainable, make it easier to change, make it easier to drive things based on customer feedback and I really believe that Elm helps people do that. I used a lot of the background and experiences that I've had with Agile and Lean coaching and a lot of those same skills, in order to help organizations adopt Elm. One thing I've seen a lot of teams struggling with is trying out a lot of different frameworks. I've encountered teams that have spent months, very painfully trying out different frontend frameworks and having trouble coming to consensus about that. One of the things that I think really helps address that is having an experimental and iterative approach, that you can really use the scientific method to focus on learning, rather than getting it right the first time. I think that there's really a need to help teams through that process of introducing a new frontend framework like Elm, so that that's why I've gone into full time Elm consulting. CHARLES: That's an interesting process. It sounds like you really need to be constantly sending out spikes, doing research on whether it's Elm or some other technology to help you kind of bridge the chasm to the next generation. How do you actually do that as an organization? My guess, this kind of a question independent of Elm but maybe we can talk about how you see that play out in the context of Elm. DILLON: Right and actually, for any listeners interested in that question, I would really highly recommend Grant Maki's ElmConf talk from this year. He spoke about exactly that topic and it was at ElmConf that it's relevant whether your team is considering Elm or looking at other frameworks. I think that the key is you need to get good at experimenting in a way that's low risk and in a way that you can be constantly learning and seeing how these different technologies fit in your codebase and fit for your team. There's a quote that I really like from Woody Zuill. Have you guys heard of mob programming before? CHARLES: I heard of mob programming from a paper by Richard Garfield a long, long time ago, almost 20... I don't know if it's the same concept. DILLON: Yes. It gained a lot of momentum these days. Mob programming is essentially pair programming but with more people involved. I've really enjoyed that process actually. I think it's actually a great way to experiment with different technologies because you get all of the minds together and it's a very good way to kind of transfer knowledge and explore things together but Woody Zuill talks about mob programming and he likes to ask the question, "Why did we begin doing mob programming for the team at Hunter Industries that originally started mob programming?" People would give answers like, "Because it cuts out code review from the process because you have lots of eyeballs on it in real time," or, "Because it reduces bugs," or, "Because it gives you better quality code. It gives all the best ideas into the product in real time," and all those things are valid points that are really good benefits of mob programming. But he says those things may be true but actually, they're not why we tried mob programming. The reason we tried mob programming was because the team wanted to try it. That's a really important point. The team needs to be experimenting with things that they're passionate about and they need to be exploring things on their own terms. But with that said, another lesson from that story of kind of his team at Hunter Industries discovering mob programming is that the team didn't discover mob programming in a vacuum. Really, the team discovered mob programming because the team became really excellent at experimenting and evaluating those experiments and then, they like to talk about this phrase that Kent Beck coined, 'turn up the good.' When something is working well, we often focus on the negative things and trying to eliminate those things but what happens if we take the things that are working well and 'turn that dial up to 11.' CHARLES: Yeah, I love that. I remember in the kind of the original layout of extreme programming, talking about how I really just wanted to turn up all the things that were working for 11 or to 11, so testing, refactoring, incremental releases and things like that. DILLON: Exactly. CHARLES: I actually had one question that's maybe a little bit of a diversion. This is actually the first time I've heard of mob programming. It's definitely not the same sort of mob programming I learned about in Richard Garfield's paper. I think it was more referring to massively distributed open source in the form which is really kind of commonplace now that happens on GitHub. I think it's maybe, an obsolete definition of mob programming but how many people would be in a mob like two, three, four, five, six, seven, 10? DILLON: That's a great question. Really, the answer is of course, it depends. That's a consultant's favorite answer but it really does. My rule of thumb is I find it usually three people is a very nice size for a mob. I find that mobs tend towards around three or four people but that being said, it's important to note that mob programming is all about this idea that what is the true cost of programming. I think that often we look at programming as the act of writing code, initially and that's a very limited way of looking at coding. Because of course, 90% of our effort is spent maintaining code, making decisions around code, reproducing bugs, fixing bugs, communicating with customers about bugs -- bugs are extremely expensive -- the farther out they get, until eventually they get to the point of a customer discovering them, bugs are in extremely expensive part of software. If we can minimize bugs, that's very valuable. When you look at programming on this bigger scale and look at the bigger picture of programming, then you realize that you may be able to get one person to write the code faster but then, that person needs to code review it. That person needs to go and ask somebody question down the line when they don't have context because they weren't involved in the decision making. For example, maybe there's a UX person who doesn't have context on certain choices that were made, so there's a lot of churn, so you can kind of eliminate that churn by getting all the relevant people involved right away and that's the idea. In my experience with mob programming, it works really well to keep kind of a core of around three people. Sometimes, somebody goes up to have a conversation with somebody, take a break or answer somebody's question, maybe somebody from another team has a question that type of thing and so, the team can keep coding as a pair or whatever. But ultimately, the idea is that you get faster because you're building up this shared context and you're not spending as much time down the line answering questions, doing code reviews and things like that. CHARLES: Right. I see. DAVID: That kind of matches with my experience. Mob programming on previous teams, the way we had it set up is there was a regular mob programming chat session that the whole team was invited to but it was optional. You can just show up if you wanted to and really, that sort of made it so that there was a set of people who regularly attend -- three to five people in a session -- and they were the core group, essentially. DILLON: Right. That's another great point. Invitation is a powerful technique. If you're kind of mandating the people try an experiment or work in a certain way, ultimately it's much more powerful to let the team experiment on their own and follow their passion and they'll discover great things. It's about experimenting, rather than choosing specific experiments. While we're on this topic of kind of the real cost of coding, I think this is a good point to talk about this quality in Elm because, I think that this is one of the things that really motivates me to use Elm myself and introduce it to others is that, I think that Elm really get something about programming where there's a sort of superficial ease of certain techniques that Elm kind of goes beyond and says, "Actually, let's optimize for a different set of things that we think make code more maintainable and more delightful to work with in the long run." CHARLES: I wanted to also transition between, we were on a little diversions on mob programming but do you use mob programming as explicit technique for introducing Elm when a team is considering adopting it? DILLON: That's a fantastic question. I absolutely do. Of course, I honor the ways of working in a particular organization or team. I think that's important to do but I do strongly encourage using mobbing as a technique for knowledge sharing and when I'm on-site with a client, I find it extremely powerful as a technique for knowledge sharing and also, let's say you do an experiment, somebody is off in a corner and they're trying out Vue.js or they're trying out Elm or they're trying a particular coding technique. Then they come back to their team and they say, "Hey everybody, I tried this great thing," and now they have to spend this time convincing everybody and saying like, "Wait a minute. You didn't try this, you didn't try it that way. It wouldn't actually work in our context because of this." I think that it's very powerful to have everybody kind of involved in that process so that you can evaluate it together as a team. CHARLES: Because the thing is like, when you experience win or you experience fail, it's a very visceral feeling and that's the thing that sells you or turns you away. You can argue until you're blue in the face but words have a very limited capacity to convince, especially when compared with like physical and emotional feeling. It sounds like you can get everybody to have that shared experience, whether for the good or for the bad, you're going to arrive at a decision, orders of magnitude more quickly. They have to rely in conviction of that decision spread around the team. DILLON: Exactly. I think that hits the nail on the head and you say that we have this sort of skepticism of arguments from theoretical conversations, rather than 'show me the money,' but it's actually, try solving a real problem in this and that's exactly as it should be. I think that's one of the big antidote from this problem that I've seen in a lot of environments, where there's this analysis paralysis, especially with the state of the JavaScript ecosystem these days. I think that one of the keys to improving that situation is to get good at trying things, rather than theorizing about things. We have a tendency to want to theorize and when we do that, then we say, "Can it solve this problem? Can it solve this problem? Can it solve that problem?" You can talk about that until the cows come home but it doesn't get you anywhere and it doesn't really convince anybody of anything. The key is to find very small experiments and what I really recommend and what I'm dead focused on when I'm initially working with a client is getting something into production. Now, that doesn't mean that you need to have a road map for turning your entire application into Elm. In fact that's the whole point, is that you're not trying to do that. The point is you're trying to get as realistic of an experience as possible for what problems might occur if we do this? Will the team enjoy working with this language? Will it work well with our built pipeline? Will there be any unforeseen issues? You don't know until you actually try it, so you've got to try it and you've got to try it in tiny, tiny steps and low risk experiments. CHARLES: Right but you've got to try it for real. You don't want to try it with a TodoMVC. DILLON: Exactly. It needs to be meaningful, to really have a good understanding of what it's going to be like. CHARLES: I would say that I tend to agree but I've definitely encountered the counterargument and I also think this counterargument makes sense or perhaps where the pushback lies is if I'm constantly experimenting, then what I'm doing is I'm internally fragmenting my ecosystem and there is power in similarity. Any time you introduce something different, any time you introduce one fragment, you're introducing complexity -- a mental complexity -- like maybe I have to maintain my Elm app and I also have to have my Legacy... Or not Legacy, I've got my other JavaScript tool kit that does it in one way. Maybe I've got a couple of more because I've run these other experiments. I'm not saying that there is one way but there is power in uniformity. There is power in diversity. Where do you find the balance? DILLON: Those are all excellent points. To me, I think really the key is it's about the scientific method, you could say. The thing with the scientific method is that we often forget the last part. We get really good at hypothesizing about things. Sometimes people leave it at that, which we kind of just discussed. Sometimes, people go past the hypothesizing stage and they actually run the experiment and that's great. But then, the majority of people, if they get to that point, will forget to do the last step which is to evaluate the results. I think the key here is you need to be experimenting and this is what it means for it to be a low risk experiment. It means that you're not setting yourself off in a direction where you can't turn back. You want to set it up in such a way that you can turn away from it with minimal cost. One of the things that is really helpful for that is if you build a tiny, independent, little widget in your application, try building that in Elm. Some people will do that with a little sort of login badge in the corner of their application. One of the teams where I've introduced Elm at a Fortune 10 company, actually where we introduced Elm, we started out with just a tiny little table in one page and if we wanted to back that out, it would have been trivially easy but we decided that we wanted to go in further and invest more. CHARLES: That makes a lot of sense. Effectively, you need to have a Plan B. Don't sync all of the available time that you have to invest in an experiment. Make sure that you have a Plan B and if you need to do this widget or this table in Angular or React or Ember or whatever, you are thinking about that -- how would that work. DILLON: Exactly and the thing with experiments is the purpose of an experiment is not to build something. It's to learn. I really like this kind of ethos of lean startup, which I think is really getting much more into the mainstream in the software industry, which is a wonderful thing. The idea of lean startup, the kind of core concept is this idea of validated learning. Basically, in an environment where there's uncertainty, which is pretty much most of the things you're doing in software, the main goal is you're not shipping a product like you would be if you're trying to manufacture cars as quickly as possible. The main thing that you're producing is what they call 'validated learning' and so, you want to minimize the amount of time it takes to validate or invalidate your assumptions about something and then, you want to make it as cheap as possible to move on from that. CHARLES: I like that. So if you're going to organize your development process around this principle or maybe not organize it but integrate it into development process, how do you know that you're conducting a healthy number of experiments, versus I may be conducting too many experiments? Is there a metric that you can look at? We need to have this many experiments running at all times or this is just too many or something else. DILLON: That's a really interesting question. I think I would tend to think about that more again, as looking at the way the experiments are run, rather than 'are there too many experiments?' That's just not a problem that I've seen there being too many experiments. The pain that we tend to really see in environments where experiments are hurting teams is the way the experiments are being done. It's hard to backtrack from those experiments and as you were saying before, you kind of put yourself down this path where you can't walk it back and you create this sort of rift in the way the code is being written, which makes it more difficult to work in that codebase. The thing with experiments is they can have really big payoff. Now, you want to make sure that you're not just going in and picking up every shiny object that you see. One thing that can keep you honest with that is if you're kind of coming up with a hypothesis before you start. If you're saying, "This is the value to our business and to our team if we attempt this thing and this is what will prove that it seems to have that value and this is what will tell us, 'Actually, it doesn't have that value and we should drop it and cut our losses.'" CHARLES: That's a great heuristic. As you're saying and imagining how that might have saved my bacon in the past because I've definitely made the mistake of playing with too many shiny objects and picking things because I didn't fully evaluate what I thought the value. I was explicit with myself about what is the value that is going to bring to this project or this business. I have a theory about it but I am not thinking what is my hypothesis and how am I going to validate or invalidate? I'm thinking, I've got a short term pain that I'm experiencing and I'm grasping for this thing, which I think will solve it and I'm not properly evaluating how it's going to affect me long term. DILLON: Right and that could be a great team practice to play around with is often, teams will kind of come up with action items out of retrospectives. One thing that I think can be really beneficial for teams is to kind of flip that notion of doing action items which again, it's really just doing the middle part of the experiment where you're conducting the test but you cut out the hypothesis part and the evaluation part. Try to bring that into your team's retrospective and try to have explicit hypotheses in the retrospectives and then, in the next retrospective, evaluate the results. CHARLES: All right. I will definitely keep that in mind but this feels like a fresh take on kind of how you manage software development that I haven't encountered too much, being more scientific about it. It sounds like science-oriented development. DILLON: Right. DAVID: I like that. DILLON: There are a lot of buzzwords these days in software development, in general and it's really becoming a problem, I think in the Agile community but really, what it boils down to is these basic elements and basing decisions on feedback is one of those fundamental unit. You can call the scientific method, you can call it lean startup and validated learning, you can call it agile, you can call it whatever you want but ultimately, you need to be basing things on feedback. I think of it almost like our nerves. There's actually a disorder that some people have, which can be fatal, which is that their nerves don't tell them when they're feeling pain. I think this is a great analogy for software because that can happen to companies too. They don't feel the pain of certain decisions not landing well. Because they're not getting feedback from users, they're not getting feedback from metrics and recording, they're not getting feedback from doing that final evaluation step of their experiments, so when you fall on the ground, a small cut could be extremely harmful because you don't know the damage it's doing to you. CHARLES: I think that is a good analogy. One of the things that I'm curious about is we've been discussing a lot of techniques for experimentation and how you can integrate that into your process and how you can make your experiments safe, so let's talk a little bit about -- first of all, two things -- why would I want to experiment with Elm in the first place? Because ultimately, that's why we're here and why we're having this conversation. What's compelling about it that would make me want to experiment? And then how can I begin to experiment with Elm? DILLON: I actually just published a blog post yesterday. It's called 'How Elm Code Tends Towards Simplicity.' To your question of why would a team consider Elm, I kind of talk a little bit in this blog post about a case study at a Fortune 10 company where I introduced Elm to a few of the teams there. One of the teams there, we had actually seen an Angular project that they had worked on and often, in an enterprise environment, you have projects moving from one team to another. I actually had my hands on this Angular project. It kind of moved over to another team and we were experiencing some major pain trying to make changes in this codebase. Even making the simplest change, we were finding that there were a lot of bugs that would be introduced because there's some global variable. There's some implicit state. Sometimes, it was even reaching in and tweaking the DOM and really, the topic of conversation at our team lunches was how afraid we were to touch this codebase. Fast forward a few months and this team was asking my advice on picking a new frontend framework and I introduced them to Elm. They took a run with it and it was pretty remarkable to see this same team that had really struggled with AngularJS and they didn't really have a strong sense of what were the best practices. They weren't getting any guidance from the framework itself and the tooling around it and they actually loved the experience of working with Elm because they were saying, "This is amazing. Maybe it takes a little time to figure out how to solve a particular problem on Elm but once we do, we know that we've done it in a solid way." One of the things that I think is most powerful about Elm is that it keeps you from shooting yourself in the foot. I think that's a really good headline kind of summary of what I love about Elm. For example, tweaking the DOM. Now, it might seem like a pretty obvious thing that we just won't tweak the DOM and that's fair enough. That might not be a problem for a lot of teams. People wouldn't even reach for that technique because they're disciplined about it. But at a certain point, you start taking on enough things and then go from kind of those basic things that are going to make your code more unreliable and unsafe like tweaking the DOM and you start getting into the realm of best practices. There's so much discussion these days in the JavaScript community about best practices, which is great. It's great to discuss that but my concern is that there's a new best practice each week and the team has to agree on it, you have to find techniques for enforcing it, people have to make sure that these best practices are being followed in code reviews. Then when you look at a given piece of code, you have to trust that those best practices are being followed, so it requires a lot of work to make sure, in your reducers, in redux that you are not mutating anything. With Elm, data is just immutable. That's just how it is. There are a lot of these kind of things that are baked into the language and the expressivity of the type system allows you to bake in your own constraints. One of the things that I find really compelling about Elm is its design really prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot and it gives you tools for making sure that you take it even a step further and it helps you enforce these best practices at a compiler level. CHARLES: Now what's interesting here is it's almost like the opposite tension of experimentation is a work, right? like here, we have an example of uniformity being the more powerful track but then inside the actual macroscopic process, you want a lot of experimentation and diversity. But at the microscopic level, inside your application, it sounds like you want less experimentation and you derive a lot of strength from that but -- DILLON: That's a great point. CHARLES: -- Experiments that are possible, yeah. DILLON: I think that there is a lot of pain these days in the JavaScript community. We hear people talking often about JavaScript fatigue and it's a real thing. It takes a lot of work to stay on top of the latest best practices and frameworks and that can be a lot of fun. I love learning about the latest new frameworks and tooling but ultimately as you're saying, we don't want that experimentation so much about the fundamentals. We want some dependable, solid fundamentals and then we want the experimentation to happen within there. I think that's exactly what we see in the Elm ecosystem. We have a single kind of data store or way of managing state in Elm. It's called the Elm Architecture. In fact, it's what Redux is based on and it worked extremely well and you don't have to experiment with different data stores in Elm because that's just what Elm code looks like. Now, if you want to experiment in Elm, then there is a lot of innovation happening. One of my favorite things about Elm is that the compiler and its expressiveness has sparked a lot of creativity. One of my favorite things about Elm is the library called Elm UI. Actually, a client that I'm working with right now, it's a really interesting case study. They are kind of a very small startup. They just kind of branched off of a larger startup. They're building some tooling for this ecosystem. They were engineers at a company called Procore that does cloud document management for construction companies. They wanted to get a product-ready for a big conference for their potential clients. The reason they brought me in to help them was because they wanted to reach this ambitious target of being able to do a demo of this brand new product at this conference and they wanted to iterate very quickly. One of the things that really drew them into Elm in the first place is this library Elm UI. Elm UI essentially, Richard Feldman gives a talk on it, where he uses the analogy of it being treating CSS and HTML as bytecode for your views. I think that's a really apt way to put it. If you break down this idea of CSS -- Cascading Style Sheets, it removes the cascading part of CSS and it removes the sheets part of CSS. What you're left with is a way of expressing style and it's a way of expressing style that is able to part ways with all of the baggage of the entire history of backwards compatible decisions that CSS has ever made. If you want to vertically aligned something, then you just say, "Align vertically," you know, center vertically. If you want to center something horizontally, you say center X. It creates a high level language for expressing views. My experience with Elm UI, this may not be the right choice for every team but I love it. I use it on all of the projects that I maintain personally. I love using it because it gives you that same sense of invincibility refactoring that you get with Elm, which is remarkable that you could have that feeling with managing views. CHARLES: It's definitely something that feels like a dark art and it can't be called science. It's an art. It's a science for some people but it's historically been a dark art and something fiddly to work with. In terms of being able to make the experiment with Elm, when we talked a little bit about why you might want to experiment with it in the first place, what the business case is, I guess my next question is or a question that immediately comes to mind is supposing that we have decided to experiment with this, how do you mitigate that experiment? We talked about lowering the cost, having a way to turn away from it, having a way to make it inexpensive. For example, one of the things that I think of when evaluating a new technology is how well can I use it with old technologies. I have a lot about best practices in my tool bag. We all do. We got our all favorite libraries and pathways that are just familiar to us. One of the things that I've noticed is when adopting a new technology, one of the things that makes it easy to experiment with is how well it works with the existing technologies. I know that, we talked about Elm UI, kind of rethinking style in CSS and your views and Elm itself as a completely different language within JavaScript, that can be both liberating but it can also be limiting in the sense that I can't reach back for my existing tool if no tool exists in this new space. The kind of experience that I've had where this is really worked is systems like JRuby or Clojure, where there's a very clear pathway to be able to use Java libraries from those environments, so you always have kind of an escape hatch. What's that like in Elm? DILLON: This is a really interesting conversation because it highlights, in some ways some of the most defining features of Elm. In terms of how do you kind of pull Elm into an existing application, there are a lot of different techniques for that. It's pretty straightforward to create a little Elm app. We usually don't call them components for reasons that we can get into if we want to but that's a whole can of worms. But if you've got a little Elm application that you want to use to render a widget on your page, then it's as simple as just calling Elm.yourmodule.init and rendering it onto the page there. That's quite straightforward and if you want to interface with your existing code there are several ways to do that. There's something called port in Elm, which is how you kind of communicate by sending these messages and data back and forth between your Elm app and JavaScript. Now, this is one of the decisions, I think that defines Elm as the language and the reason this is important is because Elm decided not to make the choice that a lot of other compile to JS languages do. For example, if you look at ReasonML or PureScript or a more extreme example, TypeScript. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, so it's trying to allow you to gradually introduce this to get some incremental improvements for your JavaScript code, so it's extremely easy to experiment with it, which we've talked about the importance of experimentation. Now, the challenge with this technique, the tradeoff here is it's great, that it then becomes very easy to transition into it and that's an excellent strategy for the goals of TypeScript. Elm has a different set of goals, so the things that elm is focused on giving you is a truly type-safe experience. When you're working with Elm, if your Elm code says that this data is a float, then it is a float. Either, it is a float or that code is not being run and so, that's very different than the experience in TypeScript where you have these escape hatches. This is an inevitable choice for any compiled to JS language. Are you going to have escape hatches or not? Elm is really the only language out there, I think that chooses not to have escape hatches and that is actually the thing that that I love about the language because that's the only way you can truly have guarantees, rather than, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that these type guarantees hold." DAVID: Yeah, wishes and dreams. DILLON: Yeah. CHARLES: What does it mean to have no escape hatches? because you talked about ports. Does it mean like it's impossible to use an external JavaScript library? DILLON: That's an excellent question. You absolutely can use JavaScript libraries. It means that it's being explicit and upfront about the fact that there's uncertainty in these areas. That's what it comes down to. Take for example dealing with JSON. In a JavaScript application, what we get when we're dealing with JSON is you make a request up to the server, you have some callback that passes in the data you get back and then you start pulling bits and pieces off of it and you say 'response.users subzero.firstname' and you hope that none of those things are null, none of those types are different than what you expected. In a way, it's kind of letting you pretend that you have certainty there when in fact, you don't and with Elm, the approach is quite different. You have to explicitly say, "I expect my response to have this shape. I expect it to be a list of things, which have a first name and last name which are strings," and then Elm says, "Okay, great. I'm going to check your assumptions," and if you're right, then here you go and you're in a well typed-space where you know exactly what the types are and if you're wrong, then that's just another type of data, so it's just a case statement where you say, "If my assumptions were correct, then do something and if my assumptions were incorrect, then you decide what to do from there." CHARLES: Right. For me, it sounds like there is some way because ultimately, I'm going to be getting unstructured but I'm going to be getting JSON back from the server and maybe, I have some library that's going to be doing that for me and enhancing it and adding value to that JSON in some way. But then at some point, I can present it to Elm but what you just saying is I need to be complete in making sure that I handle each case. I need to do or handle the case. Explicit about saying if the assumptions that Elm wants to make, turn out to not be true, Elm is going to make me handle the case where those assumptions were not true. DILLON: Exactly. I think that TypeScript of any type is the perfect illustration of the difference. TypeScript of any type is sort of allowing you to say, "Don't type check this. Trust me here," and Elm's approach is more kind of just be explicit about what you want me to do if your assumptions are incorrect. It doesn't let you kind of come in and say, "No, I know I'm going to be right here." CHARLES: Right but there is a way to pass data structures back and forth. DILLON: There absolutely is and actually, there's a technique that's starting to gain some traction now, which I'm really excited about, which is rather than using this sort of JavaScript interrupt technique we talked about, which is again, it's very much like communicating with a server where you're kind of sending messages and getting data back -- getting these messages with data back. But there's an alternative to that which is using web components. Actually, there's quite good support for assuming that you don't need to be compatible with Internet Explorer. Basically in a nutshell, if you can wrap a sort of declarative web component around anything, it could be a Google Maps API, it could be a syntax highlighting JavaScript library, something that you don't have an Elm library for but you want to use this JavaScript library, it's actually quite a nice experience. You just render that custom element using your Elm code just as you would any other HTML in Elm. CHARLES: Yeah I like that, so the HTML becomes the canvas or composition with other JavaScript and the semantics are very well-defined and that interface is actually pretty thin. DILLON: Exactly and the key again is that you wanted to find a declarative interface, rather than an imperative one where you're kind of just doing a series of statements where you say, "Do this and then set this value and then call this and then set this call back." Instead, you're saying, "Render this Google Maps custom element," which is centered around these coordinates and has this zoom level on. You declaratively give it the bit of information that it needs to render a particular view. CHARLES: Okay. Then I guess the final question that I have around this area is about being able to integrate existing tools and functions inside of an Elm application. Because it sounds like you could theoretically develop large parts of your application, is there a way that you can actually have other areas of your application that are not currently invested in Elm still benefit from it, in the sense for kind of need of JavaScript APIs that Elm can make available. DILLON: Right, so you're kind of talking about the reverse of that Elm reaching out to JavaScript. You're asking about, can JavaScript reach out to Elm and benefit from some of its ecosystem? CHARLES: Exactly. I say that is that another potential vector for experimentation. DILLON: It's a really interesting thought. I haven't given it too much thought, to be honest but I actually have heard it come up before and my gut feeling is that it's probably more fruitful to explore the inverse, reaching out to JavaScript from Elm and the reason is kind of the main appeal of Elm is that when you're operating within Elm, you have this sense that if it compiles, it works. Because again, this central decision to not allow escape hatches is what allows you to have that sort of robustness, so you have this feeling of bullet proof refactorings and adding new features seamlessly where you change your data modeling to say, "Here's this other case that can be represented," and then suddenly, the Elm compiler says, "Tell me what to do here, tell me what to do here and tell me what to do there," and you do it and your app is working. That's the real appeal of Elm, I think and you don't really get much of that by just calling out to an Elm library from within JavaScript. That's my gut feeling on it. CHARLES: Okay, that's fair enough. On the subject of interrupt and using tools like JSON, you actually maintain a GraphQL library for Elm. You probably have a lot of experience on this. Maybe we can talk about that as a concrete case that highlights the examples. DILLON: Yeah. I think to me this is one of the things that really highlights the power of Elm, to give you a really amazing refactoring and kind of feature creating experience. A lot of Elm libraries are prefaced by the author name, so it's still DillonKearns/ElmGraphQL. I spoke about it this year at ElmConf. In a nutshell, what it does is it actually generates code based on your GraphQL schema. For anyone who doesn't know, GraphQL is just kind of a language for expressing the shape of your API and what types of data can return. What DillonKearns on GraphQL does is it looks at your GraphQL schema and it generates an API that allows you to query that API. using this library, you can actually guarantee that you're making a valid query to your server. Again, you get this bulletproof experience of refactoring in Elm where you can do something like make a change in your API and recompile your Elm code and see whether you've made a backwards incompatible change. All of this effort of doing sort of this JSON decoding I was talking about earlier where you kind of have to explicitly say, "These are my assumptions about the shape of the JSON that I'm getting back." When you're using this library, you no longer need to make any assumptions because you're able to rely on this sort of schema of your API and so you know when you're requesting this data, you don't have to run it, see if it works and then tweak it and run it again -- this sort of cycle of checking your assumptions at runtime. It moves those assumptions that you're making from runtime to compile time and it can tell you when you compile your application, it can say, "Actually, this data you're requesting, it doesn't exist," or, "It's actually called this," or, "This is actually the type of the data." CHARLES: Right. I love that. How do you do that? Because it seems like you've got a little bit of a chicken and the egg problem because the schema is defined outside of Elm, so you have to be able to parse and understand the schema in order to generate the Elm types to be able to compile Elm code against them. Maybe I'm not -- DILLON: That's exactly right. That's exactly what it does. Now, the nice thing is that GraphQL is really designed for these types of use cases. It supports them in a first class way. If you have a GraphQL API, that means you have built into it whether you know about it or not, a way to introspect the schema. All of the queries for kind of interrogating that GraphQL server and asking what types of data does this return, what are all your queries that I can run, it's built into it by the framework, so that comes for free. Getting up and running with this package I built is as simple as running a little npm CLI, pointing it to either your URL for your server or the JSON form of your schema, if you prefer and then, it generates the code for you. CHARLES: Wow, that sounds fantastic. This is the exact kind of thing that feels like it would be cool if I could just start using this library to manage the GraphQL of my application but I'm consuming that GraphQL from other JavaScript but it's the Elm code that's managing it. Do you see what I mean? DILLON: I hadn't considered that. I guess you could. You're right. Maybe I'm so smitten with Elm that it's hard to see an in-between but I guess, you could get some benefits from that approach. CHARLES: Right and as an experiment of course. DILLON: There you go. There you go. CHARLES: All right. With that, I think we'll wrap it up. Thank you so much, Dillon for coming on and talking with us on the podcast. DILLON: My pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversation. CHARLES: I actually got so many great tidbits from so many different areas of software development in Elm but also, just in kind of other things that I'm interested in trying. It was a really great conversation. DILLON: I had a lot of fun and I love discussing these things. For any listeners who are interested in this stuff, feel free to reach out to me on the Elm Slack or on Twitter. I'm at @DillonTKearns. I'm also offering a free intro Elm talk for any companies that are kind of entertaining the idea of doing an experiment with Elm. If you go to IncrementalElm.com/Intro, you can find out about some of the talks that I'm offering. CHARLES: All right. Well, thank you very much and we, as always are the Frontside. We build software that you can stake your future on and you can get in touch with us at @TheFrontside on Twitter or Contact@Frontside.io on email. Please send us any questions you might have, any topics that you'd like to hear about and we look forward to hearing from you and we will see you next week.

I talk about Korean name and how to say 'Actually,' 'As a matter of fact,' and 'In fact.'

Take one flick through the pages of Lisa Messenger's brainchild mag The Collective and you'll know that the publication is unparalleled in the print game and makes you walk away feeling motivated instead of trying to comprehend Hollywood's latest love triangle.In this week's episode of Founders University, Lisa explains that the dream wasn't so clear cut, and that her path from horse riding instructor to working in real estate, sponsorship and event management, to Editor In Chief of The Collective was one hell of a winding path."I think people often expect that there’s a linear path to where you land, " she explained. "In isolation not one single thing makes any sense whatsoever to own a global media brand, but, when I kind of go back through it all - and this is probably what’s really important for the listeners - it all kind of makes perfect sense in its illogical nonsensical kind of way, and not just in a business sense but also personal things that I’ve come up against.""I mean, I’ve been through a divorce, I gave up drinking thirteen and a half years ago, so it’s all those things that you can either choose to pull you down or go, 'Actually, that freaking fuels me.' Because it’s from those things and those pain points, where I’ve actually utilised them to learn that resilience and push me harder."Make sure you listen to the podcast for the rest, because there's plenty more where that came from.

SUNANDBASS Podcast #48 comes from 'All Crews'. Here's what they had to say about the mix: The ethos behind All Crews is to celebrate everyone’s talents. The crew's members include: JB Raw of London From The Rooftops, DJ Chef of Kool FM, DJ Staunch from Rude FM and All Crew's author Brian Belle-Fortune. Our sun-kissed logo was designed by Nadine Minagawa and The Voice himself Mr singing Fats accompanies us on this journey through SUNANDBASS, the special festival where we all bonded. And each Crew member plays a different SUNANDBASS venue. JB Raw ushers in warm liquid La Cinta's beach vibes. Chef entertains Bal Harbour's bikini & bass, pool and palm trees. Staunch militantly marches us straight into Ripping's Darkroom. And Brian 'No Prisnors' Belle-Fortune devastates Ambra Night. Although we all live in London, all the mixes were recorded separately by each DJ, without knowing which tracks the others were playing. So it says much that no one selected the same tune. It's down to the talents of DJ Chef, engineering the mix, ensuring all the levels were correct, arranging Fats' words punctuating the music in exactly the right places. This is All Crew's Bad Company collective. As DJ Staunch explains, "Expect to hear the mix and with each chapter think, 'Actually it's all about this style, that's what makes this culture so special. Each soul has their own take on it and we get to tell the same story a million different ways. I know when I hear you lot spin I'm like fuck me.' " It's an honour to be called upon to play this SUNANDBASS podcast. And it's a delight to contribute to the SUNANDBASS Family. See you in September. And remember, All Crew Muss Big Up!

Ed Caesar is a freelance writer based in England whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, British GQ, and The Sunday Times Magazine. He is the author of Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon. “That was a really horrific situation. People were being killed in the street in front of us. People were firing weapons in all directions. It was really chaotic and quite scary. It freaked me out. And I thought, 'Actually, there's not a huge amount more of this I want to do in my life.'” Thanks to MailChimp, MasterClass, The Message, RealtyShares, and Prudential for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @edcaesar edcaesar.co.uk Caesar on Longform [2:00] "House of Secrets" (New Yorker • Jun 2015) [sub req'd] [3:00] "Congo: The Horror" (GQ (UK) • Jan 2010) [3:00] "Tehran Nights" (GQ (UK) • Jun 2009) [4:00] We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (Philip Gourevitch • Picador 1999) [5:00] "Blood Oil" (Sebastian Junger • Vanity Fair • Jun 2009) [7:00] "The Visit: Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Life Inside" (The Independent • Sep 2011) [7:00] "Jon Bon Jovi" (The Independent • May 2006) [10:00] The Guardian Long Read [17:00] "Hell Is Other People" (GQ (UK) • May 2014) [22:00] Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon (Simon & Schuster • 2015) [23:00] "Sammy Wanjiru: The Runner They Left Behind" (Sunday Times Magazine • Nov 2011)