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What's in a name? Well, based on the history of the raccoon's scientific name we are somewhat accurate by calling the raccoon a trash panda! But raccoons are much cooler then pandas. And they are much better at surviving. We will find out what the hands of the raccoon has to do with their name and learn why the raccoon washes their food (and its not for the reason you think). The other animal of today's episode is the worm lizard, or Amphisbaenia (if you want to be specific). And we will learn what exactly a worm lizard is. I'll give you a hint; REPTILE! But not a lizard. It kind of looks like one of the cute puppets from the Labyrinth. And we get a bit explicit when we talk about the worm lizard's sex life and how they reproduce. We also sing the taxonomy song A LOT!! 'Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species!'Here are the impossible scientific names:Raccoon: Procyon lotorMexican Mole Lizard: Bipes biporusFlorida Worm Lizard: Rhineura floridanaIberian Worm Lizard: Blanus cinereusInstagram @wafpodcastTwitter @ExplicitWeirdEmail: wafpodcastexplicit@gmail.com**New episodes will now be released Tuesdays!**

Style is a very personal part of what makes someone who they are. The way you dress is a reflection of who you are or who you want to be, and what speaks to you may be totally foreign to the next person. Knowing all of that, it’s understandable if you believe that something as personal and experience-driven as style could never be boiled down to data points or plugged into an algorithm. But… you’d be wrong.At Stitch Fix, a combination of human stylists, powerful A.I., and behind-the-scenes technology has created a winning model that delivers a personalized online shopping and styling experience straight to clients’ homes. A powerful data science team is one of the key reasons that Stitch Fix has been able to launch its valuation into the billions. Stephanie Yee is the VP of Data Science at Stitch Fix, and on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, she explains all the ways that data and technology are being put to use to create the best customer experience possible.Stephanie describes how technology like GPT-3 is going to finally make seemingly unimportant data consumable to a consumer audience, and she explains how an event like COVID-19 can impact your backend models and what to do to adapt in that situation. Plus, she gives tips on how any ecommerce operation can go about building a data science team, and the soft skills to focus on when hiring talent. Main Takeaways:Asking the Right Questions: The most important skill a data scientist can have has nothing to do with technical prowess. It’s about having the ability to frame a problem and then ask and answer the right questions. Encourage your team or new candidates to pump the brakes and reevaluate the “why” behind the question they are trying to answer or the problem they are trying to solve. Making The Indecipherable Easily Digestible: With the shifting demographics, and older generations now becoming more comfortable shopping online, tools need to be created to ingest and answer long-form questions in a way the consumer connects with. Technology like GPT-3, which is the most advanced language model to date, has the ability to do just this. Tune in to hear how! The Quick Change: Deploying algorithms and A.I. in conjunction with human resources/industry experts is critical for organizations to be able to adapt to big changes in a market. COVID-19 had a drastic impact on models that were trained on pre-COVID data. Should you scrap your current model and start over? Or build on what you have? Stephanie says a little bit of both.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie Postles:Welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Today on the show, we have Stephanie Yee, the VP of data science at Stitch Fix. Stephanie, welcome.Stephanie Yee:Thank you. I'm excited to be here.Stephanie Postles:Me, too. I know it's going to be a good interview when there's two Stephanies, but I'm slightly worried about how the transcript will look. Like who's saying what? Who sounds smart? I'll just take all your quotes and pretend they're mine.Stephanie Yee:Perfect.Stephanie Postles:So tell me a little bit how long have you been at Stitch Fix for?Stephanie Yee:I've been at Stitch Fix for almost four years. Yeah, four years in January.Stephanie Postles:Well, tell me a little bit what does the role of the VP of data science look like day-to-day?Stephanie Yee:Yeah. If I have to think about it, being the VP of data science, it really comes down to maximizing the value that the data science itself and the team can bring to the company, like how do we really get the full promise of an algorithm's approach to things? I think as you guys probably know, Stitch Fix is really thinking about how do we help people find what they love and how do we use data science and human expertise to do that? So the types of things that I think about in service of that are things like what are new opportunities that we haven't really discovered yet? And that's been pretty exciting over the last four years.Stephanie Yee:I think another area that I think about a lot is like what's the right almost interface between data science and data scientists and the business partners. So this is if we have data scientists working with the design team, or the product team, or the marketing team, or even executives, what's the place where data scientists can contribute the most? And also, just being really intellectually honest, like what's the place where it makes sense for others to take over? And then obviously, the last part of my job is to really create an environment where the team can be motivated and fulfilled in doing things that bring out the best to each of them.Stephanie Postles:That's great. So it would be great to dive a bit more into Stitch Fix. I know what it is because I'm a customer, but I think a lot of people may not know exactly what it is or all the things that go on behind the scenes to get the pretty box on your door. So could you explain what it looks like, what is Stitch Fix from a high level, for anyone who doesn't know, and then what goes on behind the scenes to create the company that it is?Stephanie Yee:Yeah, so Stitch Fix is a personal styling company. And at the core, we use both data science and real stylists and their expertise to help people find what they love. If you think about unpacking that, it's really about understanding... or from a data science perspective, it's really about understanding a client's needs, as well as being able to set the stylist up for success. The core of Stitch Fix, the way that it shows up is in a box of one or more items and clients are able to try it on, they're able to send back what they don't like and really just keep what they really love.Stephanie Postles:Tell me how do you go about making sure that you give the customer the exact outfits they would like or refine that process to where maybe the second or third time you've nailed it? Because for me, at least when I am getting the outfits, I'm like, "The first time, maybe like one thing was off or something," but then after that, it's like, "Okay, now, this stylist knows me, or this algorithm knows me." So how do you refine that behind the scenes?Stephanie Yee:Yeah. I think that that's a great question. I think a lot of it... I mean, as a data scientist, like I always think about the data that we collect and what's available, and this comes both from what clients tell us as well as what we're able to infer, so a really interesting example of this, and this is where you had mentioned like, "Okay, there might be one item off at first and the algorithm really learns over time," we really think about things in terms of the ability to say like, "Okay, what data do we have now?" And with the stylist, the stylist is incredibly important throughout the client's life cycle. With the stylist, like what's the right thing to be sending right now? And in response to feedback like, "Oh, that item that didn't really work out for whatever reason," we're able to respond to that.Stephanie Yee:I think a really interesting example of the approach that Stitch Fix takes, or rather one of the interesting things about Stitch Fix is that we're thinking about this and we're thinking about a purchase experience in terms of soft goods. So if you think about the way that ecommerce really started off, or at least as I recollect it, it was like comparison shopping sites where you were looking at like how many megapixels do you want in your digital camera. And a camera, those are very easy to compare because it's like, "Oh, it is three or it is four." Whereas with what I think of as soft goods, there's so many different variants on like a V-neck top that it's almost a little bit overwhelming.Stephanie Yee:And then on top of that, a lot of the typical searching and filtering is not really going to get people there, just because what might be a great top, even if it's the same aesthetic, what may might be a great top for you might be not as great for me or vice versa, just because it's like, "Oh, you know what? I really need things that are machine washable, or I have very narrow shoulders or something like that." So Stitch Fix is really trying to distill a lot of these things that are ultimately very difficult to categorize into what we would call a latent space, but really to say like, "Okay, we have something like style." Style is not what lunch table did you sit at in high school, it's really a form of self-expression. And because people are so different, we need to be able to use data science to quantify where people are on a spectrum versus what category they're in. To handle this like-Stephanie Postles:How do you even encourage people to get maybe the feedback that matters? Because I'm even thinking like if I were to get a shirt and I'd be like, "Well, it doesn't fit," I know you're probably behind the scenes like, "Well, why? What part doesn't fit? What don't you like?" How do you encourage someone to tell you what you need to know to then send them something better?Stephanie Yee:Yeah. That's a great question. So what we found, I think that the motivation to give us feedback is actually just an inherent part of the service. I think a lot of people they'll like... When I've styled people and maybe I've missed the mark, people will say, "Oh, you know what? You didn't get it right the first time, but here's more what I was looking for." If you think about it as a relationship, it's not a transaction where you walk into the store and you say like, "I'm happy or I'm sad." It's relationships and relationships are predicated on that back and forth. So it's really a phenomenal percentage of clients that leave feedback on a fix. It's something like 85%.Stephanie Postles:Wow, that's great.Stephanie Yee:It's just like an intrinsic part of the relationship just because we do frame it as a relationship.Stephanie Postles:Yeah. I think having that stylist there really is what forms a human connection, where you're like, "Well, this is..." Of course, there's a bunch of machine learning and algorithms behind the scene, but there's a face here, a human who's actually approving this style and making sure it's perfect for me. And you instantly feel that connection and you don't want to let your stylists down [crosstalk] get that feedback.Stephanie Yee:Exactly, exactly. And similarly, the stylist doesn't want to let the client down. So there's that level of trust that gets established. And from there, I think, a lot of the desire to say like, "Hey, this had a fit issue for me because it was too long or something like that." There's just something that's special there inherently. And then on top of that, we obviously do encourage clients to give us feedback, like we'll give them a nudge. But we're certainly not the type of company that has to like... They'll come to us rather than us having to really force the issue, will say.Stephanie Postles:Yep. What are some of these subtle nudges that you give that aren't annoying, but then encourage the person to give you the information you need to help them. I think a lot of brands struggle with that, where they either don't follow up at all sometimes if they want feedback, or they do it too much and you're like, "Whoa, chill." How do you guys get that right blend?Stephanie Yee:I think that there's two parts to that. One is saying like, "What's the right number of times to be asking or to be reminding really because it's less on asking?" It's just more like, "Hey, if you want, you can leave feedback and there's someone on the other end who's going to be really thinking about it and responding to it." I think it's figuring out like what's the right time to tell people, and it's really like when would this be relevant to someone? I think that there's some other aspects where it's like what's the right time of day to reach out to someone? And all of these can be distilled down into data science problem or data science opportunities. I really find that to be really interesting. I think that there's another aspect, which is that the clients do come back to the app and come back to the site, even without looking to transact. Once they're there, then it's possible to be like, "Oh, by the way, did you want to..." Just making it really easy and lowering friction to giving feedback. That's another way that we're able to implicitly encourage it.Stephanie Postles:Yep. So with all this feedback coming in, it's a lot of natural language that you're probably getting, or is there any tech that you're excited about right now to help you categorize it? Are you looking into GPT-3 or anything new this year that could help solve that problem when people are just giving you probably long paragraphs of like, "Here's the things that aren't working for me," and they're just putting in terms that you're like, "Okay, I can actually build any database at this."Stephanie Yee:Yeah. I think it's interesting because I think some of the unstructured texts or data generally that might be, I would say, overwhelming to someone like you or I. Computers are actually quite good at processing it. So I think GPT-3 is really incredible, sort of advanced in the way that we're thinking about the opportunities that come from natural language processing. So I think the team is really actively thinking about like what's the right way to bring that into the client experience? We certainly want our stylists to continue to be proactive and like a central part of that relationship. And we're actually trying to figure out like, "Okay, how can we actually bring the stylist forward even more?" But I think the way that I would look at it is I actually love it when there's a large corpus of data, will say, just because there's quite a bit of things that one can infer or pull out of that that would be otherwise a rather arduous task for a person like you or I.Stephanie Postles:That's great. Earlier, you were saying that the team is looking at how to maybe utilize GPT-3. And it can be for the overall industry, not just Stitch Fix too. Is there anything where you're like, "I could see this really impacting ecommerce in this way," because that's the one area that I've been trying to look into it? I can see all the things that you can do with it, from not having to code things and writing books and stuff. How could it actually impact ecommerce or data science or behind the scenes?Stephanie Yee:Yeah, I think that's a great question. I would say that if you think about... GPT-3 is a really great way to translate information into the format that people are used to absorbing information in, which is text. I think that it's especially important going back to the like you can't take a shirt. The specs of a shirt are not particularly helpful to a shopper. They can be helpful to a computer, but it's like, "Okay, the sleeve is 13 and a half inches, like who cares?" And GPT-3 is able to almost add in a way that would have been incredibly difficult before. It's able to translate some aspects of an item into what that actually means in someone's everyday life. So it's not like, "Hey, we could show you a table of information where it says, 'Here's the sleeve length.'" But it can be more like, "Oh, you know what? This shirt is going to hit your elbow and it's actually going to drape a little bit."Stephanie Yee:And because there's so much clothing out there and it's all slightly different in its own way, even if it's once again, the same aesthetic, same color, everything, we're able to bring that to the fore for a massive amount of inventory. So that, I think, gets me really excited. I think another thing that's really promising about something like GPT-3 is it'll let us... yeah, it'll really let us customize an experience to a client using a format that... and move beyond tables of data into information that might be more relevant or easier to absorb.Stephanie Postles:Oh, that's great. Yeah, that takes it to a whole new level. I think about right now when I'm shopping around and it shows, "Okay, there's this model and she's 5'9 and 135 or whatever it is," I'm like, "Okay, I could see maybe how something would fit if that's like a similar person to me." But that takes it to a whole new level and saying, "All right, Stephanie, this is going to be bad, you get your elbows and it's going to be very short on your waist," and just putting it in a contextual term where I'm like, "Oh, it's fixed. You all know me. Thanks for letting me know."Stephanie Yee:Yeah. And if you think about style and aesthetic, there's almost something... Style is a form of self-expression. And describing style in terms of only numbers is quite limiting. If you look at the way that people will describe clothing, and it's always really interesting to say like, "Okay, fashion week happened. What are they saying about what's being shown?" It almost becomes poetic in that level of abstraction. And I think that that's something that that language is much better at doing, or images even are much better at doing than just numbers and texts.Stephanie Postles:So the thing I was just thinking about... I mean, you guys have all these models running and algorithms behind the scenes and you have really large amount of data. How have your models changed? I'm thinking about like pre-COVID models, [crosstalk] probably around work and work clothes, and I want to look nice and heels. And then now, it seems like all those models probably had a big shake up because now it's, "I want athleisure and I want sweat pants and comfy hoodies." How have you guys models changed and what are you doing to adjust them, or what should brands be thinking about with adjusting their historical models that are probably wrong?Stephanie Yee:Yeah, I think that's a great question. It was funny actually. In April, one of the data scientists posted in Slack and he was like, "Oh my gosh, like all of the experiments that we're running, we're just going to have to start over." I think that there was a lot of stress behind that statement. And obviously, we're not starting over, but we're starting from a place where the data has changed. And the really wonderful thing about an algorithm and about being able to really take advantage of technology is that they can adapt much, much faster than a person. If we only had the styling team, it can take a little bit of time to figure out like how do we... If we're learning something about like COVID trends, how do you train a team of thousands of people to be on top of everything that is there, in addition to letting them style each client individually?Stephanie Yee:So what's really wonderful... and COVID was a fascinating situation because it's like, "Okay, all of the..." There was a tremendous amount of work that had to be done to say like, "Okay, given a pretty big step change in the way that both like the world writ large as well as the way that people are thinking about shopping and shopping online, how do we adapt things to that?" So there was quite a bit of work to do that across the board. And then on top of that, it was easier than it would have been if we hadn't taken a data science approach, just because so much of the models are designed to change. Some of our algorithms they'll be like, "Okay, this is just going to be updated every week just because it needs to be."Stephanie Yee:I would say that in terms of COVID specifically like... And a lot of it, we're sitting there and we're saying like, "What are people like?" We'll have conviction in where we think that the market is going. With COVID, it was like, "Okay, you know what? Everyone can anticipate. If people have to stay at home, then they'll have to work from home and maybe they won't feel a need for as formal closes as they normally would." But what was interesting, and this is just from how things unfolded from a data science perspective, we actually had... One of our data scientists was a former epidemiologist. So when we were trying to figure out like, "Oh gosh, the world has changed, like how much merchandise should we buy a year from now," she was actually able to contextualize a lot of the news.Stephanie Yee:As a company, we were able to come to what ended up being a pretty reasonable, I would say, assumption about the world and then to go forward and say like, "Okay, overall, how much should we buy?" And then within that, it's like, "Okay, how are consumer tastes going to change?" We can lock down that merchandise. I think the merchant team did a really great job responding to that. Within that, we can make sure that the clients who are looking for working from home clothing versus something else they can actually get it. I think in terms of general trends, I think it's like a 10X increase in requests for working from home clothing. Definitely, a shift out of formal work wear and into more like casual and everyday styles.Stephanie Yee:I think athleisure, those purchases have accelerated quite a bit. With Stitch Fix, because we sell actual items, the merchant team had to do a tremendous amount of work to really anticipate that. And then the styling team is able to make sure that those items get to the right people. Because if suddenly we started to only send out leggings, that's not really going to work for many of our clients who just need to make sure that the people who are looking for athleisure can get it.Stephanie Postles:Yeah. That's so smart having someone who understands that industry. I feel like there's more room for brands to partner with industry experts like that to help them build their models. Because oftentimes, it seems like everyone is so focused on just, "This is our company model. Only the executives of the company can figure out what the future looks like." But by tapping into someone who has very different experience, [crosstalk] maybe what's happening, it seems very smart.Stephanie Yee:Yeah. One of the things that I find to be really fascinating and amazing about Stitch Fix is the way that the executives... like for executive decisions are able to take advantage of the data science capabilities that we've built. And you almost get to this like the core question here, and this is almost... it gets existential, like is how do you handle uncertainty? For me, I'm like, "Okay, this is why I want an executive with like 20 or 30 years of prior experience because some of these questions are genuinely hard."Stephanie Yee:I want to arm them. Given the data available, the task of a statistician is to really squeeze out as much information as possible and to say like, "Okay, guys, here's what we can know, here's what we can't know. And the part that we can't know, to the extent that it's incredibly important to have a decision or a point of view on that, that is truly human judgment." So the executive version of that, I find to be really interesting and there's many versions of that throughout the company with the stylist, with the product team, with the marketing team, with the merchandising team, everyone.Stephanie Postles:That's great. So when thinking about updating the models and algorithms, would you suggest that a company rebuild from scratch, or should they update a current model to kind of pivot a bit? Because I guess when I think about updating a current model, I worry that there's so many things built into it after the fact and the algorithm just runs away on its own and people are like, "I don't really know what's driving it anymore," versus starting over again.Stephanie Yee:Yeah, I think that that's a great question. There's a couple of different aspects to it. Generally, we'll think, "Okay when you have a..." because a model is really expertise in how to use data. So if you find a model that seems to fit the world very well, then you will want to continue to improve it. If fundamentally the world responds quite well to a random forest, or we get very good predictions out of a random forest, then there's no need to change it just because, but there's opportunity to improve on that. Now, with that said, as research is continuing on different methods, people are going to try different methods. But I would say that you definitely want a mix of both because it's both the method and the tuning of that. It's both the type of model that people will think about as well as the tuning of that model or adding new variables to the model or something like that that we want to do.Stephanie Yee:So to give you a concrete example, like with COVID, we have a demand forecast. The demand forecast is really modeling client behavior and it's really being able to give the merchandise team and the executives and the operating partners visibility into like, "Okay, what's life going to be like a year from now and how should we plan?" When COVID happened, everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, the world is very different." But what was great was we were able to say, "Okay, here's some assumptions that we have. We can update those assumptions, but we've got several years of work into the capability itself. And the great news is that we don't need to start from scratch because things have been built in a way that can adapt."Stephanie Postles:Yeah, that's very smart. When thinking through your demand forecast, are you guys forecasting that the world will eventually return back to pre-COVID, or do you think it's a new normal and now people are going to continue working at home indefinitely and keeping it adjusted? How are you guys forecasting the future of apparel?Stephanie Yee:Yeah, I think that's a great question. I would say that there are certainly things that are very large shifts and there are other things that are just probably going to stay the same. I would say that it's a blend of the two. I certainly don't think and I certainly hope that we're not going to be working from home forever.Stephanie Postles:Yeah, I hope not.Stephanie Yee:Exactly, exactly. With the vaccine coming out and just how effective the vaccine seems to be, I think that we will be returning to... There's some things that are going to fall back into place. There's some things that frankly have already fallen back into place, and then there are other things that the company is really leaning in to take advantage of, so definitely a mix.Stephanie Postles:Yeah, yep, I agree. Have you seen any different types of consumer buying behaviors around what consumers are expecting now that more people are at home, they have more time to try things on? Have you had to adjust how you interact or work with your consumers during this time that was maybe different than COVID or pre-COVID?Stephanie Yee:Yeah. I think as I mentioned, there's definitely a difference in what it is that people are looking to buy. I think another thing that has been really exciting is that I know quite a few new shoppers, people who have never bought anything online before suddenly they're like, "Oh, shoot, all the stores are closed. I now have to try this new channel." So we're seeing people who aren't even used to a traditional way of shopping buying things. I think that's been really interesting because that behavior, as you can imagine, can be quite different. So it's great that the business is able to respond to that and-Stephanie Postles:Yep. It seems like there's a whole new demographic market that is opening up now that a lot of ecommerce companies are going to be able to have a lot of opportunities with. I'm thinking about Stitch Fix, my mother-in-law, who's almost 70, when they came back and told me she... I had never told her about you guys and I don't think she would actually ever do that. And she's like, "I ordered from this company, they picked things out for me, it fits perfectly." And I'm like, "Are you talking about Stitch Fix?" And I was genuinely surprised, but she found out about it on her own, went forward, bought it, worked with a stylist, and got her box. It just made me think about how many opportunities are opening up with this new group of people who never were probably comfortable with buying online before. But now, they're forced to it and it's now becoming normal for them.Stephanie Yee:Yeah. I love that story. That's wonderful. I think what's interesting too is that folks like your mom or my mom where they're not actually as used to buying online, they're more used to going into a store, so they're actually more used to being able to talk to someone. Whereas like my friends are like, "I don't want to talk to a human being."Stephanie Postles:Yeah, don't call me. Don't look at me.Stephanie Yee:Just text me. Right. Don't leave a voicemail, that doesn't work. Right. But the folks who are trying something online, they're used to a store. And Stitch Fix like the gap between some of these department stores where you do have a person and the department stores online presence is quite uncomfortable. So if you have Stitch Fix, obviously you're not in the store, but you get to try things. You get to work with a person, you get someone who's actually there to help you. I think in some sense, it's actually a more natural entry point, especially if folks aren't used to the current paradigm of shopping.Stephanie Postles:Yeah. How would you advise a company to be able to not only continue to focus on their traditional consumers that they're used to, but also lean into that new group of people because it seems like you would have to have very different messaging? Like you were just mentioning, some people like myself and you are like, "Just text me, do not leave me a voicemail. Don't try and call me, I'll decline it," whereas this group, you have to have a whole different mentality. Your customer service team probably needs to start calling people and doing things very different. How would you advise a company thinking about this, who wants to maybe connect with both of them, their current customers and the new ones who are now coming on the market?Stephanie Yee:Yeah, I think that's a great question. So the way that I would think about this is, first off, you have to come up... Let's take the messaging example. You want to think about what are the different messages that are going to be resonating with consumers? And then the second is how do you get the right message to that consumer? In terms of what will resonate, I firmly believe... There's a very interesting opportunity for interaction between design and data science and user research and things like that. Data science can contribute, but ultimately the messaging strategy is one that is the overall messaging strategy. You can try many different variants, but the overall strategy is one that is a judgment call.Stephanie Yee:And then machine learning is wonderful for being able to say like, "Given this message, or given this client and given a universe of messages, how do I make it so that the client can see the most compelling one and really understand on their terms what it is that we can offer?" I would say this is an area where you definitely need both art and science because messaging is so incredibly important and strategic. So it's working with the marketing team, it's working with the design team, and then the data scientists can really help figure out where should that message be delivered? How should it be delivered? What is the right way to make it land with the client?Stephanie Postles:Oh, that's great. So we're putting together this end of year commerce article about 2021 trends. And this is one thing that we're talking about is how much the over 55 demographics spend. And they spend twice as much as millennials. And I think I saw, let's see, 10,000 baby boomers are going to turn 65 every day until 2030.Stephanie Yee:Oh, wow, okay.Stephanie Postles:And then by 2050, the over 60s will account for 20% of all people globally. So when I started seeing these stats, I'm like, "Whoa, more people need to focus on this demographic." Oh, and then another one, the 50 and older crowd has a lot of spending power. And if you put it in terms of GDP, it would be the third largest in the world.Stephanie Yee:Oh, wow, okay.Stephanie Postles:US is 21 trillion, China's 14 trillion, and then Japan is 5 trillion. And this is where the people they spend 7.6 trillion in 2018. To me, I'm just seeing all these opportunities that are being missed right now. I'm like, "What the people be doing?"Stephanie Yee:Yeah, no, I think this is a wonderful group of folks. Within the tech industry, I would just say especially there does tend to be a focus more on millennials and things like that. I think the great thing about Stitch Fix is that we are... And oftentimes I think some brands they'll sit there and they'll say like, "Oh, our target demographic she is between 25 and 39. And after that, she's not us." I think with Stitch Fix, we're able to say, "You know what? We're not going to categorize you into one group or another, we're going to serve you where you are. And with personalization, we are able to..." I completely agree with the stats or the information that I have on how that generation of clients interact with Stitch Fix is very, very consistent with some of the numbers that you had described. So it's a really wonderful group of people who are thinking about their personal style, and I do agree it's folks who, I think, tend to be served a little bit differently, really at the retail industry's loss.Stephanie Postles:Yep. Yeah, I agree. How would you go about getting the right data to then be able to craft the personal message then? For Stitch Fix, it does feel a little bit easier because you can ask things like age and a bunch of other questions and they're like, "Well, they're styling me." But for a lot of other brands, if you were to ask age, they'd be like, "What?" How would you advise other companies to be able to get enough information to then be able to personalize a message like that?Stephanie Yee:Yeah. I think that there's a couple of different ways to do it. And a lot of it really is around the marketing and design toolkit. Because ultimately, when you're coming up with messaging, you don't want to say like, "Okay, this is the messaging for folks who are 50." I'm an old soul, so maybe I'll just really respond to that myself. A lot of this is just a strategic question. So data science can play some role where it's like, "Okay, based on what we know, people tend to respond to X, Y, and Z." But really, if you want to be looking forward, it's less like what've people responded to in the past?" You definitely want to take that into account, but it's more like where are things going in the future, especially at a time when things are changing so rapidly?Stephanie Postles:Yep, yeah. That's why I'm also excited about being able to ingest the sentences that people are asking the customer service reps or putting in the search bar because I think that alone could tell you who someone is just based on how they say [crosstalk 00:32:09].Stephanie Yee:Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. I think that the notion of being able to have more conversations with people is something that I think is incredibly exciting and it does allow for a level of, I would say, flexibility of expression, especially once computers can really respond to that.Stephanie Postles:Yep. So when thinking about building up a data science team, what are your first steps? How would you tell a brand to think about it to be able to build it up in an efficient manner, where it's answering the right questions, you have the right goals in mind? Because when I think about data science from different companies I've worked at, some people are called data scientists when they're really a BI team [crosstalk] called data scientists. And then you have marketers who are also data scientists. So like how do you [crosstalk 00:33:26]?Stephanie Yee:It's certainly become a loaded term. It's funny because in recruiting, it can be incredibly frustrating like, "Well, this LinkedIn search is not very helpful." Yeah, that's the first thing that I would say is if people are thinking about like I need to build out a data science team, searching on the term data scientist is probably not going to be the most efficient way to get there. I think probably the step one that I would advise people to do is to really think about what role do you want data science to play and where are the areas that you see as high value? And this can be a little bit of a hard question because without... in the same way that I'm not a 100% familiar with a merchant's toolkit or a designer's toolkit.Stephanie Yee:If I, as a data scientist, look at a problem, I can be like, "Oh, this is something that can be very easily solved with the machine learning." It's hard for folks who don't have that background to know that, but really thinking about like what is the strategic problem that people are trying to solve? With data science, I'm very supportive of making it like a core... like figuring out how to have in-house data scientists focused on the core problems of the company. So it's like what are the core problems of the company? What role would you want data scientists to play within that? I think one of the things that's wonderful about Stitch Fix is that data scientists are really expected to take a leadership role. And this can be incredibly exciting for some folks and it can be just not really interesting to others.Stephanie Yee:So figuring out like, "Okay, if you want data scientists to play a strategic role like, A, what's the core of your company, B, can you hire people who are inclined to really step up and to contribute to that strategy, and then C, how do you set them up for success," I think... And when I've talked to companies, some people will say, "You know what? We're really about logistics." And it's like, "Oh, actually, there's a subset of data science," where they're really thinking about operations research, they're really thinking about warehouse efficiency, supply chain and things like that.Stephanie Yee:And if people are really thinking about demand forecasting and logistics and fulfillment, that's a great tack to go for Stitch Fix. A lot of it is around the warehouse and the fulfillment side of things, those folks who are doing wonderful work and it's all in service of a very specific type of client experience or being able to provision a specific type of client experience. So we have folks who are working on the warehouse side of things, but then we also have folks who are really thinking about like, "How do you work with a stylist to help people find what will really help them or what will really bring them joy?"Stephanie Postles:I got it. If a company doesn't really... They know some of their problems and they know their operations, but if they don't know data science, how would they know what they can solve, or how would you recommend, like should they go and talk with the company or a mentor or advisor who understands that area to do just what you just did with me of like, "Oh, of course, you can put it in logistics and you can put it on your website or here"? How would you tell someone to move forward if they don't know what they don't know?Stephanie Yee:Yeah. If you tell me what is most important to your business, then I can help you figure out like what are the data science opportunities there. And sometimes data scientists may not be the most important input to that, at which point then there might be alternative areas to invest.Stephanie Postles:Yep. What kind of skills would you be looking for when you're hiring a data scientist team, or what are some of the emerging skills too that you're like, "We weren't looking for this four years ago, but now it's something that's very much in demand"?Stephanie Yee:Yeah. That's a great question. I would say the skill that seems to be more and more in demand, and this is something that I think from the early days Stitch Fix had good intuition that this was important, is around problem framing. Like a data scientist, we need them to have a good understanding of statistics, oftentimes machine learning, computer programming, sometimes software engineering. But really, the core thing that we think about is like, "Can they frame a problem and can they... How do they think about problem framing?" Because what will often happen, and this is a pattern that I've seen in other places, is people will very valiantly answer the wrong question. And it's not their fault that they're answering the wrong question, it's just the wrong question was asked.Stephanie Yee:So what we really encourage folks to do and what I think the most effective data scientists do when they're empowered to do so is if people pose a problem to solve, it's actually okay to say like, "Okay, let's take a step back. Let's dig into this a little bit and figure out like is this posed in a way that can lend itself to the full suite of potential solutions?"Stephanie Postles:Got it. So if you're interviewing someone, how can you test that when you don't have much time with them? What kind of questions can you ask to see are you able to actually ask the right questions to figure out what the problem is without going down the wrong path right off from the start?Stephanie Yee:Yeah. That's a great question. Oftentimes there's two ways to do that. One is to say like, "Okay, tell me about a time when someone has posed a very vague business problem and how did you think about refining what it was?" I think that that's one angle. And then another angle that I will bring to the table is I'm thinking about this type of problem, how would you help me? How would you think about it? And just really making it into a discussion because what you're really looking to assess is how do people think? And I will say interviews are not... When you only have 45 minutes with someone, or you have six people with 45 minutes each with someone, you don't get nearly as much data as you'd ever want to. So when I think about it, I just want to have a conversation and see how people think and what connections do they make. If something is framed in a way that merits revision, how do they go about figuring out what that revision might be?Stephanie Postles:Great. So in an industry that's changing so quickly, how are you staying on top of new trends and tech? Are you subscribing to a bunch of newsletters? Are you listening to podcasts? What do you do to stay on top of the data science field?Stephanie Yee:I think that that's a great question. I do subscribe to newsletters. There's a couple of blogs that I really like as well. I think Andrew Gelman is a professor, I believe, at Columbia. He has some wonderful work. Susan Athey is actually another researcher at Stanford who I think is absolutely wonderful. She thinks about causality. So this is like what actually causes another thing. And she thinks about machine learning techniques that can... One of the areas of her research is thinking about how machine learning can contribute to that field. I personally like to stay closer to some professors that I particularly admire. And then also the great thing about Stitch Fix is that everyone has a different set of passions and interests, will say, as well as a different background. So when people are coming across a lot of different methods or papers, there's a wealth of different conversations going on. So that's another great way to stay on top of things.Stephanie Postles:Yeah. I found it really helpful when I dive into certain trends. Like every week I'll pick a new piece of tech or a new trend or something just to see what it's about. And then I start to realize how many new things I'm being introduced to and new people on Twitter that I'm following and new ways to solve problems, like at a media company with podcasts, where I'm like, "Whoa, I never thought about using that. But now that I've read about it, I can think of 1,000 ways to maybe implement it, or I have a whole new model in place or a business model idea based on just very things that are not a part of maybe the media industry or something."Stephanie Yee:Exactly, exactly. I love finding metaphors in one area that tend to work in another. Being able to abstract between things is such a source of insight. I agree with that.Stephanie Postles:Yep. So where do you see the future of data science in ecommerce headed? How do you see that experience playing out in the next five years or so? What does it look like, or what does it feel like?Stephanie Yee:Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think that the future of ecommerce is really one where you have a more personalized experience. I think that as we've discussed, data science is an incredibly important input to that in being able to really fulfill on that promise. I think that data science can also help retailers make better decisions. I see a lot of promising growth on that front. I think for retailers who are particularly fulfillment or operationally focused, there's some really wonderful sort of... I think Amazon is really leading the way in the direction that that side of things can go.Stephanie Postles:Mm-hmm (affirmative). I see a lot of companies probably looking to this field, especially after all their models and plans started breaking last year, trying to figure out what can I get ahead of this next time? There's going to be a next time of something and how can I get ahead of that and start seeing the early indicators and maybe be able to be more agile with adjusting forecast and supply chain and all of them.Stephanie Yee:Yeah, absolutely. I think that that level of agility is something that I'm very proud of that Stitch Fix has. And part of it is because we're able to use data science, not only it's like, "Okay, we can update this model relatively quickly compared to others, or we can figure out how to take into account in the past but not too much," but then also in the ability to help executives think through different scenarios. Because ultimately, we can use data to do some things like we need to executive input on other things.Stephanie Postles:I always love a good data story. Are there any stories that come to mind that either the data shows something that was wrong or it was funny, any of your favorite data stories that you think about from time to time?Stephanie Yee:Yeah, I think that's a great question. The one that I find to be quite endearing is... We have this notion of latent style. And this is rather than saying like, "Oh, here's the lunch table I sat at in high school," it's where within the broader realm of style do you sit? And one of the early hypothesis, it was like, "Okay, we have this sense of the types of clothes that people will like, and we can show pictures of them. But we should figure out how to articulate this to a stylist." So there was some work done to say like, "Hey, here's a set of clothes and here's another set of clothes, named them." So you could be like, "Oh, this is casual and preppy, or this is boho and edgy or something like that."Stephanie Yee:We basically ask people to annotate collections of clothing based on how they would describe that aesthetic. What was wonderful in a sense was all of the... There wasn't really that much consistency between what people were saying. I think sometimes people are like, "Oh, this is a problem." I was like, "No, this is great, guys. This is actually great because it proves that there's things that are there that are beyond categorization. I view self-expression and style as of them." Ultimately, when it was like, "Okay, now we need to express a client style to a stylist," a lot of it was just like, "Let's just show examples and pictures because we don't have the words for it."I thought that that was wonderful. In my mind, it really spoke to the value that Stitch Fix's approach brings to ecommerce.Stephanie Postles:That's cool. So that definitely shows that consumers on your side definitely can't be used from a... You do see annotation label or dataset type of aspect because they're all going to come back with, "This is preppy. Oh, no, this is boho. Oh, no, this is athleisure," and it wouldn't really work for you guys.Stephanie Yee:Yeah, yeah. It does become interesting. Because if you have something that is totally fashion-forward and wild, then nobody would certainly say like, "Oh, it's classic." So there might be a cloud around things. But it definitely does speak to like where is it that people can be most effective versus pictures versus something else?Stephanie Postles:Mm-hmm (affirmative). All right, cool. Well, let's move over to the lightning round. Lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question, and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Stephanie?Stephanie Yee:Sure.Stephanie Postles:All right. First up, what's the nicest thing someone's ever done for you?Stephanie Yee:For me personally?Stephanie Postles:Yep, personally.Stephanie Yee:Oh my goodness, okay, I'm going to need the minute.Stephanie Postles:Yeah, go for it.Stephanie Yee:I guess this is tangential to data science. But there's one point early on in my career. I started my career in management consulting and management consultants are an incredibly impressive bunch, incredibly good at dealing with uncertainty. They also have a very clear view for like what makes you successful management consultant. And there was a talk that one of the partners gave that stayed with me. I think of this as nice because it was quite informative in how I viewed the world and what I can do within it. He said like, "You know what? Every place that you work is going to try to put you into a box. They're going to try to categorize you and nobody really fits into a box."Stephanie Yee:So it's actually okay to say, "You know what? Try to find a job where you fit closely enough into... where all of the strengths that you bring to the table match the strengths that they're looking for." But it's actually okay to say like you have quirks and you're not always going to fit into the box. I think that that was really wonderful because it was like, "Oh, I need to find a job where the way that I think about things maps really well to the thing that the company needs." And then I also need to say like, "What are the things that I bring to the table that people might be like, 'Hmm, okay, that's interesting'"? And decide like, "Is that something that I want to develop about myself, or is that something that I want to say, 'You know what? That's just a strength that I have, or that's just an aspect of myself'"? I would say that that piece of advice was incredibly generous to give as well as something that was very valuable to me.Stephanie Postles:Oh, I love that. I'm really glad I asked that question now. It's a new one. So I always am waiting to hear if someone's like, "Ah, nothing," or something really great like what you just said.Stephanie Yee:Okay, I'm glad that that worked.Stephanie Postles:That was good. What is a trend or piece of tech that you don't understand today that you wish you did?Stephanie Yee:That's a great question. Let's see. A piece of tech that I don't understand today that I wish I did. I think on my list, I've been very interested to get in a little bit more into the weeds and how autonomous vehicles work. I've read at least like what The New York Times will say about Waymo or things like that. But I haven't gotten a chance to really read up on the literature. That's definitely been on my list in part because I think it's just a very interesting problem to solve. And I actually have some friends who are working on that problem, so I can probably just ask them, but also because it's something that is probably going to transform society in the next decade or so.Stephanie Postles:Yeah, I agree. What's your favorite data science book that you refer back to?Stephanie Yee:What's my favorite data science book? The core one that... And this one is not exactly readable, but it's quite nice to reference is elements of statistical learning. I would actually say that it's... Well, for some people, it's readable. For me, it's more of a reference book. But it's this wonderful collection of information put out by some professors at Stanford. I think that it's like a cornerstone of a lot of machine learning and data science classes.Stephanie Postles:What's up next on your Netflix queue?Stephanie Yee:Right now, I'm in the middle of The Crown.Stephanie Postles:Okay. I've had a lot of people say that.Stephanie Yee:Yeah. I hadn't gotten into The Crown actually until shelter at place... I sort of been like a elapsed inactive Netflix customer on and off throughout the years. But I had heard so much about it that I was finally like, "All right, I will sit down and watch it. It's really good.Stephanie Postles:Yeah. I started it and I'm excited to finish it. And I heard the next season's not coming out for like another couple of years or something.Stephanie Yee:I know. I was just like, "Oh, I should have waited to get into it until everything is done." But yeah, I think it's like two years.Stephanie Postles:All right. And then my last question, which is very important, how strictly do you enforce when people are writing up the term data? Do you use it properly, like the data shows, the data show? How strict are you with your team about use the word data properly?Stephanie Yee:I will say-Stephanie Postles:Very important [crosstalk 00:52:14].Stephanie Yee:I notice when people use it. I noticed people's grammar, including that. There are other concepts that I will become more passionate about than grammar necessarily. I think it's incredibly important, but I think the contents, like the true content and making sure that we're precise in certain other words is probably higher priority. I generally try to take a light touch with my team.Stephanie Postles:Okay, you're now stickler about it.Stephanie Yee:I do notice though. I have to filter it, will say.Stephanie Postles:I think you does it right. [inaudible 00:52:56].Stephanie Yee:I do, I do, actually.Stephanie Postles:I love that. All right, Stephanie, well, this has been a really fun interview. Where can people find out more about you and Stitch Fix?Stephanie Yee:That's a great question. The stitchfix.com website is probably the best place to find out more about Stitch Fix. I think in terms of myself, that's a great question. I do have a side project called RTD3.us.Stephanie Postles:I was looking at that. What is that actually? I saw it on your Twitter, but I didn't have enough time to jump into it.Stephanie Yee:It's just a side project. I was at a machine learning and fraud detection company at the time. Oh my goodness, this was probably like six years ago or so, maybe seven years ago when machine learning itself was just starting to like... It wasn't anything that people knew anything about. And a lot of the vendors out there would be like, "Hey, we have this super advanced algorithm, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah." I found it to be a little bit annoying that people would market it as it's too complicated, you can't understand, ours is the best. And at the time, I was quite indignant because we actually had top-notch data scientists and engineers who did actually have something that was the best, but we were still trying to figure out how to market ourselves.Stephanie Yee:So I was like, "Okay, I want to sit down and I want to be able to explain machine learning and some of these more advanced statistical concepts to people who didn't take linear algebra in college." Very, very smart people who just decided to study something different because it doesn't have to be as difficult or as complicated as people make it out to be. There are some things that are incredibly complicated and wonderful and elegant, but you can distill something down to something that is accessible to a broader audience. So I worked with a designer/front end engineer, and we came up with something that really tries to explain some of these core concepts and to make it accessible to people who otherwise like... others are just trying to confuse them.Stephanie Postles:Yep, yeah. That's great. It reminds me... I mean, it's not very similar, but have you heard of Sideways Dictionary?Stephanie Yee:I haven't. I want to go check that out though. That sounds wonderful.Stephanie Postles:That's a dictionary and it uses analogies to explain technical terms. So very different than what you're talking about, but it's helpful because if you look at... Let's see, I'll look at API. The analogy is it's like the connectors on the back of your TV. They let you plug in a device from another manufacturer and both the TV and the device know what to do next. And the connectors are the interface that lets one machine talk to another.Stephanie Yee:Oh my goodness, I love that. This is actually something that I end up doing at work anyway. So I'll have to take a look at that. This is wonderful.Stephanie Postles:Yeah, check it out. I was looking at the about and I saw that it was created by Jigsaw. I don't know if you remember that. It's a group within Google. I think it's just one of their side projects that some of the engineers built. I'm like, "This is actually pretty helpful for me to understand technical engineering type terms."Stephanie Yee:Yeah, yeah, no, I think t's very easy to forget like what it was like to not know something. I think that for folks who can remember that, there's a great deal of empathy there and there's a great deal of desire to help people just understand technology in general. So I will definitely look at that. That's very exciting.Stephanie Postles:Cool. All right, Stephanie, well, thanks so much. Yeah, we'll have to have you back around since I feel like we have a lot of things we could keep talking about, but until next time.Stephanie Yee:All right. Thank you. This was great.

Unlocking the Hidden CharacterMost consistent question – why are you inferring Michael is JesusSome think that Jesus waited 4,000 years to personally intervene in the affairs of man. I want to make it crystal clear to you that Jesus has been personally actively working on behalf of mankind since day 1. Jesus is Michael – Michael is the archangel – the archangel is the chief of all the angels and is also known as THE angel of the Lord. Scripture does not reward the casual readerJohn 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.2 The same was in the beginning with God.3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.Genesis 1:1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…This is why Jesus said; "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad" (John 8:56). Jesus appeared personally to Abraham when the Patriarch interceded for Lot (Genesis 18:26). Genesis 1 and Hebrews 1 and John 1 – tell us clearly that Jesus is the creator of all things – all life – all beings in the universe. This means He was the active agent in creating the angelic race of beings – including the first – Lucifer – the lightbearer – the morning star. There is a good reason why Jesus is sometimes portrayed as an angel but it can be only be understood with an investigation into the angels.In Rev.4:5,6 we see a description of the seven angelsThese angels are divided into two orders - cherubim and seraphim. AccordingEze. 10:9 there are four cherubim and Eze. 10:21 says they have four wings, this meansthe other three are seraphim.In reference to the devil the bible. reads "Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth "...Eze.28:14. The only angels that can cover themselves while flying are the seraphimbecause of their six wings [Isa. 6:2] so a covering cherub is a seraphim. This means the devil was of the highest order. The description given of him in Eze.28:11-15 would indicate he was the head angel, he was unique!With the loss of the head angel Jesus stepped in to fill the void because now there were only three seraphim so Jesus also became known as "Prince of host" Dan. 8:11."How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star son of the dawn…or Oh Lucifer son of the morning"...Isa.14:12. When Jesus stepped in to fill this position he accepted the same title. "I Jesus ...the bright and Morning Star" Rev.22:16.Ellen White commenting on the war in heaven describes a moment when it had to be made clear that Jesus was higher in rank than all. Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) John Calvin:John Wesley:Jewish Midrash Judaism, Michael was the fourth being that saved the Hebrew boys from the Fiery furnacePuritans Matthew Poole and Matthew Henry Martin LutherThe phrase "angel of the Lord" is found 68 times in Scripture. Sometimes it applies to Gabriel who appeared to Daniel, Zacharias, and Mary. But Gabriel is called "an" angel of the Lord (Luke 1:11). He is not referred to as "the" angel of the Lord. Neither is he ever called the archangel. Daniel 1010 And, behold, an hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands.11 And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.12 Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes --- the chief of the princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.20 Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come.21 But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your princeDaniel 1212 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book."Will the defendant please rise?"Jude 1:9 Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke you.The only other passage in the Bible that uses the word "archangel" is 1 Thessalonians 4:16. "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first."John 5:21 – Jesus is the life giver and one who raises the deadThe Revelation of Jesus Christ -  1:18 – Jesus says “I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.”Revelation 12:7And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,the word "angel" means messenger, Sometimes, men are called angels in the Bible 1 Samuel 29:9 Galatians 4:14. And sometimes angels are called men Genesis 32:24. And in other places, God Himself is identified as an angel!  The Key Is in the Name. In the Greek New Testament, the word "angel" means "messenger," and "arch" means "chief, principle, greatest, or highest." So "archangel" simply means "highest or greatest messenger." The Hebrew name "Michael," found in the Old Testament, means "who is like God" So the title Michael the archangel can be translated as "The greatest messenger who is God….or who is like God"The chief of the angels – not just one of but the angel of the LordStories in the Bible Hagar"And the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness" (Genesis 16:7). When the "angel" disappeared, Hagar "called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me" (verse 13). AbrahamGod told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on mount Moriah. Just as he was about to plunge the dagger into his son of promise, the angel of the Lord stopped him. "And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, 'Abraham, Abraham:' and he said, 'Here am I.' And he said, 'Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me'" (Genesis 22:11, 12).  (Genesis 22:15-18). Jacob – wrestles with the angel of the LordMosesMoses saw a burning bush that was not consumed. "And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush" (Exodus 3:2). Verse 4 identifies this angel: "God called unto him out of the midst of the bush." And in verse 6 He identifies Himself again. "I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." The angel of the Lord identifies Himself as God! ---REPEATED BY STEPHEN  (Acts 7:30-32). Children of IsraelThe Angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them" (Exodus 14:19). BalaamJudgesGideonManoahSamson's mother, the wife of Manoah, was barren. "And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman" (Judges 13:3). When the angel came the second time, Manoah asked him his name. The King James says that the angel told Manoah that his name was "Secret," that translates as "Wonderful." ----Isaiah's prophecy foretold that Jesus would be called, "Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6). after seeing this "Wonderful messenger," Manoah declared they had seen God. And Manoah said to his wife, "We shall surely die, because we have seen God!" (Judges 13:22). No One has Seen the FatherSince no man has seen God the Father, all of these Old Testament sightings of God as the "angel of the Lord" must have been Jesus, God the Son, veiling His glory Rebuking the AccuserZechariah was given a vision of Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord. Satan is standing at his right hand to resist him. Here we see two adversaries contending over a sinful human being. Joshua's filthy garment symbolizes his sin. (Zechariah 3:3). In this narrative, the name changes quickly from "the angel of the Lord" (verse 1) to "the Lord" (verse 2), indicating again that they are the same. Then the Lord makes an interesting statement. "And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan" (Zechariah 3:2). There is only one other place in Scripture, Jude 1:9, where this sentence is found—and Michael the archangel speaks it! Worshiping the CommanderIn Revelation 12, Michael is portrayed as commander and captain - leading the heavenly hosts, or armies of angels, in the war against the Lucifer and the fallen angels Just as Israel was preparing for its first battle after crossing into the Promised Land, Joshua had an encounter with an unusual warrior. (Joshua 5:13-15).  "And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant? And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so" Angels alone – reject worship -  (see Revelation 19:10; 22:8, 9). CONCLUSION12 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.DANIEL 7:22 TELLS US – Jesus Judges in favor of the saints. 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 - Don’t you realize that someday we believers will judge the world? Don’t you realize that we will judge angels?

This week, the siblings dive into Mel Brooks' absurd musical comedy about a pair of Broadway producers who pull off the scam of all scams by staging an offensive piece of Nazi fanfiction. There's ugly laughter throughout as they dissect one of their favorite musicals. Copyright 2020 Sorry Mom Productions   List of queer podcasts'12 excellent podcasts with black hosts for pop culture, politics, or history fans'Here's a list of movies that are a better use of your time right now: 13th (dir. Ava DuVernay)|Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins) |The Hate U Give (dir. George Tillman Jr.) | Dear White People (dir. Justin Simien)FIND MORE HERE BLM WEBSITEDON’T TWEET—ACTWays You Can Help (this link has EVVVVERYTHING—petitions/donations/protest education/pro bono counsel and more!)PDX Bail Project FundThe Sentencing ProjectALLY EDUCATION:For Our White Friends Desiring to Be AlliesTalking Race with Young ChildrenThe Lies We Tell About RiotsDon’t think you’re racist?

Sarah encourages us to get serious about listening to, hearing and obeying the voice of God. Part 3 of our 'Here & Now' series.

Retired engineer Bill Reed introduces high school students to accomplished professionals via interactive Zoom meetings with a focus on STEM careers. "We want to show the kids 'Here are the things you can dream about.'"

It was the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 that WWI ended. In 1921 President Warren Harding had the remains of an unknown soldier who was killed in France buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington. Inscribed on that tomb are the words- 'Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.'

It was the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 that WWI ended. In 1921 President Warren Harding had the remains of an unknown soldier who was killed in France buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington. Inscribed on that tomb are the words- 'Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.'

For a lot of us, the benchmark for a great meal is if we're still thinking about it long after we've had it. This greatly applies for the dishes prepared by Garima Arora, Chef Owner, Gaa & Here, and the guest on this episode of This Round is On Me.Garima is the first Indian woman chef to be awarded with a Michelin Star, and she was also named 'Asia's Best Female Chef' in 2019. After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, she worked at the famous restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, learning alongside René Redzepi. She returned to Asia in 2016 and was appointed the sous-chef at Gaggan in Bangkok, and then went on to open her own restaurant 'Gaa' in 2017, an innovative and modern fine dining establishment. More recently, she has opened a new restaurant called 'HERE', also in Bangkok.On this episode, Gauri and Garima talk about what all the accolades she has won mean to her, how they affect her business, how restaurants have been evolving during the times of coronavirus, what the last few months have been like for Garima and her team, how they went from being fully booked to 40% of capacity, the hardships and difficulties of shutting down a running restaurant, her plans for opening back up, how she looks at this as a time to try out all the unique ideas she has wanted to, Thailand being an extremely saturated market for delivery restaurants, her amazing Food Forward India programme, and lots more! Do tune in.Follow Garima on Instagram: https://instagram.com/arorgarima

Jesus said to his disciples, "A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, 'What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.' The steward said to himself, 'What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes.' He called in his master's debtors one by one. To the first he said, 'How much do you owe my master?' He replied, 'One hundred measures of olive oil.' He said to him, 'Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.' Then to another he said, 'And you, how much do you owe?' He replied, 'One hundred kors of wheat.' He said to him, 'Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.' And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently. "For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light."

This week, we cover a formative favorite, the out-of-body comedy 13 Going on 30! Ross fawns over the nostalgia, and Carie drags early 2000s magazine culture.Copyright 2020 Sorry Mom Productions   List of queer podcasts'12 excellent podcasts with black hosts for pop culture, politics, or history fans'Here's a list of movies that are a better use of your time right now: 13th (dir. Ava DuVernay)|Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins) |The Hate U Give (dir. George Tillman Jr.) | Dear White People (dir. Justin Simien)FIND MORE HERE BLM WEBSITEDON’T TWEET—ACTWays You Can Help (this link has EVVVVERYTHING—petitions/donations/protest education/pro bono counsel and more!)PDX Bail Project FundThe Sentencing ProjectALLY EDUCATION:For Our White Friends Desiring to Be AlliesTalking Race with Young ChildrenThe Lies We Tell About RiotsDon’t think you’re racist?

This week we take a long-winded stab at covering television. Our resident West Wing scholar, Ross, is here to tell us how this show came to be, how it stands up to history, and the craft of Aaron Sorkin. Carie is mostly here to fawn over Robe Lowe. Related Media: The West Wing Weekly; Copyright 2020 Sorry Mom Productions List of queer podcasts'12 excellent podcasts with black hosts for pop culture, politics, or history fans'Here's a list of movies that are a better use of your time right now: 13th (dir. Ava DuVernay)|Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins) |The Hate U Give (dir. George Tillman Jr.) | Dear White People (dir. Justin Simien)FIND MORE HERE BLM WEBSITEDON’T TWEET—ACTWays You Can Help (this link has EVVVVERYTHING—petitions/donations/protest education/pro bono counsel and more!)PDX Bail Project FundThe Sentencing ProjectALLY EDUCATION:For Our White Friends Desiring to Be AlliesTalking Race with Young ChildrenThe Lies We Tell About RiotsDon’t think you’re racist?

Welcome to Episode #66 of the Blue-in-Green:PODCAST which sees Imran secure time with singer and songwriter, Georgie Sweet. With her debut album due for release later this month through the UK's revered future soul label, Futuristica Music, Georgie Sweet's 'Misunderstood' is a versatile, confident and self-assured album serving as a genuine highlight for an already fantastic year in music for Futuristica. Having initially come up under the guidance of the inimitable Deborah Jordan, the boundless talents of Georgie Sweet have actually been bubbling away on Futuristica for a couple of years now having chalked up scene-stealing guest appearances on DJ Simon S's 'Music 4 Alternative Souls' (2018) and later how own solo singles 'Here' and 'Sorry', paving the way for the 'Misunderstood' full-length. The news of 'Misunderstood' finally securing a release date would surely excite those completely taken in by the personality exuded by Sweet's incredible vocal. Her natural versatility as a vocalist, creative penmanship and her overall presentation make her such a natural fit for Futuristica so it's with great pleasure that we're able to secure time with Georgie to discuss the new album, developing the art of songwriting and having the fantastic Deborah Jordan and Simon S as musical mentors. www.blueingreenradio.com TuneIn: bit.ly/2LBK0BD The Blue-in-Green:PODCAST unveils new episodes on the first, second and third Mondays of the month. This podcast series runs in conjunction with the online radio station, Blue-in-Green:RADIO which celebrates 21st century soul, jazz, funk, Latin & hip-hop music. These shows are designed to give you some insight into the incredible range of talented presenters we're so lucky to host from all over the world and to geek out musically with us.

Preston Morrison concludes the series "A House (Un)Divided" with a message titled 'Here's How You Kill Division.'

Preston Morrison concludes the series "A House (Un)Divided" with a message titled 'Here's How You Kill Division.'

Mojisola Elufowoju is a British Born Nigerian, Award-Winning Director, and the CEO/Artistic Director and Founder of Utopia Theatre. She creates work extensively with under-represented voices. The next Utopia Theatre production 'Here’s What She Said To Me' opens 30 October on the main stage of the Crucible Theatre Sheffield, and is also available to stream live.Mojisola began her Directing career at York Theatre Royal. She is passionate about the growth and development of ethnic minorities in the theatre industry. You’ll hear in this episode about the work she does and her thoughts on the future of the theatre industry.Also in this episode Mojisola shares stories of reclaiming her name and what it means, how being brought up perhaps not traditionally how a girl of her generation and heritage might have been, gave her more voice and a sense of capability to express herself in the world. Plus seeing people as equals, asking for what you want, and choosing to be committed to see your dreams come true.Here’s a bit more about Mojisola Elufowoju – A Guest Director At The London Academy Of Dramatic Arts And London South Bank University. Was Staff Director At The National Theatre On Three Sisters By Inua Ellams. Was A Recipient Of The 2017 Opera Awards Foundation Bursary, A Founding Member Of Mosaic Opera Collective.And other Credits Include: Far Gone (Sheffield Crucible Theatre And Theatre Deli Sheffield) The Bogus Woman (Camden People’s Theatre 2019), On Missing (The Cockpit Theatre 2018), Shadows In Different Shades (Work In Progress - Sheffield Theatre 2018), The Pied Piper Of Chibok Opera (Opera North Residency And Arcola Theatre 2018), I Am David Oluwale (Work In Progress- Leeds Playhouse 2018), Iyalode Of Eti (Leeds Playhouse, Sheffield Crucible, Cast - Doncaster And Ake Festival Nigeria 2016/2017) London Tales (Rich Mix And Lost Theatre 2015)This Is Our Chance (Cultural Centre Calabar, Nigeria 2013)The Shepherd’s Chameleon (CLF Art Cafe 2013) House Of Corrections (Riverside Studios (2012) Wake Me When It's Time (York Theatre Royal 2012). Links:Website - https://utopiatheatre.co.ukUtopia Theatre Compilation - https://youtu.be/um5zpZpBH2MThe Creative Hub - https://utopiatheatre.co.uk/thecreativehub When Women SpeakWebsite ~ https://www.wwsgn.comFacebook page ~ https://www.facebook.com/whenwomenspeakglobalnetwork/Facebook group ~ https://www.facebook.com/groups/whenwomenspeakEmail ~ hello@wwsgn.comSupport the show (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=hello%40wwsgn.com¤cy_code=GBP&source=url)

After an extended break brought to you by #2020 - we're back, baby!Watching footy this year has felt a little bit like sitting in an empty stand at the MCG singing Dave Dobbyn to yourself, but there have been some surprisingly enjoyable parts to the season. In this special episode we talk about things we missed and loved during the 2020 season. Brodie and Amy also drop a huge surprise on Sarah that seals the fate of her future daughter. Thanks to Friend Of The Pod Gemma who helped us concoct the perfect footy origin story.Audio note: The audio quality on this episode isn't as clear as usual as it was recorded using the magic of the internet, rather than in a radio studio.Our artwork was designed by Steph Hughes, and our theme song is 'Here if You Need' by Wet Lips.Follow us on socials:Twitter @fangrrrlspodInstagram @fangrrrlspodFacebook @ fangrrrlsOr get in touch:Email fangrrrlspodcast@gmail.com

Preston Morrison continues the series "A House (Un)Divided" with a message titled 'Here's How You Kill Unity.'

Preston Morrison continues the series "A House (Un)Divided" with a message titled 'Here's How You Kill Unity.'

God set down the bitter portion before him, and let him see what he had to drink, if he persisted in his love to sinners- and brought him to the mouth of the furnace that he might see its fierceness, and have a full view of it, and have time then to consider whether he would go in and suffer the flames of this furnace for such unworthy creatures, or not. This was as it were proposing it to Christ's last consideration what he would do- as much as if it had then been said to him, 'Here is the cup that you are to drink, unless you will give up your undertaking for sinners, and even leave them to perish as they deserve. Will you take this cup, and drink it for them, or not-

You can put a low ticket offer out there and make some quick cash if you have good content. But you have to look at the big picture so you won’t make shortsighted decisions. Scott Oldford has been an entrepreneur since 7 years old, and he had a million-dollar business by the time he was 16. By the time he was 21 years old he was over $1 million in debt. Since then he has bounced back and he has helped 200+ Entrepreneurs scale past 7 figures. He has built 13 businesses past seven figures, and he is now the leading expert when it comes to scaling online businesses. On this episode of the Low Ticket High Impact podcast, Justin and Scott sat down and talked about how Scott launch a low ticket workshop and sold a million dollars on the backend. Tune in for an inside look at the way Scott did it. Million Dollar Workshop Breakdown Training   You’ll Learn  Why you should focus on the long term How you can leverage your money by investing wisely The best way to position a low ticket offer in order to get the highest chance of converting to a high ticket sale Why it’s a good idea to make long-term bets that are hedge And much more!   Favorite Quote “I think it's really important to be able to give strategy and not tactics. For a lot of people's low ticket offer it's, 'Here's the tactics of this. Here's the tactics of this.' My entire workshop there's no tactics. Zero tactics. Literally, there's not a single tactic. It is all pure here's the strategy.” – Scott Oldford   Connect with https://scottoldford.com/ On Facebook On LinkedIn   How to get involved Justin DeMers launched his simple, low ticket workshop, Click Go Live, without a large audience – and sold over $200K in four months. Now, he wants to teach other business owners his method. If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It would mean the world to hear your feedback and we’d love for you to help us spread the word! Brought to you by Justin DeMers of Low Ticket High Impact

Hey, it's Jon Cook with Keynote Content, thank you so much for joining me today. As I talk with different coaches, speakers, industry experts, they're saying, "I have my website, I put it together but my traffic goes to all these different pages. Whether it's going to blog articles, whether it's going to a lead magnet, whether it's going to the about page, or services page. How do I make sure that [inaudible 00:00:22] coming into my website... Is there a preferred landing spot that I want them to go?" And I recommend putting together what I call a 'Start Here' page. And a 'Start Here' page gives you a smaller sandbox to be able to present, "Here's exactly what I want my audience, every website viewer... I would ideally like them to go to my 'Start Here' page to read about a few important details that strips away everything else that's good but maybe not as important for the first time viewer. For somebody coming to my website for the first time, how do I know I want them to read this exact section of content?" So, on a 'Start Here' page... I'm just going to put, 'Start Here' page. I recommend putting in what I call your ... this is your cornerstone content. Initial, we talk about is, who is this for? So, I like adding in like, "What is your unique value proposition?" So, your UVP. I recommend having that towards the top of your page on your homepage and then reinforcing it in a creatively redundant way on your 'Start Here' page. And how you can do that is saying, "We work with this people by doing this so they can that. And we do this and we are the only agency or firm or organization that focuses on these unique characteristics that make us different than these other competitors or other people in our industry." So, you start with a unique value proposition but then what I like to do is say, "We're not just saying, 'Here's the unique value proposition,'" but embed the exact core problem that you focus on with your services, with your content, whatever it might be. Focus on that exact problem and then raise or amplify the intensity of that problem. Make them know that you understand. On your 'Start Here' page, I also like to include a manifesto. And a manifesto, it doesn't have to be several thousand words, certainly not. In fact, the best manifestos that I've ever seen are ones that are about 150 to 200 words. So, aim for about 150 to 200 words for your manifesto. And it really focuses on what is your why? You're probably very familiar with [inaudible 00:02:23] start with why. But if you have a way to articulate that why, right off the bat for somebody coming to your website, they're not looking at your services page and they're not looking at your about page or all these other different pieces. But they're looking at, what is the exact info that is most relevant to me right now on this website right here? By putting in your why in your manifesto, what it does is it [inaudible 00:02:45] a lens for how they... You want them to see the rest of the content on your website because your why, yes, it's about what motivates you but in some sense it also says what is important to them. (Transcript continues) ------------ Being an expert doesn't mean you automatically have an audience, especially with so much noise in the digital marketing space. You need to break through the noise and establish your message as a rising thought leader in your industry. Jon Cook has worked with over 1,100 coaches and consultants and 800 speakers to make their messages remarkably clear and compelling to the right audience, and today he wants to help you. If you want greater clarity and even better results with your message, visit workwithjoncook.com.

25 -Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps-a- and went to meet the bridegroom.-b- 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a cry, 'Here is the bridegroom- Come out to meet him.' 7 Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' 9 But the wise answered, saying, 'Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.' 10 And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. 11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us.' 12 But he answered, 'Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.' 13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

Why you talkin' tho?! We talkin bc we just got a FULL RIDE to DRAG U! JK- we here H-E-R-E to coo-coo bout Rupaul's Drag Race All Stars 5 w/ Nicole Byer & Mano Agapion! We scream about the continued chaos of Alexis v Shea, spill tea what truly does make a lipsync assassin versus a lipsync arsonist, whisper sexy improv secrets that woulda made the ep better, and wil' out bout WHY Nicole doesn't get ANIMAL CROSSING! NICOLE!!!!! She's perfect & you know it. IT'S ALL STARS!!!!! PREPARE TO GAG, WHORES!!!!! PROPS TO YA, DWOTUR!Black Lives Matter. DONATE NOW!Listen to Drag Her on Stitcher, download the app, or get more info at stitcherapp.com/dragher!Get more Mano & Betsy on We Love Trash on Patreon!Be sure to rate Drag Her 5-stars on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review with the best drag names for a chance to have it read on-air.Drag Her IG: dragherpodcastTheme Song: Twinkids (@twinkidsmusic)Art by Jack Manion (@jackmanion)

Welcome to Episode 30! Into the strange new post-lockdown Aotearoa mediascape comes a new magazine. "Fiercely local" and dedicated to New Zealand residential architecture, 'Here' launches on June 22. In this episode we talk to Here's editor Simon Farrell-Green about the current situation for print media, stories he hopes to tell, and what it takes to create, fund, and launch a design magazine. Theme Music - The Cosmic Wheels

This week, the How to Launch a Book series continues with everyone’s favorite: book launching on social media. Twitter. Instagram. Canva. PicMonkey. Crello. Pinterest. Linked In. Head blowing up yet? We talk about planning your launch social media, how to use social media and image-creating apps to share and promote and why you shouldn’t feel one bit like you’re talking about your book too much when you’re launching it into the world.We also fall apart a bit, here and there, because these are falling apart times, and we feel it.#AmReadingKJ: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia OwensJess: The Secret History by Donna TarttHow to Be an AntiRacist by Ibram X KendiMiddlesex by Jeffrey EugenidesSarina: Pale Rider Laura SpinneyDon’t forget to check in with our sponsor, Author Accelerator. They’ve got a special book coaching class happening in June on coaching historical fiction, which I would love to be a fly on the wall for—as well as introductory and master classes on book coaching, and, as always, the ability to match you with just the right book coach to help you move your work forward.As for us—we send out a MiniSode or a Writer Top Five every Monday to our supporters. Your support pays for the production and transcription of the podcast, and is the reason why, this week, you don’t also hear my conversation with the child who walked in while we’re recording. Also why there’s music and a fun opening. Because we hired a professional, because it’s good to do these things right. So thanks for chipping in—and if you’d like to join us, click the button.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:01 Hey writers, it's KJ. This week we are continuing our book launch series and Sarina is schooling me on getting all my social media ready for a fiction launch. At our sponsor, Author Accelerator, they're offering some different schooling this month, June of 2020 with classes in book coaching. There are introductory classes, master classes, and (this fascinates me) a special class this month on coaching historical fiction. I love that they're getting so specific, and I would love to listen in on that one. If you're intrigued find out more at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:40 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:43 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 0:47 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:48 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hi, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, essays, book proposals, pitches. In short, this is, as I say every week, the podcast about settling down and getting your writing work done.Jess Lahey 1:18 This is Jess Lahey I am the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my work at the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and The Atlantic, and various other spots.Sarina Bowen 1:29 I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 35 romance novels and the most recent one is called Sure Shot.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:35 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of the novel The Chickens Sisters coming out July of 2020 and the book How to Be a Happier Parent out in paperback now, as well as the former editor of the Motherlode blog and column at the New York Times where I am still a contributor. That's who we are. And this week, we're continuing our how to launch a book series, in which we sort of try to cover all the different arenas of things that you can get ready for before your book launches. We've done Amazon, Bookbub, and Goodreads. We've done websites. And now we're going to turn our attention to social media.Sarina Bowen 2:22 That beast called social media.Jess Lahey 2:24 Such a powerful tool sometimes. Well, and I know for a fact that when I talk to authors who are sort of contemplating the social media sort of for the first time in a professional context, they're just so overwhelmed. They're like, do I have to do all of it? So Sarina, do we have to do all of it? Do we have to do Pinterest, and Instagram, and Facebook, and do we have to be good at all of it? Because that's the thing that seems to overwhelm authors.Sarina Bowen 2:52 Absolutely. You will find it overwhelming because it is overwhelming and you don't have to do it all. You absolutely have my permission not to do all of it. So, of course, everybody has their favorites. So you really need to ask yourself two questions. And Jess, you've been super articulate about this, too. Like, the two questions really are, which platform is your favorite or which platform makes you hate it the least? And the corollary question, which is almost as important, which platform is your people?Jess Lahey 3:45 Yeah, where's your audience?Sarina Bowen 3:47 Yeah. And you and I have discovered that our answers to this question are like 180 degrees different, whereas you talk to educators all the time on Twitter, and my audience is really on Facebook and Instagram.Jess Lahey 4:04 Yep. How did you figure that out? I mean, for me, it was fairly obvious from the get go because I think I started learning about personal learning networks and realizing, oh, that's where all the teachers were. And I was using it for teaching. But then, of course, when I started writing something that was about teaching, it was sort of a natural fit for me. But did you have to go looking and sort of figuring out where all those people were for you?Sarina Bowen 4:28 I really did have to pay attention because there are a lot of authors on Twitter. But at one point, somebody said to me, Twitter is where I go to talk to other authors. But I reached my readers on Facebook and I thought, okay, well, that feels a little bit familiar. But I'm a really analytical person and I like data. So of course, I've been using all of these sites, at least partly, for kind of a long time. And I realized that my Squarespace website (and every website does this in some capacity, you just have to find it, but it has really good data about this) it's called traffic sources is the page that I look at. And under social media in the last 30 days, you can see, or maybe I'm at seven days here. But over some period of recent time, I have gotten 816 clicks from Facebook, 158 clicks from Goodreads, and 78 clicks from Twitter, and 18 clicks from Pinterest. So that tells a really clear story immediately about what's working. And of course, we post fewer links on Instagram and my Instagram shows up on this other page because I use a program for this and I'm getting like 200 off Instagram.Jess Lahey 5:54 Wait, what do you mean when you say that your Instagram is showing up on another page and use an app for that?Sarina Bowen 6:01 Well, let's let's just dive right into Instagram because lots of authors love it. So anyway, what I was trying to say is that you, you can be given permission to cut one of these out if you can see in hard numbers where people are finding you. And of course, a lot of the links that I post on social media do not lead back to my website. So this is just a little subset. But I still find it quite telling and it gave me permission to walk away from Twitter without really looking back and I actually changed my account there. It says now that it's a Sarina Bowen update account infrequently monitored, because I'm not part of the conversation. And it basically says, this is a promo account, you know, do with that what you will, I don't expect to have a grand, wonderful following there, because I have chosen not to pursue it.Jess Lahey 6:57 You know, it's really interesting. I have a column up in TweetDeck - one for you and one for KJ, because I like to keep tabs on what people are saying about my peeps. And occasionally I'll find stuff before you guys see it. But what I often see are cross posts from Goodreads with a tweet saying what percentage they are through him via Goodreads. And it's really clear that people are letting Goodreads cross post to Twitter for them. And that's the majority of what I see from readers regarding your books, which was a really interesting realization to me that it's sort of not that the readers are necessarily there, but that they're letting Goodreads cross post for them.Sarina Bowen 7:39 Yeah. And can we just back up to the part where you said you have a column on TweetDeck, but that column is a special thing. That's a search column, right?Jess Lahey 7:48 Right, right. Meaning I have a search column with quotes around your full name and a column for you on @SarinaBowenUpdates or whatever your handle is. Just because I like to just know what's happening with my people. Sarina Bowen 8:05 That's amazing. Jess Lahey 8:08 It's fun, I like to see what people are reading of your stuff. And you know, it's always fun to report back that when people are saying nice things.Sarina Bowen 8:15 You know what, at one point I had a column like that. But I found that I didn't always want to know all the things that were showing up there. Jess Lahey 8:26 That's probably true. I've seen some things that I didn't necessarily want to see. But that's also how I found out about that thing where I was my one of my essays was on the SAT, because people weren't tagging my handle on Twitter, they were just saying mean things, and making memes about me using my name and sometimes misspelling it, but either way, that's how I found out that I was on the SAT and that all the high schoolers in the country hated me that year.Sarina Bowen 9:05 We're still on Twitter, so let's let's finish Twitter because I want to know something that I'm not good at on Twitter because like I said, I don't use it that much. But how do you use hashtags to find your audience?Jess Lahey 9:19 Well, it depends. I use hashtags on Twitter for education stuff, simply because they're chats that happen, like more chats than I can even tell you. If you do a Google search on education hashtag Twitter chats you will get this table that has hundreds of Twitter chats. So occasionally, I'll use them for things like you know, I need a particular book for kid a particular age and then I'll hashtag a couple of reading or teaching literacy hashtags, but I actually don't use hashtags very often on Twitter. It's not so much my jam.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:03 It's not like Instagram, there's not a lot of room for them. You just use a hashtag, unless you're joking.Jess Lahey 10:10 There are exceptions, though. I mean, like if a big education conference is going on, I'll throw up a column for that education conference and follow people at that conference so that I can see what's going on, and find out what people are talking about, and things like that. But for the most part, yeah, I don't really use hashtags. I don't use hashtags the way people use hashtags in Instagram. It seems to be a bigger deal in Instagram than it is on Twitter, at least for me, that may not be the case for everyone. But definitely for me, hashtags are not as much a thing on Twitter.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:42 I think that the reason to use them on Twitter tends to be because your being part of a conversation is around a hashtag. So it's often political, but not always. I mean, that's why. Whereas on Instagram, because people rarely reshare because Instagram makes it hard, I will follow certain hashtags. And then from those hashtags, I might find new accounts to follow. Because for example, I'm actively looking to follow people who write about the kinds of books that I write. So I follow a hashtag for that. I don't do that in Twitter for a lot of reasons. One of which is that I just don't go on Twitter anymore.Jess Lahey 11:30 I absolutely just misspoke though. Because in looking for this new audience for the new book, I actually do have a list around people in recovery and then I also do have a column for hashtag recovery or hashtag sobriety or hashtag sober so that I misspoke. Because I don't know the audience as well in the recovery world as I do in the education world, I do occasionally go mining and looking around just to see who's who, who's talking about what, who's reputable, who's not, sort of who's in the conversation, and those hashtags can occasionally help me access that.KJ Dell'Antonia 12:09 And I think the thing for Twitter is that if you're a nonfiction author, especially, but it probably works in fiction as well, is that you can end up in a conversation with an expert that you might want to reach or a fellow author that you might want to reach because if they're putting out a tweet, and you reply to it, it's just different, then they might tweet back. And because they're actually actively on there, well depending on whether or not they've scheduled their tweets, but usually the kind of thing you'd reply to isn't that, so there's an opportunity for connection there that's a little bit different, but I don't know. It's sort of more general. It's not a lot to do with launching your book. Jess Lahey 12:57 Well, for me though, the one thing I do though is if I find someone who's in my demographic squarely, someone who I really am interested in following on Twitter, and who I think really follow some interesting people, whether it's recovery or education, I will go through who they follow and sort of say, oh, look, there's some people I don't follow and follow those people. So that can be really useful too, if you're new to a field. Going and looking. For example, if you were really interested in like COVID stuff, and PPE, there's this woman, Dr. Megan Ranney, who's out there in the media a lot and Megan would be a great person to go follow and then look at who she follows because she probably follows a really reputable group of people within that field. So that's a really great thing to do, too. For example, if you were writing your first novel, and it happened to be a women's fiction novel, go look to see who like Jennifer Wiener or KJ Dell'Antonia or Jodi Picoult, who do they follow? And obviously, there might be some interesting people for you to follow in there as well. So that's been really useful for me.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:05 But to specifically bring us back to book launches, I will say one thing that I did on Twitter with my nonfiction book launch, and I think Jess may have done some of the same thing, is to tweet everyone I quote in the book. So when I was launching my nonfiction, I prepared in advance a bunch of tweets that were like, 'Thanks for your help with How to Be a Happier Parent, Jessica Lahey, it's out now.' They were a little better than that and I had those all revved up and ready to go and either scheduled or not, so that's a way to let people that were helpful to you know, so that hopefully they will share. So that's one way to use Twitter. And another way is to ask other people to tweet for you.Jess Lahey 14:50 Right. And, you know, our groups of friends can be relied on to really boost us if we need them. But it's been really fun watching for a friend. Like when Catherine Newman's book was first up on Amazon, and you know, it'll be out by the time this podcast goes up. She did that. She said, I want to thank @JessLahey for supporting me in this book by blurbing it and blah, blah, blah. And that sort of reminds me, oh, yeah, I really support this book I want to help. So you're right, that's a really good way to do it as well.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:25 Right. And so then another thing that you can do within Twitter is to create tweets about the book that people that are on your email list could send out. And if you go to share link generator, you can write a tweet that then you can create a link and you can put it in an email, you can put it in a blog post, you can put it on almost anywhere and say click to tweet. And if someone clicks that, then their tweet pops up, it's editable. So what I do with that, is I send it out to a bunch of people that I know, but maybe my email list, maybe my launch team, maybe just 20 people that I have collected, and I say, it would be awesome for me if you would tweet about the book. Here, I've made it easy. Click here, and you get an editable tweet about the book with all the links. And the person clicks. And it says, 'Hey, I'm so excited to welcome KJ's new book, The Chicken Sisters into the world.', and they can change that too. You know, 'I've read this and I love it' or 'I hated this I never want to hear from this author ever again'. You know, they can change it to anything that they want. But it's already there. And it has the links and it makes life so much easier. And I always kind of boggle at people who don't. People who just send me an email and say would you mind tweeting about the book? To do that I have to go find the link, and then I have to think of something to say, and I have to go on Twitter, I mean, there's like four steps in there. Whereas with share link generator, you can make it a one click deal. It also works for Facebook, but we're not on Facebook yet.Jess Lahey 17:09 All right, are we done with Twitter?Sarina Bowen 17:11 I would like to propose one last thought on Twitter that's actually applicable to all of the platforms we're discussing today. Which is that by the time any author gets to her launch day, she feels as though she has been talking about nothing except her book since the beginning of time. And she is a little bit sick of herself and the whole topic. But I would just like to say that Twitter specifically has a sort of short half life of each tweet. And even if you feel you've been discussing your book way too much, launch day is not the moment to change your behavior. Like it's the one day when everyone will forgive you for talking about your book launch a whole lot. So you know, hang tight and put out yet another tweet about your book on that launch day because that is your moment. And not that many people will see that tweet, even if you are sick of yourself.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:14 And to save yourself the agony of spending your launch day writing 10 different tweets about your book. Write him ahead of time. I mean, then you've got them. I've got a Google spreadsheet going in which I'm just dumping possible posts or make the images that you're going to use have them all ready and just know what you're going to put out there so that you don't have to generate it while you're sort of feeling that 'Oh my God, I've been talking about this forever.'Jess Lahey 18:54 This week coming I believe is my copy edited manuscript and I have scheduled for when that has to go back in and then I'll have another date coming when I'll hopefully get my galley proofs. And my plan is to go to those looking at my copy edits with a highlighter so that I can highlight a few tweetable, Instagram-able, quotable things that I can make Canva cards for from the get go. Because I'm probably not gonna want to go through the manuscript to the fine tooth comb again, after I do it for all these edit things. So why not do both at the same time?KJ Dell'Antonia 19:30 I did that with the novel as well.Jess Lahey 19:34 So smart...KJ Dell'Antonia 19:35 Sarina, you do something a little different. You do sort of the 'Here's what you can expect to find', which I always think is really fun, which I am also doing now.Sarina Bowen 19:49 Well, Jess mentioned Canva cards, and let's just spend a minute on Canva, because it's a really useful tool of mine. Canva is a graphic design program at least that's what it calls itself. And there are many there's one called Crello there's several versions of this beast, PicMonkey, lots of places where you can use templates and make cute designs fairly easily even if you're not a Photoshop human. But what I love about Canva specifically, and I actually have the paid version of it, is not only is it good at designing stuff, but it will save it for you for later. So when I'm feeling it in terms of promoting my book, and I'm not sick of myself on a particular day, I can go into Canva and mess around with things like quotes from the book, or thank you for your support, or anything that has to do with that design. And you can actually make pages each Canva document, you can just duplicate the thing you made, and delete the quote and put in a new one. So it's really good at sort of holding your design brain in one spot.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:10 And you can resize it for something else. So you can duplicate it and then resize it into Twitter size, or Facebook size, or LinkedIn size, or Instagram story size, instead of Instagram post size.Sarina Bowen 21:25 Right. I think the resizing is part of the paid portion, or at least it used to be, but that was definitely something that I enjoyed getting after I became a whatever it's called pro member. It's not very expensive either. It's like, the whole year costs $200 or something like that. So Canva is definitely a great tool for when you're switching from Twitter to Facebook or you want to play around with a checklist. Those checklists you were just talking about that I make are also wonderful in Canva. And another thing I do if you have chapters in the book that you're launching, and those chapters have titles, I like to make countdown chapter titles because as you hurtle through that month towards your book launch, it's great to be newsy. And so I will make let's say, chapter eight of my book is called, 'Is that really a duck?' I will make a Canva card that says in eight days I will bring you chapter eight, 'Is that really a duck?' And then the next day, I'll have one to post that says, in seven days, I can bring you chapter seven, 'The duck went fishing', and on and on because I've taken the trouble to give my chapters funny titles or informational ones, and it just gives you something newsy to put out into the world as you count down to your terrifying book launch.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:04 I did that with nonfiction, too. I did it with How To Be a Happier Parent and it was fun and it was helpful and it was just it just felt like something to say. And I made little cards, and it kept me busy, and gave me something to say. Jess Lahey 23:25 I just want to underline this whole planning ahead thing, because if you are waiting until the very end to think about doing these things, you're going to just be so overwhelmed. So the clear message here is be thinking about text, tidbits, strategies, things you want to do ahead of time so that you're not overwhelming yourself the week of pub date.Sarina Bowen 23:45 Definitely.Jess Lahey 23:46 Because that would be insane.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:48 And let's talk a little about the goal of all of this. It's not going to sell millions of books, you're only probably reaching... So when you ask other people to share on social media, you're reaching their followers and when you're sharing you're mostly reaching your own followers and some retweets. But I think something important to remember is that people need to see the book more than once, usually before they head over and click and buy. And sometimes they don't even remember where they saw it or how they saw it, it just becomes familiar because you've posted a lot of imagery around it. But you haven't made it annoying, you've made it fun, you've made it entertaining. So when people see that title, when they're surfing a book site, or hopefully in a bookstore, it makes them go 'Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that one.' Jess Lahey 24:44 I definitely hear that a lot that you know, we've talked about this before, that it's the repetition and sometimes it's the second, third, or fourth time that someone says 'Oh yeah, that book that I meant to buy the first time I heard about it, but didn't.' KJ Dell'Antonia 24:57 So to some extent, that all means that if you don't do it during launch week is just an excuse to do it. If you don't do it during launch week, fine, the next week do something different, create a bunch of things, and start putting your book out there. We don't need to panic if we don't get it all out there on launch day.Jess Lahey 25:24 You know, what's so interesting about the social media thing too, is that there have been all kinds of attempts, there was that thunderclap thing that was a couple years ago where you'd ask people a favor to all tweet and post something to social media the same exact time and I don't think that that had any kind of effect and it was a huge amount of effort. And it sounded like you were getting something done, but I don't know that it actually had any major effect. So when we talk about these things that you're supposed to do on social media or that you could do on social media, we're not saying that you have to do all of these things and they're going to have a major impact on book sales. But every little bit, you know, can help. And as we always like to say, we don't want to get six months out from book release and say to ourselves, 'Oh, I could have done that other thing. I wanted to be able to say, we did all the things that were under our control that we could do to help our book do well on launch day. But that thunderclap thing was very weird, I think anyway.Sarina Bowen 26:26 It was an attempt to make virality happen where it wasn't destined to.Jess Lahey 26:33 Exactly, to force a lot of noise all at the same time in the hopes that it would catch fire. And I don't know, I just mixed metaphors. But I don't know that that was a particularly effective thing to do. And I like to be sparing and what I ask other people to do to help me out and being a part of something like that wasn't something I was particularly interested in.Sarina Bowen 26:54 Right. I don't think I once participated, but it was an interesting experiment.Jess Lahey 27:00 Alright, anything else that you want to add to this discussion about Twitter or Instagram?KJ Dell'Antonia 27:07 We didn't do Instagram...Sarina Bowen 27:09 We should do Instagram, which is growing faster than the other services that we've been talking about. Jess Lahey 27:17 Sorry, in my head I kind of thought we had sort of done Instagram because in my head I associate Canva with Instagram, so mentally I had gone there. So my apologies. Sarina, Instagram. Sarina Bowen 27:59 Instagram is a platform where sharing doesn't really happen very often. So you kind of have this one moment to put something visual and beautiful in front of people and hope that it sticks with them. But discovery on Instagram also works a little differently than it does on other platforms, which is that hashtags really matter on Instagram. So, before you are launching your book, you want to figure out what hashtags people are using who are looking at books like yours and I have a little collection of these I keep it handy.Jess Lahey 28:42 There's a lot of them for authors and writers and books on Instagram. There's a ton of them, so good for you having a list.Sarina Bowen 28:50 Well, I have several lists, honestly. So if I'm talking about my own book that's coming, I will use bookaddict, booknerd, bookworm, booklove, booklover, contemporaryromance, romancereads, IGreads, oneclick, alwaysreading, you get the idea. There's a lot of these.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:08 And let me guess that you have a list that is pastable. Sarina Bowen 29:11 Oh, yes.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:12 So where do you keep that? Sarina Bowen 29:14 I happen to keep it in notes, that little yellow app on all things Apple that is just really handy. But you could use Google Keep for this, you could use any program that you keep handy. KJ Dell'Antonia 29:26 I use Evernote and I have thought about using Keystrokes. Because since Instagram really requires that you use the phone. You know, you can't post to Instagram except on a phone. So if you go (in an iPhone, at least) into general, and you go to keyboard, you go to text replacement. You can make a series of letters and put them all in there and then when you type that series of letters they will all pop up. Sarina Bowen 31:00 KJ taught me this nifty trick because actually I use it on Instagram too, which is that I have thank you and some longer phrases for thank you spelled out in German, French, Italian, and Portuguese, because Instagram is a really international platform. And at least half the tags that people are using for me on Instagram are in German, honestly. God bless German instagramers. So I have three different German phrases saved in those Keystrokes that I apply when somebody takes some beautiful picture of my German book and tags me in the post so that I can be thankful without writing danka, danka, danka, danka all day long.Jess Lahey 31:50 Yeah, that's really brilliant. And I'm actually going to need your help because I got tagged in a couple of things that I needed a Portuguese thank you for and I didn't have it. So that's really smart and really thoughtful. Sarina Bowen 32:06 So, that whole keystroke thing and being made to create stuff on your phone is kind of a drag. Thanks, Instagram, you can actually hack your way around this by installing a Chrome plug-in that fools your Instagram into thinking you're on a mobile device when you're not...But my current setup is that I probably have the picture on my phone anyway because I use an iPad to create a lot of imagery, and then I type whatever I want onto my notes on a laptop, and then I just open it on my phone, and copy and paste, or I rely on Bluetooth to copy from one device and paste into another. Because I am never, ever composing an Instagram caption on my phone, my thumb's are not that good at typing, it's just not happening. So there are several ways to keep your Instagram feed looking good. And you don't need to do that. Like you don't need to become obsessive about the beauty of your Instagram feed. But, there are moments when I want to kind of work hard on this. So I have an app called Preview that I use to look at what the grid will look like before I post and some people use one called Planoly. And there's also Later which is a posting to Instagram app. And if you change your Instagram to a business account, you will be allowed to schedule via some of these third party things so that it could post automatically. I don't actually do that, I don't need to post Instagram so often that scheduling is super helpful for me. But I know that a lot of people like to do it that way.Jess Lahey 34:13 But if you want to see a beautiful Instagram account, go check out Sarina Bowen's Instagram account. The gold standard seems to be what some book bloggers and some romance readers in particular seem to do for the authors that they love, and the people who create these gorgeous Instagram posts for you just blow me away. I'm amazed by the kind of artful creations that your readers create, and that you create for your books. They're really beautiful.Sarina Bowen 34:45 They blow me away, too. KJ Dell'Antonia 34:47 Well, you can use those when someone else makes a beautiful image of your book or just makes an image of your book because my goodness, thank you very much. You can do a couple of things. You can post it to your story, which is only polite I think and quite common, but you can also use an app that will allow you to repost and in this case I use Repost. And if you're using an app like that, then when somebody else posts about the book, you can take their post and use it in your feed. Thus, you know, adding to your number of images that you have without you're having to create an image which is really cool. And there's the opportunity to sort of say, you know, thanks bookstagrammar for writing this lovely thing about my book, and then you can share the lovely thing.Jess Lahey 35:38 What's always weird is when someone thanks me for posting something beautiful they made about my book to my story, and I'm always like, 'Oh my gosh, thank you. This is the most beautiful thing ever. And it's such an incredible honor to be able to repost that.' So it's a wonderful, it's also just a great way to sort of connect with readers. I love it.Sarina Bowen 35:56 Repost and those apps also will copy the entire caption that the other person wrote...KJ Dell'Antonia 36:04 Including the hashtags.Sarina Bowen 36:07 Yeah, exactly. So that not only are you assured an easy way of giving credit to the person who created that thing, but it's very easy to share. So because we never want to get into trouble and have any creator think that we've stolen their work for our own. KJ Dell'Antonia 36:28 Yeah, that's the nice thing about using the app instead of screenshotting it, is that it makes it very clear where you got it. And it's just socially acceptable.Sarina Bowen 36:38 Yep. My other trick for working ahead on Instagram is that I don't commonly have more than a small handful of paperback arcs to give away ahead of the launch. So I went to Moo and I made a bunch of these beautiful five by seven postcards. Like I'll do like 150 five by seven postcards of the book cover. And I will mail them all over the world because like I said, Instagramers are very international. And then I will see those postcards pop up all over Instagram during launch as well. And they cost a lot less than a paperback arc and it's honestly really about the shipping, I can put $1.15 stamp on one of these cards and send it all the way to Australia, whereas shipping a book to Australia costs $25. KJ Dell'Antonia 37:38 And that sort of gets around you know, if you want to be sharing arcs, they can be digital, but there is something that people can take a picture of, which is really nice. People love having something to take a picture. I love having something to take a picture of. I don't do LinkedIn, but I have some friends that do it really well. And so I'm just gonna ask them when my book comes out will you post this on LinkedIn, please? But if you are a business writer, you probably should be.Sarina Bowen 38:22 Definitely.Jess Lahey 38:24 Absolutely. The business world is very much about LinkedIn. And you know, I will post things there but I actually don't see a ton of interaction with the stuff that I post there. So it's often an afterthought for me. Alright. Can we talk about what we've been reading? Pretty pretty, please. Sarina Bowen 38:53 Absolutely. Has anyone been able to read?KJ Dell'Antonia 39:00 I will note before we talk about what we've been reading that we didn't talk about Facebook.Jess Lahey 39:05 I think that's a whole long discussion in itself. I mean, that's just me, mainly because I hear Sarina talking about the stuff that she does there. And she's on a whole other level with Facebook and I sort of have the feeling that that's its own episode in and of itself.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:23 Okey dokey. There we go. Stay tuned. We got one more book launch thing to go. Jess Lahey 39:34 KJ you have been doing a beautiful, beautiful job, by the way, speaking of Instagram of talking about what you've been reading, and you've really done a great job of doing these capsule reviews of books, and you've sort of set a standard, I think, for me anyway for understanding how to do a really quick review of a book. So I just wanted to tell you that I have been appreciating those a lot.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:56 Why thank you, I'm actually planning to up that game. So, I've been creating a whole list of books that I want to make sure get shared. This is partly just the the whole let's help make book book launches still work. So I've got a whole great list of books that I want to share with people that are either books that I recommend and here's why, or books that I have had an arc of, or books that I'm super anxious to read. And I've been putting together ways to do that. So yeah, I've been having fun. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

George Floyd's death at the hands of a police officer has caused an outpouring of anger, prompting national protests in cities across the US. The world looks on as America grapples with ongoing racism, police brutality, protests - all in the midst of a pandemic. And here in Australia, it's made us look at the way in which we have mistreated our First Nations people, for centuries. At the weekend tens of thousands of Australians peacefully protested the death of Indigenous people in police custody.And so while this podcast usually sets out to solve the world's less pressing issues, I wanted to ensure that we acknowledge that systemic racism is a massive problem that should be talked about.Mitch Tambo is a proud Gamilaraay man who has brought his First Nations culture to Australia’s Got Talent, Eurovision: Australia Decides, and the massive Fire Fight fundraiser concert that took place back in February. Mitch is passionate about his own culture but also very keen to help others embrace theirs. Though this episode was recorded prior to George Floyd's death, Mitch's insights speak so well into the current climate - particularly the urgent need for understanding, respect and an ability to listen well.Mitch Tambo is on Facebook @MitchTambo and on Instagram @MitchTambo. His new song LOVE is out now on all streaming platforms.Our conversation will continue in our next episode (dropping this Thursday) as we cross to the United States to discuss Black Lives Matter and systemic racism. So, be sure to hit subscribe.Some further reading:'How to be a good Indigenous Ally' by Summer May Finlay, NITV News.‘There cannot be 432 victims and no perpetrators…’ by Amy McQuire, The Saturday Paper.'Here are the practical ways you can support Aboriginal Lives Matter' by James Purtill, triple j's Hack.'Indigenous issues can be daunting - here are 10 positive ways to engage' - triple j's Hack.Listen and learn with the Black Lives Matter collection at SBS On Demand - SBS.Thanks for listening to the show, I'm genuinely thankful that you did. If you enjoyed it, please hit 'subscribe' on Apple Podcasts, or 'follow' on Spotify. And leaving a rating and review really does help get the word out, so feel free to do so!Connect with the show:Instagram: @whatshallwedopodFacebook: @whatshallwedopodTwitter: @whatshallwepodEmail: whatshallwedopod@gmail.comWhat Shall We Do About...? is hosted and produced by Sam Robinson, who is on Twitter @samsquareeyes.

It's hot. It's FRESH. It's STRAIGHT OUT THE KETTLE! Delilah and Chelsie are BACK once again and it's BONUS TEA TIME! Here' the TeaKO girls answer questions from their supporters. Kairos MMA - Is the sport growing fast enough? Combat Sports w Rhino - Pick 3 dudes and 2 women to start Team TeakKO, who are you 2 picking? Reusable Shoe - Most overrated fighter and most underrated fighter? Rory - Most memorable finish in MMA history Fighting w/ Myself Podcast- Does being a fan of Paulo Costa make you a terrible person? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/teako-podcast/message

The NHL is *officially back and there's a lot of questions to be answered. We catch on some former Caps news, jersey madness, and a weekend at the bars. We're joined by Tarik El-Bashir from The Athletic (17:42-1:22:54) who breaks down the ends and outs of the entire return to play and Stanley Cup playoff format.. that and some '18 cup run stories. They boys are also joined by the DMV's #1 90's cover band 'Here's to the Night' (1:37:15-1:53:37)

Do researchers and frontline clinicians have a moral obligation to communicate science around the coronavirus?In the second episode of this six-part Working Scientist podcast series about science communication, Pakinam Amer explores crisis communication and asks how well researchers have explained the underlying uncertainties to the public.Epidemiologist Sandro Galea, dean of Boston University's school of public health, says academic researchers have three roles, to generate scholarship and science, to teach that science to students, and to clearly translate it for a general audience.“Our job is to help the world see how we can bridge the science to the very real practical decisions that the world has to make to create a healthier world,” he says.But how is science communication evolving during the pandemic? “We are entering a new era. We need a new playbook for communicating science in a time of uncertainty, and how policy can be informed by uncertain science. We have not done that well,” he tells her.“There has been this mismatch between what we do not know and our capacity to communicate what we do not know, and to inform policy that needs to be made anyway. Those have been glaring gaps in my assessment.”Ron Daniels, a critical care consultant at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, sees a role for scientists to plug knowledge gaps alongside the understandably “cautious and risk-averse" messages that often emanate from government and professional bodies.Daniels produced a short video in response to calls to explain why COVID-19 patients are ventilated on their stomachs, using a simple drawing on a white paper board to explain the underlying physiology.“People want to make sensible informed decisions. With a very filtered and controlled flow of information coming from government, which is designed to avoid panic and instil calm, making informed decisions can be challenging.“This is not about profile, this is not about gaining followers or scoring points. Usually this should not be about academic argument. This should be around 'I've appraised the evidence, I have a level of expertise, here are my opinions and this is what I think you as a member of the public should do with that information.'”What about journalists reporting on the pandemic and busting myths and misinformation? How does their communication role differ from scientists and clinicians on the frontline?US science journalist Roxanne Khamsi says: “I feel some kind of personal obligation to try to disseminate what I know, which is a fraction of what virologists know. I don't want to oblige anyone to do anything. If folks have the time there has never been a more urgent time to communicate your science.”US photojournalist and science writer Tara Haelle adds: “I think journalists and scientists in general have done a reasonably good job of trying to focus on the good information and counter the bad information. It is a hard job to do. The entire base of science is uncertainty. It is a quest for knowledge. If you had the knowledge you would not be seeking it.”Anica Butler, editor of the Boston Globe Ideas section, tells Amer how she works with scientist contributors who submit expert opinion pieces to the newspaper. “I think of myself as standing in for the public. I am going to ask stupid questions.“The editor is trying to help your work be understood by the average everyday person. In a crisis like this, that is the ultimate goal. Think about you explaining to your next door neighbour 'Here is what is happening.'” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Reading an excerpt from chapter 9 of my book "Meet Mama Bear." "Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, hull and spar as she was when she left my side. And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And, just at the moment when someone says, 'There, she is gone,' there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, 'Here she comes!' And that is dying." (Henry Van Dyke)

31 Days of Yoga - Here and Now - Day 2 Hi Friends, PLEASE NOTE: This is a live tutorial if you find it challenging to follow, please visit my YouTube Channel to follow the Tutorial Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqE0Ymjxyiw&t=170s Welcome to Day 2 of our daily Live Yoga for 31 days. Yesterday was the first step in our new journey together. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Today our theme is 'Here and Now'. What is more important than the moment right 'here and now’? Everything that is in the past has gone, everything to come in the future has yet to arrive. Every moment in the here and now creates our future. Here and now is the most crucial moment we can give ourselves. Today's practice will honour the body and mind in the 'here and now'. Please leave a comment to let me know how the practice was for you, I would love to hear from you at the end of the session today. Meglio have collaborated with us for the competition My mat - https://mymeglio.com/products/yoga-mat-pro?variant=31273123577952 Full-length private group LIVE YOGA Class Streams: Wednesday: 7:00 pm-8:00 pm (BST) Sunday: 11:00 am-12:00 pm (BST) You can book your place at: https://www.lotusfloweryoga.co.uk My Latest BLOG: - https://www.lotusfloweryoga.co.uk/blogs Your Beginners Yoga Guide: - https://amzn.to/2ROKUzl To purchase my poetry book: - Grow From The Inside' - https://amzn.to/3a3HJKm Can't Sleep - My latest project - Weighted Blankets, click to see me!: - https://amzn.to/34pfxQM Stay connected through Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lotusfloweryoga Please don't forget to SUBSCRIBE for more free content and uploads weekly I recommend seeking medical advice before doing any of my online Yoga classes, pre-recorded or Live. Not all exercise may be suitable, and your doctor will be able to advise you. During the session, you take FULL responsibility for yourself and anything you may do within the Yoga practice. You must be mindful and be devoted to self-care, look after your body at all times, and if something doesn't feel suitable, please do not do it. Please don't forget to hit like as this helps to support the channel. Note: Affiliate links to products may within this description that we use personally. If you use decided to use the links this channel may earn affiliate commissions that will be no extra cost to you. Thank you and your support is appreciated.

Bobby's been doing something in our ‘Post Show Pre Show' segment that's irritated a listener so much she called and left us a voicemail. Kenny Chesney joins us for our 'Friday Morning Conversation'. He talks about his new album 'Here and Now' and why he's not quarantining on the islands. Plus, Bobby gives a listener advice on how to handle stress and anxiety. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Josh looks at the story of the two disciples on the Emmaus Road from Luke 24. We see in this story how Jesus interacts with us. He asks us what we're thinking or feeling. He listens and is present with us. We often don't recognize Him. He explains things that our heart knows to be true, and when we invite Him in, our eyes are opened. And we continue the journey towards the fullness of the gospel with Jesus. Luke 24:13-35; Acts 2:42-44; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19.  Josh shared three quotes in the message:  1. "And Jesus listens. He hears them out, allowing them the balm of articulation. And then — when they’re done — He tells the story back to them, and as He does so, the story changes. In His retelling, it becomes what it really always was — something far bigger, deeper, older, wiser, and richer than the travelers on the Emmaus road understood. 'Here’s what you’re leaving out,' Jesus seems to say. 'Here’s what you’re missing.' When Jesus tells the story, He restores both its context and its glory. He grounds the story in memory, in tradition, in history, in Scripture. He helps the travelers comprehend their place in a narrative that long precedes them, a narrative big enough to hold their disappointment without being defeated by it. When Jesus tells the story, the death of the Messiah finds its place in a sweeping, cosmic arc of redemption, hope, and divine love that spans the centuries. When Jesus tells the story, the hearts of his listeners burn." - Debie Thomas 2. "Then, as the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed, another character falls into step with them and asks what were they discussing with each other while they walked along. This question stops them in their tracks. They 'stood still' Luke says suggesting that when God enters a conversation we think we are having with one another - when our horizontal perspective on the human condition is assumed from above and crossed by the vertical perspective of God's word, we cannot but find our lost self standing still. We have surely come to a crossroad. At issue are not the miles before us but the moment at hand and the eternity that has just invaded time.... God's word interrupted the church's idle conversations and effectively called a halt to our frantic forward momentum? Where were we going when the question of a stranger prompted us to confess that we had lost our way? What was it about the one who had listened that turned the details of despair into beseeching?" - Cynthia A. Jarvis 3. "It has been suggested that hospitality is the key to evangelism in our day, so this text offers a window to spiritual practice and post-modernity. Actions more than words, welcome more than self promotion and protection provides the space where others might fearlessly enter in and find themselves at home. Sharing the common meal transgresses boundaries and allows communion with Christ, who meets us whenever we gather at the Lord's table - or at the tables that provide self-giving welcome." - Molly T. Marshall

'Here are some uptempo jams -- some older, some newer -- that I've had on repeat as of late to get me through the day. The mix begins with Gypsy Brown's "Life is a Trip", and includes tracks from some of my favorite artists (Salif Keita, James BKS, and Novalima to name a few).' - Francesca - - - Francesca is an LA based international Dj. She has spun for crowds in the UK, Mexico City, Colombia, the Bahamas and South Korea, and has played opening sets for artists such as The Weeknd and Ariana Grande. Find her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/djfrancescaharding/ Find Love Extremist at www.extremist.love and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/loveextremist

More Tales of the Wheel Welcome to episode forty four of 'The Ta'veren: A wheel of time podcast!' This week, Rob rides and talks about Chapter 47 from 'The Eye Of The World' - "More Tales of the Wheel" Using my John Mellancamp voice.... 'Here's a little ditty about Lan and Padan. Two good ole kids growing up in the Randland'! https://discord.gg/nHsgU5a https://www.redbubble.com/people/taverenpod/shop http://www.materialockdown.com - Check out Bills Charity Event to raise money for the MNDA. Patreon/TheTaveren Send a Raven or Whatever: Twitter: @TaverenPod Email: TaverenPod@gmail.com Check out Rob's side podcast project, The CounterCast: Season One - Friends on Apple / Anchor / Google We Can Make This Work Probably Network: This podcast is a production of the We Can Make This Work (Probably) Network follow us below to keep up with this show and discover our many other podcasts! The place for those with questionable taste! ProbablyWork.com Twitter, Facebook, Instagram: @ProbablyWork Email: ProbablyWorkPod@gmail.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-taveren-a-wheel-of-time-podcast/support

Are you a 'Heavy Betty' or a 'Lite Lucy'? Joining Sophie and Gemma this week is the incredible Tara Chandra, one half of 'Flo' or 'Here we flo' (co-founder Susan Allen). For those not in the know, this a business founded out of a passion for bringing women organic menstrual products... in style.Tune in to learn all about the absorbency of a vagina, what's in our typical tampons and... do men really have an allergy to latex...!?Jingle provided by Lickd Licence ID nJdZONKr6eW

Zak Keefer is joined by David Lombardi of 'Here's the Catch' to give his initial reaction to the news of DL DeForest Buckner being traded to Indianapolis for a 1st-round pick.

*This episode contains discussion and mention of a homophobic slur in the context of hostile crowd environments. The specific mention comes at around 10min 05sec if you feel like skipping past it.*Mindy Mapp, the bass player in iconic punk bands Fur and Little Ugly Girls, joins us this week to chat about finding community in footy, how AFLW only enhanced her love of the game, and the ways in which Brisbane's music scene in the '90s compares to rowdy crowds at the MCG.We also launch a new campaign: get Richo to a Little Ugly Girls show!!Our artwork was designed by Steph Hughes, and our theme song is 'Here if You Need' by Wet Lips.Follow us on socials:Twitter @fangrrrlspodInstagram @fangrrrlspodFacebook @ fangrrrlsOr get in touch:Email fangrrrlspodcast@gmail.com

Jon Bloom, Senior Conversation Designer at Google, joins us to share what a conversation designer does at Google, as well as some conversation design techniques used at Google, such as 'grounding strategies'. Presented by SparksSparks is a new podcast player app that lets you learn and retain knowledge while you listen.The Sparks team are looking for people just like you: podcast listeners who're also innovative early adopters of new tech, to try the beta app and provide feedback.Try it now at sparksapp.io/vux Conversation design and grounding strategiesConversation design is one of the core skillsets required to create engaging and effective voice and conversational experiences. UX Mag recently wrote about how the role of conversation designer will be one of the fastest growing UX roles in 2020.But what exactly is conversation design? And what does a conversation designer actually do?This week, we're joined by Jon Bloom, Senior Conversation Designer at Google to find out.We discuss the role, what's involved, Jon's prior experience, the resurgence of enthusiasm in the voice community, as well as some conversation design techniques you can use to start creating engaging conversational experiences.Conversation design techniquesOne of the highlights of the conversation is Jon's take on errors.Within the conversation design community, most people talk about 'error recovery', which is recovering from situations in a conversation where things go wrong. For example, if a user asks for a pizza, and the system says 'what flavour', what happens when the user says a flavour that the system doesn't have? Or if the system mishears the user?Recovering from these situations is typically known as 'error recover', but Jon's perspective is different and refreshing.Jon mentioned that within all conversations, there are no such thing as errors. There is simply 'grounding'.Grounding includes anything and everything the two people do within a natural conversation in order to ensure understanding.For example, if a user asks for a hotel room for Tuesday, the system might confirm with 'Here's the rooms I found for Tuesday'. Confirming that it heard Tuesday is a form of grounding.In the pizza example, where the user asks for a flavour the system doesn't have, the system might respond with 'I'm sorry, we don't have Hawaiian, but we do have farmhouse'.These aren't 'errors', they're natural parts of human conversations and the things we do to ensure both parties are on the same page.We get into some great detail on this with Jon, as well as plenty more conversation design techniques.About Jon BloomJon is a veteran in the conversation design space, with decades of experience working in speech recognition systems, conversational UX and natural language-based human-computer interaction.He created the interface design process for the well renowned dictation system Dragon Dictation by Dragon Systems, before moving to SpeechWorks (acquired by Nuance) to work on conversation design for IVR phone systems and in-car speech recognition systems.Jon then worked at Synchronoss Technologies working on analysing and improving speech recognition systems for IVR phone systems, then moved back to Nuance as a Senior User Interface Manager.Jon currently works predominantly on the Google Assistant and is responsible for making interactions and experiences on Google Assistant as intuitive and as user friendly as possible.LinksFollow Jon on TwitterDesigning Voice User Interfaces by Cathy PearlVoice User Interface Design by James GiangolaGoogle's conversation design guidelinesGoogle's 'error' recovery guidelines (The irony isn't lost on me that Google has called this 'errors', rather than 'grounding'. Although this does include genuine system errors such as speech recognition issues) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week's episode, we've got a recap of the first couple of weeks of the 2020 AFLW season, including a story of the time Sarah heckled Neil Balme.We give our thoughts on the ticketed vs free game conversation and discuss Bec Godard's fighting words about the Tiges. Then it's time for this show's inevitable move into intense discussions of menstruation. Specifically: how AFLW teams are tracking players' periods to improve performance, and the links between ACL injuries and menstrual cycles. Our artwork was designed by Steph Hughes, and our theme song is 'Here if You Need' by Wet Lips.Follow us on socials:Twitter @fangrrrlspodInstagram @fangrrrlspodFacebook @ fangrrrlsOr get in touch:Email fangrrrlspodcast@gmail.com

SEASON 2: EPISODE 4 Meditator Kate Johnson explores the connection between car horns and anonymous comment sections. ABOUT THE GUEST Kate Johnson teaches classes and retreats integrating Buddhist meditation, somatics, social justice and creativity at the Rubin Museum in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Kripalu Center and the Omega Institute. Kate works as a culture change consultant, partnering with organizations who are pursuing noble goals to achieve greater diversity and sustainability. She is also an utterly unprofessional dancer and performer who earned a BFA in Dance from The Alvin Ailey School/Fordham University and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.  Producer: Devon Guinn  Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue  Mixer: Andrew Litton  Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver  Theme Song: Jeff Hiller  Website: Itai Almor Media: Justine Lee Interns: Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Nick Rymer, Sue Simon, Maddy Sinnock TRANSCRIPTION NEIL GOLDBERG:  My favorite New York biking experience is going over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn. There's that long, gentle curve as you exit into Brooklyn, and you also don't have to pedal because you're ... KATE JOHNSON: Going down a hill. NEIL:  ... going downhill. KATE: I know what you're talking about ... NEIL:  I live for that. KATE: ... down to Jay Street. NEIL:  Yeah, exactly. And I also love that moment, especially at night, coming from Brooklyn into Manhattan on any of the bridges, and when you reach that midpoint where you can stop pedaling, you're over the water, and you can basically just glide all the way back into Manhattan. KATE: Yeah, from the peak, right? NEIL:  Yeah. KATE: Oh yeah, that is beautiful. Yes. I actually crashed my bike once on that because I was just having this peak moment as I was looking out at the water, then I hit the side and scraped my knee and hobbled the rest of the way. NEIL:  Hello. I'm Neil Goldberg and this is SHE'S A TALKER. Today, I'll be talking to meditation teacher Kate Johnson. But first, here's the premise of the podcast, and I like to say it's better than it sounds. I'm a visual artist, and I have this collection of thousands of index cards on which I've been jotting down thoughts, observations, reflections for a good 20 years. They were originally meant just for me, maybe to hold onto something I wanted to remember, or maybe to use in a future art project. But in SHE'S A TALKER, I'm using them as prompts for conversations with some of my favorite New York artists, writers, performers, and beyond. NEIL:  These days, the cards often start as recordings I make into my phone here and there throughout the course of the day. Here are some recent ones: English. Double letters are okay, triple letters are too much. I'm kind of surprised Trump likes Sharpies. Have to get home to feed one animal to another animal. NEIL:  I'm so happy to have as my guest, Kate Johnson. Kate teaches classes and retreats that integrate Buddhist meditation, social justice work, and creative practice at places like the Rubin Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philly, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the Kripalu Center, among others. She also describes herself as an utterly unprofessional dancer who earned an MA in performance studies from NYU. We talked in January at a recording studio at The New School near Union Square in New York City. NEIL:  I'm so happy to have Kate Johnson with me today on SHE'S A TALKER. Thank you, Kate, for being here. KATE: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. NEIL:  I want to start with a couple questions I ask everybody. The first question would be, what is the elevator pitch for what it is you do? KATE: Oh my God. I am a mediation teacher and organizational consultant, and I often work at the intersections of spirituality, social justice, and creativity. NEIL:  Whoa. That is an elevator pitch. KATE: Right? NEIL:  That absolutely is. KATE: I pulled it together. NEIL:  I can really see how that triad could inform each other. Spirituality, social justice, and creativity, yes? KATE: Yeah. I mean, I also feel like those are the things that I just like and am good at, so there's not a whole lot else, I think, that's for me in this world. I try to just make them go together whenever I can. NEIL:  Right. Oh, isn't that what we're all doing? Just make the things that we like go together. Do you have parents, grandparents who are still around? KATE: Yeah. I have parents who are still around. NEIL:  What, let's say, would your parents say to their friends when their friends ask what you do? KATE: Oh. My mom would say that I'm a spiritual teacher, and my dad would say that I'm a writer. NEIL:  Oh, that's interesting. What's that split about? KATE: Well, my dad was a writer. He was a journalist, and so I think that he always really supported my love of language and saw that part of me. Then my mother, recently she started getting really into meditation, so she practices twice a day, she comes to mediation retreats that I teach. I don't know, I also feel like there are certain people in life where when you talk to them, your wisdom kind of comes out, and I think that my mom and I are that for each other. NEIL:  Oh, that's wonderful. KATE: So I see her as a spiritual teacher, too. NEIL:  Do you get nervous when she comes to a meditation retreat? KATE: A little bit. I mean, partially because I kind of have an internal commitment, even when I'm in meditation spaces, to really be honest about the way that I hope that our spiritual practice can inform our political lives. So oftentimes that means talking about my experience as a black, mixed race woman, and I have a white mommy. And so part of, I think, what's spiritual about our relationship is the willingness not to give up on each other as we have these conversations about what it means for me to be a black woman in America, what it's like for her as a mother of black children, and the ways in which, as a white woman living in kind of a middle-upper class area of Chicago, the things that she doesn't see or the attitudes she unconsciously picks up she didn't mean to. And so I think it's amazing. It's also frustrating in some ways to be in this long-term relationship with this person where we're not going to give up on each other because we have different views. KATE: But just to go back to your question, I'll often look out and be talking about experiences of racism, both within meditation centers and outside, and I'll look out at her and just wonder, "What's she thinking?" Does she feel bad that she couldn't shield me from those experiences? Is she feeling like, "Is Kate making this up? I don't know what she's talking about." So sometimes I'll try to read her face, but most of the time I'm just happy she's there and that she's ... I mean, she raised four children pretty much by herself, so I'm happy she has a little time to relax. We probably terrorized her. NEIL:  You mentioned not giving up on each other. I mean, that's such an interesting way to put it. KATE: Well, every family's different, everyone's relationship with their parents is different. A lot of the people that I interact with often in my social life, they have a relationship with their parents, and I think sometimes with the elder generation in general, where there's a sense of ... I don't know, kind of objectifying them. Like we might have seen them once and then saw a mixed bag, as we all are, someone who in some ways has it together or is loving and in other ways maybe carries outdated notions of themselves or other people, or uses embarrassing language to describe a particular ethnic group. Then we just kind of ... There's this dulling of the perception that happens after that where we no longer are seeing that person, we're seeing our memory projecting it out and then reacting to our own projections. And so- NEIL:  Oh my God. Story of my life. KATE: So I think not giving up is being, in some ways, willing to allow each other the grace that is actually offered to all of life, which is that we're all always changing and to be awake to each others' evolving experience and to be willing to be honest about what our experience is and shape each other. I think that's the other way in which I've seen friends give up on parents, is that they stop really telling the parents who they are. We fear we may not be accepted or parents just don't understand, that kind of thing, and sometimes that's true. Sometimes we have that fear and it's confirmed, and that's really hard. So it's like you can't have your whole sense of worth wrapped up in what a parent thinks, but also what if they couldn't see us once and then one day they could? And we kept kind of showing up and allowing ourselves to be seen, if that's not dangerous to who we are. I like to be surprised. NEIL:  Shall we go to these cards? KATE: Cool, yeah. This is actually the part that I'm most excited about, so ... NEIL:  All right, well. The first card I have is, "Patience always feels somehow wrong." KATE: The wrongness. I relate to the discomfort of patience. I think one of the blessings of Buddhist meditation training is it kind of gets drilled into your bones that just because something is uncomfortable doesn't mean it's wrong. I think to the point where it can even go a little too far and people can become scared of pleasure, and that's also not the point. In the Buddhist tradition, the word that's translated as patience is called khanti. It's K-H-A-N-T-I and it's one of the virtues, and so it's not different than other traditions where patience is a virtue. We often translate it as patience, but it means something like forbearance, also. KATE: So for me, when I learned patience as a child it was like holding on like hell until you get what you want, like, "If you're good, then you can have this treat when you get home." And so you just hold your little hands, you just sit on them and wait until finally, "Oh, I get what I want now that ..." I have a sense of relief and the patience that is talked about in the Buddhist teachings, which I also relate with ... and it's a little bit of a perspective shift, but it's like not just patience until I get what I want, but the patience that one has when we may never get what we want, or whether what we want is gone and will never return. The kind of patience that we have with our bodies as they get older and we go to do something that we used to do effortlessly. The suggestion, I guess, is that we can meet that experience with patience. NEIL:  Yeah, there's so many different types of patience, too. For a long time, I supported myself in a day job that involved a mix of computer graphics and IT work. Working with people around computers brings up, for me, the deepest level of patience or challenges to patience. KATE: Because they're not going fast enough? Is that- NEIL:  You could take the keyboard and mouse out of their hands and just do it absolutely in two seconds, but it is important to develop that muscle memory of using the mouse and the keyboard and da da ... going through the steps and having it be imprinted on your body in that way. KATE: Yeah. I mean, we're talking and I'm like, oh, so much of patience for me is about pace. It's about I either want a task to go faster than it's going, I would like time to go faster than it's going, and the frustration that it's actually not ... It's difficult. It's difficult. I don't know, would you say it's wrong? NEIL:  That really segues, interestingly, into a card I have about honking. "People honking are not where they want to be." KATE: That's deep. I mean, that's really deep. Yeah, I mean, gosh, to just be able to make a noise and be like, "I'm here and I don't want to be." NEIL:  Right, exactly. KATE: It makes me want to have a horn to just carry around and be like ... NEIL:  Oh my God. KATE: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think it's like they don't want to be here, but also, "I want someone to know that I'm here and I don't want to be. I want to make that heard. I want to make that visible." I can relate to that feeling. NEIL:  Oh my God, yeah. God, that horn would be on frequent blast in my life. KATE: Yeah, yeah. Or when you see a child have a tantrum and it's just like, that's them honking their horn being like, "Something is not right." NEIL:  Right, right, right. That's so true. Oh my God, the horn is metaphor. But I bike a lot, and I was stopped at a light where someone was honking the horn, and the biker next to me ... I love the conversations you'll have occasionally at a stoplight with someone else in the bike lane. He said, "Car horns should be just as loud inside the car as outside." KATE: Yeah, that's a cool idea. I mean, I can't imagine any car manufacturer picking that up, but you know. NEIL:  I know, right. I think that's also a connection between honking and vulnerability. As a bicyclist, do you ever kind of make that connection? I often feel like when people are honking at me, they're actually expressing a fear of hurting me. KATE: Oh, oh. NEIL:  Have you ever had that, or ... KATE: Yeah. I guess it can be like that the same way a parent will yank a kid, like, "Why'd you do ..." When they're doing something that they feel is dangerous. Yeah, I think the feeling of being in this giant metal thing that's hurling through space that could totally kill somebody is really kind of jarring. NEIL:  Absolutely. KATE: I mean, I love that you're giving people the benefit of the doubt like that, like, I startled them and they don't want to hurt me. I think that's a wonderful attitude to take. I didn't often think that. I often felt like there was so much protection or something that, I don't know, they felt they could do whatever they wanted. I often would pull up next to a car at a stop light and look over and when the person looked at me, the impression that I had is that they forgot that they could be seen inside this compartment. NEIL:  Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. KATE: So it almost is like an anonymous comment section or something where they can say whatever they want with their ... and then no one has to know it was them that trolled this nice biker. NEIL:  Honking is like the anonymous comment section. That's fucking brilliant. The card says, "Childish laughter at Buddhist lecture." You know what I'm talking about? Any kind of spiritual lecture ... First of all, the teacher will often embrace a kind of, "The bird doesn't worry about da, da, da." You know, say something kind of like that. KATE: Oh God. Yeah. NEIL:  And then in turn, the audience will laugh but it's not funny, and it's a childish kind of laughter. KATE: I was talking with a friend about this recently because we were talking about the kinds of Dharma talks or spiritual teachings that become ritualized to the point that this person is telling a story that they have actually told many, many times. You've heard it on a podcast and you've heard them say it at last year's retreat and they're telling the same story and there's the same punchline and you laugh again and it's like, "Why?" We were wondering if it's less about novelty and more about familiarity, kind of like there's a sense of, "Oh, I know what's coming and it's comforting to me and I laugh because I know what to do here." NEIL:  I hear that. It's why we like sitcoms. You know the joke's about to come ... certain types of sitcoms. KATE: Right. And it also depends on what's coming before it because sometimes I think that Dharma talks can also bring up heavy stuff, like death and aging and heartbreak of various kinds. And so it builds up a kind of energy that can actually be difficult for us to contain, and so there's this sense of it's powerful, but it's almost uncomfortable because it's building up this energy, then wanting it to release in some way. So even if the joke is bad, just being excited that there's a release valve that you can pull. NEIL:  Next card. "How I sometimes keep my shoelaces untied as a kind of mindfulness reminder." I'm aware that my shoelaces are untied as I'm walking. They become untied, it's not like I purposely don't tie them. They become untied and I kind of hold off on tying them just as a way to be like, "Got to walk mindfully." KATE: Oh wow. What effect does it have, or how does it work? Does it help your mindfulness? NEIL:  Absolutely because it's like you don't want to trip. It then becomes a walking meditation. But also, it really makes you aware of how many people will tell you, "Hey, your shoelace is untied." Which is why New York is great. KATE: I was thinking about that. I was like, "Oh my God, do you know what you're doing to people? NEIL:  Right, exactly. KATE: For me, I get so scared when I see someone with their shoelace untied. I'm like, "You're going to fall." But I kind of love that. I also think it's ... Walking meditation can be kind of boring. I mean, all meditation can be kind of boring, so it's like ... NEIL:  Right, exactly. KATE: ... juicing it up a little bit, living on the edge, walking meditation. I like it. NEIL:  Because you could trip, as mindful as you're trying to be. KATE: Right. The wind blows a different way, it swings that little lace underneath you're other foot, and then you're just- NEIL:  Exactly, you're down. KATE: Yeah. But I'm glad you haven't fallen yet. I think that's cool. NEIL:  May you not fall. KATE: May you ever be upright. NEIL:  Do you have any little tricks like that, like meditation hacks? KATE: Yeah. I mean, I think Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition is really amazing for this kind of thing because they talk about mindfulness bells and the way that you can ... And bell is a metaphor, it's something that makes you remember, and so you just ... It can be a bell, like every time your phone rings, you take a deep breath, feeling your feet on the ground before you pick it up. Or every time you touch a doorknob, you allow yourself to begin again, whatever that means. There's ways to do that. NEIL:  Oh, I love that. KATE: I think for me now, a lot of my mindfulness bells are internal. I'll actually notice a disturbance in the field. I'll notice that my chest tightened up a little bit or my belly kind of swerved, or I feel something inside and use this moment to kind of actually pause and notice what happened there, and if necessary, to care of it. I'm big into letting my body talk to me these days as a practice, after having really ignored it for many, many, many years. I'm like- NEIL:  As a dancer, or in dance work? Or just as a human being, or ... KATE: Yeah, definitely in dance work, although ... I was going to say, although I don't know if it started there. I might have ... But in dance for sure, there were ways of moving my body that didn't feel good, but then I thought, "Well, this is what the choreographer wants, so I'm going to do it." There's an element of dance training that is about don't pay attention to what you're feeling and just get it done, and that is capitalism. That's not- NEIL:  Dance is capitalism. That is hilarious, oh my God. KATE: I think, right? It's like what matters is production and not necessarily your human feelings and needs, and so as humble as it is, actually paying attention to what your body is feeling and being willing to attend to that ... at least with your attention, if not with your actions ... is kind of this radical anti-capitalist act. NEIL:  I love it. KATE: For some reason, from a early age I was really drawn to these European concert dance forms. I was really into ballet and then I was really into Martha Graham technique and some parts of the Horton technique, which I ended up in when I went to The Ailey School. They're not actually meant for everybody ... NEIL:  Yeah, everybody. KATE: ... and I'm not even sure if they're meant for anybody. It's kind of this idealized form that we're all ... So anyway, I don't know if feeling or feeling good is always a part of dance for the dancer. I think sometimes it's helping other people feel something. But I don't think that's what dance has to be and I don't think it's what it is at it's best, but I think somehow that's the kind of dance that I end up doing most of the time. NEIL:  That's an interesting way of thinking of it. It's almost like this Christlike thing of, "It doesn't feel good for me, but it makes someone else feel good." KATE: Feel amazing. NEIL:  Right, yeah. "I could imagine thinking as I'm dying, 'Here we go again.'" KATE: Where did this come from? NEIL:  I just had the idea it could have a sort of familiarity to it, in the same way that falling asleep has a familiarity to it or something. I mean, of course, the beauty of it is I'll know but I won't be able to have a followup podcast episode about it. I think. KATE: You'll just have to send us a sign or something. NEIL:  Yeah. And it's not even for me about necessarily believing in reincarnation, which I don't know if I believe in. But I don't think beyond that. KATE: The thought that I had just now was like, I hope I'm familiar enough with death by the time I experience it myself that I can think, "Oh, this is normal, this is natural, this is the way of all things," instead of, "Oh, why is this happening to me?" Which, I think, from talking to people who volunteer in hospice and stuff, that can be the thought. Like, "Why me, doctor? Why me?" And it's like, "Well, you're 90." NEIL:  "Why not you?" KATE: But yeah, so there's a lot of Buddhist practices that are preparations for death and dying, and some of them are visualizations, some of them are reminders. There's one that's, "I am of the nature to grow old. I am of the nature to become sick. I am of the nature to die. Everything and everyone I love will be taken from me and I am the owner of my karma, it's my only true inheritance." KATE: I mean, I think that one of the things that make Buddhism a hard sell is that it can feel like a downer to be like, "Okay, we want to talk about suffering. We're going to talk about impermanent." The paradox is that somehow being in touch with those things lends a sense of, "Oh, I'm actually alive now and this is what life is," and maybe even a sense of urgency around understanding, "This will not always be the case, so I don't just have forever to bumble along until I finally decide I'm going to do the thing that I need to do." And that leads to a kind of freedom and happiness that denial of death and denial that things are changing actually ... We will never win that game. NEIL:  Right, oh wow. Yeah. KATE: We will never succeed. This is a setup, actually, but it's a setup that you can buy a lot of products and goods on the way to realizing that's possible. So it's good for the economy, but it's not necessarily good for our spirits. NEIL:  Capitalism again. What's a bad X you'd take over a good Y? KATE: A bad X I'd take over a good Y. So first thought is a bad day sober I'd take over a good day drunk. NEIL:  Are you in recovery, can I ask? KATE: Yeah. Almost nine years, which means I was definitely meditating before I got sober. I was trying to become less attached to wine without actually having to stop drinking wine. But that didn't work out as well and I think that the meditation practice helped me to get real enough with myself to be like, "Oh, this is actually never going to work out. No matter how I dress it up or dress it down, it's never going to work out for me." Yeah. NEIL:  What is it that keeps you going? KATE: Oh man. I think it changes. A couple of answers came to as I was letting your question resonate, and one is a sensory sense of smell kind of thing, like being able to smell a different future that's ... I think it's something ... What keeps me going feels like it's something in a future that is looking back or calling to me from a future moment, saying, "You really want to get here, actually. Keep going. I love you. Keep going. You're doing great." NEIL:  And that connects to smell for you? KATE: Yeah, it's like a whiff. Having a whiff of something that is just kind of like cooking. I genuinely want to see what's going to happen. Like, "What's going to happen today?" It's very close to anxiety, but it's not anxiety. I know that there is kind of a way that anxiety can get people up in the morning for momentum, and I had that experience also, and this one is just a half-step back from that and it feels a little bit more sustainable for my system just to be like, "I wonder what's going to happen?" NEIL:  That seems like a beautiful place to end it. Kate Johnson, thank you so much for being on SHE'S A TALKER. KATE: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. It's been awesome. NEIL:  Thank you so much for listening to this episode of SHE'S A TALKER. Before we get to the credits, there were some listener responses to cards that I'd love to share. It's a new thing we're doing in season two. NEIL:  In my conversation with artist and baker Andy Hawkes, we talked about the card, "Leftovers as a kind of embodied memory." In response, Lex Brown wrote, "More than memory, leftovers make me think of the seemingly endless future of packing my lunch in middle and high school. I thought it would never end. Gladware, monotonous future food, foggy plastic lids, leftovers for school night dinner or for lunch the next day." John Pilson wrote, "I feel like the leftover with teeth marks deserves its own category, probably a name other than leftovers. Maybe evidence?" And finally, [Com and See 00:27:59] wrote, "One of my uncles in Hong Kong as a personal rule never keeps leftovers, even if he's making lobster or crab or abalone or delicious meats. It's so ruthlessly unsentimental, it breaks my heart every time I eat at his table." NEIL:  Thanks to everyone who wrote in. I loved all the responses. If you have something you'd like to share about a card on the podcast, email us or send us a voice memo at shesatalker@gmail.com or message us on Instagram @shesatalker. And also, as always, we'd love it if you'd rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or share this episode with a friend. NEIL:  This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Devin Guinn produced this episode. Molly Donahue and Aaron Dalton are our consulting producers. Justine Lee handles social media. Our interns are Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, and Jesse Kimotho. Our card flip beats come from Josh Graver, and my husband, Jeff Hiller, sings the theme song you're about to hear. Thanks to all of them and to my guest, Kate Johnson, and to you for listening. Jeff Hiller:                       (singing

A quick catch-up with your favourite fan girls ahead of the 2020 AFLW season, wherein Richmond will debut their women's team.We share some reader mail and Sarah launches a new footy jokes segment.PS - Brodie referred to Richmond's Women's coach as "Tommy White". His name is Tom Hunter. She's sorry.Our artwork was designed by Steph Hughes, and our theme song is 'Here if You Need' by Wet Lips.Follow us on socials:Twitter @fangrrrlspodInstagram @fangrrrlspodFacebook @ fangrrrlsOr get in touch:Email fangrrrlspodcast@gmail.com

To understand why the TODA/SingularityNET collaboration makes so much sense, one has to look carefully at the essential missions and architectures of the two projects, the historical contexts that produced each of them, and the futures that each are working to build In this Podcast and series of 3 blog posts, we’re going to take a fairly deep dive — but those who bear with us till the end will be rewarded with a genuine understanding of the profound potential that SingularityNET, TODA and Todalarity, working together, have to seed the emergence of the next level of Internet intelligence. By which I mean both immediately practical, applied AI products and services — and slightly longer term, the transition from today’s narrow AI systems to powerful AGI systems resident in and emergent from the global AI network Online information resources regarding TODA are in rapid development this fall; for now Toda.Network, TODAQ and Todalarity are the places to look. All three parts of 'The Todalarity is Here' blog post can be found here: The Todalarity is Here, Part One: SingularityNET / TODA Synergy at the Core of the Emerging Global Brain — Ben Goertze http://bit.ly/Todalarity The Todalarity is Here, Part Two: The Rapidly Expanding TODA SovTech Ecosystem —Toufi Saliba, Dann Toliver, Ben Goertze http://bit.ly/Todalarityp2 The Todalarity is Here, Part Three: A Product Accelerator for Driving the Decentralized AI Revolution — Ben Goertzel, Toufi Saliba http://bit.ly/Todalarity3

Senior Steelers writer Mark Kaboly joins the show to get us up to speed on Pittsburgh's outlook for the final three regular season games and beyond. Then, 49ers beat reporter Matt Barrows tells us how the 49ers can capture the NFC's No. 1 seed. For more Kaboly and Barrows, check out 'The Immaculate Podcast' and 'Here's the Catch,' each here on The Athletic. Mark Kaboly [@MarkKaboly]: (6:37) The Rise of Duck Hodges Hodges vs. Rudolph Juju & James Washington Cohesion on defense AB, Lev & Big Ben SNF: Bills @ Steelers Matt Barrows [@mattbarrows]: (35:18) 49ers win @ New Orleans Sherman & Richburg injuries SF running game No. 1 seed odds Shanahan’s success

Making an impact is something we all want to do, in one form or other. And this is especially true of those who produce content. But never forget that it only takes ONE person to be impacted by what you put out for it all to be worthwhile. Because, in fact, An Impact One, Never Stops at One. Case in point... Laura Meeson picked up on my idea about telling your own personal little Christmas story as part of your overall content strategy.  We all have a story. Each one is unique. And each person in your company who shares their story will give your customers just one more insight into who you are and what you are as a brand, business and company too. And Laura's story was extremely moving. Here' it is, if you missed it... https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lauracattigan_thanks-trent-munday-for-the-inspiration-behind-activity-6609544868031184896-gOmJ   #storytelling #contentstrategy #brand

Turns out you should judge a book by its cover, and readers do. Which means authors need to consider that (and not our own taste) when we think about our own covers. This week, we talk about the two things to consider whether you’re an indie working with cover artists or a trad with a publisher and an art department: reader expectations and those now-you-can’t-stop-seeing-the-flowers trends, and it turns into a bit of lesson in heading to the bookstore and making some cover judgments of your own.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, have you heard that we recorded our first #SupporterMinis this month? #SupporterMinis are short bursts of advice or inspiration (or maybe commiseration) to punctuate your writing week, which appear in the podcast feeds of our supporters. Supporters also get weekly #WritersTopFives like Top Five Goodreads Secrets for Authors and Top Five Things You Don’t Need to Be a Real Writer. Support us and we’ll do everything we can to support you!As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Running with Sherman: The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero, Christopher McDougallKJ: Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, Kate RacculiaMore Reading on Book CoversThe 78 Best Book Covers of 2019 from LitHub9 beautiful book cover design trends for 2019, 99designsThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work done. Check out their FREE (and epic) upcoming summit on the Business of Book Coaching if you’re intrigued, or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration was compiled by the people at the magnificent LitHub, which you should bookmark and read constantly, and used in the article that’s linked in our shownotes: The 78 Best Book Covers of 2019. I note that I have not read one single one of these books. Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hello fellow writers. The end of the year is a great time to look back at what filled you up in the past months and for many of us that's not just our writing, but the time we've spent helping others with their work. For some of us that's come out in small ways, but for others it's a calling and an opportunity to build a career doing work you love. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. And they'll be hosting a free book coaching summit in January for anyone who wants to learn more. If that's got your ears perked up, head to authoraccelerator.com/summit. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:43                    Now it's recording, go ahead.KJ:                                        00:44                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:48                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:49                    Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:52                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:52                    Now one, two, three. Hey, this is KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the weekly podcast about writing all the things, be they fiction, nonfiction, proposals, final drafts, pitches, essays, whatever it is that you are working on. We are the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done.Jess:                                     01:20                    I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids and I am deep in the land of editing right now and you can also find my work at the Atlantic and the New York Times and the Washington Post.Sarina:                                 01:33                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30-odd romance novels and I am revising a book called Heartland, which will come out in the late winter and my revision is due on Monday.Jess:                                     01:49                    Ouch, but you're going to make it.KJ:                                        01:53                    I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of a novel coming out next summer, as well as How To Be a Happier Parent coming out in paperback next summer and former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, where I occasionally still contribute, and right now, not in fact in the land of editing, or revising, or anything along those lines. But I will own that my bold declarations regarding NaNoWriMo and trying to finish my current project, I did not. It is not quite the end of NaNoWriMo as we record, but I can guarantee to you that I did not write 50,000 words of a novel during November, but that's okay. I needed to do a lot of thinking, so I could not write. If I had written 50,000 words, it would not have been a good use of my time. Sometimes, it turns out that way.Jess:                                     02:45                    Well, I said I pulled the rug out from under my NaNoWriMo, anyway. So I've been doing something that was completely unplanned and has been going pretty well, actually. Oh, this is also fun news. I had a meeting with my editor - the same meeting that I had post sort of her taking a look at the first draft of Gift of Failure. And whereas the Gift of Failure meeting was vomit inducing, it was horrible. Some of you have heard this story, but basically suffice it to say it was a nightmare of a meeting with your editor, the very kind of meeting you hope you don't have. Although she's quite a lovely person. This meeting was its exact opposite. It was lovely, it was a love fest, everybody's happy. It was just really, really nice to have a positive meeting to offset the negative meeting that I had after Gift of Failure was turned in. One and one - is that what you say?KJ:                                        03:50                    I was going to look at a little more positively and say not many writers can have such a ringing guarantee that they have learned.Jess:                                     03:58                    Well, that's actually something that has been really interesting. I had a huge checklist of basically the what not to do stuff. And it was really nice cause during the meeting she said, 'I could tell that you were trying really hard to not do the things that you did last time.' And I'm like, 'Oh you have no idea. You have no idea how organized I was in my efforts to not make the same mistakes twice.' So that was a ringing endorsement of at least my anal retentive sort of attempts to to do better this time. To learn from my mistakes.KJ:                                        04:30                    Massive gold star. For learning all the things and we're going to talk about other things that we've learned today. We do have a topic and I'm really excited about it. Today's topic is cover art.Jess:                                     04:49                    I can fall so deep into this whole...like this topic, especially now since I'm at the point where I get to start sort of like really thinking about this. This can consume me for days.KJ:                                        05:01                    So we're going to talk about covers when you need to create your own cover. Covers when you're working with a publisher and they are presenting covers to you. Covers internationally. Covers, you know, what it is when you are working with a publisher, what you ought to be thinking about. So let's just start broadly like, what makes a good cover?Sarina:                                 05:24                    Well, I was thinking about this yesterday, as we were getting ready for this and I had a really good time thinking about it and making notes. And I thought that at the end of the day there were really two things that every author is supposed to think about. Two broad things - and they are, number one reader expectations, followed by (distantly) trends. So when I say reader expectations I mean that all of us, when we walk into a bookstore and we take that first glance at the table in front and maybe your eye comes to rest on a book, I don't know if until you're in this seat where you have to think about it, that you really realize how much information you're getting from that cover just at the first glance. About is that book fiction or nonfiction, is it literary, is it practical, is it a romance, is it for children? You know, you get a lot of information really quickly and, and when it's time for the gut wrenching question of what cover art is going to be on your book, you have to like back out a little and think with your analytical brain about what information you want readers to have.Jess:                                     06:44                    This is something that when Gift of Failure was in the process of getting its cover the first round of covers really were a clear statement that my publisher wasn't really sure what this book was. And so when we backed up, my agent and I did a really clear conversation about what exactly do you want this book to say about what's inside. And I knew little things, like I wanted people to be able to know what this book was from far away. Like I wanted someone on the other end of a subway car to say, 'Oh, I recognize that book.' But above and beyond that, if you think about what Gift of Failure is, it's a parenting book, but it's an education book. And so there were all these like how do you convey that through a cover design? And it's really a tricky thing. And looking forward to the next book, I don't even know where to start with that, but I love the fact that you have to somehow get all of these messages across graphically. And that's what's so exciting about a cover.Sarina:                                 07:49                    It is. And we should also say where Gift of Failure ended up as cover art because it's really telling; and it was such a great cover.Jess:                                     07:57                    Well, and it was a total redesign. And when my agent and I rejected the first set of covers and asked for a redesign, we found the image of a ladder with a broken rung. And then we're like, 'Oh, but what if the ladder was made out of pencils?' So that was kind of a joint effort between me and my agent. So while my agent said (you know, she neve,r hardly ever recommends that an author sort of say, 'Here, look, here's a cover design.') She was very into the idea of us giving them ideas, especially once it seemed like their artists were stuck.KJ:                                        08:34                    I want to jump on the word rejected. Cause you didn't, cause you couldn't. I have not read your contract, but I can almost guarantee you that that right is not in there.Jess:                                     08:48                    How about we gently suggested?KJ:                                        08:51                    But that is something to be aware of if you are in a situation where you're working with a publisher, you don't have control over the cover art. If the publisher said, 'No, no, what we really like for the book, the Gift of Failure is this shot of a Christmas tree with presents on it and gnomes hanging off of it and that's what we're going with. You really got nothing. So when you're in that situation to take like a sort of more diplomatic approach is very necessary. Because every new design really costs them money too, right?Sarina:                                 09:32                    Right. And in one case, my first novel was women's fiction for Penguin in 2011, basically. And when I first saw the cover, they hired an outside illustrator to make it and I was told upfront that that was sort of an expensive thing to do. And they said, 'Here is your cover.' And I freaked because the cover was a whole bunch of things that did not make sense for this book. It looked vintage to me and the book was straight up contemporary. It was super busy. And I have to tell you, it had comic sans as the font. In black and the rest of the cover was not dark colors. And I just lost my mind there for a minute. But after I freaked out to my agent (and you're allowed to do that) I...KJ:                                        10:31                    Yes. That's the person to freak out to.Jess:                                     10:33                    Yeah, absolutely.Sarina:                                 10:34                    Then I wrote, very carefully, a note about I didn't actually mention how much I loathed with every fiber of my being the imagery on this cover, but rather I explained why the readers we were looking for would not pick up that cover. That it looked too old, it looked too big. You know, because my opinion is not important to this equation, but reader opinion really is.Jess:                                     11:01                    That's a fantastic point.Sarina:                                 11:03                    Yeah. That's where you want to go with your angst. Is here's why this would be an error, you know, in a very analytical way.Jess:                                     11:12                    I had this really cool situation with my publisher where the CEO, President, whatever, my publisher was teaching a class on publishing at a college. And one of the books that he had offered up to the students to do some sample covers for, just to sort of get an idea of how marketing works, one of them was mine. And the student got in touch with me through my website to talk to me about the fact that she had chosen my book as the book that she was working on in this college class on publishing, which was really cool. So that meant that my publisher was thinking about my book, not only from the perspective of 'I'm the publisher of this book and we want people to buy it, but I'm teaching students about marketing using this book.' So it was a really cool opportunity to have lots of perspectives. But also, unique, not many people get that opportunity.KJ:                                        12:06                    That is very cool. My nonfiction, the How To Be a Happier Parent came back to us the first time with an image of like cartoon parents on a roller coaster with their children. About which there were many, many problems. Among them was that all the parents and children were white. And also being on a roller coaster does not make you a happier parent. I mean, it had its point. I could kind of see where they were coming from, but we did something similar where we went back to them with just talking about how we didn't think it represented the book and ultimately they asked me, 'Well, what do you like?' And this same process, just to jump ahead, it happened to me with the novel, you know, show us some pictures that you like, show us covers that you like, tell us what it is you like about this. They actually did that in the case of the novel before we even went into it. So, in the case of How To Be a Happier Parent, I actually gave them a magazine that I like, it's called Flow, and if anyone ever found Flow and also found the cover of How To Be a Happier Parent, it ended up kind of looking like an issue of Flow. It has a chalkboard, and a floral, it's very trendy to be honest. And I like the cover very much, but it's definitely of its time. And then for the novel this time around I went to the publisher's website and tried to pull covers from their website that I liked.Sarina:                                 13:45                    Yeah, that was actually really fun to just think about the novel cover with you, KJ.KJ:                                        13:51                    Yeah, we were all pulling things and it was really great.Sarina:                                 13:56                    It was super fun. And that's kind of where part two comes into this, which is what trends have to say about what should be on the cover of your book. So one is reader expectations. And with The Chicken Sisters, you know, this is a novel about sisters. It's not a spoiler to say that. So, it's contemporary, it has a family dynamic, there's an element of competition regarding the whole book is about a contest, right? You had all of those things to kind of juggle and play with. And then there's also the trends of what's on the cover of women's fiction right now.Jess:                                     14:43                    And not just what's on the cover, but what colors. Because it turns out, and I had no idea, obviously there are trends just like in fashion for colors and you can see what colors are trending when you go to your local bookstore.KJ:                                        14:56                    Oh, you totally can.Jess:                                     14:58                    It's really interesting. All of a sudden everyone decides teal is the color. Or everyone decides yellow is, it's really fascinating to watch.KJ:                                        15:06                    Let's hope yellow is the color of 2020 because that's what I ended up with. So The Chicken Sisters went through two cover drafts. So the first cover was very typical of commercial women's fiction. That's commercial, small, the tropes and chicken sisters, just to use the lingo. It's a small town, there's restaurants, there's foodiness, there's women, there's lots of conversation. That's not really a trope. Anyway, the first cover was a picture of two women sitting in a restaurant, talking. And there was nothing wrong with that. Like it was fine, but it didn't really leap.Sarina:                                 16:01                    It lacked conflict.KJ:                                        16:02                    It looked like a happy women's, commercial women's fiction book, which it is. But it didn't show that it's a dynamic story. And also, like yours, it looked a little vintage, and it's a very contemporary story. And so we went back and sort of went through it again and talked again about different covers. And the thing that they came back with when they decided to do a complete redesign is such a perfect icon. What they've got is two women's hands pulling at a wishbone, which you guys can see. We will put it up in the show notes, of course. It's all over my Instagram and will continue to be all over my Instagram for the next who knows how long.Jess:                                     16:55                    Here's a question - did you suggest the wishbone or did they come up with that?KJ:                                        16:58                    I did not, they came up with it.Jess:                                     16:59                    It's so good.KJ:                                        17:02                    It's really perfect.Jess:                                     17:04                    Because that first one, you're right, it really did look like two friends sitting down and having a cup of tea together. But this is perfect cause there's the conflict, there's the competition, there's the luck. All of that stuff, it's great.Sarina:                                 17:17                    It's amazing.KJ:                                        17:18                    And then I suggested (we made it super clear that they are different hands. You can tell by the fact that they've got different nail polish and they look a little different) and then it's got this background of sunflowers, which I love. And apparently floral backgrounds are super trendy, but I love them because the book is set in Kansas and sunflowers are very Kansas. I think what that communicates to readers is just, I don't know what the floral background communicates to readers to be honest. I like it, I pick them up.Sarina:                                 17:52                    It's just an it item. It's pretty like who doesn't want to look at sunflowers. And we should also say, KJ, that this whole cover art, so gorgeous, is illustrated because that is also a big trend right now. So, in the nineties I read lots of like chicklet novels that had illustrated covers like the Bridget Jones era. And then there was a while there after chicklet kind of had a big moment and then went away that that like illustrated was gone from book cover land because it was like you can't say anything serious underneath an illustrated cover.KJ:                                        18:34                    The pause here is me trying to remember what commercial women's fiction looked like in the...I guess it would...Sarina:                                 18:46                    Well, there's photos of like porch swings, and adirondack chairs, and women on beaches with big floppy hats. And all of that is still there. Like Elin Hildebrand has beach covers, but hers are starting to look more illustrated, too.KJ:                                        19:03                    They're starting to be illustrated pictures of women on beaches in big, floppy hats. And let me just say, I love a good women on a beach and a big floppy hat novel. So, you know, it's a good cover. If there were a beach and hats in my novel, I'd have been all over that.Jess:                                     19:19                    I have to say all of the books I was going to talk about today. I've done this fun reversal to you know, stuff I don't usually read, the sort of women's romcom stuff and it's all illustrated. You're totally right, I was just looking at the covers.Sarina:                                 19:33                    Yeah. And that's new. And it's also hitting the romance market pretty hard right now. So like four years ago you couldn't find a single romance novel with illustrations on the cover. It just didn't exist. And you know, everybody knows the history of romance covers with Fabio and like ripped shirts open and people. But a couple obviously screams romance. So people were used to seeing that. And then we hit the 50 Shades era and also self-publishing kind of ripped up all the rules because people didn't have photo shoots at their disposal, so...KJ:                                        20:11                    They were busily sort of begging their brothers to stand around shirtless and it just wasn't working for whatever reason. Come on, come on, it'd be great for your Instagram.Sarina:                                 20:23                    It became a stock photo market and there are certain stock photo models that when I see it that I just laugh because they're so overused. Like there's this one model that I call Creepy Eyed Santa Guy. I went for years without a photo of Creepy Eyed Santa Guy because there are a whole bunch of photos of him with a Santa hat on, but lots of photos of him without one. And then my check publisher actually used Creepy Eyed Santa Guy on one of my check editions. So now I do have that guy. But then 50 Shades of Gray came along and this author chose to put like cufflinks and a neck tie on her very stark covers.KJ:                                        21:09                    And it was self-published. So that was her choice.Jess:                                     21:11                    I think you mean handcuffs there, Buckaroo.KJ:                                        21:15                    Oh, that's true.Sarina:                                 21:17                    No, there were cufflinks.Jess:                                     21:19                    Oh, were there?Sarina:                                 21:20                    Yeah.Jess:                                     21:21                    I only remember the tie and the handcuffs. I don't remember the cufflinks, excellent.Sarina:                                 21:25                    No, there were like fine menswear stuff on and it. And it was moodily lit so it just looked like, you know, the guy took off his tie cause he had things to do. And that just ushered in what now in romance, people call object covers. And so now, if you see a book cover with a slip on it or just some piece of clothing moodily lit on a dark background, it tells you that that is going to be a very erotic book or have very erotic themes because that one author changed the way that romance novelists looked at cover potentials (in that sub-genre anyway) by her own success made it that way.KJ:                                        22:09                    Well there were so many things to sort of tease out of that and one of them was your international publisher. But I was thinking about the question of illustratation - You tried an illustrated cover lately? We're talking about reader expectations and I know that recently you had a moment when you felt like the cover that you chose did not meet your readers' expectations.Sarina:                                 22:38                    Oh yeah.Jess:                                     22:39                    We want to hear more about that.Sarina:                                 22:41                    Well, that was just last month and I was spinning off a character. So he was from my Brooklyn series and I had retired him from the hockey team in a book and I was spinning him off into a story about his family's very bizarre security company, like a cybersecurity thing. So I needed readers to know that that beloved character was getting a story and that they were connected. And my wonderful cover artist, she is so talented, made me exactly what I asked her for, which is something a bit trendy, with a bit of a blur to it, really interesting cover for this new series that had an element of suspense. She did exactly what I asked her to. It was gorgeous and the preorders for this book were terrible and I panicked and they just didn't improve and I thought, well, something's just wrong. Like readers really like this guy. They'll like this story, the blurb is good. Like I knew enough to know which things ought to be working and so I woke up six days before the launch - positive that the cover was a problem and I thought, okay, well I'm going to write my poor cover designer an email and say, 'Listen, I've made a big mistake. Do you have any time to help me?' And she said yes. And I bought a photograph from a photographer that day and I sent it over to her and we changed the cover so that you can tell that it's a spinoff from that other series by the typography.KJ:                                        24:23                    Right. Now it looks like it looks like the other series.Sarina:                                 24:27                    It does, except the background is dark instead of light and there's no sports imagery on it. But you can tell from the typography and the minute I showed it to people (another author who reads some of my stuff) said, 'Oh, it's a Brooklyn book.' And then I knew exactly at that moment that I was right and that book ended up doing great. It hit USA Today at number 89. It's performed in line, the audio is selling well. Like everything about it did what I had originally expected it to, but I had confused my readers and they did not know what to make of that new cover.Jess:                                     25:01                    Well and how brave of you. Well, and keep in mind not only how brave of you to make a change at the last second, but making a change at the last second involved a lot of moving parts that a, you couldn't necessarily have anticipated like weird moving parts that that we can go into in just a second. But the other thing is, in terms of expectations, it's okay if your readers expect this to be a Brooklyn Bruiser's novel because they'll pick up that it kinda sorta a little bit is, but it's a new entryway into a whole new series. So, you didn't have to worry too much about people getting confused by it being, but not being, a Brooklyn Bruiser's novel.Sarina:                                 25:43                    Right. Because that was true. It's just that I had lost them at like maybe it doesn't have anything to do with any of your other books and that was a mistake. Basically I was kind of tired of putting shirtless men on my covers and I wanted something artsy and interesting and it didn't work. Like my readers were not ready. Well, they just weren't there for me to say, 'Hey, my brand today looks different, you have to respect the brand that you've built.' And that's the mistake I made.KJ:                                        26:18                    Here's a question. Does the illustrated trend extend to Indie and if so, is it a pricey thing to do to have an illustrated cover?Sarina:                                 26:27                    You know, Indies are a little confused about it, because many of our cover artists are not illustrators. And so I have some friends that have found good illustrators to make this trend work for them. And then there is stock illustration, though. So a good cover artist isn't necessarily going to freehand everything. Like you can find illustration vectors that will contain the imagery that you're looking for and you can move it around however you wish.KJ:                                        27:04                    Even publishers use that stuff. There is a little bird on the cover of How To Be a Happier Parent that I really loved and wanted to use in other places. And we had a problem because they had licensed it and they had only licensed it for cover use. So we worked it out. But yeah, even publishers use stock illustrations.Sarina:                                 27:23                    Of course they do.Jess:                                     27:24                    And publishers will also outsource stuff. There was one of my international editions, the publisher in that country wanted to use the original art from Gift of Failure in the U.S. and apparently my publisher had outsourced that art to someone that didn't necessarily work under that for Harper Collins. And so that art was no longer available because that person, for whatever reason wasn't making it available. So there's all kinds of snags that you can run up against with illustrators and licensing and all that stuff.Sarina:                                 27:56                    Yeah, I bet that like almost half of U.S. traditionally published books have some element of licensed stock art on them. I see it all over the place.KJ:                                        28:11                    And now we will all see it all over the place.Jess:                                     28:15                    Well, I'm in that phase right now where I'm paying a lot of attention to covers because the cover for my next book is going to be really, really tricky. Because for me, I would love it if people would see this next book and identify it somehow with me, or my brand, or my preexisting cover art. How exactly you convey the title (which by the way we think is probably gonna stick) we probably think we're going to stick with the title of The Addiction Inoculation. We had a very specific conversation about this. And there are some worrisome images that you could use.KJ:                                        28:50                    We've spent some time coming up with the worst possible combination of pencils and The Addiction Inoculation. We've enjoyed it, but you know, it's probably time to give it a rest.Jess:                                     29:03                    Exactly. So what they end up with, so now I have tastes in covers and they may not necessarily be what's on trend right now. So it's going to be really interesting to see what they come up with. And I'm going to be brainstorming a lot about what possible covers could look like. In fact, I even got an email recently from someone who said, 'You know what, I was in a bookstore recently and I had this idea for you.' And believe me, those things are welcome. I love that.KJ:                                        29:30                    So Sarina, walk us through creating a cover. As an Indie published author. Like where do you start? Where are you getting this art? Where do you find that person?Sarina:                                 29:42                    You know, there are 10 or 15 cover artists that my friends and I all use and you can look at somebody's copyright page and see who did their design. So that's one place to start. Or you can even search book cover art.KJ:                                        30:03                    Yeah. If you search this people definitely pop up. But I personally wouldn't have any way of evaluating them. I guess I could look at their covers because we can judge them by their book covers.Sarina:                                 30:15                    And I honestly look at designer's websites all the time and I rarely find what I'm looking for cause I'm just super picky now. But the important thing is to find someone who understands the genre because without that key component, it doesn't matter how talented they are. In romance, if somebody showed me a cover without humans on it in some way, I would not be able to take that. And of course these things are really dependent upon the location as well. So all of my German books have flowers on them or other vegetation and they are so pretty. There are just gorgeous. But the first time I saw that flower cover, or actually it was a tree for a different book, I was a little panicked. Like people won't know this is a romance if there's no people on it, it's a tree. How is anyone gonna understand? But that was me just trapped inside my own stereotypical understanding of what I see at the bookstore when I look at a cover and Germans just don't need that, I guess.Jess:                                     31:30                    The cultural divide can also be really interesting. One of my prettiest covers, I have no idea how it would get any Gift of Failure kind of idea across, it's Korean and it's got this beautiful deer on it. But someone told me that it actually appeals quite well in Korea. So who knows what I know. And by the way, your German covers I think are some of the most beautiful covers out there. I love them so much.Sarina:                                 31:53                    Well, they were just geniuses with this because the first flower one came out I believe in March or April. And I began seeing it all over Instagram next to pictures of real flowers and it just photographed really well. And the season hit it just right. And yeah, it's pretty great.Jess:                                     32:41                    The interesting thing is there are some people who also try to hook their website art into their cover art and some people's website art ended up, I'm thinking about Gretchen Rubin's specifically, she worked with a designer who sort of helped to do branding for her all over the place. And that art from the branding company ended up also being her cover art. And so, you know, there's all kinds of convoluted ways this can happen. But some of the most recognizable art out there, I think Gretchen's art is incredibly recognizable from her happiness project. And that was the result of a partnership with a branding company. So anyway, there are lots of ways to to tackle this beast, I suppose.KJ:                                        33:28                    Yeah. And then when you get your cover art, I would guess as an Indie, you probably want to make sure that you have it licensed so that you can use it in every possible scenario. And if you're working with a publisher, you can ask can I have the elements of the... So for example, I asked for the sunflower background so that I could use it as a background for social media and for for some paper stuff that I wanted. So it doesn't have the cover image, it only has the sunflowers on it. You can take your own cover art, whether it is Indie or publisher driven, and you can you can take a screenshot of a tiny chunk of the color and then just Google, what color is this? And pop the screenshot in there and it'll give you the number. So you'll get this crazy six digit/letter number that signifies that color digitally. And you can go to Canva and make your brand palette with your colors and you should. And then you can use that for everything. You can ask your publisher what your font is and then you'll have to look, maybe Canva and other places have that font. I actually had to buy the font that they used on my title for like $7.99 or whatever. But I bought it and I bought the license so that I can use it on cards and things like that. A publisher might pay for that for you, but in this case the amount that it cost to buy the font was not worth it. And then once you've bought the font, you can upload it to Canva. There's a lot you can do with this stuff once you've got it in hand.Jess:                                     35:27                    I have these lovely book plates with pencils on them and and that's been a wonderful thing to have and it matches the book. I love it. We are running up against the end of our time, but I wanna make sure we have time to talk about what we've been reading, cause I've been reading a lot.KJ:                                        35:43                    Are we done with talking about covers?Jess:                                     35:45                    I don't know. I'm happy to go over and I assume our listeners are happy to go over, but, but there's definitely a lot to talk about and definitely a lot to talk about when it comes to cultural stuff.KJ:                                        36:00                    Yeah, we didn't talk about like trends in nonfiction and the sort of the big book cover, which is basically nothing but letters on either a background or a background image. Or I was reading some interesting stuff about how there's a new trend for like having the illustration kind of overlap the letters. So that's a neat thing. I don't know. It's just fun to see what's coming and then watch for it. It makes you look at covers differently, even while all the while you're using them in your mind to judge whether or not you would want to read the book. Because the truth is that we do judge a book by its cover.Jess:                 

Stephen Rollnick provides consultancy, mentorship and training on the subjects of motivation, change, teamwork and Motivational Interviewing. He an Honorary Distinguished Professor in the School of Medicine in Cardiff University, Wales, UK with a research record focused on good practice in efforts to promote change and behaviour change among patients, clients and the practitioners who serve them.Stephen's new book 'Coaching Athletes to Be Their Best: Motivational Interviewing in Sports' reveals why conventional ways of giving feedback and addressing conflict are often counterproductive, the book presents tried-and-tested methods for getting through to athletes and helping them to thrive. In this fascinating conversation we explore: - Why connecting with people is simple but very hard- How to roll with resistance- The secret to 'empathic listening'- How to avoid becoming a 'deficit detective'Here is the link to the publisher's of Stephen's Book, you can get a 25% discount by using the code AFSPO at checkout. https://www.guilford.com/books/Coaching-Athletes-to-Be-Their-Best/Rollnick-Fader-Breckon-Moyers/9781462541263To access the 'bonus episode' which I recorded with Dr Tim Anstiss in a web workshop with the Conclave learning community head over to https://www.patreon.com/thetalentequation

This week Patrick looks at the best of Irish and International publications for February 2020. Books covered on the show include: 'Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain' with Paul Corthorn, 'Renaissance Galway' with Paul Walsh, 'Rathcoole and the United Irish Rebellions 1798 to 1803' with Kerron O'Luain, 'Here to Stay, Here to Fight: A Race Today Anthology' by Paul Field and  Dr Jeremy Jennings on the legacy of Benjamin Constant.

Writers need a page, a profile and a whole lot of patience and persistence to even feel like we’re close to getting Facebook “right.”The question first appeared, as these things do, in the #AmWriting Facebook group. A book is coming! I’m on Facebook (obviously), but do I need an author page in addition to my profile? Why—and what should I do with one once I’ve got one? Our answer is yes, but of course it doesn’t stop there. In this episode, we talk the ins and outs of Facebook for writers of all kinds, with a primer on the basics and then a few ninja-level tips from Sarina.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, November 4, 2019: Top 5 Things You Don’t Need to Be a “Real” Writer. We’d love your support, and we hope you’ll love our Top 5s. Join in for actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe #AmWriting Facebook GroupGrown and Flown on FacebookRon Lieber’s Author Facebook PageSarina’s Facebook PageSarendipity (Sarina’s Facebook Fan Group)Jess’s Facebook PageKJ’s Facebook Page, which she didn’t even remember existed but will now tend as directed by Sarina.ManyChat#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Home, Run Away, Harlan Coben (also mentioned, Tell No One)KJ: Kitchens of the Great Midwest, J. Ryan StradalSarina: Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo#FaveIndieBookstoreGibson’s, Concord NHThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hello listeners, KJ here. If you’re in with us every week, you’re what I like to call “people of the book.’ And some of us book people discover somewhere along the way that not only we writers, we’re people with a gift for encouraging other writers. For some of us, that comes out in small ways, but for others it’s a calling and an opportunity to build a career doing work you love. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator, provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. If that’s got your ears perked up, head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com and click on “become a book coach.” Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:02                    Now it's recording, go ahead.KJ:                                        00:45                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:45                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:45                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:45                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:54                    Now one, two, three. Hey all, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is your podcast, your weekly podcast, our podcast, about writing all the things. Fiction, nonfiction, pitches, proposals, essays you know what? All the things, except poetry. None of us do that. But we did have a poet on once. I dunno, I just was thinking that the other day like, wait a minute, it's not quite all the things. Alright, back to the regularly scheduled introduction. #AmWriting is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work, whatever it is, done.Jess:                                     01:40                    KJ, before I introduce myself, speaking of the intro changing up, we got an email this week from someone who said, 'Wait, you changed the pattern at the beginning of the episode and I don't know what to do with that.' It was very, very funny.KJ:                                        01:54                    I love that people go back and listen to all the episodes. It brings me incredible joy.Jess:                                     01:58                    Yes, it does. I am Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And I write at various places including the New York Times, Washington Post and the Atlantic.Sarina:                                 02:13                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30 plus contemporary romance novels. And you can find more of me at sarinabowen.com.KJ:                                        02:22                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, a novelist and also the author of the nonfiction book How to Be a Happier Parent, first novel will be out next summer, more to come I hope. You'll sometimes still find my work at the New York Times and in a variety of other places. So that's it, that's who we are. We know some things and today our plan is to talk about what we know about Facebook. But before we do, I just want to thank everyone who has gone in and subscribed to our weekly emails that come out every week about the podcast. That is a new thing that we're doing and I love that people are finding it useful. Every week we send you little something about what the episode is, all the links, and a way to see a transcript, which is pretty cool. And also huge shout out and thanks to those of you who have signed up to support the podcast and get our weekly top fives for writers. It's huge, we feel so grateful and excited that you guys want to support us, and want to be a part of it, and want to get our top fives, which we're having a great time doing. So you know, thanks to everyone for that. And if you're looking to do either of those things, head over to amwritingpodcast.com and you'll find all the links there.Jess:                                     03:42                    Alright, let's do it. You said our topic is Facebook. What do you mean about this Facebook thing?KJ:                                        03:54                    Well, it's a great place to put up pictures of your kids and offend all your relatives on your political views. But as a writer, people have questions like, 'Should you have an author page and a personal page? Should you do everything from your personal page? How has this evolved over the years? And I have wrestled with it. Sarina has come to some pretty good terms with it and I'll just also throw out there that back in 2013 when I started with the Times, they actually said to me, 'We do not want to create a Facebook page for the Motherlode blog, which doesn't exist anymore anyway. So just use your own. It was one of the best gifts that they gave me. I don't think it was actually the right choice for them, but well, and here and today I'm sitting here with no author page, but the AmWriting page and everything I do professionally ends up on my personal page and I'm not sure that's where I should be.Jess:                                     05:01                    I'm a mess. Sarina, you go cause you've got a whole thing. You use it beautifully.Sarina:                                 05:07                    Well, thank you. But we have to talk about vocabulary for a second. Because people have a profile, not a page. And we just want to be careful to use that vocabulary correctly because if listeners go and try to untangle our suggestions, they might run into a little trouble. So every person, like the way that we would define a person has the right under the Facebook terms of service, to have one profile. So, if you use a pseudonym for your writing, you may find yourself in the awkward position of trying to fake it to Facebook that you can have two profiles. And yeah, so that's a good time. But the profile is the main way that most people look at Facebook, you login with your profile. Now a page, you can have as many pages as you want. A page is meant to be representing something that's not a person. Like a brand or a business or it can be a person, like a personality. So I have a profile under Sarina White Bowen, it's three words. And then I have a Sarina Bowen page. And pages and profiles have different things that they can do, they're not identical in their functionality. And that's why we get into these tricky discussions because the way that pages and profiles behave is not identical and that's where some of the weird fun comes in.Jess:                                     06:54                    Well and honestly that's where most of my apathy/confusion lies. Mainly because for me, my profile, Jessica Lahey. Actually, I think my profile is Jessica Potts Lahey because my maiden name is Potts. So that's my personal profile, the thing I originally signed up for Facebook with. That has long since gone out the window as a private, personal thing. Like I get 30 friend requests a day and I accept some and don't. But most of them are people I don't even know. I've just long since given up the ghost on that. But it is how I keep in touch with childhood friends and high school acquaintances and things like that. Then I also have a page as Jessica Lahey and that was something my publisher wanted and it was important to them. But see, here's the problem - if you're accepting any old person out there to your profile, and I'm posting things to my page and to my profile and honestly, there's a lot of overlap between the two. I wish I'd been more strategic about this from the beginning. And I somehow had a profile that was really just personal stuff and then shuttled everyone else over to my page, like put up kind of some kind of like, 'No, I will not friend you, but here's my page.' I wish I'd been more strategic about that, but I didn't and so now I have a mess. I have, two things, neither of which is personal, and both kind of get duplicate posts.Sarina:                                 08:28                    Well, I could make you feel better by telling you that we're all in the same mess, honestly. Because Facebook has treated the two things differently over time. So, it used to be that in the glory days of 2010 you could make a page and even if you'd gotten this right from the very first day...Jess:                                     08:53                    If I could have seen the future...Sarina:                                 08:55                    Well, that's the thing. You would have still not been able to do it exactly right because the behavior that would have been optimized at the time would have changed. So back in the glory days, you could've made that page that you were just talking about and kept your profile private and you could have posted the things you were writing and thinking about it on this page and people would see it and they would interact with you and your page would grow, and grow, and grow. And you might have like 30,000 followers. However, Facebook has very much become a pay to play platform and now they would want you to pay every time you put up a post on your page that you wanted more than say 5% of your followers to see. So the fact that when you share meaningful things on your profile, at least there's some chance that the people who are connected to you will see it. So it's not entirely clear to me that you wouldn't be a very sad owner of a highly followed page by this point. But everybody who relies upon Facebook to push content into the world has been increasingly unhappy with their results because it's not just that Facebook wants your money (and they absolutely do want it), but also just the number of pages in the world grew at such an exponential rate that they can't actually show everybody all the stuff that they're following anymore. Like if you liked your dentist's office in 2013, then you know, the odds of you actually seeing a post from the dentist are really bad. Like the pages who you might actually see are the people who have been out there working it so hard since the very beginning, with a nice pace of content release, and a good interaction that...it's very few pages that are still getting that kind of play. You mentioned that you get a lot of friend requests. Facebook actually caps the number of friends you can have at 5,000.Jess:                                     11:05                    Early on I think it was like 2000 or something. But yeah, it's definitely 5,000. I'm getting close and that worries me. Because what if someone I really want to follow, that's why I don't accept all of them or even real people...KJ:                                        11:19                    People don't know you didn't accept them. And probably most of their goals is just to follow you, which is what happens if someone puts in a friend request and you say no, they end up following you.Jess:                                     11:32                    That's right. Yeah, I forgot about that.KJ:                                        11:35                    At least you've got that going for you.Sarina:                                 11:36                    So, another factor is that now Messenger is tied in with the people you're friends with on Facebook. So I have stopped accepting friend requests completely, unless of course I met the person.KJ:                                        11:51                    Unless it's your friend.Sarina:                                 11:53                    Or, but I got some friend requests after that retreat we went to in Maine and I accepted those. But I don't accept random requests anymore because I've discovered it's just a way for readers to bug me. Like when is such and such a thing coming out and you know, there just aren't enough hours in the day for me to do a good job answering those messages.Jess:                                     12:16                    Actually, I'm so glad you said that because that has been a source of anxiety and frustration for me in that the number of direct messages I'm getting via various apps has gone through the roof and it's a lot of people asking very personal questions about their own children. I got one the other day and she sent me this long, long, long message about what she's going through with her child. And she wrote the word please and she sent a picture of herself with her child.KJ:                                        12:48                    I wish you could auto reply from Messenger. Because if you had that that said, 'I'm sorry, I can't...' I suppose you could just type one. Okay, we're going to get back to how everyone should use Facebook in a second, but just to solve this particular problem with which I am somewhat familiar, type something up, and imagine yourself as your assistant. 'I'm sorry, Mrs. Lahey can't respond to all.' And you know you're gonna feel like a jerk, but Mrs. Lahey can't respond personally to everyone and that leaves you the freedom to do it. To take a step back, we have people on our Facebook group page, which is a whole other thing, and is a great tool for various kinds of authors, particularly I think in nonfiction. Someone was saying, 'Here I am and my first book is coming out and should I create an author page?' And there are reasons to say yes to that, I think.Sarina:                                 14:07                    Yes, there are. One of the reasons you might need an author page is if you want to advertise something, you can't advertise from a profile, you have to advertise from a page. So, the main reason that the Sarina Bowen author page continues to grow a following is because of paid advertising. And when you use paid advertising you collect likes sort of by accident. So you should never run the kind of ad that just gets likes because that's pointless. But if you have something to advertise like 'Look, this is my new book. Here is the link at Apple books.' Then that is something I advertise and the page does grow its following that way. So I would say that if you have even a 20% chance of ever wanting to advertise something, you should set up that author page. But then you should not obsess about how many followers it has. You should post only often enough so that it looks like the lights are on. And you don't need to worry about it. It needs to be set up so that there's somewhere people can find this kind of information, like the link to join your newsletter, and the link for your own personal webpage. So you need to be listed there because a lot of people will use Facebook as like a global directory. So you need to be find-able, but you do not need to obsess about how many people are following you there. So you can really put it as one of those things on your Sunday promo calendar where you're like, 'Oh, time to stop by the neighborhood of my Facebook page and maybe update something. You know, a book I'm reading or an article I put out this week.'Jess:                                     16:05                    I use it for my speaking calendar, too. Like you know, 'Oh I'm going to be in the next week or month or whatever I'm going to be in so-and-so.' One thing I would like to add is that so early on in my promotion plan for Gift of Failure, my publisher very much wanted me to have a Facebook page because one of the things they did during my pub week was that I added my publisher as an administrator to my Facebook page and they posted a couple of ads. So that was wonderful and helpful.KJ:                                        16:37                    That's really nice. I have not heard of a publisher doing that, which just means I haven't heard of it. I advertised my book personally a couple of times. But I actually did it from the #AmWriting page, I think, because we have a page and I don't remember if I have a page.Jess:                                     17:00                    I think they did two or three ads just during pub week itself. And that was nice. They wanted to know as part of my original, the fact that I had one was what interested them. So I don't think they actually care that much about my followers. Who knows. Anyway, I want to make sure that was in there.KJ:                                        17:22                    When you pay to place a Facebook ad from your page, that has nothing to do with how many followers your page has. It goes to that subset of people that you hopefully carefully create within the Facebook ad maker.Sarina:                                 17:40                    That's right. The ad engine is a vast thing. There are entire podcasts about the Facebook ad engine. So, we won't cover that today but it does give you access to basically everyone on Facebook and Instagram.Jess:                                     17:58                    And you can target very carefully and all that sort of thing?Sarina:                                 18:00                    Yes, sort of carefully. But yes.Jess:                                     18:03                    Okay. Anything else here?Sarina:                                 18:06                    I do have a page and I do have a group, cause you mentioned groups, and groups are lovely and for a couple of reasons. One is that they gel with what Mark Zuckerberg claims to be his new idea for what Facebook should be, which is groups of like-minded people talking to each other. So I actually have a fan group on Facebook.Jess:                                     18:41                    I belong and I love it. I love your fan group and it is so much fun to go in there and look at what's being posted. I love your fan group.Sarina:                                 18:51                    It's called Sarendipity and I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of having a fandom. I don't like to use the word fan, I'm not saying that I don't use it, but I don't really want to be that person. It's kind of like there's always a party that I'm hosting and I have to show up, you know. But what happens is that people tend to go there to talk about things that come up in my books and it really takes the pressure off of me. So in May, I had this book where one of the characters, who was known as lobster shorts, that was his avatar on an app. And one of the central conceits of the book is that the other person in the book doesn't know that lobster shorts is really his neighbor. So they have this whole conversation and I swear there are still people posting various lobster clothing in my group, you know, five months later I'm still seeing, look at this lobster shirt I found. So that's super fun because then the discussion doesn't have to be about whether or not you liked the book or what I'm having for lunch. It's like a commonality. This thing that we've all found funny and here's a little more of it. So my group is full of posts about apples because of one of my series.Jess:                                     20:21                    Your group also, I have to say, there was one thread that was posted by one of your fans and it was a question and it was, 'How did you discover Sarina Bowen?' And it was one of the most and incredibly fascinating look at how readers find authors. Some of them were, 'I discovered her through Elle Kennedy, I was an Elle Kennedy reader.' Some were, 'Amazon recommended Sarina because I read X'. It was fascinating and it was a wealth of information about how people stumble upon new authors. I loved reading that thread.Sarina:                                 20:56                    You're right, that was fascinating. But you also said that I didn't post it. There are lots of authors who do ask that question, who are able to ask questions about themselves without wanting to jump off something high. And, but I can't, it's just not me to do that. There's also other romance authors who posts like Towel Tuesday. And so on Tuesday there'll be some photo of a guy in a towel and the other romance readers are like, 'Ooh, good one.'KJ:                                        21:23                    I thought it was going to be the author and a towel. That's brave.Sarina:                                 21:29                    Well now you're really scaring me. That's not me either. And I really struggle with what is my role in that group. And there are so many ways to do it. And if you are a person, as an author, who is comfortable hosting that kind of party all the time, then the group is probably your greatest asset.KJ:                                        21:54                    Alternatively, if you are a person who, as an author, wants to generally answer those kinds of questions that Jess is getting by Messenger, who has a nonfiction platform, which is self-help or that kind of thing you could create... Yeah. Ron Lieber does it really well, that's what you were going to say.Jess:                                     22:26                    No, I was going to say Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington, they do that incredibly well. They use those questions as fodder for posts on their massive, massive group for Grown and Flown.KJ:                                        22:42                    Right, but they started out as a group and a blog and only later became a book. I guess what I'm saying is if you are Lori Gottlieb, or you, or Ron Lieber, you could use Facebook to start a group in which people discuss the topic of your book. But, I think that there would be a pretty high maintenance requirement there. I mean, at a certain point it would probably become somewhat self sustaining, but for a while I feel like it would be really demanding that you find and put up questions, and respond to things, and keep track. I think that'd be a pretty big time investment, but it might be a worthwhile one.Jess:                                     23:30                    It would be a big investment.KJ:                                        23:31                    I'm not suggesting you do it, this is a general. Let me just say, I don't think that's you, you need to write books. But there might be people for whom it would be a great strategy. For example, the author of Quiet, Susan Cain has said, 'I thought about writing another book and then I realized, no, my mission is to keep talking about this one.' She does it in a different forum. But if that's where you are, if your mission for the next few years is to talk about the topic of your nonfiction probably. Then that could be good.Jess:                                     24:15                    As a speaker, I have to say, reader questions are incredible fodder for either articles, new chapters, blog posts, things to talk about on stage. I have this sort of wealth of stories and many of them came from readers who wrote me, or posted, or messaged, or whatever and said, 'Here's what's going on and here's how I've used the things you wrote about.' So that can be an incredibly valuable thing and if you want to mine that for all it's worth, a little bit of effort could pay off big time.KJ:                                        24:47                    Right. All right, so we got the basics. You've probably already got your profile. Certainly there's no one in our Facebook group asking questions about how to use Facebook that doesn't already have a profile. You're gonna need a page, but you don't need to do anything more there besides keep the lights on. You could contemplate a group, you need to think about how you use Messenger, and what else? What am I missing in terms of the basics?Sarina:                                 25:14                    Well, we definitely covered the basics, but I could give you a couple of ninja level things. So my page has an auto-responder that is hosted by a service called ManyChat. So if you go to the Sarina Bowen page and you hit the button there to send a message, you will immediately get a reply from a bot and it says something like, 'Hello. And then insert first name of person. Thank you for reaching out. The best place to find information about upcoming Sarina Bowen books is this link right here.'Jess:                                     26:09                    Brilliant.KJ:                                        26:13                    That's for Messenger messages or postsSarina:                                 26:17                    Messenger, but it's Messenger to the page, not the profile. So it also says, 'And if you are a man who just wants to chat or show me your photo, you will not like my response.'KJ:                                        26:35                    Even if you're wearing a towel. Especially if you're wearing a towel.Jess:                                     26:39                    I do like that when I get messages like that, like gross, disgusting, stuff like that. Often for example, in Instagram it will shield it from your view. And so in order to see whatever picture someone has sent you, you have to actually click on it. And I have decided not to click on a few things that I receive via the messaging part of Instagram.Sarina:                                 27:05                    Weirdly, the what to blur out trigger is really strange, though. Because I click on them all the time and it's usually like just a photo of a book on a table and it's like my book, you know. So that's one thing that you can hook up. Now, this is the ninja super top secret thing is that also ManyChat, will collect the identities of everyone who ever messages you.Jess:                                     27:34                    To what end, Sarina? To what end?Sarina:                                 27:40                    I will tell you. A page can also always message whomever has messaged the page before. So if you run a contest where to enter the contest, you send the page a message, then ManyChat can retain that list of hundreds of people and then randomly messaged them when you decide. So I could right now just blanket message, all the whatever thousand people who've ever messaged my page before with, 'Hey, guess what? I have a new book.'.Jess:                                     28:16                    Oh my gosh, you're so brilliant.Sarina:                                 28:17                    I don't actually use it, though. Because I find that people are very confused about whether I'm messaging them personally this way. Like it's not common enough a thing to break down that wall. And I don't actually want people to think that I'm messaging them. So, it's not a useful tool for me, but it does exist. And the other Ninja level thing is about the page itself and how nobody sees them anymore. So I do keep track. My page has either 14 or 17,000 followers. I can't remember right now. And the average post is seen by like 1200 people. So it's less than 10%. But if I didn't do certain things, then it would drop even further because the Facebook algorithm looks carefully at each post to decide if it's going to love you or not. So if you're always posting Amazon links then it hates that. But if you're always posting to your own website, it hates that less. And if you're posting text with no links or pictures at all, it loves that because that seems really genuine to Facebook. Like if you just have a haiku to share or something.Jess:                                     29:53                    Is that why people started doing that thing where they started posting in the first comment instead of in the post itself?Sarina:                                 29:59                    The link? Yeah, the link in the comments. Yeah. I'm not sure. I think Facebook caught onto that immediately, though.KJ:                                        30:05                    So, interesting, completely random side note, Facebook doesn't want you to sell animals anymore. And of course Facebook is actually the largest place to advertise horses. So our barn manager, I just turned her on to go ahead and put a picture, but you put the link or you put the ad in the comments. Because if you put an ad they throw it off and it's got to do with puppy mills and that kind of thing, which I'm totally supportive of. But Facebook killed all the sites upon which people once sold horses and they have not yet been replaced with anything. And it's a problem. But, that does still work to some extent I think. The link in the comments.Sarina:                                 30:57                    Okay, well this is how I handle it. A page can also have what are called top fans. That is Facebook's word for it. So if you turn this feature on to your page, you might have to have a certain number of followers, I don't know what it is. You turn on the top fan badge and then Facebook will actually track for you who it considers to be your top fans. I believe I have, I don't know, a couple hundred of them. And top fan badges are earned by commenting on things and liking things. So I actually run a giveaway like once a month we pick a random top fan and they get to have a prize of their choosing and the prizes are a signed book shipped anywhere, an item from the Sarina Bowen swag store, or a bad, but flattering poem in your honor.Jess:                                     31:56                    While we're on the topic and because I have helped you with some of this in the past and I have had to deal with it myself, when you run these sorts of things and you say shipped anywhere, just keep in mind how much it costs to ship to Australia. Just keep it in mind. Just think about it when you do it.KJ:                                        32:14                    There's a reason people do U.S. only and apologies to those who can't participate, but whoa.Sarina:                                 32:23                    Yeah, one book to Australia is $22.50 and yesterday I shipped a box to France for $57 50. Ouch., right?KJ:                                        32:35                    Groups have a similar thing to the top fan, which is the conversation starters.Jess:                                     32:40                    Yeah, I love that. And there's also like a visual storyteller. We have it in our group and, according to our group, I'm an administrator, but I'm also a visual storyteller because I post a lot of pictures to our group.KJ:                                        32:53                    Well, no prizes for you. I'm sorry.Sarina:                                 32:55                    Well, the point of giving prizes to top fans is to give an incentive to comment. If you were to go look at my page right now (and I have no idea what the last thing we posted), but you'll see like 'Can't wait' and just people chiming in and the chiming in tells the Facebook algorithm that that piece of content is valuable or interesting. So Facebook will give it a little more love. I mean there are days when it feels like my entire job is to try to outwit the Facebook algorithm and not everybody needs to think like this or operate like this, but it's quite the rabbit hole.Jess:                                     33:37                    Well, and we've talked about this in the past, is that certain social media platforms are great for certain things. And for me it's Twitter and for you it's Facebook. And we've talked about this in the past and partially it's a self-perpetuating thing. But when Sarina goes on my webpage (which I let her do from time to time and look at where my traffic's coming from) you know, mine's coming from Twitter and hers overwhelmingly comes from Facebook. So if you know that the genre that you write in is Facebook oriented, then this is really helpful information. For me, I'm trying to figure out how to best use Facebook. And it may be different for nonfiction authors, but I think when you know that that's where your fans are it's worth spending a little bit extra time and effort, as you do, to engage that audience. It's all about decision making.Sarina:                                 34:27                    And in order to remove some of the emotion from it. So yesterday I got very depressed because I have a book launch coming up and I realized just how much I hate launching. Like it's a kind of a popularity contest that I don't really want to enter. I don't enjoy that week of share me, share me, love me, buy me. So one of the ways that I get around this is that every two months I take note of where the growth in my social media following is happening. So I'll just note the totals of how many followers are on the page, how many people in the group, how many on Instagram, how many on BookBub and how many on my newsletter list. Not because I'm obsessed with the totals, but because I want to know which thing is growing the fastest?KJ:                                        35:23                    Where should you invest your time?Sarina:                                 35:25                    Right? Where is the heat? So that I don't obsess about my Facebook page if that's not obsessable this week.KJ:                                        35:34                    Well, my loose take on what Facebook is good for is nonfiction of the kind that I have written and that Jess writes, parenting stuff, family oriented stuff, self-help style stuff. Basically, probably nonfiction with more of a female audience. I don't know what I mean, Facebook is definitely both genders. Does it skew female? Do we know?Jess:                                     36:07                    I don't know, but I do know that parenting stuff, at least from my perspective, does incredibly well on Facebook. And then the added bonus is that some of the outfits I write for like the New York Times and the Atlantic and Washington Post have very active Facebook pages. And when they post my stuff to Facebook, holy moly, the shares for those articles go through the roof. And then of course other Facebook pages pick up those articles. And I'm very lucky in that some of my more evergreen content the Atlantic will repost from time to time, thus revitalizing an article I wrote four years ago, which is lovely. Yeah. So from that perspective it's really useful.KJ:                                        36:47                    Well, I often think of it is Twitter for serious nonfiction, Facebook for lighter nonfiction, Instagram for fiction. But I think that is just a gross, gross oversimplification as evidenced by the fact that Sarina makes a really good use of Facebook. And Facebook's ads for fiction, especially independently published fiction, are kind of I think without parallel. And there's no barrier to entry like there is on Instagram. You can't advertise on Instagram. You can't even link on Instagram. You can't advertise either, can you? Am I right, Sarina?Sarina:                                 37:23                    You could advertise on Instagram.KJ:                                        37:25                    Oh you can still advertise, okay. Alright, fine. Well, this is good. Okay.Jess:                                     37:31                    This is really helpful.KJ:                                        37:32                    We've laid out some useful basics, given me some ideas. I hope we've given some of the rest of you guys ideas. Oh my gosh. Books.Jess:                                     37:56                    Yeah, do we want to talk about what we've been reading? I have a new author that I've recently discovered that's fun to read. You know there are certain really popular authors that are sort of are in the periphery of your awareness and yet you never actually listened to them. I finally listened to a Harlan Coben book recently. So I listened to Harlan Coben because a narrator that I really, really enjoy - Steven Weber, he played one half of the duo on the show Wings in the 80s, and he's still out there doing some great stuff. He's an audio book narrator and I happen to love his audio narration voice. You can click not only on authors in a lot of apps, but you can click on the narrator, too. So if you really like a narrator, try other things they've narrated. And that's what I did. And I've been listening to a Harlan Coben book. I listened to one called Home that was kind of interesting, but now I'm listening to one called Run Away (it's two separate words). I think it's his newest one. The opening was so beautifully done - and what's really fun about Harlan Coben is that he's funny without trying to be comic. Like he's just a witty writer and it's really fun in a way that I don't get to read a lot. And so he's highly prolific. There's tons out there. He has series. He has stand alones and so it's nice to have a new author to be able to dip into and learn new things from. So that's Harlan Coben Run Away so far I'm loving it. Home was really, really interesting. I like that one, too.Sarina:                                 39:32                    Well, Jess, I love Harlan Coben. And there's a lot to learn there, also. One of his novels (my favorite one) was made into a movie in French.Jess:                                     39:49                    What's the book?Sarina:                                 39:51                    I'm trying to figure that out right now. Tell No One. It's a wonderful novel.Jess:                                     39:56                    I actually originally heard about him because Stephen King talks about him a lot. I think they're buds or something or he just really likes his work, but I just never occurred to me to listen to any of his books or read any of his books. But I'm glad I am.Sarina:                 &#

3:45 new-ish Specialized Shiv10:30 custom aero extensions17:00 swim data collection / display devices17:00 form goggles22:00 platysens marlin23:15 instabeat 24:45 omius headband 23:40 floe bottle 36:00 run to the top of Mauna LoaFor more context on the effects of heat on endurance training and racing, have a listen to our 'It's Getting Hot in Here' episode. Check out the latest smart trainer from 4iiii the Fliiiight. And ask your questions about Michael's group strength classes and indoor track workouts by emailing him at info@x3training.com