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GOSPEL POWER l AUGUST 6, 2021 Our Lord's Transfiguration Gospel: Mk 9:2-10 2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. 9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean. I n the person of Jesus, heaven has come down on earth to establish God's reign among earthly creatures and to make human beings God's children who participate in the divine life. When Jesus embraced our earthiness, his solidarity with us was complete, his divine splendor veiled in our mortal flesh. The transfiguration is a momentary lifting up of the veil to give us a brief glimpse of that splendor which the Beloved Son possesses in his union with his Father, and which is at the same time a preview of the future life to which Jesus will give us access. The transfiguration is a necessary prelude to the drama on Calvary, for glory is inseparable from the cross. Jesus will share with us his divine sonship by subjecting himself to the human experience of suffering and death which will permanently remove the veil that conceals his divine splendor. Lord Jesus, may we never fall for the illusion of seeking glory apart from the cross. Amen

Intro: Writing personallyLet Me Run This By You: What would you say to your inner child?Interview: We talk to Ed Ryan about surviving two theatre schools, surviving 9/11, and interrupted grief.FULL TRANSCRIPT (UNEDITED):I'm Jen Bosworth from me this and I'm Gina Polizzi. We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? And I'm scared. Like, I think partially 1 00:00:34This is this, the main character is based on me. Like all our character. I think every writer writes about themselves. I don't care what you say, aspects of themselves. So I'm like, man, would I do this stuff? Would I, how far would I go to people please? Like that? That is what I'm wrestling with. That is what is, is, how far do we go? And how far would I go to people please? Now I don't think I'd go that far, but people do go far. 2 00:00:59People go far and feel like they're in a few state and feel like it wasn't them. That was making the choice. And, and I believe that I believe that that can happen. I also just think it's interesting in the lens of like, feeling, having felt for a long period of your life, that you weren't allowed to have certain emotions. It makes sense to me that you would be surprising yourself with where you can go in your imagination, but that would also lead to, you know, surprisingly like our, we had a conversation one time on here where I said, I don't feel like I've ever seen you angry. So, and you, you said you do get angry, but I just wonder if maybe there's just a lot of unexpressed anger and this is a great way to get it out. 1 00:01:42Totally. And I, and I think you're right. I think you're right on. And so, and I also think, and I wonder how, you know, how you feel about the idea that writing, right? Somebody, I wonder if people write and I don't know how you write, but if people read, I mean, I know a little how you write, but if peop, if people can ever write fully devoid from their own person, you know, like, like where they don't put themselves in their characters or their, if they're writing, I guess maybe if you're writing non-fiction I don't know. But when you write, do you agree that like each part of you and every, oh yeah, 100%. 2 00:02:24And I, I, in reading the Stephen King book about writing, you know, he, he realized like years after the fact about the way that he was writing himself in his stories, like, I guess famously and in misery, he is when he was at the height of drug addiction. And he, at the time he did not feel that he was writing the story about himself, but that's what it ended up being. Yeah. I mean, in part, just because like, how else would you do it? I mean, you only have your own as close as you can be to anybody else. What you really stuck with 24 7 is the ruminations in your own mind, the reactions to things, your worldview, your worldview is, is so people can recognize a lot of things about their worldview, but then there's all kinds of things about their own perspective that they would never think unless they had occasion to see it, contrast it with something else and say, oh, wow, I think about that really differently. 2 00:03:21So anyway, I think it's cool. I think it's great that you're going there and I'm excited to see where it goes. 1 00:03:32Let me run this by you. I started seeing, so I had a therapist that was this Orthodox Jewish man that I stopped seeing. It was just it. I always what I, you know, and it's so blatant at the time after, but during, during, I never see, like, I'm looking for like a father figure. And, and he started to say things that were, and it's all I'm on the phone, you know, but like he has six kids and he wanted to, he started saying things like, do you think that this is because you never had kids kind of like why my emotions? 2 00:04:13And I said, you know, 1 00:04:15I don't know it could be, but I, and you know, it was it's interesting. So I just had to say, you know what, I'm so-and-so, I think that I'm going to take a pause on this. I just don't feel that were, I was proud of myself. I said, I just don't feel like it's a good match right now for me, a good fit. I couldn't just say it's so funny. I have to qualify it. Like, I couldn't just say this isn't a good fit. I was like, not a fit right now for trying to soften that. Just ridiculous stuff, but that's how I did it. And yeah. And so I, I was like, okay, well, do I want to get another therapist? Or do I want to, so I do see like a coach, like, what do I want to do? 1 00:04:55So I started seeing, I had a first session with a coach outside in a park. Who's a, she coaches, she does a lot of career coaching, but I just, like, I've known her for a while. And I liked her and we got to some interesting stuff like, you know, and you've said some stuff about like inner child stuff. Like I never really felt like I could connect with the idea of making peace or taking care of my inner child. And I couldn't understand why. And I think I got to the point where the reason I I'm afraid to things that my inner child will hurt me or that I will hurt it. 2 00:05:35Her. Yeah. 1 00:05:37So, so I thought I'd tell you about that. 2 00:05:41Hurt you. Any idea what you mean by that? Like 1 00:05:44Sabotage, like my inner child is so angry at the way that my parents, and then I have been treating her that she will fuck things up. Hm. 2 00:05:54Yeah. By misbehaving. Yes. 1 00:05:57Misbehaving sabotaging. So there's not a trust there. There's not a trust. And I wouldn't have ever, whenever I, in the various forms of therapy and schooling that I've done in this area, I always felt really, it's not even that I bristled with when we did inner child work. It's like, I thought, well, I don't even know this is weird. I don't even know what this is. 2 00:06:23Yeah. I totally, I can totally relate. And I think I have had the same exact opinion, this very cynical sort of point of view. It all seems so I would just want to roll my eyes talking about inner child, but I think it's like that thing that I was telling you about when I did that thing on clubhouse and everybody was playing and I was just afraid of it. I think it's just that I think you learn to hide the parts of yourself that get you in trouble in the world for whatever reason. And then if there are parts of yourself that you first identify when you were very young, they're locked away. Good. They're locked away. Real good. And there's a real, I mean, just intense fear about going there. 2 00:07:07And I guess like the best signal that I have about that is that every time I start to think about it or talking about it, I start to cry, which, okay, well, there's obviously a lot there. I, I don't believe, see my thing about it is like for a long time I did therapy. I did. I've I'll total in total. I've probably done therapy. I'm going to say for like 10 years between different therapists. I, it's not that I think I'm done. It's not, you know, it's not that I don't want to be in therapy. I, there are reasons that I'm not in it right now, but I just very quickly be talking about my childhood became like, okay, but I talked about it and now I'm just complaining. 2 00:07:56Or, you know, now this is just, when are you going to get over? And that's the voice of like everybody in my family, like get over it. Everybody's everybody hurts. Like not even, not, not even everybody hurts, just like, get over it. You're your grownup. There's no time for that anymore. And I, that is the voice that I cannot quiet in my own head. So, whereas at one point in my life, I thought I had done all that. Cause I did 10 years of therapy. Now I realized I just never even approached it. I stuck with things that were more happening in my life now. Or like I would spend a lot of time like crying about my dad or whatever, but it wasn't like it's, you know, that was about him. 2 00:08:37It was about me talking about him. It wasn't really about me talking about me because I think when I started talking about myself, that's when all the walls and defenses went up and I was like, you know, and I, and I couldn't do it. And Aaron has said to me, a number of times, like you've never really dealt with this stuff and I, and I've just been so incredulous, like, of course I have, I've done, I've dealt with it a ton, but I really haven't. I haven't, I've done like layers of it, but I haven't, I haven't done all the layers. 1 00:09:06Yeah. And I, I could totally hear that and I can totally relate to not feeling, to feeling like I haven't really touched on it. And the reason I know that I haven't gotten to the core of sort of any inner child work is that yesterday when I was, when she had me doing an exercise outside in the park, like just trying to approach my inner child, the only way I could make contact with her was across a field with loud noise in the background with me yelling and her yelling back. So like not screaming at each other, but like there was, had to be a barrier. Like I couldn't the intimacy of approaching her straight on was too much. 1 00:09:46So I was like, Hey, I'm over here. And she said, hi, I'm over there. And she was like, really suspicious of me and stuff. But I knew like, oh, I'm really having, I have a lot of trepidation about approaching this part of myself. And so I have to have a separation, like a barrier. It has to be, it has to be moderated. It can't be like, I can't just walk up to her. There's no way in hell. There's no way. 2 00:10:13What's it. Like when you look at pictures of yourself, when you were really young, what did you think? 1 00:10:17I feel like I don't even know who that person is. Yeah. 2 00:10:21I have the same exact, whereas I know this just could be the difference between thinking about yourself and thinking about another person. When I look at even very, very young, young baby pictures of my kids, I think, oh yeah, their personality was there. You know, from the beginning, this is who they still are. And sometimes I'll share, I'll show them something and they'll say, you know, it seems like they kind of recognize. Yeah, that's me. Whereas I look at that person and I think, I mean, I've seen this picture before, but I, I have what, who is that per yeah, I've just have no idea. I think I, what I basically did, starting in theater school is just form a whole new set to start over. 2 00:11:05I just formed a whole new identity. I was just like, not to the point that some people get like my sister where they tell everybody that our parents are dead. But to the point of just, yeah, I'm this person now. And you know, and I'm, and I'm done with that other person, whoever she was, I hated her no matter what. And of course the realization realization I have recently is no, but I still hate myself. So I really haven't a changed divorce. And I, and there's a, you can't walk away from who you are, you have, you have to. 1 00:11:37Right. And, and, and I, I, my coach, Deanna, was like I said, I don't know who that person is. And she said, she's you, you just haven't integrated her yet. Like there it's you. And I was like, whole, I saw it as a separate sort of. So it's interesting. And she said, trauma, you know, we talked about neuroplasticity of the brain and trauma and, and how it's rewiring. Like, so, and she's like, I don't really believe in, well, I don't know if she said this, but I got, kind of got the feeling. She was like, she didn't really believe in mantras and all that, but she said, what happens? What do you start telling yourself when you are scared? 1 00:12:19Or when you have an audition, that's scary. I say, I'm going to screw this up. That's my mantra. I'm going to somehow screw this up. I'm going to, she's like, all right, we have to cut that off immediately. She's like, I don't care what you say, but you can't say that to yourself anymore. So I was like, okay, what can I believe? Like, what can I get stand behind? Because I'm not going to say, oh, I'm the greatest actor and everything. No, no, no. I don't believe that. I don't believe that at all. But what I do believe it, I do have evidence to show in my heart and in my bones that things have that everything is happening at the time it's supposed to be happening. I do believe that I do. I can stand behind that. I can't say it's good. I can't say it's awesome, but I can say, so she said, all right, we're just going to go with that. So now, like, you know, I think, oh, what if I get a call back for this role I really want, and I know I'm going to fuck it up. 1 00:13:04And I said, Nope, it's going to happen. If, if I do fuck it up, it's going to be, because it was the time to fuck it up. Like I have to believe in the timing of things, because I can't really believe in the goodness of things, is that, you know, 2 00:13:17Right. And sort of similar to that is how I'm always just thinking in my mind that I'm just starting over at that. I'm always just putting the other the past behind me. It's, that's not you that you can't really do that. And, and it's all, it's every failure in every experience you go through every part and every iteration of yourself is a part of whatever it is now. It's not. So what's what this is making me think about is when I was in private practice, I became sort of known for treating really severe trauma cases. And so almost all of them had did. 2 00:13:58And the technique for integration when a person has multiple selves and just for people who are listening, it's not like civil, civil, and bark, like a dog, whatever. It's really a lot more subtle than that. Now in severe cases, people have these few states where they go and they're just doing something else. I mean, I had, I had clients who would get themselves. They would go into a few state and then do terrible things that really dangerous, dangerous, terrible thing. But the technique is you have them all sit around a conference table. 2 00:14:38You have, what's amazing to me is if, if you're talking to a person who suffers with us and they've never heard this technique before, they never go conference table, they go, okay. Yeah. They're, I mean, they're just immediately, oh, that's a good idea. They can all come together because of they're in their experience. They feel or see. And they all have very often, they all have different names and different ages and they have different things and they fight with each other about what they're doing. So I say, let's just do the conference table thing. Let's have everybody meet together and we can work on the agenda. But like the underwriting overriding thing has to be we, whatever we do, we want to do it United. 2 00:15:20And what it gets tricky is when you're, you're not doing it United and everybody's, and that's the sabotage thing. That's what you get a lot of it. The sabotage thing is like this one is, and it's all because it was all a coping strategy for not being able to, you know, the parts of yourself that were rejected by whomever get shunned. They don't go away. They just get shunted off into another part of you. And it's funny because I really see a lot of my dysfunction feels splintered like that. Like I can say, I can click into a mode. That's happy, happy, and positive. And, but then if I'm not feeling happy and positive, then it's like, I'm not that person anymore. 2 00:16:03I'm just this other sad, depressed person. Or sometimes I'm, you know, we all have it to some degree and I feel it a little too. It doesn't feel like different parts of me that have different names, but it still feels like it needs a lot more integrating. 1 00:16:18Yes, I totally agree with that. And the other thing I worry about, and I think, and I, I don't know if you've ever worried. I worry that might the, that part of myself, the small, vulnerable, whatever, I would say five or six year old part of myself is going to disclose some, even more deep trauma happened. 2 00:16:38Okay. There you go. That's probably exactly right. 1 00:16:41And I don't want to, and I am like, I don't know if I can handle that. Like I, so she is the keeper of secrets of when I was young and who knows what the hell really went on. Like I could have been worse than I thought is the, is the, is the, is the overarching fear 2 00:16:59I can see why you would be afraid then. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if I wonder if part of your way it is going to be instead of, or like in addition to fearing that is like, yeah, that's scary, but she needs help. She needs, yeah. 1 00:17:14Yeah. That's what, that's what Deanna said too. It was like, yeah. She needs to be seen and heard. Yeah. And that's your way to freedom. And I was like, what? Because whenever someone says the way to freedom, like that interests me because freedom from such self doubt, freedom from such self-loathing or fear, you know, self like freedom from that seems amazing. So if someone tells me, you want to get free from this, you know, as long as they're not telling me some wackadoo stuff, but you, you want freedom from this thing, then it's going to take a certain amount of work. I'm like that, that I'm curious if I will do that word, which is just to say 2 00:17:58To our listeners, that the experience of doing this podcast has people are always reporting to us. Oh, I've reconnected with people. I'm, I'm healing things and remembering things, but that's true for us too. And I have reconnected with people that I haven't spoken to in a number of years. And it's so gratifying. I mean, that, that's actually another piece of this disintegration thing is like the person I was when I was in theater school and the friends I had. And I just basically with the exception of you just moved on from that and never looked back and you know, these are people that I love that I loved then, and that, you know, as I'm reconnecting with them, I'm like, oh yeah, you're amazing. 2 00:18:48And I'm just so grateful that we're having the opportunity to do this. I, this is what college reunions are meant to do, but they don't because it's kinda like one, you know, it's just, it's all because you just get through one layer of like, well, what do you look like? And what are you doing? As, you know, as an and, and I guess social media has changed that for people, like they get a better sense, but, but that's even, that is not the same as actually talking to somebody who you haven't talked to. And then now I'm like texting with people and it's fun. It's and then the other thing, which I've mentioned to you at least once before, but I'm still thinking about a lot is the people who I don't remember, but who remember me to me, that means I have just been so self absorbed that w that to, to a great degree. 2 00:19:43When I think back about that time, I, I almost can only think about myself and how I felt about things and whether I was getting treated well, or, you know, instead of like the fact, I mean, I guess that's human, but I just feel like if there's somebody who remembers me, then there's a re then the reason that I don't remember them is not anything other than I was just paying only attention to myself. And I, and I have compassion for myself about it because I, you know, it was just doing the best I could, but I'm interested in going back and healing those riffs too, because I, I think that something happens that has happened to me over time is like, I was never the most popular or the least popular. 2 00:20:37I was always in the middle, which meant that I ended up looking down on the people who were less popular than me and, and looking up to and resenting the people. So it was, I was just seeing everything in terms of like status status. Yeah. That's what it is. I have been entirely status obsessed in a way that is a complete surprise to me. I had no idea that I was status obsessed and it makes sense because that's how my parents are. That's how everybody, I mean, that's how a lot of people are. Why would I be unique? Why would I be exempt from 1 00:21:10Them? Well, that's the thing. I mean, I think that we, that I get get, so I get so trapped in thinking I'm uniquely where I'm at, and that is garbage. I am a unique human because everyone is to a certain extent. And then we're all the freaking same. We're all worried about what we look like, what we sound like, who, what, what other people think of? What other people think of us and how we're coming off. And, you know, that's part of being human, but I think you're right. I think for me as well, when people remember things, I don't remember, people were like, yeah, we were friends and I'm thinking we were friends. And that is because I was too busy probably thinking about myself and what else I could do, or why it's, it's what they say in 12 step programs, really about self centered fear. 1 00:21:55It's like, I'm so self-centered, and, and 2 00:21:59She'll warm. I'm I'm shit, but I'm, but I'm 1 00:22:03Yeah, shit. Or I'm the special warm and a, not a worker among workers, you know, like it's, it's, it's an interesting thing. And we come by and see the thing that's really also interesting to me is that we come by it, honestly, that is the part that I have to remember. It's that the people come by the shit, honestly, including me, I'm not so special that I don't come by it, honestly, it's not right. You know? 2 00:22:26Yeah. I mean, right. Yeah. I think it is. It's completely amazing. I'm completely great. I, I'm an apropos of our conversation that we had a while ago about like constantly evaluating our progress. Like when I can get away from doing that, I'm just full of gratitude for, for, for what we're, what we've already done. Even if we never did it again after this, what we've already done has been so personally helpful. Yeah, 1 00:22:54Me too. And I do see it as a way also as, as we move forward as artists, as a way of building allyship with people that I once looked at as not nemesis, maybe, but like as adversaries or doing better than me or doing worse than me, or now it's, it just seems more they're equal. Like I feel more equal with people and I think that's a better way to go, because the other way is like, 2 00:23:20It's also just the truer way to go. Like, it's just a lie. We tell ourselves when we think we're so sped. It's like, okay. But I mean, among other things, it's simply a false, 1 00:23:31Which is why, like, things like the like organized, like army and stuff works because you all get put in basic training and no one is better than the, there were, you're all lower, lowest on totem pole. And I think that builds some kind of comradery. And yeah. So anyway, I just, I just, I don't know why I was thinking about that, but I liked that idea. 2 00:23:55I, I started to watch some of the showcase this year is DePaul theater school shows. I was just curious if you had seen any of them. I 1 00:24:07Have seen it. And you know, it's interesting. I, the, the way that they filmed it, for the most part, it's the same camera shots, right. Of each I'm like, okay, okay. I think that we could have been a little more original with that, but I think they were trying to be equal to everybody and not quote you. And, and also 2 00:24:30It's not a film school. I mean that, you know, I, I, for that reason, I give it a lot of credit because it's like, oh, wow. I wonder if somebody had been tasked doing that in our year. I'm, I'm not certain we would have gotten anywhere. It would've been 1 00:24:44In video camera shaking and like, yeah, yeah, 2 00:24:47Yeah. So it's cool. I'm happy for them that they have this. I mean, I'm happy for them that they have this access. It's probably has the same effect that it did when we did the in-person thing, which is like, not a lot, unless they're going to move to LA. But what I felt was interesting is looking at the acting and just remembering, like, talk about not being special. We all did bad acting in the same way, you know, which is to say not connected, not real, very, very self-monitoring of like, how is this coming across? You can see people thinking that, how is this coming across? Versus there was a few people who was like, oh no, they're in it. 2 00:25:29They're totally there. They're there. It's just ed. And I say, this was so much compassion because I think probably the entire time I was just looking, I was just observing myself. I'm sure I did a terrible job. Yeah. And 1 00:25:41I can see it too. And I, you, it sticks out when someone's really in it. And it is so hot. And we said this, and I, I think we've talked about this on the podcast. It's so hard to get there. It's hard to get, to stop the self-monitoring to be in the moment and just tell the story or be in the it's so hard. So what it happens and you see it, you're like, oh, that's gold, that's gold. And it's not to say that, you know, we all get there at different times and we have different moments of it, but yeah. 2 00:26:09Yeah. What's hard to account for, I mean, you know, to a certain degree, there is only so much teaching that somebody can do of actors, because what you really need also is just these life experiences that either do, or don't lead you in the direction of really understanding yourself. And if you're a person who is not interested in understanding yourself, you're probably pretty limited as an actor or, or like, or maybe even very successful, but just that one, you know? Yeah. Right, 1 00:26:39Right. You might, you might make a million dollars, but as we talked about it, that not equal being in the moment and being it truly like for me in an experience, just because you made a million dollars doing it does not. I, I is a recent, recent, recent discovery that worth and money are not necessarily the same. Oh my God. Oh my God. 2 00:27:04Me too, girl. Me too. I'm just like, yeah, because actually there are other, I've heard the phrase. It's not always about money, but I really have never lived it. I have always been like, no, no, no. It's always 0 00:27:26Today on the podcast, we're talking with Edward Ryan, Edward is someone who went to the theater school at DePaul university and then left and then went on to have many adventures and different incarnations as an artist and is still on that adventure. And he's thoughtful and kind. So please enjoy our conversation with Edward Ryan. 3 00:27:47I was, I was a year below you guys. Okay. Okay. Okay. Edward, 2 00:27:52Ryan, congratulations. You survived theater school. I did twice. Twice. Yeah, because you just went back a few years ago to get your degree. So tell us about 4 00:28:03That. That was a very different, yeah. So you know what I did do some local theater, like a while ago I met a costumer and his name was Frank and he wound up teaching at a really small private school in Springfield, Massachusetts. And he's basically started a theater program there that's called American international college. And he said to me one day, like, how come you never finished your degree? He was like, give me your transcripts. And I, I, I got my transcripts. And he was like, you could be done in like a year and a half or two years and have a decree. 4 00:28:47Well, I didn't know I was going to be so, you know, affected by, was it, it's a school that serves a lot of sort of underserved communities. So there's a lot of first-generation Americans, a lot of first-generation college students. And in contrast to a place like DePaul, although we complained about the building on north Kenmore, the facility, there's nothing. I mean, they have nothing, these kids and, but their like passion and their drive is really what you know is so inspirational, you know? And they're like, we can make theater out of anything, you know, out of nothing. And it was kind of a strange situation because Frank and I were very good friends, you know? So all of a sudden he was like my professor and I mostly had to do academic classes to graduate there. 4 00:29:33You know, they took all my credits and I re I did a history of theater. I was like for like the third time, like all of, you know, this time I wasn't able to cheat. As I remember 2 00:29:46Cheating, I did cheat, oh 4 00:29:48My God. Anaconda make us, had every test that doc, whatever his name was, Jack O'Malley gave us. Oh, hilarious. And I've always been really studious, but like second year I was like, oh yeah. You know, give them up. 2 00:30:05That's funny because I don't actually remember the cheating thing, but when Dave was on, he, he referenced that, I guess it was widespread. I mean, you know, in a way, I'm sure they were like, oh, these kids they're so dumb. Just something easy. 4 00:30:20Get the same test every year, year after year after year. And luckily I lived, I lived with second years. So it was like, and you know, and she had them all, like, she was a stage manager, dramaturgy, Jenna, all a file. I just had to go in every week and pull it out. Yeah. 2 00:30:35I mean, are you the, one of the people who just got a brochure from DePaul and that's how you went 4 00:30:40With, yeah. With this gesture on the front, I never went to visit the school. I auditioned in New York and it was, you know, I had applied to NYU and I had an audition set up, but their auditions for summer, I didn't audition at the same time. And it was like really late. And I applied to Providence college. That was, if I wanted to like go the more academic route, dammit. And I remember going for my audition and I, I like heard really quickly that I got into DePaul and I just decided I never even went on my audition for NYU. 4 00:31:21I, I thought that the city would probably be a little too, you know, I was, I lived near the city. So it was like always my grandfather lived in the city and I thought that's going to be too much of a distraction, you know? And I really wanted to, you know, get an education. So I went to Chicago and I flew out and my parents drove all my stuff out. 2 00:31:42What, like, what did you make of it? Day one. What was, where was your head at with it? 4 00:31:47I was like, Chicago is so clean compared to New York. Yeah, it really is. I lived in Seton hall and I lived on the fourth floor in the corner room that was like ginormous with Cedric was Cedric steins was my roommate. And we had this other third roommate that we never liked. And then he got kicked out of the dorms, like halfway through the year. So we had this great big room and it was right above. I felt like the blues brothers, cause he looked at our window and they're like the El tracks by, but it was really close to taco burrito palace. Oh 2 00:32:24My God. I forgot all about TVP. Okay. Well they have many, you know, there's like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I think that one is actually still there. 4 00:32:39That place like on a Friday or Saturday night was like, you couldn't get near it. And Rose's Tavern is like hole that the Mesopotamian woman who was like, let anybody drink. Okay. If you could walk, you choose giving 2 00:32:53Toddlers shots of you guys 4 00:32:56You'd be surprised. And there was some sort of characters in that joint. I mean, I remember like winding up at some apartment and being like, I shouldn't be here. What am I doing? 2 00:33:10So, but you left, you left after your second year. Okay. And it was rough. You said you had a rough, 4 00:33:16It was, I was, I was planning on living there. So I was living there for the summer. I was living with Cedric again and then Noel wrath. Yeah. And we were living like sort of west of everything, like up Armitage. It was like desolate. It was like this really weird apartment where I had the closet as my room. And I just remember like taking out the garbage, had to go out the back doors to this garage. And there was like this Harley biker who was always hanging out in there. I don't know if I was just like, this is where children get molested. I can't, you know, it was odd and Cedric left and he went to Africa, there was a trip to like Africa. 4 00:33:56And I remember Susan Lee was on that trip because he was like, he called us and he was like, oh, I met Susan Lee and wait, 2 00:34:07Susan Lee was just randomly in Africa with this girl. Don't you remember? That's when she came back and said to Erica, oh, I've got to teach you African dance. Okay. 4 00:34:18But, you know, I really, I really want, I was like, you know, I was kind of shocked about it and you know, I think it was a lot for me to go there. You know, I'm the youngest of five. And then my mother had remarried and I have four step kids. So my parents had like nine kids under the age of like 30. And you know, financially that no matter how much money you make, I think it's, it's a burden. And I was really committed to like the theater school. And I didn't have a warning that was sort of, you know, productive. I remember going to Rick Murphy's office and not having any morning, my first year of going in and sitting down him being like, you're fine. 4 00:34:59Get out of here. You know? And then my second year he was like, what the fuck is going on with you? You know? And he's like, what's up a tree Kessler. And I was like, I don't know if she hates me. And he was like, get your shit together or something like that, you know? But there was no like sort of actionable steps. And then when I left and asked back, I was like, wow. And you were talking about mushrooms. So for the first time I ate flushes and I wandered around Chicago and I found all these incredible places. I was like, oh my God, like a Paul said and all that. I was like input. And like I realized, I was like, in my own backyard, I thought I was lost. But I, you know, I have like some journal entries about Sundays are the best day in the world. 4 00:35:40Everybody does what they want. Even God rested on Sunday. And it was so much fun. Yeah. All by myself, just wandering around the city. But you know, people were like, oh right. Speaking of that, I remember I was dying during Eric Slater's interview because we got a phone call at like 6:00 AM, one day at apartment two downstairs. And it was Eric and he was, he had been arrested. And it must've been when you guys were doing Andrew CLIs and the lion, because he was like walking home. It was really late. He was walking home from our house, I guess. And the cops stopped him and arrested him. 4 00:36:21And we were like, he had to be like at the Merle reskin theater for this purport, like that morning. And I think we wound up calling John Bridges and it turns out they had just taken and he looked like a shady character. 3 00:36:38I don't know. But I wanted to ask 2 00:36:43Total digression, but I always thought in lineups, they got other criminal, like people that they know, they know and they can just random. Yeah. They get rent. I don't know about now. But you used to do this random ass people for lineups. Yeah. But the way you get them there is by arresting them. Well, I think you can, apparently in Chicago, 4 00:37:05I think he was drunk. He was probably stumbling. Maybe he was like, had a few beers and they were just like, oh yeah, public drunkenness let's go. But that was like one of the funniest. And it was like the day that my mother called me late, it was like crisis. You know, we went into crisis mode and it was like, she got out her clipboard and like gave us all the assignments. And then my mother called me that morning and she was like, is everything all right? And I always thought, I was like, you know, my mom just says that like intuition, you know? And I was like, everything's fine. You know? Like, and I remember saying to her, I'm like, I think your psychic should always, so you're, you're saying, so 2 00:37:47You didn't, it was, there was no, I mean, there was a warning without any information in it or 4 00:37:55Yeah, there wasn't really anything specific, you know? And like I had truly Kessler my second year for voice and speech. And I had had Ruth's Rupert who you, she was there for a really short period of time. And then she left, she came back and she was like, oh, I got a contract. I'll be here next year. And then she came back like the next week and was like, I'm leaving. And she got a job at Yale and she went off to teach at Yale and she taught Christian Linklaters work. And then Trudy, our second year. And I was sort of excited to, I guess, first she taught LSAC and other things and was doing Linklater again. 4 00:38:37So it was sort of like the same class again in a row. And I think Ruth was a really great Linklater teacher. And I don't know if I don't know Trudy and I just had something. I still tell, I, I S I'm still in contact with Ruth. She's my Alexander technique teacher now. And there was a 13 year gap in our relationship, but she'll always say like, oh, I'm going to this conference, Judy. I said, hi. You know, cause when I got my letter, it said that I had three absences from voice and speech. 4 00:39:18And to this day I say, no, I didn't, I would have never done that. Like I was pretty committed. She, I had a full freedom, so I was born like tongue tie and she was like, I want you to go. I never had any speech issues, but she's like, I want you to go see this doctor. So I went to see this Dr. Bastion. And he was an ear nose and throat guy that worked with actors in Chicago. And he was like, oh my God, let me clip it. And he's like, I've never gotten to do it. And I was like, so it's a little thing underneath your tongue. So it's, it actually tells your tongue behind your bottom teeth. Like everybody's develops that way when you're pouring it recedes. 4 00:40:00If you're not, they usually just clip it when you were born, but they never discovered mine. And so I wound up letting this doctor like do it. And then I had rehearsal for like my intro with Trudy. And I just remember meeting her in her office and her being like sticking her thumb in my mouth and being like, oh yeah, you have a significant overbite. Like, and just saying like, you know, you don't have a speech issue, but maybe if you got your tongue released, it would change your speech. You know, it's, I would love to see what it does. You know, I just felt like I was pretty committed to it. And David was my acting teacher second year. 4 00:40:40And in David's class it was like, I could do no wrong. You know what I mean? I remember like almost hating it, like him being like some like, okay, you know, you critique each other's like scenes or improv or whatever you were doing. And he would say, so who saw what ed was doing? And somebody was critiquing it. And they were like, what are you? He was like, you know, what are you talking about? Like, he was like, he was fine. Like, he was like, my opinion is the only one that matters. So, you know, and just being like, okay, so now they hate, 3 00:41:14I have to say I'm shocked that, you 2 00:41:16Know, usually the story is that the second year acting teacher hates your guts and then you get cut. Like, that was my experience. Cause I was cut and then asked back crazy, crazy. But, but it's interesting that David, that thought you could do no wrong in your, as your acting teacher? 4 00:41:39Well, it was really weird because I had David and first quarter I was in David's intro and he gave me a better grade in my intro. Then he did an acting class and I remember him saying to me, do you know why I did that? And me being like, yeah, like, and really having no clue. But I remember, I remember getting into a fight with him in that rehearsal for that intro and him saying something to being able to like, okay, well what, what, what do you want? And he was like, I don't know what, you know, just, you better try something else. Cause that's not working. Like he yelled at me and everybody was like, oh, and David and I used to take these, walks around the block at the theater school and have these little chats. And he was like, you know, he, he, he gave me every indication that he thought I was talented. 4 00:42:22And then I remember my second year of him saying to me, do you really want to be here for another two years? And I was like, well, yeah, you know, I really want a degree. And he was like, what are you going to get out of us Shakespeare classes? And I remember, and I was like, oh. And then I remember telling him about my issues with Trudy and him being like, you know, Trudy he's like, I'm the head of the voice and speech, which I didn't even didn't really even know at the time, you know, it was odd to me that he was, and, and then, but then he gave me, but then he gave me a bad grade, like enacting class. And so it was sort of like this. I was like, what the fuck? 4 00:43:02Like what, you know? And I just, you know, and then in my intros I was always like a middle-aged alcoholic. Like every single one, you know, or that I was like the alcoholic vicar in that horrible, a farce that thought it'll coat did where my, like I walked in the room in my pants, you know? And Corpus, yeah. It was like, first of all, farce is tough. You know, it's a tough, and for some reason they thought, you know, I heard this a lot about our class. Like, oh, these guys could do it. Like they could graph it. Well, guess what we couldn't and it fucking sucked. It was just like Riddick. 4 00:43:43I was like, Betty Hill, is that what I'm doing? Like, it was just like, it, it, 2 00:43:50It, it's hard to be funny care, but like the experience it makes you funny 4 00:43:59Is that I remember seeing David's like intro second quarter. It was like bomb and Gilliad. And I was like, why don't I get to play one of these like transvestite hookers? Like I can do that. And then it just wasn't, it, it was like the autumn garden, my last one. And again, it was like, I mean, Eric Yancey, I drink so much peach tea my second year of, cause the dining room was my first one. And it was like all of these like waspy, you know, I played like one little boy, that's the scene. We, we, we sorta had a yelling match about, but it was so I don't know. I mean, I was, I was, I remember Noel being like I got in and you didn't. 4 00:44:43I was just like, I didn't really, the thing was, I thought they stopped going to New York for the, I didn't ever have a desire to be on television or in the movies I wanted to be in the theater. And I went to the theater school and I sort of saw that transitioning transition happening. It was kind of like, I have no desire to live in LA. I just think it's like the new years and fake foods. Like, that's all I could think of when I'm thinking of LA. Like it was a desert, everything there is artificial. Like every, every blade of grass is like planted. I don't know. And I thought I was okay with it for a while. Cause when I moved home and my stepfather died kind of suddenly like that summer and you know, it was one of those things like, okay, everything happens for a reason, you know, it's really hard. 4 00:45:34Yeah. My mom, my father had passed away, but he was sick for a really long time. And so I think she was like prepared for that and she wasn't really prepared for my stepfather dying. And so I was okay with it for a long time, but I really, till recently we realized like, I think it really, you know, I remember somebody calling me and asking me to do it a play and not wanting to do it because I had to a lot of musical theater. And I was like, when I did the first play, I was like, wow, musical series is so hard. I'm like, why am I doing this? Like, you know, I sang a lot, but I was like, I hate singing. 4 00:46:14You know, I really don't even like it. And I just, so I, you know, I never saw myself as any Shakespeare characters. Like I was like, you know, I had to read every male part in high school and English class. I read every like male part while the teacher read every female part. And I was like, I hate Shakespeare. Maybe this isn't the place for me. What was disappointing about it is that I wanted it to agree, you know? And I was a good student and I think that my circumstance, this is just sort of allowed me to sort of flounder a bit and not really have a, a footing, not really have any direction, you know? 4 00:47:01So I had some great mentors and I did do some more things and, but very little. And then I moved to New York and it was really not about that. You know, it was about just see what else was out there. I just excited. I was like, okay, I'm moving to New York. And I had worked for J crew for a couple of years and I had left and I called them up. It was like a move to the city. I needed a job and they gave me a job and I started going out in the city. Somebody took me to a nightclub and it was like the first time ever. I was like, you know, we would go see, I, I saw the last grateful dead show in Chicago. 4 00:47:45Like we went to fish, meaner Bana when we were out there. And when I went into this like sort of world of these nightclubs and sort of saw all of these like characters that were present, I sort of became one. You know, I was, it was like my job to go out and, and have fun in sort of a clown. And it was, it was an interesting time in my life. I like to call it the turn of the last century, but it was like from, so I guess I, I moved to the city from like 98 till 2000, or I guess it was 99 till 2003 is when I moved here. 4 00:48:37So I was there for about four years, you know, I worked at the world trade center that was, you know, and I think that compounded things. And I think it sort of made me realize that I was having a lot of fun in New York. You know, I had this, I had great roommates. We had a great loft in Brooklyn, these crazy parties that were like before Brooklyn was cool. I say like, we've priced ourselves out of it. You know, we made it cool. And then, but it was nothing I could sustain or really even monetize. 4 00:49:20You know, there was always like the job that I had to maintain to with, I really had no desire to do theater and I didn't for about another 10 years till I moved here. And, and I was okay with that, you know, I was sort of working in retail and I realized, you know, later that the whole going out and becoming this like character, which I didn't really think I was doing at the time, but I really was, you know, doing things that I'd never done before, or, you know, even these parties were like insane. 4 00:50:02We would like wear like Russian military uniforms and have 200 people in a Japanese go-go band at our house and fill up, we would like fill up kiddie pools with water. We had a great space. And so we did, and I lived with a caricature artist and all these kids from Vassar and it was just, you know, we'd get like a sitar player and, and have like an opium den. And I just 2 00:50:40Have a question I have to go back to, what was your character like? What was your, your nightclub character? Sure. 4 00:50:48So I always joke that I looked like, like huckleberry Finn, you know, I was working for J crew, but I was, I was just myself, you know, I, I would, I had my baseball cap and I had this baseball cap that said ack, which is actually the three letter code for new work airport. And I'm sorry for Nantucket airport. My initials are the Newark airport and people. And so ack people. And I would like, have my pants rolled up different, you know, I worked for J crew. So I was like a walking, like, you know, the J crew like twist that, how it used to be pants rolled up at different lengths and like maybe, or I'd wear like a crusher hat or something. 4 00:51:29And I'd get in line with these people who were like going to bang, bang, and buying their like, you know, tight leather pants and stuff. And it just became like this. I was, you know, I was kind of like a quirky, you know, I dressed, I danced a little funny. I, I attribute movement to music to that. You know, I sort of just followed these impulses that had me sort of stomping my feet a lot. And I danced with my face a lot and I would show up with like a big bunch of gerbera daisies and a couple inflatable sunshines. 4 00:52:08And, you know, I had one friend Franco, who's the only person that I ever went out with. I could always go out by myself and, you know, leave by myself. And I would just, you know, do these fun things. Like, you know, I wrote like a Valentine to the world and like, you know, we put on red paper and pass it out to everybody. Or we would, we'd bring junior mints to junior, was the DJ and pass them out to everybody. Yeah. And people, you know, I was talking about the hat. People would say like, like, what does ack stand for? What does ack stand for? And I got, you know, and that goes to the three letter code for Newark airport. 4 00:52:52And I got so sick of it. I started this thing, like the hairball remover that Cass asked for by name, you know, like, and I didn't really, I never, you know, I still sort of felt like I didn't belong there. You know, it was kind of like this secret thing, but you know, you cold places all the time. And then people start, you know, recognizing you and, you know, you start like getting in for free or, you know, and I found these places where it just seemed, I was appreciated, you know, people would, and I met a lot of such interesting people. I mean, everybody from people who were, you know, Sharman to, there was some pretty, you know, crazy shenanigans that went on, you know, at the time. 4 00:53:44And some people that, I mean, everyone from Tonya Harding and then it comes out and she was interesting to me, but that's like the funniest story I ever time, I let her Newport cigarette for her. Like I do the Catholics, I would see it. Evan am, you know? Okay. 2 00:54:01So I'm just, there's like a theme here, which is that you went to the theater school for two years, and then all of a sudden you had to leave while you might have otherwise been processing your grief about that. You had to go all of a sudden process with your mom because she lost her second husband. And then you moved to New York to get that life going. And then nine 11 happened and you were working at the world trade center. So you have had major Griffis interruptus. 4 00:54:36It's true. Yeah. I, I think, and, and, and I've recognized in my life that I have a hard time, like getting things done that are in my normal routine. Like say, like getting my car inspected, you know, it's like once a year and it's like, whoa, you know, so when things like that happen, it takes me a long time to regroup. And you know, I'm not gonna, you know, sit here and say that I'm, that it, you know, these things like ruined my life in any way, shape or form, you know, I I'm, I'm so lucky that I, you know, I've been in the circumstances that I've been in and that I have a great family and that, you know, I always had a bit of a safety net. 4 00:55:25Not like some people, like, I didn't really have a safety net. Like I felt like in New York, I couldn't do theater because I wasn't independently wealthy. And I, and there was just no place to, you know, you really, it just doesn't exist anymore. You know, if you notice people who go to New York and become directors and, you know, actors are either, you know, inherit that position. I have 2 00:55:52Another way of making money, even though even this Celia Keenan Bolger's of the world. I mean, it is, you cannot, you cannot make a living, even if you're on Broadway. 4 00:56:04Right. It's true. You know, and it's, and it just became, I just became disenchanted with it. You know, I was like, I mean, I still love the theater, you know? And I was, like I said, I was really lucky. I had, you guys were talking about those monologue books, know like Jocelyn Baird is the woman who edited all of those books, which I didn't know, but she was someone who I did theater with when I was like in high school, she's who she picked my audition monologues. And she, you know, I'm still in contact with her. She's a playwright. And she went to Yale. She coaches kids on how to get into programs now, stuff that I was like, what is my brand, that kind of thing. 4 00:56:54But it's like, I, commercial theater I guess, was exciting to me in a certain way, but it was, you know, it was other theater that I liked too. And I don't think it was just theater. I think it was just art, you know? And I think it was like art in life is what I've discovered. You know, like everything is art, you can make anything artistic. And I think that's kind of what I do. I just haven't shaped it in a way, like, I need to write a book. 2 00:57:28You haven't been able to shape it because you've had suspend a lot of time in reaction mode, you know, to various losses 4 00:57:35That, yeah, like the whole nine 11 thing. I, you know, I remember, I didn't tell anyone that for years, you know, it was just something that, I mean, my friends knew there was, there was an Edward Ryan who died that day, who was from Westchester and star. And so there were people like my old boss, Alyssa, who was a harpist and a composer who I worked for as a personal assistant. And, you know, she just heard like names bred off. She knew that's where I worked. You know, we didn't have very few people had cell phones. I ran into one of her three sons and he was like, we got to call my mother. 4 00:58:16I was like, she literally was, she was afraid to call my mom. She was like, that was the only contact number I had for you is your house phone. And I didn't want to upset her. And I was like, oh my God. I just thought I was Ted. I, I will, could been, you know, it was, yeah, it was, it was a rough, it was a rough day, you know, I've had better. And it was my first day back after like 10 days of vacation. And we opened, there was a mall in the building six where the big divot down to the path, trains wound up, you know, the, the second tower that fell. 4 00:58:58And luckily, you know, we were really lucky. We, I, we locked ourselves in at first. I mean, we didn't have any sort of clue what was going on, you know, when you were sort of in it, even it wasn't until we got to the Seaport that we realized that there was planes being flown into the building. You know, I was like, we heard the second plane and we crossed the street and we saw the second building on fire. But at that point we thought somebody was like dropping bombs or shooting missile. You know, we couldn't, you know, come up with the, the idea of someone flying planes into the building. And, and I was like, you know, what do I, what do we do? 4 00:59:41You know, I was like, we're dead. And I was all right with it actually, you know, it was a, it was a strange feeling, but I was like, I'm okay with that. Like, I'm not going to spend my last moments here, screaming, yelling, running, like, you know, there's like this peacefulness about it. And I remember my nephew had been born, my sister's second son who lives here and I had never met him. And so that was the only like little thing I thought about as a regret. And then luckily we were okay, you know, and it was a long, you know, process of sort of also from my loft, I could see this, you know, smoke stack for the next, you know, three weeks. 4 01:00:29And I, even that day, I didn't really process anything until I got to a friend's house. And I, I, they were all there watching the news and I laid down behind them. They were like sitting in my futon and I like fell asleep. My adrenaline like finally ran out and then I woke up and I went home to my loft and the two girls that lived there, Lily and Rebecca were there and they just like grabbed me. And I don't think I stopped crying for like two days. Like I didn't leave the house. I didn't do anything. You know, I talked to my mother, but it was sort of like I was at work. 4 01:01:09So it was like, you know, and I was responsible for other people. And I, I felt like I also have to advocate for those people in the moment, you know, where they were like, oh, you know, well, you can come work at, you know, fifth avenue that day. And I was like, yeah, they're not going to work anywhere today. You know? And it was so I didn't tell anybody because people's reactions were so strong and I didn't want to like tell the story all the time, you know? And so I just didn't tell anybody for a long time. And I realized when I did that, it was actually helpful, you know, to talk about it and to talk about the, the impact of it. 4 01:01:54And I think that it, you know, made me a little more, maybe maybe careless or in a living, but also really living like really living, you know, in the moment, you know, and knowing what that meant, nothing like a little, you know, little flying a plane into your buildings to wake you up. Yeah. Yeah. So that was 2 01:02:22Yet the third or the fourth thing, which is that you graduated from school three years ago. I don't know if you were what you were planning to do when you left, but then the pandemic happened. 4 01:02:34Oh yeah. Not even three years ago. It was a year ago. Oh, that's when you were done was a year ago. Yeah, it was may. I went back to school in 2000, I guess it was 2019. I went for, so I got a bachelor's degree, but I went to Nepal for two years and I went there for a year and a half. So I somehow finished a four year degree in three and a half years, but yeah, I had enough credits. So I was like, bye. And yeah, I was stage managing for them a production. They were doing a little shop of horrors, which was really interesting stage managing and just sort of doing everything for them, for these kids. And I felt so terrible for them. 4 01:03:14And I mean, everything is still there. Like all the props we made, everything is just, I keep thinking of the Titanic it's frozen in time because they decided that even in spring, they were going to be fully remote because they didn't, they didn't think it was fair to leave it to the last minute to decide they wanted people to be able to kiss those sort of ducks in a row and, and know what to expect. Cause I think that was really one of the hardest things on any students or kids during the whole pandemic was like every, you know, the, from month to month, they didn't know what was coming next. You know? 2 01:03:49I mean, I kind of feel like that's how I had spent sort of the stopping and starting of Edward Ryan you've sort of stopped and started and stopped and started. And, and now you, you, you started school, you finished school and you were, and so the kids too, but also you stopping and starting. Yeah. 4 01:04:07Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that, you know, I have a little more, I have some more skills to deal with it. You know, I have a little more, it's like my work at school, you know, just cultivating creativity with this class that really affected me and sort of made me realize that I was more than just a theater artist probably. And do you remember those photographs in the like nineties of like different, like the Beastie boys are run DMC and they were on the rooftops of buildings. So this guy, John Nardell was that photographer. He worked for all these different it's, he's not the person you would expect to be taking photographs, but he was a teacher at the school and he taught this class and this class is so annoying. 4 01:04:55Like it's going to really drive me crazy. And all the kids were really like, he railed against like every assignment does a lot of work and we weren't allowed to buy anything. We had to make everything. And, you know, he gave us a lot of art supplies, but we had to like build vessels to like carry them in and incorporate every handout somehow creatively into this, into this book. And I mean, it was a lot of work and I would, I stay up till three o'clock in the morning, like, you know, making these things and doing the stuff. And he was like, you know, your work is like, incredible it's so it's, it's so much beyond, you know, what were some of the kids are doing here? 4 01:05:36And I was like, well, it shouldn't be, you know, like I have a little, few more resources than they have in their dorm and, you know, but, but the kids too, they were sometimes inspired in that to, you know, these kids to inspire them was like such a, a great thing because they were, so some of them were so disenchanted. And by the end of this class, you could just see that they had all found like what they were good at, like what sort of creative, artistic thing that they really connected with and that they loved and that they were just excelling in. And it was so exciting. Like it was really a, it was a great class. 4 01:06:18I 2 01:06:18Love that it was called cultivating creativity. 4 01:06:21Yeah. Good class. And I mean, you know, we either studied artists or, or, or techniques from Zen, Zen, Zen doodle, or 2 01:06:35Zen doodle. Yeah. There's 4 01:06:36Dan tangles. Yeah. Like he was a Venn tangle instructor. So, you know, we started with that. We did, like, we studied like in Stein and like, it is like sort of pop flags. And we each took a, a country. We were assigned to country and their flag and we, you know, created, you know, work from that. It was a really a great class, but hard, you know, these kids were not used to being asked to do to actually like work. I mean, the school itself knows who their students are. I think a lot of them have, you know, different accommodations and different, you know, struggles or opportunities. 4 01:07:18And, you know, they come from, like I said, an underserved communities and places, and it's like one of those places where, you know, if like Frank, the guy who ran the program was like, I couldn't let, just kidnapped graduate, you know, you know, like there's no way. And you know, whether it's paying his tuition bill or, you know, or raising money, whatever needs to happen. And, and, you know, he got me ready and Frank got me writing again. I directed, I took a directing class, which was a great read life, you know, so great books. 4 01:08:01And it was fun. You know, I really sort of was inspired to just be creative. And I looked at some MFA programs and I auditioned at Yale and I, I think I realized I did not get in, but I realized before that, that I, and Ruth was like, do you really want to go there? And I was like, you know, it's yeah. You know, and she's like, Hmm. And when I went there, I realized what she meant it, like, first of all, it's a shithole about bad facilities, you know, while you're waiting in an old computer lab with like broken computers, stacked in the corner, going this girl from West Virginia, she was a young girls high. And from what I was like, oh, this is what you thought. Yeah. You know, and I sort of felt like they had given the keys, you know, it was like the opposite of the theater school. 4 01:08:48It was like the kids were running that place. I mean, they held all the power and I think it's, it's sort of the way things are going these days, you know, with the me too movement teachers are one of the teachers at Yale said we are the only teachers that have to teach our students naked sometimes. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? We are the only teachers that have to teach their students naked. Sometimes 2 01:09:15The students are naked or the teachers are the students. What for, for zoom? I mean, on zoom, they're naked. 4 01:09:21No. I mean just different productions where, you know, they are directing a student who is nude and that's why there's intimacy coaches and all of that now, you know, to protect them. Because I mean, you can obviously see working in close proximity with a naked student that could open you up to problems, say like at the school, like what did Kat call it a spontaneous sex of study naps. I mean, there was a loud groping and touching going on that was like, you know, probably, you know, innocent, but you know, could certainly have been a trigger for some people. Sure. You know, like Trudy shoving her thumb in my mouth. 4 01:10:03Yeah. Not good. Not good. Yeah. So that was the day I had three, sorry, three absences. And I was, and I, myself use was damaged by habitual use was the other thing on my letter when I got cut from the theater school, self use was debt is damaged by habitual. You understand what that means? Well, neither did I. I mean, but as I think at that age, I just thought, well, I'm damaged. 2 01:10:31I also can tell you that Rick Murphy, when we were doing set, a very similar thing that David said to you, so I'm doing space work. Rick comes up to me, whispers in my ear. What are you doing? Drop out and go see the world. 4 01:10:48Yeah. 2 01:10:49And I'm like, I'm like doing work first year, second year. I don't remember. He whispered in my ear, why are you here? Go, go see the world or something. And I was like, what is happening? 4 01:11:02You know, I loved Rick Murphy. I mean, he was just like magic, right? I mean, this is not a pipe dream was like, so in captivity it was called freewill and one lust back then. And that was the other thing I wanted to tell you 2 01:11:20That it changed names. Oh no, no, no

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »Alex Ross is the co-founder & CEO at Gregarious, Inc. Gregarious is the company behind Greg, an app dedicated to helping people grow healthier and happier plants. Greg's community has grown from 100 beta users in August 2020 to over 50,000 monthly active users today.Alex graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied data science and statistics at MIT. Alex has worked for companies such as Cisco, The Daily Aztec, and Cannon Trading.Prior to founding Gregarious, Alex spent 4 years as Director of Engineering at Tinder. Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year.In this episode, you'll learn: The two critical steps in making a successful app An ingenious strategy for partnering your app with retail companies Why you should involve your customers in content creation Links & Resources Tinder Enplug fitbod app Y Combinator (YC) Alex Ross' Links Greg app Alex's Twitter: @AreteRoss Job opportunities at Gregarious Alex's LinkedIn Gregarious, Inc. on LinkedIn Follow Us:David Barnard: https://twitter.com/drbarnardJacob Eiting: https://twitter.com/jeitingRevenueCat: https://twitter.com/RevenueCatSub Club: https://twitter.com/SubClubHQEpisode TranscriptAlex: 00:00:00The two steps in making a successful app business are make something worth using, and then put it in front of the people who would use it.If you have a plant, and you don't know what to do with it, we solve that problem.So, what we did is we reached out to a bunch of plant retailers, “Hey, we will help your customers have a positive outcome with your product.”Can you put in our little QR code? And now when these retailers ship out a new plant, every single one of them has this little QR code in it.It led to our first 15,000 users, I'd say. David: 00:00:30Welcome to the Sub Club podcast. I'm your host, David Bernard. And with me as always, Jacob Eiting. Hello, Jacob.Jacob: 00:00:53Happy to be here. David: 00:00:55You sound incredibly happy.Jacob: 00:00:57It's great. It's a Friday, David. The sun is shining. They're grilling a bunch of chickens in my hometown. I got nothing to complain about. It's gonna be great.David: 00:01:05Our guest today is Alex Ross, founder and CEO at Gregarious, makers of Greg, an app to help you grow healthier and happier plants. Prior to founding Gregarious Alex spent four years as director of engineering at Tinder.Alex also co-founded Enplug, a digital signage company that was acquired earlier this year. Welcome to the podcast, Alex.Alex: 00:01:27Thank you guys. Good to see you. Thanks, David, Jacob.Jacob: 00:01:29Hi. David: 00:01:30So, I'm going to try really hard this whole podcast and not call you Greg, but I've made that mistake.Jacob: 00:01:36I was thinking like, I get like annoying company name questions. Sometimes. I'm like, I'm sure you get more worse than me.Alex: 00:01:43But I'm considering just legally adopting Greg as alias or something. Jacob: 00:01:48Yeah. You know, I mean, that's a news cycle right there. A little bit of earned PR. David: 00:01:55So I wanted to ask you, so obviously, you know, director of engineering at Tinder that's, I mean, what a rocket ship that must've been quite a wild ride. So, tell me a little bit about, about how you ended up at Tinder and then, you know, if you do have any fun, war stories from there, that'd be great to hear. Alex: 00:02:16Yeah, definitely. It was a rocket ship. Definitely some war stories, some wins, some losses. So, I came across Tinder and I was looking to get into like a consumer application. so I was interviewing with Uber and Twitter, and then I came across Tinder on an angel list. Actually the head of recruiting at the time reached out to me and I kind of took it on a whim.To be honest, I had not used the app before, before even interviewing or anything. that's kind of a challenge for Tinder is like, do you, how many of the teammates need to use Tinder? Because a lot of people are married and in relationships, and those are great people to have on the team. And so it makes it odd, and kind of difficult or complicated. But, basically I joined when it was around 70 people, if I recall. So, it was a pretty small team. There was already a global user base, so it was one of the scrappiest, global brands I think probably has ever existed. Because this was all right before Tinder or right around the time that Tinder launched its first monetization efforts.And so there wasn't really awareness as to like, great, there's this like large, global, many millions of people are using this thing, but is it going to make money? Right? That was still an open question at the time that I joined. So, yeah, basically I joined and it was very, it was definitely still a startup.And, so there was not a lot of structure and I think my manager changed on the first day, like the person I was talking about working with's desk changed, but I had a great time and basically I ended up creating the growth team. So I became very focused on, growing the international user base.One of the coolest things that that team did is we decoupled Tinder from Facebook. And this was from Facebook login because like Tinder came to, came to fame by having, you know, you tap one button, it imports your Facebook photos. It basically made online dating as easy as it possibly can be because like you push a button you're in and then you're dating.Right. And by making it that simple, it made it so you felt less than desperate by using it. I think it was like one of the important psychological dynamic, because if you feel like you have to work to start using that application, then maybe it means that like you aren't having as much success in dating in the real world.So, by making it simpler, it made it less stigmatized. More cool. Right? And so when we decided to then allow people to create accounts with a phone number that introduced all this complexity around like, well, are people going to want to do that? Then they have to add profile photos. They have to type in their name.You have to introduce an onboarding process. You have to worry about spam. So, in any case, my team led that decoupling of Facebook and Tinder, and this was like pre Cambridge Analytica, pre GDPR. So it was definitely pressure. And it was like, it was a lot of good foresight and it did lead. It was a very successful project.So, that was kind of what I cut my teeth on it Tinder. And then from there, I ended up creating the trust and safety team. So we then kind of took on anti-spam, which is a major problem for any global consumer or especially a brand that you're introducing people to each other. Like you're introducing strangers to each other.That is a spammer's dream.Jacob: 00:05:32There has got to be just so much abuse on Alex: 00:05:34So much, and it was all stuff. I agree. Yeah. 24 7. and so we ended up creating a team kind of bottoms up. This is a cool effort. Cause it wasn't like an executive side, like, oh, Tinder needs to needs to create this team. But rather. A collection of engineers that were very motivated to solve this problem.So, we created a trust and safety team again, before, before GDPR, like this was before the world was really focused on, privacy and data security and protect users. Very consciously.Jacob: 00:06:01It's it's interesting. Cause now, you know, even with like clubhouse recently have had issues here. I think now the expectation is you need trust and safety from day one, which even five or six years ago, wasn't really the case. It was kind of like, well, I'll just grow and then you'll solve it later.So, that was, I would say early days for even that concept of like a whole dedicated team to those, those, those aspects of, yeah. If you're meeting people in public mind, God, like you need good Alex: 00:06:28Real. Yeah. You really need to continuously try to protect people. Cause there are, there's a rare selection of people that are not great. Right. SoJacob: 00:06:36Yeah. David: 00:06:37So then, tell us a little bit about the transition from being a tender to founding a company, because you had founded companies before and plug, and been at, other large companies before Tinder, but Yeah. What, what led you to, to found Gregarious? Alex: 00:06:54Yeah. I actually saw Jacob and I shared an experience interning at Cisco systems. Is that right? Did you, yeah, Jacob: 00:07:01Wait, when were we at the same? Like onboarding. Alex: 00:07:04No, no. I was actually in the finance organization, so I was doing internal auditing. it was crazy. I was on a team that like investigated other people for like, you know, abusing their corporate cards and stuff like that. So there'd be likeJacob: 00:07:19Interesting. internally. Alex: 00:07:21Internally. yeah. it was a very, Jacob: 00:07:23We've had interns on that team. Alex: 00:07:27It was a unique, it was definitely the only inboard,Jacob: 00:07:29Yeah. Wow. I was testing, I was testing phones, so I'm actually not sure which one of those is more boring. I think actually you might've had me. So Alex: 00:07:38That's for sure. yeah, so I got exposure is Cisco is interesting for anybody who doesn't know cause you have to drive between meetings. Right? Cause the campus is so large. Jacob: 00:07:48Campus. Alex: 00:07:49Yeah, Yeah, Talk about, oh my gosh. Culture. Yeah, so the, the process leading up to, to starting Greg was very deliberate. because I had done a startup before and that company had gone to success a successful outcome, but it was a lot of hard work was honestly grueling.Definitely like, hardest challenge of my life. And so I knew that I wanted to be involved in starting a company and building a culture from the ground up again. but I knew that I wanted to do it differently. and so basically there was a lot of preparation thinking about really the main thing I was thinking about is what is the industry that I want to be working in, because I think that startups often don't go the way you expect.But you can learn so much. And so I was really thinking like, okay, what do I want to become an expert at? Right. Like what do I want, if it doesn't work out in the way we expect, what would I like to have learned four years, five years, seven years worth of information about.And, I really kept coming back to science. and I wanted to, to kind of use my engineering experience and pivot that into, more real world, like physical phenomenon. Right. And like learning how the universe works. David: 00:08:59That's amazing. Alex: 00:09:00And so that's really, a lot of the thesis of Greg is that we apply computer science and software engineering to this specific domain of how to plants work.Right. And, and basically the, the dots kind of connect looking backwards, but it was a process of discovery of like, what's an area that's emerging and like kind of changing, like where is there an opportunity, right. Because I think it's helpful to position yourself at a place where either you can cause change or this change already happened.And, right now, like a lot of people know there's climate change. and there's also a lot of, rapid things happening in plant science world, specifically around like CRISPR and plant genetics and stuff like that, really at the deep end of it, which we can get into, but it's like way deep. but, but basically, this was before the pandemic.So we were actually looking into plants before COVID and already there was like the rate of people bringing plants into their homes was growing by 50 to a hundred percent per year. And we wanted to validate like, Jacob: 00:10:03I really like, that seems like that seems like a thing that would be fairly stable, like, is it, is it, is it a, is it a generational trend, like millennials or younger folks being? I have a lot of people on Twitter. I follow that seem very interested in plants more than I've ever been. Alex: 00:10:20There's a couple converging trends. Yeah. I think that part of it it's associated to like the mental wellness movement. So it's kind of this trend line follows a one that's very similar to like meditation and yoga just five years later. So I think it's a very, it's a lot of adjacent interests there, but then there's also an aesthetic component to plants where like, people are kind of decorating their spaces and they're getting more like trendy in how they, you know, how they, even people who are eating, like you want to have like a space that you invite someone into and it's very nurturing.Right. so yeah, there was definitely a generational kind of tailwind already happening. And then COVID just like crammed that up. Right. Cause then everybody's on zoom and you look in the background, some people have plants and you're like, oh, that looks kind of nice. Like I'd like that.Jacob: 00:11:04I have this. I have, I still have this like barren white wall back here. That is embarrassing. Yeah, I need, that's why I was excited. I, I, I installed Greg today and I was disappointed. I couldn't buy the plants in the app yet. So we'll have to talk about that as we get a little Alex: 00:11:17That's something that is coming. That is the client segment. Yeah, definitely. yeah, so we kind of saw an opportunity and we did some due diligence, some interesting things I think, to identify like, is there a revenue opportunity in my favorite stat that I like to share that blew my mind when I learned it is home Depot, is a publicly traded company.So you can look up their, you know, annual statements and you can see how are they making money. And if you look up their statements, you'll see that they make more money on indoor garden than on any other product segment. Like home Depot sells lumber, paint appliances, all these other the Jacob: 00:11:54That's like, that's like actual revenues. Is that also margin con? Cause I would imagine these are high margin items as well, I would guess. Alex: 00:12:01Yeah. Depending on where you fall on them. But yeah, they're, they're, they're pretty hard margin. and no, we only looked at revenue, but they make like last night, like $11 billion per year in revenue. Which is, and, and they're like 10 or Jacob: 00:12:15Store, right? That's, one. Yeah. And there's like, every town has four of these. Alex: 00:12:19Exactly. Yeah. And home Depot is like 10 or 15% of the plant retail market. Probably. It's hard to estimate.Jacob: 00:12:26Okay. Yeah.So, it's like roughly like a hundred, a hundred billion dollar a year kind of thing in the US. Wow. That's it. That's the size of in-app subscriptions for anybody. Who's curious, like, roughly like in that ballpark.Alex: 00:12:39Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like Apple's app store, subscription Jacob: 00:12:42Oh yeah. Sorry, app store. It's not even subscriptions. I think that's the app store broadly. Yeah.Alex: 00:12:47So we combined the plant Tam with then the app store growth in subscription revenue. And there's our business model.Jacob: 00:12:56There you go. Did you, did you, I mean, yeah. You mentioned like wanting to get into something physical into something science related. Did you have like a passion for plants or was this something that is like deep in you or, or was it more like me and an app subscriptions, which is like, wow, this looks like a good thing I can work on and I actually care about it and know a little bit about it.Right. So how, how did it, how did you go? Like, Yeah.This is what I want to do. Alex: 00:13:17That's a great question. It was like 75% the ladder. So the same as you, where I was kind of, I got exposed to it cause I started getting plants and I realized I did like them, but there was no brand to guide me. And there was definitely no science to help me keep them alive. Right. but I, I grew up in the mountains and so like, I, I, my family, I lived in Mammoth Lakes, California for any of the listeners know where that is.And so I, you know, I, I went on like a solo backpacking trip, like shortly before starting all of this and kind of communed with like being in nature with no people around me. And maybe that put me in touch with the plans a little bit more. but it was mostly, kind of identifying, this is a realm of science I'd like to work in because plants are mostly.Physics-based, this is something a lot of people don't don't realize, but because they're stationary, you can almost view them as like, like a civil engineer would a bridge. so there's not, so you can kind of really think about like the water physics, the light physics. And so they're a really great vehicle for learning, just physics generally, and also how like the sun and earth orbit matters to that plant and that location.There's so much science there that we learned that there's a depth. That was, we were very interested in diving deeper intoJacob: 00:14:31Yeah. Not to mention, not to mentioned biology, right. Alex: 00:14:33There is, but Jacob: 00:14:34As an intersection, right? Yeah. Alex: 00:14:37Yeah. Biology is difficult though, right? Like if you're like an engineer, who's trying to approach it,Jacob: 00:14:41Right. Yeah. Alex: 00:14:42it's messy, you know, I Jacob: 00:14:44Yeah, exactly. Alex: 00:14:46Yeah, yeah,Jacob: 00:14:47But if you think about it, it was a closed system, right? Like yeah. You have it. It's potted, it's planted, you know, lumens in, you know, water in, you know, nutrients in, you can, yeah, you can, you can make some approximations, right. As we like. Alex: 00:15:02The closed system is really important. I can. so what Greg does is Greg predicts when a given plant is going to need to be watered. And that's like the super simple, like simplified functionality. It's one of the main things you need to know. And the way we figured that out talking about closed systems is kind of a fun fact. you can very accurately measure the amount of water that a plant loses by weighing it on one day and then weighing it the next day. And the change in weight is the water lost in grams. And it turns out, so what we did is we did that for like 700 plants for like six months. And we, we then graft what was the grams of water lost per plant per day?And you get this beautiful pattern. It's like it random, like this is a very clear, like almost a heartbeat of a plant, which is a great fit for like machine learning.Jacob: 00:15:56Yeah. So, so, so how did, how did you pull this off? Like practically, did you have like a big garage or warehouse or something like that? That's, that's more work than I usually do for software. So tell me what that process was. Alex: 00:16:09It definitely did. So at one point I had like 150 plants and they all had a plastic, little pots and I had like labels. I named them like a one through nine and then C one through whatever. Cause I had to keep track of it. Right. It's all in our progress database. And but that didn't scale. And so like me and my co-founders, we were all measuring every day, every single day, hundreds of plants, but that didn't scale.So then we went on Craigslist and we started saying like, Hey, we're looking for people to weigh their plants every day, twice per day for a couple of months. And we had hundreds of responses, like people, people care about their plants and they thought that it was cool to be doing like citizen science.Right. And so we ended up with people in Berlin and, and you know, Sydney.Jacob: 00:16:48All right. Cause it doesn't have to be local, right? Yeah. Alex: 00:16:51And actually it needs to be in like Southern hemisphere versus Northern hemisphere because the location of like the sun and solar radiation effects that. Yeah. So we needed a global distribution for sure.David: 00:17:01This is like way off topic for, for subscription apps. But, but if you, if you squint it's, there are a lot of similar problems in understanding user patterns and user life cycle. And like, there's so many hard to understand variables. Alex: 00:17:18Yeah, David: 00:17:18But one thing I'm curious about on the plant science, like how much does like humidity and other things play into that.So if you, if you have, you know, 40% humidity, one day and 60%, the next does that actually impact things. Alex: 00:17:31No humidity. We don't really need to model humidity very much. it's actually, there's a couple of things that are misconceptions. You don't really need to worry about missing or humidity and you don't need to worry about fertilizing. Like all of that is overdone. for the most part, like there's some cases where it, matters, but, I'd say for like 99 out of 100 plant types that you're likely to own doesn't matter.And even more people don't realize that the humidity reading that we see in the weather is what's called relative humidity. And it, it not actually like super scientific way to measure, like how the water in the air relates to a plant. You need to look at absolute humidity, the whole totally different calculation.There's basically relative humidity changes according to the temperature. And so I see as humidity, you can almost, and to be honest, like, ignore, except for a couple of plants, like really evolved to be in, like, you can picture it. you know, in England, like, United Kingdom, like BHAG, right. Where it's just so much water, like, okay, well does like some, some ferns like are from like the Pacific Northwest, like Washington area where it's like constant rain forest, those types of plans.Yeah. You're going to have a hard time if you're not, in a very human environment, but the vast majority of EBI don't have to worry about it.Jacob: 00:18:47I have, I have more questions on the plant physics, but I think, I think I will let, I will, I will have to like save my curiosity.David: 00:18:55Well, we'll have to do the, we'll have to jump on your podcast and talk, talk points. Jacob: 00:19:00Plant Club, just invite V2 to newbies on there. Just to ask questions. We'll be there. David: 00:19:05So from, from all of this, you, you started to alluded to it a bit, but one of the things I was really impressed talking to you a couple of months ago, was just how I'm vicious. Your plans are with Greg. So you're, you're kicking it off with a consumer subscription app. but tell me a little bit about like, where you want to go from there.Alex: 00:19:25Yeah, definitely. That's a part of like, going back to like how we started it, why we started it. I have seen, or like I've worked at companies and like not naming names that are very, very revenue focused. Like just purely prime directive is we just need to make coin and as much of it as possible. Right.And then the question is, well, if you get there, then what do you do? Because if you do accumulate a level of avenue and a lot of influence, you kind of inherit a social responsibility, right? Because like you're accumulating all these resources. If you're like a Facebook or an Instagram, I think there's like general consensus.Like you kind of need to think about the impact that you have. Cause you're too big to not think about it. Right. And so with Greg, like we really thought about if we manage to navigate this very challenging process of getting to scale. Well then what? Right. And our goal what's really interesting that people don't realize is that plants in our homes are just plants that were taken from various places in the world and put in our homes, right?Like there there's no such thing as a houseplant, it's actually just like a giant jungle tree that somebody took a cutting from and then transported it to England and then ended up the United States. Right. so the physical principles that govern, being able to predict how to keep those plants alive is, are the same as the physical principles required to predict how to keep like crops alive.Right. like plants that are grown for our food system of which there are like billions. Right. And those plants, like it turns out plants are really like an infrastructure piece of our planet, right? Like plants are our like big support system on spaceship earth. And it's kind of interesting. Jacob: 00:21:10It's, the, it's the first stage of catalyzing, the sun's resources, right? Like, Alex: 00:21:15That's exactly it. And a lot of people don't realize this, that basically all of life gets its energy from the sun. Like that is the input of all of energy into what we know as life, as you know, maybe there's more on other planets that works differently. But as far as we know, all of life depends on solar energy.Jacob: 00:21:31Yeah, Alex, you're leaving out some very, very, sensitive, bacteria that live by vents. Okay. That, that Alex: 00:21:40I love that you noticed.Jacob: 00:21:43I'm D I'm disappointed in myself that I can't think of what they're called. They're extremophiles some kind of, I Alex: 00:21:47Yeah. Jacob: 00:21:48All, it's all, it's all discovery documentaries, so Alex: 00:21:51There's a vanishingly small number of, like living things that, thrive on geothermal energy from the earth score. Right. But that's like less than like 1% as far as I know. What people don't realize as an example is that like plants. A lot of people think that plants are just taking things out of the ground that is sucking nutrients out, sucking water out. They're actually also putting things back into the ground at all times. And so plants, like, for example, they photosynthesize. So they take energy from the sun and they are the only thing on the planet that takes energy from the sun and then converts it into energy that all other life can use. And it's not only insects and birds and mammals like us, but plants are also depositing sugar into the soil.So it's a bi-directional flow and that sugar feeds the bacteria. Jacob: 00:22:38Is that an active process while they're alive? Is it, or is it during decomposition? Alex: 00:22:42No, that is an active process. Like plants are actively depositing sugar into the soil and that, that those sugars feed the bacteria and fungi and those bacteria and fungi are responsible for breaking down the, inorganic, nutrients like nitrogen into a format that plants can absorb because plants can't just like stop nitrogen.Now they depend on. Those organic, you know, facilitators. And so it's a very symbiotic relationship and there's growing awareness now that like having a quote unquote, living soil is crucial for our planet. And I'll tell you like an example of how, how much awareness there is around this. during my due diligence for Greg, I went to a plant genetics conference.This is like for any engineers in the call, like imagine like AWS reinvent, accepted the geneticists. Right. And so they're like presenting, like how they run their projects. And it's, it's a really cool parallel world, but half of this conference was dedicated to soil like microbiomes, because that's how important it is.It's like truly like a resource. It's an infrastructure for our spaceship earth. Right? David: 00:23:49That's amazing. So, so one of the things, yeah, you and I talked about was not just, you know, consumer subscription to then like funding science, which is kind of what you're talking about now, but then also the potential to take this from, from B2C to B2B. So like you have, nurturing these who have to manage the planets before the people buy ‘em.You have office buildings that have thousands of plants. You have, you know, commercial facilities like there's, you know, plants existed on so many different layers of are of, of, of use, So tell me a little bit about kind of the long and short term plans of potentially transitioning or not transitioning, but, but kind of building on top of what you've done for consumers to then expand into more B2B, use cases.Alex: 00:24:42Yeah, definitely. Some other examples. people don't realize that cities have to like municipalities have to maintain the plant inventories, right? Like there are people who manage the inventory of plants. Exists, you know, or there are small businesses. there are people in most towns, I grow food for their farmer's markets, for example.And so those are like smaller scale farmers and then there's large scale farmers, right? And there's a real dearth of like talented software teams, writing applications for any of those parties. And that's really the long-term opportunity to be spotted. If we can pull together a talented team to make products for those people, that's a longterm opportunity.And my, my thesis on this, which I think we're aligned on is that, like delightful, simple consumer user interfaces, like simple software is appreciated by everybody. Right? Jacob: 00:25:35Okay. Alex: 00:25:35like enterprises don't want to use complicated integrative Jacob: 00:25:40There's tastes now in software, right. And all levels of, employment. I think it's, it's a bit of like our gen my generation aging into the, the enterprise buying world. And, also just like people have enough software experiences in our lives. They've learned to discern like, oh, this is good.And, oh, this is bad. and I think there's, yeah, I think it's really, I mean, we I've, I've done it a ton in making revenue count. I came from the compute super subscription world. I learned a ton of lessons about onboarding and, and, and, and creating delightful experiences and like, you know, playing, playing against and into people's like, you know, habits and things like this that you carry into the enterprise world or B2B world, and it can really supercharge software.And it's probably what we're going to see. Yeah. I think. I think there's still, there's always this like technical leap or not technical in the sense of computers, but technical in the sense of processes and whatnot, when you leap from consumer to, to selling to businesses. But as you said, you bring those teams together, you, you build your data set, you learn more about Alex: 00:26:45Right, Jacob: 00:26:46Act of growing plants, then someday you, you, you can, you Alex: 00:26:49Right. And there are some, some famous examples of this. I definitely see it with RevenueCat. Cause like you compare the UI to a SAS that was created 10 years ago and it's just more of delightful. Right. It's like simple. And I know to use it. I'm not like getting a headache while I'm on it, but it's nice.Right?Jacob: 00:27:05It's very nice. Very nice of you to say Alex: 00:27:07Yeah. Bye-bye But, but like some examples like strike became famous, right? Because like they had a good Jacob: 00:27:14Same. Yeah, yeah. Say my mindset. Right. Just like, make it easy, make it simple, make the, make the shortest possible path to value. Right. Alex: 00:27:25Or, slack would be another example. Right. Whereas it was almost a consumer level application that just took off like wildfire because individuals liked it. Right. Jacob: 00:27:34And then they added enterprise grid, whatever they have now, or whatever to sell it to, to, to Alex: 00:27:39And then nothing is things, Jacob: 00:27:41Need that to begin with.Alex: 00:27:42Right? David: 00:27:43Yeah. So it's just, it's really cool that there's, there's just such a direct path from selling to consumers right now, and then selling to municipalities who are managing their plants in a few years, and then selling to, you know, the, the company should have to manage this at scale and then selling to farmers.That's really cool. One of the things that, again, that you're not talking about, you and I talked for like two hours a couple of months ago. And so there's, there's so much that I would, I would've loved to have recorded that and released it as a podcast. But, Jacob: 00:28:20Glad I can glad I can contribute. David: 00:28:23Yeah, one of the, one of the fascinating things that you talked about was kind of your view on marketing. And so I'd love for you to talk about that more broadly, but then specifically what you're doing with nurseries is just such incredibly smart marketing. Like, I mean, it, let me say tangent for a minute.So it's just so obvious talking to you that you're not the average like app founder, you know, like none of my apps have had even, even like when, when hundredth of the due diligence and market Jacob: 00:28:55Why I was gonna say, I've never, I've never bought some, like, I've never had a physical warehouse of plantsDavid: 00:29:02Yeah. and so it's just, it's just so clear that you, you think about things in a way that, that most, you know, at people don't most software people don't most even founders don't. and, and so I think, you know, we've talked about this on the podcast before, is it just so many apps are trapped in this?You know, we just, we have to advertise on Facebook to grow. We have to do this. And like that clay book, I've just, you know, dumping money, a bunch of money in ads, I think leave so much on the table. And so I just love that you're, you're going to do that. And that we've talked about that, you know, you've got to do paid marketing and, and maybe I've already started experimenting with it, but, but yeah.So tell me about what you're doing with nurseries and then just kind of, you know, some of your thoughts on, on marketing and virality and stuff. Alex: 00:29:51Yeah, definitely. I think broadly, like what I would, I think I'm definitely aligned with that where, your broader point is that like building an app is half technical and UI design and getting the product really, really, really right. Right. But the other half that people are often uncomfortable about is needing to get it in front of the right people.Right. And so in my mind, the way I break this down is the two steps. Like I have a theory that like the two steps in making a successful app business are make thumping worth using, and then put it in front of the people who would use it. Right. And it's like remarkably hard to do either one of those, but, Once we had, the beginning signs of retention.So we got our first, like, I don't know, 5,000 users by like posting on Facebook and on Reddit and like that kind of stuff. Then we started thinking about, what is like the most optimal time for people to be introduced to grade. And what we came up with is, well, we solved the problem of, if you have a plant and you don't know what to do with it, how to keep it alive, we solve that problem.And so the most natural moment would be when you get a new plant, right. Because it's like, that's a moment. And you're like, oh crap, I have this thing. What do I, how do I keep it alive? And, so what we did is we reached out to a bunch of, plant retailers, like online in-person brick and mortar all over the place.And we basically said like, Hey, we will help your customers have a positive outcome with your product. Right. And so let's do this trade where like, we will give them. at this point we had a subscription tier. And so we said, we'll give them free subscription tier for N number of months. At first it was six.And now it's three. and in return, can you put in our little QR code flyer, like nicely designed four inches by four inches recycled paper card that has a QR code and it takes you to download. Great. Right. And so we did that and now like when these retailers ship out a new plant, every single one of them has this little QR code in it.And it's almost like a digital companion to your unboxing experience. Right. And so that was definitely like a very natural fit and it, it led to our first, probably like 10 or 20,000, 15,000 users, I'd say.Jacob: 00:32:10So can I ask, like, did you do that yourself? Did you have somebody on your team? Cause like, yeah. I'm, I'm in the camp that that's outside of my experience. I don't like calling the pizza person. Like I, you know, I, I don't know how to do that. So how, how did you, how did you delegate that and, and Alex: 00:32:24Yeah. Jacob: 00:32:24The resources and a small team to pull that off. Alex: 00:32:27Definitely. so I I'd say I provided the, the oomph behind it. but then I have a good friend, who I've worked with in the past named Colin, who does like growth marketing stuff and that's his comfort zone. Right. And so I definitely did reach out to a bunch of the biggest partners in the beginning.Because the thing is that like with early stage stuff, founder led sales can be great, right? Like you don't always need it. It's better if you don't need it to be Frank. but, we were so early and we had no partners at all that I was like, I ha this is crucial for us. Like, we need to have a better source of user acquisition.That's like our next major challenge to solve. And so I did reach out to them and then call in kind of like took over and scaled that. Right. Cause like, I, I ultimately like I needed to be writing code and stuff. and so now he owns that relationship and he's been able to keep that going further.Jacob: 00:33:22Yeah, it's just one of these unique channels. you know, I don't know, you can, as a, B to C app founder, I think David's points exactly on, I think we've a lot of us have settled into this world where there's one or two channels to like get growth and that's paid, paid marketing.There's a lot of good, growth resources out there. oh yeah, there's a lot of good growth books. I've read, moving into the B2B world that say there's like seven channels or whatever. There's only like so many like ways to get and in and in, and in B to C we tend to be like, well, yeah, there's these two, essentially, but it's not really true.Like you can try seven, I guess the trick is finding stuff that two things, one is approachable. Like, that's why I asked about you. How did you make it happen? Well, you were able to start it off and then you had somebody to work with you to, to, to bring it to scale. But then the other thing is it has to move the needle. Right. And so, and so you have to figure out and like for a price that's reasonable, right? And, and that sometimes is hard to find as well. Because I think with this, you have this adjacent high velocity market of users. You have a place, your users are going every day, which isn't maybe always the case for all apps.Right. It's hard to find there's no meditation store that people are going to day. Right. Alex: 00:34:33Yeah. I thought about this. Jacob: 00:34:34That's your, that's your advantage? You know?Alex: 00:34:37I thought about parallels. Like I wonder if like fitness apps have tried partnering with gyms. I'm thinking like fit. Jacob: 00:34:44I'm sure the gyms wouldn't be as eager maybe. Right? Alex: 00:34:48Well, I mean, possibly I'm just thinking like, if, if like, Jacob: 00:34:51This also like there's also this like benefit right from the, for the Alex: 00:34:54There has to be. Yeah, yeah. But I would just, I just like theory, graph, like I'm thinking if there's an app That helps you track your workouts. Like I use football, I'm a user, it's a great app and, and it's a complete compliment or a gym. Like I can't do gym without, I can't do football about gym. I don't really do gym about that.So, I, there might be a thing there, or like with meditation, I'd be curious if, like yoga studios. Cause here's the thing is Jacob: 00:35:21Find the adjacencies right. Alex: 00:35:22Yeah. And so here's the thing about a mobile app business that I have found is that one of our strengths is that we're building an audience, right? Like mobile apps only really work with retention.And so you're like building up this audience of people that are committed to your app and your brand over time. And these smaller businesses are looking for ways to get audiences. Right? And so in the scale of a mobile app is such that you might actually be able to accumulate an audience that is valuable to those small businesses.That can be a part of that trade. And so we've actually talked about that with our partners where we basically say like, well, you're referring users to us. We can refer users back to you. And our scale is large enough that it could actually be a meaningful number. so I think you can kind of get, it's definitely a B2B strategy where it's like, I'm thinking of the strategic value I can provide to my partners in return for them providing value.Which might be why it's less common in the, in the B2C, like mobile app world, right.David: 00:36:16Yeah. Any other, experiments that you've done or kind of things that you're working on in the, in the marketing realm that you've seen fail or things that are being successful right now Alex: 00:36:27We really want to tap peer to peer referrals and that has not been easy. And so that, that is one Jacob: 00:36:33Have you seen, have you seen the new store kit to stuff? Alex: 00:36:36Not Jacob: 00:36:36Yeah, they did. This is, I don't know when this is going to go out, but they, they dropped in, in, in the dub DC, this, this, this week they announced there's a new API. That's going to make that kind of possible. Now you'll be able to, you'll be able to like extend somebody else's subscription, based on some sort of like action. I think I, I, I don't know if they made it as like, for extending, for like a customer support use case. So there might be a case maybe Apple's like, no, we didn't want you to use it for incentivized referrals, but it could Alex: 00:37:09Yeah, Jacob: 00:37:09Make incentivize referrals work and like a really smooth way. Sorry, I'll derail. But, Alex: 00:37:14I love it. Jacob: 00:37:15It's, kind of a change.Alex: 00:37:17Well, it's probably useful to listeners. we have definitely hacked around incentivizes invites using promotionals that will say RevenueCat has been helpful.Jacob: 00:37:26Oh, so, and so you guys are, you guys are pushing folks, but they have to go through like this, like a user-driven process, right? Alex: 00:37:33They do. Yeah.Jacob: 00:37:34Is friction.Alex: 00:37:35It's friction. It has been fine, but it's not quite as productive as we like. So that one. Jacob: 00:37:39Have a lot of users that get confused about the process. I would imagine. Alex: 00:37:42Yeah. And it's like a deep Linky thing. So it's like not super transparent. the thing that's worked better, the one that I'm most excited about is I love this one. we, created, user generated content loops. so, basically people, there are certain things you can do in our app that like publish web pages on the web.And so for us very specifically, People like Greg, we don't have a database of like every plant in the world yet. Right. There's like 400,000. It's really complicated. And like, that's actually, one of our core IP is, is developing that database. And the only way we can do it is if we allow users to contribute to it.Right. and we need to be like a crowd source, like model and we get really good at curation so people can create new species in Gregg. And then we curate that and then we publish that page on the web and then it starts showing up in Google search traffic for other people searching for information about that species.Right. And so I love the theory of this and like check back in, in a year to see how it turns out. But I love the thing. Because it's like, okay, a user publishes a web page, which then more users find our app through. So then they join the app and then they publish more webpages. And then so more users find the app and then they publish more web pages.Right. And so it's like a very like positive reinforcement loop. And I think those types of recursive positive reinforcing user growth loops can lead to very healthy, growth curves, right?Jacob: 00:39:08Yeah. I mean, that's the, the challenge of these apps. You said it with retention is the big thing. I think you, you you're you're you're you've got some tables. Keeping a plant alive plants live a long time. Therefore, hopefully your app gets used a long time, but then, finding these things that can take what is inherently like a decaying process, which is people leaving your app and turning it into something more stable, which is how you build this, like yeah.Long-term business. And then, you know, for, in your case, like use this as a platform to move into other segments and whatnot. but, but but moving away, from this, like get them in, monetize them, let them go. Right. Model, which like, it seems just like the whole world is pointing us against right. With, with the way that ad tracking is getting less easy to do and all this stuff.Alex: 00:39:54Yeah. Jacob: 00:39:54So I was gonna say SEO, that's one of the seven good channels. Right. So you've hit at least three, Alex: 00:40:01Do end up dependent on, on Google. AndJacob: 00:40:05It's something can change in Alex: 00:40:06Yeah, Jacob: 00:40:07Or. Alex: 00:40:07But like I've been wanting, I've been watching SEO for a while and I think that generally, as long as you're not doing shady things, you don't have to worry about much. Right, Jacob: 00:40:16Content that people click on and find useful it will work. Right? Like, but when I did our blogs for revenue cat, initially the ones that got really good traffic for us kind of got us off the ground. Like I didn't, I didn't think, like I thought a little bit like, oh, what are people going to Google?Whatever. But no, I was just like, I'll just make plus that people will read and spend time on and share. And like that's all it took. And you'll find the posts that some of the posts that I did that were intentionally like, I'm trying to be like, SEO smart. Didn't do that. Well, the ones where they were just really good posts and like contained a lot of really good content and get referenced a lot. Those are the ones that still generate traffic for us. So like, which is nice because you don't have to be like an SEO master anymore. You can kind of just make good stuff and do Alex: 00:40:56Yeah. Jacob: 00:40:56Things. Yeah, David: 00:40:57Yeah, I was going to ask, I think we talked about this, but have you, have you done some paid marketing and how's that gone for you? Alex: 00:41:05Yeah, definitely. We did use paid marketing to like, scale up, by like a two X factor. So did that add a little bit of extra? And, so we've been running on Instagram and Facebook, and it's been pretty productive to the point where it's almost NetSpend zero. it's like we spend a dollar in advertising and then we make a dollar in revenue.We're still very early. And so we haven't had enough months. Like the, the, the pain point is if you do a trial. It's actually a much longer, payback period or like what finance people would call a float. And then a lot of people expect, because let's say you have, we're generous. We have a 30 day trial, which is like a bit much for a mobile app, but we do it.And so 30 days, and then the user subscribes, and then you get paid and then apple will pay you a month later. Right. So you actually end up with like up to a 90 day float. and so that's not as tight as I would like hope for, but it's better than nothing. And I think that's the key is that like, because we're a revenue generating app we're able to do the ad spend in like a reasonable way.I think if that weren't the case, then it'd be very difficult.David: 00:42:12Yeah. And, and at some point, I mean, with, with your other strategies of referrals, of SEO, of building a base of users, that then you can get more and more partners, you know? So, so if you went to home Depot, 10 million active users, then that's a much more attractive proposition to them. so at some point, you know, spending at a loss might actually make sense, but it's amazing that the subscription, model enables you to even spend break even, but keep that flywheel going, which is it's.That's incredible.Alex: 00:42:52And I think the NetSpend break, even that creates an interesting exercise because then it's like, it becomes, we didn't get into like financing, but like if you fundraise That's then a good reason to fundraise because then if you have more capital, you can put that capital to work. Because if you know, you'll make, if you have a dollar, now you'll have a dollar again in 90 days, as long as you can carry that float.Well, then at the end of 90 days you have a dollar and a user Jacob: 00:43:17Yeah, which is like, has, has value, right? Like you've increased the value of your user base has adult, you know, dollar per user active value essentially in the venture market or revalue reevaluate. Right. So, it, it does make sense. So yeah, I w I want to ask, like, You guys, it seems like your apps pretty developed for how long you've been working on it a year and change.Right. and you mentioned, you mentioned this, like finding iterating to like a retention goal. Like how did that go? Did you start with just like the basic function, like the most basic thing and then add stuff until you got, and what, what I guess specifically, like what metric were you looking at to say like, okay, retention is good now. Alex: 00:43:58Hmm. Yeah, that's a great question. So we did start with the most basic core functionality, and I think one of the things that we did that I would do again, We just solved our own problem. So like I, so we, we started at the beginning of COVID, so like New York where I live, locked down basically the day, almost the day that I left Tinder.Right. And so and so I remember I'll never forget things were shutting down. So I ran to the nursery nearby plant nursery, and I bought like 30 plants. Cause I was like, I need to have the problem in order to be deeply motivated to solve it. Right. Cause like, if you actually have like over 10 plants, keeping track of them kind of socks a little bit, it's hard.And so I knew that I needed the problem and that motivated us and, and our whole team really, we basically just wrote like a prototype app to solve our own problem. and once it was working for us is when we started bringing like beta users in, we did like a test flight, version for a month brought in like maybe a thousand or I think it was 2000 beta users total and there in like August, 2020.And. Jacob: 00:44:59Did you, how did you get that list for the beta? Just Facebook and Alex: 00:45:04Facebook. It was, it was mostly Facebook like groups and stuff like that. Jacob: 00:45:07Mm. Alex: 00:45:08Yeah. and it posted on Reddit. Reddit is hard. but, we did a little bit Jacob: 00:45:15Rip off middlemen made easy. That's my favorite. We posted, I posted right. It was where we launched two and I have this, this favorite hater quote that I have like screenshot it on my desktop that I will hold on to until we IPO. Alex: 00:45:27The hater codes or something people should be prepared for, I think,Jacob: 00:45:30Yeah. Alex: 00:45:32But let's see. So we solved that. Here's the key is that we specifically, for our app, we wanted to solve the retention piece first. And so he chose the behavior in the app that would be associated with retention because the way that I personally think about retention is that right.What happens is you have a trigger. So a person needs an external trigger to think about opening your app. Right? So it could be a feeling that they have like Tinder, it's a feeling I'm bored or I'm lonely. And I want to see people, and that's an external trigger that causes a person to think about your app.Then you need value to them to actually open your app. Right? Like, okay, I have this trigger in this app can adjust that trip. Sure. So for us, we didn't have like an emotion, but we did have, the need for reminders. And so basically we, leveraged push indicator very heavily. Our whole app is like a water reminder app right now that's the core value.And so we built that specific functionality, water reminders before anything else, because we wanted to validate, is that a sticky behavior? Is that something that people will actually want to do and use over like six months? Right. And because we knew we wanted to get six months of data, we had to build it first.Right. Because you have to really think about how long it's going to take to get that validation. and we were bootstrapped. And so we knew that like, well, we can't bootstrap for forever. Right. And so we needed to front load the questions that we knew investors would be asking when we went out to fundraise.David: 00:46:57So speaking of which you just raised $5.4 million seed round, how, tell us about the process. It sounds like you were, you know, having been at Tinder and been in Silicon valley and in the industry, that was your goal that you didn't come into it thinking you were going to bootstrap this forever. and you were specifically kind of building up some of those retention numbers and other things that you knew investors would ask for.So, how did fundraising go having kind of iterated into that direction? Alex: 00:47:35It's definitely hard as hell. I don't know, like you don't ever say that it's not. but it wasn't, it wasn't like excruciating. I think recruiting is actually probably a little bit more difficult, especially right now. There's a lot of, a lot of movement in the, in the why people are working, how they wantJacob: 00:47:51It's easier. It's easier. to write a check than it is to take a job. I think, you know, like to give it to somebody to do, do Alex: 00:47:57You can write multiple checks. Right?Jacob: 00:47:58Yeah. It's not your, it's not your every day, you Alex: 00:48:02Exactly. Yeah. So, let's see. We actually, to go back to your first point, we weren't, completely, we hadn't decided that we were definitely going to raise VC capital. and so there was like, like we did work through that as a team and we ended up deciding, various specifically. Our mission is one that we believe would benefit from us being good at raising capital, because we think that if we can bring capital and talent to this industry and this problem domain, that's a good thing.And then even from a life perspective, like we wanted, we want to move quick, we want to be able to grow. You want to be able to like, build delightful things for lots of people. and so that was, that was the main motivation behind the VC capital. I think it's a big trade-off. so we, we definitely did not take it lightly and we did deeply evaluate Jacob: 00:48:49Closes, off a lot of paths, Alex: 00:48:51It does. Yeah, Jacob: 00:48:52You kind of really narrows what your future, I mean, Alex: 00:48:55Yeah, Jacob: 00:48:55You on a trajectory to something potentially much, much bigger, but it Alex: 00:48:58Yeah, Jacob: 00:48:59Of like brings down your, your options. Alex: 00:49:02It does. Yeah. And I think you just have to think about like, am I okay with needing to focus on eventually providing an exit to these people who trusted with their capital, right. Yeah. And I think maybe something that people don't think about is like the CEO, whoever is fundraising. Like you, you build a relationship with your, your, your VC partners, right?Like I consider them like life journey partners at this point. And so it's not that like, it's certainly not an adversarial relationship. It's more like I have a true responsibility to these people because we had a clear, like, this is the agreement is like capital and then they have obligation to their investors too.And so, you know, I'm aligned with that and I think you're right. You just have to think about like, is that, is that aligned with my vision for this, this journey, right. David: 00:49:45And then speaking of, of an exit, you shared with me, you have a very unique approach to employee equity. I'm actually curious to hear at, Jacob's take on this, having gone through the whole thing, himself, but Yeah. Tell us about your equity structure. Alex: 00:50:05Yeah. We, we definitely are, experimenting and trying something different and I think there's pros and cons.Jacob: 00:50:12Investors love that, by the way. I'm sure those were easy conversations. Alex: 00:50:17Surprisingly most investors were, were okay with it. I definitely had a couple that were concerned about, the implications in the medium term, but here I'll get to what it is. So, yeah. Okay. So basically, like we, wanted to distribute as much of the financial ownership of the company across as many of the early teammates as we could.And the reason for that is like the real thought that I had that whether or not other people think about this kind of thing, I would, I would encourage people to ask the best, which is, if I have an exit, how big of an exit would I really want to feel very fortunate about. Right. And like, really think about like how much money do I actually need.Right. Because I think that there's a lot of people who get caught up with like, I want a billion dollars, right. Or like, I want like a hundred million dollars. I've been fortunate enough. Like we pointed out earlier, my first company was acquired for like a fine amount and then Tinder totally exploded. I didn't own as much of it, but it is still a positive outcome.And I can say that like they didn't change anything. And I know it's a very cliche thing to say, but I think it's a productive exercise that if anybody was founding a company, I would recommend asking, at what point am I again, feeling fortunate about the outcome, right? And then what we really thought about is our ability to recruit a great team.And basically the decision that we made is that, there's really two aspects to equity. and I'd be curious again, Jacob's take on this there's there's compensation for risk. So early teammates take more risks, quote unquote. Right? And so that, that's a typical, like reason for, founders taking a large, large Jacob: 00:51:52Costs risk mostly. Right. But Alex: 00:51:54Opportunity cost and risk.And then the other dimension that I think about is. Where, early stage companies are hard for everybody who's involved. And my prior experience pointed towards like the first 20 people who joined the company, or at least definitely 10 or 15, all worked, pretty much as hard. And definitely at least not like 10, it's impossible to work 10 times harder. Right. And so, Jacob: 00:52:19And with less M with less glory, to be honest, Alex: 00:52:22With less boring. Yeah, Jacob: 00:52:23Don't, they don't get all the likes on follows on Twitter or whatever. Right. Alex: 00:52:27Exactly.Jacob: 00:52:28Try to distribute it, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a grindy place to be for sure. Alex: 00:52:33Not getting the glory is like a, it's definitely a double edged sword because I think that that glory is also a responsibility. Right. But, yeah. And so basically we decided to try this approach where we wanted to do this exercise of distributing that equity as equally as possible. And so he set up a mathematical curve where whenever I make an offer, I just look at this math equation.What is the amount of equity that this next person gets. Right. and, and so, and we did that and basically projected out like, okay, each person gets to like, like if we reached a billion dollar company, each teammate should have an outcome of something like $10 million or more, right. Like something, something above that number.And it was really important to map that out because otherwise it can go forward. And, yeah, basically that, that was our exercise. I mean, basically they decided like, okay, can we, can we turn that around a little bit? And, the side effect that I like, so again, we're, we're early in this, like, we're, we're an eight person team we're in a 15 and it may turn out to be complicated.And again, we check in in a year, but what I like about it is it, did enable a completely transparent cap table. Right. And that's nice. Cause like, I don't think it's like maybe required, but I do like being able to show people like this is who owns this Jacob: 00:53:50Who owns with you? Right? Alex: 00:53:53Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that's a positive side effect.But there's definitely it's complicated.Jacob: 00:54:00Yeah, I well, so David, my take is actually we do something very similar that's I like also like, so interestingly and, and inside, inside baseball, I think, it it's it's we, we did, something similar. No, we weren't as scientific with it for the first, like we had like a rough rule, but it was like the same, like X, each number, like the number like decreased, like, but this backoff curve, I've found it a very, it's a very hard problem to reason about, because you want, you want to think about this, you want the hundredth employee to have some skin in the game.Right. But you, you need to balance that with like, Hey, like come join this company that you've never heard of. And like probably has like worst benefits and you know, who knows it's going to be, it's going to be a mess. Right. And so like, finding that balance is really hard. and, and, you know, Looking at where we're at 30 people now, and the complexity definitely grows. And then I think also you start thinking about like recruiting leverage and like, what, you know, what, how much equity do I need to offer to be able to like, recruit these different types of roles and things like that. And your systems get more complex, but, but, but it's still, did you guys, did you do something special on special on founder equity to create like more, more room on the cap table?Or did you ha how many co-founders do you have?Alex: 00:55:11That's such a blurry line. I don't know if this is just me by name or no, like, well, is that the fourth person? Like, I mean,Jacob: 00:55:18I guess that's true. yeah. Alex: 00:55:20Yeah. Jacob: 00:55:21A, maybe that's a, it's a YC thing is where they're like very clear, like who are the co-founders and who are not But, but yeah, I, I agree. It's probably mostly a, a label.Alex: 00:55:32I feel like we have six co-founders. realistically there were, there were two of us that were like, thinking about this, you know, like that's not true. There were three of us that were thinking about this, like two years ago. so we, I, I called them co-founders and so we're all on this same plans.Like we have this graph where like, I am the first black. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, It's Jacob: 00:55:51Interesting. Alex: 00:55:53Like as much as possible. And so the hardest, this plan is definitely hardest on the first three people and it requires incredible cultural buy-in to that because it means that the outcome, like, I, I definitely worked on this for a lot longer than like the people who are joining today.Right. And like, it was stressful and hard, but here's, here's my, my, my personal take. And, is that I actually think the risk of doing startups and I feel like YC, you may agree with us. The risk of doing startups is like so much lower than most people realize for people who have the fortune of having a safety net.Right? Like if you're, if you, if you have a family and you don't have savings, then like, of course that is a, that is a risky proposition. for people who are relatively early or mid stage in their careers and they have savings and they're not actually gonna end up in a really dangerous spot, then I think that startups are almost always a net positive.If you really apply yourself, because the amount that you learn and grow by solving that many problems, only accelerates your career. Right. And so going back to the risk versus there's also opportunity costs, and then there's effort. I personally discount the risk for people who are fortunate enough to have that safe space.I discount that risk almost to zero, because I think that it's just such a, even this time around for me, my second startup, I have learned so much and it's been such a good life experience that even if it didn't work out tomorrow, net win. For sure. Sure.Jacob: 00:57:17Yeah. David: 00:57:18So part of the reason I brought it up was that I, when I joined and I've told Dick at this, when I joined revenue, this is way inside baseball. Goodness a open, an open enough on the podcast. But when I joined Romney, I thought more along the lines of you, Alex. Like I thought, well, why is Jacob getting so much more of the company and, and revenue Katz, like the first 10 employees and then the next 20 it's actually, it's very generous compared to the industry, like take a, did an incredible job and has been great with equity.So, but, but early on you, you're at a startup and you're like, wow, I'm working really hard. He's working really hard. Like why, why, why is the outcome going to be so different? But honestly, 18 months in and Jacob having raised a series B and like taking a lot of the hardship, like you as a founder are going to have to do things and be under amount of stress.And like, there, there really is. And I, I don't, it's probably somewhat true for maybe those, you know, those first early employees, how carry a little bit of that load, but the F but a founder just has to carry a different load. And so. Jacob: 00:58:29It's always going to fall on that first two, you know, whatever people on the cap table. Right. Whatever it's going to keep rolling until it hits you at some point. And, you know, as it gets bigger. yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know. It's an, it's an interesting, this could very easily devolve into like the nature of capitalism and ownership.Right. Because it doesn't, it plays very much against this, like, you know, constant, like Marxists debate about like labor versus capital and like, what are the value and what is like value and like, cause you know, you like, you had this whatever period it was one month, one year or whatever. That's like such, you know, if you

Each weekday we will meditate on a prayer or a reading for the upcoming Sunday as assigned in the ELCA's hymnal.Hebrews 5:5-10So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him,“You are my Son,    today I have begotten you”;as he says also in another place,“You are a priest forever,    according to the order of Melchizedek.”In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

John 5:118 (ESV) The Healing at the Pool on the Sabbath 5:1After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3In these lay a multitude of invalidsblind, lame, and paralyzed. 5One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, Do you want to be healed? 7The sick man answered him, Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me. 8Jesus said to him, Get up, take up your bed, and walk. 9And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. 10So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed. 11But he answered them, The man who healed me, that man said to me, Take up your bed, and walk. 12They asked him, Who is the man who said to you, Take up your bed and walk? 13Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17But Jesus answered them, My Father is working until now, and I am working. Jesus Is Equal with God 18This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

In this episode of Wine, Women, and Revolution Heather interviews activist and author Laurie Greene. Laurie wrote the book "Drag Queens and Beauty Queens" which tells the often overlooked LGBTQ drag history in Atlantic City and the undeniable impact drag culture had on the Miss American pageant. She discusses how people competing in both Miss America and the drag pageant Miss'd America use it to access power structures that may otherwise be denied to them in this Cis, Hetero, White, Male, Capitalist world. Now Miss's America is struggling to reconcile its more subversive roots with the goal of capitalism to make everything consumable for the bland mass audience. Only the future will tell if they will be more successful than their beauty pageant inspiration, Miss America. Transcript Auto Generated Laurie Greene 0:00But the history of this event which you would never know from looking at any press anywhere, including the Miss America page is that "show us your shoes" started because drag queens used to be at the corner of New York Avenue and the two buildings would sit up on their balconies during the parade and lean out the windows. And tease the contestants, because they saw they weren't wearing shoes and they're wearing slippers but you couldn't see their feet they would yell "show us your shoes." Heather Warburton 0:34This is Wine Women and Revolution with your host, Heather Warburton. Hi, and welcome to Wine Women and Revolution. I'm your host Heather Warburton coming at you here on Create Your Future Productions. You can find us online at your future creator. com. Follow us on all the social medias and get us wherever you get your podcasts from. Today, I'm talking to someone that's a friend of mine. They're a fellow activist from South Jersey. And specifically what we're talking about today is they're the author of the book, Drag Queens and Beauty Queens. Welcome to the show, Laurie Green. Laurie Greene 1:08Hi, thanks for having me, Heather. Heather Warburton 1:10So you're actually joining us all the way from London today. Even though you live locally here, you're all the way in London when we're recording this Laurie Greene 1:18I've been here for two weeks, I'm actually going to get out of quarantine tomorrow. And I just found out today that they're closing down the country again. So it looks like I'm gonna be in quarantine for another week. Heather Warburton 1:30Yeah, things are definitely challenging in these times of COVID. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. We're talking about Drag Queens and Beauty Queens, which is an awesome title for a book, by the way. And I think what really compelled me was you kind of tell a lot of like the not so well known history of both the Miss America pageant, which if you're local here, you know, you know, Atlantic city's tied to Miss America, and Miss'd America, which may not even be as well known, but it's getting quite popular. And one thing that really stood out to me was when I first moved to the area, I had a friend of mine who was like, Oh, I'm going watch the shoe parade for Miss America. And I'm like, Wait, what? Like this was something I did not know about living outside the area and they were like, yeah, we go and they show us their shoes. I was like, well, why do they do that? And they had no idea why. I don't know, it's just something that happens and you actually explain the history of where that all came from. Do you want to give a little like, quick teaser about what that is, before we dive into the meat of the book. Laurie Greene 2:35Well, the parade is actually called the show us your shoes parade. It is trademarked that way by the Miss America Pageant. And what happens during that parade is that the contestants get dressed up in costumes and funny costumes that spoof or somehow over emphasize the characterizations of thei

Hope For Life with Bob Lenz - an inspiring message for your busy day. This week's devotional theme is Identity. Today's episode will be from Phillipians 1:10.Phillipians 1:10So that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.To discover more, visit lifepromotions.org.

TranscriptionSteve Markovich 0:03Part of the culture of OhioHealth is that it’s a very team-based culture. We tend to solve all of our problems in multidisciplinary teams. And how do you do that and still have the same chemistry and dynamic while you’re making social distancing or working from home?Gary Bisbee 0:16That was Dr. Steve Markovich, President and CEO of OhioHealth as he works through changes brought by the COVID outbreak. I’m Gary Bisbee. And this is Fireside Chat. OhioHealth has the largest health system in its region, with 12 hospitals and 400 ambulatory sites. Dr. Markovich and his executive team are focused on using lessons learned from COVID-19 to accelerate to the next level of convenience for consumers. Recovery is a top priority for the health system, and for patients needing surgery or treatments. The OhioHealth executive team is working to solve a key barrier to patients returning, which is the restrictions to limit or exclude visitors and family members from accompanying patients. One of the learnings from the COVID crisis is that the state and local governments have an expanded view of OhioHealth actual delivery network. Let’s listen.Steve Markovich 1:12I think the government views us, in fact, as a system that is more comprehensive and more integrated than it really is. I was being asked questions by the governor’s office about well, how are we coordinating with all the nursing homes to use nursing home beds as overflows we need them. And they frankly didn’t understand that. OhioHealth doesn’t own a network of nursing homes.Gary Bisbee 1:32As a result of the crisis, OhioHealth will be addressing more completely the integration of disease management and public health. I’m delighted to welcome Dr. Steve Markovich to the microphone.Well, good morning, Steve and welcome.Steve Markovich 1:49Good morning.Gary Bisbee 1:49We’re pleased to have you at the microphone. We’ve been leading off our conversations the last eight or 10 weeks with the discussion of COVID. What’s the state of the surge in OhioHealth’s primary service areas, Steve?Steve Markovich 2:02So we’re in central Ohio central and southern Ohio, very stable right now we compared to some of our colleagues across the country, and our governor acted very quickly and aggressively. And that blunted when I think most people would think of as the surge. So we are averaging about 1100 patients in the hospital across the entire state, of which we have 80 to 100 at any given time at OhioHealth, which is a 12 hospital system. So it is relatively flat. For the last few days, we’ve seen declining volumes at a state level. So this may take you straight to see the backside of the curve, that the big exponential peaks and a lot of people have predicted it really was born in Ohio.Gary Bisbee 2:45Good news there compared to some of the other hotspots. Why don’t we move to OhioHealth? Many of us are generally familiar with OhioHealth but Steve, could you give us an update on OhioHealth as it is today?Steve Markovich 2:58Sure. As I mentioned, we’re headquartered out of Columbus, Ohio at the center of the state. We’re the largest system in the region with 12 hospitals 400 ambulatory sites about 1000 employees, physicians, and about four and a half billion in revenue. 30,000 Associates. So it’s a medium-sized regional player, we are only within the state of Ohio and don’t venture up to Cleveland or down to Cincinnati. So to that center part of the Midwest, Columbus is a unique community in the state capitol. It’s not a manufacturing center. It’s really very much a business center. It’s the Ohio State University. So you’ve got a lot of the economic base here is very, very stable. It’s actually a great place to have a health system.Gary Bisbee 3:39What’s been the policy on remote working due to the COVID outbreak?Steve Markovich 3:43As soon as the Governor declared a state of emergency we effectively sent anyone who wasn’t a frontline caregiver home. And we are still working from home yet the typical administrative challenges up front are making sure everybody had access to the right software and the remote capability, but we’re making it work. It’s great when you can see people are just doing a session. Today, one of the things we got back is the associates that are working remotely while they’re able to do their jobs, that connectivity to their teams, and the connectivity to their manager, something that is challenged. So we’re trying to work out ways to work through that. We’ve had board meetings, we’ve managed to work through it. And so we are right now we’re working on a plan to hopefully bring everyone back. You know, you look across the community. I know folks that aren’t even planning to come back in Columbus, some folks in other industries are coming back in September. So we’re trying to figure out what makes sense, let’s say for our associates, where there might be some increased operating efficiencies. Now let’s prove to people can work from home. While it was a challenge, I think it’s one of those things that in the long run, we’re going to find that it creates opportunities for us.Gary Bisbee 4:49Can you focus a little bit more on the opportunity side? Will this translate into people permanently working from home in certain cases?Steve Markovich 4:58For example, revenue cycles, Our revenue cycle prior to COVID was largely campus-based at one of our administrative centers. We’ve got 1000 people working from home now. And the intention is not to bring them back. So I think especially folks that are working transactionally will benefit from working at home. I think for a lot of individuals, we’re going to end up at a hybrid model, where people will be able to as needed work from home, one of the things we have to do is we have to look at our physical plant and say, okay, at the administrator spaces that were designed in the past, with large group operating spaces, can we still have space, social distancing, we’ve got signs up in the elevators. Now, at work, you can only have two people in an elevator, there are things we’re going to have to rethink how we do part of the culture of OhioHealth is that it’s a very team-based culture we try we tend to solve all of our problems in multidisciplinary teams, and how do you do that and still have the same chemistry and dynamic while you’re maintaining social distancing or working from home?Gary Bisbee 5:54It’s a big project. You mentioned earlier that you have teams working on thinking about how to get back to whatever normal is going to be. How’s that working out? Steve?Steve Markovich 6:05We got two teams. We knew the day this all started, we started what was called back to business. We knew that there was going to be a wave of patients on the backside as well. I think yesterday we had 4000 prepped up imaging studies that needed to be done for patients. So we knew that there was this way that was going to have to happen. And so how do we come back to business? How do we make sure we’ve got the staffing, the supplies, the clinical protocols that allow us to function in the new world, as the governor relaxes some of the restrictions that he has in Ohio. We can do surgery, we can do elective surgery. We just can’t keep people overnight. Emergencies are still a “go”, treating pain, treating cancer, those things are still good, but you can’t do an elective procedure. We have to stay overnight. So we know there’s going to be this wave of people that need care. So we start thinking about that the day that the Cova crisis started. At the same time, we have another team that’s looking at what we call COVID plus one, which is what they learn from COVID. And how do we not go back to the way we were meant, like most of the systems across the country, our er volumes fell 50%. So people come through the front door 50% of baseline. Do we want to take it back to what it used to be? Or can we create new models of care and new delivery models where we can hopefully save some economic impact? Because we all know that there are a lot of folks that end up in different levels of care that really don’t need that, that level of support. How can we further leverage ambulatory surgery centers rather, for elective surgery, rather than bring people to the big hospital? Because prior to COVID, it was really a lot of physician input and physician preference. But really, we have to think about it differently now, as opposed to just saying, we want to bring everybody we can’t do our big institutions. So we’ve got two separate teams working on those things.Gary Bisbee 7:56Makes good sense. What’s your feeling about the way that your community is looking at coming back. Is there any way to judge how much concern there will be with coming back to your surgery facilities or the hospitals?Steve Markovich 8:13It’s anecdotal at this point, we had heard some concerns and started to make some plans, thinking I’d hear from other system leaders across the country that there was a significant number of folks that were hesitant to come back out of fear. We are working both through our physicians, some of our physicians are our best advocates for the safety of the healthcare system. Our government officials have stepped up. The mayor did a public service spot where he was talking about how safe the hospitals are. And then we’re going digital and print media to let people know how safe things are, that we have adequate PPE and that we will take great care of them. One of the big concerns we heard was really not so much around patients being concerned about infection or more COVID as much as the severe restrictions that were put in place around visitors. Family members, people who are willing to come to the hospital. But if they ask if their wife can’t come with them or their, their caregiver or partner, that creates an issue. So one of the things we’re really looking at is what’s the policy on folks coming? If folks are coming in for surgery? How far do we let support folks come with?Gary Bisbee 9:18Just follow up on that you’ve been mentioning, communicating with the community with your caregivers. What has been your communication strategy, Steve?Steve Markovich 9:27We’ve had multiple channels. We communicate internally with associates and physicians every day. My chief medical officer is on point for daily communication. I communicate to the organization with a video once a week. I communicate to my board once a week, and then every two weeks or so I do a communication video to the medical staff. We’ve done some things that I think are a little unique, and I’m very proud it covers from several aspects of the crisis. The four system CEOs we got together, and we said, “Listen, this is bigger than any one of us.” And so when it comes to the safety of the healthcare environment, our policies around visitation support for an alternative site of care, you know, standing up the convention center as 1000, better 1500 bed hospital in Columbus, for mass casualty management, we did that together. And so there’s been a lot of communication to try to reinforce across the community, that it’s not just about a house, it’s about the network. It’s about the system of care that exists, and that people should have confidence in that all four CEOs. We wrote a big letter to the editor. In some communities, hospital systems don’t collaborate but we’re really proud of Columbus. We have a way of doing things that are above us at that level. We all agreed to be one team.Gary Bisbee 10:43Excellent. What’s the morale been of your caregivers? It doesn’t sound like you’ve been swamped, like some of the hotspots but nonetheless, treating patients on a continuous spaces. What’s the morale been?Steve Markovich 10:56It’s really been pretty good. We’ve been very transparent with where we are, what we’re doing, we created some really solid channels for feedback as well, as we got into this. We had some physicians from the front lines that jumped in to help us work on the teams to set policies and procedures and help us as things evolve. We recognize, right upfront, there are eight principles that we set out at the beginning. And one of them was taking care of our associates, economically, physically, and psychologically. And when I say associates, I include the physicians with that. And so we created physician associates resilience teams. So every day there’s an incident command center report out and resilience and burnout is actually an agenda item. So we’ve been working hard to take that into effect. The good news is because we didn’t have the volumes that you might have seen in other parts of the country, we’ve been able to manage the workload, and frankly, when the volumes went down, we sent a lot of people home to keep them safe and keep them ready for a recovery period. So we’ve been able to rotate people through to make sure that people are feeling refreshed as best they can.Gary Bisbee 11:57Just thinking about leadership for a moment. What have been your takeaways from this crisis in terms of your leadership style? What have you had to do differently or think about differently?Steve Markovich 12:10It’s interesting. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on that because I’m a relatively new CEO. Having only been in the job now about seven months when this thing kicked off. Historically, I would have been the guy that was probably running Incident Command, and I needed to stay about it. And so we put together and I essentially kept the senior team out of incident command, we put together a structure where we had clear channels, we had clear roles and responsibilities. We empowered those people, we gave them as broad of decision making authority as we could. And we basically said, “Listen, job one is to take care of the people, and that could be the patients or the associates.” We got to do this safely. And we’ll figure out the processes and the finances on the back end. But we got to make sure we got the right PPE, we’ve got to make sure we’re managing this appropriately. We got to collaborate with our government officials. The biggest thing is that my leadership change was really elevating. And then letting those people that are really experts at the job, just turn it loose, and they have really done a great job and it has been great to see some of those young leaders mature and grow into the roles.Gary Bisbee 13:10So you mentioned PPE, how’s the supply chain been holding up for PPE for OhioHealth?Steve Markovich 13:17It was really challenging at first, like most places, we have GPO relationships. And we had gone to a lot of relatively limited inventory. And so there were a lot of challenges up front. We ended up working back channels and alternative producers. And so we are in a pretty good place right now. We were super fortunate. And you may have seen it on Today Show and I think it was on Time Magazine. There’s a large think tank in a town called named Patel. There’s a lot of government work and research and we work with them to actually come up with a decontamination system. And so at one point, you can reuse a mask 20 times and so we started decontaminating them long before we had the alternatives PPE or from a supplier perspective, we were recycling PPE to the tune of 10,000 masks today at one point. It was great to see that innovation come up. That was one of our family physicians who in partnership with Mattel, started thinking about how can we fix this thing. And it was great to see that level of cooperation. But we’re in a pretty good place right now. We are tracking it very closely in Ohio. The governor has a perspective that really the healthcare system is in fact a system where you’ve got small hospitals, big hospitals, nursing homes, the independent silos and bureaucracies, and the different legal entities. I think he takes a perspective that, listen, it’s one system, we all got to take care of each other. And so you’ll have a hospital association stepped up and helps us track who’s deep in PPE who’s not who can help somebody else out. So some of that does go on, but we’re in a pretty fortunate place right now.Gary Bisbee 14:52Many of your colleagues are talking about the fact that we should have a more reliable supply chain for PPE And perhaps thinking about how much of the supply chain is outsourced globally? How would you think about that?Steve Markovich 15:07I think that’s spot on, I think we’re going to have to rethink for critical items, whether it’s in 95, or facials, there are certain surgeries. And we’ve seen even before COVID, we saw the problem with one of the major GPOs with the problem of production in China, and sterility. So this idea that we’re dependent on relatively few channels, and those channels are offshore, it creates challenges. So I think we’re going to need to look at that. I think whether it’s local sourcing, or creating deeper bench deeper stockpiles, I think those are all the things we’re gonna have to look at.Gary Bisbee 15:39So you were a command pilot in the Ohio National Guard for a number of years. How does the military handle its secure, reliable supply chain? Are there any lessons learned there for us and healthcare?Steve Markovich 15:51The military focus, you know, has some of the same issues. You’ve got some relatively specific items that may be sourced from a single vendor and they have to do another on a worldwide basis, so you end up with inventory management. And there’s a logistics tail to just getting things moved, that the military is really, really good at. I think inventory management awareness of where you are things that you can learn that I took away from the Air Force, clearly a strong sense of supply chain management, people that understand that business and just making sure you go through your contingency planning to where if you’re dependent on a single supplier or one or two suppliers, that is a risk that we’re not talking about at the board level. In today’s world, it’s not sustainable.Gary Bisbee 16:31Yeah. Well, and the question is who’s really going to pay for this excess capacity that we all think we need now that we’ve drummed out of the system before? So I’m sure you’re talking about that with your board too.Steve Markovich 16:45Yep. We had a tremendous response and I’m sure most communities did. We had a tremendous response from the business community for folks that have in their particular businesses. They may have used masks or protective equipment. We had over a million items donated in a relatively short time, we actually had to get a separate warehouse just to take care of what was being donated. Again, that was another place where all the systems in Columbus came together. And so it doesn’t make any sense for each one of us to be looking for help from different businesses. We ought to look at this together. And then if there are issues we got to supply that we can draw from. Yeah, that’s just terrific.Gary Bisbee 17:20Turning to telemedicine, have you seen a marked increase in telemedicine visits?Steve Markovich 17:25Huge. I think through the last report that I saw, we’ve done 75,000 telemedicine visits, ie visits, video visits, mobile chat with a patient so that was a relatively immature space for us. We knew we were gonna have to get better at it, but there just had been that catalyst to make it all happen. And COVID really pushed it. And so we’ve got 900 providers now that have all been trained, and the office staff and we’re actually encouraging folks, especially for routine follow-ups, things like that telemedicine is going to be huge. He’s been using it for a while. tele-consults for things like urology, counsel to the Are things like that, but pushing it down to primary care? we’re operating at a whole new level now. And I don’t see that going back.Gary Bisbee 18:07Well, it helped the CMS and the insurance companies are paying for the tele-visits to I suppose that was an important part of it.Steve Markovich 18:13Absolutely. I think in this case, just because of patients not wanting to go into their doctor, there’s pressure to solve that problem no matter what. But the fact that they’ve now created a way to make the economic model work is a good thing.Gary Bisbee 18:26Have your providers your caregivers responded to this? Have they been innovative in terms of how they’re thinking about and using telemedicine?Steve Markovich 18:36They’ve been superpartners. Most of them are very engaged, they see and they’re thinking about it from a safety perspective and a patient care perspective. They don’t want to bring people into the office that don’t need to come into an office. It’s really been remarkable to watch the collaboration. It is challenging in a community-based hospital system like Ohio Health. Our providers are all on epic. But you’ve got independent folks that aren’t and so it was interesting, there were a lot of requests for help to help create a telemedicine solution for them something that they could connect with their patients or that was secure and appropriate. So we’ve been trying to help them as much as we can stand up that capability.Gary Bisbee 19:12Well, let’s turn to the all-important economics piece. How will OhioHealth end of the fiscal year? I think you’re a June 30 fiscal? How will you end up your 2020 fiscal year Steve?Steve Markovich 19:25We are going to weather this better than some. So we did take advantage of a number of government programs as well as the Medicare advance payment. So from a cash flow perspective, we’re in a good place. We did curtail capital. And we did discretionary spending. We put a lot of constraints on the organization, new capital projects were stopped and we actually lowered the threshold, the authority matrix for what people could do to really try to make sure that we have things clamped down on things. Our fiscal year ends June 30, essentially the last third of the year. We’re what we’ll probably watch about the first two-thirds of the year. But overall, I think we’re going to end up in a pretty good place moving forward, we did make the strategic decision, we have a pandemic PPE program. So even though I’ve got associates at home, we’ve released June 1, we’re keeping them whole economically, we’re going to need those associates, we are modeling as quickly as we can, what the bounce back is going to look like both the short term pent up demand as long as what as well as what is the new normal look like. And so rather than put associates in a conundrum or an economic hardship, we leveraged our economic stability to keep them whole. And our board was very supportive of that. And we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about that. Just the fact we had the ability to do it, we chose to do it. But this next few months will be those are going to be the benchmark that we use to look at how the next quarter looks and we’ll probably end up in a quarter to quarter budgeting or management situation for a little while.Gary Bisbee 20:50Well, that makes good sense. What about cap x? How are you thinking about budgeting next year for cap x?Steve Markovich 20:56We will still have capital available. It’ll be a little more emphasis on routine capital. And then some of the big projects with long term bricks and mortar type things that would have had a much longer-term financial payback. We’re really looking at those. Clearly cash is important right now. And so we’re trying to be very, very selective of what we need to do. There will still be regular routine infrastructure that has to be managed, and some strategic thinking, but some of the major projects right now, I was on a capital meeting yesterday, and everything is being relooked at because we just don’t know the volume assumptions that went along with some of those strategic projects. Those are actually in flux. So we got to figure that out.Gary Bisbee 21:32Sounds like, in addition to your cap x plans, your strategic plans for the next several years may need to be adjusted as well.Steve Markovich 21:39Absolutely. I was talking to our population health team this morning on a call, they’re gonna have to help drive what the new normal looks like and how we deliver the care and what level of care is going to be appropriate in the new home. I’m not gonna say the whole strategy has changed, but I think that demand on the system is going to change just because of the nature of people going to the doctor or going to the house. Go to the surgery center. People are rethinking those things as how bad they need it. Or where else can they get it?Gary Bisbee 22:05Let’s turn to the Board of Directors, which you mentioned meeting with previously, how have you communicated with your board during the crisis?Steve Markovich 22:14I do a letter to the board every Friday that summarizes how the week is gone and what the issues are dealing with. I think I mentioned earlier, I do an all-staff video once a week on Tuesday, I attach that video to the mailing to the board. So the entire board gets that I’ve gotten a lot of very positive feedback on that. I have had a couple of private board calls with my executive committee in my chair, just to inform them of anything major that was covered down or what we were, whether it was the plan for reopening of elective surgeries, things like that. So the communication with the board has been good. We have had one full board meeting. We’ve had several committee meetings, but the full board actually had one fully electronic remote meeting, which was great.Gary Bisbee 22:55Well now I’m asking everybody any tips for smooth virtual board meetings.Steve Markovich 23:00Give ya a couple that worked well for us. One thing is we literally because you know, most of us use PowerPoint or something like PowerPoint, one of my concerns was keeping everybody on the same slide, you got to make sure everything is numbered, even the agenda, each topic of the agenda. It’s had its own separate slides. So if you just went page by page by page, you knew where to go. We also put whoever each slide was assigned a staff member. And that name was put on the slide so that if a board member had a question because some of the board members had visuals, and they were using an AV tool that had visual capability, and some board members were calling in. So sometimes when you’re calling in, you can’t tell over the phone who’s actually talking. And so I wanted to make it crystal clear if you had a question on slide 17. Here’s what you should ask. And so there was no ambiguity as to where to direct your question as you went through the meeting. Because it’s not unusual to have a person meeting you could have three or four people talking and I could appreciate on the phone, you might not be able to I understand we need to direct the question to it went really well.Gary Bisbee 24:03Yeah, that’s a terrific idea. I had not heard that before. So well done. Let’s move back to a higher strategic level, it seems evident that public health is now part of the national security, not sure that we thought about it that way before. How do you think about that? Steve?Steve Markovich 24:20I think this has been a real eye-opener. Frankly, there’s a lack of integration of public health, both at the state level and at the federal level. I think this is going to be the catalyst that makes us rethink that I mentioned a little bit ago, I think, in the health systems. I think the government views us in fact, as a system that is more comprehensive and more integrated than it really is. I was being asked questions by the governor’s office about how are we coordinating with all the nursing homes to use nursing home beds as overflow as we need them. And they frankly, didn’t understand that. Ohio health doesn’t own a network of nursing homes. They’re independent, very high-quality nursing homes in the region. But it’s not like we’re networked on a giant computer database. Well, we know what each other census is and what the demand is for beds or TV or anything. So when we say public health, it’s not just about testing and disease management. It’s how do you in situations like this? How do you create a system that truly is integrated and leverages everyone’s capabilities? Like most hospitals, we’ve been through a lot of mass casualty exercises, and contingent outbreak exercises. We’ve never exercised the system to this level. New York during 9/11 would be the closest thing having come from the military. I’ve got this vision of Sunday, there’s gonna be an exercise, where there’s a Blackhawk helicopter from the National Guard landing on one of our hospital helipads. When we start thinking about it at that level, we will be on the right track.Gary Bisbee 25:45Does this kind of add to our focus on social determinants of health?Steve Markovich 25:50I think the data is showing for patients who are struggling with social determinants of health and this particular disease outbreak is or having worse outcomes. It’s just another case where folks, folks that are either socioeconomically challenged or medically challenged, their prognosis is poor. We have to figure out ways to address that. You’ve got cultural barriers to testing. There’s actually I sat on a committee that was looking at how do we get greater penetration of testing into minority communities where there is a fear of government and fear of gig systems, because they don’t trust they don’t know where the data goes, they don’t know how to be used. So this is a multifactorial problem of how do we address not just social determinants, but deeper penetration of the healthcare system and to all the patients that we serve?Gary Bisbee 26:36Yeah. Well said, this has been a terrific interview. Steve, if I could wrap up with one question. We’ve had a number of people at this microphone talking about a “new normal.” What do you think will be changing going forward as a result of the COVID crisis?Steve Markovich 26:54Could there be so many things I think the just how we approach our interaction with each other you know, whether it’s the need for physical distancing or the desire to do things in a way, that is like, if I can do it from my family room, if I can find my groceries that I can find my paper towel, I can I see my doctor and get what I need. So I think there’s going to be a whole new, and I’m a family physician by training, you know, I was trained with the idea that you know, your patients and you understand your patients, and you have these deep relationships, that whole model is going to be challenged. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest things we’ll see. I think, too. How do we continue to deliver high-quality care in smaller communities, this clearly shows us the economics of health care are going to have to be addressed. If you look at the hospitals that are dealing with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of COVID patients in the larger urban centers, or the small community hospitals that were living on elective surgeries and we shut that off. I think that’s a wake-up call that we’re going to lose. County hospitals are smaller community-based hospitals if we don’t do something.Gary Bisbee 27:57Well said, Steve, this has been terrific. Thanks. So much for your time and good luck to all of you in Ohio and OhioHealth.Steve Markovich 28:05It’s a pleasure. Thanks for doing for this.Gary Bisbee 28:08This episode of Fireside Chat is produced by Strafire. Please subscribe to Fireside Chat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening right now. Be sure to rate and review fireside chat so we can continue to explore key issues with innovative and dynamic healthcare leaders. In addition to subscribing and rating we have found that podcasts are known through word of mouth. We appreciate your spreading the word to friends or those who might be interested. Fireside Chat is brought to you from our nation’s capital in Washington DC, where we explore the intersection of healthcare politics, financing, and delivery. For additional perspectives on health policy and leadership. Read my weekly blog Bisbee’s Brief. For questions and suggestions about Fireside Chat, contact me through our website, firesidechatpodcast.com, or gary@hmacademy.com. Thanks for listening.

Esther 7:9-10 ~ "9Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Moreover, the gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, is standing at Haman's house, fifty cubits high." And the king said, "Hang him on that." 10So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the wrath of the king abated." esther_7.9-10.mp3File Size: 2216 kbFile Type: mp3Download File [...]

In the final episode of Beneath the Subsurface Season One, we're focusing on Well Data Products and the full gamut of subsurface intelligence that can be gleaned from leveraging Well Data with Seismic. Caroline Brignac sits down with Jason Kegel, Ted Mirenda and Katie Fearn for a deep dive into the evolution of well data and how it’s used in today’s workflows.EXPLORE MORE FROM THE EPISODEProduction ForecastingCompletion DataWell Data ProductsInterpretation ProductsWell Production DataGlobal Well DataUS BasinsTABLE OF CONTENTS00:00 - Intro01:42 - Evolution of Well Data Products at TGS03:25 - Production Data & it's Uses07:38 - Production Data and Thesis Work09:09 - Longbow: A Well Performance Visualization Tool with Analytics12:08 - What is Well Performance Data Used For?15:04 - Validated Well Headers & Interpretation20:26 - Well Logs and Production Data for Students, Interns & Early Career22:30 - Historical Production and Well Data24:43 - The Marriage of Seismic and Well Data: Interpretation26:48 - Historical Data and Microfiche?!29:44 - What About Offshore Well Data Products?34:34 - How Much Gulf Of Mexico Data Does TGS Have?39:00 - Seismic or Well Data... Why Not Both?40:20 - Analytics Ready LAS Data (ARLAS)43:49 - Eye Opening Data for Early Career48:48 - TGS Projects & Careers51:37 - Conclusion  EPISODE TRANSCRIPTCaroline:00:12Hello and welcome to Beneath the Subsurface a podcast that explores the intersection of geoscience and technology. This is Caroline Brignac from the well data products group at TGS. In This episode we'll explore our well data products and how they prove to be critical datasets for any exploration and development program. So go ahead and we'll get started with introductions for today's podcast. We've got Jason Kegel with us. Jason why don't you to tell us a little bit about yourself? Jason:00:39Sure. My name's Jason. I work with the geology group here at TGS. I'm a geologist I've been here for six years. I work pretty closely with our well data products and our seismic products. Caroline:00:50Awesome. Thanks Jason. We also have Ted Miranda with us. Ted, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Ted:00:55Sure. Thank you. Caroline. Ted Mirenda. So I'm with TGS. Well, data products group. I've been here for 10 years now. A primary task was to bring production data to TGS and commercialize that product. It's been a lot of work and exciting. Caroline:01:12That's awesome. I'm really excited about having Katie with us. She's a production geologists for a super major. Katie, welcome. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience with TGS. Katie:01:21Thank you, Caroline. I am a recent graduate school graduate and I loved my time at TGS where I got to use Longbow and R360 and then I carried those things that I had learned and into my schoolwork in grad school and it's been awesome. Caroline:01:39So Katie, you started with us as an intern, correct? Katie:01:42Correct. Caroline:01:42That's awesome. Well, we're really excited to have you here and talk a little bit about what your experience with TGS, our products and how you use it in the industry. So one thing that we know a lot about TGS is that it's known as a seismic company. However, TGS offers a wide range of other products such as products in well data. Ted, would you mind telling us a little bit about the well data products division and how it's evolved over time? Ted:02:07Sure. I guess we can step back to 2002 when TGS officially acquired a little company called A2D that gave A2D's the resources to further go out and I believe in acquire Riley's electric log inventory. So that led to the largest commercial well log library. Other resources that TGS provided or enabled was the ability to digitize hard copies and raster logs to LAS. And that library has grown over time where I came into play now 10 years ago after growing the LAS library TGS made the the decision to what's next with well data, well, let's bring in production data. That's when I came into mix. We started building our production data library up. It's been a long challenging project, but it's really paid off. One of the things that critical decision we decided to do was not acquire any production data assets, but build that data from the ground floor up. That meant more work. But in the long run, it's a more valuable product. Caroline:03:25So when you talk about production data, what exactly are you talking about and what does that look like? Ted:03:30Well, we're talking about the full historical production record of every well in the United States. So when you think about different pieces of information that our clients use and need what the well has produced, the reservoir fluids captured from each wellbore is about as important a piece of information as you can have going forward. So we capture that information, really important to tie it to the proper wellbore and a really detailed well header record. There's a lots, a lot of other processes that we do with that as well to then provide the data to our clients. Caroline:04:16So we know that we have, Jason has some experience as well as Katie with this dataset. Would you mind telling us about how you guys use it in your role in the industry? Jason:04:25Sure. So I know at TGS we use the production data quite a bit, looking at our different mapping projects we have. So when we look across the entire, especially United States and look for new areas to shoot on shore seismic, we like to have a really good background information on what companies are actually producing, how much they produced in the past. Can a lot of times tell you where the, where the new plays are and it's always been said that where you found oil before you'll find oil again. And that's been proven over and over again. When we look at the Permian basin, which has been producing since, you know, the 1910, 1920s and today it's one of the biggest basins in the world and we're still finding oil there. So it's nice to really see those historical records of production and where people have gone. On top of that, the Longbow database gives you completion information so you can start really seeing where exactly within the geology has been drilled and how they have done it. So you can get some engineering insight into that as well. Over the years at TGS we've brought all that together to really start looking at new areas where clients want to go and where we can start bringing them seismic. Caroline:05:34So Katie, we knew that you started off as an intern here at TGS a few years ago and we know that you worked with Jason on his team to help sort of guide where we'd go next with our products. What was your experience with the production dataset and Longbow? Katie:05:48So I used the production and information during my project, both at school and at during internship to help me understand the reservoir better so that I could clear up any uncertainties that I was curious about. So for example, I use production data during my time at school to help me understand if there was any reserves left that were not taken out. Ted:06:19Yeah, I know a lot of our clients then use that data to look for bypass opportunities. Another one of the many capabilities of leveraging production data. Jason talked about moving into the completion data side of what we call completion data. Kind of led that evolution. You know, horizontal drilling, unconventional tight reservoirs, fracking, I mean that led to a whole new need for different attributes captured about a well record. So we identify those pretty early on. I had been collecting those and now provide that kind of information to our clients. Not just perf intervals. What is the, what is the producing interval subsurface depth, but the length of the lateral that's being completed and produced correlating production rates, any U R S 2000 foot laterals, another way to really do better well economics and evaluation of assets. So it's, it never ends, you know, the data needs are constantly evolving and changing as industry changes and we follow that path. Jason:07:38So Katie, you said that you use some of our production data with your thesis work, correct. And that was in the, in Louisiana, the Tuscaloosa Marine shale, right? Katie:07:47Yes. Jason:07:47So the Wells and the data that you used there, were they mostly conventional Wells or where we also tried to look at some of the unconventional Wells there too, to define that play that you are looking at. Katie:08:01Right. So I would say the majority, I also focused on the lower Tuscaloosa, which was mostly conventional Wells. Jason:08:09So those Wells, they helped you define that play area and then you had to go deeper and deeper into the log data. Correct. Trying to see exactly what the formation was made up. And you did a sort of a real exploration study of that lower Tuscaloosa Marine shale Longbow helped you kind of understand exactly where the production had become historically and where it might go now and where, where people are drilling currently in the Tuscaloosa Marine shale. Katie:08:39Right. And we also did that with the Austin chalk too. That was another one of our big projects. Jason:08:44Right. And then when you, in the group that was here all from the university of Lafayette worked with us, we also looked up into the Haynesville and looked at some of the smack over units using Longbow quite a bit, looking for trends in conventional plays historically and then seeing where those went unconventionally and if Longbow is the, the main generator of the majority of that data. Caroline:09:09So for those of you listening in who may not be familiar with Longbow is that is our our visualization tool that sits on top of our well performance database. Ted, would you like to add to that? Ted:09:19Yeah, that's right. So you know, production data is a fairly complex data model, right? So you need a tool to search and search your way through that data library, identify Wells that are appropriate to your project assignments so Longbow started out as really as that initial search engine. Hey, you're connecting to almost 5 million Wells, right? In a cloud based database and you're typically going in your assignment, you're going to identify subsets of Wells based on location, geology, formation, operator assets. Hey, examine these assets that are for sale and tell me if it's worth it, right? So Longbow provides that search engine. However, over the, the years and the time, we've incorporated quite a bit of analytics into the search engine. So we're really proud of that. It's if you can think of having a search engine connected to a live database of every well and include analytics, make a bubble in contour map on six month cumulative by zone, you know, all that in one. It saves time. So it's been exciting. We've had great feedback from clients and we are really focused on, Hey, what do our clients want? That's what we put in Jason:10:46When you go. When you talk about analytics Ted, what has been the biggest benefit of forecasting for Longbow? Ted:10:54Well, okay, so that is another good point. Production data being the historical production for the wellbore. Again, the reservoir fluid produced once me and my team, I felt we were comfortable and really good at acquiring that data. I always wanted to move into the forecasting realm as well. So we have added to the, to the product feature every single month. Now every, well all active wells get forecasted to their economic limit, giving our clients quick access to EURs. So from that perspective, I can look at historical data for an example like Katie gave about looking for bypass opportunities. Where did prior operators leave hydrocarbon in the ground with forecasting, I can look at, okay, what's the total proposed value of an asset? How much is that asset going to produce? How much remains that's already there in the, in the analytic tool. So, and again, the different analytic tools include besides mapping, probability graphs, scatter plotting and charts. It's the full gamut. Jason:12:08So we have, Katie who has worked with this data as an intern. I work with this data internally with project development and sales. And then I know that I've gone out with you before and we, we sell this data, we try to give our clients opportunities to use this data. Are our clients, strictly exploration type geologists or engineers or do we have other sort of venues where this data's important in the oil and gas industry? Ted:12:36You know, that's a good point. I mean, our clients cover all those gamuts. You know, one thing, again, with production data, it's a valuable piece of information across an integrated oil company. Enterprise exploration, geologists exploration is of course petroleum engineering department, reservoir engineers that have to forecast production. It's really become a big tool also in the A&D world investment banking A&D world at oil companies, business development. And that's what I like about production data. Everybody finds a use and value out of it, Jason:13:23Right? And it seems everybody wants to know how long that well is going to last and where the next well is next to it. It's going to produce as much that really hard to find that information from anything other than production data. Ted:13:33And what's, you know, what's, what's recently happened and I was looking at right, or like writing a paper on this topic. But you know, right now, most of the think tank forecast for supply, they're all like redoing those and lowering them, you know, the Unconventionals. And we, when we started doing our forecast models, we realized that the horizontal Wells had to be looked at differently. And the decline rates on those, those Wells now are, what would I say, exceeding what we thought they would be. Ted:14:08We had this, you know, unconventional production had made perhaps a real the world with the real comfortable setting of endless oil supply and and you see the think tanks now readjusting those forecasts. So our model changed as well. We're looking at studies and how long Unconventionals are really going to produce and readjusting the EURs. And does that also have quite a bit to do with parent child relationships and how they're stacking Wells within the reservoir? It does, and right now that's what everybody's trying to figure out. That is really challenging looking at spacing, refracking spacing, how does another child affect the, the, the parent well and etc. What is the proper spacing that we try and provide the data to our clients to help them do that? Jason:15:04Right. And in some of those cases you said before with our header products that we have, that really has led to Delineating some of the production data with the validated well header. Can you explain a little bit more about how the validated well header helps understand different laterals and how that traces back to production? Ted:15:25Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's another key point, I think what was attractive to building production data here at TGS? You know, you go out and collect production data and for the most part, I mean, when you're getting public production data, the reality is that data is really coming in at a surface level. I mean, what does the state regulator care about? They just want to know how much did operator produce. So your severance, you're paying severance tax below the surface, they're not so much concerned about which zone is that coming from in which borehole? So here at TGS we have, we can leverage our validated well header dataset, which is our proprietary header where we've gone in, looked at the subsurface and identified missing boreholes. So we are in the process of tying our production data now to that validated header. So really moving production data down to the, to the, what we call the 12 digit API level. And that's really making a difference to our clients. Jason:16:39I know it's helped internally where we've gone used the perforation information. Ted:16:43That's right. Yup. Jason:16:45And actually track the perforations. And I'm not sure if you, you might've done this with this, some in your internship, Katie, where we looked at the perforated intervals on the Wells and then when we are doing our cross sections, we would actually see exactly where the perforations were and see where that oil was coming from. And that helps in a lot of situations in basins where you, you don't know a lot about the basin or you're going somewhere new and you're mapping and we'd see, you know, you'd see the Austin chalk and the Buddha and the Eagleford and you try to wonder, well, where exactly in those formations are they getting the oil from? Without those perforations that we'd got from Longbow, we couldn't truly track that back. We've been doing that more and more with the help from interns when you were here a few years ago and also with our newer interns to, to really try to understand that and then provide that on another level through R360 to start understanding where these Wells are actually producing from, which in some states they don't, they don't provide that information. Ted:17:42That's right. And that that really is a really neat project. I know for me and my team at the, and Ted talking about the production data, leveraging Jason and the geoscientists and the interpretation type work you do on your workstations where we can take our production, our perfs, you guys load it in, match it up with the LAS, correlate that production to the actual producing zone. It takes a while to do that, but we're doing that in projects going across different basins and it's really exciting. Jason:18:15No, it's been, it's been very valuable for us that in some of the test information that Longbow has also has in some states like Oklahoma and Texas, let's say, they don't have produced water for a lot of the production. So the only things that you can look back are some of the actual, that the test data that you have where you can find that water. And then a lot of these areas where you're running analytics on some of these Wells to see when they watered out or how much water they have per volume of oil. That's the only place you can get it. And then when you max that match that back to the perforated interval, you can really start understanding some more about those horizons and how much oil or how much oil you have left, but also how much water you're getting out, which is a huge issue right now with a lot of the unconventionals is water not only how much water you're putting in to stimulate if that's what you're doing, but how much formation water you're actually taking out and that could be a, that could be that the factor in having a well that's a good well or not good at all. Caroline:19:19So I know we've touched on production data and the well performance database that TGS offers, but TGS also offers other data like well logs, various types of well logs our validated well header that Jason just mentioned. Katie, I'm curious about your experience as a student getting data from TGS. Can you tell us a little bit of what that was like and how you use other well data with production data to help solve some of the, the issues you guys were running into? Katie:19:48I'm sure. Well, TGS was really helpful because like Jason said, if Jason and Ted said to the state, you don't have to provide good data to the public. So TGS' well logs, their production data was far superior to anything that I saw. So it definitely helped not just at school cause I use this product at UL but I also got to use it in our projects. So it made the uncertainties that were, we were curious about less uncertain. Right. Cause the subsurface is always uncertain. Caroline:20:26So to follow to build on that, Jason, how do you, how do you work more with well logs and production data together, especially when you're working with a group of young interns like Katie and her, her fellow interns Jason:20:39Well one of the things that we do in our group quite a bit is either look for for new areas or sort of redefine basins that have already had had exploration. So the main thing we do when we do that as we get as many well logs as we possibly can. So that's the, the LAS that we have for those areas. Working for TGS is nice because we have access to quite a bit of data. So we pull all those together and we start just doing cross-sections and fence diagrams and make picking our formation tops so that we have a real good general understanding of the basin. As we're doing that, we're also looking at the production data. So each one of those Wells is either a producer or not a producer or maybe it was just a stratigraphic exploration well. But the reason those Wells exist are to make somebody money. So hopefully they're all producers. Jason:21:32So we learned as much from a dry hole as we do from a hole that's not dry. That's where the production data comes in really handy cause we can see exactly how much oil they got out of that well when it was drilled, when it was plugged and abandoned. Some of the issues that might've gone on with it. So we can understand from looking at just some of the well logs themselves than the caliper per se, to see where you had the whole breakup and see where you might've had engineering issues with that well, where they might have crossed faults that might've caused to loss of production in certain areas. And we can tie that back using production to see exactly how these reservoirs work. And we can track that around better to see where explorationists, might need help delineating new fields or new areas. And that's where the seismic comes in with TGS to where we can try to get the seismic out to help limit some of these problems that were we might be seeing in some of the Wells. Caroline:22:30Out of curiosity I know that we offer a long range of historic production data. Recently we just acquired a company called Lasser that goes back far beyond the 1970s. As a geologist, would you say that having a larger dataset going back further in time is more beneficial for you to help solve problems? Jason:22:54Absolutely. So the one thing we've always ran into is not enough data, right? We always want more data. We want to see the complete picture of the entire basin. So having that data that goes farther back in time, that historic production data really helps because we have a lot of those well logs that are sort of historic historics our well logs and our Las don't stop at 1970 or earlier. The production data depending on state isn't necessarily at a strict cutoff of 1970 but that historic data really helps with that production to really start understanding how those wells were drilled. And like I said before exactly what was it producer and what wasn't producer and if it was producing, how long did it produce for? There's been lots of of technology advances that have really increased how much oil you can get out of the ground or gas you can get of the ground. Jason:23:45That's on a purely engineering basis and you can start to see that in the production data, but you can really start seeing that in some of the LAS data when you start looking at the curves and understanding some of the petrophysics behind the Wells. And not only that, you start understanding the basin. So when you look at some of these really old wells, a lot of them are really shallow just to sort of understand that's as far as they could drill to. That's where the technological limit was. But depending on the basin, some, some people in the forties and 50s had drilled all the way to basement. You really want those type of data points when you're understanding the entire basin. The deeper you understand the basin, the more history you can put into it. The more basin modeling you can do. If you can understand the basin from initial infill to present day and the erosion intervals that have been between there. We see that quite a bit in our base in temperature models, which is one of the products that we do that builds off of our LAS data. Caroline:24:43What other tools, interpretation tools do you use internally that TGS helps provide or provides to our clients? Jason:24:49Well firstly I mentioned the basin temperature models. That's one that we, we helped build and we provide to clients and that's a product where we look at the entire basin. We pick the tops in it from 2000 to 3000 Wells from the LAS. And then we do basin temperature modeling on that entire basin with grids and horizons, start understanding the the basin from completed from basement all the way up to the top and understanding the infill. We also provide other products, sort of worldwide called our facies map browser. And this is mainly offshore, but this is looking at sequence stratigraphy within offshore basins. Jason:25:29This one we also use well data and seismic data where we can and integrate the two of them to, to have a real good understanding and picture of the basin. So the geologists that use this data can jump right in to the basin and have a real good working knowledge of what's going on there. One thing in the industry, I've been in this industry for eight years now and I've seen lots of mergers and you know, lots of layoffs unfortunately with people, but groups shrink and grow all the time. And when they grow, people need to jump into new basins they've never been. So one thing that we provide with some of our well data products like the facies map browser and the basin temperature models easily help people easily get acclimated with basins they may have never worked. It's a, it's a real quick and easy way to understand the stratigraphy and understand some, some components of the basin you might not have thought about before. Jason:26:25Then we've been moving on with the basin temperature model is that the background into TOC models. So actually looking at total organic carbon within the same basin using the background of our basin temperature model and then working with core labs to really understand some of our vitrinite reflectance and core data points. So that's the new thing we're doing particularly in the Permian basin. Ted:26:48And I want to add another point on Lasser that Lasser acquisition, which was a, again, exciting for our team. Jason talked about the need for historical data. Sure. acquiring that data set. Now, the only way you could really replicate that public data is if you went to physically went to the individual railroad commission, district offices and loaded up a bunch of microfiche. So that data's digital. We've got it now. What's really neat is we're running it through our modern QA and QC processes. So adding data production volumes in Texas all the way back to the 30s, and then taking further, taking the lease level production data and allocating it to a well level. Nobody in industry is doing that right now from nobody from a vendor perspective. So that project that's ongoing and will be completed before the end of the year. Having historical production back to the 30s allocated to the well level, excited about that and proud of our team to get that done. Caroline:27:55Not to ask a silly question, but what is microfiche is that what you said? Ted:28:01I said microfiche, yeah. Jason:28:01You don't remember Microfiche? (Laughter) Caroline:28:02You're talking to a millennial. Jason:28:04I feel so old. Ted:28:06The point there is the data is not digital, it's manual, it's on microfilm. Microfiche it's lots and lots of hours of labor to recapture that data in database format. And now that we've got it, it's going to be real exciting. Jason:28:27My experience with microfiche was always in elementary school going to the library. So at the library they always had stacks of microfiche that had historical newspapers from the past and you can still find them and they're really, they're almost like little slides like you remember, do you remember what slides looked like? (Laughter) No, it's done. That's true. It's already 2020. [inaudible] There was a special microfiche reader to see them. And you flip through each one of them. But that's how they always documented historical papers. So we'd go back and have to do research projects and you'd have to go find your little microfiche from the library. And when you looked it up, you would slide through and it was like a little projector screen that read the fiche from like the little, little tiny film and scrolled through the little film. So it is almost like a negative Ted:29:17It's a picture of a document. So I'm not the only millennial in the room. So Katie, I'm gonna make a safe assumption that you did not know what that was? Katie:29:23Nope, no, I had no idea what that was, but I have seen it in movies. So thank you for that visual like connected the two for sure. Ted:29:31That's right. But that, that tells you how you know how- Caroline:29:37How hard to find it, how hard to find that data is. Ted:29:39That's right. There weren't computerized records back then, but we still need the data Caroline:29:44Absolutely. Katie:29:44So you've talked a lot about onshore, so do you offer the same kinds of products offshore as well or what do you, how does it go from onshore to offshore? Jason:29:58That's a good question, actually, because with TGS and with the amount of data that we have onshore as really dense area of log data per se, so we can do areas like the Permian, the Eagleford or the DJ basin and fill them in with 5,000 Wells and pick tops and all 5,000 of those Wells. And they all have temperature points. So we can do our base in temperature models there. Offshore, it gets a little bit more difficult because there are, the data's not so close together and offshore particularly say in the Gulf of Mexico, the geology gets a little more tricky, particularly with basin temperature models because you start dealing with more salt. You start dealing with just having the water to sediment differences that you'll- we understand pretty well, but the more well data you have, the more we can make those interpretive products. Jason:30:55So we have, sort of, different products offshore and like I mentioned before, we have the facies map browser is almost exclusively offshore because we can do that along mainly 2D lines, so long 2D lines that go over large areas and are- usually have a few wells connected to them in exploration areas. So the newest one of those is what we're trying to start now in Mexico and the Mexican side of the Gulf of Mexico where a few years ago we shot a really large 185,000 kilometer 2D survey called Gigante. So we interpreted that whole survey and we shot gravity and magnetics over it. So we actually have a gravity and magnetics model that we've built on that area that helps a lot in exploration, but we've also interpreted all the seismic to pick certain horizons. We would like to go a few steps further and actually understand your stratigraphic facies and your sequence stratigraphy that's in there. Jason:31:56And that's what we're, we're trying to do now with the Mexican side of the Gulf of Mexico. And it's a little bit easier there because there's less wells there and a lot of the operators that are moving in there since they opened up Mexico aren't there. So they don't have as big a knowledge base as they do in the U S Gulf of Mexico. And that big large knowledge base in the U S Gulf of Mexico from the operators that have been there for 40 or 50 years has really limited multi-client type interpretation studies. Because say the Exxons or the Shells or the Chevrons have been in these basins for so long, especially the Gulf of Mexico that they have the working knowledge of those basins and they train their employees on that pretty easily. So they don't necessarily need an outside company like TGS to sort of give them the boost or the the heads up or the, the first step to get into a basin. Jason:32:53Whereas in other basins around the world where we have facies, map browsers, we've had them for a while, we have new companies coming in and going more often. So they sort of like having that extra layer of knowledge that we can offer on shore. In the Gulf of Mexico though we did do a post-well analysis, which is just looking at specific wells and I think we have a little over a hundred now and they're either dry holes or or discoveries and they sort of show the stratigraphy they show why it was a dry hole or why was it a discovery. We match that up with seismic and certain areas so you can see the structures that were being drilled at the time. So we do have that. And then in the Mexico side of Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico, we have production data on both sides now. Jason:33:41So we actually have the contract with the Mexican government to provide not only the seismic but the well log data in Mexico, but also the production data in Mexico. On the U.S. Gulf, we have the contract to deliver log data. So companies that drill in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, they actually send their log data to TGS. We hold it for the 26 month timeframe. And then we clean that data up. We provide our LAS plus package. We provide that back to the BOEM or BSCE, the government entity that sort of controls the Gulf of Mexico. And then we also provide that to any other company that would like to purchase it. So we're the - TGS is actually, we've had that contract for a little over 10 years now and we've just renewed it this year. Katie:34:34So like how much coverage do you have in the Gulf of Mexico? Data-Wise. Jason:34:38Data-wise? So all of it really. So with the, with the recent acquisition of spectrum, we now have 2D coverage that extends all the way from Florida to the Rio Grande Valley really. So we have 2D coverage that covers, there are, TGS is a seismic company. Our core seismic area has always sort of been 3D seismic anyway, has always sort of been the Mississippi Canyon, DeSoto Canyon, Atwater Valley area. We have lots of 3D seismic. We're currently shooting seismic there. We'll just finished up some new nodal surveys there and doing reprocessing. But we have 2D and 3D coverage across the whole area and well data we have all of it. We have every well that's ever been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. Ted:35:27On the production data song for Gulf of Mexico. The data's really, really nice from that perspective. I mean every well is reported oil, gas and water, monthly production. Well tests are extensive in the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps the federal government does a better job of reporting well test data, making sure operators are testing those Wells annually and semiannually and getting that data out to public. So you also get access to certain pressure data in there, you know, flowing tubing pressure, bottomhole pressure, et cetera. So that data sets we like working with that. And now on the Mexico side, you know, we've got full coverage of Mexico petroleum industry. There's about 21,000 Wells with production in Mexico. About 1100 of those are offshore and we have captured and calculated monthly production for all of those Wells. So that was a fun project. Learning to translate certain wellheader attributes from Spanish to English that was fun to do. Converting units of measurement down there from a, you know, average daily rates to total monthly production. Bottom line is that data's now standardized in our library monthly oil and barrels in Mexico, monthly gas and MCF water in barrels. And,looking at the data, there are world-class wells in Mexico, so I think the continued release of data from Mexico. Hopefully we'll stay on track there with the, the government releasing data. Like I said, there's there's been some really gigantic flow rates down there, particularly offshore and no reason to think there's not great opportunity there. Seismic Katie:37:36Where's your seismic that you just shot in Mexico. Where does the location lies? Jason:37:40So the, the 2D seismic that's there, the original Gigante is all offshore and covers the entire Mexican Gulf of Mexico 2D. So it covers everything and it even goes sort of around the horn of the Yucatan near Belize. So it covers everything sort of almost into the Caribbean. We've also been doing looking at reprocessing efforts to extend some of our, to extend the seismic onshore to offshore and the Sureste and Tampico areas. And then we're also looking at 3D programs as well. Katie:38:15Very nice. Jason:38:16So there's quite a bit there. And that's not the only place that we have seismic or well log data. So TGS is actually always, I always try to remind me, we have well log data worldwide. So we have data. Do you know Russia and Africa and Australia and Malaysia all over Europe. And all over South America as well. And seismic too. I sort of focus on Western hemisphere so I know a little bit more about that part, but that's still quite a quite a large area sometime. And we're we're, we're looking at wells and seismic all across, both North and South American. Ted:38:53Don't forget Canada. Jason:38:55And Canada too, we have quite a bit of seismic in Canada as well. Caroline:39:00Nice. So one question I have for the table, we know that as TGS is predominantly a seismic company, but we also offer well data. How does that, how does that really help our clients when we offer two very different and unique datasets together? Jason:39:19I think the biggest part of that is making a complete geologic picture for explorationists. So you need the seismic to really sort of understand areas where we don't have well data and that well data really helps the seismic become better. One of the good examples of that is in some of our reprocessing efforts we're doing offshore, we're incorporating as much well data as we can, particularly Sonic data so that we can really understand the velocity models. And really make sure that we can tie those velocity models when they come out and with our seismic comes out in depth that our wells tie perfectly with them. The more well data we have, the better our seismic is going to be at the end of the day. We've always tied a few Wells that we can here and there, but since TGS has so much well data, it's a real benefit to our clients to be able to use that in the seismic processing and in reprocessing as more wells come out. Caroline:40:20So I'm just curious, you know, we are now offering a new product in the well data group. That's our analytics ready LAS that basically allows us to offer even more data. How do you feel about the machine learning algorithms that we're using in forecasting or with well logs? How do you feel about using that as geologists, Katie and Jason? Jason:40:42So one of the things that we've noticed quite a bit with this is you get a really nice big picture and particularly with analytics ready, we like to call it just ARLAS AR-LAS is that that big picture of that first presentation you can get, particularly when it comes to velocity models in Sonic where you don't have seismic. So one of the great images, and I don't know if I can explain this well through through radio, but one of the great images that you can have is with regular well data you have lots of lots of holes. So we didn't drill every place we could and then every place we drilled through time, we didn't do every log we could do. So a lot of the well logs that we have, particularly on onshore might have one or two curves. They might have a resistivity and a gamma ray or some of the older ones just might have an SP curve. Jason:41:32What can start doing with AR or the analytic ready Las is incorporate sort of Sonics into all of those logs and start understanding where we have those deviations in Sonic across the whole area where it hasn't been drilled. So from a big picture, it really helps you understand how that would tie together where you might want to drill next or what might, what interesting features you wouldn't see where a well isn't drilled without having seismic. And if you have seismic then you can tie them both together as well to kind of have a better understanding of of your depth processing. Ted:42:13And I might add onto that AI question back on the production forecasting a challenge. So we're offering both methodologies now of course we have our, you know, our traditional hyperbolic curve fit type forecasting algorithms that work well and offering the physics based you know, probabilistic spread forecasting new. Your question is how do we think about that? It's like, how does the industry think about that? I know everybody's talking about it. Everyone's trying to figure it out. To me, getting a million forecast in a couple of seconds is impressive. Right? And getting that full spread on each, well a P 10 through a P 99 forecast right at your fingertips. It's powerful stuff. Caroline:43:07Yeah. I'd be really curious to see where machine learning and artificial intelligence takes TGS in the future with other types of derivative products that we end up discovering and producing and really making sure that we're getting these to the industry to reduce cycle time. So I think that's pretty cool. Jason:43:22Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think we're, we're already moving in that direction with filling in log curves and in the seismic side trying to understand different seismic bodies. So using machine learning and AI to serve as a tool to understand where salt is in a quicker, more timely fashion or to even start understanding easier ways to define horizons or define some amplitude attributes as well. Jason:43:49[To Katie] So you've seen our data and played with our data and hopefully in the future is you're, you know, experiencing your geology career, you'll get to use it much more. Ted:44:01I think she's just scratched the surface with our data, right. I know all that data. Jason:44:06You had the unique opportunity to use it to come into our -come into the company and see what it was like to have that much data at your fingertips. Can you tell us a little bit about how, what that was like and how, how that's different from then to school to now that you're, you're in the industry. Katie:44:24So I came into TGS knowing nothing, well, not knowing nothing, but you know, minimal. You think you, every time you start somewhere you like think you know something, but you really don't, which I've learned again third time. Ted:44:37Right? Katie:44:37So at TGS, I wouldn't say it was just, I learned how to work with all this data, which was overwhelming at first. It was like I learned how to, I don't know, act, not just like socially in an office, right? But I also learned like what's important, what's not important. It's easy to get bogged down in the details when you go from zero to 100 real quick. Caroline:45:03So you've really had a unique perspective. Especially compared to a lot of us at TGS, you started off in an internship with us getting into the data and learning the data, applying the data. Right. And then I believe maybe you've even used it in your thesis. Katie:45:20Right. Caroline:45:20And now that you're in the industry, what has that looked like for you? Ted:45:26How about, how about how do you access data being an industry now? Katie:45:31When I've looked at data, it tells me, it makes me feel comfortable. It clears up uncertainties.. It's not telling me what's going on, but at least I'd like have more of a general idea. So when I look at these large amounts of data that I get for a project, let's say like I did in grad school, it's okay, I have this data. What does the data tell me? Does it tell me if it's pinching out? Does it tell me if it's, you know, this big chunk or maybe the depositional environment. That's what I looked at a lot in well logs the petrophysics. Jason:46:08No, it's understandable. You get thrown a lot of data in these situations and it's how you put that together, how you can efficiently use it. And that's something that we're always trying to make easier for people. It helps in a lot of situations, particularly in, in super major type of companies or in a lot of different companies, even smaller companies that they have geo techs that efficiently use our data before they give it to you. Right? So a lot of times you never, you'll never get to see the first part of, you know, where did this data come from because it all just ends up on your desktop. Right? Katie:46:42Right. So like I, what I liked about my experience I guess at TGS is I saw the beginnings, right? What a geotech would put it in. So I like got to see that visual fresh or put my own spin on it when we were using Longbow. So making those bubble plots or looking at URs and decline curves. I don't have, I don't, I haven't gotten that experience yet, but I'm a Guppy. Caroline:47:10So it was like you were getting access to data sets such as the, you know, the EURs and the forecasting database that you probably didn't necessarily have access to while you were working on your masters. Katie:47:21Right. And didn't know about until it came to TGS. Ted:47:26And the ability to build that project from scratch. I imagine a lot of times now in industry, you walk in and sit down and there are gigantic projects already existing and workflows established as opposed to like starting at the beginning. Katie:47:46Right. Which is overwhelming. Like I remember Jason was like, Hey, y'all are going to map from Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. That was very overwhelming. Now I just, you know, you get a project and it, someone's already, most of the time, I don't know picked through it. So you don't, it's not very fresh. Jason:48:09But now you're not afraid of the deep end of the pool. Katie:48:10I don't know about that... Jason:48:10Right. We threw you right in the deep end and I, you can swim. You're ready to go. Katie:48:18Oh no. I'm still learning. Jason:48:18Well that's good. Never wanna stop learning. Ted:48:22We're all still learning. Katie:48:22Right. But I'm really still learning. As a new worker bee. Jason:48:30So Katie, is there anything we haven't seen you in a little while? I know that you're, you're in Louisiana now. Is there anything that you want to ask us that you're interested in from a, from your perspective after you've graduated and are now moving onto bigger and better things that might help you in the future? Katie:48:48Maybe not something that would- maybe wouldn't help me in the future, but also help other people that are looking for jobs. Is, are y'all looking for employment? Like looking to employ anyone or what does that look like? It sounds like you're doing a lot of work. So do you have people to fill these positions or are you, how does that go for y'all? Do you even know? Jason:49:10Well, that's one of those great HR questions where, you know, we're always, we're always just busy enough to need new people. (Laughter) Caroline:49:20And I think with, you know, new departments that were growing especially new datasets like Ted is talking about Mexico and Canada, I feel like it really helps to position us to grow, you know, as a company as a whole. So opportunities are always always coming up. Yeah. Jason:49:36I know particularly with our internship program, we're always looking for, you know, young, exciting new talent that can, that can come in and help us out. But also like you did learn about data from sort of the bottom up and take that knowledge base to other companies. So we don't only like training people to come and stay with us or we're perfectly happy bringing in interns and having them go out in the world and and learn something from us that they can bring somewhere else. Katie:50:06Oh sorry. I would say that that's why I like had not, I think that working at TGS was nice for others to see cause they knew that I had experience I guess with production data, which is a cool talking point I think. Caroline:50:22And just to build off of that, Ted has done a really great job building this new initiative, which is getting our well performance data in the universities to work with people like you, Katie, while you were getting your masters to make sure that we're able to provide data to other other programs and get geologists or young geologists access to data sets that they wouldn't have or wouldn't be familiar with whenever they're entering the workforce. Ted:50:48That's right. So, you know, we're happy to donate donate our products, donate production data and Longbow to the universities. As you know, at ULL they brought it into the geoscience and engineering groups. And now we're sitting on the, what the 20 workstations in the lab and part of the curriculum. So it's exciting at the same time, giving the students access to these data products learning actual, you know, working product tools. When they do get hired and hit the, hit the workforce, they're ahead of the game and ready to go. Now, from my selfish perspective, it helps to get feedback and make the products better. So it's a win win for both. Caroline:51:37Well, thanks everyone for coming out today and having this conversation, you know, hanging out, covering a lot of really awesome topics, kind of, you know, exploring where TGS is headed next, where we've been, where we're going. Katie, you know, especially thanks to you for coming all the way from New Orleans to sit with us and kind of give us your insight and your opinions and let us know how it's, how the journey has been for you. So thanks, Jason. Thanks Ted looking forward to the next, the next episode. Katie:52:01Thank you for having me. Jason:52:03Yeah, thanks Katie, it's been great Ted:52:04Thank you.

Samaria the capital of Israel’s northern kingdom was under siege. Ben-hadad, the Syrian king and his powerful army’s presence had resulted in a disastrous famine. Israel’s king was walking along a wall when a woman cried out to him for help. His answer expressed his sense of utter helplessness. I quoted from the New Living translation, but the Aramean is translated in most places as Syrian.  2 Kings 6 & 7 NLT He answered, “If the LORD doesn’t help you, what can I do? I have neither food from the threshing floor nor wine from the press to give you.” 28But then the king asked, “What is the matter?” She told a story of cannibalization that drove the heartbreaking truth of desperation like an arrow into his heart. 30When the king heard this, he tore his clothes in despair. And as the king walked along the wall, the people could see that he was wearing burlap under his robe next to his skin. Burlap In the Bible, whenever someone sought God with ardent desperation through prayer and fasting, they would put on burlap as a sign of their humility. 31“May God strike me and even kill me if I don’t separate Elisha’s head from his shoulders this very day,” the king vowed. I can only guess at why the king would blame Elisha for this nightmarish situation, but Elisha wasn’t the problem. Playing the blame game started with the first sin and has been repeated again and again when a person is confronted with a problem or a sinful consequence. You can't win shifting the blame. The king backed up his vow with a personal visit to Elisha’s house and his personal assistant. 32Elisha was sitting in his house with the elders of Israel when the king sent a messenger to summon him. But before the messenger arrived, Elisha said to the elders, “A murderer has sent a man to cut off my head. When he arrives, shut the door and keep him out. We will soon hear his master’s steps following him.” 33While Elisha was still saying this, the messenger arrived. And the king said, “All this misery is from the LORD! Why should I wait for the LORD any longer?” Chapter 7 NLT 1 Elisha replied, “Listen to this message from the LORD! This is what the LORD says: By this time tomorrow in the markets of Samaria, six quarts of choice flour will cost only one piece of silver, and twelve quarts of barley grain will cost only one piece of silver.” 1 Kings 6 describes the scarcity of food by explaining what is available and how expensive it is; the price of a donkey head cost 80 pieces of silver and a cup of dove’s dung for 5 pieces of silver. In the midst of this kind of scarcity Elisha announces the availability of choice flour and barley grain. But not just availability, he is also communicating that the flour and barley will be available in abundance by telling how much it would cost…6 quarts of fine flour or 12 quarts of barley grain for 1 piece of silver. 2The officer assisting the king said to the man of God, “That couldn’t happen even if the LORD opened the windows of heaven!” But Elisha replied, “You will see it happen with your own eyes, but you won’t be able to eat any of it!” 3Now there were four men with leprosy sitting at the entrance of the city gates. “Why should we sit here waiting to die?” they asked each other. 4“We will starve if we stay here, but with the famine in the city, we will starve if we go back there. So we might as well go out and surrender to the Aramean army. If they let us live, so much the better. But if they kill us, we would have died anyway.” What a hopeless situation! Or so it seemed. The was really true. If they sat where they were they would die! It was hopeless ONLY if they did nothing. They had no idea what God would do.   5So at twilight they set out for the camp of the Arameans. But when they came to the edge of the camp, no one was there! 6For the Lord had caused the Aramean army to hear the clatter of speeding chariots and the galloping of horses and the sounds of a great army approaching. “The king of Israel has hired the Hittites and Egyptians to attack us!” they cried to one another. 7So they panicked and ran into the night, abandoning their tents, horses, donkeys, and everything else, as they fled for their lives. I just love this part of the story! This is a perfect picture of a boomerang. Intimidation had been a powerful tactic of this army, now God was using sound to intimidate them. Please dear friend, stop allowing intimidation to stop you. It is a strategy of hell to stop you from doing what God has called you to do; to keep you from believing God for your family; to rob you from the victory God has promised you. I want to remind you that no weapon that is formed against you will prosper. 8When the men with leprosy arrived at the edge of the camp, they went into one tent after another, eating and drinking wine; and they carried off silver and gold and clothing and hid it. 9Finally, they said to each other, “This is not right. This is a day of good news, and we aren’t sharing it with anyone! If we wait until morning, some calamity will certainly fall upon us. Come on, let’s go back and tell the people at the palace.” 10So they went back to the city and told the gatekeepers what had happened. “We went out to the Aramean camp,” they said, “and no one was there! The horses and donkeys were tethered and the tents were all in order, but there wasn’t a single person around!” 11Then the gatekeepers shouted the news to the people in the palace. The King didn't believe 12The king got out of bed in the middle of the night and told his officers, “I know what has happened. The Arameans know we are starving, so they have left their camp and have hidden in the fields. They are expecting us to leave the city, and then they will take us alive and capture the city.” 13One of his officers replied, “We had better send out scouts to check into this. Let them take five of the remaining horses. If something happens to them, it will be no worse than if they stay here and die with the rest of us.” 14So two chariots with horses were prepared, and the king sent scouts to see what had happened to the Aramean army. 15They went all the way to the Jordan River, following a trail of clothing and equipment that the Arameans had thrown away in their mad rush to escape. The scouts returned and told the king about it. Finally! 16Then the people of Samaria rushed out and plundered the Aramean camp. So it was true that six quarts of choice flour were sold that day for one piece of silver, and twelve quarts of barley grain were sold for one piece of silver, just as the LORD had promised. Just like God said. 17The king appointed his officer to control the traffic at the gate, but he was knocked down and trampled to death as the people rushed out. So everything happened exactly as the man of God had predicted when the king came to his house. What are we missing out on because we don’t believe? The king’s assistant missed out on the food, the bounty that the army left and his life. Isaiah 53:1 KJV Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?   John 12 tells us the story of an excited crowd that greeted Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Verse 17 explains that many of the people in the crowd had seen Jesus call Lazarus from the tomb and raise him from the dead. They were telling others what Jesus had done, so crowds of people wanted to see Jesus too. In this context Jesus prophesied his death; then He exposes his heart in verse 27. “Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But this is the very reason I came! 28Father, bring glory to your name.” Then a voice spoke from heaven, saying, “I have already brought glory to my name, and I will do so again.” 29When the crowd heard the voice, some thought it was thunder, while others declared an angel had spoken to him. 30Then Jesus told them, “The voice was for your benefit, not mine. God spoke from heaven to benefit them, to bolster their faith, to reveal Jesus to them. Part of the crowd explained it away as thunder. I've heard people explain way God's miracles.  Some of the more religious people passed it off as an angel speaking to Jesus. It was God, but many didn’t get the revelation of who Jesus was because they didn’t believe. Verse 37, But despite all the miraculous signs Jesus had done, most of the people still did not believe in him. 38This is exactly what Isaiah the prophet had predicted: “LORD, who has believed our message? To whom has the LORD revealed his powerful arm?”   Do we believe something simply because it is frequently repeated? Do we believe something because it sounds right to our ears? Or do we believe it because it IS TRUTH?                              John 14:6 NIV Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.   What about you, my dear friend, do you believe?   Lauren Dagle has captivated America’s hearts with her song, “You Say.” I would guess that you have heard it many times, but for illustration sake I want to describe what I see (Yes, see.) in her song. Lauren sings several truths that God says about a believer and then she sings a simple but game changing line…”I believe. I believe.” And I believe she really does believe what God says about her, that’s why her songs grips us like it does. But I’m talking to you today and I want to know about you…do you believe?   So one more time I repeat the words of the mighty profit Isaiah.  Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?   Let’s pray.      

In this episode of Beneath the Subsurface we introduce our Geoscience and Data & Analytics intern teams for our summer internship program. Erica kicks off the episode with Jason and Sri talking about how the programs have come about and changed overtime here at TGS, how they select and recruit for the program, and the scope of the projects that the internships tackle this summer. Erica then spends time with both teams of interns discussing the experience in the program, what they’ve learned, and everything they’ll be taking away and applying back to their studies and upcoming careers. TABLE OF CONTENTS00:00 - Intro00:50 - Team Leader Segment with Jason and Sri01:09 - The Geoscience Internship Program04:42 - The Data & Analytics Internship Program07:29 - Advice for Program Applicants11:54 - Data & Analytics Intern Team Introductions13:32 - The D&A Summer Projects15:18 - Lessons Learned Pt. 117:20 - The TGS Internship Experience Pt. 120:24 - Future Careers21:41 - Advice for Future Interns & Reasons to Apply Pt. 124:34 - Valuable Take Aways Pt. 126:01 - Geoscience Intern Team Introductions28:36 - The Geoscience Summer Projects31:33 - Lessons Learned Pt. 233:14 - The TGS Internship Experience Pt. 234:12 - Advice for Future Interns & Reasons to Apply Pt. 239:28 - Valuable Take Aways Pt. 2EXPLORE MORE FROM THE EPISODEARLASSALT NET TGS DATA LIBRARYEPISODE TRANSCRIPTErica Conedera:00:12Hello and welcome to Beneath the Subsurface a podcast that explores the intersection of geoscience and technology. From the Software Development Department here at TGS, I'm your host, Erica Conedera. This time around, we'll be chatting with our newest batch of intrepid students in TGS' dynamic and immersive internship program. As you will hear, they are a diverse group of future innovators from around the world. They bring with them a wide range of skills and interests and work together to collaborate on exciting real world projects. We'll start our conversation today with a quick introduction from the leaders of our internship program. I'm here with Sri Kainkarayam, the data science lead and Jason Kegel with the geoscience team who heads up the geoscience intern program. And we're going to talk a little bit about the internship programs. Jason, how has this program changed in the last five years?Jason Kegel:01:09When we first started the program, I want to say 2013, 2014, it was out of the Calgary office in Canada. The interns there were mainly from some of our Calgary schools nearby. And then it started to grow 2014, 2015 to include some of our Texas schools, UT, Baylor, University of Houston. As it's grown, we've decided to add more projects and more sort of interesting work to the projects. We've also been able to bring on some of our original interns into roles within the company. So over the last five years, I'd say the biggest thing that's grown is the, the number of interns. So in Calgary, when this first started we had one intern and then that same intern came back a second year and we brought another one on. And then we got one in Houston. And then as that grew, we had a couple in Houston and a couple in Calgary.Jason: 02:09And then the past couple of years we've had four each year. So we had four last year and four this year. So we've really been able to sort of guide new projects around that to where we can really include their schoolwork and what they're doing in their university work with what we're doing here at TGS and hopefully build a sort of cohesive project for them to work on. And that's sort of the struggle with a lot of internship projects that we've done over the past years is to incorporate what they want to do as students and as interns and as their career grows, with what we'd like to see them do and encourage them to do within TGS.Erica:02:49Does that go into the consideration of which interns you end up picking, what their specialties are or what they're looking to do with what you need?Jason:02:58No, not necessarily, a lot of the times the interns, so for example, last year we were working very closely with a couple of schools that we wanted to bring data into. So some of our production data our Longbow group into with the University of Lafayette. So we were working really closely with a few professors out of that school and a few professors with UH. So we had recommendations from the professors themselves with students that they thought might work nicely with us with - in terms of their knowledge of data already and their knowledge of well log use and seismic, so they can kind of jump in running without having to learn too much in the beginning, without too much of a learning curve. So in aspects of that, and that's, that's more that we look for. So the, the professors we're working with, along with how long it will take them to, to get up and running with things.Jason:03:51Our current group of students is sort of a more advanced set of students who are working on their PhDs or in their later years of their master's degrees. So they've already seen a lot of these areas and worked with a lot of the data. So we do look for sort of more advanced students now, whereas when we first started the program, we were, we were happy to get anybody, some people that were not sure if they were going to be geoscientists, but you know, we're in the geoscience program with their bachelor's and that was okay too. I think we still got a lot out of having them here, working with us. but as we've grown, we've been putting them on more and more advanced projects and they've really been able to help out.Erica:04:29Cool, sounds like they've added a lot of value.Jason:04:30They definitely do. And it's nice to have sort of fresh faces around in the summertime and, and it really, really fills in for everybody that goes on vacation in the summer.Erica:04:39(Laughter) Right? Awesome.Jason:04:39The office doesn't seem so empty.Erica:04:42Awesome. So for the data analytics team, the internship program is new. I think this is your first batch of interns, correct Sri?Sri Kainkaryam:04:57Yes. So the data science team started sometime around November, 2017 so this is, although this has been our second summer, this is our first batch of interns that are projects, both, trying to test out novel algorithms, novel approaches, also try and apply ideas from high performance computing to building workflows, and also try and build sort of, user interfaces or ability to, deploy these for various users. So, there are broadly three buckets in which these projects fall into. And, it's an, it's, it was an interesting time looking for an intern because data science as, as a domain is, sits at the intersection of sort of three, broadly non intersecting sets, right? So geoscience, computing as well as machine learning or deep learning and folks having adequate background in all three of them, they sort of fit the -the mold of a good intern.Sri:06:02So it was in some sense was a little hard initially to try and find an intern. So I think we have a talented group of interns working on two of the broad offerings that we have right now. One of them is Salt Net, that is trying to interpret salt bodies from seismic images, and one is called ARLAS that is curve completion and aspects of petrophysics that can be done on, on wells that are available in an entire basin. So, it's, it's been four weeks into the internship program and the interns, the interns are pretty smart. They're motivated and it's been a fun experience so far.Erica:06:43Is it a 12 week program in total?Sri:06:46It's around a 12 week program. Some of them I think are here for a little longer than that. So, one of them is, trying to build a tensorflow port of our salt network flow because tensorflow community comes with a bunch of advantages such as, like, ability to deploy, it also comes with a JavaScript library called tensorflow JS that that makes it easy to do machine learning in the browser. So we want to make use of that infrastructure and the community built infrastructure. And that's one of the reasons why, one of the interns is spending time trying to build, trying to put our workflow in onto tensorflow.Erica:07:29So if you guys had some advice to give to people looking to get into the internship program, would you have anything you'd want to let them know?Sri:07:37So from the perspective of data science internships, given that how fast the field is moving, especially for students looking for data science internships in, in the space of oil and gas, the first and foremost thing is having an ability to understand various aspects, various various sources of data or aspects of data in the upstream domain. Because, just to give you an example, somebody who's worked on deep learning of natural images throughout, the moment you try and apply similar algorithms onto seismic images, it's a completely different domain. So, what are the, what are some of the assumptions that you can make? And that's where having a strong domain background really helps.Sri:08:30And I think the second thing that is, that's becoming very important in the marketplace right now is, is with, with platforms like GitHub or, you know, various open source projects. You can actually showcase your code. So pick a problem, learn a few, learn some approaches or try out some novel approaches, and put out the code out there. Put that on your resume because that adds a lot of weight, in your, in your ability to make a case for an internship rather than somebody who hasn't, who says, oh, I have, I have a strong programming background, but there's no way for somebody who's evaluating the person to see the code. So that these days has become a really strong advantage for, for a lot of students. So a couple of the students that are working with us this summer, they actually have active GitHub profiles where they've posted code, they've contributed code, various projects and so on. And as a consequence, like we looked at their profiles and backgrounds and like, oh, this is an obvious fit to our group and this person also has a background. A couple of them were like Ph.D students in geophysics, so it's an obvious fit for our team. So it was, it was all, it was a no-brainer for us to get them to come work with us this summer,Erica:09:53Jason?Jason:09:53On the geoscience side, it's, it's quite a bit different really. A lot of the students that are in university going for, for geoscience and wanting to go into the oil and gas industry have mainly just academic experience. So we really just want somebody that can sort of get up to speed quickly with sort of what an explorationist in an oil and gas company would do is look at essentially what we're bringing them in to do is what a sort of a mini, really quick exploration studies on basins where they don't have to go full on to drill a well, but they still need to have the ideas behind it where they can use the data, they have to evaluate an area and come up to speed quickly with, with getting those presentations out. So having really good presentation skills and having just a background enough to be able to learn on their own and pick up concepts quickly really helps. We see that a lot with, since we do get a lot of our interns through their advisors at different universities, that that really helps. But it also doesn't hinder it. We've also had lots of students that have applied, that have came from different universities where we don't know the advisors and it's just a matter of them going through the interview process and showcasing that they're, they're able to get to speed quickly. So, anybody can really go, go and do this type of work if they have the, the ability to learn.Erica:11:14Awesome.Sri:11:14I think that's an interesting point that Jason brought up. The ability to learn things fast and, sort of the ability to, appreciate various data sets and trying to understand and bring them together. I think that's a huge advantage for, for students. And based on my interaction with students in our group as well as Jason's group, I think TGS this summer has a fabulous group of interns.Erica:11:43Okay. Well thank you guys for talking to us about the internship program and we're very happy to talk to your respective groups and see what they have to say. Thank you.Sri:11:52Thank very much.Jason:11:53Thank you.Erica:11:56I'm sitting here with our first group of interns from the data and analytics group. To my left, we have Michael Turek from Florida State University. His major is computer science. He has a B.S. In computer science as an Undergrad. What are your career goals? What are you working towards?Michael Turek:12:15Yes. So part of me taking an internship here at TGS was to help figure that out. And so, well, you know, my interests rely mostly in machine learning and things like this. So something pretty, along those lines.Erica:12:31Awesome. Well we hope you, we'll help you figure that out. While you're here. Going around the table, we have Lingxiao Jia from the University of Wyoming. Your major is geophysics and you're working towards your PhD studying seismic imaging, migration and inversion. What kind of career are you working towards?Lingxiao Jia:12:50I plan to work as a Geoscientist in the oil and gas industry.Erica:12:56Awesome.Lingxiao:12:56Yeah, I like to do programming, so mostly on that.Erica:13:06Cool. All right. And then to my right, we had Deepthi Sen, from Texas A&M, majoring in petroleum engineering, working towards your PhD, studying reservoir engineering. What's your career goal, Ms. Deepthi?Deepthi Sen:13:21I'd like to, get a full time employment in the oil industry, preferably working on something related to machine learning in reservoir engineering. So yeah, that's why one of the reasons why I'm here too.Erica:13:33Awesome. Yeah. Oh, we're glad all of you are here. So can you guys describe for us, the projects you're working on? I'm not sure if you guys are all working on the same project or if you're working on different projects.Deepthi:13:45We are working on different projects. So right now I'm working on something which, involves clustering well logs, into good and bad, sections.Deepthi:13:57I use machine learning and a few algorithms that I use for my graduate research too.Erica:14:04Very cool. What's a bad section?Deepthi:14:07A bad section as in, there are certain depths at which, certain well logs behave erratically so we want, do not want to use that data, so we have to cluster it out. So, in order to do that manually for, you know, thousands of wells, it's impossible. So that's where machine learning comes into play.Erica:14:27Very cool. Very useful too. Lingxiao?Lingxiao:14:32I'll be working on using machine learning to do the recognition of geoscience features. For example, there could be faults, it could be picking horizons, could be recognizing salt domes, something like that.Erica:14:48Wow. Very complex and over my head. (Laughter) I'm sure it's very important though. And you, sir?Michael:14:57Yeah, so I'm working on translating the models that TGS' data analytics team uses to predict salt patches in the earth. So they use, they use models written in a module called Pi Torch and I'm converting that to tensorflow 2.0Erica:15:17Cool. Very cool. So what have you guys learned along the way so far? I know this is kind of the beginning for you, but-Michael:15:28Yeah, so it's, it's somewhat difficult to- so much, is kind of the answer to that question. But a lot of what I've learned boils down to more of the theory side of machine learning. Coming into the internship I didn't know a whole lot about the backend of machine learning, mostly just applying it. So learning how all these models work and why they work and things like that in terms of, the actual actually applying machine learning. That's what I've learned. I've also learned though, perhaps more importantly, working with a team and collaborating and things like that, which has been-Erica:16:10So hands on, real-world experience. What do you guys say to that? Ladies, I should say (Laughter) to my right.Deepthi:16:17So as I said, the research that I do is again, on machine learning. So I get to use similar algorithms to another, I would say facet of oil and gas. So I worked in reservoir engineering back in Grad school. Here I'm working on, petrophysics, so I kind of see how the same algorithms and same concepts can be applied in two different, areas, which is quite eye opening. Yeah. And apart from that I'm learning new algorithms and learning new math, which, I would think that's very important for, for my Grad school too, so, one good thing about TGS is that, they are quite, you know, they don't mind, publishing. So as a PhD student, that's very important to me. So that's one thing I look forward to too.Erica:17:08Yeah. Awesome.Lingxiao:17:10For me, it has helped me get a deeper understanding of how much, how machine learning works and how it could be applied to the field of Geo Sciences.Erica:17:20Cool. So talking about TGS more broadly, like as a culture, how would you say it's like working here, if someone were to ask you from school, what's it like working at TGS? What's that company like? What would you say?Deephti:17:36It's a very friendly atmosphere and, it is different from Grad School, in the sense that, I think Grad School, hours are more flexible than in an industry environment. But then, the focus is different and this is more, you know, I would think this more social than Grad school and, you know, being here, this is my first internship in the US, the environment is very friendly and you know, people look out for each other it's great.Erica:18:15Cool.Lingxiao:18:15Yeah. People here are so helpful and the, I have had a great time. I really enjoy this internship by far. Yeah.Erica:18:26Awesome.Michael:18:26It's wonderful. You're working in small teams and so you get to know everyone pretty well. It's very tight knit and those people are smart and very helpful kind people. It's, it's, it's wonderful.Erica:18:37Cool. Any surprises along the way? Anything you weren't expecting?Michael:18:44So, no, I wouldn't say there's anything that surprised me. I mean apart from the environment I had a much more perhaps rigid definition of, you know, you go to work and do your job and that's kind of that, but it's much more relaxed and that was, I guess, somewhat surprising.Erica:19:01Okay. I like that. Yeah. How bad the drive was maybe?Deepthi:19:06Yeah, I stay close by.Erica:19:09That's good. That's the way to do it. (Laughter) Yeah. What are you guys looking forward to for the remainder of your internships?Michael:19:17Yeah, so I'm looking forward since I'm rewriting these, these models and an interface for them, it'll be exciting to see them, how they perform and also to actually see the data and analytics team using them and hopefully finding them useful.Erica:19:31Yeah to see value for what you're working on. Absolutely.Deepthi:19:34So I'm about to finish the first part of my project, so I would like to wrap it up, you know, produce some good results and maybe get a publication out of it. And after that, yeah, I have a plan for what is to be done next, regarding the same, using the same similar approach but in a different setting. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that.Erica:19:59Can you tell us what the different setting is or is that classified?Deepthi:20:03I'm not sure. (Laughter)Erica:20:05Right. We'll leave that one alone.Lingxiao:20:08So doing an internship here at TGS is an amazing adventure. I learn and discover new things everyday and I feel time passes very quickly, and everything is moving at a timely manner. So it's pretty good.Erica:20:24Nice. So I think we kind of touched upon how you guys are going to apply what you've learned here, at your careers as you go forward. Is there any particular job title that you guys think you're going to go towards?Deepthi:20:44Yeah. I probably will be going for a data scientist role, or I can say because of my background in reservoir engineering, I can go both on the data and science roles or the reservoir engineering roles. But yeah, from my experience here, I would, I think I would prefer to go to the data and data science roles because, there are like lots of opportunities out there and, the experience that I've gained here, I, I think it's going to be very helpful finding a full time position later on. Yeah.Lingxiao:21:18I could consider becoming a Geoscientist in the oil and gas or becoming a structural engineer because I have a programming background.Michael:21:32Yeah. I wouldn't say I have any career title I'm, I'm seeking out, but perhaps data scientist, but I'm not sure.Erica:21:41So what advice would you give to the interns who are going to be coming behind you?Michael:21:46Yeah. So probably to just build strong relationships with the team that you're in. Learn as much as you can, as deeply as you can.Deepthi:21:58Yeah. I would suggest that before coming in, you can go through, or if they have a set plan for you. In my case they did. So I had read up and you know, known what I'm going to work on so you can, you know, straight away start working on the project you have a rather than, you know, spend a lot of time, reading up those things that can happen before you start the internship. And yes, once you're here, it's, very important to like keep in touch, you know, meet the mentors every day or you know, update them so you have a clear path that you need to, yeah.Erica:22:44Lingxiao?Lingxiao:22:44I would suggest to go talk with people and you see what everyone is working on.Erica:22:51So learn, learn what other people are doing as well.Lingxiao:22:55Yeah.Erica:22:55That, yeah, that makes good sense. So why did you guys apply for the internships here?Michael:23:05So I applied, cause I was just looking for an internship and I had heard that, well I had heard that, (Laughter)Erica:23:14Honest.Michael:23:14(Laughter) I had heard good reviews from people who I respect and and I knew that they had a new data and analytics team doing machine learning, doing things with machine learning. That piqued my interest. And so I told them I was interested.Erica:23:28So kind of diverge off of that. So what programs are you guys using? Like actual hands on programs?Michael:23:36Yeah. So, programs for me are pretty, pretty simple. I use, a coding ID, visual Studio Code, and an Internet browser.Erica:23:43Whoa, okay.Michael:23:46I do that to do my work.Erica:23:47Google and a calculator, alright.Michael:23:49Yeah, pretty much.Erica:23:52Deepthi?Deepthi:23:52Uh, what was the question again?Erica:23:56What programs do you guys use?Deepthi:23:59Again, I guess we are in the process of making a program, so what I use is just Jupyter, it's very basic.Erica:23:59It's built on Python correct?Deepthi:23:59Yes, it is Python, I use Jupyter ID, and I'm in the process of making something useful from scratch.Erica:24:22So lastly, would you guys recommend a TGS internship to your fellow students?All:24:27Yes, definitely. Yes. Yes, yes. Yeah. Awesome. Yes.Erica:24:34Okay. So open question to the table. What are you going to take back to your program that you learned from your internship here? Starting with Michael to the left?Michael:24:42Yeah, so I'm learning a lot about machine learning and so in computer science that's obviously going to be a direct parallel. I can take that back. But I really think that what I'm learning most here that I'll take back is just how to collaborate with people, how to talk with people in a team and work in that way. I think that'll -Erica:25:05Life skills.Michael:25:11Yes.Erica:25:11Lingxiao?Lingxiao:25:11So, since machine learning in such a hot topic. Now, the work that I did here could be really extended into a project in my PhD research. So, yeah I'm currently working on that.Erica:25:28Awesome. Deepthi?Deepthi:25:29So right now we're working on a clustering of time series data. So my, one of the projects that I'm working, at my Grad school is also on time series data, and I think I might be able to, you know, use the insights that I gained from, from TGS, directly to my, research. So that's something that I'm looking forward to.Erica:25:52Awesome. Okay, well thank you guys for talking with us today and I guess we'll let you get back to work now.Michael:25:59Thank you for having us.Deepthi:26:00Thank you.Lingxiao:26:01Thank you.Erica:26:01And now our last group for this episode, the geoscience interns.Erica:26:08Going around the table clockwise, we have Sean Romito. You're from the University of Houston, majoring in geology. You are working towards your PhD and you are studying magnetic basement structure of the Caribbean plate, tectonostratigraphy of South Gabon and Camamu-Almada conjugate basins. I totally know what all of that means. What career are you working towards?Sean Romito:26:35Oh, hello. Thank you for having me. Definitely exploration Geoscientist, this is kind of where I've been propelling my career, ever since I started with a bachelor's and I've just kinda been stepping towards that goal.Erica:26:51Awesome. All right. Now we have Geoff Jackson from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Majoring in petroleum geology. Your program is a master's degree and you graduated last spring. Congratulations!Geoff Jackson:27:07Thank you!Erica:27:07You studied a prospect lead off of a salt dome in southern Louisiana, and you cannot give us any more details than that.Geoff:27:14Unfortunately yes.Erica:27:14Very mysterious. So what, what are your career goals?Geoff:27:19Uh, similar to Sean's I was going to say, I can probably speak for the group here, but we're all just trying to be geologists and getting on with an operator, going to say probably best case scenario.Erica:27:28Awesome. Next we have Hualing Zhang, from the University of Houston, majoring in geology, working towards a PhD. And you're studying structural analysis and gravity modeling in the Permian Basin in West Texas. And you are originally from Urumqi, Northwest China and you got interested in geology about traveling around. That is so cool. So is your career goal the same?Hualing:27:53Yeah, basically similar, I'm working towards a career goal in the oil industry. Yeah. Since, like, my dad is also a geologist. Yeah. He works in PetroChina. So yeah, that's also my career goal.Erica:28:08Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. All right. And lastly, Cahill Kelleghan from Colorado School of Mines, majoring in geology. You're working towards a Masters of science and geology, and you're studying sedimentology and basin analysis / modeling with your thesis being in the Delaware Basin. So career goals?Cahill:28:28I'm pretty similar. I like to be in exploration geology and I really like sedimentology. So yeah, just applied geo science.Erica:28:36Awesome. Cool. So can you describe for us the projects that you guys are working on this summer? Same project or different project?Sean:28:46TGS has kind of tasked us with, I'm putting together some potential prospects or ideas of places we can look and most of that's going to be happening, well, we think it'd be North America and North American basins. And so we've kind of gotten access to some of their pretty amazing software, access to a lot of different databases and kind of putting that all together for a big picture of something useful that they can hopefully use from our projects. So I don't know if you guys want to add anything.Geoff:29:15Yeah, I mean, for one thing with these projects that's been very helpful to leverage the software that TGS has, specifically Longbow and access to their wealth of onshore well data that they have there. So we've been kind of bringing all of that together to generate these areas where we think that we should move further into as a company.Hualing:29:40Yeah. Also the first two weeks we're like working separately. We each have a study area and it's just a information gathering and doing researches and moving forward. Right now we are working in pairs. So, me and Geoff, we are working on similar location and to do like a research in a more detailed way. Yeah.Erica:30:05So you guys mentioned the software programs you're using. So aside from Longbow, what other programs do you use?Cahill:30:14Um, a lot, a lot of work in Kingdom. But Longbow yeah. Longbow and Kingdom. I'd say probably the big two. Yeah. yeah.Sean:30:25Any, I mean, any time you talk about geology, Arc Gis is going to come up. So we've definitely been using that a lot as well.Erica:30:32Okay. And is that different than what you were familiar with, from school or is this the same training that you had?Sean:30:39Well, Longbow is completely different. You know, even looking at production data is not something that I, you know, geoscientists when we ever, we go through academia, we even get exposed to. We use Kingdom. But I think it's, it's more of on a limited basis. I've, I've really been able to work a lot with, the, the well interpretation suites here at TGS that I hadn't worked with before.Erica:31:03Cool. How do you, do you find that challenging or kind of a natural extension of what you are already working with?Sean:31:11I mean, I, yeah, challenging, interesting, different. The team here, the geoscience team here has been very helpful, with the different, features. I'd say there are bugs. Some people might say they're features with the Kingdom software. (Laughter) but I'd say challenging. Yeah, but, but in a good way, not, not as a, you know, wringing out your hands kind of way.Erica:31:33So what else have you guys learned besides Longbow?Geoff:31:37I think for me is just kind of seeing just like what a day-in and day-out sort of process is like. So like having worked in the field, I never walked, I've never worked in a corporate environment before, but just kind of seeing how teams integrate and work together, it's going to say I've never seen that portion before. And so for me it's been fun, you know, going from classroom and then getting the actual hands on application of what we learned in the classroom. That's what's been fun for me so far.Erica:32:01Anyone else agree? Agree, disagree?Sean:32:03I agree. Yeah. No, I mean another thing that I feel a lot of us, especially me and with my Phd projects, they're very wide scale. I'm not talking about basins, I'm talking about plates. And so it's been very rewarding to kind of zoom in. Even if we are still basin scale, that's a lot smaller than I'm used to. So I'm able to kind of get lost in the details more than I would in a very large scale study.Hualing:32:28I think also a good thing is we learn from each other. Like where were you working together? Yeah, we're getting familiar with the software and if any of us found something and others will get around and see what we found. And I think that's very important for us to learn.Erica:32:48Yeah, absolutely.Cahill:32:50Yeah, I think kind of going off that as well and we obviously us for come from different backgrounds in Geo Science and what we've worked in and we kinda bring those backgrounds and each of our own projects and we kind of can come together and help each other out in different areas that we might not be more experienced with, like certain, well log interpretations or mapping things, stuff like that. So, so yeah, it's, it is helpful to have a team.Geoff:33:14Good overlap.Erica:33:14What's it like working at TGS, culture wise? The people, the food?Sean:33:22(Laughter) well they treat us well hereGeoff:33:24I was gonna say no complaints there. Yeah, I mean getting started in know there's always a learning curve, but I mean I guess as much of a learning curve as there could be, you know, everyone around here has been as helpful as possibly could be, you know, to help make that climb that much less steep, if that's a good way of wording it. But that's kind of what I would think.Cahill: 33:43The food is definitely good. Healthy. I like it.Sean:33:45Can't complain about free lunches.Cahill:33:47Yeah. But, but I mean I think the culture here is really, everyone's been extremely nice and even just within the geoscience team, a lot of nice guys; Cian and Alex, they've been so helpful with any questions we have, whether it be geology related or software related, and we've had company outings already. Going on Top Golf is super fun. Everyone's very open to meeting different branches and whatnot. So that was really fun.Erica:34:12Why did you apply? Did it, for TGS' internship program in particular?Sean:34:17Well. Yeah. So, our professor, me and Hualing, we have the same, advisor at the University of Houston. Dr. Paul Mann. And he was actually the one that reached out to us because, James, the head of the Geoscience Department here, had reached out to him looking for good candidates. and he had asked us if we wanted to, to join up. We, we kind of, you know, we researched it. We, I was, I talked to James on the phone and it just seemed like something, so different from what I was doing at the moment that I felt like it was a great opportunity to jump back. And it, I have absolutely no regrets.Erica:34:54Awesome.Geoff:34:54Yeah, my story is pretty much the same thing. My thesis advisor was, was good friends with James K and so he reached out to me and saying, pretty much the same deal as him. Looked into you guys, obviously cause say Jason, I met you before. So that, and also, the interns from last year, I was going to say I was good friends with them too. So I knew what they did. And so, here I am.Erica:35:17Any surprises along the way? Anything that you weren't expecting that you've encountered during your time here?Cahill:35:25I guess one thing is, it shouldn't be surprising, but I'd always is that I'm working with really big data sets. There's always lots of errors you have to put up with. And even with the amazing technology we have, there's always, there's always a human aspect to it, that's always interesting, that we've dealt with in our data at least so far.Hualing:35:44I think for me it's the flexible working time and my, yeah, he didn't request a specific time to be here or like a specific time to leave. So that's like really helpful for my schedule that I can make adjustment along and try to see by what time range works best for me. Yeah.Geoff:36:08Yeah, that's definitely been nice. I feel, like you said having to commute from Spring. I was going to say, getting to come in maybe later or earlier as need be. It's always definitely nice to dodge that traffic.Erica:36:22What are you guys looking forward to working on for the remainder of your internship here?Geoff:36:27Well, I'm really excited to see the end product of what we're doing, especially because, we're going to be presenting it to upper management, and presenting it to our, our geoscience team as well. I think that's really going to help bringing it all together. Cause right now we know we're all working on our separate areas as well. I mean, we're still two teams in a certain area, but it's still very much our own work. And so that, that finish line I think is going to be where it all comes together and I see more bigger, I see a bigger picture than maybe I'm seeing right now.Geoff:36:57Yeah. I think one aspect that I like about is, it's not just busy work. You know, we're actually adding value to the company with an end result. Kind of like what Sean said.Erica: 37:06No making coffee?All:37:08(Laughter) Danggit. For ourselves, we make coffee for ourselves.Erica:37:14Um, what advice would you give to other students wanting to intern here?Cahill:37:20Say like, don't be afraid to get into anything that you're not experienced with. Whether it's geology or software related. Since coming here, I feel like you can learn a lot from a lot of different people and there's a lot of different backgrounds here and people are all open to helping you or talking about their passion and their little branch of geology or geoscience. And so I would say don't be afraid to ask questions and go up to random people and say, hey, what do you do here? And what are you into? Because chances are they're happy or passionate about their job and you can probably learn something from it.Geoff:37:54Yeah. Maybe to add onto those, don't feel like you have to know everything beforehand coming in. Cause I mean you're not, no one's gonna know everything. Kind of like what Cahill said, there's plenty of resources around. You don't feel afraid to ask. No. Everyone out here is more than willing to give their time to help you out for what you might have a problem with. And we've had that reiterated to us time and time again. So, I mean, it's been nice to know.Sean:38:17Hmm. And, I don't know if before we talked about how we got the internship, and I feel personal connections are the biggest, you know, it's not about going on a website and clicking apply. It's about going to the conferences and meeting people from TGS and they're extremely friendly. We've all seen that firsthand. So I'd definitely recommend, and I, I would recommend it as well that you would get an internship with TGS, but just go up and see them during conferences, talk to them, ask them about opportunities, say, Hey, what are you guys doing? Be interested. and even if you don't get something out of it, that's fine. You're still gonna make connection, connections and learn about where the industry's heading.Hualing:38:53Yeah, I definitely agree with Sean, cause I met Alex on with, the person, our geoscience group, we met during the AAPG meeting at San Antonio and I talked to him and, he talked to me about his project and what I may be expecting for my interns. I think that definitely helped. And yeah, when I first day, when I came here, I saw him as, hey, yeah, that's, yeah. I feel like familiar and yeah, I'm more easy to get along. Yeah.Erica:39:28What have you gained during your time here at TGS that you're gonna take with you as you continue your studies and your career?Sean:39:36Everything we just talked about. Yeah, no, I mean that, that's a good sum up question. So the, the connections we've made with all the people here, not just in the Geo science team, every, every other team that there has that there is at this company. All the skills that we're learning with these different programs, the different perspectives we're getting because we're looking at, again, not just geological data, we're looking at, these problems more holistically. All that and above, I think is what we're going to take with us.Cahill:40:02Yeah. I think, you pretty much nailed it on the head. It's seeing the, the geoscience in an actual industry application in its own way. It's a lot of different moving parts coming together for an end product that's ultimately valuable and generates business. And then seeing how that works, you know, if on a fundamental level that's, that's pretty interesting and being able to be a part of, it's pretty cool. So.Erica:40:27Well, awesome. Well, thank you guys for being here. Thank you for talking with us today, and we'll let you get back to work.

1 Corinthians 1:26-30For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 2 Corinthians 12:7-10So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.Hebrews 12:1-2Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.English Standard Version (ESV)The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.Permalink

Sermon delivered Sunday, 04/09/2019, Lent 5CText: John 12:1-11 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” 9When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, 11since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

"Now is the time, now is the moment for a movement of liberation and reconciliation."How are you called to work as part of this movement for liberation and reconciliation?//2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,“At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of liberation I have helped you.”See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of liberation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.//This episode was written and recorded by Brian McLaren. It was produced by Rev. Jim Keat. Background tracks include Button Mushrooms and All the Ways by Podington Bear, Seven by Dexter Britain, Pony by Gillicudy, and The Soft Glow of Christmas Lights by Will Bangs.Visit www.trcnyc.org/BeStillAndGo to listen to more episodes from all three seasons of Be Still and Go.

"Now is the time, now is the moment for a movement of liberation and reconciliation."How are you called to work as part of this movement for liberation and reconciliation?//2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,“At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of liberation I have helped you.”See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of liberation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.//This episode was written and recorded by Brian McLaren. It was produced by Rev. Jim Keat. Background tracks include Button Mushrooms and All the Ways by Podington Bear, Seven by Dexter Britain, Pony by Gillicudy, and The Soft Glow of Christmas Lights by Will Bangs.Visit www.trcnyc.org/BeStillAndGo to listen to more episodes from all three seasons of Be Still and Go.

1 Kings 17:8–16    8Then the word of the Lord came to [Elijah], 9“Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” 11And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” 12And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” 13And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. 14For thus says the Lord the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” 15And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. 16The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.

Find us online at: AdventNYC.orgEmail us at: Podcast@AdventNYC.orgTalk with us at: Advent Sermons & Conversations on FacebookCome to a service and hear the sermons live and in person Sunday morning 9am and 11am in English and 12:30pm in Spanish at 93rd and Broadway.Readings for this WeekFirst Reading: 1 Kings 17:8-16This chapter begins the story of Elijah. God sends a drought on Israel because of the sins of King Ahab. This passage depicts God’s saving acts not only on behalf of Elijah, but also on behalf of those who are associated with the prophet, even a foreigner, the widow of Zarephath.8The word of the Lord came to [Elijah,] saying, 9“Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10So he set out and went to Zarephath. When he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.” 11As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” 12But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug; I am now gathering a couple of sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” 13Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. 14For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” 15She went and did as Elijah said, so that she as well as he and her household ate for many days. 16The jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.Psalm: Psalm 146The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. (Ps. 146:8)1Hal- | lelujah!Praise the Lord, | O my soul!2I will praise the Lord as long | as I live;I will sing praises to my God while I | have my being.3Put not your | trust in rulers,in mortals in whom there | is no help.4When they breathe their last, they re- | turn to earth,and in that day | their thoughts perish. R5Happy are they who have the God of Jacob | for their help,whose hope is in the | Lord their God;6who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that | is in them;who keeps promis- | es forever;7who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to | those who hunger.The Lord sets the | captive free.8The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord lifts up those who | are bowed down;the Lord| loves the righteous. R9The Lord cares | for the stranger;the Lord sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way | of the wicked.10The Lord shall | reign forever,your God, O Zion, throughout all generations. | Hallelujah! RSecond Reading: Hebrews 9:24-28The letter to the Hebrews describes Christ as a high priest who offers himself as a sacrifice for our sin. Christ does not die again and again each year. He died once, is alive with God, and will reveal himself on the last day.24Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; 26for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, 28so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.Gospel: Mark 12:38-44After engaging in a series of public arguments with religious leaders in the temple, Jesus contrasts the proud and oppressive ways of those leaders with the sacrificial humility and poverty of the widow.38As [Jesus] taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”41He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

John 4: 5 - 10So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

"You are a child of God and by nature of being a child of God, you are a priest."//Hebrews 5:5-10So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him,“You are my Son, today I have begotten you”;as he says also in another place,“You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.//This episode was written and recorded by Brandan Roberts, the Lead Pastor of Missiongathering Christian Church in San Diego, CA. It was produced by Rev. Jim Keat, the Associate Minister of Digital Strategy and Online Engagement at The Riverside Church.Find out more at www.trcnyc.org/BeStillAndGo.

"You are a child of God and by nature of being a child of God, you are a priest."//Hebrews 5:5-10So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him,“You are my Son, today I have begotten you”;as he says also in another place,“You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.//This episode was written and recorded by Brandan Roberts, the Lead Pastor of Missiongathering Christian Church in San Diego, CA. It was produced by Rev. Jim Keat, the Associate Minister of Digital Strategy and Online Engagement at The Riverside Church.Find out more at www.trcnyc.org/BeStillAndGo.

"God has hands; they are attached to your wrists."//2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.//This episode was written, recorded, and produced by Rev. Jim Keat, the Associate Minister of Digital Strategy and Online Engagement at The Riverside Church.Find out more at www.trcnyc.org/BeStillAndGo.

"God has hands; they are attached to your wrists."//2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.//This episode was written, recorded, and produced by Rev. Jim Keat, the Associate Minister of Digital Strategy and Online Engagement at The Riverside Church.Find out more at www.trcnyc.org/BeStillAndGo.

There Is An Atmosphere Around You. Either It Is Shaping You Or You Are Shaping It. What Atmosphere Around You Is Making You Sick And Causing You Pain? Change The Atmosphere With One Word. Call It What It Is. Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the LORD, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” 1 Kings 17:1 Their Word Was Drought. What Word Is Around You? What Word Is In You?(Fly In) Receive: Find Your Force Field. And the word of the LORD came to him, saying, 3“Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 4“And it shall be that you shall drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there.” 1 Kings 17:2-4 The Opposite Of The Atmosphere Is Always Available.(Fly In) In The Atmosphere Of Drought Elijah Received Abundance.(Fly In) Become: A New Identity Means The Old Rules Don’t Apply. 8Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, 9“Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there; behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” 10So he arose and went to Zarephath, and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks; and he called to her and said, “Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink.” 11And as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.” 12But she said, “As the LORD your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar; and behold, I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat it and die.” 13Then Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first, and bring it out to me, and afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son. 1 Kings 17:8-13 In An Atmosphere Of Drought Elijah Became Abundant Food & Water. You TEACH What You Know, But You IMPART Who You Are. You Keep Changing Until Your Atmosphere Does. Protect Your NO, So You Can Release Your YES. Giving What You Need Creates Freedom To Receive. Remember, I AM… Becoming Is Identity! Release: Expectation Is Everything. 14“For thus says the LORD God of Israel, ‘The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the LORD sends rain on the face of the earth.’”15So she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and she and he and her household ate for many days. 16The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the word of the LORD which He spoke through Elijah. 1 Kings 17:14-16 Abundance Is The Belief That There’s More. Without The Belief That There’s More You’ll Always Stop. (Fly In) Like A Doctor, God Is Calling you to RELEASE the OPPOSITE of the sickness and pain in the atmosphere around you.(Fly In) Treat Them Based On Their Destiny, Not Their History. Act Like Everyone You Meet Can Have What You Have. Arguments Never Alter Atmospheres. Demonstrations Do. Looking For Fire Or Becoming A Fireplace. (Carmel) Become A Fireplace And God Will Provide The Fire!

April 6, 2014 Seize The Day John 12:1-10 1Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. 3Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, 5“Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages. ” 6He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 “Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. 8You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” 9Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well,

1Cast your bread on the surface of the waters, for you will find it after many days. 2Divide your portion to seven, or even to eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth. 3If the clouds are full, they pour out rain upon the earth; and whether a tree falls toward the south or toward the north, wherever the tree falls, there it lies. 4He who watches the wind will not sow and he who looks at the clouds will not reap. 5Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things. 6Sow your seed in the morning and do not be idle in the evening, for you do not know whether morning or evening sowing will succeed, or whether both of them alike will be good. 7The light is pleasant, and it is good for the eyes to see the sun. 8Indeed, if a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything that is to come will be futility. 9Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things. 10So, remove grief and anger from your heart and put away pain from your body, because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting.

Click here to listen or download this message.5-16-10, SAM, CLCLifestyle of Victory, part 3Lifestyle of Love Lifestyle of VictoryJohn 14 – Jesus said that we were to love one another, and that if we kept this commandment, then He and the Father would reveal themselves to us and dwell within us.John 13:34-35 (New American Standard Bible)“34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.35 By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."1 Cor 12 – the Body, the Gifts, yet a more excellent way (last verse)1 Corinthians 12:31 (New American Standard Bible)“31But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way.”1 Cor 13 – Love defined, described, summed up… the greatest. W/out love, we’re nothing.1 Corinthians 14:1 (Amplified Bible)“1EAGERLY PURSUE and seek to acquire [this] love [make it your aim, your great quest]…”Galatians 6:10 (New American Standard Bible)“10So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.”Click here to go the the site where you can view the whole sermon outline, listen online, or download to your computer.