Podcasts about and louisiana

No matter where you live in Louisiana, it's Mardi Gras time! Carnival is when we all get to suspend our disbelief, don a mask, do or be something outrageous. This week, we explore the many ways people celebrate the season. First, we hear from Abby Roniger, author of the colorful new children's book, Carnival Time in My Mind, which depicts the joy and excitement of being a kid at Mardi Gras. The book will bring back memories for anyone lucky enough to have grown up in New Orleans and is a lovely introduction to the celebration for kids everywhere. Then, author and photographer Sally Asher takes a break from her professional endeavors to talk about the various ways she celebrates Carnival – including roller skating down St. Charles Avenue, riding high atop a parade float, and dancing in the street. More importantly, she shares her very specific dining and drinking preferences during each of the season's big events. And Louisiana cultural scholar John LaFleur joins us to talk about the Courir de Mardi Gras, a ritual that takes place in rural Creole and Cajun parishes. For more of all things Louisiana Eats, be sure to visit us at PoppyTooker.com.

No matter where you live in Louisiana, it's Mardi Gras time! Carnival is when we all get to suspend our disbelief, don a mask, do or be something outrageous. This week, we explore the many ways people celebrate the season. First, we hear from Abby Roniger, author of the colorful new children's book, Carnival Time in My Mind, which depicts the joy and excitement of being a kid at Mardi Gras. The book will bring back memories for anyone lucky enough to have grown up in New Orleans and is a lovely introduction to the celebration for kids everywhere. Then, author and photographer Sally Asher takes a break from her professional endeavors to talk about the various ways she celebrates Carnival – including roller skating down St. Charles Avenue, riding high atop a parade float, and dancing in the street. More importantly, she shares her very specific dining and drinking preferences during each of the season's big events. And Louisiana cultural scholar John LaFleur joins us to talk about the Courir de Mardi Gras, a ritual that takes place in rural Creole and Cajun parishes. For more of all things Louisiana Eats, be sure to visit us at PoppyTooker.com.

The dock worker strike that shut down ports along the South and east coast last month only lasted a few days, but it set off panic buying across the U.S., with shoppers worried store shelves would go empty.Stephan Bisaha of the Gulf States Newsroom reports there's one panic-buying staple that people can keep off their shopping list.New Orleans funk icon and co-founder of The Meters, Leo Nocentelli, is headlining a concert celebrating the re-release of his critically acclaimed acoustic guitar album “Another Side”.  This live performance features the Grammy award-winning artist presenting music that had been lost for 50 years. He joins us for more on the upcoming show. More natural gas is being transported to the coast of Louisiana and shipped overseas. To sell it globally, it has to be supercooled to a liquefied natural gas, called LNG for short. And Louisiana is at the center of this booming industry, set to double – or even quadruple – in the coming years. While the industry says LNG is better for the environment, a new study out of Cornell University debunks this sales pitch. Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell University, Robert Howarth, found that LNG is actually worse than coal. He spoke with The Coastal Desk's Halle Parker for more. ___Today's episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Diane Mack. Our managing producer is Alana Schrieber. We get production and technical support from Garrett Pittman, Adam Vos and our assistant producer, Aubry Procell.You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It's available on Spotify, Google Play and wherever you get your podcasts. Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you! Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you're at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you'd like to listen to.Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

The U.S. is the largest exporter of natural gas in the world. And Louisiana's Gulf Coast is where much of America's natural gas is piped in to be liquified for export.Over the last twenty years, liquified natural gas (LNG) has been heralded as a clean and efficient "bridge fuel" for nations transitioning away from coal and oil, towards a future of renewable energy. But the promise of LNG has not reflected reality. In today's episode of The Sunday Story, WWNO reporters Halle Parker and Carlyle Calhoun talk about the impact of the LNG export industry on Louisiana's Gulf Coast. And they follow the supply chain of LNG all the way to Germany and Japan.To hear more of Halle and Carlyle's reporting on LNG, listen to their three-part series, "All Gassed Up," on the podcast Sea Change from member stations WWNO and WRKF.Part One: The Carbon CoastPart Two: The German ConnectionPart Three: The Sugar Daddy of LNGLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Biden Administration pushes abortion in emergency rooms while the GOP seeks to remove the Biblical views of life and marriage. Plus, France's snap election prove costly for President Macron. And Louisiana and Oklahoma make controversial moves regarding the Ten Commandments and the Bible in public schools.

The Union of Concerned Scientists recently released a report highlighting the risks that flooding poses to infrastructure in the US. And Louisiana is no stranger to flooding-related disasters. The Coastal Desk's Eva Tesfaye spoke with UCS's policy director Rachel Cleetus to learn what this report tells us about heightened flooding risks to disadvantaged communities.The Historic New Orleans Collection recently unveiled a new exhibit featuring portraits of unidentified people. Called, “Unknown Sitters,” the exhibition showcases 26 portraits of unknown New Orleans area residents whose names have been lost or forgotten over time.Curator of Decorative Arts Lydia Blackmore tells us more about this exhibition and how audiences are creating their own stories and identities for the unknown subjects. The Baton Rouge Audubon Society is celebrating 50 years of preserving bird habitats and nature in the region. President Jane Patterson and wildlife photographer, naturalist and co-founder of the BR Audubon Society, CC Lockwood, tell us what the organization has accomplished in the last half century and how they're marking the occasion. Today's episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Adam Vos. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber; our contributing producers are Matt Bloom and Adam Vos; we receive production and technical support from Garrett Pittman and our assistant producer, Aubry Procell.You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at 12:00 and 7:00 pm. It's available on Spotify, Google Play, and wherever you get your podcasts. Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you! Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you're at it, fill out our listener 

Guests: Harry Litman, Elie Mystal, Mary McCord, Kevin Kruse, Masha GessenSeven days from a presidential debate, and justice for Jan. 6 is delayed again. Tonight: how the far-right radical court keeps creating its own law. Then, Judge Aileen Cannon puts Jack Smith's case on trial amid new reporting on the federal judges who asked her to step aside. And Louisiana mandates religion in the classroom. Want more of Chris? Download and subscribe to his podcast, “Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes podcast” wherever you get your podcasts.

Now that New York City's congestion pricing is on hold, will it move forward, and when? And what will happen regarding lawsuits over the plan? Also, a safety group is shining a light on the importance of non-commercial drivers securing their loads. We speak with the woman who started Secure Your Load Day. And Louisiana lawmakers are taking a look at changes to rules for truck owners' liability and towing. Meanwhile, Florida is putting some restrictions on how vehicle taxes and fees can be used. 0:00 – Newscast  10:14 – Congestion pricing in NYC on hold – what's next? 25:09 – Effort focuses on getting four-wheelers to secure their loads 40:09 – Truck owners' liability, towing action in Louisiana

Novo Nordisk reports that its GLP-1 drug Ozempic could help treat kidney disease. An advisory panel recommends the FDA approve Guardant Health's colon cancer blood test. And Louisiana lawmakers vote to reclassify abortion pills as controlled dangerous substances. That's coming up on today's episode of Gist Healthcare Daily. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

5/24/24 - Jim and Fr. Stephen Imbarrato, providing cutting edge pro-life commentary. You're not going to hear anywhere else. Republican leaders continue to retreat on life, but we've got some data showing that to lead on life is not the political liability they think it is. And Louisiana is looking to classify chemical abortion pills as controlled substances. The Men's March: https://themensmarch.com/ Rally For Personhood: https://rallyforpersonhood.com/  

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange will be in a London courtroom today. He's trying to stop his extradition to the United States. A planned Israeli invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza may force Palestinians into Egypt despite its objections. What will it mean for the more than 1 million Palestinians in Rafah displaced by Israel's war against Hamas? And Louisiana's legislature is in a special session that threatens to undo some of the state's recent criminal justice reforms. Lawmakers will consider over two dozen bills, including a bill that would make state executions easier. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Miguel Macias, Mark Katkov, Liz Baker and HJ Mai. It was produced by Claire Murashima, Ben Abrams and Milton Guevara. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott and our technical director is Zac Coleman. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Trump's civil fraud trial begins in New York. Dianne Feinstein's impact is felt as her Senate seat is filled. And Louisiana grapples with salt water intrusion. Vote for Start Here at the Signal Awards: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2023/shows/general/news-politics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

LSU didn't just set the record for most Jello shots consumed during the College World Series - they shattered it. And Louisiana boy Rob Brown couldn't be more proud of his home state...

Everyone always talks about how bad plastic garbage is for the environment, but did you know glass is bad for the environment too? 你知道，除了塑膠之外，玻璃也對環境不好嗎？ Did you know that you can turn glass into sand? You can do this because… glass is made out of sand! 為什麼玻璃可以變成沙子？因為玻璃就是用沙子做的！ A company in Louisiana, called "Glass Half Full", is trying to help. They take old, used glass bottles and they grind them up into sand! 美國的路易斯安那州，有一間叫做 "Glass Half Full" 的公司，會把玻璃瓶磨碎變成沙子！ And Louisiana needs more sand. Louisiana is a state in the U.S. that has eroding coastlines. This means the sand by the ocean is slowly being washed away over a long, long time. 在路易斯安那州，因為海邊的沙子一直被沖走，海岸線正在退後。 This is bad because when too much sand is washed away, there is no more land. So the animals and people who were there before won't have any place to live. 太多土地被沖走，動物跟人就沒有地方可以住了！ Glass Half Full is trying to recycle old bottles to make more sand. Then, they can use this sand to fix Louisiana's eroding coastlines. 這間公司打算用這些玻璃磨成的沙子，減緩海岸線退後的速度。 So the next time you are walking on a beach, look down and think of all the bottles that could make all that sand! And remember to recycle! ________________________________ Vocabulary 玻璃瓶碾碎之後，有很多用途。 1. bottle 瓶子 Let me keep these beer bottles. 讓我留著這些啤酒瓶。 What do you need them for? 你需要它們做什麼？ I'll send them to a special factory. 我會把它送到一家特殊的工廠。 2. glass 玻璃 They can turn glass bottles into sand there. 他們會把這些玻璃瓶碾成沙粒。 You'll use the sand in your yard? 你會把這些沙子用在院子裡嗎？ 3. sand 沙子 Yeah, it makes good pavement. 對，它是很好鋪地的材料。 Glass sand doesn't get washed away by the rain. 玻璃砂不會被雨水沖走。 4. recycle 回收 Good. That means I don't need to recycle the bottles. 真好，這表示我不需要回收瓶子。 But it doesn't mean you can drink more beer. 可是並不表示你可以喝更多啤酒。 今天學到哪些單字？ bottle 瓶子 glass 玻璃 sand 沙子 recycle 回收 ________________________________ Quiz 1. What problem is Louisiana facing? A: Eroding coastlines B: Disappearing trees C: Disappearing oceans 2. What does the company Glass Half Full do? A: Recycle glass bottles B: Recycle plastic bottles C: Recycle sand 3. How does the company recycle? A: By grinding glass bottles into sand B: By turning sand into plastic C: By turning sand into glass Answers 1. A 2. A 3. A

LLN (11/1/22) – When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, in one state, parking for those truckers was suddenly cut off. As part of our celebration of OOIDA's 50th anniversary, we'll look back at what the Association did to get that parking opened back up. Also, it's vital to have your truck in good working order when you head out on the road, and the same applies for your health. We'll focus on U.S. DOT physicals and what you can do to get your health in check with Stephen Kane of Rolling Strong. And Louisiana may consider a higher road user fee to help pay for road and bridge work. Meanwhile, one Florida county is battling in court over a road funding ballot measure. 0:00 – Newscast.  09:41 – 50 on 50: Solving a parking problem. 24:34 – DOT physicals. 39:28 – Local road funding.

Allen: All right, passive traders, we have a treat in store for you today. Many of you know about the option continuum, which is basically, you know, our levels of breakdown of where you are as an options trader, you start with level one, you don't know anything. And then you get to level 10, maybe if you want to, which is option professional. And basically a professional means that you are so good at trading options, that you are now trading and managing other people's money and you're getting paid for it. Many of you have reached out to us in the past and said, Hey, I want more information on that. And we haven't really put it out there because I am not doing it myself. Right now, as a professional, I don't I'm not measuring anybody else's money. And so, you know, I'm not the best person to talk to about that. But we keep getting people and be like, hey, you know, I want to learn, I want to learn. So one of our members, Paul Ashcraft, has volunteered to join us today. And I want to thank you, Paul, for coming and helping out. A few a couple of months ago, I think in one of our groups, I think it was a passive group, where I had put in there like, Hey, I'm thinking about starting a hedge fund. So I'm thinking about going professional, right? And he reached out and said, hey, you know, I'm already doing it if you want to, if you want to talk and I can answer your question. So we had an amazing conversation, I learned a lot. And I was like, You know what, this would be really helpful for everybody else. So I asked Paul, hey, could you do it again? And we can record it this time? It was like, Yeah, sure, no foul. And so he's here, Paul, thank you. Thank you for being on thank you for taking the time to do this. Paul: Thank you very much. Pleasure. Allen: And you're Paul is a member of our of a lot of our programs. So passive trading formula, the blank check, and now the credit spread mastery as well. So you know, it's good to see that, hey, if you're a money manager, then you're continuously getting learning and learning new things to help out your students, or your clients, I guess. So. Well, tell me, why did you get into management? What was it that drawed you through that? Paul: Well, I sort of got tricked into it. I had a, I'm a CPA by trade, and I had a client who was becoming an NFL player agent. And he trusted me and wanted me to help him manage his people's NFL players money. So I started the licensing process at that time. And so that sort of tricked me into it. So that sort of fell apart. And then he wasn't getting more leads for what he was doing. So I basically continued since then, so Allen: Okay, so were you already trading on your own? Or before that? Or did you learn as you want to? Paul: Yeah, I've been trading, you know, for quite a while. Off and on. So yeah, I've had some experience of trading. Allen: Okay. So you are comfortable, you could do it? Paul: I knew I needed to learn, I do need to learn some more. But yeah, I feel like I could I knew enough about the world to do that. Allen: Okay. And so you are known as what is a RIA, a registered independent advisor? Paul: Right. That's correct. Allen: So that's one of the ways of managing money. What exactly is an RIA? Paul: It's basically a firm that is licensed by the FINRA basically, and you are licensed to where you can manage other people's money. Allen: And all RIAs, are fiduciaries, right? Paul: That's correct. Yeah.  Allen: Right. Because a lot of people don't know the difference between a fiduciary and a non fiduciary. And so a fiduciary, if you don't know you are legally bound to do what's in the best interest of the client. A lot of these other companies that people think about when they're talking about money management, or Wealth Advisors, retirement advisors, all these words that they use, they have no license, or maybe they do have a license, but they're not a fiduciary. So they're not required to do what's best for the client. And so they can sell you a product that they get the highest commission on, even if it's not really a good thing, a good fit for you. So that's why..  Paul: Yeah one of the ways I deal with that fiduciary criteria is basically whatever I do for other people, I do for myself. Allen: Okay. Okay, interesting. So, what does it take to open an RIA? Paul: Well, if you want to legal structure and need, like, I have an LLC got a creative for that. And I have had to pass a serious 65 test, which you'd like an SEC test, and get to come up some kind of agreement you have with your clients that's approved by FINRA to sign them on as clients. Those are the basics you have to do. Allen: Okay, and like how long did it take you to go through all that? Remember? Paul: I'm gonna say, basically of six to nine months. Allen: Okay, and how long have you been? How long have you been an RIA? Paul: Since 2014, so roughly eight years. Allen: Awesome. Yep. Cool. And for those of you, you know, I'm going to repeat it later on, but Paul's business website is Businessadvisors.Pro. So if you ever or if you need a good adviser, you know, please reach out to Paul. And I'll repeat at the end, and we'll put it in the show notes. I just wanted to get that out there. Paul: And that's mainly my CPA website, just so you know. Allen: Very cool. BusinessAdvisors.Pro, there you go.  Paul: And then sort has been done about creating my Wealth Advisors website, because you're so under scrutiny when you were you advertise things, so I just sort of steered away from that a little bit. Allen: Interesting. Okay. So I guess there's certain things you can say and certain things you cannot say. Paul: Basically, anything you put out there to the public, you have to like, monitor it for five years, and they can question you about it anytime. So I just figured one way to get around that is just not to do it. Allen: Okay. So then that leads me to my next question, like, how do you find clients if you're not advertising? Paul: Well, you know, I have CPA clients, probably like half the clients, I have my Wealth Advisors from CPA side. Other thing is like, from friends, and referrals from other people who use me. Allen: Okay. So it takes time to build all that up?  Paul: Yes, yes. And I'm currently working on more. More advertising. Allen: Okay. All right. So the advertising is possible. It's not it's not like it's restricted. But you have to be careful of what you do and how you do it. Paul: Yes, yes, yeah. Allen: Now, what are your clients looking for? Because, you know, if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, you know, I'm looking to make more money, obviously, but they have so many, so many choices. They can do it themselves, it could go to like, like Fidelity and have them do it. They could go to they're really rich, they can have their own private like, you know, Bank of America, has their own private wealth, people. So when they come to you, what do they tell you? Like? What are they looking for in terms of an advisor? Paul: Well, I mean, I had someone recently come to me, and, you know, we're signing them up, or things that I'd say we, if we look, if we're here a year later, what do you want to what your criteria are saying, I did a good job. And he wanted a 10% return, which has been difficult in this market. But that's, that's one thing. Another thing? I you know, most advisors out there, these basically are, they're buying hold people, I mean, and they bid six things in a bucket, and don't look at it too often. So I, I basically say that I'm actively working in their account, and I'm not sure I'm going to just put it there and not be looking at it. Allen: So obviously, you probably tell them about your options experience and the different types of strategies you use. Paul: Yeah, a lot of times just the casual person warnings on the manager money that, that if I tried to tell them all that it would go way over their head. Because, you know, it took me like two years talking about options to actually start doing it myself, you know, so I'm trying to be a little bit of conscientious about what they can and cannot handle information wise. I'll be glad to talk about it, they want to, but I'm not gonna write too much about it. Allen: And I bet that would that would set you apart, right? You know, it's like, hey, you know, we can do plain vanilla stuff. Or we can do if you're a little bit more aggressive than we can do this, and this and this. And then if it goes over there, that's fine. But as long as they're like, whoa, this guy knows. Paul: Yeah, definitely. That's certainly part because like, my CPA, well, I deal with investment advisors. And like, no one, no one that I know of is actually managing costs. I mean, like, you know, every week or things like that, Allen: yeah, yeah, they just don't I mean, part of it is they have, depending on where they are some of these guys that I know, they have broker dealers, and the broker basically tells them what they can do and what they can't do. And trading is like, No, you're not doing it. They just they can't, they're not allowed. And so, you know, we get we get clients that are financial advisors, they come in, they're like, oh, yeah, I'm a financial advisor, like, oh, they shouldn't, you know, all this stuff. And they're like, oh, I don't do any of this for my son. I don't know, they don't even teach us this stuff. In financial advisors. Cool. So it's like, once I call again, I'm like, Oh, my God. Paul: Yeah, most of them are just like, call themselves people. And it is this, they don't necessarily know that much about investing. It's more about they have relationships with people, and they train their people to be accustomed to five to 7% returns. So so don't want you to do that as that's, you know, not a hallmark. Allen: Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, when I go to if I go to a dinner party, or whatever, and, you know, always comes up. So what do you do? It's like, well, I teach people how to do this. And the first they're like, really, is that, you know, what do you what do you mean? And then we tell them a little bit about it, and they go, Yeah, you know, we try to aim, you know, for 5% a month, and they're like, what a month. Really? Oh, wow, I gotta learn about that. And then, you know, you explain a little bit and then they're, like, bored and then they go talk to somebody else. Because, you know, it's cool. They want, they want it. They just want to do the work. So that's cool. Now as an advisor, how do you How do you charge? Like, what do you charge? How do you do it? Paul: So I have what's called a serious 65 license. So I'm able to charge a percentage of what assets are under management. Okay, so the basic generic, charged with as generally 1% of assets under management. Okay, that if I'm doing more as a some different strategies, things like that, I'm probably going to up the field more because it's, it is active trading. Allen: It takes more time. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember way back when I had a guy at America ice, and he was my advisor. And yeah, he would charge a minimum of 1% on assets every year. Every time you put money, you gave him money, they would take 5% off the top. And then every every mutual fund and every index fund or whatever that they put you in. And most of them were, you know, Ameriprise products. Each of those things would have a separate fee every year. So I mean, I got dealing left and right. I didn't know what I was doing. At the time, I was thinking I am going to you know, I'm smart. I got an advisor. But yeah, he was the one getting rich. And so.. Paul: They made that money, whether they go down or go up it. Allen: Yeah, I mean, they take the money right up front, 5% off the top. As soon as you make a deposit, it's like, man, you haven't done anything. Even if I turn around and ask for the money back, I just love fibers. Do you have like a lot of Is There a lot of overhead for being a advisor? You need a large staff? Paul: Right now, it's just me. And so I'm already have all my setup for my CPA business. So there's not really that much more to do.  Allen: And you can run it from the same location. Yes, yes. Okay. So then who does the like the backend stuff, you know, statements, and compliance audits, all that stuff. Paul: So we use Interactive Brokers as the broker dealer. So they basically, so all my clients have their own account set up with them, and it sort of goes underneath my master account. So so they take care about the then get a statement from there anytime they want to find out what their balances. And if they need to take up money, they can contact them and get the money taken out. So they saw him. So we're doing a lot of the back office stuff. Allen: Awesome. So you really don't have to do anything. And they they opened the account themselves, the client opens the account themselves, they deposit the money themselves, they can take it out whenever they want, they can go and log in, see all the trades, see whatever is there. So you really don't have a lot of customer service issues. And so you don't have to send send out statements, because Interactive Brokers will do that. Right. Paul: And one of my strategies is if someone is, I call it high maintenance, then I probably can't handle that, you know, they probably need to find someone else because, you know, I got enough things to do is it is. Allen: Awesome, cool. And then. So you don't handle any of the money either. Because they just go straight to interactive. So you're like a hands off, okay, I'll do the trades, but I'm not touching your money. So you don't have to worry about me taking your money and running away and flying to Bermuda or something.  Paul: Yeah, just like the Bernie Madoff deal where he was. He they call it having custody of the funds, and he had custody. And so they, they talked about that when you're going through your testing and things like that, about having custody and not having custody and things like that. So yeah, it's a big red flag. Allen: Yeah. Because I mean, like, I've been looking into starting my own hedge fund, you know, using the the passive trading strategies and such. And I looked at RIA first and then I looked at, you know, hedge fund as another way, and I think from what I've been able to find so far is that if you start a hedge fund, and you don't charge any management fees, you don't need the license, you can set it up in a way where you know, you get you only take a percentage of the profit. So if there's a gain, you can get a percent, but you don't get that yearly management fee. If you want the yearly management fee, then you do have to separate a separate Ria, to do the management of the fund. Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah, so I thought that was pretty cool. So we've been looking at that as well, different things. So now, what percentage of your management is active? versus, you know, index funds, mutual funds, etc? Paul: I'd say about half. Allen: Okay, and all of the clients are okay with that, or do you do client by client? Paul: I pretty much put everybody under the same model. Yeah. So Allen: And so with interactive, how does that work, you have to go into each account to put a trade on or you just put one trade on and it just trickles.. Paul: There's a master account and I can set up different  classification. So I could I could buy 1000 shares of IBM and have it spread it putting all the accounts did that.  So they have to watch out for is some of the accounts can trade certain things, some can't, like RIAs cannot do you know, futures and naked options and things like that as far as, at least on the credit side. Allen: Okay. All right. So can does that get confusing? If you want if you want like, Okay, I want like a say IBM, I want my IBM stock to be 5% of all of my everybody's portfolio. Paul: Yeah, that would be a different the different equation. So basically, like I did a trade today where I figured, you know, want to take a $10,000 risk. So divided by what that option was going for. And I bought that many contracts to take on that kind of risk. So not necessarily rebalancing everyone is usually trade by trade. So putting on a certain set of circumstances, set a step stop loss and things like that. Allen: Okay, cool. So you can do it as easy or as simple as you want. Or you can make it as complicated as you want. Yeah, up to you. Yeah. Nice. So what types of what types of trades do you do? Paul: Well, some of what you teach. So I do some swing trading. And of course, you know, credit spreads and things like that. And some, you know, some some of the dividend paying stocks and covered calls and things like that. Allen: And do you do any any oil futures options? Paul: Well, I'm not. I'm just at the point to get licensed for that. Allen: It's a separate license? Paul: That's as a separate license. Yes. So you have to you have to get licensed through the, Chicago Board of Trade, the NFA and National Futures Association. Allen: Okay. Okay. And then will you be able to do it the same as everything else through Interactive Brokers? Paul: Yes, I think so. Sometimes you don't know to actually do it. So I think it's pretty similar. Allen: Sweet. Okay. Now, as a as an RIA, do you also advise your clients on other alternative investments, you know, real estate, crypto anything else? Or is it just stocks, bonds, options? Paul: I'm always getting to ask questions, you know, because I'm in, you know, really, I'm gonna CPA world or the IRA world, I'm getting asked questions. So I will advise on that if I think I have a good opinion. You know, I'm not roll up on that rolled up on crypto Allen: Right, right. Are you still bound by the same fiduciary type rules on that or?  Paul: You could come under some scrutiny. You know, you'd like an offsetting handed comment, and then someone does something crazy. And so you got to be a little careful. Allen: Yeah. All right. And okay, so him now with the interactive account, or the broker dealer, is the software any different? Like, versus if you open a regular account by yourself? Is there anything you have to learn a new platform? Or is it basically the same thing?  Paul: It's pretty much the same platform, you just have to understand how to do the trading, like I was telling you about, like, allocating between all the accounts, but the platform itself is basically the same. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Allen: What do you see as the future of money management, because like, you know, they got these robo advisors now, and they got like Robin Hood, trying to get everybody to trade on their own. And so what do you see down the pike? You know, do you see like, your clients are like, yeah, rather just have you do it? Or are robots or whatever? Paul: Yeah, I can see, you know, some of the robot picking up. But on average, most people out there don't know, hardly anything about the investing world. My average client, so I think it's going to be still a good field you know, way up currently doing it. Allen: Okay, and who is like your average client? Paul: They're probably like 50 years old, that did 60. And probably, you know, got assets anywhere from, you know, 50 to 50,000 to over a million dollars, you know? Allen: And do you have any limits on who can invest with you? And how much? Paul: No, I mean, like, I'm not, I'm just gonna take on any account right now. It would need to be over a certain dollar amount for me to I just always have to keep that in mind about, you know, do I want to take on a five or $10,000 account? Because it's gonna be extra work. Taking that versus the capital issue at-- You don't have to be you don't have to comply with the day trading rules. You know, because because if you if you accidentally in and out three, three trades in a week, then your account gets shut down. You know, so you have to deal with that. So yeah, so I'm trying to gradually move up from like a minimum of 25,000 to 50,000, 200,000. Allen: Okay. And then you also have a certain criteria like a certain person that you want right? Certain somebody they can handle the options and that Intertek can handle that because I mean, it does swing a little bit. So if they have a 5,000 to $10,000 account, they freak out if they lose $1,000, obviously, that's not the right person for you anyway. Paul: Right. But on that same note, I had a client the other day that, you know, they have, you know, an excess a half million dollars with me. And they want to know how they could put in more money since this market was down so they could capture, capture that now mark? I love that kind of client. expecting them to call you and tell you, why is my account down? Actually, that question is dead. They're saying, How can we put more money in?  Allen: Yeah, that's a smart, that's a Smart Client. So that's, that's got to be your email, you know, going out, like, Hey, he's trying to give me more now. double down on your investments. Okay. Now, How has being a money manager improved your own trading? Or hasn't? Paul: Well, I mean, it's made me to seek out new avenues of investing. You know, because I'm looking out for my clients. By the same token, when I do that, I find things that I can use to, you know, like, I don't know, if I would have found the old future options without that, you know, seeking out new new investment strategies, you know, so I could do a better job for my clients. Allen: Okay. Now, we've had a lot of volatility lately. And you've, you've alluded to it already. When stocks down about 20% or so right now, how do you deal with the investor concerns or expectations? Paul: I'm continually learning that. The more, the more proactive you can be with that, I find that it's better. Like, if you have a bad day or a bad trade that, you know, that affects it so much, and then maybe call and talk to them about it versus waiting for them to call you later, and they get their quarterly statements. And they call you know? Allen: Right. So do you find that a large portion of your job is just talking to people and just calming them down? Or explaining certain things to them? Or educating them? Paul: In the beginning? Yes. If someone's with you for a while, and they haven't gotten, understood your ways, and why you do what you do. And it would be generally in the first year of a client relationship, you indeed do that more, but there is sort of they get to know you, you you get to know them and sort of like a training curve there. Allen: And now, most of your clients, are they either they know you or they were referred to you. Right. So there's always there's already that trust built in from the beginning. Most of them yes, yeah. So if you, you know, advertising, somebody comes in cold, they're like, oh, yeah, I like what you're doing here. You know, here's $100,000, there's gonna be a lot more back. Paul: Yeah. Allen: Okay. So how are you handling? How are you handling the volatility? Like when somebody calls up and says, Oh, my count is down. How do you? What do you do there? Paul: Well, number one, what I did when I saw when I saw the market starting to tank, I basically, was going more into cash. So like, I the client won't know why we aren't investing. I said, Well, I'm waiting for the market to give me indication has, it's found the bottom or, you know, it is headed back up. So I don't want to, I'm not a bottom picker. But I don't want to like, write it further down. You know. So that's one way of dealing with it. And they seem to appreciate that quite a bit and understand that. So I don't think that's something you get out of a typical advisor. Allen: So yeah, but what if somebody calls you and says, Oh, my God, you know, I'm down 10%? What am I going to do? I can't handle this. How do you handle that? Have you ever had that happen? Paul: Yeah. I tried to change up their strategies a little bit to get them a little more solid, or maybe not trade as much in their account. Just being a little more cautious. Allen: Okay, so Okay, so you can actually choose, like, let's say, we talked about that IBM thing. So if you're like, Hey, I'm buying IBM, you could choose and say, okay, don't put it in this account in this account, just because in all these other ones,. Yeah. All right. So you can actually tailor it because like, if somebody goes, Yeah, I just want to be long stocks, or I just want tech stocks. And I just want you know, credit spreads. So they you can, you can do that. Yeah, okay. Yep. So, do you have any shortcuts that you can share? You know, for somebody that's thinking, hey, you know, this sounds like cool, I'm gonna I'm gonna get into this. RIA business, anything that you probably didn't know, ahead of time that you would have liked to have known? Paul: This is sort of like a unknown territory. Because, I mean, when I was doing it, I couldn't get anybody to actually figure it out what like a serious 65 license would do. And I was sort of going into blindly a little bit. So I mean, I think the number one thing is maybe you know, then contact me. Shortcuts is, you know, I don't know like I had to find a place to take the take the course for that. And then I hired a guy to tutor me some. And, you know, there's, there's these firms out there wanting you to sign up with them for them to do oh, you know, like your paperwork and so forth. And I just sort of like fumbled my way through it and plagiarized another agreement online affected us. And so another thing is to know if you're in this world, you will get audited. Personally. Well, the your investment firm, right, yeah. Yeah. Like I'm in the CPA world, and I probably will never get out a different CPA world. But the investment side, I will get audited probably time and time again. So far, it's only been once one step Florida, but yeah, Allen: okay. Yeah. I mean, that's a good thing. I guess, you know, that, that the advisors and like you said, you know, the Bernie Madoff, he keeps him at bay as much as he can a little bit. So some of that, I guess, from a consumer standpoint, and that's a good thing to hear. Paul: Yeah, but a lot of a lot of us, they don't necessarily understand the world as much as you do. And it's more like them checking a box somewhere in a city. They ask this question, or I did that, but they don't really find that don't really necessarily know exactly what they're doing, you know, Allen: Yeah. So but do you mean tax audited or audited by like the audit by Paul: the state by the financial regulatory people for the state you're in Allen: The state regulatory? Okay, so every state has their own regulatory stuff that you have so far. Paul: Yeah. So just just sort of background here. Usually, as you're managing under $100 million, you're managed by the state. But then once you hit $100 million in the SEC is basically is going to your watchdog, it's gonna look over your shoulder. Allen: Okay. All right. Cool. And you're in Florida, right? Correct. But you can take clients from anywhere? Paul: I can. But different states have different rules, most of them allow you to take five to 15 clients, and not really be registered with them. But then once you hit over that threshold, they want you to fully registered with them. But there are a few states that require you if you get one client, they want you to be registered. And Louisiana was one of those states. Allen: So I guess, depending on how much capital the guy is gonna give you whether it's worth it to register there.. Paul: Exactly, exactly, yeah. Okay. All right. Allen: So would you knowing what you know, now, are you happy that you went this route? Paul: Ask me again, in a few years. Allen: Well, you've been doing already for like, eight years. So kind of got some kind of track record here. Paul: Yeah, it's been, you know, it's been definitely a learning curve, you know, from the regulatory side. And then from the investment side, too, so? Yes, I'm glad I did it. But it' had its rough moments. Allen: Well, give me an example. Paul: Well if you if you lose on a trade, you know, it can affect your account and other people's account. So that's probably the biggest things that has happened to me, you know? And then you got to figure out how am I gonna tell this person this?  Allen: Yeah. So how did you how did you deal with that? Paul: I prayed a lot. Basically, if I knew the fact that someone so much, I would, I call them and talk to him about it. But in a certain situation, like, because it was spread over so many accounts, it didn't really affect anyone that much. It wasn't that big of a deal. Like, you know, if I'm managing $5 million of money, and I lose 20,000, you know, the most Someone's probably gonna lose is maybe 2 or 3000. So the overall number is a big number. But you know, we spread between all the counts, it's not that big of a number. Allen: Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's that thing, right? There is like, the biggest thing that's kept me out of it for all these years, you know, people have been asking me from the beginning, okay, can you take my money? I'm like, nope, nope, because I don't know how I'm gonna handle the stress. I don't know if, um, we will sleep, I can lose my own money, you know, market down 20% Okay, whatever, it'll go back up, I got time, you know, but somebody else if I lose your money, and I don't know, I don't know how I'm gonna handle it. And so that's the one thing that that's really caused me to be hesitant up till now. And I agree what you said about not having that much information out there. You know, I mean, there are companies out there that will like if you want to be in RIA you type in how to be an RIA and there's a company that hey, you if you give us like 30 grand, you know, we'll do all the paperwork and we'll file everything for you. So you Okay, but what do I actually get? You know, they're like well you do the paperwork. Well what about after that? How do I get clients how do I do this how to do that they will help you at all and these two guys they had approached, they had talked that a because I'm you know Option Genius is in what's called the financial publishing space that world, so we have our own little conventions and all the Guru's come and hang out and talk marketing and stuff. And so there was there was these two guys who were speakers, and they were telling all of the financial publishers that hey, you guys need to get into the into the management business, because you guys already have all these clients? They already trust you? You know, and they probably have a lot of money because people coming to me, you know, they say, Hey, I want to learn how to trade options. Okay, cool, you know, and how large is your account? They're like, Oh, 50,000. Okay, cool. And they trading options with 50,000. But they also have like, maybe a million dollar IRA, that they're not touching, or their wife has $500,000 that is with some other financial advisor that she doesn't want her husband to touch with options. So it's like, yeah, everybody that comes in has a lot more money. So if you started an IRA or an advisor, then you know, they'll give you that money as well. And you can make all this money. And I was like, Okay, that's interesting. But, you know, what are the legalities and all that and they wanted, I don't know, obtain $1,000 plus a percentage of the company to actually teach me all this stuff. And I'm finding a there's a lot of secrecy, as you can say, you know, and Wall Street, I think puts it like that on purpose. Because they don't want everybody to know what they're doing and what they that they don't know what they're doing. Pretty much. So cool. Paul: I don't know, that's intentional, but it just got I think there's so few people who are looking to do it. And like, it's not a widespread throughout the population thing. So you don't find as much about it, you know. Allen: Maybe okay, yeah, I'll take that. Yeah. Because like, you know, even like, what is the difference between an RIA and a hedge fund? You know, I've been beating my head, like, which one? Which way? Do we go? Which way? Do we go? If we go this way? Or this? Or what are the pros? What are the cons, and there's like, no one person that can that can tell me, if you want to go to a hedge fund, they got a little hedge fund world, and, you know, you got to you got to pay the dues to get in. If you want the RA world, then it's more common, but it's, it's for the guys, you know, for people who are like, Yeah, you know, I just want to put everybody's money in an index fund, you know, so it's like, what you're doing is totally different, like, I have not met any advisors that are actually, you know, trading that actively for people. So I mean, compared to the other guy, Joe Schmo that charges 1% a year, or 2% a year, just to put their money in an index fund compared to what you're doing, you know, your value is just so much more. But it does seem like it's very similar to a hedge fund where, you know, a hedge fund is a little bit different, where all the money is pooled into one spot. And then, you know, the, the trader controls it, you're doing kind of similar, where you can look at it and be like, Okay, I got, you know, $10 million under management, how am I going to split that up into different trades? And it just happens to be in different people's accounts? So have you ever thought about increasing your rates because like a hedge fund, they can charge a percentage of the gains? An RIA can't? Can they do that? Paul: They can do that on their certains particulars criteria? I think like you have to have an investor who's has at least $2 million in investable assets. They have at least $1 million invested with you. And then you can have certain arrangements where you say, Well, if I make whatever percentage I'll make about what the s&p does, you'll split it with me, or something like that, you know? Okay, so again, it's very, it's has a lot of criteria to it can't be done, though. Okay. Yeah. Because I wouldn't say the hedge fund world is based on what you're telling me is, cuz you're basically commingling all the funds. Right? So you got to do like a statement for each person or something. Yeah. And so I think the advantage is, you can just commingle it all and then do whatever you need to do. And then at the end of the day, you somehow allocated? Allen: Right, so the thing with the hedge fund is that all the investors have to be accredited. Okay, so accredited, as you know, probably, you know, you basically you have a million dollar net worth not putting your house, or you're making upwards of 300,000 a year. So, you know, basically, so at least Paul: They have to tell you, they're accredited. Right? Allen: I think we would actually want them to be proof, you know, give me proof otherwise, we're not letting you in. Paul: That was actually in so my testing I just did is like, yeah, you want this criteria? But are you actually gonna go go check it? No. So Allen: Interesting. Okay. Because I mean, you know, the government says that the hedge funds, you know, if you're an accredited investor, you should be smarter than the average bear. And so, if you lose money, it's not that big a deal. Like you are smart enough to get into it. You know, somebody with $5,000 or $10,000. That's my life savings. No, sorry, you can't invest in this. Even though the hedge fund might be like doing 1,000,000% a year, you can't invest because you're not accredited. Ras can take basically everybody, so that was one of the things okay, somebody comes in with 50,000 as an RIA, you might just take it because it's not that much paperwork. It's not extra for you. But for a hedge fund. Yeah, no, I can't do it. Because I gotta, I gotta pay the auditing company. I gotta pay the statement company. I got to pay the customer. You know, whoever's doing customer service and answering the phone and doing all that, and salespeople and all that. So 50,000 is not going to cut it, you know, the limit is a lot higher. For sure. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that, in that sense, totally different world. But very similar from what I'm seeing is that, you know, you're doing probably what we're gonna be doing, you know, similar. Paul: So you probably can't take qualified money like IRAs and things like that. Allen: I think they can. Yeah, yeah, I think they can, as long as a person is accredited. And so there's different regulations, 5063 C, or six, C, five, or six D, they'll those tell you, you know, if you can take accredited and non accredited, and then can you advertise or not, I'm still learning all this, it's all different, because like, if you start a Real Estate Fund, different from if you're doing a hedge fund, versus a private equity fund, so some of the rules apply to everything. Some of the rules are just separate. So I'm still learning all that. But I know that the Interactive Brokers, people, they've done webinars in the past with attorneys. So if anybody wants to start a hedge fund, you can still use the Interactive Brokers platform. And they have they actually have a separate portal, I think, for hedge funds. Yeah, I've seen that. You've seen that too? Where you can actually see what other people are doing. And what are the trades that they're making? Paul: I didn't know about that. I just knew that they had some kind of hedge fund portion of what they're doing. I didn't know exactly what it meant. Allen: Yeah. So So what they said was that, you know, the attorney was like, you know, it'll take several, you know, maybe $30,000, to set up your hedge fund, you can probably do it with a smaller amount, if you want to start an incubator fund, which is like, you know, if you have your own money, and you put in and say $300,000, and you trade it as if it's a fund, and you don't maybe that that paperwork might be like 7000, and you set that up, you treat it as a fun, you build up your track record, and be like, Oh, hey, look, you know, I was trading for six months, I got this, that or not, and then you can start advertising it, and you convert it to a full fund. And then you can say, well, look at my track record, this is what I did. And then people can come in for the full fund. So that was one of the things that they were they were talking about. But so yeah, we were we were looking at an interactive, but the one thing that interacted with their software is a little bit more clunky or less user friendly than some of the most user friendly software. Yeah, it was my personal accounts. Now. So when, do you still trade on on your own on the side? Or is all of your money in the big? Paul: I have some money still in the in the huge fund? And then, you know, I have some I have an account on the side, right? Allen: So that separate account, did that change it all after you got licensed? Because they always, you know, when you open an account, they always ask you, are you licensed? And then they're I don't know why they do that. Is there to change anything on? You're not gonna recall? Paul: Yeah. So, there's, there's occasions where you can link up an account with the master fund, and you can D link the account. So I think at one time I had, it's actually my 401k account for my accounting firm attached to the IRA account, but then I detached it. One of the main reasons was for futures. Okay, because I knew I wasn't qualified to do futures for the whole fun. But I could on a mountain account. Allen: Ah, okay. So you have to keep it separate to do the futures options. Yeah. Until you get licensed by them. And is that like a lengthy process as well? The futures options? License? Yeah. Paul: I took a series three exam back a month or so ago. So I'd studied for two or three months, and again, got a tutor. Yeah. Okay. Allen: All right. How many clients do you have right now? Paul: I'd say about 20-25. Allen: Okay. All right. Cool. And so, from a financial standpoint, has it been worth it? Paul: Yeah, it's been really good. I might, my intention when I know that, you know, once I got into it, my intention was over the years, you know, retirement age, is at my incomes shift for my CPA business or to my investment business. So I could do that, say two hours a day and retirement versus, you know, doing tax seasons and all that. CPA visits. Allen: Okay. Is that still the plan? Yes. Still plan. Awesome. Cool. So yeah, I mean, handling managing millions of dollars of assets in two hours a day. That sounds pretty good to me. Paul: That might be a pipe dream. But that's what I had in mind.  Allen: I think you could do it your own way. You're on your way. Cool. Awesome. So is there anything that I haven't asked you that you think like, oh, yeah, people need to know this. Paul: I could probably sit here and think about a few things. Not on every call. No, no, no, no. I mean, one thing you have to like for instance, a you have to have a like an email account that you Gotta add to retain all your emails for at least like five years. That's one thing to keep in mind. And like I have to send a like a balance sheet and income statement to the state of Florida every year and get someone to notarize it. You have to upload information to the FINRA site at least once a year. And that's where you pay your like on license Louisiana along Florida and things like that. So I pay my fees for those licensing booth vendors website. Allen: And that you had told me that the fee that you charge for management that comes out Interactive Brokers basically pays you every quarter, your fixed asset if I had to build it, right, yeah. Paul: Okay. So, so they do it automatically. But when I got audited, the state wanted me to actually create invoices. So the answer your question is, I'm not sure what the real requirement is. So far, I guess I met that criteria then. So I'm not actually grading him. What's the reporter right now? Okay. Allen: Yeah, I mean, because like, I mentioned, those two consultants that I had talked to, they had told me that I would have to bill everybody invoice, everybody, every quarter. And those people would have to pay me directly. So it wouldn't be taken out of their account, it would be sent directly to me that they would have to write a check every quarter. And I'm like, that's a pain in the butt. You know, that's pretty cumbersome. Yeah, if a customer has to pay, you know, a big check every quarter for management fees. And then especially if you have a down year, he's like, What am I paying for it? I don't pay for this anymore. And you don't get paid. So I was like, Okay, that's a big red flag. But I'm glad that that's not true. Cool. Okay. Paul: One thing I have figured out there is, like, there's an account I was going to take from someone from one advisors to me, and they had all their fees, like totally hidden with all these mutual funds and things like that. And so like, you know, that account, I was gonna charge 3.3%. But we weren't able to ever get to the bottom of what the other advisor was charging. So, even though they have a lot of disclosures and things like that, I think we could have pressed the issue if we really wanted to. But, um, but you know, I ended up losing that account. Allen: So did that customer realize that, that he's being charged all these things? Paul: No, no, no clue. No, I mean, whenever I sort of parted ways, and I said, you guys at least need to figure out what they're charging you. You'd be surprised at the amount of inept that's out there and people who are actually hiring advisors, like, yeah, most people do not keep like their annual statements. They couldn't tell me how much they made last year. You know, because really, when I'm taking on an account, I want to know, what their track record has been sort of what I would need to beat to make them happy. You know, a lot of them are not that attuned to that. Allen: That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, people, they work their entire lives to save up money and invest it so they can retire. But then they don't pay any attention to the money. Oh, boy.. Paul: I think it's because they don't know that much about it. So they wouldn't know what to do if it was not what they wanted, you know? Allen: Yeah. I mean, you gotta you gotta take a little bit of time to at least read the statements and figure out where's the money going? And it could be better disclosed, you know, the statements could be easier to read that that's definitely sure. That's, yeah. But it is what it is for now. Paul: Like, I have this account right now, I'm probably going pick up another six to nine or 1000. And I asked them to get their annual statements ready. Because I wanted to see what they have been. have been doing, you know, so, you know, so they didn't know if there'll be they'll find those. So let me guess. It's like, it's weird. Allen: Okay, they just like asked her her advisor. Paul: Oh, that might be red flag fight flight to them. And they are looking so yeah. Wow. Okay. All right. seem bizarre. Allen: So if somebody was thinking about starting their own advisory firm, what would you say? They would need in terms of like, what are the minimums, okay, you should have been in the market for, you know, five years, you know, or you got to know XYZ, is there anything that you would say that, you know, if you don't, if you can't even do this, and this is not for you? Paul: Well, they're planning on doing what I'm doing, they probably need at least three to five years, you know, their own market experience. But, you know, that being said, like, I just met with someone the other day, and I could put all my funds through their strategies, and just sit and coast. You know, really, they charge an extra 1% or whatever, so I'll back off of my fee a little bit. You know, so you can you can play the game different ways. Wow. So you could do like I can see a new person and starting that and just have these other you know, because they have what's called sub managers or something like that. I don't know the exact term. Basically, you're hiring other money managers to manage the money you have for your clients. Right, like sub advisors, maybe is what it's called. Okay. So I'm not saying it will totally preclude them that they didn't have three to five years. But, you know, hopefully they're drawing on someone's experience to help hold their handle that Allen: Right. And do you know how much it costs to get it up and running? Paul: I would say three to five grand. Wow, that's not much. I mean, the hardware, these firms are brought in to charge you five times that? Allen: Yeah. Okay. So well, the sub accounts. Yeah, actually, I do remember those consultants talking to me about that. Paul: They they call it sub advisors? Allen: Yeah, I think that's what it is. And it's like, yeah, you know, if you don't want to do it yourself, you can put your money, you can put your your clients money into different buckets, and then they just do it for you, and they charge and then you split the fees or whatever, or something like that. So, and then each broker, each broker dealer has different ones. So like Fidelity or Schwab will have different sub accounts versus what you could put your stuff in. But interesting, I just Just curious the ones that you had talked to what what strategies were they were using, Paul: They're using free cash flow to is their criteria for who they're investing in. So they have like international, they call a cash cow c-o-w. So they've international domestic, and things like that. So they have a different definition of free cash flow. So they're they're fearing that's the best value, their way of determining value out there, like sort of like a value fund, but their own definition of what value is. Allen: Okay, so they're investing in stocks. Paul: Yes, international and domestic.   Allen: And they handle the ins and outs. And so you could put a portion of your client's money in there, you put it all in there. So it's like, it's like an ETF. So basically, you can say I want 20% of my money to go on this domestic one 20% International. And I might, I'm in talks with them. So I might end up doing some more money that way. But so they're coming up with different sample portfolios that I can use their funds for. Allen: Okay, interesting. And so that must be a much larger company. Paul: Yeah, I'm not sure how big they are. But they're, you know, big enough to where they had like a representative here in central Florida and some of their back office helping them out. Awesome. I'm not sure their size yet. Allen: Yeah. So I mean, this rabbit hole is pretty big. You can dive in there and spend a lot of time figuring all this stuff out. Paul: Yeah, yeah. So I can see a way I could sit and close more. But you're only doing it two hours a day anyway. Allen: Cool. All right. Paul: Well, maybe we're gonna get into my retirement years, a certain amount of years. I'll just put it there and just coast. The zero hours a day. Yep. Allen: Yeah, my, my neighbor in the office next door, he's a financial adviser. He's been doing it for, I think, 25 years now. So he's built up, you know, a sizable clientele. And so now he's at the point where he wants to retire. But he doesn't know what to do with the firm. He's like, you know, he makes probably a good 500,000 a year income from it. And he's like, I want one of my kids to take over. But the kids are not really willing, and not interested. He's like, I don't know what to do. So he's still there.  So there's been periods of times or, you know, like, I sit on the CPA world deal with other investment advisors, where it's been a quite a lucrative market to get bought your practice bought out by bigger, let's say Merrill Lynch or something like that, you know, they pay some pretty big bucks to buy those books of business. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, one of the things that the consultants told me is that once you get you get a client, that turnover, meaning the fact that they're going to leave you is not very high, they're gonna stay with you for years and years. So you can count on that money coming in, you know, that fee money coming in for a long period of time, unless you unless you totally screw it up, and then they're gonna leave. Paul: If you play the play smart. You know, if you're dealing with someone 50 years old, right now, you know, another 10 or 20 years, you're gonna pick up their kids and things like that when they need investment advice and stuff. It's, it'd be a self perpetuating thing. Allen: Yeah, yeah. And I do like the fact that there's always going to be somebody there willing to buy you, your company. You know, because a lot of times in smaller companies if you're the only person or if you got one or two employees, nobody really wants to buy the company even if it's successful. Nobody wants to buy it because they would without you there they're basically buying a job for themselves, right? It's not running on its own you're the one doing all the work in this case. Yeah, you're the one doing all the work but they don't need you. They can just, you know, have their own advisors take over. So you still get a pretty decent multiple when you sell so that's really cool too. Right? Paul: Also, I met a.. in my travels on this world. I've met the company and actually finance you if you want to buy on someone else's practice in the financial visor word world. Allen: Hmm.. So have you looked into that? Paul: I had a conversation or two with them, but I haven't really pursued it further. Yeah. Because I didn't know if I wanted to buy a larger practice. Right? Yeah. Because generally, that is a seven year payout to do that. So, you know, seven years, you'd be free and clear. Allen: That'll be interesting. Yeah. So a lot of ways to skin this cat. So you would I mean, I'm assuming that if anybody asked you, Hey, should I do this? Probably the answer is yes. Paul: Yeah, I mean, just mean, talk to people who have done it, and sort of figure out if it's a good fit for you, you know? Yeah. It's definitely can be pretty lucrative. Allen: Right? And I like the fact that it's like, for you at least it's more localized, you know, so you're not competing with somebody in California or Canada, or whatever. It's like, yeah, you guys get your clients over there. I'll have my clients over here. You know, they love me, they trust me. We hang out maybe. And sometimes. So it's not like a competitive situation. So, right. Awesome. Are you in any? Are there any, like, associations or memberships for advisors?  Paul: No, I'm not. Allen: No, but obviously, they probably have them? Paul: Yeah, I'm just not familiar. Very familiar with that. I have another advisor to hang out with suddenly sort of share some ideas. That's, that's all I have right now. Allen: And they're also private. Like on their own? Paul: Now, one of the reasons I didn't cover this in the beginning, like when I started looking into this whole thing, I didn't want to get clients and then share my fees with other people. That's why I didn't latch on to a bigger firm and start building my clients from there. So that's why I started my own Ra. So they will be my clients. And I get all the fees for them. And no one else had had rights to him. So that's, that's one of the reasons I did the way I did it. Allen: Okay. Okay. So what would be the benefits of going with a larger firm just to name recognition? Paul: Well, they have, one of the biggest things is called compliance. So like, right now, I'm my own compliance officer for my firm, okay, and larger firm like that they have whole departments that take care of compliance, for you to make sure you don't get in trouble, the regulators and so forth. So, like this other advisor, I had, he joined another firm, just so you could have that compliance piece to it. But in his firm, he can't trade options. Right? Allen: Because they're very limited. Yeah, exactly.  Paul: It's taught me to join his is up, like can't trade options. Allen: Because compliance says no. Paul: It was on the client's officer. Allen: Right. So that's why when you said you were thinking about advertising, it's the risk is on you because you're the compliance officer. So you got to know exactly what can be done and what can't be done. Right. Right. Interesting, cool. Is there anything else because  I'm out of questions. Paul: One of the things, one of the things I tell you, I looked into going with other companies, other inactive brokers when I started, okay, and like Charles Schwab wanted you to have $7 million you're managing before you could go with them. Allen: Whoa, okay. And they're the biggest right right now, I think. Paul: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So that's one reasons with Interactive Brokers, because they didn't have the minimums like that. I didn't really check too much rather than other people. Allen: So and how's your customer service at Interactive Brokers, because they for personal accounts, they don't have a good reputation. Paul: Yeah, they have a separate line, you can call as a professional advisor. So it's, I get pretty quick attention. Usually, you know, it's not it's not perfect, but you know, it's decent. Yeah, but you're happy. Yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm sure other companies have better customer service but you know, for right now, they, you know, I might need to call him a few times, but I get what I needed if I need need to.. Allen: And how are their margins and Commissions? Paul: Commission's are pretty low. I don't have the exact numbers I just know less than like $1 per 100 shares. Allen: And who comes out of the customers account? Obviously. Paul: Each person like when you do a trade display something all the counselee they pick up their own fees. Allen: Cool. All right. Well, thank you Paul. You know, Paul's website is again BusinessAdvisors.Pro. Paul said that he could reach out you know, you guys can reach out to him if you have any questions. And Paul is also in our other memberships are other programs as well past trading formula blank check and credit spread. So if you guys are members of those, you can reach out to him there. You'll find him in the group. And he's been very gracious with his time. So I do want to thank you and And he's very active in the group and you know you've been helping a lot of newer people as well they're so appreciate you there. Interesting place, interesting world and as I dive in I'm probably going to reach out to you more. Paul: Sounds great, I appreciate it.  Allen: Thank you thank you so much and we'll talk to you soon JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance  Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!

Episode 103 We are so excited to welcome Dr James Stump to the podcast today. Jim is the Vice President of Programs at BioLogos and hosts the podcast, Language of God. He is a passionate speaker, author, and organizer in the field of science and religion. He has written multiple books on science and religion, and has the uncanny ability to bring disparate groups together for meaningful and respectful conversation.  We sat down for an hour to talk about the work that BioLogos does, what he's most excited about, and how to have productive conversations with people who disagree with each other.    Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast   More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/   produced by Zack Jackson music by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis    Transcript  This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.   Zack Jackson 00:04 You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. Our guest today is the vice president of programs at BioLogos. And host of the podcast the language of God is a passionate speaker, author and organizer in the field of science and religion. He's also the author of four views of creation, evolution and intelligent design, science and Christianity in Introduction to the issues, how I changed my mind about evolution, and the Blackwell companion to science and Christianity. We are so excited to welcome Jim stump to the podcast today. Welcome.   Jim Stump 00:42 Thanks, Zack. Good to be here. Thank you, Ian.   Zack Jackson 00:44 Yeah. And thank you so much for taking this time out of your day. I know that there's so much going on right now with BioLogos. We were just talking before the podcast started about the conference that you have just a couple of days, which, unfortunately, by the time that this podcast airs will be over. So   Jim Stump 01:02 there will be virtual recordings available to see if you're interested in that sort of thing. Yeah.   Zack Jackson 01:08 Oh, excellent. That was gonna be my first question. So for the folks who did not register, because they are just hearing about it after the fact, they can go watch   Jim Stump 01:17 those. So I think the way it works is you can register for the online portion. And it's a pay what you can kind of thing, and those are going to be available for three months after after the conference. And then there may be free versions that that come out. Don't hold me to that. I'm not entirely sure about that. But I think that's the way it works.   Zack Jackson 01:40 Excellent, wonderful. So you heard it here. First, folks. Actually, you probably already here last point. So for those of our listeners who are not all that familiar with BioLogos, could you take a minute here and explain a little bit about what it is that you that you all   Jim Stump 01:57 sure the BioLogos elevator speech. We are a nonprofit organization, founded by Francis Collins, who was the leader of the Human Genome Project, and then became the director of the NIH is currently the President's science advisor. He wrote a book in 2006, called the language of God after which our podcast was named. And in it, he shared about how he is this world class scientist, he didn't call himself a world class scientist. He's too humble for that. But he is a world class scientist, and how he came to understand these scientific things about the world, but then also how as an adult, he came to faith in Christ, and tried to show how those two things fit together in his own life. And after the publication of that book, he got lots and lots of questions, emails, even letters at the time, from people asking follow up questions. And he quickly got overwhelmed with all of that and put together a group of people to write out answers to frequently asked questions and they put it on a podcast or sorry, they this is a podcast, they put it on a website and call it BioLogos. And that's how biologists got started, it was answers to frequently asked questions about primarily science and evolution at the time, just after that podcast, after that website went live was when he was tapped by President Obama to become the director of the NIH and had to separate himself from bio logo. So it became a little more organized and incorporated and started having things like conferences and doing a blog and writing some other books and those kinds of things. And so here we are, 12 years later, or so that we're now a staff of 1414 people. We have a speaker's bureau, we have this podcast, you mentioned the website is still kind of the main hub of what we do. We had over 2 million unique visitors to the website last year, lots of them interesting, interestingly enough, still landing on these pages of frequently asked questions that Milo has gotten started with. So somebody does a Google search on something related to human beings and Adam and Eve and evolution or these days, we also talked about climate change and vaccines and those kinds of topics as well. And I think it's fair to say we've become a pretty trusted organization within the Christian community for people who are trying to take their faith seriously, but also want to take the findings of contemporary science seriously.   Ian Binns 04:35 Yeah, yeah. So   Zack Jackson 04:36 you've been with them since 2013. Or so I   Jim Stump 04:39 started in 2013. Half time I was a philosophy professor and split my time between BioLogos and the college I was teaching at for a couple of years and then went full time starting in 2015.   Zack Jackson 04:55 But what about your trajectory of your life led you to that point to the place.   Jim Stump 05:00 So I did a PhD in philosophy and was always interested in science. My undergrad degree was in science education II and I would have had you as a professor somewhere along the, along the route. And my father was was trained originally as like a middle school science teacher, he eventually became, became an administrator. But I, and we grew up in a Christian family, a very conservative Midwest Christian community. And so I was always interested in these two things and was never really forced into the kinds of positions you hear lots of people from conservative Christian families were creation science or young earth creationism or something we I was never forced into those kinds of positions, and was always encouraged to investigate and ask questions and look at the natural world as a good place, and was always interested how that fit with the Christian commitments that I had. And so I did this undergrad degree in math and science education, thought I might become a high school or middle school math and science teacher. And then immediately after college, my wife and I went to Africa actually to teach in a mission school for a while. And there I started Reading, Reading books more seriously than I did as a math major and in college. And so it was primarily the 19th century fiction shelf in the library in this little school way out in the middle of, of the jungle, actually. And somewhere in that conjunction between the math and science analytical training I had and then Reading 19th century fiction like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Melville and some of these great ideas that came out somewhere in the conjunction of those two things out pop philosophy, and I'm not the first person I've heard to say that, that they were attracted to philosophy through literature, but came back from there and went to grad school and philosophy, wanted to do something related to science and religion in a philosophy PhD, but was said no, you can't really do that in this department. But you could do science and, and metaphysics science and philosophy more generally. So I did a I did a dissertation that was kind of historical in nature, the scientific revolution, how the advancing scientific theories interacted with, with the advancing philosophical theories of the time, and how these two disciplines interacted with each other, all with an eye toward how does this affect science and religion. And so then started teaching in a small Christian liberal arts school where you teach about everything and don't have too much time to research yourself. But I got a fellowship one year through the Templeton Foundation to go to Oxford, for to do some projects in science and religion. And that was where I was introduced more specifically to the academic discipline of science and religion and really liked it, and started doing some things there. In 2013, BioLogos had a new president who was from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the BioLogos offices were previously in San Diego, the the past president was a professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. But when Deb haarsma became president, she said, I'm in need to move the headquarters to where I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and only two of the staff wanted to move from San Diego to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Surprise, surprise. And so she put out a call looking for some new staff. And in particularly, she wanted somebody in philosophy and theology that could help to curate some of the resources for the website, and so on. So I responded to that saying, I am really interested in this and the work BioLogos is doing. And I think I could help in, in what you need, but I'm not ready to quit my full time, full professor tenured position to do that, can we work out some other deal? And to my surprise, she said, Yeah, let's do this. So for two years, by oligos, bought out part of my faculty contracts so that I could do each of them half time. And that was with the full, full permission of the administration from this little college where I was teaching and but then as word started getting out to some of the broader constituents in that community, it made them nervous that there was a faculty member, so closely aligned with BioLogos that accepts evolution, you know, so sort of long. We called it a dialogue started, but it was more of a one way monologue, I'm afraid and ended with some of the documents that faculty have to sign every year being changed. And it kind of forced me to say, I probably don't belong here anymore, and biogas wanted to hire me full time. So in 2015, I started working for them full time. That was a very long answer to your question of how I got here, but that's the know the nitty gritty like taste a lot of her.   Zack Jackson 09:57 I feel like a lot of our listeners can resonate With that, there's a lot of folks, especially those of us, who come from a more conservative background and more evangelical background, who we dip our toes into this world, we realize we're not alone in the people who really want to engage with science with integrity, and maintain our spirituality. And we discover this new and beautiful and exciting world that God has made. And there's a new life in us. And then we're met with a brick wall of opposition from the people who used to accept us where our identity used to be. And they've now changed, that'd be the fact that they changed their covenant that you could no longer sign in. Very similar thing happened to me in a church once, but is one of the things that I really appreciate about BioLogos of all of this sort of organizations that that are tackling these issues. You all seem to have the best inroads into the evangelical world, where there is, you know, historically, anyway, a lot of science denialism. What is it about about your organization that, that gives you this ability to speak, to speak science speak truth into a world. So full of denialism?   Jim Stump 11:17 That's kind of you to say that, and I wonder if one day somebody in the sociology department might write a write a big dissertation and do a big study related to science and religion organizations in the US because it's, it's a fascinating territory. BioLogos in its earlier days, so soon, after Francis Collins had to disassociate himself with the organization, there was one group of people that came in, and you can go, you can still find some of the the early articles that were written, more so you find when I travel, people who reacted in a certain way that wasn't very positive, I think there's a natural, I think there's a natural kind of progression for people that start to entertain these kinds of ideas. That leads them away. Part of what happens when you when you're trying to figure out how to reconcile evolution with Christian faith, and particularly with the Bible is your interpretation of Scripture, you start to realize has to be a little more nuanced, and, and not quite. So look, I just read this in the Bible, and therefore that's it. And we come to think that that wasn't a good way of interpreting scripture anyway. But what it does is it opens the doors for you to reconsider lots of other things, right, that you see, this is harder, this is messier than, then perhaps the community I came from had led me to believe. And I think there were some instances in those early days of BioLogos, where that was almost pushed down people's throats a little too harshly. And they felt like BioLogos was saying, Oh, you poor benighted evangelicals, let me help straighten you out. And let me you know, show you the truth. And you'll come to be just like we are, then that's that's maybe not a charitable way of interpreting that. But that's the kind of message I hear from people who were only acquainted with BioLogos in some of those early days, and then there was a very intentional decision for a kind of kinder, gentler approach, and the hiring of people that identified themselves as evangelicals, and we're still part of this world. And so I think we took on more of an aura of trying to reform from within rather than taking potshots from the outside, that's a little too simplistic and is perhaps a caricature of what was actually happening. But I think that's, that points to some of it that we have very intentionally tried to keep one foot in the evangelical world, even though you know the way the culture wars have bundled issues together. Science is on one side, and religion is on the other side, way too often. And we find ourselves in that No Man's Land out in the middle. But instead of just going with the flow of saying, well, then we're just going to become this progressive organization that sneers at evangelicals. You know, we've said no, we're, we're still part of this and many of these impulses we share. And so it's much more an issue of how do we articulate within, you know, the the framework that makes sense to that community? So I don't know it's a it's a really good question, and we are not a perfect organization and we misstep and stumble all the time, but It's a it's a one of our one of our values. I mean, our, in our founding documents, our values, say, rigorous science, Christ centered faith and gracious dialogue. So it's not I think too many people use the speak the truth in love verse as a weapon that gives themselves permission to club people over the heads with the truth as they know it now. And we're much more concerned about, you know, winning people through graciousness than just clubbing them with the truth.   Ian Binns 15:35 So I'm curious, I'd like that idea. You talk about the having the conversation, right, making it so that you can actually have a conversation? Which I really liked that how do you approach those who? I mean, I'm certain there are individuals or groups maybe who've started off maybe more antagonistic, or they've started off their conversation with you in an attacking type manner? How do you handle that? Or Or do you initially do? Do you know what I mean? More? I'm trying to get out here like it. People who maybe approach more with my way or the highway? I am correct. You were wrong. type of approach. What have you done in the past?   Jim Stump 16:20 Yeah. So thankfully, those people are the outliers. Actually. They're the ones that get the most press. They're the loudest voices out there. But it's not the norm. We commissioned a sociological survey origins a few years back, and it was really fascinating to see, yes, you can if you only ask the question, like, How old do you think the earth is? Or do you think human beings evolved? evangelicals? Still, the majority of them, say our, you know, young earth creationists or old earth creationist at least saying that there's no such thing as evolution. But when you dig a little deeper and ask, and how important is this to you? It's a really small percentage, it's like less than 10%, who pound their fist on the lectern and say, I'm a young earth creationist Darnit. And it has to be that way, or you're all going to hell or you know, that you hear those voices on the internet, particularly, but that's not the majority of people. And so there's a, there's a middle ground of people who are, you know, either don't really care that much about the issues, or they say, this is interesting, but it's not hugely important to me, and I'm not going to get into fights over it. So that's the first response to your question in is that it's not as many people doing that, as you might be led to believe, by if you only follow these issues on Twitter, right. But then there are those people and one of the things BioLogos has done is that we don't really do debates. I mean, that became that became part of the DNA, I'm afraid of evangelicalism and apologetics, to say we're gonna get up and, you know, have a debate and trot out all our fancy reasons and show people why, you know, we're really just as smart as you are actually smarter. Because we believe the truth. We've said, we're not doing that. We're happy to have conversations with people, but we vastly prefer those conversations to come out of relationship that has happened. So just as an example of that, reasons to believe is another science and faith organization out in California, founded by Hugh Ross, who is an astrophysicist, became a Christian later in his life and started this as an apologetics ministry. They're old earth creationists. So they accept the science of physics and geology that points toward the ancient age of the Earth in the universe, but they don't accept evolution. And we've had really good, interesting, productive talks with them. But it's only because we've spent a lot of time with them. And when I say spend a lot of time with them, it's not a lot of time on stages, talking in front of other people, or even doing this kind of thing on a podcast where you're having a conversation, but secretly, you're just trying to talk to your own audience, you know, preach to the choir, in some sense, we spent a lot of time with them behind closed doors out of the public eye just getting to know each other. So four or five representatives from our organization would get together with four or five representatives from their organization. And we'd talk about the common ground we have we talk about our differences. We'd also pray with each other and we'd hear each other's spiritual journey and stories and we'd eat a meal together. And so I often have said in response, in reaction to that and to these kinds of questions, that it's a lot harder to be snippy over the internet at people with whom you've prayed. People that you people that you have out with people that you know, their testimony, their stories, in when when you have that kind of a relationship, it's it's way harder to be uncharitable toward them. Where when it's people that you don't know anything about, you read a quote, or two, and you make all these assumptions about who they are and what they must be like, and you just go from there. So developing relationship has always been really important in the BioLogos approach to these things.   Ian Binns 20:30 Yeah, I like that, if you're talking about debates, you know, I've never found debates on these types of issues, worthwhile. And when I was faculty at LSU, for three years, from 2008, to 2011. And Louisiana, you know, at times has historically said trouble with teaching of evolution in schools and, and they still do, and I was testifying a lot down there against efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution, and also to undermine curriculum materials. And right before we moved back to North Carolina, I don't remember the name of the person. But someone reached out to me from a small group in Canada, wanting to set up a debate as a way to come after me. And I immediately turned it down. But I reached out to some of my mentors about it. And they just said, it's, it's not worth it. So you're, you're going the right way. But it was it was interesting to finally get on someone's radar that way. But again, I just saying it's not worth my time. So   Zack Jackson 21:30 there seems to be a fine line between a debate and a conversation. Right, and you are a podcast host? Do you find yourself in situations where things start turning into a debate over a conversation? And?   Jim Stump 21:49 Not very often, not very often. And I'm sure part of that comes through the selection of the people we have on the podcast to talk with. Most of them are people who agree with us to start with we we do consciously try to look over the course of a season or over a calendar year to make sure we're talking with people that are outside the tent, and outside the tent in different directions, whether that's they don't agree with us on science, or they don't agree with us about Christianity. And but those have those who have never, like gotten ugly or nasty or anything, so.   Zack Jackson 22:28 Okay. And so for those of you who are listening who are not familiar, Jim is the host of the the language of God podcast, which is saying before, one of the only regularly updating podcasts that tackles science and religion on a regular basis with any kind of intellectual integrity is how I think I would put it, but but I do regular Google searches because, well, you know, one of the reasons we started this podcast was because there wasn't a whole lot out there. And we were in conversation, the five of us and I, we realized there was not a whole lot of content out there. And there wasn't a whole lot of organization of people, everyone kind of felt like they were on their own. And so we wanted to create a community of people who, who at least were asking similar questions, if not on the same page. And you do that on a regular basis. So first of all, thank you for doing that. And I wonder if you might take a little, a little bit of time here and tell us a little bit about what is sort of the driving ethos behind your podcast and what you're trying to do with it?   Jim Stump 23:47 Yeah. One of the most frequently requested resources we had it BioLogos, in the middle teen years of the 21st century, was to have a podcast and we always replied with Yeah, that would be great. But we just don't think we have the resources to do it. Both the human resources as well as money we had known and that that answer was fairly, an uneducated, but we didn't, we didn't we just didn't know about podcasting. And I had a chance, depending on your theology, you might say providential conversation with a former student of mine, at a party one night, I asked him what he was doing. And he said, I started this new business, and I'm a consultant for podcasters. And I'm like, seriously, there is such that you can do that. And he said, Yeah, lots of people want and I said, What does it take to do a podcast? And we had this conversation for about an hour and at the end of that hour, I had the whole plan in mind to go back to the leadership at BioLogos and say, we need to do this. We can do this. It's not as complicated as I thought. It's doesn't take as much money as I thought. and using somebody like this, we can figure out how to do it well BioLogos we're, we're funded entirely through grants and donations, we don't sell anything. So our only revenue comes from those. And so anytime we have a new project, we ended up pitching it as a grant proposal, or we find a donor who's interested in that way, we really thought we needed to hire one more person than we then we had to be able to devote time to doing it. And so we ended up getting, we ended up getting a grant to start it to start it off. And to do that, you have to write up this big document saying this is what we want to do. And essentially, it was taking the academic conversations of science and religion that you guys know that that go on at all sorts of levels. But it doesn't often trickle down into the people in the pew. So this was a grant that was intentionally pitched to say, we want to bring the kinds of conversations that the scholars in our network are having regularly and to try to translate that for a general podcasting audience. For people that say, Yeah, I'm kind of interested in where humans came from. I'm interested in what the Bible has to say about this. And I'm interested in the latest scientific discoveries, but to take that and package it in a way that would that would be interesting for, for for those kinds of people. So it's designed very much to take the all the topics that BioLogos is is interested in and engaged in and to find the interesting people to talk to about that. My only qualifications as a podcasting host. Before starting this were that I was I was the announcer for the women's basketball team at the college where I was teaching for a number of years. And so I had practice speaking into a microphone in that regard. But I was something I thought I can I'd really like to do this, I think I can do this. And there was some skepticism going into it, whether this was really the right fit for me to be the podcast I was about, we started doing a few and people said, Yeah, I guess you can do that, that I guess, announcing three pointers translates Okay, and talking about science and faith, so, so now it's, it's like half of my job. It's and it's been one of the most enjoyable things that I've done. I really enjoyed having these kinds of conversations with with lots of people. So we just like you have recently hit the 100 episode mark, and have continued, continued on for we'll go for at least another couple of years. And we'll see what happens then.   Zack Jackson 27:42 Yeah, I only just realized that you all launched your podcast just about just a couple of months before we launched our podcast. Yeah, it was we must have lost at the same   Jim Stump 27:52 time, we must have sent the same need out there.   Zack Jackson 27:56 I think we probably did, it sounds like we sent the same need anyway, the the taking the from the the academy and bringing it back down to the people as it were. So in the past 100 and some odd episodes, what what are some of the things that you've learned that stand out to you?   Jim Stump 28:17 So, I mean, I think I've learned how to be a better podcast host than I was at the beginning. I've learned I mean, just through conversations with people, one of the things you see over and over again, is that what people believe is really deeply connected to who they are, where they live, the community that's around them, the ideas that we have aren't just floating around in, you know, some ether, that they're deeply connected to the people that we are to the communities that that we're part of. And that can be troubling to people sometimes if you think that leads you down this road of relativism of some sense, but I think instead it shows the embodied pneus of our faith, it shows that our faith can take on particular particular guises depending on where we are and who we're around. And that shouldn't be threatening, that should be an indication of the incarnational element of Christianity. Right. And so it's it always gives me I think, great hope to hear people different people's expression and articulation of their Christian faith dependent on the circumstances that they've found themselves in. And there are obviously commonalities through that. And different challenges. It's similar challenges that come out and are expressed in in similar ways but it it doesn't take away from the kind of uniqueness and embeddedness of of the faith in our in our lives as we find them. Use if   Ian Binns 29:59 Zach knows this. We've been friends for a long time night, I always bounce back and forth. And you were talking earlier. Jim, when you're talking about your journey, and you refer to a fellowship that you did, I think you said it was with Oxford maybe or something. Can you delve more into that a little bit? And what was that experience? Like? So what was it then? What was that experience for you?   Jim Stump 30:19 The John Templeton Foundation is the major funder of all things science and religion in, in this country and in several other countries. And they started a program designed for primarily for faculty at Christian colleges to get more engaged in the academic discipline of science and religion. And so this was, it was actually three summers in a row held at Oxford University. Wickliffe Hall is one of the colleges, one of the halls of, of Oxford University. So three summers in a row, I went over there for four weeks, each two of those summers, I even got to bring my family with me. And it was really transformative time. For me as a scholar and understanding deeper the the issues involved in science and religion. So we each had to pitch a project of some sort to work on throughout those times. And then there was a cohort of about 35 people who were there, and we got to know each other and became friends, and had these kinds of conversations a lot. And so I came back and started working and writing more seriously in the academic field of, of science and religion. And that's kind of what led me to BioLogos then, too, so yeah, and they've done so Templeton has done this several times with different cohorts. I was I was part of the second cohort. So it was see if I have my dates, right. 2003, four and five. Were the years that the summers that I was there, there was a three year program immediately before that, too. And since then, I think they've been doing just two year cohorts, but have had similar programs for quite a while. Yeah.   Ian Binns 32:01 That's because just for me, personally, that's something I'm interested in. And obviously I work at a secular institution, but of the fellowship that brought all of us together. Sinai's snaps as it was, was something that, you know, obviously was very powerful for me personally. And it led to the five of us becoming very good friends in this podcast. But it's something that I am more interested in trying to find other avenues just because, you know, as Zack mentioned, of the five of us, I'm the only one that's not as engaged, I guess you could say, within the religious community, as the others just because of my work. And as a science educator, which is not a bad thing. It's just something that I crave. So   Jim Stump 32:47 I think, when we have so when BioLogos has these conferences, like the one you mentioned, that's, that's coming up here this week, that's, that's what we hear most from the people who come and attend that they've been just craving fellowship around like minded people. Because for too many for too many people in their, in their religious communities, they find it challenging and difficult to talk openly about science. And for many scientists, then in their work situations, they find it difficult to talk openly about their faith commitments. And so again, we're kind of in that no man's land between those those two ideological camps. And so but there really are a lot of people out there like us that are interested in both of them. So it's, it's very, very nice to have a community of people that are involved in both.   Ian Binns 33:38 Well, and thankfully, my my church community, I'm an Episcopalian. And within my Episcopal Church, community, immediate community, at least it is very much welcomed. You know, I've taught several classes from my church, with my former Rector and my current Rector is a huge fan of our podcasts. And he actually was a high school biology teacher before he went to seminary. So it's an area that I get to talk about a lot, but you know, academically, you know, I get to do work on it and write about it. But you know, I do, I'm trying to get to know people in our religious studies program, for example, but also to to get to know people at different institutions around the country and seminaries and things like that as a way just to kind of collaborate more of science and religion centers as a way to collaborate more, because it's something that I find very fascinating, obviously, since we do this. Good. Yeah.   Zack Jackson 34:31 So you've, you've done a lot of work on with with BioLogos in the in building resources, right, with answering Frequently Asked Questions for for faith leaders for Christians, across the board. But what is it that within this, this fear this this, this world of science and religion, this relationship between the two that that just gets you jazzed? That That makes you excited that you could talk about for an hour.   Jim Stump 35:03 Yeah. So I got into this work primarily, because I'm teaching at this Christian College. And I started hearing more and more former students after I'd been there long enough former students, I'd start hearing that had left their faith, because they got out of the bubble that we were part of, and saw how science works in the real world. Maybe it was just watching the Discovery Channel, seeing nature, and, and somewhere deep inside them, whether it was ever articulated this way explicitly, or not, somewhere deep inside them from the religious communities they had grown up in, we're like, this doesn't fit. This doesn't work this with my faith, this view of the world doesn't, you know, I can't reconcile this. And I'm feeling that I got to choose, am I either going to double down and be part of this religious community? Or am I going to say, Yeah, this is the way the world works, and the what scientists told us, and they would feel at this fork in the road of having to choose between these two. And so I got into this because I was tired of hearing that of hearing people think that somehow they had to choose between science and, and faith. And so I said, I gotta sort some of this out myself. I gotta I mean, I've, as I told you before, I've I've never really tempted by things like young earth creationism, but neither was I ever completely sure how to reconcile, in my own mind, things like what Genesis says, with evolution. And so it was through some of my own Reading through some of the work in this Templeton group that I was talking about in Oxford, where it was like, Okay, now I'm starting to see the way that it's not like you have to compromise somehow, on your faith, it's that I need a little better, more sophisticated under understanding a way of interpreting scripture, that's actually better. It's not somehow, you know, shirking responsibility, but it's like, no, these, these documents didn't fall from heaven, that they were written in a time and place. And so coming to understand that just like, opened my eyes to say, Okay, I'm free. Now, I feel like I'm free to explore the scientific evidence and let that lead me where it will, because it's not going to threaten this commitment to faith that I have to this understanding of the Bible, even as this inspired document that that is, you know, been so important to our, to our tradition. So that in my own journey, led to I think I can show this to other people here now, too, I think, I think we can help people come so that they don't get to a crisis point the way so many of my former students had. And so that part of understanding in one bigger, more coherent picture has been really important for me, and I think, is is one of those things that keeps me juiced up and in talking to other people about this, that, that you can take both of these seriously, right, so that it's not not giving up on one or the other. More recently, so BioLogos, here about three years ago, made an intentional decision to expand the topics we talked about. Earlier on, it was mostly evolution and origins related work. And that was an intentional decision also to try to unbundle it from the other issues, because as we talked about on these culture wars, that too often the culture wars come as prepackaged bundles of of issues and topics and that you have to take all of one or all of the other and BioLogos said, No, we're not trying to get you to we're not trying, we're not talking about climate change. We're not talking about homosexuality, we're not trying to get you to vote democratic. We're just trying to talk about evolution as a way of unbundling that, but after doing that for about 10 years, we said we think we've earned enough credibility and trust that maybe we do need to talk about some other scientific topics. That was a at a strategic planning meeting in 2019. And we thought that 2020 was going to be the year of climate change and creation care for BioLogos. And then COVID happened. And we pivoted really hard in 2020, then to trying to provide scientific resources from a Christian perspective that people might trust related to COVID and really ramped up very quickly in that regard. And so then by about 2021, by the middle of 2021 or so we we started thinking more seriously and developing more resources on climate change. And that's become an issue now for me, that keeps me animated and sometimes keeps me up at night. And seeing that just the psychology of the way this is an issue works, that it's just far enough away that it doesn't feel like a crisis right now. But it really is a crisis right now. I mean, the things we're we have this short window right now as a civilization, to make the right kinds of choices, and to show how this ought to flow out of our faith. You know, rather than again, it being bundled on the opposite side of the culture wars from where many people of faith are. And they think that's what those liberal people are worried about. I'm not worried about that, well, to show that this ought to flow out of our faith, that we ought to be caring for creation, and that we ought to be worried about the justice have we in the in in the Western world, the industrialized world who have caused almost all of this are going to suffer the least from it, it's going to be the people who didn't cause it that are going to suffer the most. And what does our what does our faith commitment have to say about that? Right? Shouldn't? Shouldn't we of all people be most concerned about what the poorest and the least of these around the world are going to suffer as a result of what we've done over the last few generations? Yeah, yeah,   Zack Jackson 41:19 I was just Reading that the, you know, the Solomon Islands are probably going to be the first nation that is completely eradicated by the sea level rise, and they're trying to purchase large swaths of land in Asia is or   Jim Stump 41:32 relocate a country   Zack Jackson 41:34 to create a new country, as theirs is disappearing. We hear our are saying, well, you know, maybe it's 100 years out. I think we're all pretty, pretty aware. If you're listening to this podcast, you are probably fairly aware of the awful parts of climate change and the things that we shouldn't be doing. And there's perhaps, a sort of paralyzing nihilism to it. For those of us who think about this a lot. Is there anything happening in this in this realm that brings you hope, right now?   Jim Stump 42:12 Right at the end of 2021, we did a series on hope. And I've been thinking about it a lot lately, because in the in the sense of, is it possible for me to be hopeful, and yet not terribly optimistic? Because when I read the data, when I read the new IPCC report, I'm not very optimistic. And is that something different than hope, and I'm persuaded that I can be hopeful as an intentional choice of commitment, as a way of saying, this is how I'm going to look at the world. I'm committed to seeing it as God's creation as a place where God is sovereign, not in the sense that God controls every detail that happens, but in the sense that the good guys win. In the end, I'm committed to that view of life that, that God will work all things together for good. I'm not very optimistic about the the way things are going. But that ultimately, I'm not. I'm not even called to be effective. We had a podcast guest use this line that I just think is super powerful that we are not called to be effective. We're called to be faithful. And what does it look like to be a faithful Christian in these days? When it doesn't look like we're being very effective at convincing people to do the right thing? What does it mean to be faithful in that, in that kind of circumstance, and I think it's to continue to say that God's on the throne, Jesus is the Lord, within our tradition. These are the phrases we use that order our order our lives, and that we're going to continue to love our neighbor, and love our enemies, and to honor God with our hearts and souls and minds and strength. And hope then becomes the kind of outflow of looking at the world in that way and of being committed to that, to that way of looking at the world, that hopefulness can be and affect an outcome from the commitment to being faithful. And again, I think it's possible to have that attitude while at the same time the sort of emotional risk sponsz to immediate circumstances is not always very good. But that optimism or pessimism I see is that emotional reaction to what I see right now. Whereas Hope is the commitment to what I believe the way things are going to be, ultimately, much longer perspective, eternal perspective that hope derives from as opposed to optimism or pessimism.   Zack Jackson 45:28 I think you've just described Isaiah as call from Isaiah chapter six, where God says, you know, Whom shall I send to bring a message to the people and Isaiah says, ooh, pick me. And God says, Here's your message. Tell them to repent, but they're not going to do it. Thanks for that. I know from the outset that this is going to fail, but I need you to do it anyway. Oh, I like that, that a call to faithfulness, not effectiveness. Because there's a we, we just had a section in, I teach confirmation in my in my church, and we've got eight teenagers. And we were talking about Christology and talking about Jesus. And we got to the section on Christ's return. And they have a lot of questions about what it's going to be like, when Jesus comes back. Is it going to be like, when he came the first time? Is he going to be a baby? Is he already here? Is it going to be dramatic in the sky? And the big question was when, and most of them, uh, kind of agreed amongst themselves, without my prodding, that it was probably just going to be when the climate gets too warm, for humans to live anymore. And that we are going to once we destroy the world, that's when Jesus will come in. And so they were just talking amongst themselves about how bad it has to be first, before Jesus will come and set things right. And like the fact that this is the sort of casual conversation happening among 13 year olds, it was like a shot to the heart to me, because, you know, this is something that's deeply important to me as well. But when I was 13, I was certainly not thinking in these terms. Right? When I was 13, my, the limit of my understanding of the environment was that in all those six pack from soda rings, were going to kill turtles. You know, Captain Planet was the extent of my understanding of what we were doing to the world. But for them, they see this as a present reality. And I think the rest of us need to wake up to that.   Jim Stump 47:35 This is part of what has urged us at BioLogos. To make this to make this one of the core topics that we deal with the origins issues are interesting, they're important at some level, and have implications for things like how you understand scripture, and so on. But whether there was a historical Adam or Eve is not going to affect too many people's lives and livelihoods and caused countries like the Solomon Islands to have to relocate, right? I mean, there's a different sort of immediacy and importance to the topics of climate change that we've got to get this one, right, or it's not just going to result in splitting of denominations, it's going to result in inability to have a sustainable planet anymore.   Ian Binns 48:22 When you think about to, you know, there are still indigenous cultures out there that are completely cut off from the industrialized world, or the technological world, I guess you could say, you know, where they still live the way they've always lived. And we know they're there, but don't have any communication with them that those cultures and those communities, especially ones that are on islands will be wiped off the face of the earth, because of our actions, and then   Jim Stump 48:55 even the ones that aren't on islands, the ecosystems are going to change so dramatically already in Africa and South America, the kinds of crops that you can grow, and when you can grow them are changing pretty rapidly. And those kinds of indigenous cultures that have always done things the same way are not going to be able to keep doing those.   Ian Binns 49:14 Yeah, and it but it's very tragic that, you know, the Western world has to be has to know that its impact, at least the general thought seems to be that some believe that, well, it's not in my backyard. I guess that's the best way of saying that. Yeah.   Jim Stump 49:31 And that again, is part of this, like, that's part of the psychology that makes this so difficult to communicate because it's not immediate and in your face, it's off down the road or in another part of the world or something like that.   Ian Binns 49:45 Sure. And that's the loving others. Yep. Right. And so, you know, obviously if you identify as Christian, you can use Christian scripture to help you with that. But even if you don't identify as Christian or even if you don't benefit as a person of any faith whatsoever, you can still recognize the importance of loving others of caring about other people. So, to me, this is another Ask whatever your motivation is to help you care for others.   Jim Stump 50:13 This is another aspect of communicating to to two people that about these issues that again, span or try to at least span the culture war issues, that the theoretical side of this so we do this a lot in practice and have lots of stories to tell about trying to communicate to people in that regard. But there's a really fascinating theoretical aspect behind it. I don't know if you guys know that social psychologist, Jonathan Hite and his book, The righteous mind from a few years ago. And these moral foundations that people intuitively use to make their decisions and the research that he's done on the political left and the political right, primarily, and which of those moral foundations are most important to them. And you, you see pretty clearly that people who identify as liberal or progressive rank the highest on these moral foundations of care and fairness, and many of us that are on that at least lean that way, think that we can make these arguments just by appealing to Shouldn't we care about these other people? Isn't this fair, in order that the people who have, you know not caused this problem, they shouldn't have to be the one suffering from it. And the way you and I both just talked about this issue, that's what we were appealing to, whereas most people on the political right end of the spectrum rank way higher in these moral intuitions on liberty, and authority. And one of the challenges we face is how do we appeal to those kinds of moral foundations to talk about these issues? Because for them, they hear well, this isn't fair. Well, but their response is, well, you can't take away my liberty, you can't take away my choice. Right? Life isn't fair. Yeah, life isn't fair. Sorry, but or appeal to some other authority that they accept. So I think that's one of the big challenges for us in this business of how do we talk about these issues that are so important in ways that tap into the moral intuitions of people who are different than we are people who, who don't value is highly some of those other things that we value   Ian Binns 52:34 was obviously the last two years of this pandemic have made that that contrast even more, even more,   52:40 even more? You're right,   Zack Jackson 52:43 so we need a good alien invasion. Some some common enemy. So   Jim Stump 52:48 I'll tell you though, at the beginning of this pandemic, we at BioLogos said this is going to be what rallies the church to take science more seriously. We thought this is really the opportunity. And within a few months, it was no, the opposite of that has happened. Yeah. So   Ian Binns 53:06 yes, very tragic. Those witness.   Zack Jackson 53:10 Yeah, definitely solve those ideologies take over. And they made certain issues, political that I never imagined a million years could be political. And then I learned so much during that time about what it means to communicate with people and understand other people's values and try to communicate through them to find find some common language, not even common values, but a common way of communicating truth that I'm still working on very much. So   Jim Stump 53:39 there's another book if I can point it to. That's been very helpful for me in this regard to by a legal scholar by the name of John in NA zoo, the books called confident pluralism, which I think is really, really important. I actually just did a podcast interview with him about two months ago on our feed, you can find it but confident pluralism is he's coining this phrase to try to talk about how do we hold to our own convictions in a society where we can't, and probably shouldn't just impose them on other people. So the confident side is this isn't relativism, where we just say anything goes I really believe this is the truth. And I think it's really important, but the pluralism side is, I recognize that my neighbor down the road believes something different with the equal amount of fervor that I believe. So how do we in that kind of society have meaningful conversations? How do we try to break through these culture war bundles that that are there and the he talks primarily in terms of Supreme Court cases in the book because that's what he is. He's a scholar of the Supreme Court, Supreme Court, but really pushes us towards thinking within our communities. How do we move towards tolerance Where again, it's not just in some wimpy sort of anything goes, but rather, to be tolerant that I know other people don't all believe the same the way I do, and I shouldn't just exile them. And tolerance kind of plays off of certainty in a in a certain sense, where maybe toning down my certainty helps to communicate with people a little bit more, but he tries to push towards tolerance and humility and patience, that I think those are all really, really helpful ways of trying to engage people who believe differently than you do.   Ian Binns 55:36 I appreciate that recommendation.   Zack Jackson 55:39 Absolutely. Thank you for that. And we'll make sure to put those those links in the show notes, as well as links to your books that folks can can purchase and read, and all the resources that you've mentioned from BioLogos as well. Here at the end of our time together, first of all, I want to say a huge thank you absolutely half of the rest of our hosts and all of our listeners for spending this time with us. And before you go, what's coming up on the on your podcast that we can look forward to?   Jim Stump 56:12 Yeah, so this conference that we have coming up, we're going to do a live a live recording, which always sounds funny, because it's not like any recording isn't live, but we're gonna have a studio audience. That's what I should say, we're going to have a studio audience in front of us to record a conversation that I'll have with the artist Makoto Fujimura. To talk about creation, what does it mean to be creative, and to be made in the image of God? And what are the consequences that we find between science and art in some of those in some of those ways. We're going to do a whole series on climate change coming up in the not too distant, not too distant future. We did a we did a series last summer on what it means to be human that was a little different from the typical episode where I sit down and talk to somebody for an hour like we're doing here. But it's a little more highly produced, where we go out and talk to two experts in a number of different fields, and then have a narrative where we weave in, weave in quotes from from them. Throughout that. We are going to do a conversation with NT right about the resurrection for the week, right before Easter that will be coming up that I look forward to that we just recorded last week, an episode with Bill McKibben, who's one of the leading scientists, climate change activists, that was a pretty fun conversation than otherwise, we are looking toward the summer and putting together a couple of other series. One of them is related to a new project that I have going on. That is what I'm calling the spiritual journey of Homo sapiens. How did we become the kind of creatures that we are? And can we see in the journey of our species, something analogous to a spiritual journey of us as an individual, the highs and lows that we go through that helped to shape us and form us into into what we are today? So   Zack Jackson 58:21 we're looking at like, Paleolithic spirituality?   Jim Stump 58:26 How did this get started, I have a trip to Europe, hopefully, this next fall, where I'm even going to look at some of the cave paintings as some of these earliest sort of sorts of intimations of, of at least the records we have of our ancestors, looking at something else feel, you know, in a symbolic way of trying to figure out why we're here and who we are and all that. So I'm our series   Zack Jackson 58:53 on human evolution was one of them. It was my favorite series that that is where my, my brain is these days, and what gets me excited. So that's wonderful to hear that you're doing that as that   Ian Binns 59:03 sounds fascinating. Let me know if you need someone to go with you to hold your carry your suitcases. That just sounds fascinating.   Jim Stump 59:15 We'll see if it happens. That's the plan right now.   Ian Binns 59:18 Good luck with that. That sounds really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And as that moves forward, if that does happen, we'll have to have you back on to talk more about that. Because that that really does sound interesting. I'd be happy to.   Zack Jackson 59:30 Yeah, well, once again, you can listen to that and 109 other episodes of the language of God podcast, you can find that on BioLogos or wherever it is that you find your podcasts wherever you're listening right now. You can also find the language of God podcast. So thank you so much, Jim, for being here today and for spending this time with us. was a really wonderful hour with you. Thanks, Zack.   Jim Stump 59:53 Thanks, Ian. Happy to do it. Thank you

Vermont is on the precipice of history as an unrestricted equal rights bill is poised to become law. And Louisiana is on the same track.  Greg talks with many of the advocates who are making history in Vermont and the Northeast, including Ellie Lane, Rebecca Dragon, Bek Henson, Annette O'Connell and Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy (plus a shout out to Mary King, who couldn't be with us as we talked about Vermont, equal rights, and when we will have our next round of beer together). Greg also talks with Elise Lewis about her and others' advocacy efforts in Louisiana, plus we have a rundown on other bills, including a quick update on the Adoptee Citizenship Act in Congress. Follow legislative actions on the Adoptees United legislative page, where we track both federal and state legislation that impacts adoptees across the country. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Adoptees United, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to equality for all adopted people. And be sure to sign up for our What Next newsletter so we can keep you informed.

Now you'll start to hear stories about the quest to return to normalcy. In the U.K., masks will no longer be mandatory in public places and COVID passports won't be required for large events. Why? They're seeing infections level off. Scientists there believe the Omicron surge “has now peaked nationally.” The Prime Minister also said hospital admissions and patients in ICU are stabilizing or falling.Starbucks is no longer requiring its U.S. workers to be vaccinated. That reverses a plan it announced just earlier this month. They said they're doing it because of the Supreme Court ruling rejecting the White House's plan to require vaccines or regular COVID testing at companies with more than 100 workers. General Electric also suspended its vaccine mandate last week.New York City's surge of cases looks like it's falling as fast as it rose. After new cases increased 26-fold in one month, they've now fallen 57% over the last week according to ABC News. Hospitalizations are declining, and the number of wastewater samples that spotted the virus have also plunged.More evidence that booster shots probably don't do much in the way of stopping transmission. A study of breakthrough Omicron cases in South Africa, where the variant emerged early on, demonstrated Omicron's ability to evade immunity generated by even the most powerful vaccine boosters. Researchers still say the vaccines protect against severe illness, but that it might not be a good idea to rely on vaccines alone in the pandemic fight. Amidst all this good news, the CDC remains at virtual war with the travel and hospitality industry anyway. Tuesday, they advised against travel to 22 more nations and territories, including Israel, Australia, Egypt, Argentina, the Bahamas, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, and Saint Lucia. In fact, there are now over 100 countries and territories total on their “Level 4” don't-go-there list. In the United States, cases were up 38%, deaths are up 43%, and hospitalizations are up 47% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending down since January 14. The five states that had the most daily deaths per 100,000 are Tennessee, Maryland, Michigan, New York, and Indiana. There are now over 25 million active cases in the United States, at 25,035,097.The five areas with the greatest increase in hospitalizations per capita: Puerto Rico 126%. Alabama 121%. California 110%. The U.S. Virgin Islands 103%. And Louisiana 102%. The top 10 areas with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: West Feliciana, LA. Waukesha, WI. Newberry, SC. Dane, WI. Tom Green, TX. Teton, WY. Uvalde, TX. Milwaukee, WI. Kodiak Island Borough, AK. And Covington, MS.There have been at least 857,674 deaths in the U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 78.6%, Rhode Island at 77.9%, and Maine at 76.8%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Wyoming at 48.2%, Alabama at 48.4%, and Mississippi at 49.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 63%.Globally, cases were up 66% and deaths up 19% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending down since January 16. There are now over 60 million active cases around the world, at 60,920,589.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 710,928. France 436,167. India 315,158. Brazil 205,310. And Italy 192,320. There have been 5,563,818 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Covid 411, the latest on Omicron and other COVID variants, and new hotspots for January 20th, 2022.Now you'll start to hear stories about the quest to return to normalcy. In the U.K., masks will no longer be mandatory in public places and COVID passports won't be required for large events. Why? They're seeing infections level off. Scientists there believe the Omicron surge “has now peaked nationally.” The Prime Minister also said hospital admissions and patients in ICU are stabilizing or falling.Starbucks is no longer requiring its U.S. workers to be vaccinated. That reverses a plan it announced just earlier this month. They said they're doing it because of the Supreme Court ruling rejecting the White House's plan to require vaccines or regular COVID testing at companies with more than 100 workers. General Electric also suspended its vaccine mandate last week.New York City's surge of cases looks like it's falling as fast as it rose. After new cases increased 26-fold in one month, they've now fallen 57% over the last week according to ABC News. Hospitalizations are declining, and the number of wastewater samples that spotted the virus have also plunged.More evidence that booster shots probably don't do much in the way of stopping transmission. A study of breakthrough Omicron cases in South Africa, where the variant emerged early on, demonstrated Omicron's ability to evade immunity generated by even the most powerful vaccine boosters. Researchers still say the vaccines protect against severe illness, but that it might not be a good idea to rely on vaccines alone in the pandemic fight. Amidst all this good news, the CDC remains at virtual war with the travel and hospitality industry anyway. Tuesday, they advised against travel to 22 more nations and territories, including Israel, Australia, Egypt, Argentina, the Bahamas, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, and Saint Lucia. In fact, there are now over 100 countries and territories total on their “Level 4” don't-go-there list. In the United States, cases were up 38%, deaths are up 43%, and hospitalizations are up 47% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending down since January 14. The five states that had the most daily deaths per 100,000 are Tennessee, Maryland, Michigan, New York, and Indiana. There are now over 25 million active cases in the United States, at 25,035,097.The five areas with the greatest increase in hospitalizations per capita: Puerto Rico 126%. Alabama 121%. California 110%. The U.S. Virgin Islands 103%. And Louisiana 102%. The top 10 areas with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: West Feliciana, LA. Waukesha, WI. Newberry, SC. Dane, WI. Tom Green, TX. Teton, WY. Uvalde, TX. Milwaukee, WI. Kodiak Island Borough, AK. And Covington, MS.There have been at least 857,674 deaths in the U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 78.6%, Rhode Island at 77.9%, and Maine at 76.8%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Wyoming at 48.2%, Alabama at 48.4%, and Mississippi at 49.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 63%.Globally, cases were up 66% and deaths up 19% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending down since January 16. There are now over 60 million active cases around the world, at 60,920,589.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 710,928. France 436,167. India 315,158. Brazil 205,310. And Italy 192,320. There have been 5,563,818 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Covid 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The U.S. quietly launched its website for Americans to request free at-home COVID tests a day early. It's COVIDTests.gov and the order form is run by the U.S. Postal Service. You can get four at-home tests per residential address. The White House said, “tests will typically ship within 7- 12 days of ordering” and they are anticipating a “bug or two.”The World Health Organization's chief scientist says there is no evidence that healthy children and adolescents need booster doses of COVID vaccine. But that train has already left the station in many countries. Israel is boosting kids as young as 12, and the U.S. FDA has authorized third doses of Pfizer for kids 12 to 15. Last week Germany became the latest country to recommend that all children 12 to 17 get a booster. Hungary has done the same. If you felt awful after getting vaccinated, a new analysis says you may have been faking it. The study has concluded up to three-fourths of adverse events can be attributed to the opposite of the placebo effect. With placebos, people think they feel better even if they were given a sugar pill instead of a real drug. But this time, people who took a placebo thinking it was the real vaccine reported feeling negative side effects from it. Should you try to catch Omicron to get it over with? The director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia gives us five reasons not to. 1, It's not a bad cold. It's still a potentially life-threatening disease. 2, You could get long Covid. 3, You could stress the healthcare system. 4, the kid population is still fairly vulnerable, and you could infect them. And 5) It's stupid to catch a disease on purpose. And yes, he says, so were chicken pox parties in the old days. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong ordered the killing of 2,000 hamsters yesterday after 11 of them tested positive. There is no evidence domestic animals can infect humans. People who bought hamsters after Dec. 22 are being ordered to hand over their pet for culling.In the United States, taking into account many states did not report statistics Monday, cases were up 62%, deaths are up 54%, and hospitalizations are up 54% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending down since January 14. The five states that had the most daily deaths per 100,000 are New Mexico, Maryland, Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. There are now over 24 million active cases in the United States, at 24,488,337.The five areas with the greatest increase in hospitalizations per capita: Puerto Rico 143%. Alabama 134%. The U.S. Virgin Islands 130%. And Louisiana and California 120%. The top 10 areas with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: West Feliciana, LA. Waukesha, WI. Teton, WY. Dane, WI. Covington, MS. Tom Green, TX. Greensville, VA. Milwaukee, WI. Kodiak Island Borough, AK. And Yazoo, MS.There have been at least 853,951 deaths in the U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 78.5%, Rhode Island at 77.8%, and Maine at 76.8%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Wyoming at 48.2%, Alabama at 48.4%, and Mississippi at 49.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 62.8%.Globally, cases were up 81% and deaths up 18% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending down since January 16. There are now over 58 million active cases around the world, at 58,938,768.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 546,714. France 464,769. India 277,740. Italy 228,179. And Brazil 132,254. There have been 5,553,993 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Covid 411, the latest on Omicron and other COVID variants, and new hotspots for January 19th, 2022.The U.S. quietly launched its website for Americans to request free at-home COVID tests a day early. It's COVIDTests.gov and the order form is run by the U.S. Postal Service. You can get four at-home tests per residential address. The White House said, “tests will typically ship within 7- 12 days of ordering” and they are anticipating a “bug or two.”The World Health Organization's chief scientist says there is no evidence that healthy children and adolescents need booster doses of COVID vaccine. But that train has already left the station in many countries. Israel is boosting kids as young as 12, and the U.S. FDA has authorized third doses of Pfizer for kids 12 to 15. Last week Germany became the latest country to recommend that all children 12 to 17 get a booster. Hungary has done the same. If you felt awful after getting vaccinated, a new analysis says you may have been faking it. The study has concluded up to three-fourths of adverse events can be attributed to the opposite of the placebo effect. With placebos, people think they feel better even if they were given a sugar pill instead of a real drug. But this time, people who took a placebo thinking it was the real vaccine reported feeling negative side effects from it. Should you try to catch Omicron to get it over with? The director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia gives us five reasons not to. 1, It's not a bad cold. It's still a potentially life-threatening disease. 2, You could get long Covid. 3, You could stress the healthcare system. 4, the kid population is still fairly vulnerable, and you could infect them. And 5) It's stupid to catch a disease on purpose. And yes, he says, so were chicken pox parties in the old days. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong ordered the killing of 2,000 hamsters yesterday after 11 of them tested positive. There is no evidence domestic animals can infect humans. People who bought hamsters after Dec. 22 are being ordered to hand over their pet for culling.In the United States, taking into account many states did not report statistics Monday, cases were up 62%, deaths are up 54%, and hospitalizations are up 54% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending down since January 14. The five states that had the most daily deaths per 100,000 are New Mexico, Maryland, Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. There are now over 24 million active cases in the United States, at 24,488,337.The five areas with the greatest increase in hospitalizations per capita: Puerto Rico 143%. Alabama 134%. The U.S. Virgin Islands 130%. And Louisiana and California 120%. The top 10 areas with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: West Feliciana, LA. Waukesha, WI. Teton, WY. Dane, WI. Covington, MS. Tom Green, TX. Greensville, VA. Milwaukee, WI. Kodiak Island Borough, AK. And Yazoo, MS.There have been at least 853,951 deaths in the U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 78.5%, Rhode Island at 77.8%, and Maine at 76.8%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Wyoming at 48.2%, Alabama at 48.4%, and Mississippi at 49.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 62.8%.Globally, cases were up 81% and deaths up 18% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending down since January 16. There are now over 58 million active cases around the world, at 58,938,768.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 546,714. France 464,769. India 277,740. Italy 228,179. And Brazil 132,254. There have been 5,553,993 deaths reported as... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There are around 4 million people in Louisiana. One million of us have downloaded the same app onto our phones. That app is LA Wallet. You probably have LA Wallet on your phone. If you don't, it holds a digital version of your driver's license, your hunting and fishing licenses, and if you're vaccinated against Covid 19, LA Wallet also holds your proof of vaccination. To get the app to work, all you have to do is download it from wherever you get apps. You don't have to upload your licenses or proof of vaccination – that information goes directly to the app from the appropriate departments of the State of Louisiana. LA Wallet is the biggest digital credential app in the United Sates. And Louisiana – the state that's usually at the bottom of every list there is - is at the top of this one. We're the first state in the nation to have a state-approved digital vaccine card, which, by the way, is recognized and valid in every other state. Calvin Fabre is founder and President of the software company Envoc, and creator of LA Wallet. Back in the earlier days of what came to be known as “The Digital Revolution,” e-commerce and social media were two totally separate things. You went to one place online to buy stuff. And you went to another place online to post pictures of what you bought. Those days are long gone. Today e-commerce, social media, and everything else you do online are inextricably linked. If you have a business, you have an online presence. Even if your business is a brick-and-mortar building that requires people to walk in the door, you can't rely on a neon sign to achieve that any more. And that's why an industry of digital marketing agencies has been created. These agencies put the equivalent of your neon sign online - in a place where your potential customers will see it. However, unlike screwing a neon sign to your building, online marketing is not quite so simple. Since 2012, a digital marketing agency called Online Optimism has been designing and installing online neon signs for local companies like Hibernia Bank, the Downtown Development District, and Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Like so many other types of optimism, Online Optimism started out in New Orleans. The agency also has offices in Washington DC and Atlanta. The Managing Director of Online Optimism here in New Orleans is Sam Olmsted. One of the main goals you hear people in online marketing talk about, is SEO. Search Engine Optimization. If I have a business, when someone searches online for something I'm selling, if I have good SEO my company comes up first in search. So there's a greater likelihood a person will click on my business ahead of everyone else. Back in the day when people used the yellow pages to find a business, businesses tried a similar sort of manipulation by listing themselves as something like “AAAAA carpet cleaning” or “AAAAA jelly beans.” All of the “A's” in front of their name meant that in the alphabetical listings, they'd be first. Like the A's in front of a name, only one company can come up first in a Google search. So, I'm wondering how cost-effective SEO is. Say I'm selling jellybeans online -- if I‘m a small business in New Orleans, for what I can afford to pay an agency like Online Optimism, can I expect you to put enough digital “A's” in front of my name to get me to the top of Google search ahead of everyone else selling jellybeans online? On this edition of Out to Lunch, we get SEO explained. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at NOLA Pizza in the NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website. And check out Calvin Fabre's earlier visit to Out to Lunch. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tonight on the Last Word: The Pentagon announces the completion of the military withdrawal in Afghanistan. Also, Hurricane Ida hits Louisiana 16 years after Katrina. And Louisiana hospitals face storm damage amid the Covid surge. Lucas Kunce, David Rothkopf, Ali Velshi, Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, Dr. Mark Kline and Joe Cirincione join Lawrence O'Donnell.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for August 26th, 2021. The international scientists sent to China by the World Health Organization to find the coronavirus' origin said yesterday, get ready to not be surprised, the search has stalled and the window of opportunity for ever getting to the truth is “closing fast.” And the U.S. intelligence review ordered up by the US proved inconclusive. So the world's scientists and governments have proven incapable of finding out how this happened so we can help prevent it from happening again. The new Governor of New York acknowledged on her first day in office the state has had nearly 12,000 more deaths from COVID-19 than her predecessor Andrew Cuomo told the public. She said, “The public deserves an honest picture of what's happening. Good or bad, they need to know the truth. And that's how we restore confidence.” Another blow for those who believe the vaccines are more dangerous than getting COVID-19 itself. A study from Israel says an infection carries a far higher risk of heart inflammation than Pfizer's vaccine. 3 cases of heart inflammation for every 100,000 people vaccinated with Pfizer and 11 per 100,000 in people who had COVID. We're starting to see more sticks and fewer carrots. Delta is going to charge employees on its company health plan $200 a month extra if they don't get vaccinated. It says the average hospital stay for the virus costs them $40,000. They're also stopping extending pay protection to unvaccinated workers who get COVID starting September 30. Oh wait, there are still companies using carrots. Well, hardly carrots. Krispy Kreme has upped the ante and will give two free donuts every day until September 5 to anyone who shows proof of vaccination. Krispy Kreme has given out 2.5 million donuts since March when they started giving people one free donut, and they'll go back to the one donut deal after September 5 for the rest of the year. In the United States cases were up 23%, deaths are up 111%, and hospitalizations are up 32% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are 7,829,286 active cases in the United States. With not all states reporting daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 26,203. Texas 21,961. California 13,583. Georgia 10,677. And Louisiana 6,619. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Cook, GA. Clay, KY. Pierce, GA. Brantley, GA. Dodge, GA. Hancock, MS. Nome Census Area, AK. Glynn, GA. Berrien, GA. And McIntosh, GA. There have been at least 632,223 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. NPR did not update the top and bottom vaccinating states so they remain: 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 67.5%, Massachusetts at 65.4%, and Connecticut and Maine at 65.1%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 36.6%, Mississippi at 36.8%, and Wyoming at 37.9%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 51.5%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Georgia up 8%. South Korea 5%. And El Salvador, Morocco, and Suriname 3%. Globally, cases were flat and deaths were up 1% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 18,196,147 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 171,737. India 46,397. Iran 39,983. The U.K. 35,847. And Brazil 30,529. There have now been at least 4,461,819 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Vaccine 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Vaccine... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for August 26th, 2021. The international scientists sent to China by the World Health Organization to find the coronavirus' origin said yesterday, get ready to not be surprised, the search has stalled and the window of opportunity for ever getting to the truth is “closing fast.” And the U.S. intelligence review ordered up by the US proved inconclusive. So the world's scientists and governments have proven incapable of finding out how this happened so we can help prevent it from happening again. The new Governor of New York acknowledged on her first day in office the state has had nearly 12,000 more deaths from COVID-19 than her predecessor Andrew Cuomo told the public. She said, “The public deserves an honest picture of what's happening. Good or bad, they need to know the truth. And that's how we restore confidence.” Another blow for those who believe the vaccines are more dangerous than getting COVID-19 itself. A study from Israel says an infection carries a far higher risk of heart inflammation than Pfizer's vaccine. 3 cases of heart inflammation for every 100,000 people vaccinated with Pfizer and 11 per 100,000 in people who had COVID. We're starting to see more sticks and fewer carrots. Delta is going to charge employees on its company health plan $200 a month extra if they don't get vaccinated. It says the average hospital stay for the virus costs them $40,000. They're also stopping extending pay protection to unvaccinated workers who get COVID starting September 30. Oh wait, there are still companies using carrots. Well, hardly carrots. Krispy Kreme has upped the ante and will give two free donuts every day until September 5 to anyone who shows proof of vaccination. Krispy Kreme has given out 2.5 million donuts since March when they started giving people one free donut, and they'll go back to the one donut deal after September 5 for the rest of the year. In the United States cases were up 23%, deaths are up 111%, and hospitalizations are up 32% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are 7,829,286 active cases in the United States. With not all states reporting daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 26,203. Texas 21,961. California 13,583. Georgia 10,677. And Louisiana 6,619. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Cook, GA. Clay, KY. Pierce, GA. Brantley, GA. Dodge, GA. Hancock, MS. Nome Census Area, AK. Glynn, GA. Berrien, GA. And McIntosh, GA. There have been at least 632,223 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. NPR did not update the top and bottom vaccinating states so they remain: 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 67.5%, Massachusetts at 65.4%, and Connecticut and Maine at 65.1%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 36.6%, Mississippi at 36.8%, and Wyoming at 37.9%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 51.5%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Georgia up 8%. South Korea 5%. And El Salvador, Morocco, and Suriname 3%. Globally, cases were flat and deaths were up 1% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 18,196,147 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 171,737. India 46,397. Iran 39,983. The U.K. 35,847. And Brazil 30,529. There have now been at least 4,461,819 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Coronavirus 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for August 19th, 2021. As expected, U.S. health officials announced booster shots of Pfizer and Moderna should be available for all U.S. adults starting next month. It is an acknowledgement that the effectiveness of the vaccines could wear off significantly in as little as eight months. Officials said those who got the single dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also probably need another shot, but they aren't releasing plans for that yet. Another mandate coming out of the White House yesterday; all nursing home staff will be required to be vaccinated or the facilities they work in could lose Medicare and Medicaid funding. That could also take effect as soon as next month. Hundreds of thousands of nursing home workers are not vaccinated. Why is it so important vaccine booster shots help protect against the Delta variant? Because those cases now make up more than 98.8% of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., according to the CDC. California has become the first state to require people to prove they've been vaccinated or have a negative test before they can attend any large indoor event with over 1,000 people. That could be conventions, conferences, expos, sporting events, and concerts. Event organizers will be in charge of enforcement. If you're supposed to wear a mask in Singapore, you should probably do it. Benjamin Glynn, a 40-year-old Brit living in Singapore for work, was filmed maskless on a public train. He was arrested and found guilty of that plus causing public nuisance and threatening public officials. At first, he was detained at a psychiatric hospital because he said COVID-19 was a hoax. In the United States cases were up 47%, deaths are up 97%, and hospitalizations are up 54% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are once again over 7 million active cases in the United States, at 7,089,424. Keeping in mind several states stopped reporting daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 23,335. Texas 18,434. California 13,023. Georgia 8,014. And Louisiana 6,606. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Neshoba, MS. Cook, GA. Clay, KY. George, MS. Stone, MS. Columbia, FL. Tift, GA. Clarke, MS. Crockett, TN. And Attala, MS. There have been at least 624,209 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 67.1%, Massachusetts unchanged at 64.9%, and Maine at 64.7%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 35.7%, Mississippi at 36.1%, and Wyoming at 37.6%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 50.9%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, and South Korea up 5%. And Zimbabwe 4%. Globally, cases were up 5% and deaths were up 1% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 17,477,559 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 158,127. Brazil 40,693. Iran 39,174. India 35,797. And the U.K. 33,904. There have now been at least 4,391,153 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Coronavirus 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Coronavirus 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for August 19th, 2021.As expected, U.S. health officials announced booster shots of Pfizer and Moderna should be available for all U.S. adults starting next month. It is an acknowledgement that the effectiveness of the vaccines could wear off significantly in as little as eight months. Officials said those who got the single dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also probably need another shot, but they aren't releasing plans for that yet.Another mandate coming out of the White House yesterday; all nursing home staff will be required to be vaccinated or the facilities they work in could lose Medicare and Medicaid funding. That could also take effect as soon as next month. Hundreds of thousands of nursing home workers are not vaccinated.Why is it so important vaccine booster shots help protect against the Delta variant? Because those cases now make up more than 98.8% of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., according to the CDC. California has become the first state to require people to prove they've been vaccinated or have a negative test before they can attend any large indoor event with over 1,000 people. That could be conventions, conferences, expos, sporting events, and concerts. Event organizers will be in charge of enforcement.If you're supposed to wear a mask in Singapore, you should probably do it. Benjamin Glynn, a 40-year-old Brit living in Singapore for work, was filmed maskless on a public train. He was arrested and found guilty of that plus causing public nuisance and threatening public officials. At first, he was detained at a psychiatric hospital because he said COVID-19 was a hoax. In the United States cases were up 47%, deaths are up 97%, and hospitalizations are up 54% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are once again over 7 million active cases in the United States, at 7,089,424.Keeping in mind several states stopped reporting daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 23,335. Texas 18,434. California 13,023. Georgia 8,014. And Louisiana 6,606. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Neshoba, MS. Cook, GA. Clay, KY. George, MS. Stone, MS. Columbia, FL. Tift, GA. Clarke, MS. Crockett, TN. And Attala, MS.There have been at least 624,209 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 67.1%, Massachusetts unchanged at 64.9%, and Maine at 64.7%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 35.7%, Mississippi at 36.1%, and Wyoming at 37.6%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 50.9%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, and South Korea up 5%. And Zimbabwe 4%. Globally, cases were up 5% and deaths were up 1% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 17,477,559 active cases around the world.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 158,127. Brazil 40,693. Iran 39,174. India 35,797. And the U.K. 33,904. There have now been at least 4,391,153 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Vaccine 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Vaccine 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for August 17th, 2021. For the first time since February when things were pre-vaccine, the US reported more than 900,000 cases last week. Cases are on the rise in 46 states. Just yesterday the US reported 382 deaths. Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, reported its worst day of the pandemic yesterday with 478 new infections and seven deaths. Two of the dead had gotten one dose of a two-shot vaccine. The rest were unvaccinated. Australia has one of the slowest vaccine rollouts among wealthy countries. Meanwhile Japan's state of emergency has been extended through Sept. 12 as cases continue to surge. The CDC added four places to their list of the highest-risk destinations for travelers. The newcomers are Dominica, the Island of Jersey, Montenegro, and Turkey With half of America rejecting the vaccines, testing for COVID is taking on a renewed sense of importance. And scientists at the National Institutes of Health believe they've developed a new, better, cheaper, and faster way to do it. The existing way involves amplifying viral RNA to detectable levels. But the RNA has to be extracted first, which is the time-consuming part. The new way can not only directly test RNA without extraction, it also inactivates the virus, making things safer for lab personnel. The NFL's Atlanta Falcons may or may not have a conference championship to boast about this year, but they do now have the distinction of being the first team in the league to reach 100% vaccination. The team had the NFL's first in-season positive COVID test and another COVID shutdown a month after that, but they have clearly turned things around. There is, however, no trophy for this. In the United States cases were up 64%, deaths are up 113%, and hospitalizations are up 70% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are 6,870,886 active cases in the United States. Keeping in mind several states stopped reporting daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 17,216. California 9,542. Texas 7,985. Georgia 6,480. And Louisiana 4,457. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Neshoba, MS. Stone, MS. Columbia, FL. Wayne, MS. Lafourche, LA. Livingston, LA. Newton, MS. Tift, GA. George, MS. And Ascension, LA. There have been at least 622,292 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 67%, Massachusetts at 64.7%, and Maine at 64.6%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 35.4%, Mississippi at 35.8%, and Wyoming unchanged at 37.3%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 50.7%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Trinidad and Tobago up 5%. Kyrgyzstan 4%. And Malaysia, Suriname, and Bangladesh 3%. Globally, cases were up 7% and deaths were up 5% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 17,228,724 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 103,697. Iran 41,194. The U.K. 28,438. India 24,725. And Thailand 21,157. There have now been at least 4,370,447 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Vaccine 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Vaccine 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for August 17th, 2021.For the first time since February when things were pre-vaccine, the US reported more than 900,000 cases last week. Cases are on the rise in 46 states. Just yesterday the US reported 382 deaths. Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, reported its worst day of the pandemic yesterday with 478 new infections and seven deaths. Two of the dead had gotten one dose of a two-shot vaccine. The rest were unvaccinated. Australia has one of the slowest vaccine rollouts among wealthy countries. Meanwhile Japan's state of emergency has been extended through Sept. 12 as cases continue to surge. The CDC added four places to their list of the highest-risk destinations for travelers. The newcomers are Dominica, the Island of Jersey, Montenegro, and TurkeyWith half of America rejecting the vaccines, testing for COVID is taking on a renewed sense of importance. And scientists at the National Institutes of Health believe they've developed a new, better, cheaper, and faster way to do it. The existing way involves amplifying viral RNA to detectable levels. But the RNA has to be extracted first, which is the time-consuming part. The new way can not only directly test RNA without extraction, it also inactivates the virus, making things safer for lab personnel.The NFL's Atlanta Falcons may or may not have a conference championship to boast about this year, but they do now have the distinction of being the first team in the league to reach 100% vaccination. The team had the NFL's first in-season positive COVID test and another COVID shutdown a month after that, but they have clearly turned things around. There is, however, no trophy for this. In the United States cases were up 64%, deaths are up 113%, and hospitalizations are up 70% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are 6,870,886 active cases in the United States.Keeping in mind several states stopped reporting daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 17,216. California 9,542. Texas 7,985. Georgia 6,480. And Louisiana 4,457. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Neshoba, MS. Stone, MS. Columbia, FL. Wayne, MS. Lafourche, LA. Livingston, LA. Newton, MS. Tift, GA. George, MS. And Ascension, LA. There have been at least 622,292 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 67%, Massachusetts at 64.7%, and Maine at 64.6%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 35.4%, Mississippi at 35.8%, and Wyoming unchanged at 37.3%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 50.7%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Trinidad and Tobago up 5%. Kyrgyzstan 4%. And Malaysia, Suriname, and Bangladesh 3%. Globally, cases were up 7% and deaths were up 5% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 17,228,724 active cases around the world.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 103,697. Iran 41,194. The U.K. 28,438. India 24,725. And Thailand 21,157. There have now been at least 4,370,447 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Coronavirus 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Coronavirus 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for August 12th, 2021. California will become the first state to require all teachers and school staff to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing. That applies to public and private schools, and it will also apply to school volunteers. California's two largest teachers' unions announced their full support. The FDA is expected to in the next day or so authorize vaccine booster shots for the immunocompromised. That'd be a third shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Even after authorization, the CDC would advise on whether to use a vaccine booster. A recent study by Johns Hopkins found vaccinated immunocompromised people are 485x more likely to end up in the hospital or die from COVID compared to the general vaccinated population. Your friends who think the vaccines endanger current and future pregnancies aren't going to like this. The CDC yesterday urged all pregnant women to get the vaccine. Hospitals in various hot spots are seeing disturbing numbers of unvaccinated mothers-to-be seriously ill with the virus. Expectant women run a higher risk of severe illness and pregnancy complications from the virus, but only about 23% have gotten at least one vaccine dose. Research in several states by the Mayo Clinic appears to show Moderna's vaccine is considerably more effective against the Delta variant than Pfizer's. While Moderna's effectiveness was down to 76%, Pfizer's was down to 42%. The study also found across multiple states, those inoculated with Pfizer were twice as likely to have a breakthrough infection compared to Moderna. If you do wind up in the hospital, you'll need people to take care of you. But in some hot spots, there's now a shortage of nurses. Just one example, one person who suffered a heart attack in Louisiana was bounced around to six hospitals before finding an ER that could take him. Hospitals are losing nurses to staffing agencies, hospitals in other states at double or triple the salary, and burnout to the point some will never return to nursing. In the United States cases were up 86%, deaths are up 102%, and hospitalizations are up 85% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are 6,414,400 active cases in the United States. Keeping in mind several states stopped reporting daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 24,753. Texas 16,436. California 12,254. Georgia 6,958. And Louisiana 5,407. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Neshoba, MS. Dimmit, TX. Lafourche, LA. George, MS. Stone, MS. Terrebonne, LA. Iberia, LA. Tangipahoa, LA. Gulf, FL. And Columbia, FL. There have been at least 618,434 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 68%, Massachusetts at 64.5%, and Maine at 64.3%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 35%, Mississippi unchanged at 35.2%, and Wyoming at 37.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 50.3%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Kyrgyzstan up 10%. Trinidad and Tobago 5%. And Japan, El Salvador, and Nepal 4%. Globally, cases were up 15% and deaths were up 16% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 16,699,848 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 143,459. India 43,641. Iran 42,541. Brazil 35,788. And France 30,920. There have now been at least 4,322,964 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for August 12th, 2021. California will become the first state to require all teachers and school staff to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing. That applies to public and private schools, and it will also apply to school volunteers. California's two largest teachers' unions announced their full support. The FDA is expected to in the next day or so authorize vaccine booster shots for the immunocompromised. That'd be a third shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Even after authorization, the CDC would advise on whether to use a vaccine booster. A recent study by Johns Hopkins found vaccinated immunocompromised people are 485x more likely to end up in the hospital or die from COVID compared to the general vaccinated population. Your friends who think the vaccines endanger current and future pregnancies aren't going to like this. The CDC yesterday urged all pregnant women to get the vaccine. Hospitals in various hot spots are seeing disturbing numbers of unvaccinated mothers-to-be seriously ill with the virus. Expectant women run a higher risk of severe illness and pregnancy complications from the virus, but only about 23% have gotten at least one vaccine dose. Research in several states by the Mayo Clinic appears to show Moderna's vaccine is considerably more effective against the Delta variant than Pfizer's. While Moderna's effectiveness was down to 76%, Pfizer's was down to 42%. The study also found across multiple states, those inoculated with Pfizer were twice as likely to have a breakthrough infection compared to Moderna.If you do wind up in the hospital, you'll need people to take care of you. But in some hot spots, there's now a shortage of nurses. Just one example, one person who suffered a heart attack in Louisiana was bounced around to six hospitals before finding an ER that could take him. Hospitals are losing nurses to staffing agencies, hospitals in other states at double or triple the salary, and burnout to the point some will never return to nursing.In the United States cases were up 86%, deaths are up 102%, and hospitalizations are up 85% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are 6,414,400 active cases in the United States. Keeping in mind several states stopped reporting daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 24,753. Texas 16,436. California 12,254. Georgia 6,958. And Louisiana 5,407. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Neshoba, MS. Dimmit, TX. Lafourche, LA. George, MS. Stone, MS. Terrebonne, LA. Iberia, LA. Tangipahoa, LA. Gulf, FL. And Columbia, FL. There have been at least 618,434 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 68%, Massachusetts at 64.5%, and Maine at 64.3%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 35%, Mississippi unchanged at 35.2%, and Wyoming at 37.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 50.3%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Kyrgyzstan up 10%. Trinidad and Tobago 5%. And Japan, El Salvador, and Nepal 4%. Globally, cases were up 15% and deaths were up 16% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 16,699,848 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 143,459. India 43,641. Iran 42,541. Brazil 35,788. And France 30,920. There have now been at least 4,322,964 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Vaccine 411 on your... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for August 6th, 2021. The head of the CDC says the number of daily cases in the US has surged more than 40% from the previous week. And across the board, they're seeing increases in cases and hospitalizations across all age groups. Moderna believes people who got two doses of its vaccine will need a third dose before winter as a booster shot. They're also working on a single shot that would be an annual booster for COVID-19, as well as flu and the respiratory condition RSV. The company said, "We believe increased force of infection resulting from Delta, non-pharmaceutical intervention fatigue, and seasonal effects (like more time indoors) will lead to an increase of breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals." California will require all of its roughly 2.2 million health care workers and long-term care workers to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 30. That's different than what the Governor said last month when he said workers would have a choice of vaccination or weekly testing. But that choice is the case for Oregon's health care workers. That order effectively neutralizes an Oregon law that says employers can't fire health care workers for not being vaccinated. Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne, has gone into a sixth lockdown. Melbourne joins Sydney and Brisbane in full lockdown due to the Delta variant. The local government said they had no choice because only 20% of Australian adults have been fully vaccinated. You might laugh a little when you hear a cable news channel was operating with its employees on the honor system, but that's what CNN was doing and now it's fired three employees who came to work unvaccinated. The head of CNN said that honor system may change in the coming weeks. In the United States cases were up 131%, deaths are up 65%, and hospitalizations are up 87% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,864,272 active cases in the United States. Keeping in mind that several states have stopped reporting their daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 20,133. Texas 14,173. California 11,725. Georgia 5,806. And Louisiana 5,468. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Sabine, TX. Dimmit, TX. Lafourche, LA. St. Charles, LA. Stone, MS. Terrebonne, LA. St. Mary, LA. Gulf, FL. Nassau, FL. And Chambers, TX. There have been at least 615,309 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 67.7%, Massachusetts unchanged at 64.1%, and Maine unchanged at 64%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 34.6%, Mississippi at 34.8%, and Wyoming at 36.7%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 49.8%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Sri Lanka up 6%. Vietnam, Zambia, and Taiwan 5%. And Japan 4%. Globally, cases were up 17% and deaths were down 3% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 15,965,230 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 120,945. India 45,001. Brazil 40,054. Iran 38,674. And Indonesia 35,764. There have now been at least 4,265,797 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Vaccine 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Vaccine 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for August 6th, 2021. The head of the CDC says the number of daily cases in the US has surged more than 40% from the previous week. And across the board, they're seeing increases in cases and hospitalizations across all age groups. Moderna believes people who got two doses of its vaccine will need a third dose before winter as a booster shot. They're also working on a single shot that would be an annual booster for COVID-19, as well as flu and the respiratory condition RSV. The company said, "We believe increased force of infection resulting from Delta, non-pharmaceutical intervention fatigue, and seasonal effects (like more time indoors) will lead to an increase of breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals." California will require all of its roughly 2.2 million health care workers and long-term care workers to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 30. That's different than what the Governor said last month when he said workers would have a choice of vaccination or weekly testing. But that choice is the case for Oregon's health care workers. That order effectively neutralizes an Oregon law that says employers can't fire health care workers for not being vaccinated. Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne, has gone into a sixth lockdown. Melbourne joins Sydney and Brisbane in full lockdown due to the Delta variant. The local government said they had no choice because only 20% of Australian adults have been fully vaccinated. You might laugh a little when you hear a cable news channel was operating with its employees on the honor system, but that's what CNN was doing and now it's fired three employees who came to work unvaccinated. The head of CNN said that honor system may change in the coming weeks. In the United States cases were up 131%, deaths are up 65%, and hospitalizations are up 87% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,864,272 active cases in the United States. Keeping in mind that several states have stopped reporting their daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 20,133. Texas 14,173. California 11,725. Georgia 5,806. And Louisiana 5,468. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Sabine, TX. Dimmit, TX. Lafourche, LA. St. Charles, LA. Stone, MS. Terrebonne, LA. St. Mary, LA. Gulf, FL. Nassau, FL. And Chambers, TX. There have been at least 615,309 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 67.7%, Massachusetts unchanged at 64.1%, and Maine unchanged at 64%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 34.6%, Mississippi at 34.8%, and Wyoming at 36.7%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 49.8%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Sri Lanka up 6%. Vietnam, Zambia, and Taiwan 5%. And Japan 4%. Globally, cases were up 17% and deaths were down 3% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 15,965,230 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 120,945. India 45,001. Brazil 40,054. Iran 38,674. And Indonesia 35,764. There have now been at least 4,265,797 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Coronavirus 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Coronavirus 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for August 5th, 2021.Yesterday we had an Axios poll that shows unvaccinated Americans mostly blame foreigners visiting the United States for the surge in the Delta variant. And apparently the White House agrees with them. The administration is taking the first steps toward requiring nearly all foreign visitors to the U.S. to be vaccinated. Travel restrictions curtailing international travel to the U.S. have long been in place, with no apparent effect on the prevalence or spread of the Delta variant. The U.K. plans to offer vaccines to 16 and 17-year-olds in the next few weeks. An independent body of scientists that makes recommendations to the government changed its advice. Healthy 16 to 17-year-olds can be offered a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine without parental consent.A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine says children and adolescents transmit the coronavirus efficiently to household contacts and some of those contacts require hospitalization. The good news, no one in the study younger than 18 required hospitalization, however the study was done last year before the more dangerous Delta variant took hold.The director general of the World Health Organization has a message for countries giving COVID booster shots. Stop it. He's calling for a moratorium of at least two months on boosters because, "We should not accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines, using even more of it while the world's most vulnerable people remain unprotected."The U.K.'s “Freedom Day” when restrictions were completely lifted brought screams of irresponsibility and predictions of doom and 100,000 cases daily from pandemic experts and the World Health Organization. Instead, the British are astounding the world with a drop in cases for the fifth day in a row. Why it's happening is still guesswork, but most speculation has to do with the U.K. being more than 72% fully vaccinated. And if you factor in COVID survivors with antibodies that number could be as high as 92%. In the United States cases were up 139%, deaths are up 49%, and hospitalizations are up 92% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,757,856 active cases in the United States.Keeping in mind that several states have stopped reporting their daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 16,935. Texas 12,334. California 10,909. Georgia 4,860. And Louisiana 4,779. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Sabine, TX. Lafourche, LA. St. James, LA. Iberia, LA. Gulf, FL. St. Charles, LA. Nassau, FL. St. Mary, LA. Dimmit, TX. And Terrebonne, LA. There have been at least 614,797 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 67.7%, Massachusetts unchanged at 64.1%, and Maine at 64%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama and Mississippi at 34.5%, and Arkansas unchanged at 36.6%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is unchanged at 49.7%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Eswatini up 18%. Kyrgyzstan 10%. Sri Lanka 9%. And the Philippines and South Africa 8%. Globally, cases were up 16% and deaths were down 4% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 15,730,573 active cases around the world.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 112,279. India 42,817. Brazil 40,460. Iran 39,357. And Indonesia 35,867. There have now been at least 4,255,443 deaths reported... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for August 5th, 2021.Yesterday we had an Axios poll that shows unvaccinated Americans mostly blame foreigners visiting the United States for the surge in the Delta variant. And apparently the White House agrees with them. The administration is taking the first steps toward requiring nearly all foreign visitors to the U.S. to be vaccinated. Travel restrictions curtailing international travel to the U.S. have long been in place, with no apparent effect on the prevalence or spread of the Delta variant. The U.K. plans to offer vaccines to 16 and 17-year-olds in the next few weeks. An independent body of scientists that makes recommendations to the government changed its advice. Healthy 16 to 17-year-olds can be offered a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine without parental consent.A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine says children and adolescents transmit the coronavirus efficiently to household contacts and some of those contacts require hospitalization. The good news, no one in the study younger than 18 required hospitalization, however the study was done last year before the more dangerous Delta variant took hold.The director general of the World Health Organization has a message for countries giving COVID booster shots. Stop it. He's calling for a moratorium of at least two months on boosters because, "We should not accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines, using even more of it while the world's most vulnerable people remain unprotected."The U.K.'s “Freedom Day” when restrictions were completely lifted brought screams of irresponsibility and predictions of doom and 100,000 cases daily from pandemic experts and the World Health Organization. Instead, the British are astounding the world with a drop in cases for the fifth day in a row. Why it's happening is still guesswork, but most speculation has to do with the U.K. being more than 72% fully vaccinated. And if you factor in COVID survivors with antibodies that number could be as high as 92%. In the United States cases were up 139%, deaths are up 49%, and hospitalizations are up 92% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,757,856 active cases in the United States.Keeping in mind that several states have stopped reporting their daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 16,935. Texas 12,334. California 10,909. Georgia 4,860. And Louisiana 4,779. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Sabine, TX. Lafourche, LA. St. James, LA. Iberia, LA. Gulf, FL. St. Charles, LA. Nassau, FL. St. Mary, LA. Dimmit, TX. And Terrebonne, LA. There have been at least 614,797 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 67.7%, Massachusetts unchanged at 64.1%, and Maine at 64%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama and Mississippi at 34.5%, and Arkansas unchanged at 36.6%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is unchanged at 49.7%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Eswatini up 18%. Kyrgyzstan 10%. Sri Lanka 9%. And the Philippines and South Africa 8%. Globally, cases were up 16% and deaths were down 4% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 15,730,573 active cases around the world.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 112,279. India 42,817. Brazil 40,460. Iran 39,357. And Indonesia 35,867. There have now been at least... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for August 4th, 2021.In New York City, you'll soon have to show proof of vaccination if you want to dine indoors at a restaurant, see a show, or go to the gym. It's the first big city in the U.S. to put restrictions like that back in place. And they'll be rolled out over the course of weeks. The Mayor said “What we want to nail is bluntly, showing life is much better when you're vaccinated. You have more freedom.”The American Academy of Pediatrics said almost 72,000 children and teens caught Covid-19 last week, a "substantial" increase from a week earlier. The definition of a child varies by state but generally includes up to 17 or 18. Children and teens represented 19% of reported cases in the latest weekly data. Kids under 12 are still not eligible for any of the three vaccines currently used in the US.The World Health Organization says that in Africa, coronavirus fatalities surged by 80% within the last four weeks. The WHO Director-General said it's being driven by the Delta variant, which has spiked infections globally 80% in the past four weeks. At that rate, the group says the 4 million cases reported last week can be expected to pass 200 million in the next two weeks.China suspended flights and trains, canceled pro basketball games, and announced mass testing in Wuhan yesterday as outbreaks persist. Cases are far more widespread than anything China's dealt with since the initial outbreak. China has among the world's most authoritarian and compliant lockdown and testing measures, but cases continue to pop up in more than 35 cities in 17 of China's 33 provinces and regions.So if the unvaccinated don't blame themselves for the recent surge in cases, who do they blame? An Axios poll found most, 37%, blame people traveling to the U.S. from other countries. 27% blame mainstream media, 23% blame Americans traveling to other countries, and 21% blame Joe Biden. Only 10% of the unvaccinated blame the unvaccinated. Among the vaccinated, they, of course, blame the unvaccinated for the Delta variant surge at 79%, followed by 36% who blame Donald Trump, who left office seven months ago. Almost no one blames the power and nature of the virus itself. In the United States cases were up 142%, deaths are up 27%, and hospitalizations are up 83% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,661,932 active cases in the United States.Keeping in mind that several states have stopped reporting their daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 17,001. Texas 14,873. California 10,010. Georgia 9,197. And Louisiana 4,753. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Sabine, TX. Tangipahoa, LA. Ascension, LA. Stone, MS. Lafourche, LA. St. Charles, LA. Livingston, LA. St. James, LA. Gulf, FL. And Terrebonne, LA. There have been at least 614,249 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.Despite media reports of increased vaccinations, our numbers sourced from NPR are not bearing that out. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 67.6%, Massachusetts at 64.1%, and Maine unchanged at 63.5%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama unchanged at 34.4%, Mississippi unchanged at 34.5%, and Arkansas at 36.6%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 49.7%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Nepal up 10%. Vietnam 7%. Sri Lanka 5%. And Taiwan and Malaysia 4%. Globally, cases were up 16% and deaths were up 16% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 15,472,129 active... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for August 4th, 2021.In New York City, you'll soon have to show proof of vaccination if you want to dine indoors at a restaurant, see a show, or go to the gym. It's the first big city in the U.S. to put restrictions like that back in place. And they'll be rolled out over the course of weeks. The Mayor said “What we want to nail is bluntly, showing life is much better when you're vaccinated. You have more freedom.”The American Academy of Pediatrics said almost 72,000 children and teens caught Covid-19 last week, a "substantial" increase from a week earlier. The definition of a child varies by state but generally includes up to 17 or 18. Children and teens represented 19% of reported cases in the latest weekly data. Kids under 12 are still not eligible for any of the three vaccines currently used in the US.The World Health Organization says that in Africa, coronavirus fatalities surged by 80% within the last four weeks. The WHO Director-General said it's being driven by the Delta variant, which has spiked infections globally 80% in the past four weeks. At that rate, the group says the 4 million cases reported last week can be expected to pass 200 million in the next two weeks.China suspended flights and trains, canceled pro basketball games, and announced mass testing in Wuhan yesterday as outbreaks persist. Cases are far more widespread than anything China's dealt with since the initial outbreak. China has among the world's most authoritarian and compliant lockdown and testing measures, but cases continue to pop up in more than 35 cities in 17 of China's 33 provinces and regions.So if the unvaccinated don't blame themselves for the recent surge in cases, who do they blame? An Axios poll found most, 37%, blame people traveling to the U.S. from other countries. 27% blame mainstream media, 23% blame Americans traveling to other countries, and 21% blame Joe Biden. Only 10% of the unvaccinated blame the unvaccinated. Among the vaccinated, they, of course, blame the unvaccinated for the Delta variant surge at 79%, followed by 36% who blame Donald Trump, who left office seven months ago. Almost no one blames the power and nature of the virus itself. In the United States cases were up 142%, deaths are up 27%, and hospitalizations are up 83% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,661,932 active cases in the United States.Keeping in mind that several states have stopped reporting their daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 17,001. Texas 14,873. California 10,010. Georgia 9,197. And Louisiana 4,753. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Sabine, TX. Tangipahoa, LA. Ascension, LA. Stone, MS. Lafourche, LA. St. Charles, LA. Livingston, LA. St. James, LA. Gulf, FL. And Terrebonne, LA. There have been at least 614,249 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.Despite media reports of increased vaccinations, our numbers sourced from NPR are not bearing that out. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 67.6%, Massachusetts at 64.1%, and Maine unchanged at 63.5%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama unchanged at 34.4%, Mississippi unchanged at 34.5%, and Arkansas at 36.6%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 49.7%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Nepal up 10%. Vietnam 7%. Sri Lanka 5%. And Taiwan and Malaysia 4%. Globally, cases were up 16% and deaths were up 16% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 15,472,129 active cases around the... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for July 30th, 2021.This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for July 30th, 2021.The EU has passed the U.S. in Covid-19 vaccinations. Inoculations in the 27 member countries are at a sustained pace while America's effort has stalled. The EU has boosted its figure by 9 percentage points just in the past month.As expected, the US administration announced a number of new steps to increase vaccinations. These include requiring all federal employees and onsite contractors to be vaccinated or face strict protocols, expanding paid leave to get vaccinated, and urging states to give $100 to people who get vaccinated. They also want school districts nationwide to host at least one pop-up vaccination clinic to get more kids 12 and older vaccinated.Israel will be the first to start offering a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine to people over 60. The President will be the first to get the booster today. The health ministry has twice reported a drop in the vaccine's efficacy against infection and a slight decrease in its protection against severe disease. Pfizer says it could apply for U.S. emergency authorization for booster shots as early as August. One of the last holdout countries will start accepting the vaccines into its country. Burundi's government will allow them but will not take responsibility for any side effects they might cause. This was announced the same day neighboring Tanzania launched its vaccination campaign, retreating from its former President's denial of the pandemic. This leaves Eritrea, one of the world's most closed-off nations, as the only African country that has not accepted the vaccines. The smiles at Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California will once again be hidden behind masks. The parks have gone back to requiring all guests to wear face masks indoors as of today and vaccination status doesn't matter. Indoors also means transportation like buses and monorails.In the United States cases were up 146%, deaths are up 11%, and hospitalizations are up 73% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,329,011 active cases in the United States.Keeping in mind that several states stopped reporting their daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 17,589. Texas 11,893. California 9,304. Georgia 4,612. And Louisiana 4,414. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Tangipahoa, LA. Stone, MS. Ascension, LA. Uvalde, TX. Livingston, LA. West Baton Rouge, LA. Lafourche, LA. East Feliciana, LA. And St. Mary, LA.There have been at least 612,105 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 67.4%, Massachusetts at 63.7%, and Maine unchanged at 63.3%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 34.2%, Mississippi at 34.4%, and Arkansas at 36.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 49.3%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Vietnam up 11%. Taiwan 10%. Kosovo and Saudi Arabia 6%. And Zambia 5%. Globally, cases were up 20% and deaths were up 7% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 14,608,402 active cases around the world.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 92,405. India 44,673. Indonesia 43,479. Brazil 41,853. And Iran 34,433. There have now been at least 4,196,442 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for July 30th, 2021.The EU has passed the U.S. in Covid-19 vaccinations. Inoculations in the 27 member countries are at a sustained pace while America's effort has stalled. The EU has boosted its figure by 9 percentage points just in the past month.As expected, the US administration announced a number of new steps to increase vaccinations. These include requiring all federal employees and onsite contractors to be vaccinated or face strict protocols, expanding paid leave to get vaccinated, and urging states to give $100 to people who get vaccinated. They also want school districts nationwide to host at least one pop-up vaccination clinic to get more kids 12 and older vaccinated.Israel will be the first to start offering a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine to people over 60. The President will be the first to get the booster today. The health ministry has twice reported a drop in the vaccine's efficacy against infection and a slight decrease in its protection against severe disease. Pfizer says it could apply for U.S. emergency authorization for booster shots as early as August. One of the last holdout countries will start accepting the vaccines into its country. Burundi's government will allow them but will not take responsibility for any side effects they might cause. This was announced the same day neighboring Tanzania launched its vaccination campaign, retreating from its former President's denial of the pandemic. This leaves Eritrea, one of the world's most closed-off nations, as the only African country that has not accepted the vaccines. The smiles at Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California will once again be hidden behind masks. The parks have gone back to requiring all guests to wear face masks indoors as of today and vaccination status doesn't matter. Indoors also means transportation like buses and monorails.In the United States cases were up 146%, deaths are up 11%, and hospitalizations are up 73% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,329,011 active cases in the United States.Keeping in mind that several states stopped reporting their daily case numbers, the five states with the most new cases: Florida 17,589. Texas 11,893. California 9,304. Georgia 4,612. And Louisiana 4,414. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Tangipahoa, LA. Stone, MS. Ascension, LA. Uvalde, TX. Livingston, LA. West Baton Rouge, LA. Lafourche, LA. East Feliciana, LA. And St. Mary, LA.There have been at least 612,105 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont unchanged at 67.4%, Massachusetts at 63.7%, and Maine unchanged at 63.3%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 34.2%, Mississippi at 34.4%, and Arkansas at 36.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 49.3%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Vietnam up 11%. Taiwan 10%. Kosovo and Saudi Arabia 6%. And Zambia 5%. Globally, cases were up 20% and deaths were up 7% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 14,608,402 active cases around the world.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 92,405. India 44,673. Indonesia 43,479. Brazil 41,853. And Iran 34,433. There have now been at least 4,196,442 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Coronavirus 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Coronavirus... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for July 23rd, 2021. Instead of stories today we'll be answering some questions many people might be having about breakthrough cases. Cases of COVID in those who have been fully vaccinated. Do the vaccines work against Delta? So far, research shows they're holding up well against it. A June study from the U.K. found the Pfizer vaccine is 96% effective against hospitalization from the delta variant after two doses. If the vaccine isn't guaranteed to keep you from getting infected, why get it? Your chances of getting infected are dramatically reduced, and if you do get infected (which is possible), the vaccine should help you keep from getting as sick. How many people who are hospitalized are unvaccinated as opposed to vaccinated? 97% according to the CDC. What would make you more likely to have a breakthrough case that leads to serious illness? If you have health conditions that affect the immune system. Exactly how many breakthrough cases have there been? There's no exact number. They can't count asymptomatic breakthrough cases because those people don't get regular testing. If they have no symptoms, they don't know to get tested. The CDC measures the effectiveness of COVID vaccines the way they do flu shots. Most people who get the flu are never tested or reported. Long-term surveillance, along with calculations to extrapolate the findings, gives a picture of how much virus is out in the community. Why are breakthrough cases going up? Because more people got vaccinated. Math says that even with a 95% efficacy rate, one in 20 vaccinees who are exposed will get the disease. With Delta spreading 2-3 times faster than the original strain — there'll be more cases among everyone, vaccinated and unvaccinated. Is Delta causing more breakthrough cases? There's no data yet to show that it is. It's also not known if you can spread the coronavirus if you get a breakthrough infection. In theory, the vaccinated have less virus so they're less likely to transmit. But it's not impossible. In the United States cases were up 180%, deaths are up 30%, and hospitalizations are up 53% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,109,249 active cases in the United States. The five states with the most new cases: Florida 12,647. California 6,937. Texas 6,340. Missouri 3,346. And Louisiana 2,834. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Cole, MO. Karnes, TX. Miller, MO. Marion, AR. Douglas, MO. Baxter, AR. Taney, MO. Oregon, MO. And Wright, MO. There have been 610,132 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 67.1%, Massachusetts at 63.3%, and Maine unchanged at 62.9%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama and Mississippi at 33.9%, and Arkansas at 35.5%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 48.8%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Taiwan up 14%. Saudi Arabia 7%. Argentina and Ukraine 4%. And Malaysia and Australia 3%. Globally, cases were up 20% and deaths were up 18% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 13,507,906 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 61,651. Brazil 49,603. Indonesia 49,509. The U.K. 39,906. And India 34,865. There have now been 4,134,432 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Vaccine 411 on your podcast app or ask... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for July 23rd, 2021.Instead of stories today we'll be answering some questions many people might be having about breakthrough cases. Cases of COVID in those who have been fully vaccinated. Do the vaccines work against Delta? So far, research shows they're holding up well against it. A June study from the U.K. found the Pfizer vaccine is 96% effective against hospitalization from the delta variant after two doses. If the vaccine isn't guaranteed to keep you from getting infected, why get it? Your chances of getting infected are dramatically reduced, and if you do get infected (which is possible), the vaccine should help you keep from getting as sick. How many people who are hospitalized are unvaccinated as opposed to vaccinated? 97% according to the CDC. What would make you more likely to have a breakthrough case that leads to serious illness? If you have health conditions that affect the immune system. Exactly how many breakthrough cases have there been? There's no exact number. They can't count asymptomatic breakthrough cases because those people don't get regular testing. If they have no symptoms, they don't know to get tested. The CDC measures the effectiveness of COVID vaccines the way they do flu shots. Most people who get the flu are never tested or reported. Long-term surveillance, along with calculations to extrapolate the findings, gives a picture of how much virus is out in the community. Why are breakthrough cases going up? Because more people got vaccinated. Math says that even with a 95% efficacy rate, one in 20 vaccinees who are exposed will get the disease. With Delta spreading 2-3 times faster than the original strain — there'll be more cases among everyone, vaccinated and unvaccinated. Is Delta causing more breakthrough cases? There's no data yet to show that it is. It's also not known if you can spread the coronavirus if you get a breakthrough infection. In theory, the vaccinated have less virus so they're less likely to transmit. But it's not impossible.In the United States cases were up 180%, deaths are up 30%, and hospitalizations are up 53% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 5,109,249 active cases in the United States.The five states with the most new cases: Florida 12,647. California 6,937. Texas 6,340. Missouri 3,346. And Louisiana 2,834. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Cole, MO. Karnes, TX. Miller, MO. Marion, AR. Douglas, MO. Baxter, AR. Taney, MO. Oregon, MO. And Wright, MO. There have been 610,132 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 67.1%, Massachusetts at 63.3%, and Maine unchanged at 62.9%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama and Mississippi at 33.9%, and Arkansas at 35.5%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 48.8%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Taiwan up 14%. Saudi Arabia 7%. Argentina and Ukraine 4%. And Malaysia and Australia 3%. Globally, cases were up 20% and deaths were up 18% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 13,507,906 active cases around the world.The five countries with the most new cases: The United States 61,651. Brazil 49,603. Indonesia 49,509. The U.K. 39,906. And India 34,865. There have now been 4,134,432 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for July 16th, 2021. The masks are back. Los Angeles County will again require masks be worn indoors even by those who have been vaccinated. California fully reopened its economy June 15 and did away with capacity limits and social distancing. Africa recorded a 43% jump in COVID-19 deaths last week. Infections and hospitalizations have risen, and, in some places, there are shortages of oxygen and ICU beds. The continent's case fatality rate stands at 2.6% against the global average of 2.2%. The head of the World Health Organization admitted it was premature for them to rule out a lab in China as the origin of the coronavirus. China's being asked to be more transparent in the search for the virus' origins but has instead struck back aggressively, suggesting the search should continue, but in other countries. You hear in the American media it's almost exclusively the unvaccinated who are dying of COVID. So why has Public Health England reported that most COVID deaths there are currently among the vaccinated? They not only say it, they say that's to be expected. The risk of dying from COVID doubles every seven years older a patient is. This variation means vaccines don't reduce the risk of death for older people so much that it falls below the risk for younger demographics. The problem with that explanation of course is infections are highest in younger age groups right now. Maybe your Nikes are about to get more valuable on the resale market. A South Korean shoemaker became the second major Nike supplier to suspend production in Vietnam. It shut down three of its factories near Ho Chi Minh City due to an outbreak. The factories employ almost 42,000 workers and will stay closed until July 20. Factories in Vietnam produced about half of all Nike brand footwear in fiscal 2020. In the United States cases were up 111%, deaths are up 5%, and hospitalizations are up 22% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 4,921,028 active cases in the United States. The five states with the most new cases: Florida 7,011. Texas 3,611. California 3,439. Missouri 2,882. And Louisiana 1,500. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Baxter, AR. Taney, MO. Karnes, TX. Dallas, MO. Wright, MO. Douglas, MO. Perry, AR. Marion, AR. And Greene, MO. There have been 608,387 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 66.6%, Massachusetts at 62.8%, and Maine unchanged at 62.6%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama unchanged at 33.4%, Mississippi at 33.6%, and Arkansas at 35.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 48.2%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Taiwan up 11%. Saudi Arabia 10%. And Lebanon, Malaysia, and Zambia 4%. Globally, cases were up 26% and deaths up 2% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 12,496,431 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: Indonesia 56,757. Brazil 52,789. The U.K. 48,553. India 39,072. And the United States 36,674. There have now been 4,065,528 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Vaccine 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Vaccine 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for July 16th, 2021.The masks are back. Los Angeles County will again require masks be worn indoors even by those who have been vaccinated. California fully reopened its economy June 15 and did away with capacity limits and social distancing. Africa recorded a 43% jump in COVID-19 deaths last week. Infections and hospitalizations have risen, and, in some places, there are shortages of oxygen and ICU beds. The continent's case fatality rate stands at 2.6% against the global average of 2.2%.The head of the World Health Organization admitted it was premature for them to rule out a lab in China as the origin of the coronavirus. China's being asked to be more transparent in the search for the virus' origins but has instead struck back aggressively, suggesting the search should continue, but in other countries.You hear in the American media it's almost exclusively the unvaccinated who are dying of COVID. So why has Public Health England reported that most COVID deaths there are currently among the vaccinated? They not only say it, they say that's to be expected. The risk of dying from COVID doubles every seven years older a patient is. This variation means vaccines don't reduce the risk of death for older people so much that it falls below the risk for younger demographics. The problem with that explanation of course is infections are highest in younger age groups right now.Maybe your Nikes are about to get more valuable on the resale market. A South Korean shoemaker became the second major Nike supplier to suspend production in Vietnam. It shut down three of its factories near Ho Chi Minh City due to an outbreak. The factories employ almost 42,000 workers and will stay closed until July 20. Factories in Vietnam produced about half of all Nike brand footwear in fiscal 2020.In the United States cases were up 111%, deaths are up 5%, and hospitalizations are up 22% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 4,921,028 active cases in the United States. The five states with the most new cases: Florida 7,011. Texas 3,611. California 3,439. Missouri 2,882. And Louisiana 1,500. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Baxter, AR. Taney, MO. Karnes, TX. Dallas, MO. Wright, MO. Douglas, MO. Perry, AR. Marion, AR. And Greene, MO. There have been 608,387 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related.The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 66.6%, Massachusetts at 62.8%, and Maine unchanged at 62.6%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama unchanged at 33.4%, Mississippi at 33.6%, and Arkansas at 35.1%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 48.2%.The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Taiwan up 11%. Saudi Arabia 10%. And Lebanon, Malaysia, and Zambia 4%. Globally, cases were up 26% and deaths up 2% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 12,496,431 active cases around the world.The five countries with the most new cases: Indonesia 56,757. Brazil 52,789. The U.K. 48,553. India 39,072. And the United States 36,674. There have now been 4,065,528 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Coronavirus 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Coronavirus 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for July 15th, 2021. It's a bad combination in the U.S.; young and unvaccinated. They're the ones showing up at hospitals across the country, some even landing in ICU and on ventilators. The CDC says slightly fewer than half of 18 to 24 and 25 to 39-year-olds are fully vaccinated. Former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb says the delta variant will keep causing problems maybe into October and will get worse before it gets better. COVID-19 is sparking protests in several countries. In addition to uprisings in Cuba, tear gas was used on protesters in Paris who railed against plans to require a vaccine certificate or negative PCR test to get into bars, restaurants, and cinemas. And in Greece, thousands gathered in the two largest cities protesting plans to make vaccines available to children as young as 15 without parental consent. The U.S. government reported overdose deaths soared to a record 93,000 last year amidst the pandemic. It's a 29% increase over 2020. Experts say lockdowns and restrictions isolated those with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get. Fentanyl was involved in more than 60% of overdose deaths last year. Speaking of lockdowns, Spain's Constitutional Court ruled yesterday that mandating strict home confinement last year was unconstitutional. The government used a state of emergency to temporarily limit civil liberties, but the ruling annulled some articles of the decree related to free movement of citizens. That opens the door to cancelling fines for those who violated restrictions. A homoeopathic doctor in California became the first to face federal charges over fake COVID-19 immunizations and falsified vaccine cards. Juli Mazi of Napa allegedly sold immunization pellets she said contained the COVID-19 virus and would create lifelong immunity. She also allegedly sent vaccination cards that falsely stated the Moderna vaccine was administered after the pellets were taken. In the United States cases were up 111%, deaths are up 5%, and hospitalizations are up 22% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 4,899,930 active cases in the United States. The five states with the most new cases: Florida 6,425. California 3,886. Texas 2,610. Missouri 2,240. And Louisiana 1,936. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Baxter, AR. Taney, MO. Karnes, TX. Dallas, MO. Wright, MO. Douglas, MO. Perry, AR. Marion, AR. And Greene, MO. There have been 607,754 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 66.5%, Massachusetts at 62.7%, and Maine at 62.6%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 33.4%, Mississippi at 33.5%, and Arkansas at 35%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 48.1%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Lebanon, Taiwan, and Zambia up 9%. Saudi Arabia 7%. And Cape Verde 5%. Globally, cases were up 19% and deaths down 6% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 12,288,532 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: Brazil 57,664. Indonesia 54,517. The U.K. 42,302. India 41,854. And the United States 35,447. There have now been 4,047,669 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Vaccine 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Vaccine 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for July 15th, 2021. It's a bad combination in the U.S.; young and unvaccinated. They're the ones showing up at hospitals across the country, some even landing in ICU and on ventilators. The CDC says slightly fewer than half of 18 to 24 and 25 to 39-year-olds are fully vaccinated. Former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb says the delta variant will keep causing problems maybe into October and will get worse before it gets better. COVID-19 is sparking protests in several countries. In addition to uprisings in Cuba, tear gas was used on protesters in Paris who railed against plans to require a vaccine certificate or negative PCR test to get into bars, restaurants, and cinemas. And in Greece, thousands gathered in the two largest cities protesting plans to make vaccines available to children as young as 15 without parental consent. The U.S. government reported overdose deaths soared to a record 93,000 last year amidst the pandemic. It's a 29% increase over 2020. Experts say lockdowns and restrictions isolated those with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get. Fentanyl was involved in more than 60% of overdose deaths last year. Speaking of lockdowns, Spain's Constitutional Court ruled yesterday that mandating strict home confinement last year was unconstitutional. The government used a state of emergency to temporarily limit civil liberties, but the ruling annulled some articles of the decree related to free movement of citizens. That opens the door to cancelling fines for those who violated restrictions. A homoeopathic doctor in California became the first to face federal charges over fake COVID-19 immunizations and falsified vaccine cards. Juli Mazi of Napa allegedly sold immunization pellets she said contained the COVID-19 virus and would create lifelong immunity. She also allegedly sent vaccination cards that falsely stated the Moderna vaccine was administered after the pellets were taken. In the United States cases were up 111%, deaths are up 5%, and hospitalizations are up 22% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending up since July 5. There are now 4,899,930 active cases in the United States. The five states with the most new cases: Florida 6,425. California 3,886. Texas 2,610. Missouri 2,240. And Louisiana 1,936. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Baxter, AR. Taney, MO. Karnes, TX. Dallas, MO. Wright, MO. Douglas, MO. Perry, AR. Marion, AR. And Greene, MO. There have been 607,754 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's been fully vaccinated: Vermont at 66.5%, Massachusetts at 62.7%, and Maine at 62.6%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Alabama at 33.4%, Mississippi at 33.5%, and Arkansas at 35%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 48.1%. The 5 countries with the largest recent 24-hour increase in the number of fully vaccinated people: Lebanon, Taiwan, and Zambia up 9%. Saudi Arabia 7%. And Cape Verde 5%. Globally, cases were up 19% and deaths down 6% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending up since June 21. There are 12,288,532 active cases around the world. The five countries with the most new cases: Brazil 57,664. Indonesia 54,517. The U.K. 42,302. India 41,854. And the United States 35,447. There have now been 4,047,669 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Coronavirus 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Coronavirus 411 podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Coronavirus 411, the latest COVID-19 info and new hotspots… Just the facts… for June 15th, 2021.The U.S. is not going to meet its vaccination goal and a new report from Stanford and the Kaiser Family Foundation points out why. The only demographic projected to exceed a 70% vaccination rate of at least one dose by July 4 are Asians. Whites are projected to be at 66% by that date, Hispanics at 63%, and Black Americans at 51%. The pace of vaccinations would need to speed up significantly to hit the national goal, the pace is in fact slowing down.The Delta variant has been detected in 74 countries and continues to spread rapidly on its way to becoming the dominant strain worldwide. Outbreaks have been confirmed in China, the U.S., Africa, Scandinavia, and Pacific rim countries. In the US, cases are doubling roughly every two weeks and account for 10% of all new cases, while in the UK it accounts for more than 90% of new cases.Because of the surge in England, as expected, the next planned relaxation of restrictions will be delayed four weeks, until July 19. The Prime Minister said the new date will be the final delay as the vaccination drive is accelerated.It's like watching your parents having a disagreement. Dr. Marty Makary of the respected Johns Hopkins Hospital claimed the also respected CDC "sits on a lot of data.” Data that includes no child in a study of the effects of COVID-19 on youth died of COVID, and the hospitalization rate was lower for COVID than it was for influenza. He added the CDC and medical leadership fails people by "ignoring natural immunity,” remaining quiet when schools issue blanket vaccine mandates. Makary is in favor of vaccines, just not necessarily for those who are already immune.Hopefully, we can all still agree that front line healthcare workers, first-responders and essential workers were and are heroes throughout this pandemic. And New York City is going to honor them with a ticker tape parade. It'll be July 7 on the Canyon of Heroes parade route in downtown Manhattan. In the United States cases were down 29%, deaths are down 23%, and hospitalizations are down 22% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending flat since June 4. There are now 5,283,026 active cases in the United States. The current top 5 states by number of active cases: California, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Florida. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Linn, MO. Lamb, TX. Karnes, TX. Gray, TX. Hutchinson, TX. Livingston, MO. Hockley, TX. St. Thomas, VI. And DeWitt, TX. There have been 599,928 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related, with a current national fatality rate of 1.8%.The states with the most new deaths reported as COVID-related: New York and North Carolina 27. Kansas 19. California and Colorado 12. Virginia 11. Illinois and Michigan 9. Alabama 8. And Louisiana 7. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's had at least one dose, Vermont at 72.2%, Massachusetts at 68.5%, and Hawaii at 68.1%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Mississippi unchanged at 34.9%, Louisiana at 36.8%, and Alabama at 36.9%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 43.4%.Globally, cases were down 24% and deaths down 4% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending flat since June 10. There are now under 12 million active cases around the world, at 11,991,596.The five countries with the most new cases: India 62,597. Brazil 40,865. Colombia 24,376. Argentina 21,292. And Russia 13,721. There have now been 3,808,883 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Coronavirus 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for June 15th, 2021.The U.S. is not going to meet its vaccination goal and a new report from Stanford and the Kaiser Family Foundation points out why. The only demographic projected to exceed a 70% vaccination rate of at least one dose by July 4 are Asians. Whites are projected to be at 66% by that date, Hispanics at 63%, and Black Americans at 51%. The pace of vaccinations would need to speed up significantly to hit the national goal, the pace is in fact slowing down.The Delta variant has been detected in 74 countries and continues to spread rapidly on its way to becoming the dominant strain worldwide. Outbreaks have been confirmed in China, the U.S., Africa, Scandinavia, and Pacific rim countries. In the US, cases are doubling roughly every two weeks and account for 10% of all new cases, while in the UK it accounts for more than 90% of new cases.Because of the surge in England, as expected, the next planned relaxation of restrictions will be delayed four weeks, until July 19. The Prime Minister said the new date will be the final delay as the vaccination drive is accelerated.It's like watching your parents having a disagreement. Dr. Marty Makary of the respected Johns Hopkins Hospital claimed the also respected CDC "sits on a lot of data.” Data that includes no child in a study of the effects of COVID-19 on youth died of COVID, and the hospitalization rate was lower for COVID than it was for influenza. He added the CDC and medical leadership fails people by "ignoring natural immunity,” remaining quiet when schools issue blanket vaccine mandates. Makary is in favor of vaccines, just not necessarily for those who are already immune.Hopefully, we can all still agree that front line healthcare workers, first-responders and essential workers were and are heroes throughout this pandemic. And New York City is going to honor them with a ticker tape parade. It'll be July 7 on the Canyon of Heroes parade route in downtown Manhattan. In the United States cases were down 29%, deaths are down 23%, and hospitalizations are down 22% over 14 days. The 7-day average of new cases has been trending flat since June 4. There are now 5,283,026 active cases in the United States. The current top 5 states by number of active cases: California, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Florida. The top 10 counties with the highest number of recent cases per capita according to The New York Times: Dimmit, TX. Linn, MO. Lamb, TX. Karnes, TX. Gray, TX. Hutchinson, TX. Livingston, MO. Hockley, TX. St. Thomas, VI. And DeWitt, TX. There have been 599,928 deaths in U.S. recorded as Covid-related, with a current national fatality rate of 1.8%.The states with the most new deaths reported as COVID-related: New York and North Carolina 27. Kansas 19. California and Colorado 12. Virginia 11. Illinois and Michigan 9. Alabama 8. And Louisiana 7. The top 3 vaccinating states by percentage of population that's had at least one dose, Vermont at 72.2%, Massachusetts at 68.5%, and Hawaii at 68.1%. The bottom 3 vaccinating states are Mississippi unchanged at 34.9%, Louisiana at 36.8%, and Alabama at 36.9%. The percentage of the U.S. that's been fully vaccinated is 43.4%.Globally, cases were down 24% and deaths down 4% over 14 days, with the 7-day average trending flat since June 10. There are now under 12 million active cases around the world, at 11,991,596.The five countries with the most new cases: India 62,597. Brazil 40,865. Colombia 24,376. Argentina 21,292. And Russia 13,721. There have now been 3,808,883 deaths reported as Covid-related worldwide. For the latest updates, subscribe for free to Vaccine 411 on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the Vaccine 411... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A new piece from the business-friendly American Enterprise Institute is making the business case for some type of reasonable mandated scheduling legislation. We'll discuss how companies in the heat of those battles might view those proposals and, more importantly, how elected officials in key battleground cities might as well. And federal apprenticeship programs are in the news this week and it's not the kind of news we would like. We'll discuss some new challenges facing the Labor Department with regard to apprenticeships and if and how it affects the industry. And Louisiana will decide on a new governor tomorrow and considering what happened in Kentucky, if the incumbent Democrat hangs on, national Republicans will be in panic mode. We'll kick that around.  We'll talk about those stories and wrap it up with the legislative scorecard.

If you re a certain age you might remember the telephone. It was a hard plastic piece of equipment about the size of a small cat. You leased the phone, monthly, from what was known as "The phone company." There was only one. Eventually, we got multiple phone companies. Then mobile phones. Which came to be known as cell phones. Then we got what we called "smart phones" which was a cell phone that did other stuff, like connect to the internet. Today, we re back to calling it simply "the phone." And there is practically nothing in our daily lives that our phone isn t connected to. Shopping. Entertainment. News. Navigation. And instantly answering practically any question we ask it. Now we re starting to see advanced, specialized uses of our phones, in ways you might not have imagined. For example, one of the common complaints you hear from police officers, and other law enforcement agents, is that the paperwork required for getting an arrest warrant which requires a judge s signature can take hours. Meet Cloud Gavel. Cloud Gavel is a web based electronic warrant app that works on a phone to create an electronic, instant, legal, arrest warrant. The creator of this technology and Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Cloud Gavel is Casey Roussel. If you get pulled over while you re driving, the first thing you need to do is show a police officer your driver s license. Even if you ve never been pulled over, you re familiar with the procedure because you ve had to show your license to get into a bar, to buy alcohol or tobacco in a store, to cash a check, or to vote. Your driver s license is a photo ID. You never know when you re going to need, it so you carry it around in your wallet all the time. If you have a Louisiana driver s license, you no longer need to carry your wallet around all the time. You can store your driver s license on your phone. In an app called LA Wallet. It s totally legal. It s recognized by law enforcement. It s valid pretty much everywhere you need a license. And Louisiana is the first state in the nation to adopt this technology. LA Wallet was created by local software company, Envoc. The software architect and founder of Envoc is Calvin Fabre. Photos over lunch at Commander s Palace by Jill Lafleur. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.