Podcasts about Asos

An ASOS sale loves to see me coming! Why? Because I can be very impulsive. In this episode we are going to be talking about the contrast of acting on impulse versus adopting a more patient approach to living. To help us consider the pros and cons, we are going to look at the story of someone who acted on impulse to their own detriment in the Bible - Uzzah. In 2 Samuel 6:1-7 we learn a very sobering lesson from Uzzah's end. We learn that even well intended impulsiveness can be very damaging. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 04:15 Why do I struggle with patience?06:44 Uzzah's impulse angered God16:40 Impulse can be a result of spiritual immaturity21:10 Practical tips for developing patience25:55 Closing remarks & prayer Follow Christian Girl, Corporate World on: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/christiangirlcorporateworld⁠ TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@christiangirlcorp

In the latest episode of The Retail Tea Break podcast we explore how modern retail leaders are blending passion, people and purpose to drive meaningful growth. George Sullivan is the Founder and CEO of The Sole Supplier, a shopping platform and marketplace connecting sneakerheads with hard to find products. Through the use of innovative tech, engaging content and strategic partnerships, the brand drives over £50 million gross merchandise value (GMV) annually, to global brands like Nike, Adidas and ASOS. Over the past decade, George has bootstrapped the company from a bedroom blog to a UK powerhouse, driven by an amazing team of 30 at their Shoreditch hub in London!Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on the evolving retail landscape and what it really takes to lead with heart and innovation.So grab that cup of tea, sit back and listen to the latest episode of The Retail Tea Break podcast.Key themes include:People-First Leadership: Creating supportive, ego-free team culturesAuthentic Community: Building real connections that drive loyaltyCreative Content: Human-led storytelling amplified by AI toolsAI + Human Insight: Using tech to enhance, not replace creativityRetail Trends: Shoppers want stories, transparency and valuesPassion-Led Projects: Solving real problems with purposeWhat's Next: New content, podcast relaunches and brand collabsCatch up on previous episodes on your favourite podcast platform and while you're there please hit that follow button so that you get to listen to it first every week. If you'd like to get involved in the next season of the podcast, as a guest or a sponsor please email melissa@theretailadvisor.ieA huge thank you to our sponsor, International Retail Magazine. Make sure you subscribe today! Read the latest edition here: https://irg-retail.com/international-retail-magazine/

I learnt that ASOS is actually an abbreviation. What were you 'today years old' when you realised something? Plus, Celeste Barber joins us in the studio!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of the Etsy Seller Success podcast, Dylan Jahraus sits down with Sarah, founder of Flourish Retail, to demystify product pricing, inventory planning, and scaling through wholesale. With nearly 20 years in the UK retail industry—including top brands like River Island, Debenhams, and ASOS—Sarah now helps small businesses profit sustainably through smart merchandising and data-driven decision-making.Whether you're wrestling with pricing, overwhelmed by inventory, or debating a move into wholesale, this episode is packed with real-world advice. Sarah shares how her own Etsy journey sparked the creation of Flourish, how to understand your sales data (even with limited numbers), and the biggest mistakes makers make when it comes to pricing and product strategy.This conversation is especially timely for 2025, as tariffs and economic uncertainty challenge sellers to get sharper than ever. Sarah's no-nonsense approach and practical frameworks make this a must-listen for creative entrepreneurs who want to run smarter and grow sustainably.In this episode, we cover: [04:20] What Businesses Are Thriving in 2025 [05:33] How to Collect and Use Customer Data (Even Without Much) [08:11] Where to Find Trends and How to Use Them [09:22] Healthy Ways to Monitor Competition [11:08] When and How to Consider Wholesale Expansion [13:45] Why Etsy Wasn't Profitable for Her (and What She Learned) [16:50] Hiring Help as a Small Business: When, Who, and Why [19:34] Managing Rising Costs and Tariffs in 2025 [21:26] The “House” Framework for Understanding Your Product MixConnect with Sarah: 

ASOS has partnered with InPost to offer next-day delivery to locker locations across Europe, enhancing speed and flexibility for online fashion shoppers. While the model is efficient and popular in dense urban markets, Chris and Anne explore whether the U.S. consumer landscape is ready for this kind of out-of-home delivery. This clip from the Omni Talk Retail Fast Five is brought to you by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Simbe, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, and ClearDemand.

In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Simbe, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, and ClearDemand, Chris and Anne discussed: - Instacart's CEO resigning to take a job with OpenAI - Amazon's new warehouse robot, Vulcan -Primark's in-store repair classes - ASOS offering next-day delivery through InPost Lockers - And closed with a look at how LTK is bringing The Bachelor to life on its social commerce shopping platform There's all that, plus Justin Swagler of AWS stops by for 5 Insightful Minutes on the technologies he thinks will most impact physical store retail operations, and Chris and Anne also go into everything from Stranger Things and The Office to who would win a battle between 100 Yanks and 100 Brits. Be sure also to chheck out the ‘IDC TechScape: Frictionless CX-Enabling Technologies in Retail, 2025' report to unlock detailed insights on retail technology trends and discover how AWS Retail Solutions can help you implement these innovations today. Music by hooksounds.com

Welcome to Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, sponsored by Mirakl. In today's Retail Daily Minute:Christine Day resigns from Kohl's board citing “deliberately selective” governance practices, raising alarms over executive compensation, transparency, and oversight following the exit of ex-CEO Ashley Buchanan.LTK and The Bachelor join forces to create a first-of-its-kind shoppable entertainment channel, letting fans buy their favorite on-screen fashion in real-time through a dedicated LTK app experience.ASOS and InPost debut next-day locker delivery across the UK, giving customers more control over their orders while positioning InPost as a dominant player in OOH logistics post-Yodel acquisition.The Retail Daily Minute has been rocketing up the Feedspot charts, so stay informed with Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, your source for the latest and most important retail insights. Be careful out there!

pWotD Episode 2933: Cassie Ventura Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 247,378 views on Tuesday, 13 May 2025 our article of the day is Cassie Ventura.Casandra Elizabeth Ventura (born August 26, 1986), known mononymously as Cassie, is an American singer, dancer, actress, and model. Born in New London, Connecticut, she began her musical career after meeting producer Ryan Leslie in late 2004, who signed her to his record label, NextSelection Lifestyle Group. She was then discovered by rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs, who signed her to a joint venture with his label, Bad Boy Records, to commercially release her 2006 debut single, "Me & U". The song marked the first of her two entries on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number three.With "Me & U" issued as its lead single, Ventura's self-titled debut studio album (2006) peaked at number four on the Billboard 200 and spawned the follow-up single, "Long Way 2 Go". From 2008 to 2009, she released the singles "Official Girl" (featuring Lil Wayne), "Must Be Love" (featuring Diddy), and "Let's Get Crazy" (featuring Akon). She signed with Interscope Records to release her debut mixtape, RockaByeBaby (2013), which was promoted by the music videos for its singles "Numb" (featuring Rick Ross) and "Paradise" (featuring Wiz Khalifa).Ventura signed with Lewis modeling agency Wilhelmina Models early in her career, and later One Management. She has modeled for Calvin Klein and has been featured in magazines including GQ, Seventeen, and Bust. She was the face of ASOS's 2013 spring collection. She has also starred in advertising for Delia's, Adidas, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Clean & Clear. She has appeared in films such as Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) and The Perfect Match (2016).This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:36 UTC on Wednesday, 14 May 2025.For the full current version of the article, see Cassie Ventura on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm standard Geraint.

USA i Chiny ogłosiły zawarcie umowy o obniżeniu wzajemnych ceł. Grupa InPost podpisała umowę partnerską z brytyjskim sprzedawcą modowym ASOS. Santander Bank Polska rozpoczął rozmowy z Banco Santander w sprawie przejęcia udziałów w SCB. CBA zatrzymało pięć osób w ramach śledztwa dotyczącego afery Collegium Humanum.Zasubskrybuj prasówkę na www.businessupdate.pl.Podcast powstał przy pomocy ElevenLabs.

Friday, April 25, 2025 - DNA Day Good luck at Sprint tomorrow.  $194k at this moment.   WODC Readout Saw friends (Hebbian Bio, Unravel, Ana M, Balaji) and families (HM AN E) RH Drug talk - https://youtu.be/Hpj72nMFfZc?si=dLVdeRNhVLfjCSar. (Other  Family Day Presentations from SYNGAP1 Conference in LA are on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjpr3a14_ls2ummdbWyUdvRpMcQBlRXy2)   Read out in a panel where we had to really talk through small molecule (broad - LB) vs precision (narrow C4/STK) and broad (Tevard). ASO Update: Trials need heterogenous populations.  At first, I expect we will be looking for PTVs beyond the first 3 or 4 exons.  Once approved, or in subsequent trials, I assume it will be available more broadly but not at first.  Trials are coming, take notes and videos. Press Release on Roadmap: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graglia_progress-in-syngap1-therapeutic-development-activity-7321668845495066624-1dDn Oliver's Warrior Story - https://curesyngap1.org/syngap-warriors/oliver/ Sign up for the conference: 222 Days! https://curesyngap1.org/events/conferences/cure-syngap1-conference-2025-hosted-by-srf/ Impact Report Webinar can be watched in its entirety as well as in segments - 18 of them to cover most of the topics discussed are being added to our YT channel at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjpr3a14_ls3OvtdFahBr4wAa8BL7aUkv Effie on TJB https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graglia_well-deserved-kudos-for-dr-terry-jo-bichell-activity-7321280877068541952-9f_1   CB Blood Drive this weekend in TN.  Read here for more information: https://curesyngap1.org/blog/fueling-research-syngap1-combinedbrain-biorepository-roadshow/ Newly Diagnosed Resources: https://cureSYNGAP1.org/Resources

This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Kent Rogers, Chief Executive Officer at EveryONE Medicines. They discuss Kent's journey across every side of the desk in the drug discovery space, EveryONE Medicines' efforts to develop antisense oligonucleotides for ultra-rare diseases, and the need to adapt regulatory models for n-of-1 therapies.Show Notes: 00:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast00:59 Welcome to Kent and his experiences across every side of the pharma ‘desk'06:00 Challenges of commercialization for ultra-rare disease therapies and the advantage of antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) 10:28 EveryONE Medicines' approach to regulatory bodies12:30 Regulatory feedback and expectations from EveryONE Medicines' platform-based approach to n-of-1 therapies15:47 Differences in regulatory requirements for rare disease across countries 19:53 Insights from being on different sides of the drug development industry22:40 Differences in healthcare systems across countries that can facilitate or impede drug development26:57 Rationale behind focusing on ASOs for treating rare diseases 28:03 Building EveryONE Medicines and Kent's approach to leadership33:20 Lessons from Kent's career37:17 Closing remarks Find out moreEveryONE Medicines (https://www.eomeds.com/)Please consider rating and reviewing us on your chosen podcast listening platform! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bp2_wVNSzntTs_zuoizU8bX1dvao4jfj/view?usp=share_link

Mike and Duncan chat to Dean Jode of ASOS, Murray McDavid and ACEO fame!We chat about Murray McDavid, ACEO Spirits, sandwiches, photography and a whole heap of other things, including Deans Pudding Island Dram selections and they find out what's been up his arrrrse.Mike and Duncan recant their recent #BlindDrams selections and talk through some adventures in Old London Town.You can ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠buy us a dram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ which will make us very happy, and we will shout you out. Check out the Honest to a Malt ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠podcast website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & blog. Browse the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Whisky T-Shirt Shop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us on: HonestToAMalt@protonmail.com

Accenture, American Express, ASOS, EY, Four Seasons Hotels, Google, NBC Universal  are his clientsFrm Royal Air Force Senior Officer, Frm. International Negotiator for the UK Government,  executive coach. Google, Accenture, American Express His first book, 'Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team', co-authored with Simon Sinek and David Mead. Peter gets up every day inspired to enable people to be extraordinary so that they can do extraordinary things. Collaborating with Simon Sinek for over 7 years, he was a founding Igniter and Implementation Specialist on the Start With Why team, teaching leaders and companies how to use the concept of Why."The first step is to distinguish leadership from management. “Management is about handling complexity,” explains Docker, while “leadership is about creating simplicity. It's about cutting through the noise, identifying what's really important, making it personal for people, bringing them together and connecting them.”  ~  Peter Docker in Venteur Magazine January 2023One of Peter's latest books, 'Leading from The Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control'Peter's commercial and industry experience has been at the most senior levels in sectors including oil & gas, construction, mining, pharmaceuticals, banking, television, film, media, manufacturing and services - across more than 90 countries. His career has spanned professional pilot; leading an aviation training and standards organisation; teaching post-graduates at an international college; and running multi-billion dollar procurement projects. A former Royal Air Force senior officer, he has been a Force Commander during combat flying operations and has seen service across the world. He is a seasoned crisis manager, a former international negotiator for the UK Government and executive coach.© 2025 Building Abundant Success!!2025 All Rights ReservedJoin Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23bAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

Topics: Andrew is at Tay's apartment, favorite musicals, Andrew almost met JLo, people who sing at their own weddings, Tay is on ASOS's naughty list, The White Lotus, Andy Cohen got botoxSponsors:Quince: Go to Quince.com/taylor for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your orderProlon: Just visit ProlonLife.com/TOT to claim your 15% discount and your bonus giftRula: Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/taylor #rulapodDraftKings Casino: Just sign up with code TOT and wager a minimum of five dollars to receive FIVE HUNDRED CASINO SPINS ON A FEATURED GAMELume: Use code TAYLOR for 15% off your first purchase at LumeDeodorant.comProduced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the third installment of LG and Friends, originally streamed live on YouTube, LG sits down with Emily of the Eyrie to discuss Sansa VII from ASOS. We dive into one of the great chapters in ASOAIF - the Snow Castle, Moon Door and more. Support us! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Five years ago, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, she took a massive financial and life-risking leap—flying to London with no guarantees, no safety net, and only her self-belief, resilience, and grit to chase her dream of becoming an international fashion model. Despite setbacks and moments of doubt, her gamble paid off.A UP Los Baños Chemical Engineering graduate who once wanted to work for NASA, Ella discovered her true passion in modeling. Once pressured to conform to beauty pageant standards, winning a modeling competition led her toward high fashion instead. Today, she's thriving in London, working with global brands like Rayban Meta, Pandora, Primark, Adidas, Puma, Glenlivet, Sephora, Boots, ASOS, Boohoo, and Nasty Gal, among many others. She has also founded her own mother agency called Eiveren Models to help Filipino models break into the international sceneIf fear or doubt has ever held you back from your dreams, this conversation is for you!If you're interested in collaborating with our podcast through brand partnerships, advertisements or other collabs, please send an email to our management: info@thepodnetwork.com

Five years ago, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, she took a massive financial and life-risking leap—flying to London with no guarantees, no safety net, and only her self-belief, resilience, and grit to chase her dream of becoming an international fashion model. Despite setbacks and moments of doubt, her gamble paid off.A UP Los Baños Chemical Engineering graduate who once wanted to work for NASA, Ella discovered her true passion in modeling. Once pressured to conform to beauty pageant standards, winning a modeling competition led her toward high fashion instead. Today, she's thriving in London, working with global brands like Rayban Meta, Pandora, Primark, Adidas, Puma, Glenlivet, Sephora, Boots, ASOS, Boohoo, and Nasty Gal, among many others. She has also founded her own mother agency called Eiveren Models to help Filipino models break into the international sceneIf fear or doubt has ever held you back from your dreams, this conversation is for you!If you're interested in collaborating with our podcast through brand partnerships, advertisements or other collabs, please send an email to our management: info@thepodnetwork.com

The Headlines: Kanye West Drops New Song Featuring Diddy and His Daughter, North – Read more Sweatpant Jeans Are the Latest Emerging Fashion Trend – Read more Forever 21 Files for Bankruptcy Protection (Again) – Read more Kanye West Drops New Song Featuring Diddy and His Daughter, North Kanye West is back with a new track — and it’s already causing drama. Ye just dropped a surprise song featuring Diddy, Diddy's son Christian "King" Combs, and his daughter North West — despite Kim Kardashian’s attempts to block him from involving North in his music. Kim had reportedly asked a judge to prevent Kanye from putting North in any of his projects, but that didn’t seem to stop him. No official statement from Kim yet, but the track is already making waves online — and North’s part is being called "adorable" by some fans and "inappropriate" by others.

If you're running a product-based business, you know how tricky it can be to manage stock, set the right prices, and make sure your cash flow isn't tied up in unsold inventory. But what if you could take the same strategic merchandising approach that big retailers use—without the huge budgets?My guest this week is Sarah Johnson. With decades of experience across high street brands and ASOS, Sarah Johnson saw a gap to bring big-business merchandising to smaller retailers, in a flexible, affordable way. Flourish Retail was the result, an award-winning consultancy which helps brands harness their product data to scale sustainably, boost sales, cut costs, and drive profitability.Struggling with pricing, stock management, or keeping up with retail trends? Sarah Johnson is here to help! In this episode, she reveals insider merchandising strategies that big brands use—so you can boost sales, cut costs, and grow your business with confidence.We cover:Retail Merchandising Demystified: What it really means, how it goes beyond visual merchandising, and why it's the key to business growthThe Smart Way to Manage Inventory: How to buy the right amount of stock at the right time—so you don't tie up cash or end up with unsold productsHow to Price Your Products for Profit: The biggest pricing mistakes small businesses make and how to avoid themRetail Trends for 2025: What's changing in the industry and how you can stay ahead, including the impact of pricing shifts, sustainability trends, and customer buying behaviourWhy Data is Your Best Friend: Sarah's #1 tip for small businesses—how to use your sales data to make better decisions, avoid common pitfalls, and increase profitabilityPlus: Sarah shares one powerful action you can take today that will make an immediate impact on your business—so don't miss the end of the episode!USEFUL RESOURCESFlourish Retail WebsiteFlourish Retail FacebookFlourish Retail InstagramSarah Johnson LinkedInLET'S CONNECTJoin my free Facebook group for product makers and creatorsFollow me on YouTubeFind me on InstagramWork with me Buy My Book: Bring Your Product Idea To LifeIf you enjoy this podcast, and you'd like to leave a tip, you can do so here: https://bring-your-product-idea.captivate.fm/supportMentioned in this episode:Hosted by CaptivateIf you've been inspired to start a podcast in 2024 then I recommend my podcast host, Captivate. They were my top pick when I started 4 years ago because of how easy it was for a complete novice to get started. I've stuck with them because it's still...

When fashion giant ASOS revamped its website using Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategies, they saw a remarkable 23% increase in sales within just a few months. By simplifying the checkout process, enhancing product recommendations, and optimizing mobile performance, ASOS transformed its customer experience and significantly boosted conversions. This success story underscores the power of CRO…

Organoids, three-dimensional cell models that can replicate an individual's organs, are valuable tools for testing medicines that might treat their illness. It can, however, take up to $10,000 and a year to grow organoids using conventional methods from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells. Researchers at Children's Mercy Kansas City's Genomic Medicine Center developed a way to do this from about $200 and in two to three weeks. We spoke to Scott Younger, director of disease gene engineering at Children Mercy Kansas City's Genomic Medicine Center, about the process, the test it ran to match three children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy to an antisense oligonucleotide therapy, and the potential impact this may have on developing customized therapies for people with rare genetic diseases.

Rare condition research is evolving, and patient communities are driving the breakthrough. In this special Rare Disease Day episode, we explore the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of rare condition therapies. From groundbreaking gene therapy trials to the power of patient-driven research, our guests discuss how collaboration between families, clinicians, researchers, and regulators is paving the way for faster diagnoses, equitable access to treatments, and innovative approaches like nucleic acid therapies and CRISPR gene editing. With insights from Myotubular Trust, we follow the journey of family-led patient communities and their impact on advancing gene therapy for myotubular myopathy - showcasing how lived experience is shaping the future of medicine. However, while patient-driven initiatives have led to incredible progress, not every family has the time, resources, or networks to lead these research efforts. Our guests discuss initiatives like the UK Platform for Nucleic Acid Therapies (UPNAT), which aims to streamline the development of innovative treatments and ensure equitable access for everyone impacted by rare conditions. Our host Dr Ana Lisa Tavares, Clinical lead for rare disease at Genomics England, is joined by Meriel McEntagart, Clinical lead for rare disease technologies at Genomics England, Anne Lennox, Founder and CEO of Myotubular Trust and Dr Carlo Rinaldi, Professor of Molecular and Translational Neuroscience at University of Oxford. "My dream is in 5 to 10 years time, an individual with a rare disease is identified in the clinic, perhaps even before symptoms have manifested. And at that exact time, the day of the diagnosis becomes also a day of hope, in a way, where immediately the researcher that sent the genetics lab flags that specific variant or specific mutations. We know exactly which is the best genetic therapy to go after." You can download the transcript, or read it below. Ana Lisa: Welcome to Behind the Genes.    [Music plays]  Anne: What we've understood is that the knowledge and experience of families and patients is even more vital than we've all been going on about for a long time. Because the issue of there being a liver complication in myotubular myopathy has been hiding in plain sight all this time, because if you asked any family, they would tell you, “Yes, my son has had the odd liver result.”  There were some very serious liver complications but everybody thought that was a minor issue, but if we are able to engage the people who live with the disease and the people who observe the disease at a much more fundamental level we may be able to see more about what these rare genes are doing.  [Music plays]  Ana Lisa: My name is Ana Lisa Tavares, I'm Clinical Lead for Rare Disease research at Genomics England and your host for this episode of Behind the Genes. Today I'm joined by Anne Lennox, Founder and CEO of the Myotubular Trust, Dr Meriel McEntagart, an NHS consultant and Clinical Lead for Rare Disease Technologies at Genomics England, and Dr Carlo Rinaldi, Professor of Molecular and Translational Neuroscience at the University of Oxford.    Today we'll be hearing about the importance of involving the patient community, particularly as new rare therapies are developed, and discussing the forward-facing work that's happening that could have potential to unlock novel treatments for many rare conditions.  If you enjoy today's episode we'd love your support. Please like, share and rate us on wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thank you so much for joining me today.  Please could you introduce yourselves.   Anne: I'm Anne Lennox, I'm one of the founders of the Myotubular Trust, a charity that raises research funds for and supports families affected by the rare genetic neuromuscular disorder myotubular myopathy.  Meriel: I'm Meriel McEntagart, I'm a consultant in clinical genetics in the NHS and I have a special interest in neurogenic and neuromuscular conditions.  Carlo: Hi, I'm Carlo Rinaldi, I'm Professor of Molecular and Translational Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. I'm a clinician scientist juggling my time between the clinic and the lab where we try to understand mechanisms of diseases to develop treatments for these conditions.  And I'm also here as a representative of the UK Platform for Nucleic Acid Therapies, UPNAT. Thanks for your invitation, I'm very pleased to be here.  Ana Lisa: Thank you. Meriel, I'd love you to tell us a bit about your work and how you met Anne, how did this story start?  Meriel: Thank you. Well prior to being a consultant in clinical genetics, I spent 2 years as a clinical research fellow in neuromuscular conditions, and as part of that training I worked on a project where the gene for myotubular myopathy had just been identified, and so there was a big international effort to try and come up with sort of a registry of all the genetic variants that had been found as well as all the clinical symptoms that the affected patients had, and then do kind of a correlation of the particular variant mutation with symptoms.   I worked when I was training to be a clinical geneticist because of my interest in neuromuscular conditions so when I eventually became a consultant at St George's Hospital I was actually interviewed by the Professor of Paediatrics and he knew Anne and her son, when Anne was looking for more information about the condition he suggested that perhaps I might be a good person for Anne to talk to.  Ana Lisa: Thank you. Interesting connections. Anne, can you tell us your story and how this led you to found the Myotubular Trust?  Anne: Yes, thanks Ana-Lisa.  Well, as many families will tell you when they're newly diagnosed with a rare disease, you go from knowing nothing about a condition to being one of the few deep experts in that condition because there are so few deep experts. So this happened to us in 2003 when our son, Tom, was born, and when he was born he was floppy and his Apgar scores, the scores they do on new-born babies, were pretty poor, and before long we knew that it was more than just momentary issues at birth.  And, cutting a very long story short, 5 weeks later he was diagnosed with this very rare neuromuscular genetic disorder that we didn't know we had in the family.  We were told that this was a very serious diagnosis.    At that time – more than 20 years ago – over 80% of those boys didn't make it to their first birthday and the stark statistic we had in our head a lot was that only 1% made it past the age of 10. And that has changed due to better ventilator and breathing equipment, etc, but at the time we expected that he might not make it to his first birthday.    We were very lucky, we had Tom longer than one year, we had him for nearly 4 years, 4 very lovely years where it was tough, but he was a really lovely member of our family.  Despite being really weak he managed to be incredibly cheeky and bossy, and he was a great little brother for his big sister. We were also very lucky that he was being looked after by Professor Francesco Muntoni, who is Head of the Paediatric Neuromuscular Service at Great Ormond Street. And, like Carlo, he is a clinical researcher and actually that I found to be amazing as a family member because you knew what was happening out there and Professor Muntoni, other than living with the reality day to day you want to know where things are going.    We began to realise that back then 20 years ago the more common rare neuromuscular diseases were finally beginning to get some fundamental research funds, like Duchenne, spinal muscular atrophy, and Professor Muntoni was very good at explaining to lay non-scientific parents like us that one day the technologies that would lead to a cure, that would re-engage proteins for other conditions and would translate down eventually into the possibility of replacing myotubularin, which is the protein not being produced or not being produced enough in myotubular myopathy. And then we began to understand actually what the barriers to that would be, that translating developments in more common, or let's say more prevalent conditions, would be hard to do without some translation research being done; you could not just not lag years behind, you could lag decades behind if you haven't done some other work.    So, I met Wendy Hughes, another mother, of a boy called Zak who was a few years older than Tom, and these were the days before social media, and it was amazing to be in contact with another family going through something similar and we had great conversations. But then they were also looked after by Professor Muntoni and we particularly began to develop the idea as 2 families that we might be able to raise some research funds towards this concept of keeping pace with the scientific developments.  And then we discovered there was no charity we could channel those funds through. Even the umbrella body for neuromuscular diseases who were covering 30 to 40 conditions, frankly, they just couldn't trickle their funding down into investing in every neuromuscular disease, and slowly but surely it dawned on us that if we did want to make that difference we were going to have to set up our own charity.   So that's what we eventually did and back in 2006, we founded what was actually the first charity in Europe dedicated to myotubular myopathy – luckily, more have come along since – and we were dedicated to raising research funding. In fact, it wasn't our goal to set up another charity but around that time, about a year in, we happened to go to a meeting where the Head of the MRC, the Medical Research Council, was giving a talk and he said that in the last few years the MRC had begun to really realise that they couldn't cure everything, that they couldn't cure the diseases that would be cured in the next millennium from a top down perspective. There had to be a trick, there had to be a bottom up as well, because that was the only way this was going to happen. And I have to say that that was a really reassuring moment in time for us to realise that we weren't just chasing pipe dreams and trying to do something impossible, that there was a role for us.    Ana Lisa: I think it would be really interesting for people to hear your story and the amazing set-up and fundraising that you've done, and at the same time it would be really good for us to reflect on how this isn't feasible for every patient and every family and how we're going to need to work cooperatively to move forwards with rare therapies.  Anne: When we explored the idea with Professor Muntoni and Meriel and others about setting up a charity one of the really reassuring things that Professor Muntoni got across to us was that this wasn't about raising the millions and millions it would take to fund clinical trials but the issue in the rare disease space was funding the proof of principle work, the work where you take a scientist's hypothesis and take it over the line, and the rarer the disease, the less places there are for a scientist to take those ideas. And the example he gave us was a piece of research like that might cost a hundred to a couple of hundred thousand, if you fund a piece of work like that and if it is successful, if the scientist's principle gets proven, then behind you it's much easier for the bigger muscle disease charities to also invest in it. It's harder for them to spread their money across all the very rare diseases hypothesis out there, but if you've helped a scientist get over the line they'll come in behind you and then they won't be the ones who fund the tens of millions that it takes to run a clinical trial.    If it's got potential, then that's where the commercial world comes in, and that's where the biotechs come in. So he'd given the example of if you spent £ten0,000 on a piece of research and it actually is proven, in behind you will come the bigger charities that would put in the million that takes it to the next phase, and in behind them will come the bio-checks that'll provide biotechs that'll provide the tens of millions.    And then, you know, a lot of what happens relies on serendipity as well, we know that, and you could easily run away with the idea that you made everything happen but you don't, you stand on the shoulders of others. And our very first grant application in our first grant round, which received extraordinary peer review for how excellent the application was, was a £100,000 project for a 3-year project that had gene therapy at the core of it by a researcher called Dr Ana Buj Bello at Généthon in Paris. This piece of research was so promising that 18 months in she and another researcher were able to raise $780,000 and, as Professor Muntoni predicted, from the French muscle disease charity AFM and the American muscle diseases charity MDA.  And 18 months into that 3 years it was so promising that a biotech company was started up with $30 million funding, literally just on her work.    So that doesn't always happen but, as Professor Muntoni explained, our job was not that $30 million, our job was that first £100,000, and our job was also to make ourselves known to the people in the neuromuscular field.  If you have lab time, if you have research time and you have a choice where you're putting it there is a place you can go to for a myotubular myopathy related grant application, so it's not just that this will come to us out of the blue, people will have done prior work, and our existence makes it worth their while, hopefully, to have done that prior work.  Ana Lisa: That's an amazing story how you've set up this charity and how successful that first application for gene therapy was. I'd love to hear more about that gene therapy and did it get to the clinic and to hear that story from you.  Because I think there are a lot of learnings and it's really important that the first patients who are treated, the first families that are involved, the researchers who start researching in this area, the first treatments lead the way and we learn for all the other treatments for all the other rare conditions that we hope and that together as a community we can share these learnings.  Anne: Yeah. I sometimes describe it a bit like going out into space. When you see a rocket going off look at how many people are behind and the amount of work that's been done, the degree of detail that's managed, and then you go out into space and there are a whole load of unknowns, and you can't account for all of them.  Who knows what's out there in this sphere.  But the amount of preparation, it feels similar to me now, looking back.  We were so idealistic at the beginning.  Our grant to Dr Buj Bello was 2008 and actually it is a really fast time in, the first child was dosed in the gene therapy trial in September 2017.  Ana Lisa: So, we're talking less than 1 years.  Anne: Yeah. And in the meantime obviously as a charity we're also funding other proof of principle research. One of the founding principles of the charity was to have a really excellent peer review process and scientific advisory board so that we wouldn't get carried away with excitement about one lab, one research team, that everything would always come back to peer review and would be looked at coldly, objectively. I don't know how many times I've sat in a scientific advisory board meeting with my fingers crossed hoping that a certain application would get through because it looked wonderful to me, and then the peer review comes back and there are things you just don't know as a patient organisation. So, yes, in those 9 years we were also funding other work.  Ana Lisa: You've just given an interesting perspective on sharing the learnings between the scientists, clinicians, the experts in a particular condition, if you like, and the families, and I'd be really interested to hear your views on what's been learnt about how families and the patient community can also teach the clinical and scientific community.  Anne: So, the first child was dosed in September 2017 and by the World Muscle Society Conference 2 years later in October 2019 the biotech had some fantastic results to show. Children who had been 24-hour ventilated were now ventilator-free, which, unless you know what it's like to have somebody in front of you who's ventilator-dependent, the idea that they could become ventilator-free is just extraordinary.    However, one of the things we've learnt about gene therapy is that we are going out into space so there are extraordinary things to be found, and extraordinary results are possible, as is evidenced here, but there is so much that we don't know once we are dealing with gene therapy. So unfortunately, in May, June and August of 2020, 3 little boys died on the clinical trial. So we have a clinical trial where the most extraordinary results are possible, and the worst results are possible, and both of those things are down to the gene…  What we discovered and what is still being uncovered and discovered is that myotubular myopathy is not just a neuromuscular disorder, it is a disorder of the liver too, and these children didn't die of an immune response, which is what everybody assumes is going to happen in these trials, they died of liver complications.    And one of the things that has come out of that, well, 2 sides to that. Number one is that it is extraordinary that we have found a treatment that makes every single muscle cell in the body pick up the protein that was missing and produce that protein, but also what we've understood is that the knowledge and experience of families and patients is even more vital than we've all been going on about for a long time. Because the issue of there being a liver complication in myotubular myopathy has been hiding in plain sight all this time, because if you asked any family they would tell you, “Yes, my son has had the odd liver result, yes.”    We could see something that looked like it was not that relevant because it was outside the big picture of the disease, which was about breathing and walking and muscles, but actually there was this thing going on at the same time where the children had liver complications. There were some very serious liver complications but everybody thought that was a minor issue but if we are able to engage the people who live with the disease and the people who observe the disease at a much more fundamental level we may be able to see more about what these rare genes are doing.  Ana Lisa: Yeah, thank you very much for sharing such a moving story and with such powerful lessons for the whole community about how we listen to the expertise that families have about their condition, and also I think the really important point about how we tackle the research funding so that we're including and sharing learnings from the conditions that are initially studied in greater depth, and we hope that many more conditions will be better understood and more treatments found and that actually the learnings from these first gene therapy trials will really help inform future trials, not just for gene therapies but also for many other novel therapies that are being developed.  [Music plays] If you're enjoying what you've heard today, and you'd like to hear some more great tales from the genomics coalface, why don't you join us on The Road to Genome podcast. Where our host Helen Bethel, chats to the professionals, experts and patients involved in genomics today. In our new series, Helen talks to a fantastic array of guests, including the rapping consultant, clinical geneticist, Professor Julian Barwell, about Fragile X syndrome, cancer genomics and a holistic approach to his practice - a genuine mic-drop of an interview. The Road to Genome is available wherever you get your podcasts. [Music plays] Ana Lisa: Carlo, I would really like to come to you about some of the initiatives that are happening in the UK, and particularly it would be really interesting to hear about the UK Platform for Nucleic Acid Therapies as a sort of shining example of trying to do something at a national scale across potentially many different rare conditions.    Carlo: Thanks, Ana-Lisa. Thanks very much, Anne, for sharing your fantastic story. I mean, I just want to iterate that as clinician scientists we do constantly learn from experiences and constantly learn from you, from the patient community, and this is absolutely valuable to push the boundary. And I really liked your vision of a rocket being launched in space and I would imagine that this is a similar situation here. So, we are facing a major challenge. So, there is over 7,000 rare diseases in the world and with improvements of genetic diagnosis this is only increasing. So, in a way rare diseases is the ultimate frontier of personalised medicine and this poses incredible challenges.   So, you mentioned the bottom-up approach and the top-down approach and in a way, both are absolutely necessary. So your story is a fantastic story but also makes me think of all the other families where they don't share perhaps the same spirit, you know, they are in areas of the world that are not as well connected or informed, where patient community simply cannot be ‘nucleated', let's say, around the family. So, there is definitely an issue of inclusivity and fair access.    So, what we're trying to do at UPNAT, which is the UK Platform for Nucleic Acid Therapy, is to try to streamline the development both at preclinical and clinical level of nucleic acid therapies. So, we'll start with antisense oligonucleotides just because those are the molecules of the class of drugs that are most ‘mature', let's say, in clinic. So, there are several antisense oligonucleotides already approved in the clinic, we know that they are reasonably safe, we understand them quite well, but of course the aspiration is to then progress into other forms of gene therapy, including gene editing approaches, for example.   And one of the activities that I'm involved, together with Professor Muntoni, is to try to streamline the regulatory process of such therapies and in particular curate a registry of, for example, side effects associated with nucleic acid therapy in the real world, and you would be surprised that this is something that is not yet available.  And the point is exactly that, it's trying to understand and learn from previous mistakes perhaps or previous experiences more in general.    And this is very much in synergy with other activities in the UK in the rare disease domain.  I'm thinking of the Rare Disease Therapy Launchpad, I'm thinking of the Oxford Harrington Centre, I am thinking of the recently funded MRC CoRE in Therapeutic Genomics. These are all very synergistic. Our point is we want to try to amplify the voice of the patient, the voice of the clinicians working on rare disease, and we want to systematise. Because of course one of the risks of rare disease therapies is the fragmentation that we do all these things in isolation. And I would argue that the UK at the moment leveraging on the relatively flexible and independent regulatory agencies, such as the MHRA, on the enormous amount of genetics data available through Genomics England, and of course the centralised healthcare system, such as the NHS, is really probably the best place in the world to do research in the rare disease area, and probably I'm allowed to say it because I'm a non-UK native.       Ana Lisa: Thank you, that's a brilliant perspective, Carlo, and across all the different therapeutic initiatives that you're involved with. And, Carlo, presumably - we're all hoping - these different initiatives will actually lead to ultimately a bigger scaling as more and more novel therapies that target both our RNA and DNA and actually are working, I guess further upstream in the pathway.    So classically in the past it's been necessary to work out all the underlying biology, find a druggable target somewhere in that pathway and then get a larger enough clinical trial, which can be nearly impossible with many of the rare and ultra-rare conditions or even, as you've said, the sub-setting down of more common condition into rarer subtypes that perhaps can be treated in different ways.  And with the many new different treatments on the horizon, ASO therapies, as you've said, is a place that's rapidly expanding, and also crisper gene editing. I'd be really interested to hear your reflections on how this might scale and also how it might extend to other new treatments.  Carlo: Yeah, that's exactly the right word, ‘scaling up'. I mean, there will be of course very unique challenges to every single rare disease but I would argue that with genetic therapies, such as ASOs or crisper gene editing, the amount of functional work that you need to do in a lab to prove yourself and the scientific community that this is the right approach to go for can be certainly very important but can be less just because you're addressing very directly because of the disease.    And then there are commonalities to all these approaches and possibly, you know, a platform approach type of regulatory approval might serve in that regard. You know, if you are using the same chemistry of these antisense oligonucleotides and, you know, similar doses, in a way the amount of work that you need to produce to again make sure that the approach is indeed a safe approach and an effective approach might be also reduced.    I would say that there are also challenges on other aspects of course, as you were saying, Ana-Lisa. Certainly the typical or standard randomised placebo control trial that is the standard and ultimate trial that we use in a clinical setting to prove that a molecule is better than a placebo is many times in the context of rare diseases simply not possible, so we need to think of other ways to prove that a drug is safe and is effective.   This is something that we all collectively as a scientific community are trying to address, and the alliance with the regulatory agencies, such as the MHRA, and you said that you have found your interaction with the MHRA very positive, and I can tell you exactly the same. So we are all trying to go for the same goal, effectively, so trying to find a way to systematise, platformise these sort of approaches. And I guess starting with antisense oligonucleotides is really the right place to go because it's a class of drugs that we have known for a long time, and we know it can work.  Ana Lisa: Meriel, can you tell us a little about the National Genomic Research Library at Genomics England and how this could link with initiatives to find many more patients as new treatments become available for rare and ultra-rare conditions?  Meriel: Yes, I think what's wonderful now is actually that what we're really trying to do is give everybody the opportunity to have their rare condition specifically diagnosed at the molecular level, and the way in which that is being done is by offering whole genome sequencing in the NHS currently in England but to all patients with rare diseases.    And so, it's about trying to establish their diagnosis. And as well as that, even if the diagnosis isn't definitely made at the first pass when the clinical scientists look at the data, because the whole genome has been sequenced, actually all that information about their genome, if they consent, can then be put into the National Genomics Research Library.  And that is a fantastic resource for national and international researchers who get approved to work in this trusted research environment to make new disease gene discoveries and identify these diagnoses for patients.  What's also offered by Genomics England as well is when the National Genomics Library data results in a new publication, the discovery of a new gene or perhaps a new molecular mechanism that causes a disease we already know about, that feeds back into the diagnostic discovery pathway within Genomics England back onto the diagnostic side of all the data.    So, patients who may have had genetic testing previously using whole genome sequencing where they've, if you like, had their sequencing done before the diagnosis was sort of known about, will also be picked up. And so, what this is really doing is trying to kind of give this really equal platform for everybody having testing to all have the same opportunity to have their diagnosis made, either on the diagnostic side or with research.  Ana Lisa: So, sort of on a cohort-wide scale as new discoveries are made and published you can go back and find those patients that may actually have that diagnosis and get it back to them, which is brilliant.  Meriel: Exactly. And this speeds up the whole process of getting these diagnoses back to people. So on a regular basis in the NHS, we will get feedback from the Diagnostic Discovery Pathway about “Here's some patients who you requested whole genome sequencing from a number of years ago and actually now we think we know what the particular molecular condition is.”  And so, it's key of course for our patients with rare conditions to make that molecular diagnosis because then we're able to have them identified for our colleagues who are doing this ground-breaking research trying to bring therapies for these rare conditions.  Ana Lisa: Thank you. And I hope that, as currently, if a novel genetic mechanism, as you've just described, is identified that could explain a rare condition that those patients can be found and they can receive that diagnosis, even many years later, and hopefully as novel treatments become available and say there's a chance to individualise ASO therapies, for example, to start with, that one could also go and look for patients with particular variants that could be amenable potentially to that treatment. And that's really sort of exciting that one could look for those patients across England, irrespective of which clinic they're under, which specialist they're under, and I think that could be really powerful as new treatments develop. I suppose, Meriel, if somebody comes to see you now in clinic are things different?  Meriel: Well, I think one of the things for me when patients come to clinic now is we might have an idea about what we think their condition is, maybe even we think it's a specific gene. And we can offer whole genome sequencing and so it's not just the way we used to do things before by looking just at the coding regions of the gene, we can find more unusual ways in which the gene can be perturbed using whole genome sequencing.  But let's say we don't make the diagnosis. I encourage my patients, if they're comfortable with it, to join the National Genomics Research Library, because really it's been incredibly productive seeing the new genetic discoveries that are coming out of that, but as well I say to them, even if we don't get the diagnosis the first time round when we look at the data, actually this is a constant cycle of relooking at their data, either if they're in the NGRL or as well on the Diagnostic Discovery Pathway side of the service that's run by Genomics England. So yeah, I feel like it's a very big difference; they don't have to keep coming every year and saying, “Is there a new test?” because actually they've had an excellent test, it's just developing our skills to really analyse it well.  Ana Lisa: Yes, and our knowledge, the technology and the skills keep evolving, certainly.  And I think one of the things that I'm sort of hearing from this conversation is that balance of hope and realism, Carlo we were talking about earlier how you need all the pieces of the puzzle to be lined up - so the regulatory agency, the clinicians, all the preclinical work has to have been done, monitoring afterwards for side effects - every piece of the puzzle has to be lined up for a new treatment to make it to a patient.    And, Anne, I'd like to come back to you because we've talked about this before, how one balances these messages of optimism and hope which are needed for bringing everybody together as a community to crack some of these very difficult challenges highlighted by treatments for rare and ultra-rare conditions and at the same time the need for realism, a balance conversation.  Anne: Yeah, that was one of our big learnings through the gene therapy trial and other trials we've had in the condition. As a rare disease charity, you do everything. You know, my title is CEO, but I tell people that's Chief Everything Officer because there's only a few of you and you do everything. So, you go and you lead the London Hope Walk and you also are a layperson on the Scientific Advisory Board and you also send out the emails about grants... And so, you could easily as a small rare disease charity conflate different communication messages because you're in a certain mode.  And so we have been from the early days in the mode of raising hope for people to say, “Look, we can make a difference as a patient community, we could raise funds, we might be able to move things forward, you've got the power to make a difference if you want to.” That's one set of hope.  And it's not dreamlike hope, we're linked to the reality of there are great breakthroughs.  So, you know, in the world of spinal muscular atrophy these clinical trials have led somewhere very quickly, so we're not selling false hope, we're talking about the difference we can make.    But then as soon as you flip into “There's a clinical trial being run” that's a completely different type of communication and you cannot conflate that message with the previous message.  And we always say to everybody, “We're your team, we're a family, we're a team, we all help each other.  When you are considering joining a clinical trial your team is the clinical trial team.    The other team does other things for you but the people you need to work with and ask hard questions of and listen hard to, that's your clinical trial team led by the principal investigator because then you're in that with them. And, you know, the reality of the fact that many, many clinical trials don't work as we wish they would be and the decision you make for your child, your baby, your little one, to join a clinical trial… because that's what it comes down to in our disease, has to be made with that team, not the team that's selling you a fundraising event. It's worth reminding rare disease patient organisations we're wearing different hats and the hope and the realism are different tracks you have to go down.    But at the same time as being realistic you also have to keep remembering that there is still grounds for hope, we are moving forward. And 21 years ago, when Tom was born the idea that you would be able to get all of the muscles in the body to switch back on – putting it in lay terms – seemed like a bit dream. Well, that is what has happened in the gene therapy clinical trial, we just have to now make it safer and understand more about what we're dealing with. So, the 2 things, the hope and the realism, do exist side by side.  Ana Lisa: I think that perfectly encapsulates a lot of the messages around rare disease therapies where there's such hope that novel treatments will really target directly the DNA or RNA to potentially correct the problem across many different rare conditions and therefore actually making treatments one day suddenly available to a much, much bigger population of people with rare conditions than we could've dreamt of 20 years ago or perhaps now, and at the same time this massive need to work cooperatively to all make this as fair, as equitable. Not everybody is going to have the opportunity to fundraise massively to be an expert about their condition, and the importance of sharing these learnings and also really, really listening to the patient community and really, as Carlo was saying, keeping track of side effects, having registries/databases to share these is going to be incredibly important.  [Music plays]  Ana Lisa:  Anne, can you tell us a little about your reflections on equity from the patient community perspective?  Anne: Well I mentioned serendipity early and one of the aspects of serendipity that played into our favour for setting up the Myotubular Trust was that by hook or by crook Wendy Hughes, who set up the charity with me, and I were both able to devote time at that period of our lives to setting up a charity. When my husband, Andrew, and I were told that Tom would more than likely die before his first birthday, one of the decisions we made as a family was that he would never not be with a parent, we would always have someone around, and that kind of meant someone had to give up a full-time job and that was me.  We thought, “If Tom has a few scarce months on the planet, we'll be with him.” And then when Tom lived to be nearly 4, as a family we got used to living on one salary and we were very lucky that we could pay the mortgage that way and run our family that way and eventually that meant I had the time to run the charity.    That doesn't happen that easily, that's a tall order, particularly when you have somebody in the family who has such high needs. And one of the things that I have often thought about is that in the rare disease space we could do with a different funding model for rare disease charities, we could, in an ideal world I have this nirvana that I imagine where there's a fund that you can apply to that is contributed to by the people who make profits out of finding rare disease cures - so the pharmaceutical companies and the biotechs - and there's a fund that they contribute to and that if you have a rare disease and you are willing to set up an organisation that supports families, that raises research funds, that provides a way of hearing the patient voice, then you could apply to that for running cost funds and then you'd be able to run this charity. And then you wouldn't have to rely on whether you live in an area where people will raise money for you or…  We were very lucky that we came across a few great benefactors who would give us money for running the charity, which is actually how we fund it.    All the research money we raise goes 100% into research, not a penny of it goes towards running costs because we have serendipitously found people who will be benefactors for the charity, but we're relying on a lot of good luck for that kind of model to work. And when you look at how much profit is made from developing rare disease treatments and cures – which is fine because that's what puts the passion and that gets people working on it – then why not have an advance fund to run rare disease charities? One of my nirvana dreams.  Ana Lisa: It's good to dream. Indeed, my hope is that there will be some amazing shining examples that lead the way that open doors, make things possible, prove that something can work and how and that then that will enable many other treatments for many additional rare conditions to be added in so that if you've learnt how this particular treatment modality works for this rare condition and there was funding behind it and everything else that's needed that then you can, the learning from that, I'm going to use the word ‘tweak', which sounds minor and could be very major but actually the concept that you can then tweak all those learnings and findings so that that same type of treatment modality could be adapted to treat somebody else with a different rare condition in a different location would be absolutely incredible and really powerful, given that if something like 85% of rare conditions affect less than one in a million people it's not going to be feasible to use the same strategies that have been used in the past for very common conditions.    One of the other big barriers is the cost of developing treatment for ultra-rare conditions.  Where it's a small number of patients that you have and therefore all the challenges that come with monitoring, checking for efficacy, monitoring safety and ultimately funding the challenges are much greater, however if some of these treatment modalities are also going to be used to treat common conditions it might be that actually there's a lot more cross-talk between the nano-rare, ultra-rare, rare and common conditions and that we can share a lot of that learning. I'd love to hear from each of you where you hope we will be for rare disease and rare therapies.  Carlo: Well my dream is that in 5 to 10 years' time an individual with a rare disease is identified in the clinic, perhaps even before symptoms have manifested, and at that exact time the day of the diagnosis becomes also a day of hope in a way where immediately the researcher, the centre, genetics lab, flags that there are the specific mutations, we know exactly which is the best genetic therapy to go after, antisense oligonucleotides as opposed to CRISPR editing, and a path forward, both at the preclinical and clinical level, to demonstrate and to cure these patients eventually is already laid out in front of the patient.  So, transforming the day of their diagnosis as a day of hope, this is my dream with the next ten years.  Ana Lisa: Thank you, that's a wonderful dream. Meriel, can I come to you?  Meriel: Yes, I think I just want to echo Carlo.  We've had great developments and progress with getting whole genome sequencing into the NHS for testing but what we really need is for it to be fast and efficient and getting those diagnoses established quickly. And we have had that set up now and we're really getting there in terms of speed, but then what we need is exactly what's the next step and actually structure like UPNAT that are developing these processes that we can then say to the patient, “And from there, now that we've established your diagnosis, this is what we have options to offer.”  Ana Lisa: Brilliant. And presumably that if the diagnosis isn't achieved now there is a hope that it will be achieved in the future as well. Anne...  Anne: Well, stepping one hundred per cent into the patient's shoes rather than the scientific side that we don't so much influence....  stepping in the patient's shoes, in 5 years' time I would absolutely love it if we were in a situation where all the parties that have come to the table looking at a therapy or in the earlier research genuinely want to bring the patient voice into the room. As Carlo talked about, there's even going to be more and more and more of these rare diseases, then those voices, those few people who have experience of it, they may be able to shed light on something. Maybe even sometimes don't even know it's a fact that they know but that were brought to the table as passionately as everything else is brought to the table.  [Music plays]  Ana Lisa: We'll wrap up there. Thank you so much to our guests, Anne Lennox, Carlo Rinaldi and Meriel McEntagart, for joining me today as we discuss the collaborative power of working together and look to the future of rare therapies that could have the potential to unlock treatments for many rare conditions. If you'd like to hear more like this, please subscribe to Behind the Genes on your favourite podcast app.  Thank you for listening.  I've been your host, Ana-Lisa Tavares. This podcast was edited by Bill Griffin at Ventoux Digital and produced by Naimah Callachand.  

Q4 Investor Audibles is out. This week we cover: Colebrooke Opportunities Fund Tidefall Capital Maran CapitalThis is an idea heavy episode that I know you'll love. Make sure to subscribe and leave a review of the podcast if you have time. It helps get the word out about Value Hive. MitimcoThis episode is brought to you by MIT Investment Management Company, also known as MITIMCo, the investment office of MIT. Each year, MITIMCo invests in a handful of new emerging managers who it believes can earn exceptional long-term returns in support of MIT's mission. To help the emerging manager community more broadly, they created ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠emergingmanagers.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, a website for emerging manager stockpickers.For those looking to start a stock-picking fund or just looking to learn about how others have done it, I highly recommend the site. You'll find essays and interviews by successful emerging managers, service providers used by MIT's own managers, essays MITIMCo has written for emerging managers and more!TegusTegus has the world's largest collection of instantly available interviews on all the public and private companies you care about. Tegus actually makes primary research fun and effortless, too. Instead of weeks and months, you can learn a new industry or company in hours, and all from those that know it best.I spend nearly all my time reading Tegus calls on existing holdings and new ideas. And I know you will too. So if you're interested, head on over to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tegus.co/valuehive⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for a free trial to see for yourself.TIKRTIKR is THE BEST resource for all stock market data, I use TIKR every day in my process, and I know you will too. Make sure to check them out at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIKR.com/hive⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.MarhelmMarhelm is an information service for investors to find real value in an overvalued market. With a focus on shipping and commodities, Marhelm helps you stay on the pulse of global trade, track global sentiment, and identify compelling investment opportunities. Get 20% of your subscription by using the code VALUE at checkout. Check it out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Sandra discusses her journey at ASOS, highlighting the importance of establishing a cohesive purpose when integrating diverse analytics and Insight teams. Amanda (Wig) sheds light on how insight can drive business growth and help achieve revenue targets. We emphasize that without a clear purpose, insight teams risk becoming fragmented and struggling to demonstrate their value, which is crucial for securing budget and resources.We discuss strategic prioritisation, resource management, and innovative approaches like the "stop, start, continue" method to redefine team roles. This year our podcasts will focus on the "Insight Leaders Playbook," an exciting initiative aimed at helping Insight leaders to become truly transformational. Please listen to find out more! Topics DiscussedTransforming Data for Revenue Growth (03:17)Strategic Choices in Insight Teams (12:27)Involving Business Leadership in Decision-Making (19:36)Insightful Ambition in Business Transformation (25:15)Proving Value and Making Choices (29:37) Highlights“They're data experts, they're communicators, they're analysts. Obviously there's so many things that they need to do and I think if you don't sort of focus the team on what they should be doing, or at least where you plan to get them to. You run the risk of them working across all kinds of things and often things that don't necessarily add the most strategic value, because they're insight people” (05:05)“I think one of the things I've realised actually as a consultant is there's a lot of businesses where leaders don't value it as a function actually, and I think I was quite fortunate and quite lucky. But the reason I suppose they say you create your own luck was because I linked everything back to revenue and delivering, so you know, on an objective.” (08.30)“There were two things that really helped my team and I thought I think I mean I'm really open and I think it's really important to let your team play a huge role in this so that they're happy and they come out the other side happy too, but also so that they understand their role or their purpose within the overall purpose and what they're delivering” (15.12)The John Barnes rap is perfect. I mean I'm not going to rap it for you, but I have it in front of me that I could read it if you'd like me to, the first line is perfect. You've got to hold and give, but do it at the right time. You can be slow or fast, but you must get to the line which picks up on Sandra's point about changing priorities. You need to be adaptable and flexible. They'll always hit you and hurt you, defend and attack.”(21.30) This is episode 64 of the Transforming Insight podcast. If you have the ambition to transform your Insight team and the role it plays in your organisation, please tune in to future episodes. Not only will we explore the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams as outlined in the Transforming Insight book, we will also talk to senior corporate Insight leaders, delve into books that have inspired us, and discuss new best practice research carried out with the IMA's corporate members.You won't want to miss this! So please subscribe - and thank you for listening.  About James Wycherley, the author of Transforming InsightJames Wycherley was Director of Customer Insight and Analytics at Barclays from 2005 to 2015 when he became Chief Executive of the Insight Management Academy (IMA). A popular keynote speaker and acknowledged expert on Insight leadership, strategy, and communication, he is the author of the book Transforming Insight: the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams, and over 35 IMA publications. He has provided thought leadership in the UK, Western Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, India, and the Middle East, and regularly hosts the IMA's Insight forums - London, Manchester, UK Online and US Online.The Insight Management Academy is the world's leading authority on transforming Insight teams.Resources: If you would like more information on any of the ideas discussed in this episode of the Transforming Insight podcast, please visit www.insight-management.orgCopies of James Wycherley's book Transforming Insight: the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams can be purchased direct from www.transforming-insight.comDisclaimerThe Transforming Insight podcast is published by the Insight Management Academy and produced by Zorbiant.All rights reserved.   

上週，大S徐熙媛因病離世，消息來得突然，讓許多人震驚又錯愕，甚至一時難以接受。社群媒體上湧現無數悼念貼文，許多人說：「明明素未謀面，卻哭了好多天。」 為什麼某些名人的離世，會讓我們如此震撼？我們的悲傷，真的只是因為失去了他們，還是喚起了內心更深層的情感？ 在這集【心情Studio】，劉軒與Keira、還有《How to 人生學》的製作人 Li，一起聊聊這種「集體哀悼」的心理現象。 而這份哀傷，是不是能讓我們重新看見自己在意的人、珍惜的事，甚至回頭思考，在這一生中，我們想要活出怎樣的自己？ -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

BLUE CAST Ep 511 - LaundReThis BLUE CAST Episode, Tuncay Kilickan talk with Salli Deighton from LaundRe.Salli Deighton is the Founder of LaundRe, the UK's first circular denim finishing hub. LaundRe transforms unsold denim stocks, enables nearshore finishing in flexible quantities, development workshops and supports fast, responsible denim drops to meet the demands of a rapidly changing retail landscape.   With over 25 years of experience consulting for brands like Wrangler, Fat Face, Marks & Spencer, and ASOS, Salli has been a leader in driving sustainability within the global denim industry. LaundRe's expert team is united by a shared passion for creating positive change the UK, helping brands reduce their waste, carbon footprint and achieve circularity on shore.Tuncay Kilickan - Highly respected Industry figure, having cut his teeth at Turkish giant ISKO spanning 20 years. Most recently Tuncay was part of R&D team of ISKO. Tuncay has a number of patents under his name. No doubt most of us have worn fabrics developed by him and his team. Tuncay takes on the Head of Global Business Development - Denim at LENZING.  @carvedinblue  @tencel_usa   #tenceldenim #tencel #Circularity  #circulareconomy   BLUE CAST by TENCEL™ / CARVED IN BLUE®    A podcast series created Lenzing's TENCEL™ Denim team. Each month, they will host an in-depth talk with a special guest working in the industry or on the fringes of the denim community. Listen for discussions on sustainability, career trajectories, personal denim memories and more.   Find us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @carvedinblue. And get in touchFollowSpotify 

This week: Innovation Forum's Niamh Campbell and Ian Welsh highlight the upcoming sustainable apparel and textiles conference (Amsterdam, 29th-30th April), featuring thought leaders from leading brands including ASOS, Adidas and Burberry. From actionable strategies for decarbonisation to scaling circularity initiatives, they preview some of the key conference sessions and talk about how to get involved.   Plus: some insights from the 2024 apparel conference from Aldi Sud's Hasan Uz Zaman, who discusses the company's approach to addressing human rights risks within a global supply chain. He highlights Aldi Sud's commitment to consumer accountability and ethical sourcing, through social auditing and transparency.   Host: Ian Welsh

In dieser Episode des Weihnachtspodcasts mit Florian Heinemann besprechen wir zunächst die jüngste Übernahme von About You durch Zalando, doch unser Hauptaugenmerk liegt darauf, welche Auswirkungen dieser Zusammenschluss auf die Wettbewerbslandschaft im Bereich Mode und Beauty haben könnte, besonders im Kontext der Konkurrenz durch Shein. Wir analysieren die bisherigen Erfolge von Shein im Bereich Eigenmarken, wobei unser besonderes Interesse der Marke SheGlam gewidmet ist, die einen bemerkenswerten Aufstieg im Beauty-Segment verzeichnet hat. Florian und ich reflektieren über die strategischen Überlegungen hinter der Fusion und diskutieren die Frage, ob die Corporate Synergien schnell genug realisiert werden können, um einen wettbewerbsfähigen Vorteil gegen Unternehmen wie Shein zu schaffen. Wir stellen fest, dass die Integration des neuen Unternehmens Zeit benötigt und eine generelle Koordination und Abstimmung notwendig sein wird, damit die angestrebten Effekte sich tatsächlich entfalten können. Im Verlauf des Gesprächs beleuchten wir auch die Herausforderungen und Chancen auf dem europäischen Markt. Am Beispiel von Marken wie ASOS und Boohoo wird deutlich, dass diese Unternehmen in den letzten Jahren stark an Marktanteilen und Kunden verloren haben. Wir erörtern, ob Zalando und About You angesichts dieser Entwicklungen tatsächlich in der Lage sind, einen echten europäischen Player zu etablieren, und ob es klug wäre, aktiv auf Märkte wie den britischen zuzugehen. Ein weiterer spannender Aspekt unseres Austausches ist die Entwicklung von SheGlam und das Potenzial dieser Marke, sich im hart umkämpften Beauty-Markt zu behaupten. Wir sind beeindruckt von der rasanten Skalierung und dem Erfolg, den SheGlam innerhalb kürzester Zeit erreicht hat. Gemeinsam diskutieren wir die Möglichkeiten, die moderne Marketingansätze, insbesondere Social Media, bieten, um eine starke Markenpräsenz und Kundennähe zu schaffen. Zum Schluss wagen wir einige Prognosen für das Jahr 2025. Wir beleuchten unter anderem die Position von Apple und die Frage, ob wir den Höhepunkt der Apple-Dominanz bereits erreicht haben. Des Weiteren diskutieren wir die potenziellen Entwicklungen bei Zalando und die Möglichkeit von Bitcoin als Reservewährung in den USA. Wir schließen die Episode mit einem Ausblick auf kommende Themen und den Wunsch, im nächsten Jahr die Frequenz unserer Podcast-Episoden zu erhöhen. Partner in der Folge: https://linktr.ee/kassenzone Community: https://kassenzone.de/discord Feedback zum Podcast? Mail an alex@kassenzone.de Disclaimer: https://www.kassenzone.de/disclaimer/ Kassenzone” wird vermarktet von Podstars by OMR. Du möchtest in “Kassenzone” werben? Dann https://podstars.de/kontakt/?utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=shownotes_kassenzone Alexander Graf: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandergraf/ https://twitter.com/supergraf Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KassenzoneDe/ Blog: https://www.kassenzone.de/ E-Commerce Buch 2019: https://amzn.eu/d/5Adc1ZH Plattformbuch 2024: https://amzn.eu/d/1tAk82E

In dieser Episode unseres Sonntagspodcasts nehmen wir die potenziellen nächsten Deals von About You und Zalando unter die Lupe, nachdem wir in der letzten Folge deren Geschäfte detailliert analysiert haben. Ich reflektiere über das umfangreiche Feedback, das ich bezüglich unserer letzten Diskussion erhalten habe, insbesondere zu den Herausforderungen, die sich für Otto und dessen Zukunftsperspektiven ergeben. Wir schauen uns heute die Situation von ASOS, Boohoo und Revolve an, Unternehmen, die im aktuellen Marktumfeld vor großen Herausforderungen stehen. Die Daten und Angebote dieser Unternehmen haben wir mithilfe von verschiedenen AI-Tools analysiert. Mein erster Eindruck von ASOS war ernüchternd: Die Anzahl aktiver Kunden sinkt, der Umsatz schrumpft und die Verluste steigen. Es war einst ein führendes Unternehmen in der Fashionindustrie, das für seine trendbewussten Eigenmarken bekannt war, jedoch hat es sich zunehmend in ein Discount-Modell verwandelt. Dies führt uns zur Überlegung, ob ASOS für Zalando oder About You ein attraktives Übernahmeziel sein könnte, was sich jedoch durch die stark sinkenden Umsätze und eine abnehmende Kundenbasis als problematisch herausstellt. Ein zentrales Thema ist die schwindende Relevanz traditioneller E-Commerce-Modelle im Angesicht von neuen Marktteilnehmern wie SHEIN, die sich durch Schnelligkeit und Preisanpassungen auszeichnen. Ich bespreche die verschiedenen finanziellen Kennzahlen, die darauf hindeuten, dass ASOS und Boohoo Schwierigkeiten haben, sich an die veränderten Marktbedingungen anzupassen. In Anbetracht der stagnierenden Performance und der Abhängigkeit von Verkaufsrabatten stellt sich die Frage, ob eine Akquisition noch sinnvoll wäre, da es sich um ein degenerierendes Geschäftsmodell handelt. Wir stellen auch die Effizienz von Boohoo in Frage, das ähnliche Herausforderungen durchlebt. Ich bringe zur Sprache, dass die Marke ursprünglich mit niedrigeren Preisen und einer klaren Zielgruppe groß wurde, jedoch jetzt gegen die Übermacht von SHEIN kämpfen muss. Beide Unternehmen zeigen einen sinkenden Umsatz und wir diskutieren die Gründe dafür sowie die Perspektiven, die sie haben, um sich in diesem hart umkämpften Markt zu behaupten. Der Blick auf Revolve gestaltet sich differenzierter. Revolve positioniert sich im höherpreisigen Segment und erreicht ein aktives Kundenvolumen, das für den US-Markt relativ gering ist, jedoch eine gewisse Stabilität zeigt. Ich führe die relativ hohen Warenkorberlöse und die Abhängigkeit von Vollpreisverkäufen als Wettbewerbsvorteile an, die das Unternehmen von ASOS und Boohoo unterscheiden. Dennoch stellen wir fest, dass die Bewertung von Revolve im Vergleich zu ASOS und Boohoo sehr hoch ist, was Bedenken aufwirft, ob diese Bewertung langfristig gerechtfertigt bleibt. Partner in der Folge: https://linktr.ee/kassenzone Community: https://kassenzone.de/discord Feedback zum Podcast? Mail an alex@kassenzone.de Disclaimer: https://www.kassenzone.de/disclaimer/ Kassenzone” wird vermarktet von Podstars by OMR. Du möchtest in “Kassenzone” werben? Dann https://podstars.de/kontakt/?utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=shownotes_kassenzone Alexander Graf: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandergraf/ https://twitter.com/supergraf Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KassenzoneDe/ Blog: https://www.kassenzone.de/ E-Commerce Buch 2019: https://amzn.eu/d/5Adc1ZH Plattformbuch 2024: https://amzn.eu/d/1tAk82E

In dieser Episode des Sonntagspodcasts zur Plattformökonomie analysiere ich gemeinsam mit Karo den überraschenden Kauf von About You durch Zalando. Wir beginnen damit, unsere Gedanken zu diesem Deal, welcher uns etwas unvorbereitet getroffen hat, und diskutieren die möglichen Auswirkungen auf den E-Commerce-Markt. Der negative Blick auf diese Transaktion, insbesondere auf Twitter, bringt eine Diskussion über Aktienkurse und Investorenstimmung auf. Ich offenbare, dass trotz meiner persönlichen Enttäuschung über die Performance meiner Investitionen, die Grundlage des Kaufes durchaus als positiv angesehen werden kann. Karo und ich reflektieren auch die strategischen Überlegungen hinter Zalandos Entscheidung und diskutieren potenzielle Synergieeffekte, wie Kostenersparnisse im Logistikbereich und verstärktes Markenportfolio. Wir wenden uns dann der zentralen Frage zu, ob das neue Unternehmen stark genug ist, um gegen aufstrebende Wettbewerber wie Shein zu bestehen. Beide sind sich einig, dass Zalando und About You ansprechende Ansätze für die Zielgruppenansprache bieten, aber festgestellt wird, dass es an Kreativität und Innovationskraft in der Markenentwicklung mangelt. Unser Gedankenaustausch bringt verschiedene Perspektiven zu Tage, einschließlich der Risiken und Herausforderungen, vor denen Zalando und About You stehen könnten – besonders bei der Bemühung, die dynamische Konkurrenz zu übertreffen. Die Diskussion führt uns schließlich zur Analyse der Synergieeffekte und zu der Frage, ob eine Übernahme von ASOS oder anderen attraktiven Marktplätzen sinnvoll wäre. Wir sehen zahlreiche Möglichkeiten zur Konsolidierung im europäischen E-Commerce-Markt und bewerten die Risiken, die mit solchen Akquisitionen verbunden sind. Dabei sind wir uns einig, dass der Fokus darauf liegen sollte, wie diese Marken strategisch in das Portfolio von Zalando integriert werden können. Ich bringe auch meine Sorgen bezüglich der Dynamik im Marktplatzgeschäft und den sich verändernden Konsumgewohnheiten ein und schließe mit der Hoffnung auf eine sich bietende Gelegenheit für überproportionales Wachstum der neuen Unternehmensstruktur. Partner in der Folge: https://linktr.ee/kassenzone Community: https://kassenzone.de/discord Feedback zum Podcast? Mail an alex@kassenzone.de Disclaimer: https://www.kassenzone.de/disclaimer/ Kassenzone” wird vermarktet von Podstars by OMR. Du möchtest in “Kassenzone” werben? Dann https://podstars.de/kontakt/?utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=shownotes_kassenzone Alexander Graf: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandergraf/ https://twitter.com/supergraf Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KassenzoneDe/ Blog: https://www.kassenzone.de/ E-Commerce Buch 2019: https://amzn.eu/d/5Adc1ZH Plattformbuch 2024: https://amzn.eu/d/1tAk82E

414: Wir sprechen über den deutschen Start-up Börsen Deal des Jahres: Am Mittwoch, dem 11. Dezember 2024, berichtet Zalando (Market Cap: 9 Milliarden Euro), dass sie den Wettbewerber About You übernehmen. About You ging mit einem Börsenwert von rund 3,9 Milliarden Euro im Juni 2021 die Börse und wird jetzt mit einer Bewertung von 1,1 Milliarden Euro von der Börse genommen. Entdecke die Angebote unserer Werbepartner auf doppelgaenger.io/werbung. Vielen Dank! Philipp Glöckler und Philipp Klöckner sprechen heute über: (00:00:00) Marktreaktionen (00:08:50) Kartellrecht (00:19:55) Was sind die Synergien? (00:33:00) Otto (00:43:30) Was macht Tarek Müller in fünf Jahren? Shownotes Doppelgänger Folge 407 am 20. November noch über Revolve, About You und Zalando OMR Podcast Sonderfolge am 11. Dezember zum Zalando-About-You-Plan mit Philipp Westermeyer, Pip Klöckner, Flo Heinemann und Alex Graf Philipp Glöcker's Predicition für 2023: Bestseller kauft About You, ASOS und Zalando und nimmt sie von der Börse

Hello and welcome to the NotACast, the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire! In this special episode, we talk about how Season 4 of Game of Thrones wrapped up the ASOS material and talk about how we would have adapted A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. Thanks for listening to our episodes on A Storm of Swords! We'll be taking next week off, but after that, we're jumping headfirst into book four, everyone's favorite, A Feast for Crows.  Emmett's twitter: twitter.com/PoorQuentyn Manu's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ManuclearBomb  Manu's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ManuclearBomb Our patreon: www.patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF Our merch store: https://notacastasoiaf.threadless.com     Our twitter: twitter.com/NotACastASOIAF   Our facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/289889118235797/   Our youtube page: www.youtube.com/channel/UCmmDfPdG…iew_as=subscriber   Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notacastasoiaf/ 

This show from last year was one of the most popular episodes of the past year. And it's also extremely relevant right now, given all of the PBM (pharmacy benefit manager) goings-on, as well as ongoing litigation like the J&J lawsuit, etc. Listen to the show with Julie Selesnick (EP428) for more on that one. For a full transcript of this episode, click here. If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter to be a member of the Relentless Tribe. Also, Brian Reid (EP456) in the episode from a couple of weeks ago. And he talks about how Mark Cuban's way of communicating and framing some of the issues with the big PBMs and just all of the perverse incentives in the drug supply chain. He says this way of communicating is “the chef's kiss.” So, besides the insights here that follow being relevant in and of themselves, there's also some lessons just in how those issues are teed up and communicated that we all can learn from. CEOs and CFOs … hey, this show is for you. Let's start here: What do all of these numbers have in common: $140,000, $3 million, $35 million, and $3 billion? These are all actual examples of how much employers, unions, and some public entities saved on healthcare benefits for themselves and their employees. The roadmap to saving 25% on pharmacy spend and/or 15% on total cost of care in ways that improve employee health and satisfaction always begins when one thing happens. There's one vital first step. That first step is CEOs and/or CFOs or their equivalents roll up their sleeves and get involved in healthcare benefits. Why can't much happen without you, CEOs and CFOs? Here's the IRL: In 2023, the healthcare industry has been financialized. There is a whole financial layer in between your company and its healthcare benefits. And unless the C-suite is involved here and bringing their financial acumen and organizational willpower to the equation, your company and your employees are currently paying hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of dollars too much and doing so within a business model that deeply exacerbates inequities. There are people out there who are very strategically taking wild advantage of a situation where CEOs/CFOs fear anything to do with healthcare in the title and don't do their normal level of due diligence. You think it's an accident that this whole space got so “complicated”? HR needs your help. Bottom line, if you are a CEO or CFO and you do not know everything that Mark Cuban and Ferrin Williams talk about on the pod today … wow, are you getting shellacked. Mark Cuban uses a different word. Healthcare benefits are, after all, for most companies the second biggest line-item expense after payroll. But don't despair here, because all of this information is really and truly actionable. Others out there are cutting zeros off of their spend and actually doing it in ways that are a total win for employees as well. My guest today, Mark Cuban, is a CEO, after all; and when he looked into it, it took him T-minus ten minutes to figure out just the order of magnitude that his “trusted” benefits consultants and PBM and ASOs (administrative services only) and others were extracting from his business. He pushed back. So can you. But just another reason to dig into that financial layer wrapping around your employee health benefits right now, you might get sued by your employees. Below is an ad currently being circulated on LinkedIn by class action attorneys recruiting employee plan members to sue their employers for ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) violations. It's the same attorneys, by the way, from those 401(k) class action lawsuits. I've talked to a few CEOs and CFOs who are scrambling to get ahead of that. You might want to consider doing so as well. Now, for my HR professional listeners, considering that some of what Mark Cuban says in the pod that follows is indeed a little spicy, let me just recognize that the struggle is real. There are multiple competing priorities out there in the real world, for sure. And bottom line, because of those multiple competing priorities out there in the real world, it's really vital that everybody work together up and down the organization in alignment. Lauren Vela talks a lot about these realities here in episode 406. This is a longer show than normal, but it's also like a show and a half. Mark Cuban talks not only about his work with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, which is a company that buys drugs direct from manufacturers and sells them for cost plus 15%, a dispensing fee, and shipping. It's kind of crazy how so often that price is cheaper, sometimes considerably cheaper, than the price that plan members would have paid using their insurance—and the price that the plan is currently paying the PBM. Most Relentless Health Value Tribe members (ie, regular listeners of this show) will already know that, but what is also fascinating that Mark talks about is what he's doing with his own businesses and the Mavericks on other fronts, like dealing with hospital prices. In this show, we also talk the language of indie pharmacies, fee-only benefits consultants, TPAs (third-party administrators), PBMs, and providers doing direct contracting. There are, in fact, entities out there trying to do the right thing; and Mark acknowledges that. Ferrin Williams, PharmD, MBA, who is also my guest today, is chief pharmacy officer at Scripta and an expert in pharmacy benefits. She adds some great points and some context to this conversation. Scripta is partnering with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs. Scripta has a neat Med Mapper tool and also services to help employees find the lowest costs for their prescriptions. If you are a self-insured employer, for sure, check out Scripta. Here are links to other shows that you should listen to now if you are inspired to take action. I would recommend the shows with Paul Holmes (EP397); Dan Mendelson (EP385); Andreas Mang (EP419); Rob Andrews (EP415); Cora Opsahl (EP372); Lauren Vela (EP406); Peter Hayes (EP346); Gloria Sachdev, PharmD, and Chris Skisak, PhD (EP390); and Mike Thompson (EP389). Also Mark Cuban mentions in this show the beverage distributor L&F Distributors. Thanks to Ge Bai, Andreas Mang, Lauren Vela, Andrew Gordon, Andrew Williams, Cora Opsahl, Kevin Lyons, Pat Counihan, David Dierk, Connor Dierk, John Herrick, Helen Pfister, Kristin Begley, AJ Loiacono, and Joey Dizenhouse for your help preparing for this interview. Also mentioned in this episode are Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company; Scripta Insights; Julie Selesnick; Brian Reid; Paul Holmes; Dan Mendelson; Rob Andrews; Peter Hayes; Gloria Sachdev, PharmD; Chris Skisak, PhD; Mike Thompson; and Scott Conard, MD. You can learn more at Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company and Scripta Insights. You can also connect with Scripta and Ferrin on LinkedIn.   Mark Cuban has been a natural businessman since the age of 12. Selling garbage bags door to door, the seed was planted early on for what would eventually become long-term success. After graduating from Indiana University—where he briefly owned the most popular bar in town—Mark moved to Dallas. After a dispute with an employer who wanted him to clean instead of closing an important sale, Mark created MicroSolutions, a computer consulting service. He went on to later sell MicroSolutions in 1990 to CompuServe. In 1995, Mark and longtime friend Todd Wagner came up with an internet-based solution to not being able to listen to Hoosiers basketball games out in Texas. That solution was Broadcast.com—streaming audio over the internet. In just four short years, Broadcast.com (then Audionet) would be sold to Yahoo! Since his acquisition of the Dallas Mavericks in 2000, Mark has overseen the Mavs competing in the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history in 2006—and becoming NBA World Champions in 2011. Mark first appeared as a “Shark” on the ABC show Shark Tank in 2011, becoming the first ever to live Tweet a TV show. He has been a star on the hit show ever since and is an investor in an ever-growing portfolio of small businesses. Mark is the best-selling author of How to Win at the Sport of Business. He holds multiple patents, including a virtual reality solution for vestibular-induced dizziness and a method for counting objects on the ground from a drone. He is the executive producer of movies that have been nominated for seven Academy Awards: Good Night and Good Luck and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Mark established Sharesleuth, a research and investigation Web site to uncover fraud in financial markets, and endowed the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents, an effort to fight patent trolls. Mark gives back to the communities that promoted his success through the Mark Cuban Foundation. The Foundation's AI Bootcamps Initiative hosts free Introduction to AI Bootcamps for low-income high schoolers, starting in Dallas. Mark also saved and annually funds the Dallas Saint Patrick's Day Parade, the largest parade in Dallas and a city institution. In January 2022, he started Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company as an effort to disrupt the drug industry and to help end ridiculous drug prices because every American should have access to safe, affordable medicines. Ferrin Williams, PharmD, MBA, is chief pharmacy officer of Scripta. With 15+ years' experience in the pharmacy industry, Ferrin brings a unique perspective to Scripta that spans the retail pharmacy, pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), and broker/consulting sectors. Her expertise ranges from pharmacy operations and services to innovative clinical programs, pharmacy audit, alternative payer funding, and specialty drugs. As chief pharmacy officer, Ferrin leads the company's clinical strategies organization responsible for devising innovative cost-containment strategies for prescription drugs, ensuring Scripta clients, members, and their providers are provided with best-in-class clinical insights and tools. Ferrin earned her bachelor's, Doctor of Pharmacy, and MBA degrees from the University of Oklahoma.   06:29 What was Mark Cuban's own journey as a self-insured employer with Cost Plus Drug Company? 07:44 What did Mark find when he decided to go through and look through his company's benefit program? 09:12 “When you think it through, you start to realize that money is being spent primarily by your sickest employees.” —Mark 10:02 How do you get CEOs and CFOs of self-insured employers to realize that their sickest employees are the ones subsidizing their checks? 13:00 What is the role of insurance in healthcare? 14:30 “If you can't convince them, confuse them and hide it.” —Mark 15:24 The reality behind getting a rebate check. 16:21 Why are rebates going away, and why isn't that changing PBM earnings? 19:05 How do you get CEOs and CFOs to dig into their benefits plan? 20:59 Does morally abhorrent move the needle? 21:33 “What we're trying to do is just simplify the [healthcare] industry.” —Mark 24:19 What's been changing in consumer behavior? 25:04 “Transparency is a huge part of building that trust.” —Ferrin 25:19 Why CEOs and CFOs really have the power to change healthcare. 32:29 What are Cost Plus Drugs' plans to expand? 39:21 Where is the future of the prescription drug market going? 42:09 What will happen to the prescription drug market in 10 to 20 years? 48:40 The wake-up call self-insured employers should be acknowledging now. 52:02 Where is the real change in the healthcare industry going to come from?   You can learn more at Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company and Scripta Insights. You can also connect with Scripta and Ferrin on LinkedIn.   @mcuban and Ferrin Williams provide advice for #CEOs and #CFOs of #selfinsuredemployers on our #healthcarepodcast. #healthcare #podcast #digitalhealth #valuebasedcare #healthcareoutcomes   Recent past interviews: Click a guest's name for their latest RHV episode! Rob Andrews (Encore! EP415), Brian Reid, Dr Beau Raymond, Brendan Keeler, Claire Brockbank, Cora Opsahl, Dan Nardi, Dr Spencer Dorn (EP451), Marilyn Bartlett, Dr Marty Makary  

Send us a textWelcome to the PRmoment Podcast.Today we're chatting to Nikki Collins. Nikki launched Earnies 1 year ago. She previously worked at W Communications for 9 years and before that at Frank. Earnies has a fee income of £1m and clients include Taco Bell, Moet Hennessy, ASOS, Typhoo and Meatliquor.The big news is: The PRmoment Awards are now open. You can download the entry from and take a look at this year's updated categories on the pr awards micro site.Also,thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors the PRCA.Here's a summary of what Nikki and PRmoment founder spoke about:3 mins Consumer PR is doing OK. But it's not an easy market. Most consumer PR firms are either flat or circa 5-8% up year on year. Earnies has put on £1m revenue in 12 months from a standing start and won the likes of Taco Bell, Moet Hennessy, ASOS, Typhoo and Meatliquor. It seems to be outperforming the market when it comes to client acquisition. How come?“Be it with the media, be it with clients, we're constantly trying to meet people face to face.”“We hired a creative director from day one. Which is quite a buck power move from day one. That's given us creative firepower.”“It (taking investment) allowed us to turbo charge our growth from day one. It allowed us to make investment hires. Do high profile pro bono work.”8 mins How many leads has Earnies had from The Romans?“The bigger agencies and the legacy agencies, want to diversify a lot of what they do…to incorporate different services. For us we're focussed on earned media and coverage.”“I believe in the art of PR and what that means.”13 mins How is the consumer PR market at the moment?“To have gone from zero to over £1 m in a year, it feels like it's in a really positive place.”14 mins Nikki talks about how she's done an average of 2 pitches or tissues sessions a week for the last 12 months.“I've tried to re-callibrate what a pitch looks like for us.”“Our role is to look at the stories our clients want to tell.”“We always do a tissue session, that is mandatory.”19 mins In a pitch process how deep do Earnies go in the scope of creative ideas and articulation of those ideas?“It's a numbers game…We have so many pitches going on. Pitching is not a stressful process for us. We'll do everything we can in the time that we have, we're not up until midnight…if we lose something don't get grumpy about it, we move on. We've probably got another pitch tomorrow.”21 mins Who's got equity in Earnies, Joe Sinclair or The Romans?“We don't share any of their resources, we don't use any of their creative or their account team.”23 mins Have Earnies ever pitched against The Romans?24 mins Nikki talks about Earnies work with Killed Women, which recently won an ESG Award.28 mins Why did Nikki decide to launch her own biz when she came back from mat leave?

✨  Caddy Davies, Founder and Director @ Caddy Collabs (prev. Asos, Nasty Gal and In The Style)☁️  Behind the scenes of fashion PR and collaborations☁️  Building and maintaining strong industry relationships to open doors for future career opportunities☁️  Mastering collaborations between influencers and brands to drive deeper brand engagement☁️  How to adapt your skills to different areas of marketing, from PR to collaborations, to increase your marketability☁️  Insights into the early stages of starting your own agencyJoin the Sky Society Women in Marketing private LinkedIn group.Follow Sky Society on Instagram @skysociety.co and TikTok @skysociety.co

Hello and welcome to the NotACast, the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire! In this special episode, we look back on everything we loved about the first three books of ASOIAF and look ahead to everything we're excited to cover in the next two. Thanks for listening to our episodes on A Storm of Swords! Before jumping into A Feast for Crows, we're going to be releasing a couple of special episodes. Next time on the NotACast: we talk about how Season 4 of Game of Thrones wrapped up the ASOS material and talk about how we would have adapted A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. Emmett's twitter: twitter.com/PoorQuentyn Manu's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ManuclearBomb  Manu's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ManuclearBomb Our patreon: www.patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF Our merch store: https://notacastasoiaf.threadless.com     Our twitter: twitter.com/NotACastASOIAF   Our facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/289889118235797/   Our youtube page: www.youtube.com/channel/UCmmDfPdG…iew_as=subscriber   Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notacastasoiaf/ 

In today's episode I talk to Faisal Khokhar.Faisal is a leading Men's Coach and International Speaker.He is known for his groundbreaking 5 FRACTURES™ framework, which has transformed thousands of men, especially those with the Nice-Guy Syndrome, to reclaim their confidence, ignite masculine charisma, and achieve dating success after rejection, divorce, or heartbreak.He has spoken on stages from London to Australia, sharing his insights with industry leaders and training thousands of individuals from European ministers, singers, entrepreneurs to investors and companies such as Amazon, Asos and many more.He also collaborates with world-renowned figures, such as Tony Robbins.Faisal helps individuals uncover the self-sabotaging patterns that destroy attraction, ruin relationships, and block intimacy.In a world where many men feel invisible, isolated, and overlooked, He is dedicated to helping them stand tall and become the kind of men who are truly admired, desired, and respected.In our discussion, we explore the dynamics of attraction and the roles men and women play in relationships, with the focus on men's issues such as insecurity, lack of self esteem and the feelings of inadequacy.We talk about the difficulties that are faced in finding their position in society and successfully finding a compatible and loving partner. Faisal highlights the importance of understanding these differences and embracing them, in order to have genuine connections.He explains how encouraging individuals to break free from societal expectations and to accept the power of their authentic selves, leads to a society that has deeper and more meaningful connections.Faisal shares practical insights on cultivating compassion, attraction and standing up for who we are, through communication and emphasising self-awareness as a key to creating fulfilling every day and romantic relationships.For more information on Faisal Khokhar visit https://faisk.comFor more information on Mimi Novic visit https://miminovic.co.uk

With Rom in Sidney this week, it's another intercontinental episode of the Wolf & Owl. We're talking… food spills, old school ASOS, more thirst traps, enviously cool celebrities, the wonders of lift lighting, deleting Instagram, television heydays and an Eastenders watch-along, pornstar encounters, filming a Bellow Deck promo, an update on Rom's visit to New Zealand, pedicure preparations and an awkward airport security confrontation. For questions or comments, please email us at wolfowlpod@gmail.com - we'd love to hear from you. Instagram - @wolfowlpod TikTok - @wolfowlpodcast YouTube - www.youtube.com/WolfandOwlPodcast Merch & Mailing List - https://wolfandowlpod.com A Mighty Ranga Production For sales and sponsorship enquiries: HELLO@KEEPITLIGHTMEDIA.COM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join us on the Kick Your Boots Up Podcast for the last episode of Season Two as we sit down with Laura Young, President of Brighton Collectables, Inc. and Leegin, and a proud graduate of Southern Methodist University-Cox School of Business. Discover Laura's journey from Tyler, Texas, to leading major brands in the fashion industry, and hear her insights on how she navigated her path to success. Plus, Laura shares her best piece of business advice for aspiring leaders. Don't miss this inspiring episode filled with valuable lessons from one of the top executives in the industry.

Tonight's Guest WeatherBrain is no stranger to the show.  He is a certified consulting meteorologist and a certified Broadcast Meteorologist with a strong focus on weather history.  He's a weather historian and author known for his book "Too Near For Dreams:  The Story of Cleveland Abbe, America's First Weather Forecaster".  He also writes "Retrospect", a regular feature for WeatherWise Magazine, which highlights notable weather events and their impacts in history.  Sean Potter, it's great to see you again and thanks for coming by and chatting with us on this week's episode. Our email officer Jen is continuing to handle the incoming messages from our listeners. Reach us here: email@weatherbrains.com. "Cracking the Code" that the US Weather Bureau used in the late 19th Century (04:45) Revisiting March 1932 tornado outbreak and Weather Bureau protocol (51:45) Reassurances that ASOS data is still being ingested into Asheville/Back-up sites (01:00:20) How much of the Code was shared with the public/Was it a novelty?  (01:02:00) Invest 94L (Atlantic basin) discussion as of 10/14 (01:20:30) The Astronomy Outlook with Tony Rice (No segment this week) This Week in Tornado History With Jen (01:18:40) E-Mail Segment (01:19:42) and more! Web Sites from Episode 978: SeanPotter.com "Too Near for Dreams: The Story of Cleveland Abbe, America's First Weather Forecaster" by Sean Potter Picks of the Week: Sean Potter - Emotional John Morales updates on Hurricane Milton James Aydelott - Kyle Benne on X: Aurora photo in Arizona Jen Narramore - Michael Lowry on X: Peter Dodge Tribute Rick Smith - Damage Assessment Toolkit Neil Jacobs - Out Troy Kimmel - Foghorn Kim Klockow-McClain - Aurora Chasing Cheat Sheet Bill Murray - Foghorn James Spann - End of an Era: Prioritizing Mental Health and Finding Balance The WeatherBrains crew includes your host, James Spann, plus other notable geeks like Troy Kimmel, Bill Murray, Rick Smith, James Aydelott, Jen Narramore, Dr. Neil Jacobs, and Dr. Kim Klockow-McClain. They bring together a wealth of weather knowledge and experience for another fascinating podcast about weather.

In this enlightening episode of Research Renaissance, Deborah Westphal speaks with Dr. Robert Vassar, a renowned neuroscientist and Director of the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease at Northwestern University. Dr. Vassar shares his personal journey into the field of Alzheimer's research, the evolution of diagnostic tools, and the latest technological breakthroughs in the fight against neurodegenerative diseases.Key Topics Covered:Dr. Vassar's Early Inspirations: Dr. Vassar shares his childhood fascination with science, the path that led him away from his dream of becoming an astronaut, and his ultimate decision to pursue biology and neuroscience.The Influence of Family: A deeply personal connection to Alzheimer's, driven by his mother's diagnosis in 1983, crystallized Dr. Vassar's purpose and career focus on researching this devastating disease.Advances in Alzheimer's Diagnosis: Dr. Vassar details how the process of diagnosing Alzheimer's has transformed from rudimentary memory tests in the 1980s to advanced tools like positron emission tomography (PET) scans and emerging blood biomarker technologies.The Role of Transgenic Mice in Alzheimer's Research: Dr. Vassar explains the development of Alzheimer's disease transgenic mice and their critical role in understanding the disease's pathology and developing new treatments.Mentorship and Scientific Thinking: Insights from his postdoctoral experience with Nobel Laureate Richard Axel taught Dr. Vassar methodical scientific thinking, a key lesson he now passes on to his mentees.Exciting New Therapies on the Horizon: The potential of anti-tau therapies, antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs), and microglial cell research as promising avenues in Alzheimer's treatment are explored.Super-Aging Research: Dr. Vassar discusses Northwestern's unique research on “superagers,” elderly individuals with superior cognitive function, and the factors that may contribute to their resilience against dementia.The Importance of Multidisciplinary Approaches: From molecular studies to societal impacts, Dr. Vassar emphasizes the value of combining pharmacological and non-pharmacological methods in understanding and treating Alzheimer's disease.Memorable Quotes:"My purpose in life crystallized when my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I knew I had to study this disease to try to stop it.""The future of Alzheimer's treatment will rely on prevention. We need to catch the disease before symptoms even begin.""Our study participants are the real heroes. Without their altruistic contributions, we couldn't make any progress."Listeners interested in supporting Alzheimer's research or participating in studies at Northwestern can visit the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease website for more information. The center welcomes volunteers for clinical trials and other research initiatives.For more updates on cutting-edge research in brain science, subscribe to Research Renaissance and visit the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust website at tofflertrust.org. Share your thoughts, suggestions, or inquiries by contacting us through the website.To learn more about the breakthroughs discussed in this episode and to support ongoing research, visit our website at tofflertrust.org. Technical Podcast Support by Jon Keur at Wayfare Recording Co.

Last time Cora Opsahl was on the show, Michelle Bernabe, RN, KAT, wrote a comment on LinkedIn I thought encapsulated the gist of it all so well. She wrote, “[Cora] first became a mentor/ally through Relentless Health Value episode 372. … It opened a doorway to a whole group of very relentless people.” For a full transcript of this episode, click here. If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to subscribe to the free weekly newsletter to be a member of the Relentless Tribe. I want to start there because it's a nice comment, but it's also a call to action. Think about this and think about it not in the context of being a “stakeholder” and not in the context of being an organization but in the context of humans who work at these various organizations who, combined, comprise the bucket of companies that we lumped together using the old stakeholder word. All of these individuals are making choices every day, and all of these choices, they could be made with integrity and with the patient or member in mind … or not. In real life, right now, the overwhelming majority of members/patients in this country get their clinical care and the pleasure of paying for that care or drugs within the current ecosystem we have here in the USA. For any of us, or all of us who work within that traditional ecosystem, it is up to us to choose our own legacy here. It's probably why you listen to this show in the first place, actually. There are so many RHV (Relentless Health Value) listeners who are pushing for patients against the riptide that is the profit motives of the organization that they work for. It's hard. But yeah, it's all about finding our people and supporting each other. Okay, so let's get to the “between a rock and a hard place” portion of this discussion. Hospitals and ASOs (administrative services organizations)/carriers/TPAs (third-party administrators) often enter into or sometimes enter into what amounts to anticompetitive contracts with each other. Listen to episode 395 with Brennan Bilberry for the rundown on that one. But meanwhile, the CAA, the Consolidated Appropriations Act from 2021, holds employer plan sponsors accountable and responsible to ensure that plan assets are spent prudently, that costs paid are reasonable, and that there's no conflict of interest (COI). This is the definition of what a fiduciary is supposed to do, by the way—prudent, reasonable, and no COI. Anticompetitive contracts between a carrier and a hospital are the very definition of COI. And when that COI results in higher, maybe unreasonable, prices and non-prudent spend, well, plan sponsors are put between a rock and a hard place if they stick with their existing vendors. Rosa Novo from Miami-Dade County Public Schools put this really succinctly on a panel at a 32BJ event recently. She said what amounts to, I have no choice but to actually do the right thing here, for many reasons, but one of them is I do not look good in orange. She said, my personal butt is on the line here. And furthermore, who do class action lawsuits make look bad when their company or CEO or CFO are personally sued over conflicted benefits? See the Wells Fargo lawsuit, J&J lawsuit, etc. It sucks that employers or plan sponsors get put into this pickle by their own vendors. And that's what we're talking about today. This is a conversation that starts out talking about rates (ie, prices), edges into rights (ie, plan sponsor rights), and ends up all about power. And by the way, if you're a plan sponsor, especially in New York City, maybe doing the right thing here means hatching a plan to steer and tier in your benefit design, figuring out how to, for reals, help support the efforts of 32BJ to advantage pretty much every patient near and far. The pushback I often hear to doing something like this often involves the perception that plan members are too rich to care about reasonable prices, prudent plan spending, and COI. And yeah, to state the obvious, these same people are also sophisticated enough to smell a fine opportunity for a class action lawsuit; and also, they probably do care, as more and more studies suggest. Sorry if I just stumbled onto a sacred cow. Cora Opsahl, my guest today, is the director of the 32BJ Health Fund, serving over 200,000 folks. Their ability to kick NewYork-Presbyterian, a big, consolidated, very expensive hospital, out of their network in 2018 enabled them to offer maternity benefits for $40 in total out-of-pocket for members. And also, employees got their biggest raise ever; employers got a premium holiday and a 3% rate increase for a bunch of years after that; and yeah … this is where we start the conversation today. And yeah, it's a freakin' tangled web we weave; and this tale is a perfect case study of it. It makes me even more invested in remembering my own manifesto (that was episode 400) to ensure that I can feel good about what I personally have accomplished and what I have been a part of and the net impact of my own personal actions, since I, too, very often work in the belly of the beast. Furthermore, you will find links to a template health savings calculator for plan sponsors and also a template contract (again for plan sponsors) that 32BJ has made available. More on that in the show that follows. Also mentioned in this episode are 32BJ Benefit Funds; Michelle Bernabe, RN, KAT; Brennan Bilberry; Rosa Novo; Marilyn Bartlett; Cynthia Fisher; Zack Cooper, PhD; Claire Brockbank; Andreas Mang; Chris Deacon; Elizabeth Mitchell; and Purchaser Business Group on Health.   You can learn more at health.32bjfunds.org and by following Cora on LinkedIn.   Cora Opsahl is the director of the 32BJ Health Fund, a self-insured Taft-Hartley benefit fund that sets comprehensive design parameters to ensure the 200,000 members and families of Service Employees International Union 32BJ have easy and sustained access to affordable, high-quality healthcare. Since becoming director of the Health Fund in 2021, Cora has prioritized a data-driven approach to healthcare, focusing on reducing trend; solving the affordability challenge on behalf of union members; and most important, keeping members at the center of every decision. Under her leadership, the 32BJ Health Fund has saved more than $35 million annually—which it has reinvested in new and better benefits, including the first fertility benefit for members—by removing NewYork-Presbyterian hospitals and physicians from its network, transitioning to a new pharmacy vendor and pharmacy group purchasing coalition, and establishing an expanded Centers of Excellence program. Most recently, Cora conducted an innovative medical request for proposal (RFP), stipulating that all finalists must have a signature-ready contract drafted by the Health Fund prior to award. By including the Health Fund–drafted contract in the RFP process, the Fund was able to negotiate an agreement that brought unprecedented visibility and increased accountability to the 32BJ Health Fund benefit. Cora is regarded as an expert in pharmacy benefit management and previously worked at Express Scripts, where she held a variety of roles, ranging from Medicare Part D to operations to strategy and acquisitions. She earned an MBA from Saint Louis University.   06:16 Why is it imperative for employers to do something differently when it comes to being plan sponsors? 09:22 How analyzing claims data allowed 32BJ Health Fund to reshape their benefit design. 12:09 What anticompetitive rights did 32BJ run into that limited 32BJ Health Fund from managing their benefit design? 14:12 How do these anticompetitive rights have quality implications as well as cost implications? 18:43 How did 32BJ Health Fund remove NewYork-Presbyterian from their network, and how much did it save 32BJ Health Fund per year? 19:46 What did the healthcare savings allow the unions and employers to do? 20:46 Study by Zack Cooper, PhD. 21:26 Why rising healthcare costs has pushed 32BJ Health Fund to move beyond benefit design to manage healthcare spend. 24:15 Why 32BJ Health Fund wants to control the contracting process. 26:00 EP419 with Andreas Mang. 27:18 What are 32BJ Health Fund's four non-negotiables? 33:17 Wall Street Journal article on health insurance contract. 35:30 Upcoming episode with Claire Brockbank. 36:14 What is the challenge that exists in our current healthcare environment? 37:43 Cora's advice on how to get high-quality healthcare at an affordable price.   You can learn more at health.32bjfunds.org and by following Cora on LinkedIn.   @CoraOpsahl discusses #fiduciaryresponsibility in #healthcare on our #healthcarepodcast. #podcast #financialhealth #primarycare #patientoutcomes #healthcareinnovation   Recent past interviews: Click a guest's name for their latest RHV episode! Dan Nardi, Dr Spencer Dorn (EP451), Marilyn Bartlett, Dr Marty Makary, Shawn Gremminger (Part 2), Shawn Gremminger (Part 1), Elizabeth Mitchell (Summer Shorts 9), Dr Will Shrank (Encore! EP413), Dr Amy Scanlan (Encore! EP402), Ashleigh Gunter, Dr Spencer Dorn (EP446)  

Hello and welcome to the NotACast, the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire! In this episode, our friend Grant joins us for the last and angstiest Jon chapter in the book, as he chooses his place on the Wall right before his brothers make it official by electing him as Lord Commander.  Next time: we climb up to the Eyrie for some shocking revelations in ASOS, Sansa VII!  Grant's twitter: https://x.com/heathen_king  Emmett's twitter: twitter.com/PoorQuentyn Manu's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ManuclearBomb  Manu's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ManuclearBomb Our patreon: www.patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF Our merch store: https://notacastasoiaf.threadless.com     Our twitter: twitter.com/NotACastASOIAF   Our facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/289889118235797/   Our youtube page: www.youtube.com/channel/UCmmDfPdG…iew_as=subscriber   Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notacastasoiaf/ 

She don't speak, but she remember... AND SO DOES OUR SPECIAL GUEST, PAT, who joins us to remember pretty much every single thing about the Freys that you didn't know you missed about their family! Come hang with us and our special guest for one of the best and mind-blowing chapters of ASOIAF Where to find Pat Pat's Reddit account and essays: https://www.reddit.com/user/ClankingDragonInn/ Sanrixian's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sanrixian  Sanrixian's Twitter: https://x.com/sanrixian Sanrixian's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/sanrixian   Kissed by Fire Podcast: https://x.com/kissedpodcast   Background music: "Right Behind You" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ---------- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: liesandarborgold.com Intro by Anton Langhage

A move by mega online retailers to charge for returns could push shoppers back in local bricks and mortar stores. Clothing giant ASOS, previously allowed people to return unwanted purchases for a full refund - not anymore. They'll be stung about eight New Zealand dollars unless they keep a minimum purchase value. Amazon is also charging a return fee and UK fashion retailer BooHoo is now charging for freight. Chris Wilkinson the Managing Director of retail strategy experts, First Retail Group spoke to Lisa Owen.

When Emma Westenberg landed the job directing the music video for Janelle Monae's track, PYNK, it opened a Narnia-like door to a whole new world of creative possibility. The video – which featured Monae wearing those iconic vulva trousers – went viral, clocking up more than 16M views to date, earning Emma both a Grammy and MTV Music Video Award-nomination, and perhaps best of all, being described as “a Queen” by Janelle herself.Since then, her career has accelerated in all directions—from a Super Bowl ad spot featuring Zoe Kravitz, to music videos for Troye Sivan, Princess Nokia and Rico Nasty, to commercial work for clients from ASOS to Vogue, to directing a feature starring celebrated Scottish actor, Ewan McGregor (OBE!) and his real-life daughter Clara in Bleeding Love—and it doesn't stop there!No matter what the scale and nature, Emma brings her distinctly witty and whimsical aesthetic to every project, and, in this beautifully candid episode, she talks us through some of the challenges, lessons and moments of magic along the way—from working with tricky collaborators under pressure, to the simple joy of making art for art's sake.“I think only the crazy ideas are the brilliant ones. I like things that are unexpected, or offbeat, or that rattle you in some way. You want art to do that, to show you something new or exciting” — Emma WestenbergFollow Emma @emma.westenbergEPISODE INSIGHTSHow perseverance and rising to the challenge can reap huge rewardsThe water-off-a-duck's-back mindset needed to stay focused and resilientWhy tapping back into the joy of art-making is essentialHow projects that feel chaotic in the making can turn out to be the best in the editThoughts on the episode? Drop us a DM @creativebloodworldEPISODE CREDITSEpisode hosted by Laura ConwayProduced by Scenery StudiosShow music by Ben Tarrant-BrownVideo by Nicola Collins

Sean Farrington takes a look how Apple's latest gadgets will feature all things AI. Plus we find out why ASOS has been getting a lot of backlash online.

Mutations affecting ion channels are the most common cause of 'applications for treatment' submitted to n-Lorem. These channels regulate the passage of essential electrically charged ions, like sodium, potassium, calcium, and chloride, into cells. Alas, ion channels pose a significant challenge in the ASO discovery process, as there is little room for error due to the need for highly allele-selective ASOs to achieve success. Let's 'dive into the channel' and explore the complexities of treating patients with ion channel mutations.Recently a report on one of our patients with an ion channel mutation was published in Endpoints News highlighting the power of our technology for these disorders. Check it out by clicking the link below.Endpoints News (endpts.com) A teenager faced constant seizures. Could a drug developed just for him stop them?Podcast Awards - The People's ChoiceSurvey – Patient Empowerment Program PodcastRegister for the 2024 Nano-rare Patient ColloquiumOn This Episode We Discuss:Defining Ion Channels and IonsHealth, Homeostasis, and Biological BufferingMultiple forms of the same geneMultiple Isoforms of Gene Product from the same geneNetwork redundancyIon Channels are different

Welcome to a huge soft-spoken ASMR haul of all the online shopping I did when I was under the weather. I'll share the jewelry I got from Hey Happiness, beach stuff I got from amazon, new swimwear, summer clothes, hair care, and the cutest bag from TikTok shop. I hope enjoy my medley of items featuring fabric sounds, packaging sounds, and gentle tapping. Youtube Video Version: https://youtu.be/ogLZRtWeAn8 Youtube ASMR Channel https://www.youtube.com/PetiteStacy

Hello and welcome to the NotACast, the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire! In this episode, Andrew from A Scene of Ice and Fire joins us for Arya Stark's last stand in Westeros, in which she regains Needle and says farewell to Sandor...for now, anyway. Next time: ASOS, Samwell IV, in which...remember Sam? He made it back! And now he has a whole new set of problems to deal with.   Andrew's twitter: https://twitter.com/MearnsPSA  Emmett's twitter: twitter.com/PoorQuentyn Manu's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ManuclearBomb  Manu's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ManuclearBomb Our patreon: www.patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF Our merch store: https://notacastasoiaf.threadless.com     Our twitter: twitter.com/NotACastASOIAF   Our facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/289889118235797/   Our youtube page: www.youtube.com/channel/UCmmDfPdG…iew_as=subscriber   Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notacastasoiaf/