Podcasts about bath iron works

Many studies have been conducted to determine the efficacy of Virtual Reality (VR) as an educational tool. Results indicate that learning in a VR environment leads to higher rates of retention and recall when compared to computer-based learning. These engaging and controlled environments also allow tradespeople to gain experience in a safe, and cost-effective manner while simultaneously developing requisite skills and muscle memory. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I sit down with Glen Hilt of Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, as we discuss how they are training the next generation of shipbuilders using this new, cutting-edge technology.

In this episode, The PR Maven® Podcast celebrates five years and congratulates Bob Shultz, president and chief financial officer at Puritan Medical Products, for having the most popular episode of the year. Nancy and Bob talk about how Puritan adapted during the COVID pandemic and how they are diversifying now that demand for COVID swabs has decreased. Nancy and Bob also talk about the value of having a finance background in a leadership position.   3:17 – Bob explains how Puritan adapted to the demand for testing swabs during the COVID pandemic.   7:39 – Bob talks about the growth at Puritan since he joined Puritan.   8:36 – Bob describes why he chose to come back to Maine.   10:14 – Bob shares how having a finance background has helped him in his role as president at Puritan.   14:43 – Bob talks about being on The PR Maven® Podcast.   15:47 – Bob explains how Puritan is diversifying as demand for COVID swabs has declined.   19:36 – Bob shares some resources he finds helpful.   Quote  “Doing whatever it takes to get it done. You can see that in everything that Puritan does and it is a differentiator. We are a company that is in the medical device business, so we have regulatory requirements that we need to meet, but the beauty of a company like Puritan is that we're nimble enough to be able to get things done that our customer needs done.” – Bob Shultz, president and chief financial officer at Puritan Medical Products    Links:   Cianbro: https://www.cianbro.com/   Bath Iron Works: https://gdbiw.com/   Grippy Tannins: https://www.grippytannins.com/   Benkay: https://sushiman.com/   3M: https://www.3m.com/   “StrengthsFinder 2.0”: https://www.amazon.com/StrengthsFinder-2-0-Tom-Rath/dp/159562015X   “Oh, the Places You'll Go!” by Dr. Seuss: https://www.amazon.com/Oh-Places-Youll-Dr-Seuss/dp/0679805273/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1PJJ1JG1UYUFQ&keywords=the+places+you+go+by+dr.+seuss&qid=1699551376&s=books&sprefix=the+places+you+go+by+dr.+suess+%2Cstripbooks%2C72&sr=1-1     Listen to Bob's first episode on The PR Maven® Podcast.     About the guest:      A 1990 graduate from Bowdoin with a major in economics and a minor in government, Bob Shultz started his career at Deloitte where he earned his certified public accountant (CPA) designation. After public accounting, Bob worked in a variety of leadership positions in both financial and operational capacities. These roles allowed him to excel as a business leader given the diversity of experiences. Bob has worked in organizations ranging from start-ups to global Fortune 100 companies and across diverse industries. Prior to joining Puritan, he was the division CFO of one of the largest global operating units of 3M Company.     At Puritan, Bob is currently the president and chief financial officer.In this role, he is responsible for the day-to-day operations as well as the future strategic direction. This role allows Bob to utilize the totality of his strengths and experiences to partner with the fantastic leadership team and drive profitable growth across all of Puritan's markets.    Looking to connect:  Email: rlshultz@puritanmedproducts.com     LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bobshultz3   Website: www.puritanmedproducts.com   

Join John Williams and Dana Connors with special guests Coleman Lapointe, Senior Strategic Specialist at Bath Iron Works, and Dr. Ryan Wallace, regional economist and director of the Maine Center for Business and Economic Research.

This Day in Maine December 16, 2022

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Puritan Medical Products ramped up production of their testing swabs under the Defense Production Act as one of only two producers of these swabs in the world. Bob Shultz, Puritan's new president, sits down with Nancy to talk about Puritan's growth since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and plans for the future. Nancy and Bob also discuss the role sales and marketing has played in Puritan's success.   3:27 – Bob talks about his career path, from his time as a student at Bowdoin all the way to becoming president and chief financial officer at Puritan Medical Products.    7:33 – Bob explains Puritan's role as one of two companies in the world producing swabs for COVID-19.   15:05 – Bob describes Puritan's goals for the future, focusing on life sciences and becoming more well known for more than COVID swabs.   19:05 – Bob shares how he was surprised at how well-known and respected Puritan was when he decided to join the company, whether it was telling his former colleagues at 3M or speaking with people throughout Maine.   26:31 – Bob talks about the job opportunities available at Puritan.   30:22 – Bob describes how sales and marketing have helped Puritan grow.   34:16 – Bob shares some resources that have been helpful to him.     Quote   “It's an American success story ultimately is what this is. It's one that's centered here in Maine. Yes, we have this great new facility down in Tennessee. It's just tremendous, but we're never going to forget Maine is who we are. Maine is where we're from, and it's the work ethic and the people and everything else that is centered in Maine.”– Bob Shultz, president and chief financial officer at Puritan Medical Products     Links:   Maine Office of Tourism: https://visitmaine.com/   Cianbro: https://www.cianbro.com/   Bath Iron Works: https://gdbiw.com/   Abbott: https://www.abbott.com/   3M: https://www.3m.com/   L.L. Bean: https://www.llbean.com/   Careers at Puritan: https://www.puritanmedproducts.com/careers/   Maine International Trade Center: https://www.mitc.com/   StrengthsFinder 2.0: https://www.amazon.com/StrengthsFinder-2-0-Tom-Rath/dp/159562015X   “Not For Sale” by Kevin Hancock: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Sale-Finding-Center-Crazy/dp/0692410996     Listen to Kevin Hancock's episode on The PR Maven® Podcast.   Listen to Lindsay Skilling's episode on The PR Maven® Podcast to learn more about Gifford's.   Listen to Katie Shorey's episode on The PR Maven® Podcast to learn more about Live + Work in Maine.     About the guest:      A 1990 graduate from Bowdoin with a major in economics and a minor in government, Bob Shultz started his career with Deloitte where he earned his CPA. After public accounting, Bob worked in a variety of leadership positions in both financial and operational capacities. These roles allowed him to excel as a business leader given the diversity of experiences. Bob has worked in organizations ranging from start-ups to global Fortune 100 companies and across diverse industries. Prior to joining Puritan, he was the division CFO of one of the largest global operating units of 3M Company.    At Puritan, Bob is currently the president and chief financial officer of this great Maine company. In this role, he is responsible for the day-to-day operations as well as the future strategic direction. This role allows Bob to utilize the totality of his strengths and experiences to partner with the fantastic leadership team and drive profitable growth across all of Puritan's markets.   Looking to connect:             Email: rlshultz@puritanmedproducts.com   LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bobshultz3   Website: www.puritanmedproducts.com  

The city of Bath, Maine, on the Kennebec River, has long been known as the City of Ships. By 1800, Bath's shipyards were producing vessels used in domestic and international trade. Doubling Point Lighthouse was established in 1898 on the northwest end of Arrowsic Island, at a sharp double bend in the Kennebec River, near the shipyards of Bath. It was one of several aids to navigation built on the river in the same year. Doubling Point Lighthouse, Maine. In the background is the Bath Iron Works, a subsidiary of General Dynamics -- one of the largest defense contractors in the world and one of the largest employers in the state of Maine. Photo by Jeremy D'Entremont. In 1935, the keeper's house at Doubling Point was sold to a private owner. The keeper at the range light station a short distance away became responsible for both stations. Responsibility for looking after the light later went to the keeper at Squirrel Point Light Station in 1980. Beginning in the early 1980s, Doubling Point Light was again monitored from the Doubling Point Range Lights Station. It became the job of one keeper to look after the Range Lights, Doubling Point Light, and Squirrel Point Light, as well as their fog signals. For a few years, this job was performed by Coast Guard Boatswain Mate Karen McLean, one of a very small number of female Coast Guard lighthouse keepers. L to R: Dan and Karen McLean; Jim and Joyce Spencer. Photo by Jeremy D'Entremont. This is part 1 of 2 parts. The guests in this episode are Karen and Dan McLean, who are now taking the lead roles in the Friends of Doubling Point Light organization. Also joining in the interview is Jim Spencer, founder of Friends of Doubling Point Light, and his wife Joyce. Jim and Joyce are the longtime owners and residents of the keeper's house at Doubling Point. This episode is co-hosted by Bob Trapani, Jr., executive director of the American Lighthouse Foundation.

Our Motto: Some of this is whimsy – some of this is true – the interpretation of it all is entirely up to you! Today is Tuesday, April 12th , 2022 In todays' episode: Maine Railway making way for Recreation Trail |Turkey Greets The Soviets (1972)|Bath Iron Works in the News (1972) |Thomas Edison Explains: I'm Happy Being Somewhat Deaf.” Maine Mammal of the Moment! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/frank-w-norwood/support

There have been protests in some cities in response to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. A gun was discharged by accident at a security checkpoint in Atlanta. Bath Iron Works in Maine started construction on a destroyer named for a United States Coast Guard officer who served in World War II. 5 minutes of news that keeps you in The Loop.

Larry Stegna served his country for 40 plus years as a silent hero. He worked as a Marine Electrician for the legendary Bath Iron Works. In his time there, he worked to secure electrical work on over 70 ships. The vital work of the Bath crew allows the Navy sailors and officers to do their job knowing they are on a top-of-the-line vessel. In this interview with Greg Kelly, Stegna gets emotional when talking about the pride he had in his work at Bath Iron Works. After Stegna's father passed, a ship called the USS Zumwalt came into his life. Working on that ship helped him refocus his life on what gave it meaning: serving our military. Named after Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., the ship also allowed Stegna to meet the Zumwalt family. They have been close family friends ever since. Admiral Zumwalt's granddaughter Maya is the executive producer of this podcast. This is a can't-miss conversation with a true American patriot whose vital work is often overlooked, but nonetheless a part of the backbone of our military's strength.Follow Greg Kelly on: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregkellyusaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/gregkellyusa/ Find out more information at:https://gregkellypodcast.com/

Host Stuart Richardson interviews Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and publisher of a blog called Organizing Notes. We speak about why Bath Iron Works ship yard (a shipbuilding yard in Maine that builds US Naval destroyers) needs to be converted into a plant that builds Green technology, how US military spending is out of control globally and how that steals from the American people. We speak about the new Biden administration and how social change happens, how we cannot sit on our hands and hope things change for the better. Support Independent Media Now by becoming a Member of the Show 

Host Stuart Richardson interviews Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and publisher of a blog called Organizing Notes. We speak about why Bath Iron Works ship yard (a shipbuilding yard in Maine that builds US Naval destroyers) needs to be converted into a plant that builds Green […]

Host Stuart Richardson interviews Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and publisher of a blog called Organizing Notes. We speak about why Bath Iron Works ship yard (a shipbuilding yard in Maine that builds US Naval destroyers) needs to be converted into a plant that builds Green […]

Studies show that our work has shifted from a 50/50 balance between sedentary and active work to 80% sedentary and 20% active.  Overall that shift has led to a negative effect on our general health and in particular, our knees.  Our knees can play a big part in workplace safety as they form a critical link in our kinetic chain, connecting us to the ground and allowing freedom to move.  They can be affected by numerous factors such as the work environment, life habits, and even genetics.  Unfortunately, our trend toward a more sedentary work/life balance can put us at even greater risk of dysfunction. On this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts Podcast, I speak with Al Brown, MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics about knees, why they can be a pain, and how to keep them healthy. Peter Koch: [00:00:04] Hello, listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, I'm your host, Peter Koch. There are a lot of joints in the body. Some are small like your fingers, and some are complex, like the shoulder or the wrist, but some are built to sustain heavy loads like the hip. And then there's the knee. We have two of them and the knee may seem like a fairly simple joint, after all, it just hinges back and forth. It doesn't even rotate or twist like other joints do, or at least they're not designed to do that specifically. But think about what it has to do. It really has to stabilize us when we're moving, when we're standing, when we're sitting. It has a lot to do with our ability to balance. And even though the joints below it, like the ankle joint in the bones that are in the foot and the hip, have a lot to do with how our knee works and functions. It really does connect the two parts of the body together. From a sports standpoint, knees have a pretty high percentage of injury, especially those that require surgery [00:01:00] in activities like a weighted pivot, sort of like soccer, football, tennis and basketball or sports that have a tendency for lateral posterior loading like skiing. There's a fairly significant proportion of injuries in those sporting activities have to do with the knee. There are tons of different ways that you can injure the knee. And in my work history, prior to me coming to MEMIC, I spent some time as a paid ski patroller about 10 years or so, and I still do that off and on. And I can recall plenty of knee injuries to both the staff and the guests. Some were impact related where you're going to fall down or hit something or strike something. But many were from a slow, backward, twisting fall and still others were from overuse walking down the mountain as a snow maker or even that weighted pivot as a lift operator trying to bump a chair. Knees I think overall we're one of the most frequently injured joints that I saw. And then never mind injuries. My knees, as I get older seem to be the thing that slow me down [00:02:00] after having been in a static position for a while. I just want to think about this for a minute. Can you feel it if you're sitting in a car listening to this or maybe you're sitting in a chair or have been seated for a while? When you start to get up, though, your knees might be the thing that are a little bit creaky or a little bit slow. And you can't move as fast maybe as you once could. Well, to talk about this a little more, I have Al Brown on the line with me today. And Al is MEMIC's director of ergonomics, Al has been on the podcast before and brings a unique insight into how our bodies deal with the stresses placed on them during work and play. So on today's episode, we're going to look at the knees specifically how they work and how we can keep them healthy and from being injured. Al welcome back to the podcast. Al Brown: [00:02:47] Thank you. Be happy to be here. Peter Koch: [00:02:49] Psyched to have you back. Hey, so you've been on the podcast before. Why don't you take a couple of moments here and give folks who might be listening for the first time a little background about what your history is and what you do for MEMIC [00:03:00] in your position? Al Brown: [00:03:01] Sure. Pete, appreciate that. I've been around for a while. I'm a baby boomer, but I'd like to try to keep the body young as much as I can. Started life out as a went to Penn State University for my undergrad degree and athletic training, then went on to Howard University in Washington, DC for my physical therapy training, then ended up moving to Maine. About forty years ago, I worked in an orthopedic clinic and then started my own practice with a partner and we worked on site industry, which is was a spectacular experience for me simply because that was where I got my interest in ergonomics and looking at people coming into the clinic that were injured and asking myself, well, why? What's the root cause of this? So we would actually walk back out to the job and take a look at the job tasks and realize there would be specific things that would create the risk [00:04:00] and exposure and then made our abilities to treat them much easier. So it was a natural flow to transition to work injury management, which is where we are today. I been with MEMIC for probably 18 years, fifteen of those as an employee. And essentially that's what we do, is we go out and we're partnering with industry and we look at the risks and exposures and we try to figure out what might be the cause and what they can do from an ergonomic standpoint to reengineer the job and make the change so we can lower the risk. So it's a win for all of us. So and that brings me to here today and what we do and from doing podcast to webinars to live trainings. Looking forward to those you're back to live trainings. But that's how I got here today. Have done some supplemental education at the University of Michigan, working with Armstrong and chafing up there in the engineering department and also at Harvard at the School of Public Health. So, [00:05:00] you know, you have to stay fresh. Things change, it's like medicine. A lot of what we do in the world of medicine is based on research and a lot of the other stuff is just fairy dust. So we like to kind of dust out that fairy dust when we can and get real data and statistics and follow the science. So and with ergonomics, it does change. So we're always having to stay on top of the research. Peter Koch: [00:05:23] That's one of the reasons that you bring so much depth to these conversations, is you have a great history and you've not only seen it from a physical therapy side, but you've looked at it from an industry side and you've looked at it from the research side. So I think kind of trying to build on that in our discussion today about the knee joint itself. I think it's important for us to start with the basics. Right. So we want to move out that fairy dust and we want to make sure people understand that the joint isn't actually as simplistic as folks might seem or might think. So why don't we start with some anatomy? So why don't you take us through how [00:06:00] the knee is designed, what makes it work and maybe what some of its limitations are? Al Brown: [00:06:07] Sure we can go way back Pete, but we'll try to keep it. But it's funny. You look at arms and legs and those are pretty non-functional and a human being when you're first born because we're all trying to develop core stability and that core is your butt your gut, your whole axial skeleton. And once you get some strength and control in those areas, you then can start using the extremities and that upper extremities seem to be first. And then eventually we get down to where we wobble over to the you know, we kind of pull ourselves up on the sofa or on the coffee table and we learn to stand up because we're controlling our hip muscles and then our legs and knees and then we're able to get very mobile. And that's where we are now. Sadly enough, as we age, we begin to wobble again and then we regress. When you look at the knee joint, we often sometimes [00:07:00] just refer to as the hinge joint. But it's not really true. It does hinge. But it also translates to so that there's two big bones, actually the two biggest bones in the body, the femur, which is your thigh bone, and then the tibia, which is the second largest bone, is the lower leg bone, which bears about 80 percent of the force of the weight created by the body. There's the fibula, which is the smaller bone down the side, which you can actually fracture of the fibula and still keep on going just simply because it doesn't bear much of the weight. The largest, sesamoid bone. That'll be on a test later. Peter Koch: [00:07:36] OK, thank you. Al Brown: [00:07:37] Sesamoid bones are the ones that just kind of free floating and it's kind of. And it's your kneecap or your patella, as they call it. So those four bones kind of come together. They're held together by ligaments and tendons and muscles. We look at the alignment because you have both the anatomy and the strengthening of the developmental sequence. That's what a baby goes through to where we [00:08:00] are now. But you also have the genetics that you were handed by mom and dad. So, you know, when we look down at our feet, they may impact the knee. You know, a quick thing everybody can do to see how well they're aligned is if you take your little hipbones, that little bump on the front, not your side down where your pockets are, but on the front side when you lay down and you know, you can feel those two little bumps out in the front, there's a fairly large muscle that goes through the kneecap that attaches there. And if you drew a line from there and then go all the way down to the bump right below your kneecap on your shin, there's a big bump there. And then you look at so you draw a line straight down or, you know, take a chalk line and snap a chalk line on that bad boy and see where your kneecap falls, it should almost be divided, split in half by that line. But the way people are built, if some have knock knees, are going to find that the kneecap will fall inside the line or valgus knees [00:09:00] as the term you would hear medically or if they had various knees or Bow-Legged, that kneecaps are going to fall outside that line. So that's going to impact how that kneecap moves up and down. So if you look at the underside of the kneecap, it's sort of V shaped and that V shape, it's convex. So that's you know, it's a V the projects out covered by cartilage and it fits in a complementary v shaped concave cavity in the femur. So they sort of what they call track. It's kind of like tracking in there. So you want that thing to sit right in the middle. But unfortunately, with genetics, with postural habits, with aging, with, you know, we're more sedentary lifestyle. We begin to change muscle length, muscle strength alignments and we begin to start messing around with where that kneecap, you know, tracks. So, you know, we could go on our whole podcast just on the anatomy, but it's a fairly complex [00:10:00] joint. Think of it this way, too. It functions as a close kinetic chain. Most of the time. That's a fancy term. But let me see if I can. It works, it's the thing that connects us to the Earth. So every time we put that foot on the ground, it's a kinetic chain. It's closed. We put the distance and the foot on the ground. So now all the loading comes up through the body for us to function, you know, give you an example of an open kinetic chain. Your arm is more of an open kinetic change. So when I reach out to get something, I'm not sure of a push up. But what I'm reaching out to grab something this end is not connected. It's allowing me to do stuff, to bring things to me. But your lower extremity is a closed kinetic chain, so it has to control and then move us forward. And just gate is real complex thing that we will see how it impacts us as we go through this podcast. We'll talk a little bit about, you know, what happens to us when certain things happen for example, sitting you [00:11:00] know, when you sit down Pete what happens to those giant muscles in your hips and pelvic area? What are they doing? Peter Koch: [00:11:06] Depends on what side they're on. Right. So by sitting down, everything on the front is relaxed. If I'm sitting in the back, I've got some tightness going on because it might be stretching the bottom. My glute, right. Is that how it works? Al Brown: [00:11:17] Yes. Yeah. So they're passive. So you have some that are shortening some of the lengthening. But think about activity. Is there any activity going on in. Peter Koch: [00:11:24] There's nothing going on there. Just relaxing. Al Brown: [00:11:27] Yeah. So what happens is they begin to atrophy, so now those get weaker. So what happens is those muscles get weaker. It begins to impact what goes on down below because remember that developmental sequence as a child, we have to strengthen our core and then we can start to use our big muscles on our hips and legs and our extremities. And we can function to be mobile. But if we lose some of that core strength, we begin to impact what goes on  down below. Peter Koch: [00:11:53] And all that progression as the infant grows relies on activity. If the infant is [00:12:00] not able to be active, they don't, you know, strengthen their core and then they can't build the musculature, the movement patterns in the muscle groups in order to make everything,  function. I do want to take you back a little bit into the anatomy part. So we talked about the bones. We talked about some about the muscles. We talked quite a bit about the kneecap. And I like that that conversation about how the kneecap tracks and the visual line and where does that fall, because it could give you some indications on what might be in your future. And then we'll talk later about what might we be able to do to compensate for some of that. But you didn't talk a whole lot about the tendons in the ligaments in there, which are some of the things that do get injured, especially in activities. So whether it be a sport activity or even a slip and fall, those are the things that are going to get damaged. What are the tendons and ligaments make up the knee joint and what do they do? Al Brown: [00:12:51] Sure, yeah. There's quite a few. There's four major ligaments that we look at. There's a whole bunch of ligaments. But if we look at the four that typically are highlighted [00:13:00] and take the hit and again, you know, when you look at athletes today, you know, there's a lot of let's take football, for example. You see a lot of the interior linemen just with all these things on their knees. And part of that is just to protect them because there's such big bodies moving around. And if one falls in the wrong position and whacks the knee, you can impact those ligaments or tendons or cartilage. But the four there's a medial collateral in the lateral collateral ligament and basically they're there. You know, the medial side is to prevent your news from getting. Inward, sort of like in a knock kneed position, the lateral one does the opposite, it prevents you from getting shifted outward and then inside there's two that are fairly large. There's the anterior cruciate ligament and then the posterior cruciate ligament, the anterior cruciate prevents sort of that shifting forward of your [00:14:00] that tibia. Remember that big bone in the lower leg from shifting forward and it does control some of the rotation. Posterior ligament does the opposite. So you had referenced skiing, skiing as an example of where there's a lot of torque and forces created by skis and skis today are actually you know, they're different. Back in the day when I used to lace mine up and clipped down the wire binding, we saw more just boot top fractures. And just because that's where the hit would be. But today's world, you know, it's reengineered and the boots halfway up your leg and it's clipped on. Fortunately, that tends to translate the forces up into that knee. For an example, what's it called? You're more familiar with the skiing industry than I where the back of the ski hits and it creates an interior translation of the knee forward. So it forces the knee forward quickly and you get to enter cruciate ligament injury. Peter Koch: [00:14:56] Sure. That's part of what they call the phantom foot injury. So that [00:15:00] that phantom foot motion, when the ski accelerates forward and, you know, more of your mass is above your knee than below your knee. So the thing that moves faster is the tibia and what's below the tibia with the boot that accelerates forward things above that don't move quite so fast. So you put a significant stress there on the ligaments, ACL, PCL or ACL specifically. Al Brown: [00:15:25] So that, you know, there's an example of, you know, two sports where you have traumatic injuries. You know, we also see that in industry to where somebody might be driving a truck and they've gotten to their location. And instead of climbing down like we encourage workers to do, they may step out onto those saddle tanks, look down and jump down, and all of a sudden they get a rotational force. And now we've got a torn ligament, medial collateral ligament, maybe, you know, the inter cruciate ligament with that sort of rotational torsion force, you might throw in the medial meniscus [00:16:00] and the terrible triad, as they would call it. And so you've started the process of sort of degeneration of the knee. And we've all had those little oh boy, my knee aches a little bit. What was that or what did I do? Or I jumped out of a tree or I, you know, was running around the backyard and I torqued on something and where I'm skiing down the hill and I twisted all those things kind of contribute to the general breakdown of the knee as we age. But there's those four ligaments. There's a bunch of different cartilage. There's fibro cartilage, and then there's hyaline, cartilage, fiber. Cartilage is more fibrous, just like the name implies in the hyaline, cartilage is more smooth. So that's more on joint surfaces like the top of the tibia, the bottom of the femur. It's almost like taking those bones and dipping them in a can of paint. That's where you find your hyaline cartilages, you know, sort of puts a coating over them, the meniscus or more the fibrous cartilage. So those look like donuts and they sit on top of that lower bone, the tibia, and there's like two of them side by side because the femur has that big rounded double  [00:17:00]end there that actually sits down in those cartilage. So, again, it's kind of a stabilizer for them to a certain extent when we're upright. Peter Koch: [00:17:07] So it kind of gives them a pocket, that fibrous cartilage for the femur to sit in. And then the hyaline cartilage gives those surfaces the ability to glide instead of grind. Al Brown: [00:17:18] Right. Yeah. And a key component of all that then is just moisture or snow. You know, it's called synovial fluid, joint capsule fluid. That stuff is there to lubricate the joint. And, you know, needless to say, as we get older, yeah, there's less lubrication. So, you know, things get a little stickier. It's called it you know, sometimes it's referred to as the gel factory. I think you referenced it in the beginning when you said, you know, when you go to get up in your little stiff and achy. Peter Koch: [00:17:49] That's exactly it. Al Brown: [00:17:50] Yeah. Movement promotes a reduction in that gel factor because it's like taking anything mechanical. And if you haven't moved it for [00:18:00] a while, it things get sticky. You know, there's not lubrication that grease and oil moving around the thing and we're no different. So when you're static sitting for an extended period of time, you're sort of draining out the fluids and then you start to get sort of a I'm going to call it a dryness, but no fluid between, say, the kneecap and the femur. So when you start the movement, get up to walk, get out of the truck. You have to get through that. Oh, that ache is that dryness. But then you eventually lubricate and then you're good to go. Peter Koch: [00:18:35] We talked a little bit about your body being like a car, too. And so if you think about that car that's been sitting. Idle all night, cold, cold evening, and you go to start it up in the morning, if you don't give it at the opportunity to warm up at Low Rev's and you push it down the road at moderate to fast speed, you haven't allowed the engine oil to warm up and to start to lubricate the pistons and all the internal workings. And we're [00:19:00] very much like that. The longer we sit idle, like you said, the less lubrication we're going to have and those places. And really, unlike a car, we have some advantages the younger we are. But as we get older, we have some disadvantages. Like the younger we are, the better our bar, the easier our body will have, the easier time our body will have to move fluid through those joints. The older we are, the less fluid we have and the harder it is for our body to move fluid into those joints so that we aren't quite as creaky. But like you said, movement is a great thing, right? Al Brown: [00:19:34] Oh, yeah. Pete, I am a 56 Chevy, you know. And let me tell you, it takes a while before I don't just pop out of bed anymore. It's kind of a let's give it a moment. Let's sit on the edge. Let's stretch the hamstrings. Let me stretch my arms above my head. Let me just make sure I can see. And where are my glasses, by the way? And then  I wait or I make sure that I slide my hand over to the bedrail. So [00:20:00] as I walk, I does everything work. You're sort of testing it first so that chill factors a little. Peter Koch: [00:20:06] Yeah. And you're not a broken guy. I mean you're, you're a fairly you're a fit individual. You do work out all the time or as often as you can to because you recognize that. So you're not you aren't in the place where you have to do those things because you're broken. But what you're doing is you're warming yourself up to give your body less opportunity to be broken through that movement because moving something that's not ready to be moved is not good for anything. So that's really that's a I want to make that distinction that this does not like the warm up phase, the things that we do before movements. All of those things are important to prevent injury. It can be done because you're injured, but they should be done in order to prevent it from happening in the first place. And we'll get into quite a bit of that when we start talking about strategies to lower the risk. And what do you do after you get hurt? So we'll talk about some of those things as we move through the podcast. [00:21:00] Al Brown: [00:21:00] Sure. Sure. Peter Koch: [00:21:02] So we've talked about a number of things that might make the knees hurt, but let's delve into that a little bit more. What are some things that we talked about? Sports and certainly activities that weighted pivot when I stand on one foot and then I go to turn in one direction or the other, I might be putting my cartilage at risk. I could be putting one of the ligaments at risk depending on the lateral forces, or an impact might make my knees hurt or injured. But what else can really make our knees hurt? What are some of the things that happen in today's society or are in our workplaces that make our knees ache and hurt and be sore and maybe even injured over time? Al Brown: [00:21:39] Sure. The yeah, the ones we sort of just covered and talked about are more trauma. And we do see those in the workplace, you know, those come along probably less often than we used to see because you know, know this, I don't know you realize. But back in the 60s, 1960, do you remember the 1960? Peter Koch: [00:21:59] I remember [00:22:00] at least one year of the 1960, Al Brown: [00:22:04] About half of our jobs were physical and half were sedentary. So it was about a 50/50 split as technology has crept into our lives and as we move forward in time about 80 to 85 percent of our jobs now are sedentary, and that 17, 18, 15, somewhere in that 15 percent range are now, you know, heavier work. So because you've seen that switch, we see less of the traumatic injuries. Does that mean that the injuries have gone away? No. Your question is what else?  So when we look at sedentary work, which means I think if you go into Social Security definition of sudden sedentary work, it's handling 10 pounds or less occasionally throughout the day. So in the way they referenced it was carrying a file here or walking over [00:23:00] here doing this. So but you think about most of the jobs a lot of us do nowadays. That's what we do. But what comes coupled with that is we tend to sit more. So when we sit more, we change the biomechanics of the leg in the lower extremity, in that we lose muscle mass in the buttock, we begin to tighten muscles. So now when we get up to move, we begin to see changes in the lower extremity that then begin to create knee pain. But it's from being inactive. So we see those types of injuries. Then we see the truck driver who is sedentary, the logging industry. They're up driving trucks, you know, the forwarders going in, the forwarder is coming out, and they don't even have to get up. The seat now rotates in the forward or so they can don't have to get up, but then they have to get out of the truck. Occasionally when they jump down, there's that that sedentary precursor that set them up for an injury and then they might jump down or just even stepping down. They twist wrong and then they've got the problem. And then you just have medical [00:24:00] conditions that might predispose, you know, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, as you know, from previous trauma. So comorbidities, those aches and pains, you know, trauma that you may have occurred before in your life are now beginning to raise their ugly head if you haven't done things where you stand to lose strength. We have a sedentary job now that mal alignment of the foot, you know, if you genetically were handed over some coronating feet and coronating feet, again, fancy term for, you know, like a flat arch, you know, that's going to take that little bump we talked about earlier right below the kneecap. And it's going to shift that and it's going to shift that sort of in a position that's going to make that kneecap align and properly. So what do you do to fix some of those things? So, you know, you look at trauma, you look at sedentary activity, and then you look at disease processes and those all kind of contribute to the problem. It's hard in our world sometimes to parse out what's related to the work and [00:25:00] what's not related to the work. I think I told you earlier I was going through looking at, you know, looking at research articles on the knee and I typed in knee work injury in the first seven pages of the search were law offices. So that sort of gives you an indicator of, you know, Peter Koch: [00:25:20] It's hard to parse it out like So if one person has a concern and one person has an argument against that, it's natural to look to somebody else to help make that decision. I really do think that discussion is kind of interesting. You talk about the I guess we'll start with genetics a little bit about that. I know one of my daughters has flat arches and she's the only one in our family that has flat arches. And that translated into her when she played sports to have trouble when she ran. And now this time of year with covid and everything, sports aren't really happening. But where she's finding a difficulty [00:26:00] is actually standing for long periods of time. So if she doesn't wear her insoles to help support that arch, then what hurts on her one? It's her arch. But then her knees are sore as well because her job requires her to stand if she's going to work a seven, six, seven hour shifts, sometimes she'll be on her feet the entire time. And just that because of the arch will cause a little mal alignment. And since there's misalignment in places, it's going to cause things to become sore. That might not be sore with someone else who doesn't have that genetic challenge. Or maybe it's a challenge from an injury, like you said before, that comorbidity. Al Brown: [00:26:42] If you look at people, I mean an example of your daughter, you know, when that foot goes, you know, rotates in into a flap, you lose your arch. What it does is we can all make our foot go flat if we sort of push our knee inward, you know, like a knock kneed position. And that's kind of what [00:27:00] happens with a flat foot is that you get that lower tibia rotates outward, the knee tends to come inward. And then if you couple that with the one anatomy piece we didn't talk about early on was there is a difference between the hip with female hip width tends to be a little wider because of child bearing in the way they're built as opposed to males, tend to be a little more narrow. So you couple a pronated foot, you know, the flat foot, the female hip, which in fact she has a wider hip, and then that knee going inward and you get almost a bowstring effect. Where that that giant muscle tendon complex that goes from the hip down below the knee and incorporates the kneecap, the kneecaps getting pulled way in. And those two lines are almost on the outside of the kneecap. So it wants to take that kneecap and fire it out to the outside so she could end up with foot ankle pain, but she could also end up with knee pain just because of that mechanical [00:28:00] alignment down below. So the foot orthotic actually kind of lifts that foot. So when she's standing there, the knee comes back into position, the tibia comes back into position and that kneecap gets realigned. Peter Koch: [00:28:13] Yeah. And actually, that's what happens if you watch if I watch her walk and stand insoles versus no insoles. That's exactly what you're describing. So there is a slight knock knee when she is or her knees coming inward when she's standing and you put the insoles in. And it's not magic, it's not incredibly noticeable. But if you're paying attention, you can see the difference in the alignment and you can totally feel or hear the difference in when she comes back from work or comes back from doing something that when she's on her feet all day, the thing that she'll complain about is the her arch will be sore because she's got the insole and it's just stretching the muscles in the tendons and the ligaments in there because it's forcing the arch into a position that the body was designed to. But genetically, we didn't give it to her. So we've got to do it mechanically. She's [00:29:00] going to love me for years, I can tell you. But I think that's an interesting place because I think if you understand more about how you're structured that like we started with anatomy and physiology. So if we understand the makeup of the knee and what makes it up and what its limitations are, what it's supposed to do, and then you understand your own genetic makeup and how your knee actually functions and what affects it from your postural and your habits, then you can start making some better decisions about what you do and how you do it. I know we were talking before the podcast a little bit about teaching kids how to run in sports, which, you know, it's something that you really don't think you need to do. But I know for me specifically, coaching, coaching girls soccer at the high school level, a couple of years ago, the head coach and I made a decision to  [00:30:00]work on stride and foot placement and knee angle and explosive force in our pre-season instead of really pushing fitness. So we did a lot of fitness work, but it was more from a plyometric standpoint and really working more on movement patterns. And whereas we didn't see a huge increase in fitness, what we did see is a decrease in sort of overuse injuries that we might normally get kind of a third of the way through the season as the workloads were starting to pick up pretty heavy as you got into our gameplay season and a sequence of practice, practice, game, practice, game, practice, rest and working that through the season. So I do think that understanding where you are and then doing some things to help with your habits can help set you up for some success to not hurt overall. Al Brown: [00:30:57] If you look, we mentioned this phenomena [00:31:00] in our past podcast and that's that unconscious behavior or subconscious behavior. Most of our motor patterns, most of our movement patterns in our body are pre-programmed or they are things we've done over and over and over again. And they become we get muscle memory, we get body position, memory, and we repeat those. And then they get to the point where they're pretty much automatic. So we don't have to think about them. They can be good motor patterns and they can be bad motor patterns. And you take a guy like LeBron James, he's probably got a pretty good motor pattern with putting the basket in the hoop. But that's all automatic. That's not something he has to think about. It's actually become sort of a subconscious. You take someone like a young athlete you're talking about and for the first time or go back to that baby. They're just trying to create motor patterns to create mobility. And then when you get to a level of becoming good at a sport activity or [00:32:00] work activity, whatever it is, you have to develop motor patterns and you typically don't see what you do. You're just doing it because it's getting you from point A to point B, but a second set of eyes, like a coach or manager or whatever, can see sometimes those poor behaviors and try to modify them and create active. Is that will allow you to practice we take folks that are delayed in the world of muscle activity and one of the things I remember back when I was a physical therapist, we would say, hey, do you guys have a play set in the backyard? You might want to think about investing you want because kids will, you know, climb whatever, and they're creating different motor patterns to do different things. And through play, they actually improve their ability to stand in the world of gravity and move around because of those motor patterns. You know, you put them in front of, you know, something like a computer or a book or sit them down and it's not going to do it. You know, you need to kind of create those good motor patterns. So that's what you did, which [00:33:00] was great in the working world, the workaday world, we have to do the same thing because the workaday world is, you know, eight hours a day. I go in there and some people have good patterns and some people have not so good patterns and some have a blend. So we try to be the eyes and ears so they can understand that because you don't look at yourself. That was the other thing that, you know, we never look at ourselves. We see parts of us or in today's world. I mean, you know, you are on a virtual looking at ourselves right now and each other. But typically we don't get that opportunity. So you don't get to see what your shoulders are doing, what your hips are doing, what your legs are doing, unless someone shows you a video of it. So it's important that we help develop those motor patterns, particularly if we see that are not so good. Peter Koch: [00:33:43] Yeah, and you talk about video. I just and we're going to move on here in just a moment, but I wanted to bring the video piece up. That's one of the tools that you use when you're trying to diagnose manual material handling challenges in the workplace, photos from an office ergonomic standpoint [00:34:00] so that you're able to see certainly in an office ergonomic standpoint, you can look at the setup, but from a manual lateral handling, looking at the cycle of what's happening, because it's hard for the person to describe what they're doing. If you were to talk to them, you're going to walk into the workplace or talk to them on the phone and say, what do you do? What do you do that's causing you pain? Oh I lift stuff? Well, that's really not enough. You've got to know not just where they lift to, but what do they look like when they're lifting? And is the environment what's causing them to lift in that particular way? Or is it actually their postural habits that are keying them into doing those particular pieces? Because you could have something set up very ergonomically well, right within that power zone for someone to lift. And they may still bend over at the waist because that's what they're habit is. So habits play a huge part in how we manage things. Al Brown: [00:34:56] Well, hey, Pete, you know, you talk about habits and we're [00:35:00] talking about motor patterns and we're talking about muscle memory. Here's a classic that we've all encountered. And it's in the work environment sometimes can be an issue. And that's steps bear with me first. I think about the most steps are, you know, six inches or seven inches, you know, or somewhere around there in that range. That seems to be a feasible height that most of us can encounter. But you go up a staircase and it's and there six and a half inches, six and a half inch, six and a half inch. And then you hit that seven or eight inch step because someone miscalculated the step when the rise and run, when they built the steps, how many people go up and they stumble over that last step because they're depending on their body calculating and then going, OK, these are six and a half inch steps. I'm going to bring my foot up, you know, six inch, six and five eighths inches, you know, so I have clearance. But all of a sudden they get to that last step that's just a half inch higher. And they [00:36:00] trip over it. You know, I mean, there's an example of, you know, that repeated behavior and how we incorporate it and where we can get into trouble. Peter Koch: [00:36:08] Yeah, that and in those habits that we build over time, age changes our ability to rely on those habits as our kinesthetic sense and our proprioception changes as well. So the that electrical feedback, if you go back to think about the knee, right. If I'm walking and I'm stepping up into something, my normal habit is to bring my leg up, bending at the hip, bending at the knee that six and five eighths inch. But as I age those receptors, those electrical signals that fire to tell me how high my leg is actually lifted, they aren’t working quite as well. And there could be a dementia in there. There could be an illness in there that's causing even more of a lag. So now I don't lift my leg up. I think it's six and five eighths, but it's really four inches. And so now I just don't stumble a little bit. I catch my [00:37:00] entire foot on that step and I go right on my face onto the landing. We totally build those habits over time and age. There's lots of different things that can change how effective those habits can be, both externally and internally, it seems. Al Brown: [00:37:15] Yeah, and with a sedentary shift, you know, again, we do have that aging workforce, you know, you look at Maine in particular, we are the oldest workforce in the nation, but in general, there's a real demographic shift in the workforce out there. So those kinds of things occur. And then you've got the perfect storm with not only the aging workforce, but now much of our work is much more sedentary. So we don't get up and like that child out there running around, jumping up on the swing set. If you take the adult version now, we're not out there sort of plowing the field, pulling the weeds, walking around and exercising those muscles and sort of re-cueing all those motor patterns. We're sitting at the computer. So then when we go and do something like climb [00:38:00] those stairs, we've lost, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. It starts to fade. And, you know, the cues aren't correct. So how do we fix that? Sometimes we go, I'm going to get rid of those stairs. I might get our house on one floor and I'm going, start digging the hole. You know, you're going in. Come on. We live in a world of gravity. You can't avoid it. Peter Koch: [00:38:20] Yeah. You got to keep moving. Peter Koch: [00:38:23] Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about our E-Ergo resource that can be used to help solve ergonomic challenges at your workplace, sometimes contacting, contracting with and scheduling an ergonomist or occupational health nurse for an onsite evaluation doesn't fit with our Just-In-Time workflow. In a competitive economy, fixing the problem right now is essential, and improving worker comfort and efficiency are key components to ongoing success. Free to our policyholders. MEMIC's E-Ergo tool can help you overcome ergonomic challenges. With just five quick photos or [00:39:00] a short 30 second video and a brief description of what's being shown, you can send us the critical demands and essential functions within the work tasks. Once received, our ergonomics team can identify risks and exposures and provide reasonable suggestions for ergonomic improvement within just a few short days. Start the E-Ergo process by logging into the MEMIC safety director at www.MEMIC.com/WorkplaceSafety. Now let's get back to today's episode. Peter Koch: [00:39:34] That statistic that you quoted before about our work, our sedentary work versus active work was about 50 50. If you go back into the 40s, 50s, 60s. And as we've moved into the 80s, 90s, 2000s and to current day, we have gone into a mostly sedentary work style. So even if you had an active [00:40:00] lifestyle back in the 50s and 60s, so you actually got out and you did stuff, if you had a sedentary lifestyle, you may be like, I remember my grandmother. Right. So many, many years ago. She might be fairly sedentary in the house. But once my grandfather came home, she would be out in the garden. She spend four or five hours out in the garden, weeding, planting, harvesting, and then coming back in and doing all that active work inside the house. So even if she did do some sedentary work inside, there is still active work that she did outside. If you have a sedentary job and now a lot of our recreational opportunities have been truncated as well, so we're not maybe as active as we once were outside, we have that double effect of having a sedentary job and also maybe a sedentary outside of work life, too. So it's a double [00:41:00] whammy almost, if you think about it. So let's talk more about how that sedentary life affects our knees specifically. Al Brown: [00:41:09] Yep, let's take sitting because that that we see sitting everywhere, it's, you know, again, you take something that is heavy duty as the logging industry all the way down to someone that works kind of in our environment like an office environment. And we see Uber, you know, and anything you name a lot of us sit. So when we look at that and we look at what happens to the anatomy of the lower extremity, you know, we can talk all about the back and the shoulder and all that stuff. But if we stay down just in the from the hip down, we're taking there's a bunch of muscles are two muscles that we look at called the iliopsoas there's the hip flexor, so if you were to bring your knee up in front of the muscles, sort of initiated, that's this giant hip flexor. Well, that muscle [00:42:00] is it sort of starts in the front of your thigh. And if you could stick your fingers through your pelvis and out the back side to your back, it attaches to the inside of your pelvis bones and then it attaches also to the spine on the back. So you shorten that muscle up. And then if you look at your knee, your knee is flexed or bent and the muscle on the back side of your thighs called your hamstring so that muscles actually shortened up. And so just looking at those two muscles, if you spend quite a bit of time at a desk and a lot of us do or sitting, it could be driving, could be it doesn't matter you seven to eight, nine hours, you begin to change the length of those muscles. So now let's try to stand up with the muscle that won't let that thigh fully engage and go fully vertical. So you have to slightly forward flex pelvis and then the knee can't fully extend since you got a slightly bent knee. [00:43:00] So now you watch people and it changes the balance and the gate when we walk. And this is when, you know, we start to see trouble because you can tell if someone's been a sitter for a long period of time because they'll start their head when they walk, will wobble back and forth side to side, side to side. And that tells me that their hip flex or their hip muscles have gotten so weak they can't stabilize the body over one leg. So when the person steps on that one leg on your right leg, the right hip has to pick up the left side, the left hip so your leg can swing through and you don't stumble. And then you wait there on the left side and the left hip kicks up and brings you through. The problem is, is that muscle gets weak when you weight bear on the right, right is weak. It drops the left. So now for you to block without stumbling, you have to throw your body back [00:44:00] over the right leg and you get this wobbling walk that you see, folks. It's actually a Trendelenburg gait. There's actually a name to it. And that tells me there's trouble ahead because we've got weakness starting. But all that translates down into that kinetic chain that attaches to the earth. So when that foot touches, we've got all those tightness going on in the muscles we de-lubricated the kneecap, the underside of the kneecap. Why wouldn't you have trouble? You know, it's a storm. Peter Koch: [00:44:29] Sure. And it all starts with sitting. Yes. And sitting for a long time. And I think it's an interesting if you're listen to this podcast and you have the opportunity to watch other people do things in the workplace. So watch somebody sit at a desk for a while, watch what their legs do. And so, you know, we talk about good ergonomic position, a desk or in a chair. And you want sure. That you want a 90 degree or close to 90 at the between the femur and the lower leg or the tibia there [00:45:00] and their feet firmly planted on the ground. We'll watch some people sit at the desk and they'll shift from that position as they get closer and closer to the screen, as their stress level goes up and up, their legs will kick underneath them, kind of curl around the legs of the chair, or I'll watch people actually sit on one leg. And you're shortening things a lot more. You're stretching things a lot more on the top side, forcing really all that lubrication out of the joint. Watch that behavior, watch those patterns, see what people do. And it's a wonder that when you sit up or stand up after being focused for a while on a conference call or focused for a while on a project at your desk or at a problem that you're trying to figure out, those habits just sort of kick in and they put you at a disadvantage. And then all of a sudden we want to move like the phone rings in the other room, or we have somebody else that comes in and we want to turn around quickly or stand up quickly. We're not ready and we've put ourselves in that odd position. Then we're going to, [00:46:00] we're not going to do our body any good that one time. And if we continue to do that, it's just going to wear parts down over time until it breaks. Al Brown: [00:46:10] Exactly right. And the one thing we, you know, the one we haven't touched on, but probably not so much again for today, but, you know, if you go back, I think in May 2019, the Harvard Health Publishing from the Harvard Medical School put out a newsletter that said the dangers of sitting and what we haven't talked about is, you know, as you approach 11 hours of sitting a day, there's 35 medical conditions and diseases that go up exponentially. You know, that's the type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease. What we don't, what we forget about is, you know, we're talking about all the mechanics today, but in the physiology of life or the physiology of these muscles, these giant muscles really help to kind of use some of that blood glucose. And if they're not, [00:47:00] and they take up a good chunk of it because they're so big so that your grandmother, when she was out doing her thing in the garden, she was using up that blood glucose. So she was you know, she was keeping her body in balance. But with the new normal of we're more sedentary. Those muscles are quiet. So not only are they getting weaker and tighter, but now we're not consuming the blood glucose. So now that begins to have physiological impacts on us. Type two diabetes, the heart disease and all those kinds of good things, right, bad things. So there's, you know, there's research around it. So we understand it. And here we are. Peter Koch: [00:47:39] Right. So it really does go to that point where the information's out there. It's not rocket science. And I don't want to belittle any of the information out there, because some of it is fairly complex. But the simplistic form of some of that research is movement is good for you. So move. And the less you move, the [00:48:00] harder it is to move later on. And so it's this downward spiral where all of a sudden you get to the point where you can't functionally move anymore, or at least you can't do it without a lot of preparation or a lot of help, and therefore you don't want to do it as much anymore. So that downward spiral of no movement is pretty challenging. So let's take that into our knees again. And what if our knees sore, like we are sore at the end of the day, our knees are kind of achy. Maybe this is the first time we really looked at it as something that we can solve. What are some things beyond general movement that we can do to help when our knees are sore after a day of being sedentary or a day of work? Al Brown: [00:48:46] Mm hmm. Well, if we go back, I mean, just looking at work, if we were to look at I'm looking at a job now or an ergonomic assessment of a foundry and right now in this particular job, they're allowing the worker to kind of move up [00:49:00] and down the line and glue castings and assemble these casting molds. And they're looking to minimize that movement. And I actually encouraged him not to take that movement away, to allow them to move. So within the work environment, sometimes we look at can we create more work pods if it's a manufacturing environment? So instead of someone standing in one place for an extended period of time, manufacturing something and assembling things, they can actually move within a pod. So it allows them to kind of move around. So that's sort of an engineering thing that you can do, that you create you broaden the job task. In that particular case, in an office setting, you know, you've seen the introduction of dynamic desks where folks consider stand now, realize because everybody thought that was the solution, not everybody. But, you know, you hear the press and the narrative was like, well, that's going to solve the problem. And then the research came out. That doesn't solve the problem. And that's right, [00:50:00] because I want you to know that standing is just as static is sitting. The value of something like a dynamic desk is to be able to take a knee joint that's been maybe in a bent position and a hip flexor that’s been in a bent position and allows you to change to a different posture and get yourself up. And when you're standing, just like, you know, when I stand on my desk, I don't stand still, you know, I wobble back and forth. I bend my knees. So I'm actually lubricating and adding value. Now, if we take an administrative change, you get construction sites, construction workers, even manufacturing that now have incorporated let's kind of like an athlete warm up before we start the day so they might have a morning session of discussion of how the day will go. But during that time, they're actually stretching their body. I have a granite installation company that does that every morning at seven o'clock, they have a circle, they do their stretches, but they also go over what's going to go on for the day. And then at the second half [00:51:00] of the day after lunch, they do it again. We have an oil delivery company fairly large in the state of Maine that when they get out of the truck, first, they step down, they climb down. They do three movements to reset their body and gravity before they initiate the pulling of the hose and yanking and filling tanks and so on and so forth, so you can take those kind of active pieces and look at it from broaden the work task or, you know, encourage change of body posture throughout the day with the office worker. We encourage we change the stretch a little bit of the movement, but we do it more midday in mid-afternoon because when you get there, you know, you're not going to do heavy activities like work. So when you sit down, it's that sedentary activity you want to break up. So getting out and moving with truck drivers, with long haul folks, you'll see now signs that say, hey, take a stretch, break it out, move around. So we try to encourage folks to kind of break up those static [00:52:00] postures, either through engineering changes by broadening the task or by just, you know, general stretch rate movements and finding opportunities to move. Peter Koch: [00:52:10] That's a really good, great point there. And I bet you folks listening to the podcast right now are in agreements with you that, yes, changing body posture throughout the day is beneficial for you. They feel it themselves. When they shift, they move, they sit, they stand. They don't stay static in one posture for too long during the day or even if they exercise before work, after work, at lunch, whatever happens that they're going to feel better at the end of the workday. But why do we have to keep repeating the message? I mean, I think that's a it's an interesting human thing to consider and it goes back to the habits. Right. So a habit is difficult to build, but easy to break. So if you've built that habit of stretching before work or doing something to [00:53:00] encourage posture, change, sit, stand desk. But if you've built that habit up over six, eight, 10, 12 weeks and now you have a different project or you get a job change or something shifts or the busyness at work, you're not finding the time or you are thinking that you can't build that time in anymore. It doesn't take that long to remove that habit. And you're right back to where you were before. So the constant repetition, that's why like a company led program, whether it be for stretching or whether it be just a check in to make sure that people are actually doing that on their own, like your delivery driver that you talked about there or I don't know, I see like your flaggers on the side of the road, Al Brown: [00:53:45] Brutal job, brutal job. Peter Koch: [00:53:47] And people think, oh, no, it's an easy job. It's not an easy job, man. Stand on your feet all day long and have a couple of breaks where you can sit by the time you get to sit during the day, if you're just standing there and if you've ever been at a [00:54:00] stop for a while, waiting for the flagger to let you go. And you've been there for one minute to minute, five minutes. Sometimes it's ten minutes depending on what's happening in the construction zone. And watch the person who's there, the person who's there, who knows their body is doing what you're saying. They're moving back and forth or stepping out. They're stepping back. They're not, not paying attention, but they're moving their body around some of those guys and gals that aren't paying attention as much. They're in that one position. They're just standing there kind of leaning on their stop sign. And they are going to be very sore at the end of the day, whether they know it or not. Al Brown: [00:54:37] Yeah, well, and it goes it's a kinetic change. So the more static you are, the more you constantly load one part of your body. I mean, that's and discomfort breeds change. So some of us have a better feedback loop than others so that if you start to act a little bit, you go, I'm going to move. And it's called you know, it's fidgeting and fidgeting as I was trying to find comfort. And if you're not a fidgeter, you're more you're more [00:55:00] just a plopper. like you just sit down, you don't move. You're going to be more prone to those things like osteoarthritis, the diabetes, all those kinds of things, because you don't get the cues to do it. So it is hard. It is a very hard thing because with aging, you have a decline in the quality of your joints faces as much as you try to. You know, let's go back to that 56 Chevy analogy. You know, even though you try to take care of it, you take care of the rust spots, you make sure the tires are aligned to keep the carburetor tuned. You know, it still probably leaves a little oil on the floor and it doesn't corner like it used to or it corners like it used to, but it's nothing compared to the newer stuff. And things break. It's not as smooth as it used to be, and it's just the aging process. So we are fighting that declining battle. But you can slow that down. I think if you look back [00:56:00] physiologically, you know, we look at what is a 78, 79 years is sort of what life expectancy is now. But you can physiologically be. 20 to 30 years younger than that chronological age. If that makes sense, you know, so you can and again, that's genetics, how you take care of yourself. And when we look at knees, it's really important because that's what connects us to the Earth to a certain extent. Your feet all the way up to the knees and then the hips and gives us the mobility we want. So if you take care of those through, you know, just healthy activities of getting out and walking, getting out and moving during the workday work because again, you don't want to just jam it all into, like, you know, a half hour or 45 minutes of exercise because we call those active couch potatoes. I think they coined that phrase in Australia. But there they have the same health risks as those folks or pretty close to the same health risk as those folks that sit all day long and don't do that because what they do after [00:57:00] they do their 45 minutes, hours of exercise, what do they do? Peter Koch: [00:57:03] Nothing. Al Brown: [00:57:03] They go sit down. They go, thank God.  Peter Koch: [00:57:06] Check that box. Al Brown: [00:57:08] The collective number of hours you spend sitting are the problem. You are better off just being a mail person, walking around and delivering mail. You're like a diesel. You just keep moving around, keep moving, keep moving. And you're burning a lot of energy, but your body is much healthier. And again, just to go back to your grandmother and grandfather back in those days, there's a lot of people that were physical, I think, of like a coal miner and those jobs to live in just today. But back in the day I lived in north eastern Pennsylvania, coal mining was very physical and so physical. It was traumatic, traumatic to the body and destroy the body so you can overdo the physical stuff, you know, that doesn't keep you healthy. You know, there's a balance. There's a sweet spot in there where one needs to take care of the human physiology and body, but not over abuse. But you can't be sedentary because [00:58:00] that's going to sort of deteriorate all those things that make up your body. So there's that you have to find that sweet spot in between. Peter Koch: [00:58:08] It brings up a thought to me that the body always seeks balance. It seeks stasis, whether it's temperature, fluid, blood pressure or whatever that is, it always seeks to be in balance somehow. And when we're out of balance, then something goes haywire. And that goes just from a structural imbalance, too. So when you're the physical demands are greater than your body can deal with, like those incredibly harsh physical jobs like coal mining, salt mining. And even today we think about some of those harsh physical jobs. Driving a truck is a pretty harsh physical job overall because it might not be as physically engaging all parts of your body in an active way, driving a truck, a long haul trucker, the forces that get placed on their back and their knees and their shoulders and their neck and everything [00:59:00] else, it's just as damaging because there's no balance. There's no stasis there. So you've got to know, like, almost know thyself, know how much is too much, whether it be a sedentary activity or it is an actually active thing that you're engaged in. You've got to know how much is too much and where to back off and how to find that balance. And like you said, I think that's a great term. Find that sweet spot for you between activity and stasis because we all like to relax. I mean, there's nothing wrong with sitting down and enjoying a breath every once in a while. But when that gets continued out too far, it certainly has some detrimental short term and long term effects on our physiology, our morbidity and our abilities to engage in the world effectively. Al Brown: [00:59:50] You know, we deal with employers and, you know, employers are dealing with an aging workforce. And so, you know, collectively they've got to think about that from an ergonomic standpoint. That's one [01:00:00] of the challenges we're faced with. And you look at its funny stairs an example. You know, some of these sort of industrial locations might have that three stairs to get by on up into change, something in a paper machine or whatever the case may be. Then there's other places that might have a whole flight of stairs. And if you're an employer and you're requiring employees to carry something and go up and down the stairs, all of a sudden if it's a two handed carry, you have to totally rely on those old knees to support you to go up or down. It's easier to go up than it is to go down. And anybody who's hike knows that it's a lot. Most people it's easier to go up the mountain than it is to go down the mountain simply because it's always a double transfer. You are putting one foot up ahead of you and you push off with the leg that's behind you to help to accelerate up over that other one that's going to help lift get your other foot up. So you always have sort of a general propeller, a double propulsion to get you [01:01:00] up. So when you climb, it works pretty well. When you come down, you are decelerating with one leg to lower yourself down. There's no you're just going. I hope that left knee holds and lowers me down to the right knee. And that's where people have problems because the mechanics change stairs, you'll see folks modify their behavior. And again, this is one of those things you think you're doing a safe thing, but they sort of turn their foot sideways on the step to come down the step. We've all done it thinking, well, if I just turn sideways, I won't. You know, it's not as bad. Peter Koch: [01:01:35] Just not as scary Al Brown: [01:01:35] Yes, it's just not as scary. But the problem is they've taken that. If we go back to your analogy of a hinge joint right now, again, it's not a simple hinge joint, but now you've taken that hinge joint, you've turned it sideways, and then you've asked it to bend in a direction that doesn't go. And you put all kinds of stress on the inside of, you know, the knee when [01:02:00] you're coming down the stairs. So you're going to talk all kinds of arthritic changes. So I guess my when you're looking at the work environments, really look at stairs as can I avoid those, is that part of the essential function of this job? If a person has to go up and down it, are they big enough? Are they all equal in height? Can we get the tools up there without them having to carry them? Never have them to hand carry something up or down stairs because they always need that extra hand to support the legs, to go up and down, get in and out of a truck. There's always got to be a three point touch to come in and out of vehicles. Peter Koch: [01:02:33] Those are great points from a workplace standpoint. And really, when we think about it, we want to make sure that we have some strategies in place to help prevent knee injuries. And those are some great pieces. Where can you limit those areas where you're going to have people put stress on their knee either through balance, through carrying stairs, ramps, uneven surfaces, all of those places. We want to make sure that there's nothing unexpected [01:03:00] in the workplace that someone's going to encounter. Maybe it's the lighting changes. Those things can certainly put you in an unbalanced position and put your knee back shoulder, whatever happens at risk, depending on what you're doing. But certainly those places where you have stairs and ramps, check them out, see if there's something that you can do to reduce the potential for a knee related injury because of what we're asking the employee to do. That's great. Great advice Al great advice. Al Brown: [01:03:29] It's you know, there's one body part. You know, everybody can go realize what aging has done to them. And there's one muscle that you can check out right away, and you can do it one or two ways, whatever works for you. But if you lie down o

In the late 90s, hackers who discovered vulnerabilities would sometimes send an email to Bugtraq with details. Bugtraq was a notification system used by people with an interest in network security. It was also a place that might have been monitored by employees of software companies looking for reports of vulnerabilities pertaining to their software. The problem was - there wasn't an easy way to track specific vulnerabilities in specific products.  It was May 1999. Larry Cashdollar was working as a system administrator for Bath Iron Works under contract by Computer Sciences Corporation. Specifically, he was a UNIX Systems Administrator, level one. His team managed over 3,000 UNIX systems across BIW's campuses. Most of these were CAD systems used for designing AEGIS class destroyers. This position gave me access to over 3,000 various flavors of UNIX ranging from Sun Solaris to IBM AIX. Joining us in this week's Research Saturday to discuss his journey from finding that first CVE through the next 20 years and hundreds of CVEs is Akamai Senior Response Engineer Larry Cashdollar. The research can be found here:  MUSIC TO HACK TO: MY FIRST CVE AND 20 YEARS OF VULNERABILITY RESEARCH

In the late 90s, hackers who discovered vulnerabilities would sometimes send an email to Bugtraq with details. Bugtraq was a notification system used by people with an interest in network security. It was also a place that might have been monitored by employees of software companies looking for reports of vulnerabilities pertaining to their software. The problem was - there wasn't an easy way to track specific vulnerabilities in specific products.  It was May 1999. Larry Cashdollar was working as a system administrator for Bath Iron Works under contract by Computer Sciences Corporation. Specifically, he was a UNIX Systems Administrator, level one. His team managed over 3,000 UNIX systems across BIW's campuses. Most of these were CAD systems used for designing AEGIS class destroyers. This position gave me access to over 3,000 various flavors of UNIX ranging from Sun Solaris to IBM AIX. Joining us in this week's Research Saturday to discuss his journey from finding that first CVE through the next 20 years and hundreds of CVEs is Akamai Senior Response Engineer Larry Cashdollar. The research can be found here:  MUSIC TO HACK TO: MY FIRST CVE AND 20 YEARS OF VULNERABILITY RESEARCH

In this episode, Lina and John follow-up on Bath Iron Works and cover Detroit teachers authorizing a strike, a dead worker left under umbrellas in Brazil, Marchallese workers at risk for covid-19 in Arkansas, police surveillance of an organizer, and Dannielle Brown's hunger strike to get answers for her son's death at  Duquesne University.We really packed in the stories this week, and we hope you enjoy the episode! To support Dannielle Brown you can cashapp her:  $Danniex2 

On today's episode of America's Work Force Radio Podcast, independent labor voice and former IAM General President Tom Buffenbarger discussed the Bath Iron Works strike, looming job losses at Boeing and more.Next, Jon Reiss of the Cuyahoga County Veterans Service Commission in Cleveland, Ohio discussed the services offered during COVID-19 and some potential upcoming services.

On this week's show… If we tell the people that Amazon doesn't care about black lives and they should stop buying from Amazon, how is Jeff Bezos going to make his $13 billion in a day? WorkWeek Radio covers the August 1 caravan and shutdown of the Amazon warehouse in San Leandro, California over health and wage issues. Learning is absolutely critical, but we needed to make sure our students and staff are safe. Kansas City Federation of Teachers' union president Andrea Flinders talks with the Heartland Labor Forum about going back to school during the pandemic. I said, let's start bringing the hammer down to show the company that we are paying attention this time and that we are standing together and that we're not willing to go without a fight. Maine native and shipbuilder Jami Bellefleur talks with the Working People podcast about her life and work, and about the ongoing strike at Bath Iron Works. Unions have played a big role in producing a sort of interracial solidarity based labor movement and we try to show this statistically. On the Valley Labor Report, researcher Jake Grumbach discusses a new study about the effects of union membership on racial resentment. We could be in a situation now where a lot of people are going to have to upgrade their skills because the sector that they relied on, maybe won't come back or it's not going to come back for a very long time. Dave Megenhardt, Executive Director for the United Labor Agency in Cleveland, Ohio, talked with America's Work Force Radio this week about the virtual job training fair it hosted recently. The factory closed down, the boss moved it to some other country. Now pop is cranky all the time, him and mom fight, and pop says it's all because of capitalism. Little Jimmy finds out what cookies have to do with capitalism in the latest episode of Tales of the Resistance from the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Plus, Labor History in 2: “Murdered for Standing Up.” Edited by Evan Papp of the Empathy Media Lab, a production house, artist's studio and an event space in Washington DC with a focus on labor, political economy, and art & culture. Produced by Chris Garlock; chris@laborradionetwork.org Social media guru: Harold Phillips

We're back from hiatus with a new full-length episode! We talk to Jami Bellefleur, a Maine native and shipbuilder, about her life and work, and about the ongoing strike at Bath Iron Works.   Additional links/info below... IUMSWA IAMAW Local S6 website, Twitter page, and Facebook page Local S6 strike fund  Andy O'Brien, Labor Notes, "Maine Shipbuilders Bring the Hammer Down to Reject Concessions" Dan Neumann, Maine Beacon, "Younger Generation Takes Lead in Uniting Workers at BIW" Todd Chretien, Jacobin, "Over 4,000 Shipbuilding Workers Are on Strike in Maine"   Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org) Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall" Derek Clegg, "If Only We Had More Time" Big Luisiana, Willy Rafus, & Arthur Davis, "Let Your Hammer Ring"

It is dusk of a late summer day and you are standing quietly on a shoreline. There are bits of gnarled tree roots washed ashore here and there, pebbles, and small patches of mossy green vegetation at the lip of the water. The long vista you're observing is a mixture of green and gold and blue, with the orange-red of the setting sun casting long shadows over the water of the quiet lake. There are trees as far as the eye can see, covering the rolling hills. If you stay very still and listen attentively, you might hear the sound of people laughing at their camps, of an outboard motor slowly cruising along in the rapture of the moment. It is a timeless place, a place of deep beauty. People might work hard and save for years for a moment such as this, far from the crowded city, a place where the angels come to play. But if you wait a while and let the last light of the setting sun fall away to the West, wait for the stars to turn on one by one in the darkest and brightest night sky you've ever seen, if you listen for the long lonesome call of the loon and feel the night air grow colder, you might also hear the sound of people, of cars, of tractors and children laughing, of radios on front porches and dogs barking. You have to hear it with the soul's ear, but if you listen, the sound is there: for this is a place where memories linger, a place that, if not haunted, is certainly trying to be. Places are a lot like people. They are born, they slowly grow and take on shape and purpose, they find a way to thrive in the world, and they change, adapt, and continue. But some places, a very few, like people, die. Some simply just cease to be and die a natural death. But some places are murdered. Such is the place you are viewing in your mind's eye - it is the victim of a premeditated crime, committed for money, leaving the corpse to rot underneath the shallow waters. This is Flagstaff Lake, the fourth largest lake in Maine,a state with over six thousand lakes and ponds. But before the 1950's, this 20,300 acre lake didn't exist. Before that, there were the towns of Flagstaff Village and Dead River Plantation, home to families, houses, stores, farms, schools, and churches. Children laughed there, the seasons ran their courses, people fell in love, married, grew old and were buried there. Life was anchored in this place. This was home. Today, it is an extremely shallow man-made lake and below the waters, memories linger. You can almost hear it, if you have an imagination. People needed power to drive the future. Factories, farms, and businesses all were bursting to grow into something more, to bring jobs and prosperity to even the most far-flung and isloated residents of the land. Electricty was on the minds of everyone who witnessed its possibilities in the few places in America where it was generated. Like so many emerging technologies, it became a revolution, and like many revolutions, there would be casualties. The man who set the machinations into motion had profit on his mind. His name was Walter Wyman and the company was the Central Maine Power Company. Wyman was a pioneer in electricty production in Maine. As early as 1899, he and his partner began producing electricty for the town of Oakland. Over time, he set his sights on all of western Maine as a kind of kingdom of power. Wyman looked at the state of Maine's electrical power production, which was scattered and unorganized. He began to change all of that by purchasing one small electrical producer after another, creating a single power-producing entity, Central Maine Power. Wyman knew that electricty would soon drive the engines of civilization, even in the smallest, most remote areas and he was going to control the means of production. In the early 1930s, he began acquiring other companies, growing his business. In 1936 the federal government instituted the Rural Electrification Act and provided money to those people and companies who could bring electricity to the isolated rural areas of the country. Wyman wanted his share of that money. He wanted to become Maine's premier electricity producer. Ultimately, he would need to harness hydro-power and the flow of the mighty Kennebec River. He looked at the map of Western Maine and saw an existing lake, a much smaller body of water called Flagstaff Pond. With the area's vast woodlands and rivers leading to the larger rivers, it was no stretch of the imagination to see a hydro-electric dam that regulated the water flow of the North and South Dead Rivers into the larger Kennebec. Wyman embraced the idea and began by purchasing parcel after parcel of land and burning the forests to the ground. His plan was to create a vast resevoir of water, the future Flagstaff Lake, to drive the turbines and create one of the largest electrical companies in the northeast. But Wyman had a problem. In 1909, in an effort to preserve Maine's natural heritage and keep it wild and open, the legislature passed the Fernald Bill. It prohibited companies that produced electricity in the state from selling it outside of the state, banning its export.That was a problem for Wyman who had plans. The law was almost repealed, but the voters of the state chose to keep it. Frustrated, he didn't let the Fernald Law stop him from building the capacity for power generation in the state, even while building the largest hydroelectric dam in the northeast, the Wyman Dam at Bingham. He had too much power - literally - to sell in Maine. If there was no one to buy his power, that meant that Wyman had to create places that needed it, so he heavily invested in Bath Iron Works, Keyes Fiber in Waterville, shoe companies, and textile mills. He even created the Maine Seaboard Paper Company in Bucksport - a mill that had no way of producing its own power. If he couldn't export power, he would invest in businesses that needed his power right in the state and profit from selling his power and from their products, which could be exported legally. Wyman was, after all, a business man with plans. And if a business stops growing, it begins to die. But what of the towns of Flagstaff, Bigelow, and Dead River Planation? The people knew what he was doing. They saw the smoke from the fires, talked to the people who sold off their land to the speculators, understood that change was on the horizon and it was coming to take something away. Central Maine Power sent letters, went door to door,applied legal pressure where it was needed to get things moving and soon people began to succumb to the idea that their town was going to be taken from them. First, it was a farm here,a home there, but then businesses sold out, and larger and larger pieces of land were owned by the company. The townships were dissolved. Most folks took the money and moved away to places like Eustis. Some even had their homes transported like mobile homes. They dug up the dead and put them somewhere else. Some few people held on and refused to take the power company's checks for their homes. Many of those people simply lost everything, because with their permission or without it, Walter Wyman and his company would have their way, as they always did. In July of 1949, about 300 people met in the village one final time before it all was taken from them. As they met, they were surrounded by a an empty forest of tree stumpage, all cut and removed so that the reservoir for the nearly completed Long Falls Dam could be free of debris, as it created the largest man-made lake in the state of Maine. They must have been quiet; their past was being taken from them, even if they had cashed Wyman's checks. The outskirts were already empty,the buildings all future ghosts just waiting for the inevitable. The school had already been razed to the ground. The church would be flooded, as would all of the other houses, under water and lost to their sight. There was nothing to celebrate. It was like gathering together for a kind of execution. Within a year, everything would be gone. In 1950, the Long Falls Dam was completed and the last people in the villages and towns witnessed the rising waters. It was a slow death, they say, as it took weeks for the waters to fill the 20,000 acres. All those places they knew so well, the houses that sheltered them, the fields that fed them, the lawns where the children played, even the graveyard that honored their revered dead, all were erased from human sight for the march of progress. In order for Walter Wyman to provide the power that would eventually be exported from Maine to Boston and places south, this quiet, rural place would need to go, and with it, the heritage of hundreds of ordinary people without the money that bought influence. The Fernald Bill would be repealed, people would move on and these places, now underwater, would eventually be forgotten until finally, only a few survivors who grew up there, can recall the streets, the lights in the corner store at twilight, the sound of the radio and people rocking on their porches on a hot summmer night. They say that Benedict Arnold, on his march to Canada, stopped at this place and put up a flag. When he left, the flagstaff remained, replaced by a trapper who found it. From that moment on, there had always been a flagstaff in the town. It was its namesake. In the end, when they flooded the town, they let it stand and for awhile, it poked above the waters as a maker, a kind of gravestone, for the town whose life was taken from its people and its people taken from it. If you go onto the lake today and stand on the shore, search as you will, you will not find that flagstaff. But if you take a moment, especially at dusk or in the early morning and stare for awhile over the calm waters, you just might discern the outline of a barn roof,of a stand of trees, or even a church steeple. Stories are all that are left and when the last resident of these places passes away and is buried in some other town's cemetery, then legends will begin to grow. The story of a murder - something ostensibly done for the good of the many - that cries out, the drowned village that whispers from under the waters - remember me… REFERENCES Dead River Historical Society https://sites.google.com/site/deadriverareahistory/home/the-flooding-of-flagstaff “Walter Wyman and River Power Power” https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/815/page/1225/display MUSIC CREDITS "Collapse" by Myuu (Creative Commons) "Edge of Life" by Myuu (Creative Commons) "Strange New England Theme" by Jim Burby PHOTO CREDITS Dead River Historical Society Maine Historical Society Picture of Flagstaff Lake - by Mlanni98 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77135333

About the guest:    For more than 25 years, Robert has helped marketers tell their story more effectively through digital media. Over the last five years, Robert has worked with more than 500 companies, including 15 of the Fortune 100. He's provided strategic marketing advice and counsel for global brands such as Capital One, NASA, Dell, McCormick Spices, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Robert is the founder and chief strategy officer for The Content Advisory, the education and consulting group for The Content Marketing Institute. Robert's third book — Killing Marketing, with co-author Joe Pulizzi — has been called the “book that rewrites the rules of marketing.” His second book — Experiences: The Seventh Era of Marketing — is a top seller and has been called a “treatise, and a call to arms for marketers to lead business innovation in the 21st century.” Robert's first book, Managing Content Marketing, spent two weeks as a top-ten marketing book on Amazon.com and is generally considered to be the “owner's manual” of the content marketing process. In the episode:    2:17 – Robert shares how he started in television, transitioning to marketing where he has been for 30 years. 3:30 – Robert talks about how he created a content marketing approach opposed to traditional marketing. 7:03 – Nancy tells how she met Robert through Drew McLellan and the Agency Management Institute. 7:43 – Robert explains the origins of content marketing. 11:36 – Nancy and Robert talk about the connection between gaining audience trust and content marketing. 14:46 – Robert shares some of the different ways to use content marketing, giving Lincoln Electric's magazine as an example.  18:47 – Nancy and Robert talk about how content marketing can be used for recruiting.  21:38 – Robert shares how PR professionals could improve their use of content marketing. 29:29 – Robert describes how he has made a conscious effort to build his network. 33:37 – Nancy and Robert talk about the importance of being able to be found online. 35:40 – Robert explains how to “get rid” of bad content someone else is producing about your brand or product. 38:12 – Robert shares some of the books that have been most instrumental to his career. Quote: “And so that lack of trust, while kind of a sad state of the world and our culture, is an opportunity for us as brands to create that trust, to create content that is valuable, trusted, and gives our audience the value that they are looking for.” – Robert Rose, Chief Troublemaker at The Content Advisory Links:          The Content Advisory: https://contentadvisory.net/ Content Marketing World: https://www.contentmarketingworld.com/ John Deere's Furrow Magazine: https://www.johndeerefurrow.com/ Lincoln Electric's Arc Magazine: http://www.arcmagazine.pub/ Bath Iron Works: https://www.gdbiw.com/ Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/ Monster Career Advice: https://www.monster.com/career-advice/ The End of Competitive Advantage by Rita Gunther McGrath Discovery-Driven Growth by Rita Gunther McGrath The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen Evernote: https://evernote.com/ Robert's Books: Killing Marketing: https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Marketing-Innovative-Businesses-Turning/dp/1260026426 Experiences: The Seventh Era of Marketing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0985957646/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 Managing Content Marketing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983330719/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2   Drew McLellan's PR Maven® Podcast Episode: https://www.marshallpr.com/podcast/episode-4-drew-mclellan-top-dog-at-agency-management-institute/ Susan Baier's PR Maven® Podcast Episode: https://www.marshallpr.com/podcast/episode-22-susan-baier-head-honcho-audience-audit-inc/   Activate the PR Maven® Flash Briefing on your Alexa Device. Join the PR Maven® Facebook group page.   Looking to connect:           Email: robert@contentadvisory.net LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robrose/ Twitter: @Robert_Rose

Do you sit all, or most of the day?  Are you more tired, and sore after getting out of your office chair than you are after a workout?  MEMIC’s Director of Ergonomics, Allan Brown, introduces listeners to the concept of how non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) can increase your overall health and improve safety on the job.  Brown asks, “When you get to that elevator, do you really have to push that button, or can you walk up?”  In this episode, host Pete Koch and Allan Brown explore how basic activities like walking, standing, stretching and even chewing gum can improve workplace ergonomics and employee well-being. Pete Koch: Hello listeners, and welcome to The Safety Experts podcast. Do you sit all day? Are you more tired and sore after getting out of your office chair than you are after a workout? On today's episode, we're going to discover the secrets of NEAT and how to make friends with your seat again. The Safety Experts podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leading worker's compensation provider based here on the East Coast. A new episode of the podcast drops every two weeks featuring interviews with leaders in the field, top executives, MEMIC staff and other industry experts. We discuss how safety applies to all aspects of our lives. I'm your host, Peter Koch, and for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realize is that safety impacts every part of each position that you have or even the tasks that you do. And from one perspective, safety can be seen as not doing something that can be dangerous. Simple cause and effect. If it hurts or it can hurt, then don't do it. This can be pretty easy, if the choice of the for the effect.  This can be pretty easy, if the choice for the effect is immediate and the cause is obvious. The burner on the gas stove is on the fire's hot, don't touch the stove. However, we don't often recognize the effect a behavior can have on us, or that we are too susceptible to the effect of that behavior. So, another perspective on safety could be as an active choice to do something walk at lunch, use protective gear, learn more about the hazards you're exposed to, or stand instead of sitting for part of your day. These simple choices can positively impact you at work and at home. So, for today's episode, make friends with your chair again up your NEAT. How non-exercise activity thermogenesis can help you make friends with your chair again. I'm speaking here with Al Brown, Chief Ergonomist at MEMIC to better understand NEAT how to turn it on and the negative effect sitting has on us. Al's been with MEMIC for 15 years and has helped hundreds of businesses get a handle on ergonomics and the benefits of activity in the workplace.  Al, welcome to the podcast. Al Brown: Thank you, Peter. Appreciate being here. Pete Koch: Very good. Al Brown: Correction there. I'm actually the Director of Ergonomics. I got a promotion. Pete Koch: Very good. The Director of Ergonomics.  Moving from Chief Ergonomist to Director of Ergonomics, that's even better. Even better. But before we dig into that and figure out how our NEAT, how not NEAT our chairs are. So, tell me a little bit more about you at MEMIC and how you got to where you are, and how ergonomics fits in with your place here. Al Brown: Sure. Actually, I'm a physical therapist and that's an unusual person to find, probably in the insurance industry. Pete Koch: It is. Al Brown: In early on in my life as a physical therapist worked on site at industry, Bath Ironworks, L.L. Bean. And one of the one of the things we would do is if someone were injured, we'd walk back to the workspace and take a look at it and look to see if we could change, modify the job, reengineer it. Then we'd start treatment. It was a natural transition to a place like MEMIC, where they focus on workplace safety, specifically ergonomics. So, I became part of the team here and that's what I do now as I actually partner with industry. Go out, take a look at if they've got risks and exposures. Help them see those. Help them understand what might create or cause injury and things they might do to change those things. Pete Koch: Very cool. So that's it's an interesting path to get here, being a physical therapist. But I do see that's a great tie in to be able to take what you would find when you saw your clients as a physical therapist and see the connection back actually in the workplace now that you're here, at MEMIC some of the cause and effect; what you see as the presentation of the patient versus how where it came from, possibly in the workplace and how work and the non-work life contribute to some of the aches and pains that might be there. Al Brown: Oh, sure, it's a continuum. Rarely is it just something that occurs just at work and then it shuts off and punches out at that point and the person goes home. It's a different life. It's a continuum from work right through. So repeated behaviors unconscious behavior are things that are repeated 24 hours a day. Pete Koch: Yeah. And they can kind of catch up with us. Which kind of moves right into our topic today with that concept of NEAT. And so that the where I heard about it first is actually from a book that you turned me on to by Dr. James Levine titled "Get Up and Why Your Chair Is Killing You and What You Can Do About It". And you told me prior to the podcast that you had had the opportunity to see Dr. Levine speak at a conference on this topic. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what NEAT is and why should we care? Al Brown: Sure. Yeah, no it was one of those moments. I'm at a conference that was in Las Vegas at the National Ergonomics Conference, and James Levine was one of the presenters. He's an endocrinologist with the Mayo Clinic, had great credentials, has done a lot of research in this area, pretty extensive. You should when you look at the book and you go and you read through, what exactly did they really controlled for a lot of variables. But his premise was that he looked at non-exercise activity, thermogenesis.  When you look at life, about 60 percent of our day is basal activity. Sleeping, sitting in a chair, really not moving much and that accounts for not much NEAT non-exercise activity thermogenesis. You're not burning much fuel doing those things. For example, sitting in a chair, it's only about 300 calories per day to do something like that. Then you have about 10 percent, which is the thermal activity from just eating. So, when you eat, your body actually burns fuel because it's digesting. So that gives you the last 30 percent of the day, which is this non-exercise activity thermogenesis which it can vary between people. You and I might have a 2,000 calorie per day difference. Just because you might be very active walking around, you're a farmer, you’re or you are a housekeeper, you are a manual material handler, you are a brick layer, whatever the case may be. And I might be sitting in front of a computer. And they've discovered that, you know, when you look at trying to control diet and all that kind of stuff, it really doesn't work that well when you're looking at folks that have type 2 diabetes and all those kinds of things, that's what sort of stimulated this research. And they realize it was more related to this need, this non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So, I began thinking, here we are in a world of technology that has crept into our lives and you know, what do we do less now? Pete Koch: Stand, act, be active, walk around. Al Brown: We don't move as much as we used to. So, if you think about it, those little micro movements throughout the day are part of that NEAT. And now we've decreased our NEAT. So, we begin to impact our health. Pete Koch: Yeah, I totally can see that. So that concept of, and even us standing when we did, we made a conscious choice to stand here today. And while we're standing, there's a lot of movement back and forth, side to side, one foot to the other. Moving our hands, moving our arms. But if you swap that out and you sit down at the table for dinner or you sit on the couch to watch television or stream Netflix or something, play a game, whatever that is. There's a lot less of that micro movement that would happen. So, you're burning fewer calories throughout the day. What's the connection between better health and burning more calories? Al Brown: Well, you're processing the food. So, when you consume food, it's kind of like think of a credit card. I always use a credit card analogy where you can use a credit card. You can eat but you got to pay it back. Pete Koch: At some point in time. Al Brown: And if you don't pay it back.  You accumulate interest on that credit card, and it gets expensive and sometimes it can run away and get away from you.  Eating. You can eat. But as long as the intake and the outcome are, are negated, you're fine. You can eat whatever you want as long as the activity level matches that. If the activity level is less than the intake, then you're going to accumulate interest, which is body fat. Things of that nature. And then with that, we know that there are risk factors related to it. Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, all those things that come along with higher risk factors which come along with obesity. Pete Koch: You definitely see that. And then there is also a health benefit in there. As I get to burn more calories, I'm more active, there's more blood flowing, oxygen moving around in my body. I'm going to be healthier overall because like any machine, the human machine, the more we can move and work, the better off we'll be in the long run. Things will stay tuned, we'll be mentally sharper, we'll be physically sharper throughout the day. So that helps us not only at home, but at work and play, whatever we end up doing. Al Brown: Well, yeah. You'll actually find, for example, you know, an example for the listening audience if you take a walk. Pete Koch: Yeah. Al Brown: And when you come back from the walk, you will have a bit of a euphoric feel, you'll feel good. You've released a little bit of an endorphin, probably not the level you would maybe if you were running or lifting, but you still get that endorphin plus you get that filtering of the systems in your body. You know, your heart runs a lot of the pressure within our body, so it moves a lot of your, your blood flow throughout. And again, if you think about it, we live in a world of gravity. So, everything always wants to go down to the feet. So, you need that return. And the return occurs by the heart, creating this positive pressure. However your muscles also contract when you're walking and moving, so your venous system which returns the blood flow back up to your heart from your feet are a system of one way valves and those valves open as the pressure pushes back up and pushes the fluid back up towards your heart and close as the fluid tries to move back down. So, the heart continues the pressure and there's a strain if you're not walking, but if you're out walking, the muscle contraction actually assists the heart. So, you’re actually cleaning the body. And when you clean the body, you get rid of a lot of the impurities. All the nasty stuff that when you sit just sits in your body. Think of it again, you know, I like analogies. You know me. Pete Koch: They're all good. Al Brown: And think of a swimming pool. Your body is like a swimming pool. The water in the pool is kind of like the blood your blood system. And think about the filter not running but having a lot of people swimming in it. And there's a lot of bacteria, dirt, all kinds of things accumulating in the pool, but it's not being cleaned out. And that's because things are static in the pool. That's very much like being static, sitting at your desk, standing at a workstation where you're not moving. Just lying down to get up and move or to, to change position, walk around, whatever the case may be is like turning that filter on and cleaning the pool out. Pete Koch: Right. Al Brown: So you get rid of those impurities. So that's what your blood system does. That's what your lymphatic system does.  And your lymphatic system really does depend on you just moving. It doesn't really have a heart connected, a pump, so to speak. The pump is you. Pete Koch: Moving stuff around, cleaning it out. So, there is a connection in there, not only to overall health, but we can make a connection to even work productivity. Sharper thinking. Feeling better. Moving. Being able to move more freely throughout the day. Not being maybe as sore from repetitive activities. If I can clean the product of work out of the body through movement. Al Brown: Yeah, oh absolutely. Just getting up and moving is, think of that, here's another thing. If eating, if you eat, eat and have dinner, your blood glucose levels go up, you know. But if you go take a walk right after dinner, you can drop that glucose level. It's kind of like stirring it a little bit, like stirring the circuit a little bit. It's not all accumulated on the bottom. And you can drop your blood glucose levels by about 20 percent just by taking that walk. Yeah. Pete Koch: Yeah. Because you're using the fuel. You put fuel in, if I, if your body's in storage mode is just going to store it. If you're active and you go out to use the fuel that you put in as it's being processed, then you don't need to store it. You're actually burning through it. Al Brown: Correct. Pete Koch: Awesome. So, let's talk about the issue that Dr. Levine is targeting here. Is sitting, being the biggest, or one of the biggest challenges to health overall in the United States and a big challenge to our workers. So, I'm going to ask you the question here, is sitting really as big a deal as Dr. Levine makes it out to be? Al Brown: The short answer is yes. The longer answer, which I always will have, is the when we use the number 11 hours, 11 hours of sitting. And the question is, do you sit for 11 hours a day cumulatively? So collectively over the day. If you think of your day, do you spend eleven hours sitting? If you do, your risk factors, your health risk factors go up exponentially. You begin to have the same risks and exposures as someone who smokes fairly heavily. Pete Koch: Wow. Al Brown: And we're talking not only type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and those types of things, we're even talking about breast cancer. So, the risks go up if you sit, if you start to close in on 11 hours a day. So, what can you do to make differences? So, you know, in this technology creep that we're looking and I call it technology creep, because what happens is more and more things we do are related to the computer from, you know, shopping, getting your media content, setting up meetings. I don't have to go down and talk to someone at MEMIC, I can send them an e-mail, or I can text them. So, we, you know, we move less. So, with that technology, we sit more, and we creep towards that 11 hours of inactivity. Pete Koch: Sure. So a lot of the times, you know, you go back 20, 30 years and sitting wasn't as, it was common, it was something that we looked to for more relief to get kind of take a break, get off our feet. But we sit more than we think. So, within the book, there was an interesting set of questions, a quiz that Dr. Levine posed the sitting that the chair quiz to see how comfortable you are with your chair. Al Brown: Did you pull it out of the book? Pete Koch: I did, I pulled it right out of the book. So, we're going to take that quiz, right, So I'm going to ask the question.  And then we're both going to keep track in our head of yes and no questions. Al Brown: OK. Pete Koch: So if you answer yes, you get a point. If you answer no, you get no points. Al Brown: Okay. Low score wins, right? Pete Koch: Low score wins. Al Brown: This is a game of golf. Pete Koch Kind of and I'm really bad at golf. Al Brown: But that ups your NEAT, if you don't take the cart, walk around. Pete Koch Yeah. All right. Al Brown: Opportunities. Pete Koch: It does. OK. So, the first question. Pete Koch: Number one, do you work seated at a chair? Al Brown: Oh. Pete Koch: Got it. Al Brown: I do. Pete Koch: All right. So, I think I'm going to have to give me a one there. Al Brown: Aha, me too. Pete Koch: Most of what I do, although a lot of what I do is standing whether I'm doing a training or I'm going to do, I try to have sometimes meetings with people when I get to get up and walk around. But a lot of the work that I do is going to be in a chair. Al Brown: So you find opportunities to up your NEAT? Pete Koch: I do. I try. Al Brown: Because you're cognizant of that sitting. Yeah and driving. We drive a lot. Pete Koch: Oh, my gosh. We drive all the time. And that's another place where, you know, if I go back before I worked for MEMIC, the job I had wasn't travel based. So, I spent a lot more time on my feet in the transition between that and a more sedentary job was very challenging for me. I mean, it's taken me quite a while to sort of overcome that and figure it out. So, number one is the, have you worked seated in a chair? I'm going to give myself a one for that. So, number two is, have you ever shopped on the Internet? Pete & Al: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I have. Yeah. Guilty. I have to give us a one on that one there. Pete Koch: So do you watch, number three: Do you watch TV or a streaming service while seated for an hour or more a day? Al Brown: Oh, geez. Yes. I watched Netflix last night. Pete & Al: Netflix, Amazon Prime. Also, YouTube. Holy cow. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you get there on and only watch it for a little bit. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You got to turn the auto play off. That's right. Yeah. And then you're the you know, the cliffhanger. You got to go to the next episode and all a sudden, it's three hours later. Right. Yeah. But I pull the plug at two hours sometimes. Yes. Pete Koch: OK. Number four. Do you ever eat while watching TV or in the car. Pete & Al: Oh yes. Yes. Yeah. So, I'm going to have to I'll say no to the television, but I'm going to have to say yes to the car just because the car for me. Television we don't snack or, you know, maybe a cup of tea, coffee. Sure. That's it. Have, have you ever Internet dated. Al Brown: Interstate dated? Pete & Al: Internet dated. Internet, no. I'm going to have to give us both a 0, A big 0. Sure. Computer didn't exist when I met my wife. Pete Koch: Yeah. Number six, I think. Do you own a recliner? Pete & Al: No, I do not. I don't either own recliner. Very good. Pete Koch: If you go to a party, do you seek out a chair or a stool? No. Is that because you don't go to parties or because you don't seek out chairs or stools? Al Brown: I'm typically not invited to parties. No, I don't. I tend to stand just because you end up, you get engaged in the conversation. It will be like this where I am probably more comfortable standing and talking. Pete Koch: Yeah. So, me to. I'm the same, same there as well. So that's going to be a zero. And then at if you look at your sofa, does it have an imprint of your butt in it. Al Brown: No. Pete Koch: Is that because it's new? Al Brown: No it's old, and it doesn't have an imprint. Doesn't, I don't spend a lot of time there. And change position all the time. Swap the cushions. Right, go back and forth. Depends on whoever wants the light to do an activity while watching TV, they get that side. Pete Koch: So this, this question might apply more to millennials than you and me, but I still think it's an important question to ask, especially in this day and age. So, do you spend more time with friends electronically than in real life? Pete & Al: No, I do not facetime, text, and all that. I talk directly to them.  Try to go see him. Yeah. Pete Koch: And the last question. Have you ever fantasized about just sitting? Al Brown: I was on top of Katahdin once and I was been walking for 8 hours. I guess you could say I was fantasizing about just sitting sown just sitting down to give my hips and legs a break. But no, not typically. Pete Koch: Yeah. Not typically either. All right. So, let's total them up. So, we've got one, two, three, four. So, we have four totals. And then the possible last one could be five. So if we total this up in one point for each answer and for those of you who are, who are doing this quiz with us on online here, for if you have zero, then you don't need to read Dr. Levine's book. You're good. You don't have a great relationship with your chair. And you can just keep on going. If you got two, one to two, you are considered a chair pre-addict. Hmm. Three to five. He gives us a Chair Addict. So we are, we are smack dab in Chair Addiction Al, because we're at 4.  Al Brown: Time for rehab. Pete Koch: Yeah, and six to eight, then you're in the Chair Imprisoned. And if you have hit 9 or 10, you are a Chair-a-holic. Yeah. Al Brown: Ouch. Pete Koch: Yeah, ouch. Wow okay. So relationship with your chair, we've talked some about like the body's response to not sitting at a biological level, so the cellular level, how the heart works in cleaning it out, and our endocrine system. But what do you see when you start talking to other workers or go into different businesses about the physical effects of sitting in those people? So, what do you see? Al Brown: Well, you know, I see musculoskeletal changes, you know, changes in their, in their body. Muscle length, muscle tightness. For example, when you sit down your hip flexor, the muscle on the front side of your thigh.  And it starts at the front side of your thigh, kind of right at the bottom where your pocket is, and it passes through your pelvis and attaches to your lumbar spine. So, it kind of goes right through your pelvis.  In a sitting position that muscle is in a shortened position. So, if you sit for an extended period time and what happens to muscles if they are in a position for a long period of time is they begin to adapt or if they're short, they shorten to that position. If you ever stretch something, it'll overstretch in the other direction. But in this particular case, your hip flexors, your hamstrings, which are the muscles on the back side of your thigh because your knees are bent will also shorten. You will oftentimes when you're sitting, you will tend to, the head will come forward a bit. Or you may recline. But in any case, you'll shut off your core muscles, particularly the front core muscles, your abdominal area, your back muscles will actually, your upper shoulder area, will get overstretched and lengthened.  If they're chronically lengthened and overstretched, that can lead to a condition called fibromyalgia or myofascial discomfort, which is connective tissue that is constantly under strain. Very difficult to recover from that simply because you have to either you have to shorten it, but that means contracting this irritated tissue. So, it's a very difficult thing to kind of change back. So those, those muscles in your body and to your chest area tends to close down because everything's in front of us. So, you, and those impact us. So, when we go to stand back up and those muscles are short, they change the mechanics of standing. So, if you think of us as a game of Jenga, we begin to start knocking some of those blocks out of position. And instead of a nice stout stack of blocks that are well-organized, the tight muscles begin to pull us forward or begin to flatten our back. We begin to lose our lumbar curve. We begin to have shortened hamstrings with knee pain. And that's all because of that prolonged static sitting posture. Pete Koch: So there's a musculoskeletal change that happens from sitting all the time. And when that occurs. So, what does that what does that look like, like when you talked about it, it changes the mechanics of how we stand back up. But if you've been sitting for a long time, that's your habit. Let's say that you took the quiz and you're in that chair imprisoned or chair-a-holic. Like most of the stuff that you do, I sit at work.  I spend a long time in the car commuting back and forth or on the bus or in a plane. And then I'm at home and I am doing work at a computer at home, or I'm exhausted when I get home. So, I just like to sit on the couch and play a video game or stream movies. So, I'm seated for eleven hours or more a day. What is it? What does it look like in a person? Like, what do you physically look like? Al Brown: Well, you, you know, one of the things I didn't mention in that that little list on the front side is the, you will tend to lose some of your muscle mass around your buttock area, your gluteus medius, gluteus maximus. Those are sort of your hip area. So, things you'll see, you'll see sort of a forward posture flattened back. But when during a gait, if someone's walking, you will see what we call in the medical world a Trendelenburg gait and the Trendelenburg gait, you have to realize that when you stand on your right hip, you weight bear on your right leg, your muscles on the right side of your hip contract tighten and they lift your pelvis to keep your belt, let's use the belt as a reference point, level with, with the earth or slightly elevate it.  The left side so that the left leg can move through. And then when you weight bear on the left side, the left side contracts, lifts and brings your right leg through.  So, your upper core, your upper body stays pretty vertical. When you've been sitting for a long time and you've lost that muscle mass on those hips, you will see people wobble. So, you'll see their head when they weight bear on the right, their head will shift over on the right hip to assist that muscle that's weak and bring their leg through. So it's sort of a wobbling gait when they're walking and you realize that person probably has got a lot of weakness in their hip areas, which will eventually lead to hip pain, which will probably eventually lead to total hip replacement, which really doesn't solve the problem. Pete Koch: It doesn't. Al Brown: Because we're just taking care of the joint. We haven't taken care of the strength of the core and the pelvic floor and that hip musculature. Pete Koch: So it's really a long-term effect. Like we could have some short-term acute effects. Like well for example, when I get out of a car, if I've been sitting in a car for two, sometimes three hours, though I try not to do that anymore. I'm sore like my hip flexors are tight, my low back is tight, my shoulders are tight, and it's because within the car I am like you said, my hamstrings are shortened, and my hip fractures are shortened and head forward in my posture.  And I'm in that single position for a lot of that time. Even if I do try to move, I can't move as much as I want to or should, and I'm sore. So that acute change for us or the acute effect is some short-term pain which can be alleviated with movement. But the long-term effects is what you're describing is that there could be the long term effects of that constant sitting is loss of muscle mass and eventually some degradation into the joints that will support because we're not ergonomically functioning the way we're supposed to anymore. Al Brown: Correct. And you know, again, it's that if you go back to the premise of art or talk today, which is NEAT, we suddenly begin to change or reduce that NEAT. And it does have those cardiovascular impacts that we talked about earlier button. But the physical effects are also right there. So, and then those two tend to feed off each other. And if you think about it, we really depend on independent movement of our body around the earth, so to speak. So, we're slowly painting ourselves back in a corner of inactivity. If you've ever seen the word the movie, Wall-E. Pete Koch: Yes. Al Brown: You know, where humans basically were chair bound and they really had no course. They couldn't stand up. And the little robots had to do everything for them. Think about that. And where we're heading. Pete & Al: We're getting there. We're developing robots. Yeah. Help us do those things right now. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Pete Koch: Okay, so lots of effects there for long-term sitting. And we've, we went through the quiz. We've talked some about what we already do. What are some, you know, when you go to a workplace, what are some areas where you find people seated for, for long periods of time? Al Brown: Well, we try to one first introduce this concept of because again, not everybody understands NEAT and understands the basis for, I might come in and say, you know, let's do job rotation or, or let's take a stretch break. And people think of that as "stretch breaks don't work" and, or let's collaborate, let's in an office setting might encourage folks to go and receive somebody that's come to the front office that they're going to meet with back as opposed to just, you know, "send 'em in" type thing. So, you're encouraging that movement, but you have to get them to understand that foundation on the front side of why we're doing this. If you look at the transition of our office over the last five to six years, you've seen an office that was static, cubicle driven. Stay inside that cubicle. You had a six or a 10 by 10 space and that was your space. And typically, you didn't leave it to more open space, more collaborative space. Rooms that you can go to, desks that go up and down. So, we try to encourage industry to look at those kinds of solutions where you're encouraging movement throughout the day. It's funny because one of the when James Levine was down in Vegas doing this presentation, there were about 400 vendors and probably 350 of those were dynamic desks. Or as we may know, most people know them as standing desks. So, the perception was that, oh, let's just stand up at work. And in fact, that's, that's an OK thing. And it's great because it takes those sore muscles like you dealt with in the car, and it allows you in the office to change frequently and again, if you look at Harvard, the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Jack Dennerlein, Nicolaas Pronk, a lot of those folks that have done some of the work down there, they you know every 30 minutes stand up, 30 minutes sit down. And about half the day up, half the day down. It doesn't solve the physiological issues that Levine is talking about. And he's not saying stand up and that'll fix the problem. That is, I call it a three-legged stool. And we look at wellness. One is you sitting. We're going to have to sit. That's here. Computers are here. We're not going to change that.  Two, given the opportunity to change position by, and allowing, like you in the car. Let you get up, stand, move, different position, put the muscles, reset the body. And then three of that stools, that third leg is “Go Move”. Don't work through the stretch break. Don't eat at your desk and continue the work. You take a walk. Same thing even in a manufacturing facility. Some folks will get up, but they'll go and sit down in the cafeteria and eat and then go back and sit right back down and do what they're doing. This, an example this morning, just myself personally, I realized this conversation is coming up today and I said, Gee I get my cup of coffee. I go out. I sit in the chair and I look out at the lawn. And today I said, no, I'm going to walk around the lawn drinking my coffee. So that's what I did. So, I just took that opportunity to up my NEAT. So, we try to find those wind, but you really have to educate folks on the front side why we're doing this. Pete Koch: I would agree with that totally, that the why around movement is important. And I think also identifying all of the, all of the times when we're not active like, well, we're almost either required by a particular task or by a job or we are requiring ourselves through habit to stay in one position and helping people identify those, those times throughout the day when you might be approaching 11 hours in the chair or even eight hours in the chair is quite a bit of time to think about that throughout our day and then the more we can be active. I like that connection, that three-legged stool, stool, sit, stand, move. So basically, you can have two different positions that you need to swap between the two all day. But even if you're just sitting and standing and changing your position at your desk for eight hours, it's not going to be as beneficial to you if you get up and move through a break to do something else.And the standing piece too, just as a sidebar.  The fidgeter is going to have a higher NEAT level than the non-fidgeter.  And you yourself know, are you a fidget or not a fidgeter? You know, I mean, you wiggle back, and I mean, we're here having a conversation. Pete Koch: I'm totally a fidgeter.  Al Brown: And I'm on the right hip, then I'm over on the left hip. So we're fidgeting. And when folks stand, we really try to encourage them that when you're standing, don't just stand, you know, move back and forth, bend your leg.  Do toe raises, you know, do anything that kind of creates actual contraction muscle movement in the lower stretches.  Because, again, remember, it assists that feedback loop of bringing fluids back up to the heart and filtering the system. So, anything you can do along those lines are going to be beneficial. Pete Koch: Yeah, that's great. So, we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back with Al to talk a little bit more about NEAT and then discuss some potential solutions that we have and our ideas for the workplace. But we'll take a break and we'll be right back. Pete Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Al Brown, director of ergonomics at MEMIC. So, let's jump back in with more questions right away. So, let's get back to I have a sedentary job. I'm going to drive a lot. I'm going to sit at my job, and I enjoy at home just being still.  So fine, I’m going to sit there, but I'm going to try to work out. So, I'm going to after work, I might go to the gym and work out for an hour. High intensity workout. Going to sweat a lot to get a lot of steps in and get my heart rate up. I feel really good afterwards. But how much is that really combating the long term sitting for that day? Al Brown: Unfortunately, it's not combating it much. They actually coined the term, I think it was in Australia or New Zealand, the active couch potato. And I'm just as guilty as you because necessity sometimes dictates my life in terms of drive a certain distance to do my job. And then, you know, generate reports or whatever the case may be. So, I'm sedentary. So same, I feel like I need something. So that pill I take is the walk, the run, the lift. And unfortunately, we do that in a short window of time. And in that short window of time, we you know sweat like you said. But then when we're done, what do you do? We sit down for dinner or then Netflix or whatever TV. Pete & Al: Fantasize about that chair. I just want to sit down. I'm tired. Al Brown: So it doesn't, it negates. Now, granted, you are creating a good muscular musculoskeletal system. You're strengthening your muscle tone and you're getting some muscle memory back. All those things are good. So, don't stop your workout. That's important. What you want to do is find strategies to add activity throughout the day. If you go back to James Levine's research and I encourage you all to kind of go back and look at that, because, you know, it's interesting. When he did his presentation out at the National Ergonomics Conference, he never stood still. He moved constantly and he did it purposely. And we're talking, you know, a room with 200 people and that he just raced around the whole time making his point. But what you want to do is in his research, he looked at folks that were lean, that had low risk factors actually moved, and again this was a very comprehensive study, two and a half hour, two and a half hours more a day.  And that's not I'm going to go out and run for an hour. And then I'm going to go work out for another hour and then do something for a half hour. These were little tiny increments. These were 10-minute increments throughout the day where I'm going to walk down and go get a cup of coffee at the corner. I'm going to walk over and get some lunch. I'm going to walk here and collaborate. So collectively, and those things to a certain extent are unconscious for a lot of folks.  You have a lot of folks that will not leave their chair, and that's unconscious, too. They don't rule our subconscious. They just don't realize they don't move. So, you have to try to find strategies that get you, and again, there's apps and all that kind of good stuff, but it's a behavior change. So, if you are locked in and you don't really think about, it's easy to push that button for the elevator and skip the stairs. Going "I don't want to do the stairs", nobody's watching and no one really cares. It's your body, it's you. It's your physiology. You would think you should care. Pete Koch: Yeah. Al Brown: Because it's the quality of life down the road. So, you begin to try to find those strategies that get you to move more.  Park across the parking lot. Don't park close. But park far away. When you go to the store in the weekend, park further away, protect the car doors. Don't get into the whole mess. I got to get close to the door. I have to laugh, we have a large outdoor retail store up in the Freeport area and I see a lot of people circling, trying to get as close to the door,  and meanwhile, it says "Outdoor hiking, camping, store" I'm thinking. Pete Koch: Yeah, exactly. Al Brown: Park further away! Pete Koch: You can do it! You can do it! Al Brown: So it's one of those things that you have to find those opportunities, be it at work. And again, management has to support that, too. Pete Koch: Sure. Al Brown: You know, if you have a management style that says if you're not at your desk, you're not working everything else is going to fail. You need that support at the upper management level that says, "I want folks to move and change." And what they have to realize is by allowing that you re-oxygenate the body, you rejuvenate the body.  Instead of getting that 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon "logy-ness", you come back, and you know, you produce a letter or you know manufacturing, you don't stick your finger someplace where it shouldn't be.  You're fresher. So again, I go back to the analogy of, you know, if I had, if I drove a truck for work and I said I don't have time to rotate the tires and change the oil and I make more money if I just keep going. Eventually I'm going to see the engine sort of burst into smoke and the tires fall off and major repairs. Oh, my gosh. Where if I take that time to actually do preventative maintenance and service it, I just keep chugging along and keep producing. So same thing with a human being. We're no different. We're a mechanical system within the world of gravity that we need to take time and sort of refresh ourselves, reset ourselves, and the benefits outweigh themselves from, you know, from staying at the desk. I mean, get out. You move around. You've come back actually are much better at what you do. Pete Koch: Those are really good points. And in some cases, I think it could be easier for someone that has a job at a desk or has a job in a place where they are allowed to get up. What about some of those positions, like a truck driver, like someone in manufacturing who literally is measured on production. I've got to get X amount of pieces out per day or I'm order picking or I'm doing something else. What are some strategies for someone who has a job that's based on the amount of time that they can actually do the job? What are some things that they can do to up their NEAT? Pete & Al: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Now in order pickers got probably a lot of NEAT. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Al Brown: It's like a mail person that, you know, walks and delivers mail. I think, I always thought the fantasy job would be to do that because you are, you're shooting the breeze, you're talking to people and you're walking and you're delivering mail. Of course, you're hanging it off one shoulder, so you have to change it every so often. But for those folks like the truck driver, again senior management has to support, let me pull off and take a stretch break occasionally. But, even then, truck driving is one of those tough things that you just, it's time, money and get down the road and you can't get up out of the seat to, to move around. So, when you do get out of the truck, first of all, I have to be very careful, because when you're getting out, you don't want to jump down. A lot has changed physiologically like you and I talked about earlier in the cast. So, you have to get yourself down safely. But when you're on the ground, then you reset and then you take time and opportunity to kind of move around 10, 15, 20 minutes. Don't just go and sit down somewhere else. Actually, take a walk around the rest stop, take a walk around the truck, give yourself some time to kind of recover.  Then back into the truck and then next stop, same thing. Find those 10 to 15-minute opportunities to just walk around and lengthen your body and kind of get things going. And you certainly should be someone that when you get home, you go for the walk.  And go, don't rush it.  Just take your time. Pete Koch: Nice and easy. Al Brown: A nice, slow walk through the woods is better than a quick run. Pete Koch: Yup. Al Brown: Because again, it's going to be that slow burn that's kind of important.  You know, in, in Maine, you know, we have long summer days, you know. So instead of our mindset sometimes is, oh, it's, it's four o'clock end of the day, or four-thirty or five o'clock end of the day and we tend to get home, you know, where we still have sunlight. Pete & Al: Habits. Yeah. Its habits. Al Brown: So extend that time, extend that time. Go out and do something, mow the lawn, go out and garden, go out and find those opportunities where if, you know, you're restricted like a truck driver, you have to find those on the other side. Now, if it's manufacturing or something like that, again, getting folks out to take a walk at lunch, take a, you know, get them to understand the value of resetting.  Job rotation.  You know, have them go move to a different job. Pods, if they have a pod and they have three machines, I worked with an auto manufacturing, that you know they're at this pod and then they move over to this pod. So, it's allowing them to move and use different muscle groups. But they're moving. It's again, it's that sort of getting the body to move. Pete Koch: And that can fit into the lean manufacturing concept.  And also, really, when we're thinking about the workplace, regardless whether it's truck driving or whether it's manufacturing or if it's the office space or it doesn't matter what it is, we're looking at that concept of as a, as an employer, I need to look at my workplace from a productivity standpoint.  But also, to maximize the productivity, I also have to keep in mind how well my employees can move within the workplace to up their NEAT in order to maintain their productivity.  Because a worker that is able to move more freely throughout the day, to, to bring more blood and oxygen to those muscles and those muscle groups will be more productive throughout the day, not just in the morning when they get there or in the evening when they first get to work depending on their shift. Al Brown: Correct, yes.  Pete Koch: So it's a more, not so much a holistic concept of it, but it's really looking at how we, we take the workplace and we can help the worker be healthier within the workplace. Yeah, those are all interesting concepts. Al Brown: Plus lower injury rates, too. I mean, because, again, that static, not moving posture, you know, and doing repeated tasks, you know, those are where we see high injury rates.  So, the movement within this does improve the wellness of the worker, but it also reduces the risk and exposure to those types of injuries we see in a work environment. Pete Koch: Sure. Now, how about the fidgeting part? Like so I you know I was thinking about that truck driver. When you were talking about the truck driver and I've you know, I've got a long road to go, heavy traffic sometimes.  There’re not many places, depending on where you're traveling, that you can pull off a big rig someplace safely and get out and wander around so I can fidget help within? Al Brown: I think, I think it was Levine's book. He said chewing gum is, you burn more calories chewing gum than you do actually sitting at a computer. So, if you're driving, chew some gum. Pete Koch: Chew some gum. Al Brown: Yeah, those types of things.  You know, I have a gripper that I keep in my vehicle that I'm actually sitting.  And I'm constantly working on gripping because my hands, you know, I used to do a lot of manual work and I lost a lot of my hand strength. So, I said, I've got to improve my hand strength. So, I just picked up a little gripper that I keep. And when I get to a stoplight, you know, instead of looking at my text or phone, I don't do that. I pick up my gripper and I, I do a couple repetitions. So, exercise bands, they sell those nowadays. You know, great, you can throw them in your suitcase if you travel or you're in the truck. It doesn't take a lot of space. You can take them out, do a little exercise. We're working with a company now that does every time, they get to their third stop, they come out and do three movements and three stretches, three sets or one set. So, it's sort of integrated into one, their job performance they're expected to do it.  And two, you know, they that it just becomes almost routine or habit for them. So those are the kinds of things you want to do is sort of change. Really have to take a critical look at your, it's like anything else, a critical look at your behaviors. You know, it's like money. Again, if you go back to if you don't know where you're spending your money, then you'll be struggling with money for a long time. You really have to look and be critical of where I spend every dime. And OK, now I'm going to start doing these things to save money. Same thing with your NEAT, which is even more important because I am going to tell you, your health is more important than your money. And you know, so you really need to take a critical look and be honest with yourself. And then also when your kind of trying to up that NEAT, be honest with yourself. When you get to that elevator, what do you really have to push that button, or can you walk up? And it's going to be harder. But in the long run by up in your NEAT and lowering your risk factors, you're going to feel a lot better later on and compressing your comorbidities and life, those aches and pains and cardiovascular type things. Pete Koch: Those are all really great points Al for that.  And I think the bottom line for us as we close out the podcast today is that kind of understanding first, looking at our habits, understanding where our NEAT level is right now, and then what are we going to actively do to increase that throughout the day? So, the overall, like you said, the slow burn movements that we have. So, don't stop those high intensity activities that you might have outside of work or outside of your relaxation or other activities.  But look towards what can I do to increase my activity in between or during some of those more sedentary tasks or jobs that we have. Al Brown: Exactly. Pete Koch: Awesome. So, thanks again today. And to all the listeners out there, really appreciate that. If you have any questions for our guests or we'd like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast, you should email podcast at MEMIC.com. Get out there. So, we really appreciate that. So, we're wrapping up today's podcast here with Al Brown, Director of Ergonomics at MEMIC. I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with us today. Any final comments for our listeners out there today? Al Brown: Pete? No, thank you for the invitation. It's one of those things, you know, find those opportunities to improve, improve your NEAT. I'm an exerciser.  I'm an active couch potato.  And I still need to find those areas, places where I can improve my NEAT. You were very good today by, I was walking towards the elevator and you said, "Aren't you going to take the stairs?"  And so, the fact that we did this whole podcast standing up, which is a great thing. The time flew by and we feel better. We're probably looking forward to sitting down now. Pete & Al: At some point reacquaint ourselves with our chair. There we go. Al Brown: But not spend too much time there. Pete Koch: I'm not fantasizing about it, for sure. Al Brown: No neither am I. Pete Koch: Excellent.  So, this podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leader in the competitive worker's comp market and committed to health and safety of all workers. To learn more about how MEMIC can help your business, visit MEMIC.com. And don't forget about our upcoming workshops and webinars. And you can also visit MEMIC.com for dates and topics.  When you want to hear more from the Safety Experts. You can find us on iTunes or right here at MEMIC.com. And if you have a smart speaker, tell it to play the safety experts podcast and you can pick up today's episode or a previous episode. You can also enable the Safety Experts podcast skill on Alexa to receive safety tips and advice from any of our episodes. So, we really appreciate your listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know that you can find it on their favorite podcast player by searching for the Safety Experts. Thanks again for tuning into the Safety Experts podcast. And remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast.  Thanks for listening. Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast   MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/ Peter Koch - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch Allan Brown - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/allan-brown Bath Iron Works - https://www.gd.com/en/our-businesses/marine-systems/bath-iron-works L.Bean - https://www.llbean.com/?&qs=3147769&Matchtype=e&msclkid=2d14580265a515a69b3d05b3fa8a9a0c&gclid=CPHZjtv4tOUCFRDcswod0iMO2A&gclsrc=ds Mayo Clinic - https://www.mayoclinic.org/ “Get Up: Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It” by Dr. James Levine - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/get-up-james-a-levine/1118661250 James Levine - https://doctor.webmd.com/doctor/james-levine-9fee2b4b-e59b-427b-a3c2-5e6d2ead739b-overview National Ergonomics Conference - https://www.ergoexpo.com/ Wall-E - https://movies.disney.com/wall-e Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ Jack Dennerlein - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/jack-dennerlein/ Nicolaas Pronk, PhD - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ecpe/faculty/nicolaas-pronk/

Producer/Host: Amy Browne Studio Engineer: Joel Mann Guests Connie Jenkins, Meredith Bruskin, Dud Hendrik, Robert Shetterly and Russell Wray are members of an affinity group that has been engaging in what they call “civil resistance”, as well as using other strategies, to call attention to the impact of the war ships built at General Dynamic’s Bath Iron Works – including their “carbon boot print”. Hear why, and what alternatives they are proposing, on this edition of Maine Currents. Catch the award-winning Maine Currents, independent local news, views and culture, on the 1st Thursday of every month, 10-11 a.m. on WERU-FM and streaming live at www.weru.org The post Maine Currents 7/4/19: Mainers Standing Up to General Dynamics/BIW first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Producer/Host: Amy Browne Studio Engineer: Joel Mann Guests Connie Jenkins, Meredith Bruskin, Dud Hendrik, Robert Shetterly and Russell Wray are members of an affinity group that has been engaging in what they call “civil resistance”, as well as using other strategies, to call attention to the impact of the war ships built at General Dynamic’s Bath Iron Works – including their “carbon boot print”. Hear why, and what alternatives they are proposing, on this edition of Maine Currents. Catch the award-winning Maine Currents, independent local news, views and culture, on the 1st Thursday of every month, 10-11 a.m. on WERU-FM and streaming live at www.weru.org

Producer/Host: Carolyn Coe On April 27, 2019, 25 people were arrested while blocking roads near the North Gate of Bath Iron Works on the morning of the christening ceremony for the warship the Zumwalt Destroyer Lyndon B. Johnson. Bringing attention to the urgency of the moment given the climate crisis and the harm caused by the US military worldwide, activists share why they protested the ceremony and share their calls for the conversion of the shipyard to the building of green technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels, and plastic collectors for polluted oceans. Guests: Ellen Barfield, Russell Wray, Rob Shetterly, Dud Hendrick, Rev. Mair Honan, Meredith Bruskin, Ginny Schneider, Ethan Hughes, Jim Freeman, Jason Rawn, George Ostensen, Deb Marshall, Connie Jenkins The above individuals represent many groups including Veterans for Peace, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats, Americans Who Tell the Truth, Maine Veterans for Peace, Peace and Justice Group of Waldo County, Maine War Tax Resisters, Island Peace and Justice, Peninsula Peace and Justice, Pax Christi Maine, and Smilin’ Trees Disarmament Farm. Veterans for Peace event announcement and flyer

Amy Bouchard was working at the Bath Iron Works shipyard when she decided to follow her passion of baking and started making whoopie pies from her kitchen. Her story starts in one of Maine’s oldest mill towns, watching her family work at the factories. With no business experience, a basket in one arm, and a toddler in the other, Amy began her journey. This is her story… 25 years, and 20 million whoopie pies later.

November 13, 1948     On March 19th, 1930 - A steel-hulled diesel powered yacht began construction at the Bath Iron Works. The yacht was finished and launched on Dec, 8, 1930 and delivered to its owner, wood-pulp magnate Hugh J. Chisholm. The yacht was names Aras and it was more than 243 feet long, it had a 36 foot beam, a draft of 14 feet, and displaced 1805 tons fully loaded. She had 2 Winston diesel engines that generated 1100 hp with a top speed of 13.5 knots.    Eleven years later on April 24, 1941, the US Navy acquired the Aras. She was re-named Williamsburg and thus the former pleasure craft was destined for military service as a gun boat.   The Williamburg was christened on Oct. 7, 1941 and began her service as a Naval gunboat. Williamsburg served many special missions for the military. She served as a command base for several Naval commanders and at one point even carried a delivery of 28 sealed boxes of gold bullion - valued at $1.5 million dollars to Washington from Iceland.    Just as the Williamsburg was slated for conversion to an amphibious force flagship for the Pacific, the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hastening the end of the war, and cancelling the slated conversion of the Williamsburg.   Instead, Williamsburg gained new employment as the presidential yacht, to replace the USS Potomac. In the following years, Williamsburg served two presidents - Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Truman made use of the yacht to conduct presidential tours to Florida, Bermuda, Cuba and the Virgin Islands. However, Dwight D. Eisenhower made only one cruise in the yacht, and shortly thereafter he ordered the yacht to be de-commissioned.   It was on this very yacht that today, November 13th, 1948, President Harry Truman, his wife and his daughter sailed the Williamsburg from Key West to the Dry Tortugas for the day.    The ship departed from Key West at 7:07am and just outside Key West Harbor, the Williamsburg was joined by the destroyer NOA, which acted as an escort for the passage to and from the Dry Tortugas.    The Presidential party lounged on the main aft deck for the majority of the trip, and had a noon lunch buffet on the aft deck for the entire party.    At 12:50pm, the Williamsburg dropped anchor off the Dry Tortugas and at 1:00pm, most of the party boarded a motor boat that had been sent out to Key West to ferry the party to and from the Williamsburg. A few of the party members stayed on the Williamsburg for the day to get in some fishing.    The rest of the party did a full tour of Fort Jefferson on Garden Key. At 2pm, the party that has visited Fort Jefferson returned to the Williamsburg and at 2:05pm, the Williamsburg and NOA got underway for the return trip to Key West.    The Williamsburg arrived back at Key West at 7:30pm and moored at the Naval Airstation. The Presidential Party left Williamsburg at 7:35pm.   Later that evening, while working on his mail after dinner, President Truman wrote a letter to the Mayor of Key West, which read:   My Dear Mayor Adams,   Please accept from a grateful heart this assurance of my appreciation of the wonderful welcome accorded to me by yourself and the good people of Key West and community. It warmed my heart and will long be treasure among my happy Key West memories.   May I also express to you and through you to the citizens of Key West, my hearty appreciation of such a fine message of congratulations. I read your thoughtful expressions and want all of you to know how much they mean to me.   Very sincerely yours, Harry S. Truman

Producer/Host: Amy Browne Studio Engineer: John Greenman Opposition to Maine Taxpayers Funding “Corporate Welfare” for Military Contractor General Dynamics In February we reported on a proposal to give a $60 million tax break to Bath Iron Works at the expense of Maine taxpayers. Those who support the measure say it protects jobs, but those who oppose it see it as corporate welfare for defense contractor General Dynamics, the company that owns BIW. Today we follow up with some of the activists involved in the issue, including Bruce Gagnon who was with us last month, as well as Bob Klotz and Lisa Savage. We’re also joined by Alex Nunes, an investigative reporter at nunesweekly.com. He has exposed details about what is going on behind the scenes of this deal. Columnist Lawrence Reichard, joins us in the studio. He's covered the issue in his weekly column “Bricks and Mortars” which runs in the Waldo County based Republican Journal and the Coastal Journal in Bath. Later in the program we check in with Jessica Stewart, one of 3 women who were arrested at Senator Collin’s office last December where they were protesting her support of the tax bill. They are heading to federal court tomorrow. Note: Activist Mark Roman was scheduled to be with us but was unable to join us due to technical difficulties. He sent the following comment: “In the taxation committee testimony, BIW VP, John Fitzgerald was asked by a committee member if he would open BIW books to the committee to help determine the need for the tax break. Mr Fitzgerald said quite loudly and quite clearly NO! we will not do that. It seems that the state is not to question the subsidiary of General Dynamics Corporation, the fifth largest weapons maker on the planet. The $45 million being requested would just cover the annual compensation of the top four officers of General Dynamics. I believe that the people of Maine need that money for education, infrastructure repairs and health care for our citizens. I would ask listeners to call their representatives and tell them to vote no on LD- 1781. I want to thank WERU for being the voice of the people” FMI: Follow the proposed legislation at: legislature.maine.gov/LawMakerWeb/summary.asp?ID=280067362 Contact info for your legislators is available at: legislature.maine.gov/ To receive Lawrence Reichard’s “Bricks and Mortars” column via email, contact him at lreichard@gmail.com From Alex Nunes of www.nunesweekly.com: Here are a few links that may be of interest to your audience. This is the original General Dynamics stock buyback story for The Providence Journal: www.providencejournal.com/news/20171103/defense-firms-spend-big-on-lucrative-stock-buybacks This is an op-ed I wrote for The Day newspaper in New London, Conn., about General Dynamics seeking state subsidies in New England. I talk about Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine: www.theday.com/article/20180204/OP03/180209865 These are two stories from a multi-part series about economic development in Rhode Island and Connecticut centered around building the Navy’s next generation of nuclear-armed submarines. The first story addresses the corporate welfare/economic development aspects of it. The second looks at the reaction from the peace community: www.providencejournal.com/news/20170915/ri-invests-millions-for-job-training-in-public-private-partnership-with-eb www.providencejournal.com/news/20170915/question-beneath-electric-boats-ascent-why-do-we-need-these-ships Investigative reporting from The Bollard was also mentioned on the show and can be found here: thebollard.com/2018/02/06/ship-of-fools/ Bruce Gagnon blogs at space4peace.blogspot.com/ Lisa Savage blogs at went2thebridge.blogspot.com/ The post Maine Currents 3/20/18 first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Max Blumenthal, senior editor of Alternet’s Grayzone Project, and Jim Kavanagh, editor of ThePolemicist.net.The Department of Justice sent a letter today to Sputnik News demanding that we register with them as “foreign agents.” We’ll spend the first hour discussing this attack on freedom of the press and freedom of speech.A US District Court judge in San Francisco has blocked President Trump’s plan to phase out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, because of the President’s tweet supporting the program. It’s Trump versus Trump on DACA. Angie Kim, an immigrant rights advocate and community organizer with the MinKwon Center for Community Action, joins the show.Former presidential advisor Steve Bannon has stepped down--or has been forced out--as the executive chairman of Breitbart News, as the fallout continues from his sharp attacks on President Trump and his family in a recent book. Brian and John speak with Dave Lindorff, an investigative reporter, a columnist for CounterPunch, and a contributor to several other news outlets.At least 15 people have been killed in the exclusive southern California enclave of Montecito after mudslides, triggered by heavy rains following the worst forest fires in the state’s history, which destroyed houses and roads. Yet many Republicans still deny the effects of climate change. May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, and Tomás Rebecchi, the Senior Central Coast Organizer for Food & Water Watch, join the show.President Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against the news organization Buzzfeed and Fusion GPS over the allegations contained in the Steele dossier. Kevin Zeese, the co-coordinator of Popular Resistance, joins Brian and John.Bruce Gagnon and 11 other protesters were arrested a year ago for blocking the main street leading to the Bath Iron Works shipyard to protest the christening of a US Navy Destroyer. Their trial starts soon. Bruce Gagnon, the coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, joins the show.

Producer/Host: Amy Browne Audio recorded by Carolyn Coe Bruce Gagnon on the “US Pivot to the Asia-Pacific” and ties with BIW here in Maine Bruce Gagnon is well known in Maine as the co-founder of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and as an active member of Veterans for Peace. He is also a senior fellow at the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and a member of the “Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific” and has traveled extensively in the area. He spoke in Deer Isle on August 3rd at an event sponsored by Island Peace and Justice, Peninsula Peace and Justice and Americas Who Tell the Truth. The topic was the “Pivot to the Asia-Pacific”. Gagnon talked about the U.S. military presence in the region, U.S. relations with N. Korea, S. Korea, Japan, China, and Russia, and ties with Bath Iron Works here in Maine Note: An excerpt from this talk aired on a previous edition of Maine Currents Maine Currents- independent local news, views and culture, every Tuesday at 4pm on WERU-FM and weru.org The post Maine Currents 9/5/17 first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.

Producer/Host: Amy Browne Contributing producers: Carolyn Coe, Denis Howard Segment 1: Bruce Gagnon on Korea, BIW and the US “Pivot to the Asia-Pacific” Maine-based peace activist Bruce Gagnon spoke in Deer Isle on August 3rd about what's being called the US “Pivot to the Asia-Pacific”. Gagnon has traveled to South Korea and worked with peace activists there and elsewhere in the region who oppose US military bases in their countries. He has also made the connection with the destroyers being built here in Maine at Bath Iron Works and has been arrested for civil disobedience at BIW. Although he spoke before President Trump’s recent comments about “fire and fury” in North Korea, Gagnon's views on the region provide insight not heard in the mainstream media. He is a senior fellow at the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, and is a member of the “Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific” a consortium of acclaimed scholars sharing a focus on the region. (Recorded by Carolyn Coe, edited by Amy Browne) UPDATE: We contacted Bruce Gagnon this week for a comment following the escalation of tensions in the region after he spoke in Deer Isle. Here is his response: “In a new report, published by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, missile experts (including Ted Postol from MIT) write that North Korea does not have the rocket capability that Washington and the corporate media are claiming. They state, “The Hwasong-14 does not currently constitute a nuclear threat to the lower 48 states of the United States. The flight tests on July 4 and 28 were a carefully choreographed deception by North Korea to create a false impression that the Hwasong-14 is a near-ICBM that poses a nuclear threat to the continental US. The Hwasong-14 tested on July 4 and 28 may not even be able to deliver a North Korean atomic bomb to Anchorage, Alaska.” The US to this day refuses to sign a peace treaty with North Korea – thus the war legally continues. On July 27, 1953 the US signed an Armistice (ceasefire) with North Korea but that is it. Thus the continuous US-South Korean war games right along the North Korean border must make Pyongyang wonder – is this the real thing? Did the Pentagon decide to invade us for real this time like they have done in Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Granada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen? Embedded deep beneath North Korea's mountainous zones are some 200 varieties of minerals, including gold, iron, copper, zinc, magnesite, limestone, tungsten, and graphite. Some of these stockpiles are among the largest in the world, and North Korea, a tiny and cash-strapped nation, frequently uses them to bring in additional revenue — no matter the laws against doing so. The total value of these minerals lies somewhere between $6 trillion and $10 trillion. Could much of this war hype be a plan to grab their resources? In the end I think it important to say that North Korea is really a foil – the US does not fear NK which only has 4 nuclear warheads while the US has 6,800 of them. Clearly the demonization and scare campaign around NK is intended to justify the US military ‘pivot' of 60% of Pentagon forces into the Asia-Pacific to be aimed at China and Russia – the real prizes that Washington has on the regime change list.” Segment 2: WERU’s Denis Howard talks with Peter Alexander about his new rock opera “One Way Trip To Mars” — opening at the Waterville Opera House on August 24th. Tune in to hear what went into creating the project and get a sneak preview of the music! Maine Currents- independent local news, views and culture, every Tuesday at 4pm on WERU-FM and weru.org The post Maine Currents 8/15/17 first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.