Podcast appearances and mentions of connor murray

FROM INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S DAY TO ELECTION PROTECTION 2024 TO THE MIDDLE EAST     We start with the legendary Indigenous leader-lawyer CHASE IRON EYES, who gives us a brilliant overview of the current state of Indigenous America & Leonard Peltier. The great grassroots organizer ANDREA MILLER of the Center for Common Ground gives us a guide to phone banking to spark voter turnout in critical states. JASON BERLIN of Field Team Six fills us on his unique phone banking operation, focussed especially on young potential voters. MYLA RESON asks Jason about what the polls are saying, especially in Montana, Texas & Florida. The idea of switching and offsetting votes from fringe parties in and out of swing states comes from RUSSELL GREENE. Threats to FEMA disaster workers in North Carolina are exposed by ILENE PROCTOR in Asheville. MIKE HERSH gives us a quick introduction to a civil discussion of the situation in the Middle East. Civilian deaths, land development issues, economic resources and spiritual forces are discussed by LYNN FEINERMAN. STEVE CARUSO raises issues about the horrifying slaughter in Gaza. Massive underground oil resources are discussed by DAVID GRACE. CONNOR MURRAY of the Council for a Livable World tells us how his legendary organization fights against nuclear weapons. TATANKA BRICCA expands on the links between nuclear power & the Atomic Bomb(s). To conclude we cope with Thom Hartmann's terrifying outline of the various ways this year's election could be stolen. We will go deeper into this profoundly unsettled situation the next week.  STAY TUNED!!!

In this week's episode, we chat about the importance of overcoming that nagging feeling of not being good enough. We'll talk about what imposter syndrome is, the impact it can on us, and Ressa shares some of her own experiences as well as and some practical tips to start tackling this issue. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out, imposter syndrome can creep up on all of us. It's time to kick imposter syndrome to the curb! Want to connect further? Follow us on Instagram @RessasTake. Sources for this week's episode: “What we know about Imposter Syndrome the psychological phenomenon making people doubt their success” by Connor Murray, Forbes, May 2023 “Stop Telling Women they have Imposter Syndrome”, by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey, Harvard Business Review, February 2021

As we end 2024, Kurt Wuckert Jr. takes us through some of his favourite moments of the year so far. Starting with Connor Murray, Kurt and Connor discussed 15 years since the release of the  #Bitcoin Whitepaper, and if it has fulfilled its original promise. Kurt also talked with Steve Bailey, one of the leaders behind the #DigitalCurrency Wallet, Rock Wallet.In an interview with Craig Mason, Kurt discusses the need for verifiable information and how #Bitcoin can solve real-world #data problems.Ty Everett also joins Kurt, and they talk about blockchain start-ups, the tooling and focusing on going out and doing business.His final clip is with the founder of Champions of Other Worldly Magic, the unique trading card game, that utilises #bitcoin technology, but is not focusing on telling that to the world, to just create a great game.As the show concluded Kurt took some of the burning questions from our live chatbox audience. ► Hit #Subscribe & #HitTheBell so you don't miss out on any new videos!-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------► Our Links:Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/realcoingeek/Twitter ► https://twitter.com/realcoingeekInstagram ► ...

Kurt Wuckert Jr and Connor Murray discussed all that is #Bitcoin on the 15th anniversary of the #BitcoinWhitepaper. Kurt and Connor discussed the significance of the whitepaper, what are the key takeaways, and some of the most important parts of the whitepaper.► Hit #Subscribe & #HitTheBell so you don't miss out on any new videos!-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------► Our Links:Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/realcoingeek/Twitter ► https://twitter.com/realcoingeekInstagram ► ...

In early February, the world watched as a Chinese “spy balloon” floated across the United States, sparking a furor that led President Biden to postpone a high-level US visit to Beijing. This week, Tom Collina talks with Sahil Shah, senior fellow and program manager at the Council on Strategic Risks. He discusses the balloon, the postponement of the US visit, and how this event affects Chinese threat perceptions.  On Early Warning, Alex Hall talks with Connor Murray from Council for a Livable World. They discuss prospects for further New START negotiations and the potential fall-out if US and Russia fail to find consensus before the treaty expires.

Where were you when the #Bitcoin Hash War took place? The story of the BSV/BCH hash war on November 15, 2018, is a brutal chapter in Bitcoin, and it laid the groundwork for much of what has transpired since. In this episode of #CGLivestream, Britevue founder Connor Murray joins Bitcoin Historian Kurt Wuckert Jr. as they look back at the past four years since #BSVblockchain emerged as Bitcoin's last chance to change the world of micropayments and data integrity.

In this episode of the weekly livestream Kurt is joined by Connor Murray, Founder and CEO of Britevue and John Pitts, Founder and CEO of SLictionary, as they discuss the BSV economy, some of the challenges that businesses building on the chain have solved and what needs to be addressed by businesses within the BSV ecosystem. 

The Rising Coaches Podcast sits down with Kevin O'Connor - Murray State College.

Cammy, John, Jonny and Craig review the Lions opening game against Japan at Murrayfield. We discuss Connor Murray's captaincy and what it means for Ali Price as well as why Duhan's critics at the weekend might have ben to quick to criticise his defence.The podcast is sponsored by Manscaped. Visit www.manscaped.com/scottishrugby for 20% off plus free shipping on a range of male grooming produc Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/scottishrugbyblog. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A CoinGeek Livestream special on the first-ever Soon™ Livestream on the day of some "big" announcements in the Bitcoin SV and blockchain space, Kurt talks with Connor Murray of Britevue, Alex Agut of HandCash and CoinGeek Writer Patrick Thompson to discuss the events of the day and take questions from the live audience. Original broadcast: February 24, 2021

Originally broadcast on Feb 4. This is one-year anniversary of the Bitcoin SV genesis upgrade, Kurt Wuckert Jr. was joined for live Q&A, discussions on the history of the upgrade as well as the importance. He was also joined by special guests Connor Murray of Britevue, Jack Davies of nChain and Matej Trampuš of CREA.

Oh, the wind whistles down the cold dark street tonight and the Draw, Lose or Draw Podcast are dancing to the music vibe as everyone's favourite Partick Thistle podcast undergoes a rebrand as the first official Amy Macdonald stan podcast. Matt Greer and David Forrest are joined by comrades in misery Reiss Haldane and Jamie Mcdonald (no relation) to discuss all the latest goings on at Firhill including the release of the long-awaited upcoming season's fixtures after our League 1 status was confirmed following a mind numbingly tedious legal battle. We discuss new signings Ricky Foster, Ross Docherty and Connor Murray and bid farewell to the outgoing Scott Fox and Dario Zanatta. Also in an impromptu Strip Club segment, we offer our sartorial opinion on the new away kit before discussing the club's social media engagement over lockdown and why we think boycotting is daft. Follow us on Twitter @DrawLoseorDraw, like us on Facebook, give us a review on iTunes and wear your masks.

Connor Murray has spent hours thinking and talking about Bitcoin as the co-host of the podcast Bitcoin and Beyond, and before that too. But now he’s turning theory into practice, as he launches his own Bitcoin SV enterprise, TrueReviews.io, which he hopes will become a kind of BSV-powered TripAdvisor. It was hailed as one of the standout projects at the Bitcoin Association’s Pitch Day at the CoinGeek Conference in Seoul. TrueReviews describes itself as “an online review platform that enables businesses to incentivize more reviews for their businesses and for users to earn Bitcoin and tokenized rewards for good reviews.” In other words, it turns today’s ‘free’ review sites into a real economy, with incentives and accountability for reviewers, readers and those being reviewed. Connor says he got the idea when he was on holiday with his mother-in-law, who enjoys posting reviews on TripAdvisor. She’s “a great person” who writes positive reviews, but most people, Connor believes, only write unsolicited reviews when they’ve got a complaint. To get a more representative range of genuine responses, a new system is needed: if “they’re spending time on this - they should get paid for it.”“In Bitcoin we talk about ‘how do we tie value to data?’ Well, that’s just what we’re hoping to do with reviews.” So if the reviewers are going to get paid, where is that money coming from? Connor says the businesses that are getting reviewed will pay. That will be better than businesses creating fake positive reviews, which is “very common” today, Connor says. The reviews will be demonstrably more trustworthy by including details such as, in a restaurant, the time of the visit or what was ordered, all uploaded to the blockchain to prove that this wasn’t a fake review.Connor sees TrueReviews as a new kind of service, valuable in its own right whether or not its users are interested in BSV: “I don’t want to build a Bitcoin app. I want to build an app that enables you to do something you couldn’t do before without Bitcoin.”In his capacity as a podcast host, Connor has had several interviews with Craig Wright, the Chief Scientist of nChain and, as Satoshi Nakamoto, the originator of Bitcoin. He says that Craig “gets a very bad rap from people who have never even tried to communicate with him”. But Connor says Craig is a great teacher: “he wants you to learn - and that’s what’s very misunderstood about him ...I’ve never found someone more willing to go out of their way to help you understand something. But he doesn’t do it in an ‘hand-heldy’ way: it’s a very Socratic method which is very frustrating sometimes, because he will say things that you don’t think are relevant or he’ll ask you questions where you don’t even know what he’s getting at.”But Craig’s insights into economic systems through the design of Bitcoin are “profound”, Connor says: Bitcoin is “a system that disincentivizes attacking it through economic means ...And that means we can build incredibly complex systems that have security rooted in economics”.

 We’re past the “I can’t believe holiday decorations are already up” portion of the season. It’s time to celebrate the holidays, and Pittsburgh has two big events coming up that we’ll discuss in this week’s episode.For starters, we talk with some representatives from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership about Comcast Light Up Night on Nov. 22. Then we bring in the race director of the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh’s Turkey Trot.After that, Paul and Dan take a deep dive into a potential change to the U.S. immigration system, and we close out with a special guest for our Pittsburgh Polyphony series. ----more----This Episode is sponsored by WordWriteCenturies before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Here's the full transcript for this episode:Speaker 1: You're listening to the P100 podcasts, the biweekly companion piece to The Pittsburgh 100 bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Dan: Hi everybody. Welcome back to the P100 podcast. I'm your host Dan Stefano with my cohost here, Logan Armstrong. Our other co-host Paul Furiga will be joining us shortly.Logan: Ho ho, ho. Dan.Dan: I can't believe you just said that.Dan: Well, the ho, ho, ho, and all of the holiday celebration nonsense here fits in with our first couple of segments that we're going to have today. We're going to be discussing Light Up Night with a couple of people from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. They're the group that puts on the event every year and does such an awesome job, and then following that, we're going to have another discussion with another big holiday event. Logan.Logan: Yeah. We're going to be talking about the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh's Turkey Trot Race, one of the biggest races in the city. We're going to be sitting down with Catlyn Brooke, race director, and she's going to give us a lowdown on that.Dan: It's an important race too because it goes to a very... The funds from it go to a very big cause and a lot of important donations there. So following that, we're going to take a left turn there and go into a deeper dive into a recent story we had on immigration, and we have an attorney from a local Pittsburgh law firm here to discuss that. And it's a really interesting talk that affects not only people in our region but nationally. We're excited to have him in for that.Dan: Following that Logan, we've got a special Pittsburgh polyphony. It's not just us talking about an artist here. We have somebody pretty interesting coming in.Logan: Yeah, that's right, Dan. We're going to have Connor Murray here, a label manager of Crafted Sounds, a local Pittsburgh record label that's doing a lot of cool things in the region. And one of the coolest, he's trying to bring back cassette tapes.Dan: Cassette tapes. That's great. Yeah, I think there might be some at my mom's house here I could dig up. I don't know. We'll have to find out, but all right everybody, let's get to it.Dan: All right everybody, we're happy to have two members of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership here with us. We have Colten Gill, manager of marketing communications and Roya Kousari, another member of the marketing team there. Thanks for being with us.Roya: Thank you for having us.Colten: Thank you guys.Dan: Guys, it's a busy time of year for you here and can you tell us why that is?Colten: Yeah, for sure. So coming up in just a few days, it's going to be the 59th Annual Comcast Light Up Night. It's kind of the kickoff to the holiday season in Downtown Pittsburgh. It's a celebration that's been going on in Pittsburgh for almost 60 years now. It's what a lot of families around the region use to kickstart their holiday celebration. And we're just about ready to kick things off. Coming up Friday, November 22nd.Dan: Right. And what's interesting too about Light Up Night is it is not a night. It's a full day of just all the great holiday stuff and multiple tree lightings. What's it like for you? This brings in hundreds of thousands of people every year, and I got to believe it's kind of go, go, go.Roya: It is very much organized chaos in a lot of ways. As you said, it's a full day of events. So the first activity of the day is the Dedication of The Creche at noon, and then we keep going strong until 10:00 PM. So there are a lot of moving pieces. We have an amazing team put together to help things run as smoothly as possible. There are seven official tree lightings and ceremonies.Dan: Geez.Roya: Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, we end with the true Pittsburgh element of everything, which is Zambelli fireworks. The BNY Mellon fireworks finale is at 9:30 and that's sort of the culmination of the event.Dan: You guys as members of the downtown partnership, you're probably a big part of witnessing this, but the downtown neighborhood itself is vastly different than whenever I was a kid. Can you talk about maybe the Renaissance that we're seeing downtown? A lot of new buildings, a lot of new shops and how they just work with the Light Up Night's celebration too.Colten: Yeah, for sure. So, like you said, it has changed a lot, and it's a really good energy that's around downtown right now. We have 140 small businesses and retailers in the downtown community. So while you don't have that big keystone department store, you have these really great opportunities that you aren't going to find anywhere else in the city to visit these smaller shops that have these really unique gifts, items, apparel, and a really strong sense of community.Colten: One of my favorite things about all the shops in Downtown Pittsburgh today, if you go to one store and say, "Hey, I'm really looking for this very specific item," they're going to be like, "Oh. Hey, I might not have it, but go down the street to our neighbor store because you'll be able to find it there." So there's a really strong sense of community in the business community that's here in downtown right now.Dan: That's great. Kind of speaks to that Pittsburgh being a small-town feel with big-city amenities.Colten: For sure.Dan: We love that stuff. Looking at this year's though on the 22nd here, what are some of the big highlights that you guys see for right now? I know they've got a pretty big name on the main stage too at the end of the night here.Colten: Yeah, for sure. So on the Comcast main stage, we're bringing Adam Lambert to the city of Pittsburgh, which we're very excited about. He was here earlier this summer actually touring with Queen out at PPG Paints Arena. So we're happy to welcome him back to the city for this holiday tradition. In addition to him, on the EQT Jazzmaster stage, we have a really exciting new piece. The MCG Jazz Group is going to be presenting the music of Fred Rogers. There's going to be a really great legacy there in that jazz music that's being presented with special appearances by Daniel Tiger. So he's a character from Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. So a really great mesh of the old and the new Fred Rogers community there on that stage.Dan: Perfect timing too because I think the movie comes out too, the Tom Hanks movie. So yeah, a lot of just like perfect synergy with Fred Rogers.Colten: For sure.Dan: But looking beyond Light Up Night then here downtown will remain a hub for holiday activity too. Can you talk about just certain, some of the things going on there? And I've spent some time in downtown in the holidays, the season last year and there's just so much fun stuff going on.Colten: Oh, for sure. So returning is the Peoples Gas Holiday Market. So Market Square is going to be that big destination market where you're going to be able to stroll through an illuminated marketplace. You're going to be able to buy some really unique gifts and enjoy some time in this really, really traditional setting with the decor and everything going on there. Returning are some favorites like the Holly Trolley. So you're going to be able to stop at Fifth Avenue Place, get on the Holly Trolley and enjoy free transport around all the holiday hotspots, including the Heinz History Center, our home good shop, PG&H right here on Smithfield Street and to the Holiday Kids Play, which is going to be taking place holiday weekends. So a lot of really fun family activities going on as well all season.Roya: We also want people to know that with the Peoples Gas Holiday Market there's a lot of activities happening within that space. Even beyond just the shopping. We have a karaoke contest ... Oh yeah, Oh yeah. Come down, sing holiday best. There are also photos with Santa. So you can visit Santa's house and if you bring a donation for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, then you get a complimentary photo with Santa. So it's a way for us to engage the community and give back as well.Dan: Yeah, that stuff's hugely important. Even if you don't want a picture with Santa, I would suggest that everybody out there, if you get down there, try to bring a donation because that stuff's just so important. Guys, thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate you visiting, and is there anything else you'd like to mention? Happy holidays message for anybody or?Roya: We just look forward to seeing everybody coming downtown to enjoy both Light Up Night and the rest of the holiday season here in downtown.Dan: Right. And we'd be remiss to not mention this too. Where can people find you online?Colten: Yeah, for sure. So you can go to downtownpittsburgh.com for all the holiday activities but also everything happening year-round in downtown, including a list of restaurants, shops and things like that. We're also on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Downtown Pitt. So connect with us there and find out what's going on.Dan: All right. Be sure to go visit those channels, everybody. And thanks so much and let's hope that organized chaos of Light Up Night turns into just an organization and a fun night for you.Colten: For sure. Thanks so much.Roya: Thank you.Logan: Hey everybody, we're back here with Catlyn Brooke, race director of the YMCAs Turkey Trots. Of course a race almost everybody in Pittsburgh knows. Catlyn, thanks for being with us.Catlyn: Hi. Thanks guys.Logan: Yeah, sure. So we have the Turkey Trot coming up here in the next week or so. Can you just give us a little bit of a background on the race and kind of what you do as race director?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. So this is our 29th year doing the Turkey Trot here in Pittsburgh. This year our sponsor’s UPMC Health Plan, they are 5k sponsor and our overall race sponsor. So we're super excited to have them on board.Catlyn: Being race director, we can put it into a nutshell is I get people to sign up, and I handle race logistics. But I mean a little bit more than that. It's getting the word out to why we're doing the race. Obviously getting people to register, getting folks to participate in our food drive for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, and just doing race things like ordering thousands of shirts that you end up seeing around the city for the rest of the year. Making sure that we have enough food and water for our folks when they're done the race, so that we can have them refreshed after the fact. It's not too glamorous, but it's really rewarding knowing how many people come together on Thanksgiving Day to give back to their community and to try to end hunger here in Pittsburgh.Dan: Yeah, and in particular, this goes to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, right? And you guys have a set goal that you want to get for some donations this year, right?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. So my loft goal, my reach goal for this year, is to collect 10,000 pounds of food. Last year, unofficially, we reached that goal. I probably had around 8,000 pounds of food come into PNC Park just during our packet pickup days. And we do have donation locations as well at all of our YMCA branches. So unofficially last year we hit our goal, but this year I officially want to hit 10,000 pounds of food.Dan: That's great. And then unofficially we can try to like shoot for like 20,000 or something, right?Catlyn: Yes.Dan: It's all for the best. It's a great cause.Logan: Yeah. And I saw last year, according to you guys that you raised over $280,000 for the organization last year in last year's race, which is just incredible. But I was looking and it sounds like there's a few different things to do. You guys have the Fun Run, the Turkey Trot, and then the Double Gobble, which is the five mile plus a 5k run. So it sounds like there's kind of everything for somebody in the family, something for everybody to do, whether you want to bring your kids or just bring your spouse or things like that. It sounds like there's something for everybody to do. Is that correct?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. And we like to think about the day as more than just your exercise. You're coming out, you're supporting the 1.2 million people in Allegheny County, which nearly one in seven of them are facing food insecurity. So that's the point of the day. Our hashtag is #EndHungerPGH and that's really our goal. So while we do raise money for the Y and the programs such as summer camp, before school, after school, senior programs, men's housing, et cetera, we do also collect all that food. But like you said, there is something for everyone. So we start off our day with the Med Express One Mile Family Fun Run, and you can walk or jog or sprint that if you like. It's really excellent to see the little kids come through the finish line who are like just huffing and puffing. They gave it their all, and it's really cute to see that. And all of our kid competitors for that get a medal, which they're excited about as well.Dan: Logan, maybe you can try this out. You can do one mile. You can get yourself a medal.Logan: I could probably do a mile, yeah.Dan: I don't know if I could do one mile.Catlyn: You can walk. It's all good.Dan: Oh, perfect. Fun Walk. Oh, that's correct. It's a Fun Walk. I could just have fun by walking.Catlyn: Exactly. The most fun. After our one mile, we have the UPMC Health Plan 5K, that's our main event. We have the most people who run that. It's usually about 5,000 people who run the 5k event. And then after that we have our five mile event and that is sponsored this year by The Pirates who are also our gracious venue hosts. And like you said, the Double Gobble.Logan: Yeah, I would not be doing that one.Catlyn: The double gobble, you run the 5k first and then you just keep on running tack on the five mile after that. And our sponsor for that is a GH&A. So we're super excited.Dan: Yeah, well it's getting close to December. Obviously it is a Thanksgiving day on November 28th, nice and early in the morning at 7:00 AM. But that's one thing that I think is important about these days is people think about Thanksgiving and they get there and it's an entire day. It's not just the meal. It's having a big breakfast with your family, starting to cook early in the morning. So I think it says a lot whenever you can see families coming out taking a significant portion of their day, a big part of the morning there to come out and support a cause like this. And it says a lot about Pittsburgh. I think you'd agree with that.Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. We see people, the majority from Pittsburgh, but we have participants from almost every state in the country, which is really awesome to see. I'll get letters or emails from people like from California and they're coming in. And they're asking about packet pickup and things like that. So yeah, it's cool. We've even had participants from other countries, so it's a special race. And it's really awesome to see how many people come together.Dan: That's great. In 29 years, 30 next year. Have you already started thinking about that one?Catlyn: The big 30 is next year. Yes. We have started thinking. I'm not going to give anything away, but there'll be some surprises.Dan: Triple Gobble maybe?Logan: You'd be in a lot on Thanksgiving.Dan: Exactly right. Yeah.Logan: And so what kind of food items are you guys accepting for the Greater Food Bank? Is it just nonperishable or what kind of things should people bring to donate?Catlyn: Yeah, so actually you can bring more than just nonperishable food items. So they also collect household items, toilet paper, toiletries, baby products, things for seniors. Basically that is anything that's not in a glass container and that is nonperishable. If you do go on our website, our Facebook page, YMCA Turkey Trot, we have a nice little graphic showing everything that they collect. You think of nonperishable items and it's like, "Okay I'm going to go get chicken noodle soup and a can of green beans." But we like for people to think outside the box with that as well. Macaroni and cheese is great for the kids. Granola bars, pasta, pasta sauce that is in a plastic container. So just thinking more about, would you want to eat out of a can for every meal. There's so many more nonperishable things in the supermarkets that we can provide.Dan: Importantly too, you don't have to just register today. I mean if you want to, you can go to Pittsburghymca.org, and the link is very nice and right in your face for the Turkey Trot. But also you can register on race day, right?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. You can come up if you decide early morning, "Okay. I'm ready to run this thing." Just come on down to PNC Park. Our set up is on Mazeroski Way right past home plate. And just say hey.Logan: So where can we find the YMCA more than just a Turkey Trot on social media and give us that URL to sign up one more time.Catlyn: Yeah, so the URL to sign up is YMCApgh.org/turkeytrot. Also if you just do a quick Google search for YMCA Pittsburgh Turkey Trot, it should be one of the first things that pops up. And again, it's the 29th year, so that's the one you want to look for on active.com. We are on social media, Facebook, Twitter. It's just YMCAPGH, and we also have a Turkey Trot Facebook page, which is YMCA PGH Turkey Trot.Logan: All right. Well, Catlyn Brooke, race director of the YMCA's Turkey Trot here in Pittsburgh. Thanks so much for coming on and we appreciate you being here.Catlyn: Thanks so much, guys.Dan: Bye.Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capital S story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your capital S story.Dan: Hey everybody, we're back and we're going to be taking a little sharp turn here into a conversation about immigration. And we have here an attorney from Meyer, Unkovic, and Scott. They're a Pittsburgh based law firm here. Joel Pfeffer, he's one of the focuses is immigration in his practice. And thank you for being here.Joel: My pleasure.Dan: What we want to discuss is lead in to this with a talk about the Public Charge Rule. It's a new rule that we discussed very briefly in The Pittsburgh 100, and these legal issues, they need a lot more than 100 words to breakdown.Joel: Dan, you need a lawyer to explain it.Dan: A lawyer and more than 100 words, correct.Joel: Thank goodness we have one.Dan: Right. Precisely.Joel: Who's an expert.Dan: Yes. Okay. Joel, can you take us ... I mean again just on a brief overview of what the Public Charge Rule is.Joel: So going back 100 years when immigrants came to the United States to Ellis Island, they were in essence judged at that point by “are you going to be able to make a living in the United States without securing or being dependent on government benefits.” And in every family there is a legend about how that answer was given to the immigration officer. A strong handshake, a description of what the person's skill level was, his history in the country he came from, a smile. All of those things are part of everybody's family history.Joel: For the last 25 years or so, immigration has focused on what I'll call an objective standard. That if you can show that you have income or you've had income or your employer is going to pay you more than 125% of the poverty level, then there's no need for a handshake or a smile. There's no discussion. It was just you knew that that case was going to go through. There was a consistent standard depending on what your history of earning or what your projection of earning is, or if you did not have that, a relative could file an affidavit of support saying that they would support you. Or if you ever tried to get on government benefits, their assets would be deemed your assets, and you couldn't get the government benefit. And that process has worked for the last 20 or 25, perhaps 30 years. It was all on paper, and it was all objective. Didn't matter really what, anything about you, what your education was, what your level of English was, what's your job prospect was.Joel: Now immigration is divided between family immigration and business immigration or employment immigration. So if you are on the employment immigration side and you were coming because you had a job that no American could fill. So obviously you had some projection of income. You had some security of income. Those cases are still going to be pretty much the same, but family based cases will be impacted by this new rule, which essentially says we're going to view this on a subjective basis. We're going to look at you and we're going to see what is your education, what is your age, your health, your family status, your assets, your resources, your skill level. And we're going to take a complete picture of you and we're going to decide whether or not you are going to become dependent on government benefits to survive in the United States.Joel: It's moving from somebody looking at paperwork and giving you the opportunity in a letter to respond by saying, "Well, if that's not good enough, I'll get uncle so-and-so to give me another affidavit." To a situation where that's only going to be part of it. Whether someone's given you an affidavit, it's only going to be part of the total subjective picture of who you are and whether you're going to become dependent on public benefits.Paul: Seems like Joel, you're going to need an interview now, right? There's got to be some interaction in order to answer some of that.Joel: Well, it just so happens that one of the other initiatives of the Trump administration is called... It requires a total review of your situation, and almost every case today is interviewed. So in the past, the only cases that were interviewed were marriage cases, other cases. So for example, if you wanted to bring a parent to the United States, if you wanted to bring a child to the United States, there was no reason to interview you. In a marriage case, they interviewed you to see if you were really married.Paul: Subject of many popular films and literature, et cetera, et cetera. The sham marriage, right?Joel: Yes. But everything else was judged on the basis of a petition. Is the relationship true? Is there a birth certificate? But the Trump administration issued an executive order that said, "No, we want everybody to be vetted." That vetting process includes pretty much an interview for every single case, which is why there's become a serious backlog at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services because they weren't geared up for that.Paul: Wow. So, Joel, what's the impact? What are you seeing? I mean, obviously it's slowing things down, but how bad?Joel: It's slowing things down to a point that it's unpredictable when you're going to be seen by the US CIS and how long your case is going to take to be completed, especially if you are an employment-based case where historically they have not interviewed these cases. So it's taking, I would say probably an additional three to six months for them to get to you. I expect that it'll go to six to nine months pretty soon if it hasn't already. In a marriage case, married to a US citizen, I'm not seeing a serious slow down. Maybe two or three months backlog greater than before. But they officially like to get their cases completed in six months. I don't know that they can meet that target anymore.Paul: Now a lot of your clients are businesses with employment cases, correct?Joel: Yes. Many of our clients are employers who are either established or in the process of establishing that a particular employee from abroad is not going to impact the US labor market, that there is a shortage of this skill set.Paul: They're a specialist of some kind.Joel: Or they are a distinguished professor, researcher or a person of extraordinary ability. Somebody who is at the very top of their field and they've established to the satisfaction of the Department of Homeland Security that they are at the very top of their field and deserving to come to the United States as an extraordinary ability alien. So those are the kinds of cases, that the kinds of employment cases we handle.Dan: One thing that's important to point out with the Public Charge Rule here is that it was some federal courts pumped the brakes on it. They blocked the rule here, but that probably won't be the last time we hear of it. Correct?Joel: No, I would think it's fair to predict that eventually the rule becomes law and that this is a temporary setback for the Trump administration. In fact, there are two government agencies that apply the Public Charge Rule, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State. The Department of State processes cases that are where the alien is outside the United States and there is the Department of State is applying this rule and has been applying this rule since it was originally introduced even in the first stage of promulgation of the rule. Department of State picked up on it and there's been an uptick in denials because of public charge at consular offices, consular posts abroad.Joel: So not only is the Department of Homeland Security going to deal with these injunctions and eventually likely to overcome the objections but the Department of State is going to, to some degree or other, enforce this rule that sort of converts this from an objective to a subjective test.Dan: Right. Well, it's certainly a complicated process here, complicated law, but Joel, we appreciate you coming on and speaking with us and helping us break it down here. Definitely more than in 100 words.Joel: Yes.Dan: Hey, thanks again and hope to have you back on.Joel: Thank you for having me. Thank you.Dan: Thanks a lot. Bye.Logan: For our Pittsburgh Polyphony segment this week, we're taking a little bit of a different approach and instead of highlighting a specific artist, we're going to be talking to Connor Murray, the label manager of Crafted Sounds, a local Pittsburgh record label that has about six active bands on their roster right now. Connor, thanks for being with us.Connor: Yeah, thanks for having me, Logan.Logan: Sure. Yes. So if you could of just give us a little rundown of what Crafted Sounds is, kind of how you got into it, and maybe a little background on yourself, that'd be great.Connor: Yeah. So I started the label when I was 18, on my 18th birthday in high school. I tried to play music, try to make music or whatever, just like too stubborn. Didn't put enough time into it. It was also kind of, I don't know, getting frustrated of what I was missing out on as far as new music is concerned because I always like sharing new music with my friends and whatnot. Going to shows, et cetera.Connor: Once I kind of realized that like I personally didn't want to be a musician, I was like, "Okay, how can I be involved?" So there was a couple smaller labels but also like bigger labels that I was very aware of on like independent level. And I was like, "Oh, I'll just do that," without like knowing what goes into that. I mean, I think taking like engineering approach, it's just like once you have your problem statement, that's when you start to figure out what it is, you know how you're going to do that.Connor: So without knowing how I was going to do it, I was like, "All right, I'm just going to run this label." And I don't know. I guess running a label for me was just providing physical format copies to artists that were underappreciated that I really liked, that I felt could be recognized on a more grand scale. And that concept has changed and molded and adapted into other formats, other artists, other sounds, other communities because I'm not from Pittsburgh. So it's been really cool just to be like the, I don't know, number one fan in the back.Dan: Not from here. You're a senior at Pitt, correct?Connor: Yes. Yeah. I'm going to stay here though. As long as I graduate and get my things set straight, I'll be working downtown for a couple of years. So I accepted an offer and I don't know. I like it here. I'm trying to stay here. So yeah.Logan: Pittsburgh tends to pull people in once they get here. I love it. It's a great city.Dan: Steal off Godfather Three, "Once I get out, they pull me back.Logan: Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back.Dan: The only good part of Godfather Three is that line I think. Andy Garcia.Logan: That's something I can really appreciate though that you're saying that you're trying to take these underappreciated artists and kind of what you think is cool. And like you said, be that number one fan and not really worry how much clout they have at the time or how much presence they have at that time. But something that you could take and really mold and them to do. But so it sounded like you kind of just took a hands-on like dive-in approach. Like you said, you didn't really know exactly what you were doing. Kind of what were some of the first things and the first steps that you took that to develop some of your artists you look back on now.Connor: I guess far as like the label's concern, I mean the first thing I was... It's like the name of the label and the imaging. It has to be cool I guess. At least to me, it has to be something other people could stand behind. I made the logo a house because I was just sitting in my house, scratching on papers, little sketches here and there. And I was like, "Oh, I should just like make it a house because I'm going to be doing this inside my house anyway." We're not going to make money. So I just made a very simple geometric house, like very, very simple and put letters out of the chimney. I didn't do anything crazy. So that was kind of where I started with that, the imaging.Connor: I guess as far as artists and where to start with that. I guess at first, the first record was through a friend of a friend. She was in New Mexico and she was like, "Hey, this guy is making cool music." And it's like, "Yeah, I like it." I mean, at that point I had no standard. I mean the music... I mean, I still love that record, but I didn't really look at who's this artist; what are their goals; where do they want to be; what have they done in the past; how long are they going to be continuing this.Connor: I was just like, "Wow, I like this music. Let's do it." That project fizzled out real quick. And I was just like, "Oh, maybe there's other things I should consider when I work with people. Maybe like communication should be clearer. Maybe I should be asking more questions. Maybe I should be setting things... Being more transparent on both ends and kind of make it bit by bit." It took me at least a year to figure out ballpark estimate how to do PR in house. By now I'm very jaded but a lot of people have been through a lot of crap. They dealt with a lot of characters. And I guess kind of conveying a message or pitching something you believe in over email. You have to be very considerate and very persistent at the same time. So it's like there was that. I guess show booking was the thing that took like a year and a half after that. Little steps. What's another thing I can put on my utility belt.Dan: Something interesting about your business, we were talking about this a little bit before we got going here. But everybody's really into vinyl these days. It's gotten really popular. You are into cassettes, which Logan, cassettes were on their way out whenever you were born. I mean, I remember using them as a kid. I remember my parents had a ton of them and stuff. But why cassettes? Why are they back?Connor: So essentially there was the resurgence of vinyl and that was cool. It started with indie labels getting back into it and supporting the format. And those real music nerds, shout out. But eventually the major labels caught on and there's only so many plants. So the cost of manufacturing the vinyl is just skyrocketed. Minimums have gotten higher obviously, and it's hard for an independent artist or an independent label to bite that initial investment and keep doing it even if it is cool. There's a point where you got to kind of make money unfortunately.Connor: I mean, if you don't really make money, we break even on everything and happy trails. But because it got so expensive, tapes kind of slowly kind of became more feasible, especially because people were just adopting the format. They were like, "Hey, I don't really want a CD." Whether it's because you could just download the music or stream it or whatever, but tape kind of sits right in between a CD and a record. And sometimes if not more often than not, it's less costly than a CD I guess when you're buying it as a consumer. I don't know. There's a lot you can do as far as customizing it. It doesn't sound good. Tapes don't sound good. I'm not here to tell-Dan: That's what I was thinking, yeah.Connor: I'm not here to defend tapes. Tapes are literally built to like deteriorate, like the acid that is required to make the tape literally destroys it.Connor: But I have older tapes from like the '80s and stuff and they sound terrible. But-Dan: Do you find people buy them? You can find people that-Connor: Yeah, I mean, we've, I don't know. I keep mostly everything that I have as far as like paper receipts and electronic receipts. I have binders full of just notes, and I've duplicated over 1000 tapes.Dan: Wow.Connor: Over 2000 tapes. Yeah. And to think like, "Wow, I've sold over 1000 tapes." It's like pretty hilarious. Cool.Dan: Some cassette holders are actually perfect cases for your cell phone too, so you can just keep all your music on your phone and put the phone inside the cassette tape holder, and it's perfect. Yeah.Logan: That's funny. I appreciate you being here, Connor. And I believe there's a track that you wanted to end us off with today from one of your bands. Is that correct?Connor: Yeah, yeah. Last month we put a track out. We put an EP out with this band called the Zells, local band we mentioned earlier. This is one of their songs. Graze.Dan: Awesome. Can't wait.Logan: Appreciate you being here, Connor.

Welcome to another episode of the P100 Podcast. Today we cover our own Port Authority. Robin Rectenwald shares with us some local getaways inside tips. Director, Dawn Keezer from the Pittsburgh Film Office talks about on location in Pittsburgh. This episode winds up with Pittsburgh Polyphony spotlight - Flower Crown.This Episode is sponsored by WordWriteCenturies before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Here is the full transcript from this episode:Logan: You're listening to the P100 Podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more. Because sometimes 100 words just aren't enough for a great story.Dan: All right. Welcome back to another episode of The P100 Podcast. I'm Dan Stefano. I'm here with Logan Armstrong.Logan: Good to see you again, Dan.Dan: And Paul Furiga, who'll be joining us just momentarily.Dan: Today's episode, we've got four segments for you. First, we're going to be discussing public transportation in both Pittsburgh and other American cities. We're going to talk with Dawn Keezer of the Pittsburgh Film Office, which will be a lot of fun. It was a really good chat with her. We're going to discuss quick getaways you can take outside of Pittsburgh. Sometimes you got to get away, and we'll be talking with Robin Rectenwald of WordWrite for that one, and then we'll finish it up with talking about a good local Pittsburgh band for our Pittsburgh polyphony series. Excited to hear that, so let's get to it.PORT AUTHORITYPaul: All right guys. Let's talk planes, trains, and autonomous automobiles. A little shout out there to the old John Candy movie.Dan: That's a classic movie.Paul: It is a classic movie.Dan: Steve Martin too, right?Paul: Steve Martin, that's right. Yes indeed.Logan:Much before my time.Paul:Oh, you got to see that movie.Dan: Logan, you weren't even alive.Paul: You weren't alive, but you can stream it.Dan: Is it John Hughes?Paul: Yes. I think it's a John Hughes film actually, one of the-Dan: Okay. See, I know my movie stuff.Paul: ... few he did in that era when it wasn't all about teen angst. But speaking of teen angst and public transportation, it seems like a perennial topic in the news in Pittsburgh, is how to get from point A to point B. And I just don't mean the topography. For instance, if you drew my street on a map, it would look like a lasso, you know the old cowboy thing?Dan: Sure.Paul: You can get onto Courtney Place, the street I live on, and turn left on Courtney Place and go around a circle and turn left, and you're still on Courtney Place. That's another issue. What we're talking about today is, maybe because of things like that, how difficult it is to get from point A to point B. And the importance of public transportation.Paul: And so, recently Dan, Logan, we were looking at the news about the Port Authority starting or considering some 24-hour transit routes. And Logan, I know you're an Oakland denizen, some of those routes would head out that way, that we'd start with you. Thoughts?Logan: Yeah, I'd be a big fan of that. I know that they're only considering really the heavier routes, which obviously make sense. You don't want to have empty buses going all night, but I think that would be really helpful.Logan: I know there have been a few times where, whether I'm in Oakland or elsewhere past midnight or so, I mean, it gets pretty scarce trying to get to point A to point B, and there are Uber and Lyft, but Pitt students have Pitt IDs and they get free Port Authority rides, and so, I mean, you're going to expect college students to be out pretty late, so I think they should be able to take advantage of that. So I think it's a great idea.Dan: Well, it's not only for the college students too. I believe one of the aims behind the Port Authority trying this is to help people who might work late shift. Those late shift workers who, maybe they're not done until 2:00 or 3:00, and they're working at least on some areas near these routes and it really helps them, and I think they're important to have for modern city living.Paul: You know, one of the challenges that we've had in the last several years is funding for public transportation. I think that still is a huge issue. Now we have competition for public transportation.Paul: Logan, you mentioned ride sharing, Lyft or Uber. And of course Pittsburgh is a hotbed for autonomous vehicle development, and it made a bit of news a few weeks ago when the CEO of one of the companies here in Pittsburgh that are testing autonomous vehicles, Argo AI, wrote a medium blog post in which he said that that company will never build autonomous vehicles for personal use.Paul: And I think a lot of people were figuring that, again, remember my street, it goes in a circle, that Uber and all of them were here because they were ... If you can figure out how to drive in Pittsburgh in an autonomous vehicle, you could drive anywhere in an autonomous vehicle.Paul: I don't know. Dan, what do you think? Autonomous vehicles in your garage? Yes? No?Dan: I don't know. Maybe a personal vehicle…that'd be a difficult buy-in. I think it's one of those things where just in my life I've always had a car that I drive myself. I mean, obviously if, say in the future there are babies that are born that only know autonomous vehicles and might be used to it for them.Dan: But I can say that I have been in an autonomous car. And I've had the AI driving me around. I took an Uber once that was an AI car, and obviously there were two people in the front seats, one behind the wheel who just had, was a little bit hands-off, and then another with the computer taking in all the data. It was a really cool experience.Dan: But one part that, at one moment we were driving through, I believe it was Bloomfield or somewhere along Baum Boulevard, and we came to one of those classic Pittsburgh 19-streets-meet-at-once intersections. And there was somebody coming in the opposing lane who had made a sharp cut in front of us. And the car made a really sudden stop. And so, I was talking with the operators about it and they said one of the problems that, problems or issues or minor things is, these AI, they still have to take into account other people's decisions. And that's really where I think that that's where the work has got to be done yet, in autonomous vehicles here.Dan: And so, it's going to be tough if not every car out there is going to be driven by another robot, you know?Paul: Well, and you know, Dan, we were talking about this earlier, and if you think about it, if every new vehicle after some date and time were autonomous, you would still have, what did you say? 200 million?Dan: I couldn't tell you how many-Paul: Millions.Dan: ... cars are out there, but probably hundreds of millions of cars.Paul: Non-autonomous vehicles.Dan: Right. Precisely. So it's going to take a while before this stuff is at its scale and it's the only thing available.Logan: Yeah. You can map streets all you want, but you can't really map human decision making.Paul: Well, one thing we know for sure, the topic of getting from A to B here in Pittsburgh is not going to go away anytime soon. So on some distant future podcast, look for us to update our musings on getting from here to there.Dan: You're going to keep complaining about that lasso, aren't you?Paul: I am.GETAWAYSDan: All right. For this next segment, we have Robin Rectenwald. And she's an account supervisor here at WordWrite.Dan: Robin, thanks for being here.Robin: Thanks for having me.Dan: Absolutely. We wanted to bring you in because a couple of stories recently that we had in the 100 discussed some short getaways that you can take from Pittsburgh here. And there were both some really interesting luxury type locations, and Robin, one of those places that you went to was Bedford Springs Resort in Bedford, PA. And you talked about just being your first solo trip, but also just seemed like a really cool, unique place that was a quick little drive away.Robin: Yeah. My best friend had actually told me about the Omni Bedford Springs Resort. She needed some time away, she was going through a really stressful time in her life. And so, years later I finally was able to take the trip for myself. It was on my to-do list for a while.Dan: Sure. Well, it seems like it's pretty cool to take one of these trips, and it's really just in your backyard, too. And I think maybe a lot of people don't quite realize all of these ... You don't have to go all the way to the coast. You don't have to go to California or something, Florida, to find a really great vacation. And did you find that?Robin: Yeah, that's what I loved about this trip. I actually am someone who doesn't like to drive very far distances by myself. I'm a little bit of a drowsy driver.Dan: That's really safe, to be on a Pennsylvania turnpike as a drowsy driver!Robin: Yeah. But this one was quick and easy. It was literally on the dot two hours. So yeah, just getting there was super easy. I felt comfortable going by myself.Dan: Right. And was it as relaxing as it claimed to be?Robin: It was beautiful. I really did feel like I was in paradise. The hotel itself is beautiful, it's historic, so you go in, it's these big staircases, these old elevators, this creaky floors. It was just taking a step back into time into, like the 18 hundreds.Dan: It's kind of like The Shining hotel before it became The Shining hotel. Right?Robin: Much less creepy.Dan: Right, yeah. No Jack Nicholson bursting through your door. That's good to know.Dan: Logan, you recently wrote just recently in the 100 here about some pretty cool little cabins through a company called Getaway.Logan: Yeah, quite a fitting name. I had seen one of their ads on some social media, and-Dan: Social media has ads?Logan: I know, right? It's incredible.Dan: Wow.Logan: But so, they're these cabins, they're just 45 minutes from Pittsburgh. They're in Lisbon Creek, Ohio, tucked right next to a state park out there. And yeah, I mean, they're cabins across these 59 acres of land, and I'm definitely trying to make it out there. I haven't yet, but they look beautiful and they're nice and away from wifi so you can just let yourself go. But so, I had seen one of their ads on social media and I've now been barraged with Getaway ads for the past two weeks on every single social media platform.Logan: But yeah, it's 45 minutes, something just quick and easy, you can getaway. It doesn't take too much time off work if any at all. Just go out there for the weekend and just relax.Dan: Right? Now those cabins are actually next to Beaver Creek State Park. So very close. And I edited that story, so I have a lot of ads from Getaway right now, too. It's great.Dan: I think one thing that is cool to remember here is that we can take these small trips, and it's such a great time of year to get away and be into the country. Do you guys like going out, maybe doing some hiking, going to see some fall leaves? Robin?Robin: Yeah, I'm actually going on a train ride with my mom, the end of September. It's in Elks, West Virginia, and they have these four-hour train rides. So yeah, another quick getaway.Dan: Right? When I was a kid, I took a, it was all the way up in North Central PA. We took a trip through the --Robin: Oh, Kinzua Bridge?Dan: Yeah. Which, I don't think that exists anymore. I'm pretty sure it got blown down-Robin: No, it's still there. I was just there in May.Dan: Oh. I could have sworn it got blown down in a storm. I guess I'm completely wrong.Robin: It's partially did, so you can actually go there and see a partial bridge, and you can hike underneath it. It's pretty cool.Dan: Oh wow. That's really cool. Yeah, so I remember it being very high, so that's pretty cool.Logan: Yeah. I also love going out to Ohiopyle, or Ohiopyle depending on who you ask. But that's great. It's probably a two, two and a half hours. You can go out there and see Fallingwater while you're out there. Yeah. Lots of hiking trails.Robin: Kentuck Knob.Logan: What's that?Robin: Kentuck Knob is another Frank Lloyd Wright's house right nearby Fallingwater.Logan: Oh really?Robin: Yeah.Logan: See, I did not know that. I’ve got to put that on the list.Dan: Right. Well, I think the important thing to take away from this is, everybody, we've got some really great fall weather coming up, some really awesome leaves to see and foliage, and everybody should definitely take advantage of these locations that are just a couple hours away.Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story.Logan: WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.PITTSBURGH IN FILMPaul: Well, welcome back everybody. I'm Paul Furiga, I'm publisher of the Pittsburgh 100 and President and Chief Storyteller of WordWrite. And we are pleased today to have with us Dawn Keezer, who on September 24th will celebrate 25 years of running the Pittsburgh Film Office.Paul: Logan, that's just hard to believe, isn't it?Logan: Yeah, no, it's awesome. I'm glad that we have such a great organization here in Pittsburgh. It does wonders for the city.Paul: Dawn, welcome.Dawn: Thank you.Paul: Tell us a little bit about the film office and what you folks do.Dawn: Well, the Pittsburgh Film Office is an economic development agency that focuses on marketing Southwestern Pennsylvania to the film industry. And that includes everything from feature films, television shows that you see on TV, commercials, documentaries, corporate videos. Anything, I used to say, anything rolling any kind of film. Now it's anybody using their iPhone that's doing anything on a professional level. We're helping them make that happen here in Southwestern PA. We represent all 10 counties in the region. Some people don't realize how big a reach the film office has.Logan: Tell us a little bit about your day-to-day role in the film office and what you're doing on a day-to-day basis.Dawn: Well, we have a huge staff at the film office. There's three of us that work there full time and that includes me. We all do a little bit of everything.Dawn: I've been there a really long time, so I'm the go-to both for our relationships with the government officials who really help us make everything happen when we're closing streets and closing bridges and need help getting into places like SCI Pittsburgh, but essentially the film office is a one-stop shop for the film and entertainment industry.Dawn: Whether they need permits to close streets, whether they're looking for an office supply company to give them their copier machines, for lumber for to build their sets, to find local crew. Anything that's going to involve their project moving forward, they call the film office and we're the ones that help them make that happen.Paul: When Logan and I were talking about this segment, Dawn, we were talking about the history. One of the cool things that people always talk about with Pittsburgh is that so much happens here with film and with TV, but that didn't happen by accident. Tell us how the film office got started and why.Dawn: Well, the film office got started, as I was told, I'm the second director, Robert Curran was who actually was here when they started the film office under the Greater Pittsburgh Office Of Promotion. It was all being operated, I'm showing you guys, because I like to use my hands, but it was in the bottom drawer of a person working in Mayor Sophie Masloff's office at the time. He'd pull out a drawer, go, "Okay, what do we do with this one?"Dawn: And when Silence of the Lambs decided to film in Pittsburgh, they went, "Wow, we've really got to step this up."Dawn: So the Greater Pittsburgh Office Of Promotion created the Pittsburgh Film Office. Russ Streiner, who's our current board chair, actually founded the film office with a few others, and they really started professionalizing the whole approach. By the time I got here it was an established film office, but it was really about making sure the community is protected and the clients, the film companies, are getting what they want done and accomplished.Dawn: Pittsburgh looks great, but everyone feels good about it at the end of the day.Paul: I think, and Logan, chime in here, but most people in Pittsburgh, and I'm making a generalization here, but I think they're proud to see Pittsburgh in TV and film, but we don't really have an understanding as Pittsburghers of how this all really works.Paul: An economic impact of 650 million, you said?Dawn: Well, that's how much wanted to be spent here. And it is.Paul: Wanted it to be spent.Dawn: They wanted to spend here. We're going to be lucky to retain about 200 million of it.Paul: Oh my goodness.Dawn: And this is money spent throughout the entire economy. The big spend, of course, is on our local crew, which we have some of the most experienced, amazing craftsmen that work in this, craftsmen and women, who work in this industry throughout the region.Dawn: Our crew is so good people travel them. They take them elsewhere because if they're not working at home, they leave. And in the old days they were lucky to stay. I say the old days prior to the film tax credits, they were lucky to be here for one film a year, and then they would go work in different states, in different places. They've all been able to stay home now.Paul: Well, let's talk about that for a second, because, in Pennsylvania anyway, it seems like certain legislators get upset about the size of the credit. But from what I've seen, our credit's not really that big compared to other states.Dawn: Our credit is woefully underfunded and oversubscribed. We needed $127 million dollars to retain all the work that Southwestern Pennsylvania had for this year alone. And we have to share the film tax credit with our friends over in Philly. We're one of the only states that have two production centers, meaning two places where people film.Dawn: I equate the tax credit to a 25% off coupon you get at your local store. This is money coming in. We're giving them 25 cents on every dollar they spend after they've spent 60% of their budget in the commonwealth. And they have to prove this. They fill out forms, they're audited. We know where every dime is spent on every single thing they do well before they ever get their tax credit certificate.Dawn: We just keep having the conversations and hopefully, we'll get to the point where they go, "Oh, we really do need to increase the film tax credit."Dawn: Georgia has a 30% uncapped tax credit. I told you, we had topped 1.5 billion this last year, and that's since 1990. Georgia had six billion dollars’ worth of film work last year.Paul: Wow. Now that is just amazing.Dawn: And they're looking for other places to go. If you look at the level of content that's being created right now, with the growth in all the streaming channels and everything else, they're all looking for homes. It's Netflix, it's Disney, it's Amazon. All our clients, they've all been here, they're all coming back. They're all, it just ... We have an opportunity here to really grow it, and I'm really hoping we get to capitalize on it this year.Logan: Like you said, everything you're saying makes sense. I would think that just pounding the nail and then hopefully it gets through some people's heads and realize that there are two production centers here and that that would bring so much money into our economy that otherwise goes unspent.Logan: Through your 25 years though, it sounds like people have wanted to less have Pittsburgh as a double, and actually want their film set in Pittsburgh. Would you say that's correct?Dawn: It's really interesting. It's a great question because we've really seen a growth in the number of shows that set it here. And primarily we're getting more people to write Pittsburgh into the scripts. There's more work being created. It saves them money when they set it in Pittsburgh because then they don't have to worry about, "Oh, there went a police car that's got the wrong logo on it, there goes -Paul: Re-badging, resigning things, yes.Dawn: ... everything."Dawn: We've seen a huge increase in that, which has been fun and it makes life a lot easier for everybody. And it gives us some great marketing.Dawn: Sometimes not so much. Right? Sometimes it's not a storyline that Pittsburgh would want to promote, but again, it's a movie. We're not portraying real life here, or a TV show, whatever it happens to be.Paul: That's great. So, as Pittsburghers, what can we do to help the film industry here thrive and grow?Dawn: Well, what we're really lucky about, I always tell people there are three main reasons anyone films here. It's the tax credits, it's our crew, it's the diversity of locations.Dawn: The fourth unofficial one is the film friendliness of Pittsburgh. We welcome these projects with open arms. We still are excited about it. Yeah, sometimes they block your driveway. Sometimes they're in the way, and we deal with all this usually minor inconveniences that happen throughout the region, but for the most part, we're very supportive. So we'd love for that to continue when people really get to know how friendly our region is.Dawn: Our website is pghfilm.org. We're on all of the social media channels, Facebook, Twitter, everywhere else you're supposed to be these days. It's important that you go check in on what's happening, and if you want to be an extra, we put that information up on our website. We really try to keep things up to date and current as possible.Dawn: I mentioned we have three full-time employees. I have a full staff of interns, they're amazing, from all the local major universities in the region, and they're charged with getting all that stuff updated, so they've been doing a great job. But it's really just checking in and staying supportive.Dawn: And for the legislators that are listening, are you people out there who have friends that are legislators? It's important to remind them that the film tax credit affects the entire region. Not just the people who see the direct impact, but the entire region. We're all benefiting from this economic development generator. And the goal with the tax credits was to not only have an incentive but to build an industry sector. We've done that. Now we need to start building infrastructure and getting purpose-built sound stages and getting some things moving.Dawn: Just supporting the film industry as a whole, as a real viable business in the region, it's really the key.Logan: Great. Well, thank you so much for being here, Dawn. We really appreciate you being here and giving your info and knowledge and expertise on this. This has definitely given me an expanded view of what the Pittsburgh Film Office does. And so, yeah, just thanks for being here.Logan: This is Logan Armstrong and Paul Furiga with the P100 Podcast, and thanks again.Dawn: Thank you.FLOWER CROWN MUSICLogan: Okay, Dan, coming into our next segment, I want to take a couple of minutes to spotlight a local band, Flower Crown, who is on the Crafted Sounds record label, who is a local record label which is run by my friend, Connor Murray. They're doing a lot of great things. But Flower Crown is, I would call them dream-pop, very hazy, very ambient, chill.Logan: My first introduction to them was when I heard their song Bender Szn, it landed on Spotify's Fresh Finds Six Strings playlist, which is a pretty prominent playlist in the platform. It got them a lot of good exposure. As an artist, you're always looking to get on playlists like those.Logan: But yeah, I know you had a little chance to listen to them. What did you think?Dan: Yeah, I think that dream-pop is maybe a good way to describe them. I hadn't heard that term for a genre until you brought it up to me. Until you introduced me to this band here, but I'd agree with it. They'd be nice to just have, put them on for a good mix, a good playlist for a long drive or something like that. And just a nice, kind of soothing, but they do a pretty nice job with their instrumentation. They sound good. So yeah. Excited to hear some more.Logan: Yeah. Yeah. It's a five-member band. And what I like about Flower Crown is that while the music is, like you said, it's great for a long road trip. It's very just, you can kind of get into it. They create their own atmosphere. I haven't met them personally, but from what I've seen on social media and in the public, they're pretty likable guys.Logan: Their profile picture on Facebook has one of them in a big hot dog suit. One of their single covers has them taking off, the guy's in an alien suit, they're taking off his alien head, almost like a Scooby-Doo character. It's nice to be able to see bands that you're able to relate with and are still making music on that scale.Dan: That's awesome. What are we going to hear from them coming up?Logan: Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, I think a great introduction to them is Bender Szn, off their latest project called Sundries, which came out in May. It's a great little single to head out into your day. Very chill. Great for a day like this in October. So yeah, I hope you enjoy.

IT'S A CELEBRATION! Last month this show turned 5 years old so I put together a really cool live panel to chat about all of our positive experiences navigating the "behind the scenes" of the "scene" and how to GET THINGS DONE! Guests include Connor Murray of Crafted Sounds, Icky Vicky of Icky Vicky's Brokenheart Sideshow, Ashley Bianca Corts of Black Forge Coffee House and Mario Fusca of Special Sessions Live. Sit back, relax and let's START THE BEAT! ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Spotify Apple Google Stitcher YouTube  Instagram  

We're joined this week by Connor Murray, founder of Pittsburgh based indie label Crafted Sounds! We talk to Connor about his label, his criteria for signing artists, and the music scenes that shaped him. Plus, we discuss new releases from The Mountain Goats, Kevin Morby, Field Medic, Prince Daddy & The Hyena, and Mannequin Pussy. 

Connor Murray, creator of local label Crafted Sounds is about to celebrate two major milestones -- the third year of the label and his 21st birthday. With a celebratory compilation album and release show a week away, we talked about work-life balance, networking, and the importance of gratitude in the business of self-promotion.

In today's episode of Kids on the Kouch, we sit down with Connor Murray, a 13yr old AFL athlete who is part of the Sydney Swans Academy to get his thoughts on pressure, failure, fear, and more... Enjoy

It’s landed! A new official podcast series on MunsterRugby.ie, ‘The Crooked Feed’ with Duncan Casey. No stranger to journalism in his own right, Duncan looks at all things Munster, both on and off the field, and is joined in Episode 1 by returning international Connor Murray, centre Francis Saili and Munster legend David Wallace. Music credit: http://www.bensound.com/