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Today's episode is about the traditions after Christmas Day in Slovakia. In the Slovak lesson you will learn a few words from my vocabulary. You will also learn how to say “Let's celebrate!” in Slovak. At the end you can find my dialogue about winter fun in a backyard.Episode notesToday I'm talking about the traditions after Christmas Day in Slovakia. In the Slovak lesson you will learn a few words from my vocabulary. You will also learn how to say “Let's celebrate!” in Slovak. At the end you can find my dialogue about winter fun in a backyard. Slovak lesson1. snehová guľa (snowball)2. guľovačka (snow ball fight)3. snehuliak (snowman)4. snehový anjel (snow angel)5. snehová pevnosť(snow fortress)6. čaj s rumom (tea with rum)7. horúce kakao (hot cocoa)8. oheň (fire)9. ohnisko (firepit)10. vojna (war)11. vojna je ukončená (the war is over)12. Poďme oslavovať. (Let's celebrate.)DialogueOtec: Hej, deti, pozrite sa ako nám tu krásne sneží!Deti: (vzrušene) Guľovačka!Mamina: Počkaj, počkaj. Najprv musíme postaviť snehuliaka!Klára, dospievajúca dcéra: Tak na to som tu ja a môj partner Miško, však?Miško, mladší syn: Správne! Čas snehuliakov!Otec: (tvorí snehovú guľu) Ja zatiaľ pripravím snehové gule. Mamina, do hry!Mamina: Počkaj, robím snehového anjela.David, najstarší syn: (buduje pevnosť) Myslím, že potrebujeme aj snehovú pevnosť!Dedko: (so zábleskom v očiach) A ja ako Mrázik, môžem v tej pevnosti sedieť a popíjať čaj s rumom. Čo ty na to babina?Babina: (s úsmevom) Ja som tu len na to, aby som na vás dohliadala a popíjala horúce kakao.Všetci: (smiech)Klára: Náš snehuliak vyzerá super!Miško: (obdivuje snehuliaka) Súhlasím. A snehová pevnosť je nepreniknuteľná! Idem dnu.David: (vykúka spoza snehovej pevnosti) Pozor, mám tu zásobu snehových gúľ!Otec: Hej? Uvidíme! Všetci na neho!Všetci hádžu snehové gule do Davida.David: To nie je fér. Dobre, vzdávam sa.Otec: Hurá, vojna je ukončená. Poďme oslavovať! Všetci k ohnisku. Je čas sa zahriať. Mamina: (drží podnos s hrnčekmi s kakaom) Horúce kakao, niekto?Všetci: Áno, prosím!Dedko: (zohrieva si ruky pri ohni) Ach, a čo tak opekačka?Babina: Už sa to nesie. Tu sú špekáčky, klobáska a slaninka.Všetci: Babi, ty si najlepšia! (Všetci sedia okolo ohňa, a hostia sa.)Klára: Ach! Nechce sa mi veriť, že dnes je posledný deň v roku.Miško: Jéj, Silvester! Musíme zostať hore super neskoro!Všetci: (smiech)Otec: (zdvihne svoj hrnček) Tak pripíjam na Silvestra a na Nový rok, aby sme spolu zažili veľa nezabudnuteľných spomienok.Mamina: Ja pripíjam na lásku v našich srdciach.Babina: A na zdravie pre nás všetkých.Dedko: Na zdravie! Hlavne o toto tu ide.Všetci: Na zdravie!Timestamps00:33 Introduction to the lesson02:34 Information about the end of season03:44 From Christmas to the New Year's Eve14:03 Slovak lesson19:10 Dialogue27:39 Final thoughtsIf you have any questions, send it to my email hello@bozenasslovak.com. Check my Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bozenasslovak/ where I am posting the pictures of what I am talking about on my podcast. Also, check my website https://www.bozenasslovak.com © All copywrites reserved to Bozena O Hilko LLC

église AB Lausanne ; KJV Luke 2 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. ...

If our storytelling allows us to build trust, build credibility, build a bond, and increase sales, then we're telling the right stories. If it's just designed to be manipulative, then save your breath. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the power of storytelling in sales. Jay, tell me a story. Jay: Listen, I am a storyteller. I love to tell stories and I like to build when I tell stories, right? And so this is something that I use on a regular basis when I'm talking to people and it's not just telling a story. I think it's putting people in a story and what character are they in that story? And I think most people want to be the hero in their own story, right? David: They do. which gets to the whole idea of the hero's journey and all that kind of stuff for anybody who follows that sort of storyline or that Jay: mm-hmm. David: type of story arc, The Hero's Journey by Campbell, I can't think of his first name. But it's a book and it describes essentially the plot of most of the most popular movies of all time. Jay: Yeah, David: Right. Star Wars, Rocky, anything where you've got this person who is initially kind of beaten down and not winning, and then they come in contact with a mentor and then they learn new things and they have a confrontation and it might not go well, and then they learn some more things and then eventually they come out triumphant. There's a whole arc. And you're right, a lot of people want to be the hero, and the challenge as a salesperson is, in our storytelling, we can't be the hero. Mm. Right. We need to make sure that the person we're talking to is the hero and that we are the mentor or guide. We're not Luke Skywalker. We have to be Yoda. We have to be the one who's helping Luke to destroy the Death Star. Jay: Yeah. This is a really hard thing, I think for a lot of people. Because we want to go in and think we're the hero, right? I'm coming into your business. I'm going to provide something that is going to save the day, and then I'm going to walk away and you're going to praise me and you're going to pay me. But that's not what really is supposed to be happening, right? It's that I have the tools and the resources that you need to be the hero. David: Yes, and it's easy to forget that, particularly when we're trying to read ourselves in as the hero to each story. But one of the things that I've noticed in sales is that many, if not most of the very best salespeople are also the best storytellers. You can say. "Hi, do you know what time it is?" And instead of getting the time, you will get a fantastic story that might weave the time into it. Jay: Mm. David: But you're going off in all kinds of directions, and when they do it right, it's captivating enough that you sit there and pay attention. Jay: Yeah. But you pointed out "when you do it right." David: Yes. Jay: Right. so let's talk about that a little bit. Let's talk about your feedback on doing it right. David: Well, number one, as we already touched on, it can't just be all about you. You can't make the story about yourself. You need to make it about them, and a lot of that upfront comes from finding out about them, which means you're asking more questions, then you're answering, hopefully in the early stages. Jay: Yes David: Because customers always just want to know what it's going to cost upfront, and you don't generally want to lead off with that. So a lot of our storytelling will actually have to come from the conversations that ensue after we've gathered enough information. Jay: Yeah. David: To know what those stories need to be about. If we just go in and we meet somebody for the first time and we start telling them stories, that's probably not ideal. We need to still initially do some sort of diagnostic upfront to find out what their interests are. Now, of course,

David is a SOC Analyst, Cyber Mentor, Educator, and Founder and Creator of CyberTech Dave. He holds a Master of Science degree in Information Systems and has a wide array of skills ranging from Teaching to Virus Removal. David is passionate about Cybersecurity and enjoys using his platform to teach people how to protect themselves and stay safe online. 00:00 Introduction 00:17 Our Guest 01:12 Using LinkedIn to break into Cybersecurity 07:30 Fake Profiles on Linkedin 08:30 Having a complete profile 10:19 the LinkedIn Algorithm 14:20 Useful Certifications and Resources 26:39 Davids Book about Women in Cyber 32:28 SOC fatigue 36:27 What role does Automation has? 37:46 Will Automation replace a SOC Analyst? 39:30 How can Clients improve their Cybersecurity? 42:35 Risk Assessments: Who should be leading? 45:20 Connecting with David ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To learn more about David visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-meece-cybertech-dave/ To learn more about Dark Rhino Security at https://www.darkrhinosecurity.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SOCIAL MEDIA: Stay connected with us on social media, where we'll give you snippets, alerts for new podcasts, and even behind the scenes of our studio! Instagram: @securityconfidential and @OfficialDarkRhinoSecurity Facebook: @Dark-Rhino-Security-Inc Twitter: @darkrhinosec LinkedIn: @dark-rhino-security Youtube: @Dark Rhino Security ​ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- https://securityplus.training/

The Christmas Story The Birth of Jesus Foretold ~ Luke 1:26-38 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. The Birth of Jesus Christ ~ Matthew 1:18-25 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus. The Birth of Jesus Christ ~ Luke 2:1-7 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.   The Shepherds and the Angels ~ Luke 2:8-21 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. The Word Became Flesh ~ John 1:1-14 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light, the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. Merry Christmas. Until next time, be blessed and be a blessing. ---- Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/richard-bodgers/earth-in-bloom License code: PKB2GOTPFQSZZFD7 Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/brock-hewitt-stories-in-sound/one-moment License code: AZHOENILHJWPW8M8 Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/brock-hewitt-stories-in-sound/once-in-royal-davids-city License code: V2I9RZOAEB3LTKMP

What is slander? Why do people want to slander other people? Chelsea and I look at some Bible verses and stories to find at least six reasons people slander others: To enrich themselves (Proverbs 21:6; 20:17; Haman)To satisfy envy (Joseph's brothers)To cover up wrongdoing or shift blame (Potiphar's wife)To conceal hateful motives or weakness (Proverbs 10:18)To damage or destroy opponents (Psalm 31:13; 1 Samuel 24:9; the Ammonites against David)To fight against truth (Psalm 31:18; 52:3; 64:3-4; Jeremiah 9:4-5) Sources Cited: Legal Dictionary, s.v. "slander (n.)," accessed August 14, 2022. *** Castle Rock Women's Health is a pro-life and pro-women health care ministry. They need your help to move into a new office to serve the community better. Please consider a monthly or one-time donation. ***

What is slander? Why do people want to slander other people? Chelsea and I look at some Bible verses and stories to find at least six reasons people slander others: To enrich themselves (Proverbs 21:6; 20:17; Haman) To satisfy envy (Joseph's brothers) To cover up wrongdoing or shift blame (Potiphar's wife) To conceal hateful motives or weakness (Proverbs 10:18) To damage or destroy opponents (Psalm 31:13; 1 Samuel 24:9; the Ammonites against David) To fight against truth (Psalm 31:18; 52:3; 64:3-4; Jeremiah 9:4-5) Sources Cited: Legal Dictionary, s.v. "https://legaldictionary.net/slander/ (slander (n.))," accessed August 14, 2022. *** https://crwomenshealth.com (Castle Rock Women's Health) is a pro-life and pro-women health care ministry. They need your help to move into a new office to serve the community better. Please consider https://www.givesendgo.com/CRWH (a monthly or one-time donation). ***

David Finberg, CEO, Peaks Digital Marketing (Denver, CO)   David Finberg is CEO at Peaks Digital Marketing, an SEO and lead generation firm that focuses on a comprehensive, aggressive approach to “addressing all seven areas of an SEO campaign to get ROI rolling as early as possible.” Clients range from small, local businesses to major enterprises. Today's solutions must be comprehensive. Peaks Digital's fractionalized team operates as a cohesive unit and integrates multiple areas of expertise with its clients' teams . . . filling in the “gaps” and providing support in areas that will most impact its clients' campaigns. Highly agile, the team can address page speed, backlinks, content, reputation, user experience, and technical site auditing in a customized way that can truly “move the needle.” Newly built or restructured websites typically rank in an exponentially shorter timeframe than might be expected, and sometimes in as little as three months. Clients work with Peaks Digital on a month-to-month basis . . . which reduces client risk and barriers to entry. Peaks Digital focuses on relationships, educating, and empowering clients. “The proof is in the pudding,” David says. Clients who see results . . . stay. In this interview, David discusses some website “quick fixes.” Analyze your sitemap/URL roster for relevance, consistency, and functionality. Do a comprehensive content inventory/audit, especially of your older content. Do you have pages written years ago that have never generated any traffic? Review your Google Analytics.  Which pages have the most hits?  What are the topics, pages, questions, and queries on those pages?  What is the market doing on your site?  Examine content that may appear to be impactful, its analytics, and its search data. Does it even rank? If not, remove it, repurpose it, or rewrite it.  David recommends that companies “no index” those pages that have low quality or thin content. Otherwise, Google will downgrade your site  Years ago, David was tempted to chase “shinier things,” like Facebook. Mentors asked him, “How much money have you made off Facebook?” (None), then asked him, “How much money have you made off SEO?” (A lot . . . and growing.)” Their advice? “Double down on what's working.” He did. David can be reached on Instagram at: @Davidafinberg, on his agency's website at: peaksdigitalmarketing.com, or on a variety of social platforms. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by David Finberg, CEO at Peaks Digital Marketing based in Denver, Colorado. Welcome to the podcast. DAVID: Hey, Rob. Thanks so much for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here. ROB: David, it's great to have you here. Why don't you give us an introduction to Peaks Digital Marketing? What are your superpowers?  DAVID: That's a great way to lead in. Peaks Digital, we're an SEO and lead generation firm based out of Denver. We work with anyone from local business all the way up to enterprise, and we've really developed this claim to fame or system around providing great backlinks, great content, and really addressing all seven areas of an SEO campaign to get ROI rolling as early as possible. We do things a little differently in terms of the way that we approach campaigns. It's a lot more aggressive. We really map out a lot of the strategy and high-level, low-hanging fruit and also more aggressive opportunities, and take it from a more comprehensive approach. It's not just about one thing anymore – your content or your page speed. It's about having great reputation, great backlinks, great user experience. It's all these things. So we really like to take a more comprehensive approach. The great thing is the strategies work all the way up to enterprise, all the way down to local mom n' pop. We've got a fractionalized team here and an award-winning staff and process that goes into these campaigns. While we do offer more of the same kind of generalized experience everyone knows, like keywords and backlinks and title tags are important, we tend to take a more in-depth approach and treat it from a much more data-driven, ROI-based perspective. Our superpower is really coming in, getting a campaign kicked off, and getting them ranked in an exponentially shorter timeframe. Most companies say, “Hey, it's a year, it's going to be 12 months or 13-14 months.” We can come in and, especially if we built the website, there have been instances where we've been able to rank websites in as little as 3 months. You don't need to hire anyone. This isn't some big pitch. But it's really designed to be a comprehensive experience where you're not only getting someone who knows backlinks and outreach and web development; you're getting the content team, the analytics team, people that are going to help you with reputation management, your Google business – really looking at every area and leaving no stone unturned, and doing so in a fast way that'll generate some results earlier on than the traditional expectations. ROB: When you talk about really being able to come in and make a difference quickly, that points me to the idea that there may be some things that are relatively low-hanging, relatively simple, that I might be doing severely wrong, left to my own devices. What am I doing wrong that is fixable quickly with the right expertise and the right team around it? DAVID: That's a great question. One of the big, high-level, punchy items – I don't want to call it punchy, but high-impact items, is doing a content audit on your site. So often, we're dealing with multiple webmasters, multiple people, or maybe just multiple iterations of the site, and the business is evolving and changing and growing. So just like with your business, your SEO is going to evolve and change and grow. It's really important to take comprehensive inventory of your content on your website. One of the places that we like to start is looking through your sitemap and looking through your URL roster. Sitemap basically just tells you what URLs you have on your site. You may find that you have things like thank you pages or blog posts that were written four years ago by a contractor that never really went anywhere in Google search, never generated any traffic. What I suggest is you should highly consider going through your Google Analytics, looking at the pages that have the most hits and writing some qualitative data about those topics, pages, questions, queries that you're seeing on those pages. What is the market actually doing on your site? And then audit some of your older content. Google grades your site – think of it like a school project. There might be multiple components. There's a research phase. It's not just about the best pieces of content; actually, your worst pieces of content can grade you down. You could have 10 amazing pages that are A+, 10/10 content, and then you might have 2 or 3 pages that are considered what we call “thin” content or low value, low impact content. A thank you page is a pretty cut-and-dried example. Very little content on the page. There's nothing you can really rank a thank you page for. People aren't going to be coming in off of your thank you page. So, it's really important to what we call “no index” that page, or have Google basically ignore some of these pages that arguably could be seen as low quality or thin content. So, you're going through and auditing that, and then on the other end, taking a look at content that may appear to be impactful, but looking through analytics and looking through the search data to say, “Is this even ranking?” And if it's not, that's probably a good indicator that that content doesn't deserve to be on the site anymore and could be redirected, deleted, or repurposed/rewritten. Starting there is a really great spot. If you can take your site from a C to a B to an A in terms of content quality, it can have some exponential effects across your entire site as opposed to just improving one page at a time. This can actually have a much more impactful, exponential approach without necessarily having to invest lots and lots of time inventing new content. ROB: To draw a bit of a metaphor, it sounds almost like you're describing an overgrown yard at a house. It's just been left there, nobody's really done anything. People are there looking for something – maybe it's the front door – but they can't find it, or they're not finding it well enough. You paint it up, you make it look good, you trim some bushes, you prune some things, you highlight the good things, and then you're at a better place, it sounds like. DAVID: 100%. I love that analogy. It's certainly the truth for most people's sites. There's probably some spring cleaning you need to do. Let's get these edges hedged up and work through ways to improve the overall presentation of the site when someone comes in. Pretty succinct and concise example. I love that. I may take a note out of that. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] At least if somebody likes gardening and has an overgrown yard from time to time, perhaps so. David, tell me, what is the origin story of Peaks Digital Marketing? Where did the firm come from? DAVID: It was almost out of necessity. I started making websites when I was 9 or 10 years old – Angelfire, GeoCities. These are dial-up era free websites that you could have, kind of like a Myspace or a Facebook, but they were an actual website you would type in. So, I always had this desire to create content and then be able to structure that content in a more technical way, and a way that someone could interact with, like a website. Really, my love of computers and journey started with my dad. In the early '90s, he had a 90 megahertz NEC computer. For those of you that know computers, that's basically like a hundredth of the speed of what a computer is now. I learned a lot on that computer, and it really paved the way for a skillset that I would end up honing in later. I had a pretty different journey than most people. I actually started my career out of high school as a Mercedes mechanic and really learned the technical components of how to work on cars and the electrics and things, and then over time I got back into computers. Prior to starting Peaks, I worked at a startup doing SEO; same kind of project management, high-level SEO, some content is really how I got my foot in the door. We had a great business. To keep the story short, the business wasn't being managed properly. It was a bunch of younger guys who were getting their feet wet in entrepreneurship and didn't necessarily have the coaches and the skillsets to be able to have a sustainable company. We got really spread out. We were doing municipal financing over here and launching affiliate websites over here and then doing Facebook ads over here. It just wasn't concise. Looking back at the data and at that experience, the SEO worked really well. Policies changed. The way that you do SEO completely changed from that point in time. When we started Peaks, I really had to reinvent that. The process was like, okay, this works. The company disbanded. We were making money, but the money was going to people's moms' rents. One of my good mentors told me, “How you show up one way is how you show up every way.” So, if there are things happening on one end of the business, you shouldn't be surprised if other things, like the money, isn't being managed and the process isn't being managed and everything's not being managed. It was a great learning experience. I walked away with some practical skillsets and opportunities and really had to start over. I said, well, if I'm going to start over – it was me and one other guy running the SEO department at this company of 10 people. It's like, I could probably do this on my own. It was not a grand story; I moved in with my folks, which I thought I wasn't going to have to do. I was 26, 28 years old, having to move back in with my folks. They were not very happy that I took a risky move in entrepreneurship that didn't work out. It's like, “Go to college, finish your degree, go do these other things.” I thought, well, I've just got to pick something. One thing that I always go back to is computers. I actually took a job, another Mercedes job, which I thought I'd never have to do. Moved out to Boulder, Colorado, where my cousin lived. He's an entrepreneur and was like, “Come out here, get off the beltway.” I was living in Virginia/Washington D.C. area. Just wasn't getting the traction in that part of the world. The writing was on the wall. I was applying to jobs, wasn't in a great mindset, wasn't in a great environment being back at home, not having my space. It was just a difficult time. I said, “Okay, how do I make this a win? Let's start this company and start building out the framework of what I feel like the previous company I worked at could've been. If no one else is going to give me an opportunity, I'll make an opportunity for myself.” So, it involved taking that step back and going back to the world that I didn't think I was going to need to go back to, which in this case was the mechanic world. During my off time, I would literally build the website. I hired someone to do the logo. I just kept investing, and over time, you get a client and you start expanding. To me, that's where I say it came out of necessity. There's a timing of my life and a season of my life that was coming to an end, and it was embracing this new dream, this new opportunity, this new season of life. It was super uncertain, but that's how most great things start. They start in a garage or they start in an auto shop or whatever the case may be. Everyone's journey is a little different, but that's what mine looked like. ROB: Around that time, if somebody was looking at the marketing world, I think for most people, SEO wouldn't have been where they would've started. They would've started with – I don't know whether it was particular organic social channels at the time, whether it was some paid social – it was something, and it was probably wasn't SEO. I think I would say a lot of the parlor tricks that made SEO rise in the prior decade had begun to go away and it became this more disciplined and steady practice. What made you start there instead of chasing the shinier things? DAVID: That's an interesting question. I had temptations, even after I started Peaks. I was like, “I'm going to start doing Facebook!” I had a really great set of mentors and they were like, “How much money have you made off Facebook?” I was like, “Well, none.” “Okay, how much money have you made off SEO?” “Oh, a lot, growing.” “So why would you switch that up? Double down on what's working.” Part of it was at a more subconscious level, was this a right fit? It wasn't always clear. SEO isn't sexy. It's kind of like accounting; you need it. It's not like social, where it's fun and it's creative. It's more like research. I was thinking, and I had some talks with different people in my life, and everyone was telling me, “Pick something. You just need to pick something.” I looked back to my childhood; I loved making websites. I looked at what I was great at when I was studying in college and in school; writing was always my passion, telling stories or performing research, putting a story together. That's where I said SEO actually is a pretty good fit for that. You don't have to necessarily be a programmer, which is what I was studying in school, to be a hacker – a certified hacker; I'm not a hacker by any means. Depends on your definition of hacker. I think everyone's a little bit of a hacker. Not like a computer, break into someone's website. I was actually studying to go work at the NSA or somewhere that was more of a white hat place, not something that does bad things. But it was really like, I don't feel like I'm a 10/10 on coding. Could I be? Sure. But I'm a little bit more of a hybrid – a little bit of creative, a little bit of technical. A little bit of writing or a little bit of web design and then the technical behind that. That's where it really clicked, and it was like, I do just need to choose this. Let's start this. People need this. Every business needs this. It's crazy; the SEO market is so saturated. There's an agency on every corner. But very few people are investing the time in the innovation side of it. And to your point, a lot of those parlor tricks stopped working. Panda update came out and it was no longer about backlinks and keywords in your titles and image optimization. It was about the quality and the experience and what users are actually doing on your site, to make sure that people actually like the sites that are being promoted, and all these different variables. It seemed like Mount Everest. It was like, wow, I'm not going to be able to climb this pretty easily. Really just approaching it step by step, it was like, let's reinvent the link component. Let's reinvent the way that we address content to make sure that it has the right expertise, authoritativeness, trust, research, and maybe some original analysis, factual – how do we create the highest quality? We want to be the Mercedes-Benz, essentially, of SEO. So how do we find these levers to pull and present to people? That's really where the journey progressed. Imagine having a baby. It was like, all right, I've got to really commit to this. In order to be on Page 1, you have to be in the top 10% of sites. Only 10 sites make it to Page 1, so 90% of websites aren't going to be on Page 1. How do we approach this from a more data-driven angle and start looking at the market? Once I made that commitment like, “Okay, this is a good skillset fit; I feel like I've got a good balance here of technical versus creative,” now it's “How do we quantify this and make this into a scalable, repeatable product that people, no matter what industry they're in, can benefit from?” That was the next season of entrepreneurship, which is like “Oh my God, how am I going to do this?” [laughs] Definitely looking at the writing on the wall was the big commitment that I had to make to myself: not only is this going to be difficult, it's going to take a lot more time. I wasn't getting traction. The first year, I tried to give up a few times. I was applying for jobs. I'm like, “I'm not making enough money.” It was tough. Those first three years were really tough. But then once you reap the rewards of planting those seeds and harvesting what you've invested and you start to see it work for other people, the reward and benefit from that and finding that purpose – like, I can be of service. I'm finding my purpose. My purpose is to help other people succeed in an area that maybe seems like gambling. It's one of those scary things like accounting where if you mess it up, you can be in big trouble, and you don't always want to deal with it. And it's not that sexy. But on the other end, how to make it fun and innovative – we create different content programs and ways to plan out articles and map out articles to make it fun and enjoyable and still innovative at the same time. ROB: I do appreciate that advice you received from your mentors around looking at how you were already making money and not trying to get too creative. I know we all want to be creative, but I think also sometimes – everyone tells you, “You should do social media” and you're like, “Oh, I should do social media,” and then you peel back and say, “What am I strong at? Where am I succeeding?” You mentioned something earlier that I do want to come back to. You mentioned something about having a fractional or fractionalized team. Tell me about that. What does that mean to you? What does that look like? DAVID: To recap, having that fractionalized team is really where most businesses need to be. It allows you to be more agile and focus on all seven of those core areas that you need for SEO as opposed to more of a Gantt chart where it's just waterfalling down. You really need to have – whether it's your page speed, your backlinks, your content, your reputation, technical auditing of your site – all these different components are what move the needle. We saw this market offering, this gap in the market where most people know that they need a web developer, but can they keep that web developer busy all the time? Instead of going and hiring all these people and paying benefits and having multiple staff on salary or as a contractor that don't play nice together and don't coordinate together, how about we just bring it all under one roof, customize the package to their needs – some people already have a web developer and don't necessarily need to double down on that. But maybe they don't have a content person or they don't have a reputation management campaign running or anything like that. There is no cookie-cutter approach, but typically you need multiple areas of expertise. I'm a big believer of if you get the right people in the right seats focused on the right tasks, and they're all experts within their field, that is really what we set out to deliver to the market. Not a jack of all trades, master of none; it's the exact opposite. You get a team full of experts that are going to come and work as a cohesive unit and integrate into your team to get you support in the areas that are going to impact your campaign the most. On the other end, the other differentiator – and a lot of people do this now, but it's month to month – reduce the amount of barriers to entry and risks for people. I don't know if anyone here listening has ever been burned by SEO. I get calls every single day talking about, “Hey, we paid this person for 12 months or 16 months and it just didn't work out.” We say the proof's in the pudding. We don't want to have to lock you in. If you're seeing the results, you're going to want to stay, and we're here to invest in that relationship and frontload that work. So, thinking about it from a business perspective, you can't be that much different on the outside than – people know about our process, but it's like, “You're just another SEO company.” What makes us different? To us, it's really focusing on the relationship. If you were selling a relative of yours SEO, would you be locking them in for 12 months, or would you keep it flexible? Would you educate them through the process and empower them, or make them feel small? I don't know if you ever watch SNL, but they had this guy Nick Burns, the company computer guy, and he would just totally sh*t on people, basically – excuse my language; I don't know if we're allowed to curse here. He's like, “You don't know how to do this? Move. I'm the wizard.” It was very disempowering for a client. Our goal is to never make our clients feel small. Doesn't matter if we're the best at SEO; it's really about the communication, expectations, positioning of the product, and follow-through and follow-up. We're not perfect. If something goes wrong, let's call that client and make them a priority, make that face-to-face connection, and then fix it. Unfortunately, in this industry, there's a lot of bad press around SEO. It's like, “They sold me this thing and it didn't work” or “Every time I call them, they never call me back” or “They send me these reports and I have no idea what I'm looking at, no one walks through it with me.” There's all these different emotional touchpoints, just like you have in your markets and just like you have in your areas of expertise. As a smaller company, you can be more agile and cater to the culture and the process around those pain points. I tell my team all the time, there are plenty of companies that have crappy SEO. They just have really great follow-through and communication, and that's why people spend a year with them. Imagine if you marry that communication angle with the technical component; people will never want to leave, and you're not locking them in, so there's no pressure. Then it's really fostering that relationship and going through some wins together and all that kind of thing. ROB: It's really critical. Someone who is hiring an outside firm to do almost anything core to their business – and in particular, I would say marketing – they're making a bet that's not always easy, and they're making a bet that they expect to pay off. If they spend a year and get nothing, it's a year of their business and a year of their life, potentially, that doesn't move as fast as they want it to. It's so key to instill that in the team and how they interact and how they communicate. That makes a great deal of sense. DAVID: Yeah, it's not rocket science. It's just things that can be hard to do at times, especially when you have Google algorithms and other things that are going to make the day-to-day more of – “Whoa, I've got to focus on this algorithm.” It's like, no, let's actually just communicate what we're doing today and start there, and then we can come back and spend the 20 hours and grind or laser-focus on this thing until it's zapped. But communication has really been the cornerstone of our success, and the other is empowering that client, not making them feel small. Which can be frustrating for both ends if someone doesn't know what they're doing and they've made that bet and they're like, “I can't tell if I'm winning or losing.” It's important to have – at the casino, they have the guy that tells you how to play the game and whether it's a good hit or whether it's right. I'm not a huge gambler, but it's interesting. ROB: [laughs] I wonder about that, because in the casino they're telling you how to lose money over the long term. You're never going to get ahead. But something like marketing is not a zero sum game, and there's room for everyone to get ahead. I appreciate the thought you put into your clients, into instilling that empathy into your team, and the technical expertise of not selling – we don't have to sell magic beans in SEO anymore, and I certainly appreciate that with you and what you're doing, David. When people want to get in touch with you and with Peaks Digital Marketing, where should they go to find you? DAVID: Check us out on Instagram. @Davidafinberg is my personal Instagram handle. We're doing lots of tips, tricks, things like that. And then if you want a free audit or you just want to check us out on the web, peaksdigitalmarketing.com. Hit the contact page, get a free audit or read some articles, things like that. But yeah, Instagram @davidafinberg, peaksdigitalmarketing.com, and then you can check us out on social as well. There's some other platforms if you prefer.  ROB: Excellent. Thank you, David, for coming on the podcast. Best wishes to you and the team. Thank you for sharing from your experience and wisdom. DAVID: My pleasure. Thanks again. I really appreciate the time today. ROB: All right, take care. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Luke 2:1-11 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

Sean: I've read your bio and you mentioned that there was a time in your life when you lost everything and nearly your life. I'm not going to ask you for the details, but I want to talk about hitting rock bottom. How you got back up? Can you tell us about that? David: To those who are listening, I own my L's, I've made massive mistakes. I mean, I'm really screwed up. Mine was based around alcohol and drugs. I got massive success, for those out there that hype themselves up and go hyperactive after a deal and gone out and celebrated. And going back to work the next day and I've done it again and I'm going to celebrate, I've just done that for a few years to an excess, but because things were going well, I thought it wasn't a problem. So I ended up losing everything. I had a breakdown, lost everything to the extent I ended up sleeping in my car. And the reason I'm saying this is I want to give people context. If you ever have it, if you wake, if you'll pull in your house and nothing's all, and you don't know any difference, it was still horrible, but it's different because you don't know different. It goes from a fact of habit, everything, and you screw it up. You make the mistakes. It's hard to come out of that because you just hit yourself with a stick. To go from eating in the top restaurants, driving the cars, having the road trips and all the holidays to sleeping in a car and literally not able to afford to buy a sandwich. Like that bad and I wanted it done, but it also gets to the stage where you can't, but you have to get through that day. It's horrible. It's painful. You have to become accountable to yourself. You have to realize everyone messes up, everyone makes mistakes. You're in hell, don't stop. Hell isn't the place to stop in. Hell is not the place to retire in. Like it's a crap town, it's a little village on the way to your success. And the only way it becomes your permanent location is if you stop. Now it doesn't matter how you get out there. If you got a car, you drive out of hell, if you got a plane you fly out of hell. If you can walk with your legs - you walk out of hell, if your legs don't work - you crawl out hell. What you don't do is stay there and burn in heat and die. It's just not it. Now you might not believe in yourself or someone might not think they deserve it and you might not. Which is hard but it's true, but it doesn't matter what, right? If you're in Hell, it doesn't matter whether you deserve it or not, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether you could achieve your day or not. You just gotta do it next week. You just gotta get through today. You just got to get in the next hour though. You just have to manage a minute, and everyone can manage a minute to do one thing if you improve 1% a day, right? Take your life right now. If you improve your life 1% today, that's manageable. If you do that again tomorrow and again the day after, in a year's time you have twice what you have today and that might not be a lot. But a year after that you'll have another hundred percent. But there are actually 200% that you would've gone up and it will keep growing like that. I think for too many people out there, they let themselves off too easy and they beat themselves up far too easy. And I think this is the big difference for a lot of people. If we're gonna be on a stage where we're going to get every single one out of this world. Imagine, do everything we have to do to get it. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Today we talk about an extremely important topic, dealing with stress so that we don’t simply survive but move forwards more positively.  I’m joined by Dr John Perry who has led the exploration of specific aspects of Mental Toughness and a variety of applications – including new insights into understanding stress management all of which have direct implication for practitioners.   Key Takeaways: Motivation is a complex phenomenon. How people respond to pressure situations. Sport teaches you that failure and disappointment is a consistency in life. Developing your skills through reflection and self-awareness can improve your mental toughness. Counselling skills are important to help people who struggle to learn from their mistakes and don’t enjoy reflecting. When we’re in a flow state or are present minded it’s a feeling.  It’s a skill transitioning from a cognitive to affective state. People performing at the very top of their fields are able to access affective states more easily.   Connect with Dr John Perry: Twitter: @johnperry81 Email: John.Perry@mic.ul.ie   Connect with David To book a call with David Join David @ The Sports Psychology Hub   Useful Resources Well-Being Menu   Other Useful Podcast Episodes Doug Strycharczyk: The Importance of Mental Toughness David Charlton: How the Mentally Tough Deal with Lockdown Professor Peter Clough: Why is Mental Toughness Important David Charlton: How Can I Be Grateful For The Little Things

Join Pat Willie as she brings you two minutes of prayer and reflection.  We believe that prayer is essential, life-giving, and life-sustaining.   In this special bonus 2 minute prayer, we offer this Christmas Prayer. Please join us for 2 minutes of prayer to our Lord and Savior. Transcription: Hello. This is Pat Willie, the founder, and CEO of the not-for-profit ministry, The Gathering. When women gather, when women worship. Thanks for joining in this podcast, the two-minute prayer. I believe that prayer is essential. It is life-giving and life-sustaining, and it only takes just a minute to pray. This is a special edition of the two-minute prayer. This is the Christmas prayer. I will start reading from Luke chapter two, verses 1 to 14. And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men. Father God in the name of Jesus, we give you glory and we give you praise.  As we set our hearts to remember and celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Truly, God, we thank you for a savior. We thank you, God, for how the Christ child came to bring newness of life. And we have received him into our hearts. We thank you, God, that the light shines in our hearts. And we give you glory. We give you praise. As we celebrate the birth of your Holy son. Thank you, God, for being in our lives. Thank you, God, that we are alive today. And we have the blessed assurance that you are on our side for not only are you our savior, but you are our Lord and we give you glory. We give you praise that you are blessing every circumstance and every situation in our lives.  And you are bringing new hope.  In Jesus' name. We give you praise for it. We thank you for the Christ child. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.  Thanks for listening in today. Please subscribe to this channel by using the links below blessings. Now, this is the two-minute prayer podcast. Have a great day. Find out more about Pat Willie here.

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. – Luke 2:1-20 KJV

Luke 2:1-7 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

2 Samuel 5:7 "Pero David tom la fortaleza de Sion, la cual es la ciudad de David" To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1235/29

Best of Jedle. "John Terry si před zápasem četl bulletin." Domino: "Jak to vypadá, když jde Celtic na pivo?" O tom, jak se stal v Moskvě plavcem. "Kdo nevydržel minutu pod vodou, tak měl klacek a bil ho do hlavy." O (ne)prodaném zápase ve Španělsku. (33:16) "Ty jsi nezmínil, že jsem porazil Mourinha 3:2 na Santiago Bernabéu." David: "To bylo zase domluvený?" @primozkabiny  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mczop4UlETI  Produkce: ZAPO - zábava v podcastoch  https://www.instagram.com/zapoofficial/?hl=sk  

Jiras: "Aby šel hrát, aby ukázal, že na to má, aby voni to pochopili." Domino: "Ty jsi lídr jak kráva!" David: "To je bomba tohle slyšet..." (18:05)  Autor gólu ze 45 metrů  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bmY3QQyB48  a bývalý dlouholetý kapitán Spartaku Moskva. Domino: "Tam jsi už začal vydělávat velký peníze, začal si utrácet, investoval jsi do aut." David: "To nejsou moc investice..." A znáš podcast Mariána Gáboríka?  https://open.spotify.com/episode/2EwKXBhGkEvIZnDqPvPqcI  K*revsky kvalitní produkce by ZAPO - zábava v podcastoch  https://www.instagram.com/zapoofficial/?hl=sk  

" ... AND FOLLOWED HIM" Jan 18 Why did people follow Jesus? We know his disciples did, because he called them to do so, but others? We had an example in today’s chapter 20 in Matthew, “there were two blind men sitting by the roadside” [v.30] who cried out when they were told Jesus was passing by, “Lord, have mercy on us, ‘Son of David’” To call him ‘Son of David’ meant they acknowledged him as the Messiah. “Jesus called them and said, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ With what sense of potential wonder would they have replied, “Let our eyes be opened.”[v.33] Jesus reacted – “in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight.” And what did they do then? They “followed him” [v.34] This was in contrast to others; nine of the 10 lepers he healed did not even return to express their gratitude! (Luke 17 v.15-18) and when the people came to see the madman who Jesus healed “clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid … and they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region.” [Mark 5 v.15,16] The loss of the pigs dominated their thinking. What dominates our thinking? Our world is full of spiritually blind people and others with the leprosy of sinful godless ways; just a few are like the Ephesians, who, Paul said, have had “the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may knowwhat is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance” [1 v.18] But few have such “eyes” – Peter’s experience was just like our world; in his last letter he wrote of those who “have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed” [2 Pet. 2 v.14] Two days ago in Matt. 19 we read the answer of Jesus to the “man who came up to him, saying ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” [v.17] But it is not achieved by a ‘one off’ good deed is it! This man was wealthy, and he needed to get rid of that in which he trusted, so Jesus told him, “… go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” [21] That was not the answer he was looking for “he went away sorrowful”. What answer are we looking for? Hopefully we have found that answer and are among those who “followed him” making our lives count in some meaningful ways, according to our abilities, in the way we follow him. A last thought – returning to our quote from Peter – we noted his words, “whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.” [v.19] Let us be enslaved to Christ, it is not possible to be only half committed. (Note the verses which follow in Peter)

Is there a prayer of thanksgiving in seasons of failure? We expect suffering (external forces complicating life), but what happens when we are faced with our own shortcomings, stupidity, arrogance, bias, prejudice. Simply put...FAILURE. The core tenets of our faith are to LOVE GOD & LOVE PEOPLE. Every time we fail it is not about the event or act, but about a lack of love of God, and in turn, love of people. Today, we look at a great failure of love for God and people through King David. What happens when Nathan confronts David on his dehumanization and desecration of Bathsheba, Uriah and ultimately God Himself? How does David respond? How do I respond to the illumination of my failure? Why does God challenge David? To damn or to free? Why does God challenge me? To damn or to free?

We ask David Crystal about standard English: why does standard English exist? How is it changing? Should students be exposed to different accents from around the world? And what role should culture play in English language teaching?Ross Thorburn: Welcome back to the TEFL Training Institute Podcast. This episode, we have Professor David Crystal ‑‑ linguist, writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster. In this episode, I asked David Crystal about standard English. Why does standard English exist? How is it changing? What type of English or Englishes should teachers teach?We talked about pronunciation and also the role that culture plays in language teaching. I hope you enjoy the interview.David Crystal, welcome to the podcast. Can you start off by telling us, when did the idea of standard English first start? Is it something that also came into play in the 18th century along with things like prescriptive grammar and Samuel Johnson and the first dictionary, etc., or was it something that started earlier than that?David Crystal: One has to ask the question, what is a standard for? A standard is to guarantee intelligibility amongst lots of people, because if you carry on writing in your regional dialect, eventually you won't understand each other.The first signs of standard English come in the Middle Ages when England becomes a nation rather than a set of independent kingdoms and there is a national civil service evolving, and a national parliament and all these things and English is becoming the language of the nation.Then it became essential to get rid of some of these variations, and all sorts of influences caused the evolution of standard English ‑‑ civil service scribes, for instance, individual authors like Chaucer, the influence of the Bible ‑‑ many, many different variations, but the point is that between 1400 and 1800, standard English as we know it today evolves.By 1800, virtually everybody was writing, and this is the point. Writing standard English is essentially a written form of English, not a spoken form. Even today, only a tiny proportion of the world's English‑language users speak standard English naturally at home as a first language. Most people learn standard English in school, and I'm talking not just about foreign language learners. I'm talking about native speakers as well.Only about four or five percent ‑‑ maybe even that's an exaggeration ‑‑ of people in England speak standard English as a natural home language. Most people speak regional variations. Most people say, "I ain't got this. We ain't got no nothing" and things of that sort. Double negatives, all non‑standard features ‑‑ that's how they normally speak.Then they go to school and they learn that, "That's not correct, dear boy. You have to say it this way," and you learn standard English. That's very useful, as long as you don't then your local accent and dialect demeaned in the process, which of course used to be the case.Anyway, around about 1800, standard English in this sense of a universal, pretty unified form of writing had emerged, thanks to Dr. Johnson, with his dictionary. People like Lindley Murray and Bishop Lowth with their grammars, people like John Walker with their pronunciation dictionary and so on and so forth.There's still a certain amount of variation, but on the whole, it's pretty standard. Then along comes Noah Webster in America and messes everything up, saying, "We don't want that standard anymore. We want a different sort of standard for a new nation," so he develops different standards for American English.Again, only about five percent of American English is different from British English in terms of spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, grammar, and so on, but it's a pretty significant five percent, nonetheless. Suddenly there are two standards in the world, British and American.Then that opened the floodgates, doesn't it, because any other country now who comes along and wants to use English. As soon as they adopt English they immediately feel they need to adapt it to express the identity of their own milieu.This is where non‑standard comes into play, because what non‑standard does is it expresses identity rather than intelligibility. You and I are speaking now non‑standard English to each other. We're not going to understand each other, but I'm proud of my non‑standard English and you're proud of yours.Of course, the result could be chaos but in many parts of the world, what happens is that the two varieties are so distinct that they don't mix each other up. I use standard English on some occasions. I use non‑standard English on other occasions.Ross: Presumably, now, then, most people recognize that one version of English isn't necessarily superior to the other. It's just that they get used at different times and in different situations, I suppose.David: Yeah. In other words, it's a notion of appropriateness rather than a notion of correctness. The 18th‑century notion was that only standard English was correct. Everything else was incorrect and rubbish and should never be used. You'll be punished if you use it.These days it's a notion of appropriateness ‑‑ that standard English is appropriate for some kinds of functions, non‑standard appropriate for other kinds of functions. This is where it gets relevant to all countries. We're not just talking about British and American and Australian and Indian or the old colonial territories. We're talking about Chinese English and Japanese English and so on.What is Chinese English for me? Chinese English is not somebody learning English from China and getting it wrong.No, it's somebody learning English from China who is now developing a good command of English but using it to express Chinese concepts and Chinese culture in a way that I would not necessarily understand, because I don't understand Chinese culture, coming from outside it.All over the world now, we see these "new Englishes," as they're called, being very different from traditional standard British English and traditional standard American English.What they're doing is they're allowing the expression of their local identity to become institutionalized in dictionaries and in novels, you see, and plays and poetry and grammars and things like this, so that we now have to respect the identity of whatever it might be ‑‑ Indian English, Nigerian English, Chinese English, by which I mean, English written by Chinese authors expressing a Chinese milieu but with a competent command of English, so that one can't just say, "Hey, that's a mistake."That is a genuine, shared expression of some section that's coming from China.Ross: Given all that, then, it really complicates the job of English‑language teachers, doesn't it? What's acceptable to teach and what is it acceptable to leave out? It's a lot more difficult, I guess, than it used to be, isn't it?David: Oh, gosh, it does, doesn't it? It is a fact that English‑language teaching has become more difficult because of the evolution of English in this way. It isn't a simple, "Oh, there's British and American English. As long as you know those two, you're home and dry."It's not the case anymore. Everything I've said, mind you, is really only relevant for language comprehension, not so much for language production. After all, if you're used to teaching standard British English in Received Pronunciation, as many teachers are and in any case as many exam boards expect and as a lot of materials expect anyway, then fine. Carry on.Standard British English is a good thing. RP is a good accent, etc., etc. But when it comes to listening comprehension and reading comprehension, if one restricts one's ability only to British English and RP, then you miss out Heaven knows how many percent ‑‑ probably most of the English language around the world.How many people speak traditionally British English in an RP accent? We're talking about, what, a couple of percent of the world's population. It's a very useful accent still. No question about that.Standard British is still a very useful dialect, but nonetheless, from a comprehension point of view, how often are you going to encounter it in the street, in literature, and so on? Only a minority of the time.It's an increasing gap, it seems to me, between production and comprehension when it comes to teaching. That's me finished now, Ross, because now it's your problem to decide how to implement this in terms of syllabus design and at what point in the teaching process do you introduce these variations? I have the easy job here.[laughter]Ross: That's a pity, because that was actually my next question.David: [laughs]Ross: What do you think? Should teachers and course books and writers be trying to work in examples of non‑standard English and non‑standard accents from all around the world into their lessons and in their course books?It seems that even, for example, native speakers might even need help with their listening skills in developing an ear from accents from parts of the world that they're maybe traveling to that they haven't been before. Presumably the same is true for non‑native speakers as well.David: Absolutely. These days there is no difference, essentially, between a native and a non‑native speaker of English in this respect. I go to another part of the world just like a second‑language learner goes to the same part of the world and we're both equally foxed by the local identity of the language.I have this all the time. I go to places. I don't know what the heck is going on, because I just don't understand the local words, the local expressions, the local nicknames of the politicians. All these cultural identity things are everywhere now. It's a problem for me as much as for the other.As far as materials are concerned, yes I think one should build in right from the very beginning an awareness of variation. Some programs do this. Global, for example, does this to a certain extent. I think it's more general than that. All the materials, of course, have always had a certain cultural input.You teach the present tense by for example saying, "Let us go for a walk down Oxford Street. Let's buy some things," and we'll use the present tense for that. It's drama driving the content.You can also at the same time let culture help to drive the content. Not only do you have a vocabulary list at the end of the chapter which says what's going on or explains what's going on, but you have a culture list as well.For example, we've done Oxford Street. When somebody says, "Let's look at your watch," and you say, "Oh, it's a nice watch," and the person says, "Yes, but it's not actually Bond Street. It's Portobello Road."That's the kind of comment that anybody might make ‑‑ completely unintelligible to most foreigners until they know that Bond Street is the posh street and Portobello Road is the street market.You could easily imagine how going into a shop to buy a watch to drill the present tense or whatever might also be supplemented by a little cultural panel somewhere or other which says, "Here ‑‑ this is a posh place to buy. This is not a posh place to buy." You gradually build up a sense of the cultural identity of the place.I'll put it another way. If I go to Beijing, how do you translate Bond Street and Portobello Road into Beijing or wherever? How would you do it? If a Chinese person said that sentence to me in English ‑‑ "Go to this part of..." ‑‑ I would not know what it meant until it was explained, which, you know what I mean by saying it's a very general issue.Ross: I also wanted to ask you a bit about how new meanings come about, because obviously that's something that happens, I think, both in standard and non‑standard English. I think you mention in "A Little Book of Language" about encouraging people to look up word meanings in dictionaries.Is it also the case that words often only really take on new meanings when people misuse them? Can you tell us a bit about how new meanings come about, or maybe how first they might be non‑standard or maybe even just considered to be wrong?David: To begin with, some people would say that any new meaning was a wrong use. There are always pedants around who will say that any change is an error to begin with. Then gradually usage grows and people forget that was ever a problem. They focus on new things that are taking place. This has routinely happened.It's only happened since the 18th century. Before that, change just took place...People did object to it. Some people tried to stop it, people like Dryden and Swift and, to begin with, Johnson, said, "We must stop language change. Look, the French have done this with their Academy. They've stopped..." Of course they hadn't. But they tried and thought they were doing so.Johnson himself recognizes this eventually and says, "Even the French haven't managed to stop language change. That's why we don't want an academy over here."Change takes place. It will always get reactions. It's a very natural process, very subtle process. Most of the semantic changes that affect vocabulary take place without anybody noticing them happening at all until they become established, they get a new the dictionary, a new sense comes along, and people say, "Oh yeah. Of course. We've been saying that for years. We just haven't noticed it happening."Ross: One more time, everyone, that was Professor David Crystal. If you'd like to know more about David's work, please visit his website at www.davidcrystal.com. I hope you enjoyed today's interview and we'll see you again next time. Goodbye.

Listen Here: iTunes | Overcast | PlayerFM Keep Up with the North Star Podcast Here My guest today is Devon Zuegel, a writer of code and writer of words who spends her time unlocking human potential through incentive design and tools for thought and cities. In this conversation, we jump from coordination problems to urban planning to travel to architecture. We compare cities like Singapore and San Francisco and talk about the power of urban density and architecture to make us happier and healthier. Then, we talk about writing, specifically the three tiers of common knowledge, how to find good ideas, and the concept that Devon calls playing chess with yourself. One thing sticks out from this podcast and other conversations with Devon. Above all else, Devon lives in obsessive pursuit of high leverage ways to spend her time and energy. In the past, that’s led her to computer science and in the future, I suspect it will lead her to cities and infrastructure. Why cities? Devon offers an excellent answer. Cities are big enough to have real importance in the world and small enough to be nimble and somewhat understandable and there are a lot of cities. You can actually hope to make some comparisons in a way that you can’t really do with countries.  Please enjoy my conversation with Devon Zuegel. Links Bloom Algorithms To Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions Georgism Devon’s articles related to this episode:  Advice on Writing Why Flaking Is So Widespread in San Francisco A Day In Singapore: Urban Identity 2:03 Devon on coordination problems and the problems they’ve caused, such as climate change and housing issues, and how clever solutions to these problems are the reason humans have progressed so much in the past hundreds of years 6:19 Human cognition and thought as it is augmented by media, cities and blockchains and the benefits of this augmentation 8:10 The most classic tool for thought and why it’s such a catalyst for healthy and productive cognition, long term and short term memory function and increased IQ 16:41 Devon’s writing process and why she defines it as playing chess with herself 17:45 How Devon has been able to get her writing to flow and the three categories of topics available to write about, common knowledge, obscure knowledge and the intersection in the middle 20:17 Devon’s theory of on why people in San Francisco are so flaky in comparison to sister cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City 28:16 How Devon chooses what rabbit holes she wants to go down prior to writing an article and how to make most topics interesting by creating a model around the idea 32:25 What makes Singapore so interesting to Devon, in regards to history, culture, GDP growth, etc. and her major observations after visiting the country 47:20 The moment Devon became aware of the effect of architecture and how it can make employees less involved with their colleagues by not promoting micro-interactions 50:53 The five metrics that a house should be described with, that are never used, when being promoted on websites like Airbnb, Zillow, Craigslist, etc.  57:00 Devon chooses the three metrics that she’d pick when it comes to the city she lives in and the home she’s living in for maximum interaction, convenience and mental economy 1:03:16 Algorithms To Live By and why Devon sees it as the best self help book she’s ever read, despite it not being a self help book 1:05:37 Devon’s opinion on Georgism and how people talk about economics as a spectrum from capitalism to socialism or communism and the third category of economic goods that it doesn’t touch upon 1:07:30 Devon’s changing opinions and her epistemic status placed on each of her blog posts written with a strong opinion 1:10:03 Devon’s philosophy of travel and why she views it as scale free regardless of how many or little places you visit 1:11:51 Devon’s philosophy of productivity and how she writes down dozens of notes and uses long form emails to repurpose her ideas into publishable articles Subscribe to my “Monday Musings” newsletter to keep up with the podcast. Quotes “I am very interested in coordination problems. I think that they explain a lot of the problems that we see in the world, everything from climate change to nuclear disarming to issues in cities to making it so that people can actually live where they are the most productive to housing policy. I could go on and on. The solution to coordination problems is incentive design, and clever solutions that are some of the reason humans have been able to progress to the extent they have throughout the past few hundred years.” “The most classic tool for thought, and one that I think we tend to take for granted, is writing. Most people think of writing as a way to communicate ideas that they’ve had in their head to other people. Obviously, it does serve that purpose and people sell books for a reason. But, I think it goes way beyond that.” “In the last year, I have found that writing has gotten a lot easier for me. There’s probably a lot of reasons for this but I think the core is that I realized there are three categories of topics you can write about. There’s the stuff that everybody knows that is trivial to write about because it’s easy. On the other end, there’s stuff that nobody knows yet or nobody around you knows yet, so it takes a lot of time to figure it out and it takes a lot of research. Now, there’s this middle area between common knowledge and really obscure knowledge of stuff that you have a unique perspective on because of where you happen to be in life and you understand it so intuitively that you can just talk, think and write about it fluidly. But, a lot of people don’t know it yet. That’s the sweet spot.” “For me, it’s very important that I can walk places. Walking is a way to interact with your community in these small ways, every single day. The way people get comfortable in a place and in a social group is not through one really intense interaction, but through a bunch of smaller ones where you see things from different angles. You experience, what does my neighborhood looks like on a sunny day, on a cloudy day, or when I’m tired. These tiny, trivial things help you understand, much better, how things function. You get to know the vibe so much better and you meet people you wouldn’t meet if you were in an Uber.” “Algorithms To Live By is the best self help book I’ve ever read and it’s not intended to be a self help book, it’s intended to be an algorithmic look at certain problems that people see day to day. But, it helps me frame certain problems that I personally run into in terms of the algorithmic complexity. I realized the stress that I was feeling about certain things I was worrying about, were actually totally rational.” Subscribe to my “Monday Musings” newsletter to keep up with the podcast. TRANSCRIPT DEVON: I am very interested in coordination problems. I think that they explain a lot of the problems that we see in the world. Everything from climate change to nuclear disarmament to issues in cities and making it so that people can actually live in where they're the most productive, in housing policy. Well, I could go on and on and on with the list. So the solution to cooperation problems is incentive design. And I think clever solutions to incentive design are some of the reasons why humans have been able to progress to the extent that they have throughout the last few hundred years. So a primary example is contract law, it makes it possible for people to trust one another. Other examples are the development of risk and the concept of commodifying the risk. DAVID: I was having a conversation yesterday in another podcast and the guest was saying that in 1471, what happened was people were able to pool maritime risk. And what happened was it let big expansive ship voyages happen because you could pull risks together. And so if you invested in a ship and say that ship broke down, then you wouldn't lose all your money. And by pooling risk and by coming up with new financing and coordination solutions, you could do things that weren't previously possible. I thought that was really interesting. DEVON: Totally. That's a great example. Actually. Old maritime risk looks a lot like venture capital today wherein venture a lot of things fail. A lot of things fail spectacularly. But if you can spread out that risk across a whole pool of investments, it only takes a few to like really, carry the whole fund. In the case of maritime investments, a lot of the ships broke down, they had problems. But if one ship came back with a whole load of goods that could repay all of the rest of the costs. However, most, most investors back then couldn't take that risk because most of them would have failed. They might've lost all their money before they hit that one big one. And so by the development of that maritime risk, they were able to get past that sort of short-term problem and to get into the run longer returns. I think that's a really good metaphor for all sorts of problems that we run into wherein the short term it's rational to do a thing that is not as interesting, that it's not as lucrative, but it's also not as risky. But if we're able to coordinate as a society, as a company or whatever level you want to talk about. So one more concrete example to bring it down from like highfalutin, venture capital and maritime risk, you could just look at cooperation problems as simple as when you're dating someone for the first time, there's that standard wait three days until you text them back after you met them because you want to come off as cool. You don't want to come off as desperate, right? But if you really like each other, like all this is going to signal is that you don't like them very much. And that may be rational for you because you don't want to come off as desperate. But if you're both doing that, you end up with an outcome where it seems like you don't like each other very much and it takes a really long time to actually realize that you do. Ideally, you would have some neutral trustable third party who could be a person A, person B, out Alice and Bob like you both like each other. You told me that you liked each other, just go for it. You know, have fun. And I think a lot of healthy relationships that I've seen have actually started in this way because of some small quirk at the very beginning. It can be super useful, but a lot of the pain that I see my friends going through when they date is literally just the result of playing games because rationally, you're supposed to. It's basically a prisoner's dilemma. And so if you can have someone who forces you into the correct quadrant where everyone is better off, that's much better. DAVID: So then let's jump into sort of human cognition and human thought. Maybe begin with media. What interests you? Sort of when I think of where this conversation is going to go today. So much of it is about augmentation, right? Like cities augmenting the potential for humans interact and making that so much easier. And blockchain augmenting human coordination is making that easier. And then here with thought and having tools, augmenting human thoughts and letting us go places that we probably wouldn't be able to go if we were stuck in the mountains on our own. DEVON: I think the underlying reason I'm interested in incentive design is because it allows us to unlock human potential and allows people to do much cooler stuff that makes them happier, healthier, makes life more worth living. I see ways to augment our cognition as serving that same purpose though from a different angle. The umbrella term that people sometimes give this is tools for thoughts and we have basically the same brains that we and our ancestors had thousands of years ago, but we're able to do so much more. Part of that is because we've developed incentive design. The other reason is because we've developed tools for giving our cognition more leverage. And I use the term leverage actually very specifically. You can only get so strong no matter how much you lift. How once you go to the gym, like you're still not going to be an order of magnitude stronger. You're definitely not going to be two orders of magnitude stronger. However, if you design an engine, if you just even add a lever that gives you that leverage, you can do so much more with your muscles. I see that that translates directly to your brain. The most classic tool for thought and one that I think we tend to take for granted is writing. Most people think of writing as a way to just communicate ideas that they've had in their head to other people. It obviously does serve that purpose. People sell books for a reason, but I think it goes way beyond that. So one thing that writing does for you is it expands your working and your long-term memory. With the long-term memory, it's pretty obvious. You take notes, maybe you don't remember all the details, but you can look them up later. DAVID: To your point, even today I was writing something this morning and I wrote something that I wrote about a year ago and I have no recollection of writing it and I read it and I was like, wow, that's actually pretty smart and it really helped me, but I think to your point, there's a permanent element of writing and being able to sort of work through sentences and craft them, makes it so that you can achieve thoughts because of the repetition and the sort of tweaking and editing of writing that you can't do if you're just speaking like we are right now. DEVON: 100 percent. And I've also had that experience more times than I can count of like coming across something I've written and being like, oh, this is interesting, I wrote that. That came out of my brain. And as long as you have enough of a pointer to that idea that you can find it when it's necessary, or it gets surfaced by accident because you happen to open up an old notebook. That's extremely powerful. It makes you much better at remembering. I think even more importantly, a writing helps you with your short term memory, your working memory. There have been a lot of studies showing that a working memory is one of the highest things correlated with IQ and the ability to solve problems. And I think the reason for this is because if you have good working memory, you can hold a lot of state in your head and you can sort of fiddle with that state. You can hold contradictory but potentially correct ideas and outcomes in your head while you work through the problem. And then they collapse into one at the end. DAVID: Describe state real quick for someone who doesn't have the computer vocabulary that you do. DEVON: So state is what is the current status of the world right now. Let's say you're working through a personal problem and with your family or something, and you want to go through step by step and sort of understand the implications of what different people have done. You're getting the story from different friends, like maybe you're helping reconcile like your aunt and your uncle or something like that, having marital problems and you want to understand how they got to that point and how, given where they are right now at that point, like how different changes result in better or worse outcomes. Understanding the current state of the situation and then like fiddling with it and being able to hold all of those sort of partial computations in your head are really important to be able to compare them and to be able to move forward and find a solution. DAVID: So you're saying that writing and sort of computers at large now help us hold more state so then we can move on to higher-order tasks that perhaps aren't memory, that our brains are really well suited for. DEVON: Exactly. And they're more interesting. And working memory can kind of provide abstractions. I think the best metaphor for working memory or external working memory is like scratch paper, that there's a reason why math teachers always tell you, feel free to use as much scratch paper as you want. That's not just because they hate trees and they want to waste all paper. It's because being able to externalize that process is really, really helpful. Offload is the perfect word. DAVID: So back to writing. DEVON: I think it actually goes even much further than memory. With writing, it is fundamentally the process of externalizing an idea which allows you to play with it in ways that I don't think are so easy when it's in your head. I'm certainly not capable of it. Writing things down can reduce the amount of ego that you have as you fiddled with an idea. Maybe I'm just crazy, but when I wrote them down and almost pretend like the person who wrote that wasn't me, it was like, that's past Devon or someone else entirely. I can detach myself from it much more in a way where, when I am a thinking through something just in my head and lying in bed wondering. I'm not going to be as rigorous about it. Now that's not strictly worse. There are other things like everyone has great thoughts in the shower for instance. It's very common. But it doesn't serve all purposes, especially if you're trying to vet and find the nooks and crannies of an idea. When you write it down, when an idea has inconsistencies or gaping holes, they are clear and right in the face when it's written down in a way that is just so easy to gloss over when they're in your head. DAVID: And also when you're speaking, you can sort of gloss over some of the inconsistencies with emotion, right? If I speak really deeper and confident with what I'm saying, actually there's an element of trust there. It was really funny. So we had a meetup in Queens a couple of weeks ago and my buddy goes on Snapchat stories and he goes really confidently, coming to the meetup and he goes "Did you know that the reason it's called Queens is because Queen Elizabeth came to New York in 1754?" and you're sitting there being like "Man, you know, why are you being so smart here?" And then he finishes the thing and he goes "Well, I just made that up, but you believe me because I said it so confidently." So what writing does is it strips out the emotion out of a form of communication and it allows logic to take over emotion. DEVON: Right. And it allows you, it gives you something like almost physical to move around and change. I'm a really big believer that constraints are actually a good thing in your thinking because if you're completely working in a vacuum, you have nothing to push off of. You have no feedback cycles. Whereas if you can just get a draft onto the page, you can fiddle around with it so much more. And I find that writing that draft in the first place, that's usually the hardest part, but once I have something to work off of, it gets much, much easier. It helps you find implications that you didn't realize there were, which again, I don't fully understand like the cognitive science behind why this is. But by putting it on the page, you start seeing these almost trails in your head of like, given this, given I said this, what are the implications there? And you can actually follow those trails and like come back to them after you've written them down and realize, oh, this thing does have an implication I hadn't considered. One of my favorite things to do when I'm writing is just looking up synonyms for words. And the reason is not just to make myself sound smarter. Though, that's always a plus. But much more importantly is that by looking up synonyms, you can think about which words don't make sense here. Even though they are technically synonyms. And why they don't make sense and analyzing that is extremely useful. It's sort of a generator function for coming up with new ideas. Similarly, I think choosing the right word is also really important. Words come with such heavy connotation that picking the right one can be the difference between concepts really striking home and like feeling kind of flat. So I highly recommend people using sources when they write, all over the place. I actually use sources when I write code as well, for variable names and class names and things like that, because it helps you. Computer science and programming is basically the art of abstractions and abstractions is another way of saying names mostly. And coming up with really good names for things is a really critical piece of being able to write good software. So I think the source, I go to thesaurus.com probably 300 times a day. I have never actually counted, but it's a lot of times. I've always idea called playing chess with yourself. DAVID: Walk me through that. DEVON: So I think writing, especially the writing process, before you've published, as kind of like playing chess or yourself. There's that Pixar short, it's called like Geri’s Chest Game or something like that. And it zooms in on this guy sitting on a park bench playing chess and his partner isn't around. And you're like, oh, I guess maybe they went to the restroom, maybe they're coming back and then all of a sudden the camera zooms in and he's like on the other side, playing with the white pieces now. And then he flips back and forth and you realize he's just having a ton of fun and playing against himself. And he's really excited against himself. This is a hard thing to do inside of your own head, but it's actually a lot easier when you've externalized something because once you have that writing on the page, you can treat that as sort of another person almost. And play around with it in a way that is just much harder when you're by yourself. DAVID: Totally. And then the other thing is I think you have sort of an uncanny knack for generating unusual ideas and I don't say this to discredit you, but I think that you've built some systems to make that a hell of a lot easier. Walk me through different tiers of common knowledge. So I got an email last week from a guy who said, I love your writing, but the biggest thing preventing me from writing is that I always think that everybody else knows the things that I know and that's the biggest thing. Stopping. And I responded and I said, well, that's not necessarily the case, but I wasn't able to formulate something that I think that you've been able to grasp in terms of different ways of thinking about what is common knowledge? If you could describe that. And then how does that translate to writing and drafting an idea? DEVON: Yeah, that's a great question. So in the last year, I've found that writing has gotten a lot easier for me. There's probably a lot of reasons for this, but I think the core one is that I realized there's sort of three categories of topics that you can write about. There's the stuff that everyone knows that's like trivial to write about it because it's easy. The sky is blue. Okay, good. That's awesome. No one wants to read that. Very common knowledge. On the other end, there's stuff that no one knows yet or no one around you knows yet. And so it takes a really long time to figure it out, requires a lot of research. I can point to some examples of things I've written where I'm very proud of this writing that I've done, but it was a slog all the way through. Some of the stuff that I wrote about, the federal housing administration last year, just required poring through hundreds of documents from old FHA manuals and things that I don't know if people have looked at in a while and I found some novel stuff, but it also was a ton of work. Now there's this middle area between common knowledge and like really obscure knowledge of stuff that you have a unique perspective on because of where you happen to be in life and you understand it so intuitively that you can just talk and think about it fluidly. But actually a lot of people don't know it yet and I think that that is the sweet spot for generating a lot of streams. DAVID: How would you know when that's true? DEVON: That's a hard question. For a long time, I just thought that this the way I think is the way that everyone thinks. And so I was like, no one really wants to read about like my theory on flaking in San Francisco. Everyone in SF knows that already. DAVID: But what's your theory on flaking? DEVON: I haven't lived really in any other city, but my impression from talking with friends is that the rate of flaking is extremely high, with friends, with romantic partners, et cetera, relative to sort of sister cities like New York or Chicago or LA. I think part of the reason is that people in my social circles in San Francisco really understand opportunity cost well. There's a very casual culture here where it seems like an acceptable flake. And we also are like, even more so than other millennial types, are very technologically savvy. So if 10 minutes before your coffee date you're like, oh, sorry, I got caught up in something. Can we reschedule next week? It feels trivial because it's just a text. You're not going to literally stand them up because they just won't show up. But the problem with this is that it's another cooperation problem where we ended up in this equilibrium where it feels acceptable for everyone to flake all the time and just not show up to their commitments. But then like everyone's worse off because your scheduling is more complicated. You never really know. If things are going to happen when you think they're going to happen, you kind of don't want to be seen as like the pathetic one who doesn't cancel the plan. So you almost are incentivized to flake because if someone flakes on you enough times, you're like, well, I don't want to look like an idiot. I don't want to be taken advantage of here. So, next time we make plans I'm going to double book and see which one feels more interesting that day. And I think that leads to a real breakdown of trust and like happiness and satisfaction with relationships. Since I realized this, I've personally made a stance where I'm like, I will not flake on something unless I have an exceptionally good reason. And my friends I've noticed have also started to like follow up with me where I've put a stake in the ground. It helps that I wrote a blog post about it. I put a stake in the ground of like, I don't want this to be okay anymore because it's like making everyone's life worse. DAVID: What about San Francisco makes flaking uniquely common here? DEVON: I think there's a mentality of casualness where if you walk around the city, no one's ever dressed up. I mean, literally today I am wearing yoga pants and a tee shirt, and people want to look mostly clean cut, but they'll wear athletic gear almost all the time. I think that is indicative of a broader social casualness. Certain social norms are not as strong and in fact, the social norm is to not have strong social norms. And if you want to come off as like cool and casual. If someone is placed on you and you say something and you're like, hey dude, you flaked on me last time too. That's sort of like a point against you. You're seen as uptight or something. Maybe LA is also more similar to this, but I think like in New York, I feel like there's more of a seriousness in the way people interact where it's like your people get dressed up when they go out. Like when I go to New York, I always feel super underdressed. I think that carries over to a lot of parts of the culture. Where you don't break dates unless you have a good reason. Whereas I can look back on my calendar before I had all of these thoughts and honestly I was either breaking or having commitments broken on me like 50 to 70 percent of the time. And I don't think I'm unique in this because I've had conversations with a lot of people on my team. So I want to go back to writing, but I just want to summarize why I think that falls into the second category of common knowledge. So the first category is things that everybody knows like the sky is blue. The third category is things like the history of FHA housing, which probably requires a lot of research and nobody knows those things. But the second category is things that everyone sort of has a common framework for discussing like flaking. But because you are in a social circle that has a high opportunity cost in San Francisco, you have unique insight into that problem. And when we have a common knowledge, a common way of speaking about something and you have unique insight into that same sort of thing, that is when you should go pursue an idea and share it with the world. DEVON: Totally. I think that's a really good framing of it. I especially like the term common knowledge. Because I don't think anything I said in the post was surprising to anyone, but I think finally sitting down and putting the pieces together as to why all of this stuff comes together, I think is the difference. And just taking the time to sort of reflect on like various dynamics in your own life I think can be a really powerful generative tool. DAVID: I gotta ask, as you think about your writing, you think about your learning sort of your process for living, so to speak. It's cool because I like people like this. Your process for living is also a process for sharing, right? It's almost like a co-dynamic between the two where you live, you share, you share, you live, and I think that they, they sort of co-evolve and develop. Who were the people who have really inspired you to become like that and who were the mentors, digital or physical that have really inspired you? DEVON: There have been a lot. And this actually ties really nicely into the framework of like common knowledge to obscure knowledge. I think I used to think that a writing had to be this big formal process where you sit down with an argument or a spectrum and you try to decide where on that spectrum of arguments you lie and then you dive deep into the literature and you study it, and then you pop out weeks later and you've like displayed to the world this thing, this masterpiece you've been working on. A lot of writing does follow that. A lot of great writing. And I don't think people should stop doing that by any means, but I think there's this other type of writing that is treat your ideas less as a final project product and more as a process. Someone who I think does this very well, I don't know him personally, is Ben Thompson at Stratechery. He writes about the same stuff day after day, but each time he writes about it, he turns it a little bit in his mind. He comes at it from a slightly different angle and over the course of years he has built this canon of like what aggregation theory and he has this whole vocabulary that he's built up and you can see when you go back to his earlier writing, the idea is not fully developed at all, but the writing itself was the thing that developed the ideas. And I think that that is a huge mindset shift that I've had where I used to think first you have the ideas and then you write them down, but actually, you should have some seed of an idea. But then when you start writing, that's what actually brings it out and like causes it to flourish and grow. Another person who's played a really big role in helping me realize the value of this is Tyler Cowen (my podcast episode with Tyler). His blog, Marginal Revolution is just like one of my favorite things on the internet. It's the most ridiculous set of things. It's the intersection of all stuff and he doesn't take it that seriously. DAVID: Right. And the juxtaposition of ideas that you find there puts your brain in crazy places because he'll share, NBA basketball, his recent trip to Ethiopia, and then markets and everything in some weird market that you've never heard of. And I think that really cool ideas and really cool ways of thinking come not necessarily when you discover a new idea, but when you juxtapose ideas that you're vaguely familiar with and then your brain just goes in weird places through that. DEVON: Yeah, by having this huge diversity of sources and ideas, it allows for a type of lateral thinking that I think is really missing in the world. And something I particularly love about Tyler's work is that he both does and doesn't take it seriously at all. So by does, I mean he does, he spends all of his time doing this and he cares about deeply. So he's serious in that sense, but he also treats it as this big game where he's just like, you know, I'm just having fun, I'm pursuing the things I find interesting and I will go down the rabbit holes that seem interesting and ultimately they will become useful. DAVID: So talk about that. So that is a really important part of the learning journey, especially on the internet. so if you take before the internet, right? Like, think of the process of going into the library to research a project in college, right? You go to the librarian and you say take me to history and then it's between like book number 800-899 on the little codes and sort of you spend time in history. But you said something there that I don't think you realize that you said, but it is what it means to learn on the internet. It's sort of having hunches and ideas that certain rabbit holes are going to be interesting and having the audacity to go down those rabbit holes. But how do you gauge what rabbit holes do you want to go down? DEVON: So I think it doesn't matter. I actually think that almost everything can be interesting if you try to build a model for it. Now so things aren't interesting if you try to just rote memorize stuff and I think that that's going to be true with basically every topic actually. However, if you try to understand why things happen and build a causal model in your head, everything's interesting. When I was much younger I felt like, ugh, I like playing sports but I don't really enjoy watching sports. And I think this is a pretty typical like nerd opinion to have. But I realized that if you actually watch a game and you tried to understand sort of where the threads are, like if you pull this thread here, what happens to the fabric over there, have this ongoing game. It's extremely fascinating. Same with a mortgage history. Like if the FHA had done this like tiny little thing differently, like what would have been the rippling effects downstream and why do you think that's true? What are the other explanations for that same behavior? So I don't think the specific rabbit hole really matters that much as long as you are actively forcing yourself to build a model. DAVID: It's interesting because I was just watching the NBA finals and with the Warriors. So Stephen Curry, the reason where he is so good, is because after he passes the ball, he runs to the corner and tries to catch it and you just watch it and it's like, it's amazing to watch. But just, it's funny because. And then I would also watch switches on screens and what not. These are things that sound advanced, but they're super simple. And just by having two or three things that I could sort of hook to, then it opened the door for the rest of it. And it was funny because to go back to Tyler when, whenever I try to learn something the best advice that I've gotten from Tyler Cowen is the idea of entry points. Find something that you like, something that it's intuitive, a metaphor that you like, start there. And then as you begin any sort of learning journey, start with an entry point that you're familiar with and use that as your balances, your crutch to go explore new territory. DEVON: I strongly agree with that. So in high school, I thought of myself as much more of a liberal artsy type of person. I was always pretty good at math and science and so on. I didn't struggle but it just didn't click until I was 16, 17. My boyfriend and I at the time rebuilt a 67 Mustang that he owned and we did an engine swap. We replace the rear end, we did a lot of work on this car. And suddenly all of the engineering and engineering related skills that I've picked up over time became fascinating. I was like, I want to understand how all this works. I picked up something like thermodynamics books and like this, this car was the entryway to all sorts of things and now this is a particularly useful one because if we did it wrong we would die while we were driving it. So like we had pretty good motivation to figure stuff out. But I think finding some sort of entryway into that is critical. And I mean working on the car has literally changed my career in the sense that I don't think I would have gone into mechanical engineering and then computer science if it hadn't been for that thing. I mean the guy helps too, but the car was like really this concrete thing I could imagine in my head and then want to understand the pieces that made up the whole thing. DAVID: Totally. Well, I want to switch gears and talk to you about the thing that I'm most excited to talk to you about today, which is really cities and with the intersection of architecture and incentives. Maybe we can start with Singapore and I'm going to ask that selfishly because I'm really interested in Singapore. I think there's a lot to learn from Singapore, but you were also just there and you've written a lot about Singapore. What is so interesting to you about Singapore? DEVON: Oh man. What is not interesting about Singapore? So Singapore I think is one of the most interesting countries in history. And that's saying something, given that it's only been around for I think 50 or 60 years. It is a city-state. It's only about 5 million people. It is ethnically extremely diverse. There are ethnic Chinese, ethnic Malays, ethnic Indians, and many, many other groups there as well. And it's one of the safest places in the world and it has a booming economy and it has been for a long time, seen as like a center of stability in a region that has not always been stable. So all of those things are incredible about Singapore and that would be crazy for any city or any country, but especially considering where they came from, where they had, I don't remember the exact number, but they had GDP, I think equivalent to like Vietnam in the sixties, and now they have significantly higher GDP than almost any country in the world. One of the highest. Now GDP doesn't measure everything, but it correlates with a lot of important things. The reason I think if I had to pick one reason why I'm fascinated by Singapore, it's because it has one of the weirdest types of governance ever. DAVID: Describe the governance. DEVON: The governance is increasingly less so now, but it's quite to totalitarian. It's not very Democratic at all. DAVID: It's funny because my first thought is whoa, that's not good. But it seems like you're hinting at something else. DEVON: I also think it's not good. And if the whole world were run the way Singapore is run, I don't think that would be a good thing for the world. In part because of the specific things that Singapore does, like it still has like physical punishment and so on for not very big crimes. But then also beyond physical and capital punishment. It also just like having one system for the whole world is not a great thing. It's extremely fragile. Things can go wrong in ways that ripple across the entire world. Now that sounds extreme, but I bring that up because I think Singapore is interesting because it is the opposite. Not only does it not, not only is the whole world not governed the way Singapore is. Singapore is tiny. So even if you really strongly dislike what Singapore is trying to do, what it's experimenting with, it's relatively easy to leave. Now I want to add the strong caveat that like leaving the country you were born in is never an easy decision. And I am not like underplaying that. But it is relatively much easier than leaving a massive country that is not deeply interconnected with the world. And so the thing I find exciting about this country is that it provides this room for experimentation at a relatively low cost. If the entire United States were to take on an experiment, say universal basic income or something else entirely, and if it were to go wrong, it would just, it would be a disaster. It could cripple the country and it would affect roughly 20 million people, something like that. And like you also wouldn't even really be able to know if what the causal mechanism was if UBI was the thing that screwed up or something else entirely. Whereas if you can run a bunch of smaller experiments, which this is the idea of federalism, then you can actually compare the results. People can leave if they really don't want to be part of this experiment. And I think this is really important. People don't like the concept of being experimented on and I get it, but if we don't experiment with new models, we're never going to improve. And so I think the question shouldn't be, should we experimental or should we not experiment. It's like, yes we should, but we should find the ways to have the greatest diversity of experiments while also minimizing the cost. DAVID: Right. Like a lot of what China's doing is sort of A, B testing cities, but the downside risk is impacting millions and millions of people. And I think to your point about minimizing the downside, you know, you could argue that they've gone too far. DEVON: Yeah. I think there's a Slate Star Codex blog post that has a great word for this. It calls it archipelago communitarianism. The concept is like we could have a bunch of cities or very small countries, that had radically different systems and the only promise that they make to each other is that they won't stop the people from leaving those places if they really want to. Maybe there are a few other rules too. I'm not gonna remember the entire details of the blog post, read it a few years ago, but I love this idea of having like little islands of extremity to really push an idea to its limit. And if it, if everyone leaves them, that means that that's not what people wanted. DAVID: Well, that's sort of where the whole voice exit loyalty idea of crypto is coming from. Traditionally in terms of countries, you could voice and you could sort of vote and you could say we want to change the way that things are run by speaking up and there's an exit where you can leave. But traditionally with citizenship, you haven't really been able to leave your country. Even if you're abroad, you still have to pay taxes as an American citizen. And so you're forced to be stuck between voice and loyalty. Whereas now we're switching to where you can still voice your opinion, but if you don't like it, you can exit. And there's a lot of freedom that I think comes with that. DEVON: Yeah. I think it's not just that you can still voice your opinions and also you can leave, it's that you can voice your opinions often better if you have a very small community. A single person has much more sway over the outcome. So it seems very likely to me that it's much easier for a person in a very small community to be able to make a change in that community to begin with and like shape it in their own image than it would be for a massive country like the US or Brazil or something like that. So by bringing it down to a smaller scale, you both get added exit rates, but you also get a greater voice. DAVID: Totally. So you were just in Singapore. What stuck out about being in Singapore to you? Let's go to two places. What is the biggest thing that surprised you when you were there? And what is the biggest thing that you've been thinking about since you came back from Singapore? DEVON: I knew that Singapore had great Infrastructure. I knew that its citizens were well educated, that a lot of its systems just worked. But I didn't realize how much this is embedded in the psyche of the place. It's not just that like, stuff works well and some people forget about it and like go ahead and do their own thing. It's like the most central place of the city right next to Maxwell's Hawker Center, which is like a big destination in the core of the city. There's this place called the URA, the urban research association. I don't remember the exact acronym. Basically, it's this like big gallery on urbanism and like what it means to be an effective city with good governance and what it will take for this to continue and get better over time. I went into this gallery exhibit because I can't keep away if you say that it's like an urban museum. I'm like, okay. It's Devon catnip. I couldn't help but to go in. And I was there at 3:00 PM on a Tuesday and it was full of students, the sense that I got is that like every Singaporean student probably goes there like once a year. I don't even think that we have a gallery like that in San Francisco. And certainly not in the center of the city and kids definitely don't go there all the time. There was this overall sense of understanding of why things work so well, how things won't necessarily keep working well in the future unless we do something about it and like a sense of responsibility that people in the community have to like be a presence voice, which seems very contradictory with some sort of a more totalitarian style of ruling. But Singapore may be the only place in the world where there's a brain drain into the government and not out of it. That is very consistent with what I saw. It's very deeply respected to be a good technocrat. Someone who understands how systems work and like truly wants to make them better. DAVID: They pay well, what else? DEVON: They pay very well. There's really high prestige going in. I haven't really thought about this too hard. DAVID: Okay. Then we'll switch gears. So you said something really interesting about cities before we were recording the podcast that I thought that you phrased perfectly and that you're especially drawn to cities because they're in this middle of scale, right? Where they're big enough to have an importance on the world stage, right? Like a city like New York, San Francisco, Singapore, they're a big deal. But then there are small enough to be nimble and still sort of understandable like it's hard to sort of wrap your head around what it means to be American because they're just so much going on here, but then also sort of what you were talking about earlier in terms of experimenting. There's a lot of them so you can sort of abstract lessons from each one. And so it's this perfect size, perfect density, perfect volume that makes cities really interesting to study. Right? DEVON: Totally. I think that the nimbleness is really important. There is some digital ID that Singapore is rolling out for all of its citizens pretty soon and they're going to just do it. They have 5 million people, which is a lot of people to roll something out to, but it's big enough for this ID to really matter, but it's small enough where they're like, we can just do this, we can just, we can just make it happen. And I think that's thrilling that you can experiment with something of that size. At the same time, you have this really tight feedback loop. If your trash isn't picked up tomorrow, you're gonna notice within a week you're going to probably start writing letters and like your trash better get picked up. I think at the national level, the feedback loops are much longer and it's just harder to know if people are governing you well at all. And that's a recipe for disaster. It leads to much more misalignment of incentives. DAVID: Definitely. Tight feedback is key to learning. DEVON: It's key to everything. Like if you don't have a tight feedback loop, you're just not really going to improve I think, and you're actually very likely to do things that aren't purely for signaling that you care as opposed to actually doing the right thing. DAVID: Go off on that because that's an idea I haven't explored. DEVON: Yeah. Officials in the US tend to do grandstand a lot, at the federal level. And the reason for this is because they don't even really know if they're having the impact they want to have or that their constituents want them to have. The only real information that people get on both sides is like what someone said, even after the facts, even a decade later, it can be very difficult to draw any meaningful causality stemming from a particular leader. I think that's true in any organization ever. Even as small as a single person organization. You can't do randomized controlled trials on like everything or almost anything. But the problem just grows in scale to a huge extent as you get bigger. I think if you can keep it to a smaller size, it's like, well, you either did your job or you didn't. And the problems are much more manageable, the relationships are less opaque. It's just a much more transparent system overall. DAVID: Totally. So, I mean, for me what's been really interesting is in New York studying art decor, one thing that I love about architecture is I've been thinking about this idea a lot, where a lot of history is sort of subject to the narrative fallacy where it's written by the winners and the really good book on this is The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. He admits that it's biased, but he tries to tell American history from the perspective of the losers. And if you have a generic understanding of American history, you're going to get so many ideas pumped into your head that are totally different. So what's really cool about architecture is, if you look at something like the Chrysler building and at the very top of it and in the lobby and sort of the birds hanging off the side, you know, 60 feet below the top of the building, you can see this like technological enthusiasm, this almost sense of like a utopian spirit that technology in the twenties and the roaring twenties was going to come and save the world. And through the architecture of New York, you can really understand the city in a way that understanding history might not allow you to do. DEVON: Yeah. And I think it's especially interesting to see how buildings change over time in reaction to that original time when it was created and how they shift. I think the moment when I really became aware of the importance of architecture was in my very first job, we started out in this very small office that was cozy and like my desk was far away from the restroom and the kitchen. So when I wanted to take a break, I'd have to walk past everyone and I'd have like a little conversation and I felt very positive about all my coworkers and I feel like we had a really good rapport. About halfway through my time there, we moved into a totally different building. It was supposed to be fancier, it was nicer by everything you could put on paper. But the shape of the rooms was super messed up. Basically, everyone was very close. It was more like a doughnut where like all of the good stuff was in the center and good stuff, meaning, like the kitchen. And so you didn't have to walk past anyone to go see it, which was kind of nice if you're focusing on a problem or you want some alone time, there are pluses to that, but you don't end up having these interactions. And as a result, I almost immediately started feeling like the only people I knew in the company were my team and a lot of the work that I was supposed to be doing was cross-functional. So this made me significantly worse in my job just immediately. Now, of course, this doesn't stop you from having coffee with a coworker and the sales team or something or organizing something with the product team or you know, inviting them to sit at your table at lunch. But these micro-interactions are really critical for building that rapport, for making, keeping people on context. I almost felt like I was a remote worker, and I don't mean to insult remote work. I think that there are huge pluses to that, but it's really undercut the benefits of being in the office as soon as we moved into this new place. DAVID: It's funny because I feel like so much of architecture now, we place such an emphasis on the outside of a building what most people see. But I don't know that we have the same sort of rich discussions about the experience of actually being somewhere. And I guess the example that comes to me is natural light. Like I value natural light in indoors just to such a high degree. It's like the number one thing that I care about in a building, but so often we look at the outside of buildings, so we say, oh that's beautiful. It looks great in a photo, but the experience of being inside of it, I don't actually know that the incentives are aligned for architects to think about that. DEVON: I agree. I mean if you have ever spent time looking for an apartment on Craigslist or a place on Airbnb, actually everything and I'll explain that later. But on craigslist it's like it tells you the square footage, it tells you how many rooms, how many bathrooms there are, which are obviously important details, but it does very little to describe features like natural light and things that make you actually happy, how livable it is. I think part of the problem for this is that it's a much harder thing to commoditize, which means that like it's harder to measure. It's harder to compare two things, there's not a strict measure that you can really use. But it really matters. It really matters a lot. The experience of being in a place is totally different from the way people will often describe a room, at least in describing a room in comparable terms. I think maybe it seems possible. Maybe someone just needs to build a vocabulary for it. DAVID: Okay. Let's play a little game. So if you had to take five metrics for deciding a house on Zillow, right? We have rooms square foot, but if you had five metrics that don't exist right now, what would it be? You do some, I do some. DEVON: Okay. I kinda like this, I'm thinking of it sort of like the, you know, the big five personality. It's kind of like that. DAVID: So you get three, I get two. DEVON: Let's see, I'd say flexibility. Like how much can you change the space to fit your own needs? Is it like very tightly custom designed? The purest example of this would be like the cabinets are built into the walls so you can't move the cabinets. Versus like a lot of ability to move stuff around. DAVID: Mine is the density of power outlets. Most houses don't have nearly enough. DEVON: Oh my god. The computer science building at Stanford has almost no power outlets, which is insane because you go there for the office hours and you know, everyone's there for hours and hours and hours and everyone's computer starts dying around hour three and there's one power outlet and the whole building. Yeah, that needs to change. DAVID: Here's another one. Where I really like houses where the rooms are super private and the open spaces are super public. So you have the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, all sort of in the same room because at the houses that I grew up in, the kitchen was always separate from the dining room. And so whenever we would cook as hosts, It was always sort of awkward because you sort of had to choose. Whereas you get this awesome communal vibe, but I think it really helps with family dynamics if all that is sort of in the same room and it has really good natural light and there's a nice ambiance in there because then people can cluster there. But then you balance that with like the privacy of the rooms. DEVON: I'll expand that one to like the ability to pass through. So in the house I live in right now, it's very hard to get to the backyard. DAVID: Yeah, describe this house because it's actually really cool. It's a commune with 10 people, but like really intelligent people here. DEVON: We call it an intentional community because commune has a lot of economic implications that probably don't apply. So I'm one of 10 people who live in this house. We're actually expanding to an upper floor and it'll be 16 soon. And we're just a group of people who we all care a lot about, having really easy relationships and what that means is I think a lot of the most meaningful and happiness-inducing experiences and interactions that you'll often have will be these little micro-interactions. It's very similar to what I was talking about with my old office. Where if it's really expensive to meet up with someone and hang out with them, it takes money, time, and energy. You have to have to call them, which seems like not a big deal. But here's an intention that's necessary therefore it to happen. You're only going to become close with people where you have an explicit reason to do so. Like sort of a motive almost. Whereas if you're just in the same place, this is why people love college so much. If you're just in the same place with a lot of people who are energetic, motivated, ambitious, like these amazing things will happen where you'll just bump into each other throughout your day and like amazing things will happen without intention and I think that's amazingly valuable and really easy to undervalue. DAVID: You make a really good point because that's almost in a place where that's not the case. Having relationships where you meet somebody right away is almost the mark of a good friendship. It was Saturday night, 11:00 PM a couple of weeks ago. My friend calls me and he goes, what are you doing right now? And it was the first time that happened to me in New York, but it was this like moment in our friendship where in order to do that. Like that happened all the time in college. Like that's college 101. Oh, what are you doing right now? But for it to happen in New York? First of all, was like shocking to me and second of all it was like this mark of our friendship where to get there with somebody takes so much more work because of the way that New York is built and that happens daily in this house here, which I think is really cool. DEVON: It's amazing. I mean, it's amazing you say that that's the case in New York because New York is probably one of the best places in the entire US for this. Like in the opposite sense of what you're talking about. Now imagine if you guys lived in Irvine, California or a far-flung suburb of Salt Lake City or something comes up for you to meet up with this person. Like right now it's just, you jump on the subway, you're there in a few minutes. Not that big of a deal. In those places, you have to like get in your car. Maybe you have to get your snow boots on. You can't get drunk and go home, which is also a good way to bond with people. Also, when you arrive, it will likely just be the two of you, probably no one else was invited, whereas like in a city, maybe you meet up at a bar where there's like a bunch of other random people around you who ended up being really interesting. Actually one of my closest friends. I met like at an event at the MoMa, and just because we like bumped into each other at a mixer afterward. That wouldn't have happened if we weren't in the city. You don't have things like the MoMa in far-out suburbs. And so this is like another example of not just architecture but the general built environment, having dramatic effects on the way you actually interact with the world. DAVID: So let's play another game. If you were to take, I gave you three, we're just going to do metrics again, three metrics or three data points that you could pick and you're going to choose where you live, the house that you lived, a location, what city, what the house looks like, what would the three that you picked be? DEVON: That's a good one. One would be, how long does it take for you to walk from where you live to like your top 10 favorite locations in the city? I think if the answer is a long time and especially if the answer is like you can't even walk there, that's not a good sign for me. Now I don't mean this to be normative for everybody. Other people do have other preferences. Some people want to like go on a big ranch in Idaho and like never see another human. Again, totally not my type but good for them. I'm not saying it's the case, but for me it's very important that I can walk places. I think the reason for this is because walking is a way to interact with your community in these small ways every single day where I think the way people get comfortable in a place in a social group is not through just like one really intense interaction, but through a bunch of smaller ones where you sort of see things from different angles you experienced, you know, what does my neighborhood looked like on a rainy day, what does my neighborhood look like when it's a cloudy day, what does it look like when I'm kind of tired? And these sound like tiny, trivial differences. But you can understand much better how things function. Maybe usually on a sunny day people will like to sit outside at Maxfield's coffee down the street, but on a different one, people sort of tuck inside and it has this closer vibe. You get to know the vibe just much better and you end up meeting people that you probably wouldn't meet if you were in an uber going from point A to point B all the time. So walking is one. Another one would be if for random and sort of once in a while type things like I had to get a necklace fixed the other day, how easy is it for this to be a part of your daily routine? So is it like you have to drive like way out of your way and find some really specialty store to do it? Or like what I did, I was able to walk two blocks away. There's a little jeweler who was able to fix it in three minutes and I walked back and that was like not even my whole lunch break. That was just a little pause in the middle of my day. I grabbed coffee on the way and I came back and up until that point, I had no idea that jeweler was there and we had a nice conversation. But it was just right there. And I love that my whole community can be inside of this little circle. Number three. DAVID: I'll give you my three real quick. So my first one would be natural light, as I've said many times before. That's super important to me. The second one, yours is walking, for me, it's like not having to use a car. So I actually sort of like taking public transportation so I just don't like driving and I don't really like being in cars. So those are the two. The third one would be I like being able to walk, especially to food. Like at my old apartment I was super close with everyone who worked at the bagel shop and I'm pretty close with all the ladies who work at maya taqueria, my local taqueria. And the last one would just be a high density of super intellectually hungry people, which for me is why I've chosen to live in New York. DEVON: Oh, I see. So we can expand this beyond built environment. I would definitely make that my third one as well. This is why I'm in San Francisco, New York maybe is a good choice too, but there is just always someone I can talk to about whatever crazy idea I have going in through my head or is going through their head any given day. I find not everybody here necessarily wants to discuss these ideas, but by using twitter you can actually find these people and like create this strong core where I've basically tricked my brain. The thinking that like everyone around me is just this crazy monster of ideas, continually coming up with new things. There's so much intersection of like different types of people doing work in the city. Everything from like researchers to engineers to entrepreneurs to artists. And unfortunately, fewer these days, as a city gets more expensive. And they're all just mixed together in this pretty small city where you can always find them. But then I think the important component is you also have to have some tools that sort of overlay this to help find them. Just walking around the city. Like I was talking about before, won't surface all of these people and you also are less likely to get outside of your current network if you just stick in your small neighborhood. DAVID: Let's do a quick fire round. So I'm going to ask you like five, six questions and try to keep your answers to like 30 seconds or less. Why do you love Stewart Brand so much? DEVON: He is a polymath. A lot of people take crusades on things. They pick one idea and they just drive it for years and years. Stewart takes hundreds of ideas and makes them all good and is still able to keep a really strong sense of identity despite not having like one thing that he ties himself. DAVID: So I have a theory that personality will end up being almost like the last mode and that sort of so much of what's happening in society right now is like brands are sort of disappearing where many people have less likely to have a favorite brand. But I think that the internet has made it really easy to connect with people. And Stewart Brand is always sort of been a pioneer of technology and I think that people can move around and explore different things through their personality in ways that institutions can't. And I think that that's really helped somebody like Stewart Brand. I don't actually think that focusing on the same thing is like a vector that really matters when it comes to consistency with a person. DEVON: I think that's true. And I think Stewart and Tyler are two fantastic examples of this being 100 percent possible. I think that most people don't realize that and they think that they have to pick one thing and so that you see th

Luke 2:1-10 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

2 Samuel 5:8 David haba dicho aquel da: Todo el que ataque a los jebuseos, que suba por el canal y hiera a los cojos y ciegos, a los cuales aborrece el alma de David To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1235/29

Fisher opens the show following up on last week's appearance by Susan Snyder who "planted her family flag" with a personal website devoted to her family that has attracted numerous other descendants, including Fisher himself. Both Fisher and Susan were delighted to receive an email from a Cincinnati listener who ties into three ancestral couples shared by both Fisher and Susan. David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist for the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org then talks about his experience at the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference. He also shares news of the discovery of newly developed negatives of a World War I pilot killed in action in 1918. Where did the negatives come from and what do they show? David will tell you. David then jumps to the recent recognition of another aged World War II pilot who was known for more than just his military prowess. Wait until you hear what it is! Then there's word that BBC Scotland is looking for you if you had Scottish ancestors in Nova Scotia. David has all the particulars. David's Tip this week concerns a new app that allows you to snap a pic and have it go out as an old fashioned post card! He'll also have another great free guest user database from NEHGS. Next, Fisher talks to genealogical speaker, researcher, and writer Loretta Evans about "circumstantial evidence" in genealogy. How is it defined exactly and how can it help you "nail down" the line you're researching. Loretta has some great insight and advice. Fisher then visits with Bill Habermann of Tacoma, Washington. Bill has "adopted" over 1,600 people... all dead... in an overgrown local cemetery, and he's doing all he can to let you know who they are. What got Bill started on this and what has the response been? You'll love the story. Then Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com returns to talk preservation. Tom answers a listener question from South Carolina about using a national digitizing firm because no one provides the service locally. As usual, Tom has some great thoughts on protecting your most important family history assets. That's all this week on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show!   Transcript of Episode 156 Segment 1 Episode 156 (00:30) Fisher: And welcome to Extreme Genes! This is America’s Family History Show. My name is Fisher. I am the Radio Roots Sleuth, on the program where we shake your family tree, and watch the nuts fall out. Nice to have you along today. We’ve got some great guests. First of all coming up in about eight or nine minutes we’re going to talk to Loretta Evans. And Loretta talks about the use of “circumstantial evidence” when you’re trying to put together your family tree. How do you know that it’s really good enough? What can you use it for? She’s going to have that for you coming up a little bit later on. After that, we’re going to talk to Bill Habermann he is up in the Seattle, Tacoma area, and he has adopted 1,600 people. All dead. In a cemetery! And you can do the same kind of thing. He’ll tell you what he’s doing and how he’s helping people all around the country, in fact around the world, find some of their missing relatives in the Washington State area. But right now, let me get on to Boston and my good friend David Allen Lambert. He is the Chief Genealogist for the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, fresh back from the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference in Springfield, Illinois. How are you David? David: I’m doing good. It’s nice to be back on the ground in Beantown. Fisher: I’ll bet. And you had a good time there? David: We had a great time. And I want to let people know who go to conferences, no matter where it is, don’t be ashamed of wearing a lot of ribbons on your badge. Fisher: Really? Yours is practically like a loin cloth when you’re out there. [Laughs] David: Well I like to say maybe a shawl. [Laughs] Fisher: [Laughs] David: I had thirty-two ribbons on it and when I went to the Federation of Genealogical Societies gala’s 40th anniversary dinner, they had trivia and they also had a scavenger hunt. Fisher: Um hmm. David: 150 points for the longest badge put us over the top! Fisher: [Laughs] David: Myself and Mary Tedesco from Genealogical Roadshow, one of our friends and guests, all won over a thousand dollars in memberships and conference registrations and meals, we’re very, very happy. Fisher: Wow! David: So, laughing my way to the bank for the longest name badge at the Federation of Genealogical Societies and I’d do it again. Fisher: [Laughs] Unbelievable. I’ve got to tell you a story. Last week we had Susan Snyder on the show and she is the lady that set up a website and we talked about it, we did the whole segment about planting your family flag basically out there for people to find you and provide you with materials, and she’s had Bible pages sent to her and things relating to her direct ancestors. Things folks sold her or gave to her. She found me because we’re related. Well we had her on the show, and then the next day she gets a nice email from a guy, a listener in Cincinnati, Ohio, who said, “Hey, we’re related to!” and so now she’s exchanging information with him and I just love the way the show brings people together. David: It’s amazing. Just last week I got a person who has an oil painting of my third great grandfather’s sister born in 1772, and he was not really sure if his family will want it. So I told him I would give her a good home. Fisher: Yeah [Laughs] great! Wow. Hopefully you get that and when you do, send us the picture. We’d all love to see it. David: Hopefully it will be in my home some day. But I don’t want to wish him to meet his maker any time soon of course. [Laughs] Fisher: Of course. Hey what do you have for us today in our Family Histoire news, David? David: Well, the exciting story that I want to start off with is actually about photographs taken a hundred years ago by Captain William Chambers of the 49th Squadron in Kent, England. He was a recognisance photographer in World War I and was shot down in 1918 at the ripe old age of twenty-one. His camera and negatives eventually were passed on to his nephew who recent had them developed. It’s amazing! There are pictures of airplanes and pilots and people that have long since passed. But it gives us another fresh view on history from World War I a century later. Fisher: That’s incredible. What a great story. David: It really is. And I want to propose a toast to the subject of this next story. Second Lieutenant Donald Stinson now aged 93, received four Bronze Stars for his service in World War II, involving bringing guns and men and flying them to the front lines in Japan during the war. But one of the things he did, which is a light hearted note, he is responsible for bringing beer. Fisher: What? [Laughs] David: Twenty thousand cases of beer to thirsty soldiers in multiple “packiruns” if you will, to Australia and New Guinea. And I think that anyone who is a veteran could probably drink to that. Fisher: Wow, that’s great! Congratulations to him. That’s like the second week in a row we’ve had a story of a World War II vet in their 90s just getting their medals now. What is going on? David: It’s about time. It really is. Well I’ll tell you, going back a little ways to the days of immigration and to the east coast, Nova Scotia, which means New Scotland was settled by many people from the Highlands. In 1773 a vessel called “The Hector” brought 189 highlanders that disembarked and were changed in Nova Scotia forever. Now, BBC in Scotland is looking for the descendants. So if your ancestor came to Nova Scotia from Scotland perhaps on the Hector in 1773, there are passenger lists that exist, contact BBC in Scotland. Just check Extreme Genes.com. Our Facebook page will have more details for you. Fisher: That’s very cool. So the people from old Scotland are looking for the descendants of the people in New Scotland, Nova Scotia, to call back home. David: To old Scotland. Fisher: Yeah. David: New Scotland, old Scotland, it gets confusing. But BBC Scotland is obviously doing a little piece on it, so put your kilt on and go and contact them. Fisher: [Laughs] David: One of the things that I really enjoy is a good tip from a listener, and one of our listeners and someone who’s been on the show is the Photo Detective Maureen Taylor. Fisher: Yes. David: While I was in Springfield, she told me about a new type of app that she uses from the app store. There’s a variety of choices to choose from but it basically allows you to send a postcard. Take a picture with your smart phone, this company, for very cheap money, will print and mail mailable postcards for you for your relatives. So the old photo postcards you might have in your family archives, you can create new ones. Fisher: How cool is that! David: It really is. So that brings me to the NEHGS guest user database of the week which harkens back to Scotland again. We now have Scotland marriages 1561 to 1910 and Scotland births and baptisms from 1564 to 1950, in conjunction with our partnership with FamilySearch.org. Well that’s all I have for this week back here in Beantown. Talk to you soon my friend! Fisher: All right, great to talk to you again as always David. We’ll talk to you again next week. This segment of our show has been brought to you from MyHeritage.com. And coming up next, we’re going to talk to a woman named Loretta Evans. And Loretta is an instructor, she’s a researcher, and she’s got some thoughts on “circumstantial evidence.” Now, we hear people talk about it in the courtroom... does circumstantial evidence really prove a case? Well, in genealogy it actually can. And she’ll give you some examples of that and give you some other thoughts coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show. Segment 2 Episode 156 (11:10) Host: Scott Fisher with guest Loretta Evans Fisher: One of my favorite shows growing up was Perry Mason. And, Perry would get into heated battle in the courtroom with the prosecutor, Hamilton Burger. “Ham Burger” was what he was called. And they’d say, “Well, Mr Mason, that’s just circumstantial evidence!” And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. When it comes to developing your family history and your family tree, how does circumstantial evidence work in there and does it really matter? Is circumstantial evidence really evidence? It is Fisher. This is Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. And my guest today is Loretta Evans, and Loretta specializes in researching the midwestern United States, and she speaks all over the place, and she’s written articles for all the big family history magazines. And Loretta’s in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Nice to have you on the show, Loretta! Loretta: Thank you. I’m glad to be here. Fisher: You know, I’m excited about this idea of helping people understand that circumstantial evidence really is evidence, and in some cases is very, very strong evidence. So let’s just start with some simple examples of what circumstantial evidence is that we may typically use all the time, right? Loretta: Right. For example, if you have a census record, and you have someone’s age, it isn’t proof of the year they were born. It gives you an approximate year they were born. Fisher: That’s right. Loretta: But it’s sort of depends on who gave the information out. If it was the mother, and this is the child, they’re pretty sure about the age of their children. But if it was a neighbor or a grandparent, they may be a few years off. Or if somebody had a reason to lie, a lot of women lied about their age in censuses, so you can’t. Fisher: I am so glad you said that! Because it’s not something that I can easily say, Loretta! [Laughs] But it is true. For some reason, more with women than anybody else, I’m just sorry, it’s just the way it is. They get younger as they get older! Have you picked up on that? Loretta: I have. In fact, somebody told me, but it may or may not be true, that someone had done a study of British censuses and they found that the average British woman aged about seven years between the ten year census records! Fisher: [Laughs] Loretta: And you know, in a sense if you want someone’s more accurate age, find them when they’re very young or very old. Fisher: Yeah, that’s right. Loretta: And they’re more likely to be honest about it. Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] Absolutely! Well that’s a great example of circumstantial evidence. Give us some examples though, of course, of direct evidence. Just for the sake of comparison. Loretta: Okay. For direct evidence, on a death certificate, usually the person’s name, their gender, the date they died, the place they died, those are all directly given by the doctor in charge or the person who is giving the information. You can be very comfortable about those pieces of information. Fisher: Right, as long as the people really knew what they were talking about. Loretta: Correct. But for example, the birth date on a death certificate is a little bit suspect. Fisher: Right. Loretta: If it’s a baby that dies and the mother gives the information, yeah, I’d be very comfortable with that. But I had a great grandfather who died in Cleveland, Ohio in about 1900, and I’m thinking he was living in a boarding house because they got his name wrong, they got his birth place wrong, they got his age wrong. It took us a long time to convince the city of Cleveland that he really was the same person. Fisher: [Laughs] Loretta: And that we could put a headstone on his grave. Fisher: And so what you’re saying is, for a death, a death certificate is direct evidence. But a death certificate is circumstantial as far as their birth is concerned? Loretta: That’s true. Or their parents names or their parents’ birth places, they’re wonderful clues. Fisher: Yes. Loretta: And so, if you are a researcher, you take those clues and then you try to find other documents that can prove or disprove that piece of information. And then you can be more comfortable whether it’s accurate or not. I think any evidence in genealogy is accurate until the next piece of information comes along that might prove or disprove it. Fisher: Right. Loretta: Somebody said it was like washing dishes. You’re all done, and then somebody walks in with another dirty glass. Fisher: [Laughs] Wow. That’s not very attractive at all. Loretta: [Laughs] I’m sorry. That image is, you know, you think you’re done, and then somebody gives you additional information that might even call into question what you think is accurate. Fisher: Sure. Loretta: I had two brothers. One born in 1944 and one born in 1950, and they both died at birth. And they were both born on July 12th. And in our family that was this kind of a “tender mercy.” “Oh, they had the same birth date.” And when the cemetery records came online, my older brother Ralph was listed as having been born on July 11th. Fisher: Oh boy. Loretta: And it was in the family Bible. There were no birth or death certificates because they were stillborn. They’re on the headstone. They carved it on the stone. Fisher: [Laughs] Right. Loretta: They forgot it being July 12th. And my mother didn’t really care, and my brother didn’t care, but it drove me crazy. And, I finally got my mother’s hospital records because some mortuary records didn’t exist anymore, and she was in her 90s and she just sighed and signed the permission slip. “Yes, you can release my hospital records from 1944.” Fisher: [Laughs] Loretta: Anyway, I got it from a place in California that had taken all of the records and they were sold there. Anyway, the hospital actually was in Utah. But he was born on July 11th. The headstone is wrong, our family Bible is wrong. Although they were born close to the same day it wasn’t exactly the same day. Fisher: Yeah. I’ve seen this before. We have a family Bible that gives the death date of my great, great grandfather, and even the obituary said December 26th 1875. But the death record said December 27th. And it appears that what happened was that he died at home, late in the evening on the 26th, but the doctor probably didn’t show up till after midnight, because the death time was put down as 12:30 in the morning. Or, they just didn’t recognize that it was a new day, at the point that he’d passed. Loretta: You know, that kind of thing happens. My uncle was born near midnight at home, and nobody looked at the clock until after he was born, but he could have been born before midnight. Nobody ever really knows. They chose one of the days and put it on the birth certificate. Fisher: Here’s another sample of a circumstantial situation that came up. I tracked down a third great grandmother, and I was very fortunate that somebody had actually been able to come up with a family Bible that put her in the family. And, it was from this very same area, so I was pretty confident. But still, how could I know for sure that she was the only person of that name from that area? And so, circumstantial evidence often involves eliminating other possibilities. I think you’d agree. Loretta: Oh, very definitely. You not only have to try to find evidence proving what you have, but you’ve got to look for are there any other possibilities that this could be, and can you prove or disprove those other possibilities. Fisher: And one of the things that’s really helpful now with circumstantial evidence, and when you have a case like this... DNA. And I was very fortunate that suddenly I found a person matching me in DNA who descended from the brother of the person I thought it to be, from a grandfather of the person I thought it to be, and a great grandfather of the person I thought it to be. Which I felt was very good confirming evidence of this otherwise circumstantial case. Loretta: That is excellent. Yeah. Fisher: So you put these things all together and then you get the confirmation, several times hopefully, from DNA. And then you can put together your case and you know, “Hey, wait a minute, I’ve got something here I can be confident in.” And that’s maybe at the point where you can publish it or put it online and share it with other people. I don’t know how you feel about it, Loretta. I like to put things together first of all on my own, keep it to myself, until I’m really, really confident in what I’ve got before I really share it. Because, as we know, once something goes public, if you’re wrong, it will take on a life of its own and live for years and years and years. And it’s really difficult ever to get rid of it. Loretta: Oh, that is definitely true. There are two major places where people put pedigrees. FamilySearch.org, another is Ancestry. The difference is that Ancestry keeps each person’s pedigree separate. Fisher: Yep. Loretta: Where FamilySearch combines everything. And your cousin could come along and change things in a while. So yes, you do want to be pretty comfortable with what you’re putting out there before you submit it. Because you could take two people who live in the same area, who have similar names and make them into one person, and make it very, very difficult in years to come for somebody to separate those two individuals. Fisher: Yeah, that’s the problem. So, that’s why it’s really important to work the negative side. Try to disprove that it’s the person as well as trying to prove it. And maybe get a little DNA help as well. And at the end, your circumstantial evidence can really prove your case. Loretta: One example we had about somebody walking in with another dirty glass... Fisher: [Laughs] Loretta: ...where we had a photograph that was of this woman who had died in Winter Quarters, Iowa. And, my husband and I visited a distant cousin one evening and she had another copy of the photograph. But it was a larger copy and somebody had copied the name of the photography studio as well as the image, and this picture was taken by Ottinger’s in Salt Lake City, Utah. Well, the woman couldn’t have died in Winter Quarters and had her picture taken in Ottinger’s in Salt Lake City because he wasn’t in business at that time. Fisher: Right. Loretta: And he was half a continent away. Fisher: Yeah! Loretta: And so, we concluded that it was the step grandmother rather than the grandmother that was in the picture. Fisher: Interesting. Well, there you go. Always making a few adjustments along the way, right? Loretta: Oh, absolutely. And, any genealogist who is afraid that somebody is going to disprove all the things they’ve worked so hard for isn’t really open enough to be a really good genealogist. Fisher: The experts are often wrong. And the best ones will go back and correct their own errors. Clean up their own mess and wash their own glasses, right? [Laughs] Loretta: [Laughs] There you go. Fisher: Hey, Loretta, delight to talk to you today. Loretta Evans, she’s in Idaho Falls, Idaho, talking about circumstantial evidence. Is it real? Is it good? Can you use it? The answer is yes! Thanks so much for coming on. Loretta: I’ve enjoyed it very much. Thank you. Fisher: And this segment has been brought to you by 23andMe.com DNA. And coming up next, we’ll talk to a Washington State man who has adopted 1,600 people. They’re all dead! They’re in a cemetery! He’s getting the word out about who they are, and you’re going to want to hear his story in five minutes. Segment 3 Episode 156 (24:50) Host: Scott Fisher with guest Bill Habermann Fisher: Welcome back to Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth, and part of my sleuthing has to do with tracking down people with interesting stories that I know might interest you. And this is a guy who I think is inspiring a lot of people around the country since his story broke recently in the Tacoma News Tribune. His name is Bill Habermann. And Bill, you work for a funeral company, yes? Bill: I do. Piper, Marley, Malinger and Oakwood are all tied together as one funeral home. Fisher: And yet, this all spills over into your hobby, as it turns out. You found a cemetery out in the middle of nowhere. I guess it's been grown over, and you've kind of adopted it. Tell us about this. Bill: Well, back in the 1880s when the Northern Pacific Railroad came out west and put a terminus here in Tacoma, they gave about 56 acres to the city for a cemetery. And back in those days, folks didn't want the cemeteries near the town, and so it ended up being out in the sticks, kind of. Well, then that cemetery became Old Tacoma Cemetery and was divided up into three parcels. One stayed as Old Tacoma Cemetery, or Tacoma Cemetery, somehow, and I haven't been able to find out how a portion of about eight acres became Oakwood Cemetery, and then off to the side of the two cemeteries. There are two acres that became the county's pauper cemetery. Fisher: And that kind of got overgrown and forgotten, apparently. Bill: Well, yes. And I gave tours of Oakwood several times, and people would ask me during the tour, "Well, what is that on the other side of the fence? I see a few headstones there, but it's pretty much just grass." And then I said, "Well, that's the county's cemetery which was closed in 1927, and there really aren't a lot of records around for it." Fisher: Now why is that? Bill: Well, I think back in the early days people just were not so record conscious as they are now. And either that or they wrote on a slip of paper and thought, "Well, I'll put it in the book sometime." And it didn't happen. Or the county said, "Well, it's up to the funeral homes to take care of the records because they're putting the bodies into the cemetery." They were each paid $4.50 per burial. So some of the cemetery records probably are just lost totally with the county, but I was fortunate enough to have the records for Piper Funeral Home which started here in 1908, and Malinger which started here in 1883. Fisher: They merged at one point. Bill: Well, they merged at one point, yeah. And then what I did, I just got curious and I looked up the folks who had some headstones and found some of them in our records and started putting that down. Somebody said, "Why don't you put this on FindAGrave because people might want to look up somebody." And I thought, "Oh, okay." And I started doing that and then going through all the ledgers here, I just came up with 1,600 folks that are... Fisher: Wow! 1600? Bill: Yeah. And that was at the time Karen did the article. Now I'm up to 1,626. Fisher: [Laughs] Of course. There's always progress. Now, would you find the names in the ledgers first? Or would you find the tombstones first and then try to track them down in the ledgers? Bill: Well, the initial 15 headstones or so, I looked for them in the ledgers, but then I just started with page one of the Piper book and looked through every page, a page at a time, and if I saw $4.50, that was a first give away that it was somebody that went into the pauper's cemetery. Fisher: Interesting. So it didn't mention the cemetery, it was the price that gave it away? Bill: Yeah, it's the price that always gets me to the page, right. Fisher: Oh, that's fascinating. So when did you start this project, and what has kept you going, and how often do you go there? Bill: Well, I started doing in on FindAGrave about six years ago. The people who own or are in control of the cemetery really don't want folks walking around in there, because several of the graves are sunk in pretty badly, because folks were put into wooden boxes and into concrete grave liners. So they tend to like to leave it looking a little rough, as it said in the newspaper article, so that everybody isn't cramming around in there looking for things. The headstones even are in such disarray sort of that I have not been able to figure out even the rows or the blocks or the plot numbers, like we have in our cemetery, to locate a specific person. And some of those folks might not even be anywhere near the headstone that's standing there. Fisher: Right. So the tombstone itself is the giveaway of who's in there, but you just don't know where the grave itself might be? Bill: Yes, right. Fisher: Wow. Bill: And some of them face east and west, and some of them face north and south, and some of them look like they could be in a row, but others have been marked just set kind of whacky. There are two Japanese headstones there that face no particular direction, you know, they're kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Those two fascinated me because periodically when I'd look over the fence I would see fresh flowers put on those two graves, and they're back from the early 1900s, and sometimes there would be small food offerings there also at those two graves. I haven't seen anything there for the last two years, but somebody was coming in there and still honoring their deceased family members. Fisher: That's amazing. Now, what have you learned about the people that are buried in there? Have you found some unusual or interesting stories about them? Bill: Yeah. There is one fellow that still kind of plagues me. His name is Taggart, and his story is sort of interesting in that he was a well known supposedly wealthy person here to Tacoma back in the early 1900s. And sad to say, his wife became insane and went to the hospital for the insane. While he, in the mean time, lost all his money, regained some money, lost it again, ended up living at the poor farm, and apparently he decided to try to commit suicide by cutting his throat with a straight razor. Well, the hospital saved him, but then ultimately shortly after, he died of pneumonia, which got a lot of people back in those days. Fisher: Sure. Bill: His headstone looks like a military headstone. I checked in the Civil War records and there are so many Patrick Taggards that I kind of lost track of did he really deserve a military headstone. But it's not carved in the way of any military headstones that I've ever found online. So he's kind of a curiosity for me. I really would like to get him a new headstone if he is military, but again, I almost run into a brick wall. Fisher: Sure. And that's the problem with common names, of course. So what about families? Have other families reached out to you from near and far to say, "Hey, you found my person I've been looking for!" Bill: Yes. I've gotten some thank you letters from folks, and on FindAGrave, they can correspond back and forth with me, and so they have thanked me and some folks have sent me information to add into my book. There's an infant that died I think age about three weeks, and the family didn't know whether the child was buried. They were so happy to find where the child was, and they sent me a copy of the baptism certificate for this infant. Although that's the only existing document there is, other than the fact that the child is somewhere in those two acres. Fisher: So, what about restoration of the cemetery? You're allowed in there and you're saying others are not, is there any interest in that on behalf of the owners or on the part of the owners to do this? Bill: I don't think so because it probably would be very costly, first of all, to mould the place and keep the grass looking nice, because here in summer everything turns yellow and dries up. The cemetery that they do own, Old Tacoma, is watered all the time with underground sprinklers, and they have their own wells, but I'm sure that they are not interested in spending probably thousands and thousands of dollars to make the cemetery look presentable. Fisher: You would think that people would have to adopt it, I guess, the descendants of those who are in there, if that was ever going to happen, right? Bill: Yeah. And because it's privately owned by Tacoma Cemetery, I don't think that they could even work that. It kind of would be a real conundrum. Fisher: Sure. He's Bill Habermann. He's a funeral director in Tacoma, Washington, and he has adopted his own cemetery up there and is getting the information he's finding up on FindAGrave. Bill, thank you so much for doing this! And I'm sure you're inspiring others who might want to take on the same kind of project wherever they are. Bill: I hope so. And thanks for the call! Fisher: Hey, this segment of our show has been brought to you by LegacyTree.com. And coming up next, we'll talk preservation with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. It's time to be getting ready for the holidays. He's got more great advice, coming up for you in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show. Segment 4 Episode 156 (37:10) Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry Fisher: And welcome back to Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It Is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth with my good friend Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. He is our Preservation Authority. And Tom, good to have you back. Tom: Good to be here. Fisher: And we do have an email here from Richard Halter, and I believe it’s pronounced Sharon, South Carolina. And he said, “Fisher and Tom, I saw this ad on Facebook and my mind immediately jumped to all I’ve learned from your shows.” Now, he sent us a link to another digitizing firm that’s national. And he said, “My first thought was that they’re not going to do everything that Tom says to look for when getting your products digitized. And the same time though, I live in an area where there isn’t anything available other than big box stores which I don’t even like. Would you recommend something like this store as an option for someone who just wants to get the media digitized? I can do pictures and I’ve played with audio as well as slides and negatives and I’m getting better. I can also take video and convert it from DVD, CD and all this, as long as I can get it to the PC to work on. I’m not a professional to say the least, but I do the best I can and I’m getting better as I go. I’m a very big proponent of getting all of these memories digitized and I’d like to give people some options for things I cannot complete yet. Your loyal listener, Richard.” Tom: That’s a great email that you’ve sent us. You know, there’s a lot of things in here that are really great. I love how you want to get all your stuff digitized. You’re trying to do as much as you can which we really advocate, and then some of the things of course you can’t do. Now this place that you mentioned, I can’t really say whether they’re good or bad because I’ve asked listeners in the past, if you have good experiences with places whether they’re local or national let us know. If you have bad experiences locally or national, let us know also so that we can warn people or encourage people to go to these places. This is one that I’ve never received any information on. I’ve checked out the website, it seems legit and everything looks nice, beautiful website. They’re about the middle to high end which sometimes is good, sometimes it’s bad. Because most of the time when you see these real cheap things, you’re getting what you pay for, and it’s not very good. So they have a fair price, the price is a little higher than what we charge on our online store. But if it’s closer to you and you feel more comfortable doing it, what I would do is, always start with the smallest package kind of as a test drive and see if you’re happy with what they do. And then of course send in all your other stuff and if you’re happy let us know. Fisher: Sure. Right. And testing is a key thing. And I would imagine, aren’t there ratings involved with this somewhere online that he could check out? Tom: You know, there really should be, and I’ve thought about this before getting out there and doing some experiments with some of these different places and actually go in and give them multi-star ratings. So that’s something we’re looking at maybe in 2017, we might actually come out with a rating system. But we really need our listeners to let us know where they’ve had good experiences and bad experiences. And let us know places that they’ve used so that we can maybe start doing a rating system. I really encourage you use local places as much as you want. Use national places if you find out they’re good. You can go to shop.TMCPlace.com and get our prices. And usually if people are close to what our prices are they’re probably legit because they’re doing the right thing. If they’re way below, I say stay away. It’s not worth it. I’ve run into so much product places like that. Fisher: That’s the thing. This is not the kind of thing you really want to price shop on so much. I mean, if it’s too cheap to be true, it’s probably too cheap to be true, Tom. Tom: That is so true! [Laughs] Fisher: [Laughs] Tom: Yeah, you need to be careful. One thing that I really advocate that I think is really, really important which we have never gone into because I don’t like it. A lot of transfer places, they use high speed. So instead of like a VHS tape taking two hours to transfer, they can transfer it in 15 to 20 minutes because they’re doing it high speed which reduces your fidelity. Fisher: Of course. Tom: You know if it didn’t do that everybody would be doing it. We would do it. We could drop our prices way down. However, we wouldn’t be giving our clients the quality that they want. You know, if you’re in a situation where money is really, really tight and it’s that or nothing. It’s still scary, because I have people who come in to me and say, “Hey, we sent it to this place online that’s really cheap. We didn’t get our stuff back. Or it came back really bad. They told us our tape is bad.” And then we had to go and “undo” what the other people did. Fisher: All right. Well, what do we have coming up in the next segment here, Tom? Tom: We’re going to talk about some scanning parties we’re planning. Fisher: All right, we’ll get to that in about three minutes. This segment has been brought to you by Forever.com. And if you have a question for Tom Perry you can always write to him at AskTom@TMCPlace.com and you might get to hear your question answered on the air. From Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show. Segment 5 Episode 156 (44:20) Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry Fisher: And we are back, final segment of Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com, Preservation Time with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. Tom, you were just talking about a scanning party you've got coming up. And let's just explain to people first of all what a scanning party is. Tom: Okay. It’s a lot of fun. It’s not a MRI or CRT or anything like that. Fisher: [Laughs] Right. Tom: What we do is, we scan your photographs. So this is where anybody can bring in one of those sterilight 16 quart shoeboxes with the lid on. Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] Tom: And you can pack it with your 3x3 up to 8x10 non-damaged, non-mounted, loose photos, and we can scan the whole box for you for twenty five bucks. Fisher: Wow! Tom: So it's an absolute killer deal. Fisher: And fast too, right? Tom: Oh yeah! Oh yeah! It's really fast! It’s amazing! But that's why they can't be mounted or anything like that. They need to be all organized. If you have multiple sizes, just organize your sizes together. And bring your own thumb drive. And there's no additional charge. If you want, we have 16GB flash drives for only ten bucks. Fisher: Now where are you going to be doing this? Tom: The first one we are doing is November 11th and 12th in Midway, Utah. That's kind of up in the mountains, a beautiful ski resort area. Fisher: Wow! That's going to be great. Okay, so you have a location there. Tom: Right. Fisher: So people who would be in the Utah area would go where in Midway? Tom: It’s going to be at the Homestead Resort. It’s all part of the FamilyHistoryExpos.com convention that they're having, those two days which we talked about, about a month ago. So if you want to sign up for the convention, you can come in and do that. You can come in for the scanning party. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Remember, it needs to be up to 8x10 and it’s got to be in sterilight box with the lid on. No great big posters. We won't be able to do anything like that at this time. Fisher: All right, but you can do stuff that's small, very small. Tom: Oh yeah! We can go all the way down to 3x3 as long as they're in good condition. And if you have some pictures that are starting to fade and things like that, don't think, "Oh, I can't do these." No, this is a good time to do your faded ones, because we're going to stop them from fading anymore. We'll give you a digitized copy of all of them. And then whether you want to do it next week or next year or ten years from now, you'll have the high definition file that you can go in and do color correction. Or if you say, "Hey, this is over my head. I don't want to be involved in it." You can email it back to us and then we can do the color correction as well. Fisher: Now what kind of dpi are we talking about? Tom: It’s usually about 1200 dpi. Fisher: Oh that's good! Tom: Oh yeah! It’s a really high dpi. Fisher: It’s solid, yeah. So I've done this recently, of course, I've gone ahead, all of my old home movies and videos digitized. So I've got like 110 of them on disk. I don't even know what's on them all, because I didn't even know what was on the videos when I gave them to you in the first place. The joy of it, though, is I can take them one at a time, maybe one a week, right, and transfer it in some way and edit it down to just each individual thing. We'll, here's a birthday on this video, that's separate from the time we got to meet Joe DiMaggio over here or something like that. I mean, you can separate them all out. And so, with photographs, it would be much the same. You can digitize them all. And then when you get around to it, you're there. And what a great opportunity this is… Midway, Utah, November 11th? Tom: 11th and 12th, correct. Just go to FamilyHistoryExpos.com and you can sign up for the convention if you want to go to that as well. And just remember, like you just mentioned, it’s good to get this stuff done. And I've even had people tell me that they're going to go on a long trip, so they get videos, photos, all these things scanned, and then they sit in the back with the kids and put the DVD in, and they're sitting there writing notes. So when they're driving down the highway they can sit there and watch the thing, instead of watching Aladdin or something with their kids. They can say, "Oh, yeah, this is grandma." and talk to their kids. And make sure you have your iPhone or a tape recorder running, so when you're explaining all this stuff to your kids, you've got it down. And then later on you can make a slideshow with your narration for your great, great grandkids who will never know you, but they'll be able to hear your voice describing who these people are in the photos, who they are in the videos. It just makes it so nice. Fisher: Boy! What a great idea! And you know, trapping the kids, I love that! [Laughs] Tom: [Laughs] It’s great! We're going to be doing a whole bunch this next year in 2017 working with our Going Postal stores. So we're going to have a lot of fun in 2017. Fisher: All right, Tom. Thanks for dropping by. See you next week. Tom: We'll be there. Fisher: And this segment of the show has been brought to you by FamilySearch.org and RootsMagic.com. Hey, thanks again to our guest, Loretta Evans, for coming on and talking about "circumstantial evidence." Does it really add up? And to Bill Habermann from Washington State, talking about the cemetery he adopted and how you might be able to do something of the same. Hey, and don't forget, if you're going to become your family's family history expert, you need to sign up for our free newsletter, The Weekly Genie. Do it at ExtremeGenes.com or our Facebook page. Talk to you next week. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we're a nice, normal family!

In episode 2 of the What does God say? Podcast  available on StitcherRadio.com, iTunes itun.es/igW6vb StitcherRadio.com or KNOXbroadcast.libsyn.com Pastor “Uncle” Terry Harris and Deacon Henry Knox discuss how a Pastor’s new description of the phrase forgive you shouldn’t be ‘F’ you, how a little-known Texas law allowed a man to buy a $340,000 home for only $16, and how we should be diligent about caring for our fellow man as a local woman passes from the horrible heat. As stated last time the main topic will be who is Jesus? We discuss his birth, childhood, and the many prophecies of his coming so-much-so we couldn’t fit it all in. This will be Part I & we will return with Part II next time, if it be God’s will. We Thank you so very much for listening, any and all questions, prayer request and or feedback can be sent to WhatdoesGodsaypodcast@gmail.com or KNOXbroadcast@Gmail.com. If you would, spare a moment and leave us an honest review on iTunes it would be greatly appreciated. Follow us on Twitter @whatdoesGodsay. Thank you for listening and God bless. Scriptures: follow along in order Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.  John 12:49 For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.  Matthew 7:28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: Mark 10:24 And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! Hebrews 5:5-6 So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. (Ref. Hebrew 7:1-17)  1 Peter 2:13-14 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. (Ref. Romans13:1 and Titus 3: 1) Genesis 9: 12-15 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. Deuteronomy 11:13-17 And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full. Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD'S wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you. Genesis 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Romans 12:2  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.  St. John 12:49   For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.  Matthew 7:28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: Mark 10:24 And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! Hebrews 5:5-6 So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. (Ref. Hebrew 7:1-17) 1 Peter 2:13-14Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. (Ref. Romans13:1 and Titus 3: 1 Peter 2:13-14) Genesis 4:9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? Romans 12:20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Matthew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. St. John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Matthew 3:17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. St. John 1:1,14 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. Luke 1:35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Luke 1:27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.  Matthew 1:20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. Luke 2:4-7,12And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.  And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. Matthew 23:12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. (Ref. James 4:10) Hebrews 4:15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. St. John 21:25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen. Luke 2:47-49And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Revelations 7:9, 13-14 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Ephesians 5:27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. Daniel 7:13-14 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. Matthew 23:23-28 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Matthew 8:5-13 And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour. Matthew 13:57-58 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house. And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. (Ref. Mark 6:5) Matthew 7:29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Mark 6:2-3 And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. Luke 23:29-31 For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never           bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? I Corinthians 1:26 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: I Corinthians 8:1 Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. St.  John 5:44 How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? Psalms 53:2-3 God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Deuteronomy 18:15 The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; Matthew 2:1-6 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. Leviticus 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. John 8:3-11 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. We Thank you so very much for listening, any and all questions, prayer request and or feedback can be sent to WhatdoesGodsaypodcast@gmail.com or KNOXbroadcast@Gmail.com. If you would, spare a moment and leave us an honest review on iTunes it would be greatly appreciated. Follow us on Twitter @whatdoesGodsay. Thank you for listening and God bless. KNOXbroadcast.com @KNOXbroadcast on Twitter