Podcasts about fragmenting

A Rabobank market researcher says the implementation of U.S. tariffs in 2025 runs the risk of fragmenting global trade, and after reaching above growth neutral in November for the first time since 2023, at 50.2, the Rural Mainstreet Index sank to 39.6 in December.

Franklin Roosevelt knew that supporting black emancipation in the south would lose critical southern white support for the New Deal and so ignored for the most part the plight of black Americans and the horrors of lynching. During the 1950s and 1960s the coalition of black and white voters that the Democrats drew to them began to fragment as black rights advanced throughout the period. This was a key factor in the fragmentation of the New Deal's support base, which was ruthlessly exploited by Richard Nixon in 1968.Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it here Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Italy surprised much of the world when it became the first—and only—member of the G7 to join China's Belt and Road program in 2019. Just four years later, Italy withdrew from the initiative. The about-face served as a microcosm of the geopolitical landscape's evolution. Policymakers have long viewed the economy through a geopolitical lens. But the overlap between the economy and national security has grown, increasingly becoming the focus of today's geopolitical fractures amid global competition over trade, technology and defense. This episode of The Outthinking Investor explores the ways in which nations are balancing economic and security priorities, and how investors can leverage geopolitical analysis to make informed portfolio decisions in a changing world. Our guests are Mark Esper, former US Secretary of Defense and author of “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times”; Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, former Dean of the Stanford School of Business and co-author of “Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World”; and Magdalena Polan, PGIM Fixed Income's Head of Emerging Markets Macroeconomic Research. Topics include the three main forces affecting the global economy, how national defense is influencing economic policy, the geopolitical factors impacting trade flows and emerging markets, and whether the peace dividend is evaporating. To learn more about the macroeconomic and investment implications of geopolitical risks, explore PGIM's 2024 Global Risk Report, Resilient Investing Amid Geopolitical Uncertainty, at PGIM.com. Do you have any comments, suggestions, or topics you would like us to cover? Email us at thought.leadership@pgim.com.

As our centennial series continues, Kathryn Cramer Brownell, professor of history and director of the Center for American Political History and Technology at Purdue University and the author of 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton University Press, 2023) reviews the history of how Americans learn about presidential elections. 

Abortion on the ballot is not an unfamiliar phrase in the United States. This issue has been a polarizing one for US voters, and the threat of revoking women's reproductive rights. At the heart of this issue is the extraction and weaponization of a single issue. Women do not have full autonomy we do not have bodily autonomy. The hyper-focus on controlling the reproductive aspect of women's lives and bodies most poignantly reveals how women are valued and not. Fragmenting reproductive medical needs from healthcare, not only endangers those who want or need to have access to abortion, the impact is far-reaching. We have seen this time and again since the Dobbs decision, from medical patients being denied necessary procedures and medication, to girls who have been forced to give birth. Today we will discuss why the election matters, and why your vote must be counted. We will be in conversation with Karen Mulhauser, a powerful advocate for abortion rights and community organizer, and her colleague Lindy Shapiro, who is committed to engaging youth. They are working to ensure women's freedoms now and for future generations.

This month we're getting elite as Matilda chats all about chieftain burials with archaeologist, curator, editor, and model Dr Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof (also known on her online platforms as The Overdressed Archaeologist). Well, they're talking about one chieftain burial in particular - that found in Oss in the Netherlands - and they're especially talking about why the burial included a large and beautifully made iron sword bent into a ring. Why did people break or bend swords before burying them in the past? How could such a sword be bent into a ring? And how does Sasja manage to juggle so many different jobs and specialisms? Listen in to find out!Transcripts For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/teabreak/32Links NWO article about Sasja and the sword Antiquities Museum article Fragmenting the Chieftain book Article on chieftain graves Sasja's website Sasja's blog article on Iron Age elite burialsContact the Host Email: matilda@thearchaeologiststeacup.com https://www.thearchaeologiststeacup.com insta: @the_archaeologists_teacup fb: /TheArchaeologistsTeacup twitter: @ArchaeoTeacupArchPodNet APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet Tee Public Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/archaeology-podcast-network?ref_id=5724Affiliates Motion

This month we're getting elite as Matilda chats all about chieftain burials with archaeologist, curator, editor, and model Dr Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof (also known on her online platforms as The Overdressed Archaeologist). Well, they're talking about one chieftain burial in particular - that found in Oss in the Netherlands - and they're especially talking about why the burial included a large and beautifully made iron sword bent into a ring. Why did people break or bend swords before burying them in the past? How could such a sword be bent into a ring? And how does Sasja manage to juggle so many different jobs and specialisms? Listen in to find out!Transcripts For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/teabreak/32Links NWO article about Sasja and the sword Antiquities Museum article Fragmenting the Chieftain book Article on chieftain graves Sasja's website Sasja's blog article on Iron Age elite burialsContact the Host Email: matilda@thearchaeologiststeacup.com https://www.thearchaeologiststeacup.com insta: @the_archaeologists_teacup fb: /TheArchaeologistsTeacup twitter: @ArchaeoTeacupArchPodNet APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet Tee Public Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/archaeology-podcast-network?ref_id=5724Affiliates Motion

Dr. Michael Kalin is a family doctor in Côte-St-Luc and a member of the Département régional de médecine générale (DRMG) for Cavendish, a body that helps recruit new physicians

Abortion on the ballot is not an unfamiliar phrase in the United States. This issue has been a polarizing one for US voters, and the threat of revoking women's reproductive rights. At the heart of this issue is the extraction and weaponization of a single issue. Women do not have full autonomy we do not have bodily autonomy. The hyper-focus on controlling the reproductive aspect of women's lives and bodies most poignantly reveals how women are valued and not. Fragmenting reproductive medical needs from healthcare, not only endangers those who want or need to have access to abortion, the impact is far-reaching. We have seen this time and again since the Dobbs decision, from medical patients being denied necessary procedures and medication, to girls who have been forced to give birth. Today we will discuss why the election matters, and why your vote must be counted. We will be in conversation with Karen Mulhauser, a powerful advocate for abortion rights and community organizer, and her colleague Lindy Shapiro, who is committed to engaging youth. They are working to ensure women's freedoms now and for future generations.

Abortion on the ballot is not an unfamiliar phrase in the United States. This issue has been a polarizing one for US voters, and the threat of revoking women's reproductive rights. At the heart of this issue is the extraction and weaponization of a single issue. Women do not have full autonomy we do not have bodily autonomy. The hyper-focus on controlling the reproductive aspect of women's lives and bodies most poignantly reveals how women are valued and not. Fragmenting reproductive medical needs from healthcare, not only endangers those who want or need to have access to abortion, the impact is far-reaching. We have seen this time and again since the Dobbs decision, from medical patients being denied necessary procedures and medication, to girls who have been forced to give birth. Today we will discuss why the election matters, and why your vote must be counted. We will be in conversation with Karen Mulhauser, a powerful advocate for abortion rights and community organizer, and her colleague Lindy Shapiro, who is committed to engaging youth. They are working to ensure women's freedoms now and for future generations.

पिछले हफ़्ते कर्नाटका के CM द्वारा घोषित स्थानीय आरक्षण ड्राफ्ट बिल पर काफ़ी हल्ला मचा। इस प्रकार का आरक्षण इससे पहले हरयाणा ने भी लाने की कोशिश की थी, पर उसे हरयाणा हाई कोर्ट ने असंवैधानिक घोषित कर दिया था। कर्नाटका में भी इस पॉलिसी को फिलहाल तो होल्ड पर रखा गया है पर सवाल ये है कि राज्य सरकारें ऐसी नीतियां क्यों लाती रहती हैं? क्या ऐसी संकीर्ण नीतियों से भारत को फायदा होगा या नुकसान? इसी विषय पर इस हफ़्ते चर्चा।  Last week, there was a lot of uproar over the local reservation draft bill announced by the Karnataka CM. Earlier, Haryana had also tried to bring a similar reservation, but it was declared unconstitutional by Haryana High Court. In Karnataka too, this policy has been put on hold for the time being. However, the question remains—why do state governments keep announcing such bad policies? Will such narrow policies benefit India or harm it? Also, how does agglomeration effect come into play in the growth of high-tech hubs? We discuss:* Is it Constitutional? * Does it make economic sense? * Can you become a local? * Basis for reservation * Fragmenting our labour market * Agglomeration in hi-tech industry * We think agglomeration is a problemReadings:India Policy Watch #2: Some Marks Are Indelible by Pranay Kotasthane Bengaluru needs more high-tech companies, not fewer by Anupam Manur and Pranay Kotasthane Innovation Network by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit & William KerrRelated Puliyabaazi:भारत, क्षेत्रीय विविधता के नज़रिये से। India is not 28 States, but 85 Regions ft. Poornima Doreभारत का भविष्य हमारे शहर तय करेंगे। Managing India's Cities ft. Devashish Dhar, AuthorIf you have any questions for the guest or feedback for us, please comment here or write to us at puliyabaazi@gmail.com. If you like our work, please subscribe and share this Puliyabaazi with your friends, family and colleagues.substack: Website: https://puliyabaazi.inHosts: @saurabhchandra @pranaykotas @thescribblebeeTwitter: @puliyabaazi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/puliyabaazi/Subscribe & listen to the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Castbox, AudioBoom, YouTube, Spotify or any other podcast app. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.puliyabaazi.in

#EU: Fragmenting support for Kyiv. Judy Dempsey, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Editor-in-Chief: Strategic Europe, in Berlin. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-24/macron-says-extreme-opposition-parties-would-lead-to-civil-war?srnd=homepage-europe&sref=5g4GmFHo https://www.ft.com/content/902ae8f6-5494-4b80-ae95-5ab9f983a6cc THERMIDOR

With the first presidential debate just two weeks away, an hour on the art and science of the presidential debate. We look at the evolution of debates through history, question whether or not they matter to the election, and even learn about the art of the political putdown. GUESTS:  Kathryn Cramer Brownell: Associate Professor of History at Purdue University. She is author of Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life and 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News Aaron Kall: Director of Debate and a Lecturer in the Department of Communication at the University of Michigan. He is also author of Debating The Donald Chris Lamb: Professor of Journalism at Indiana University Indianapolis, and author of The Art of the Political Putdown: The Greatest Comebacks, Ripostes, and Retorts in History Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.  Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

TR LESSON LEARNED IN 1916:   THAT THE GOP DOES NOT EASILY UNITE AFTER FRAGMENTING SINCE  2020: 5/8: The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future, by  Neil Lanctot https://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Storm-Roosevelt-Wilson-Americas/dp/0735210594/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age. 1906 TR IN THE WHITE HOUSE

TR LESSON LEARNED IN 1916:   THAT THE GOP DOES NOT EASILY UNITE AFTER FRAGMENTING SINCE  2020: 8/8: The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future, by  Neil Lanctot https://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Storm-Roosevelt-Wilson-Americas/dp/0735210594/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age. 1907 TR IN OFFICE

TR LESSON LEARNED IN 1916:   THAT THE GOP DOES NOT EASILY UNITE AFTER FRAGMENTING SINCE  2020: 7/8: The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future, by  Neil Lanctot https://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Storm-Roosevelt-Wilson-Americas/dp/0735210594/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age. 1903 TR IN OFFICE

TR LESSON LEARNED IN 1916:   THAT THE GOP DOES NOT EASILY UNITE AFTER FRAGMENTING SINCE  2020: 6/8: The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future, by  Neil Lanctot https://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Storm-Roosevelt-Wilson-Americas/dp/0735210594/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age. 1900 JANE ADDAMS

TR LESSON LEARNED IN 1916:   THAT THE GOP DOES NOT EASILY UNITE AFTER FRAGMENTING SINCE  2020: 4/8: The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future, by  Neil Lanctot https://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Storm-Roosevelt-Wilson-Americas/dp/0735210594/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age. 1917 WILSON'S SECOND INAGURAL

TR LESSON LEARNED IN 1916:   THAT THE GOP DOES NOT EASILY UNITE AFTER FRAGMENTING SINCE  2020: 3/8: The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future, by  Neil Lanctot https://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Storm-Roosevelt-Wilson-Americas/dp/0735210594/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age. 1910 SUFFRAGETTE PICKETS DC

TR LESSON LEARNED IN 1916:   THAT THE GOP DOES NOT EASILY UNITE AFTER FRAGMENTING SINCE  2020: 2/8: The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future, by  Neil Lanctot https://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Storm-Roosevelt-Wilson-Americas/dp/0735210594/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age. 1923 FORMER PRESIDENT WILSON VISITS THE WHITE HOUSE

TR LESSON LEARNED IN 1916:   THAT THE GOP DOES NOT EASILY UNITE AFTER FRAGMENTING SINCE  2020: 1/8: The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams, and Their Clash Over America's Future, by  Neil Lanctot https://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Storm-Roosevelt-Wilson-Americas/dp/0735210594/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= In the early years of the twentieth century, the most famous Americans on the national stage were Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams: two presidents and a social worker. Each took a different path to prominence, yet the three progressives believed the United States must assume a more dynamic role in confronting the growing domestic and international problems of an exciting new age. 1905 TR

The Bible's witness is clear: When the people of God gather for corporate worship, their children are to be with them in the service. That's the unmistakable record found throughout Scripture. Yet in the 20th century, many congregations abandoned this established biblical norm, starting Children's Churches and other youth-centered ministries that separated families during weekly worship. In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Sam Waldron, discuss the resurgence of family-integrated worship that has come as Christians have set aside pragmatic and worldly practices for the simple truths of Scripture. This move to follow God's prescriptions for worship and church life, rather than man's inventions, has transformed churches and families for the better. While there's still room for growth, those committed to the Word will find blessing as they obey God from the heart. Additional Resources A Weed in the Church: How a Culture of Age Segregation is Harming the Next Generation, Fragmenting the Family, and Dividing the Church A Declaration of the Complementary Roles of Church and Family The Family at Church: How Parents Are Tour Guides of Joy

The global financial landscape stands at a crossroads as signs of fragmentation emerge. The once-dominant American-led financial order is showing cracks, paving the way for a more divided system. Prof Adrian Saville, professor of Economics and Finance at GIBS explains the future of global finance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

PREVIEW: #SOMALIA: #IRAN: From a conversation with Africa based Caleb Weiss of FDD and the Bridgeway Fuoundatin, reporting on the fragmenting of Somalia by jihadists -- and an educated observation of Iran influence in Somalia as a smuggling route to Yemen and the Houthis.  More of this tonight. 1950 MOGADISHU.

More and more TV households are cutting the cord and moving to streaming. In 2023 alone, pay-TV providers lost more than 5 million subscribers. But now that streaming companies have a robust subscriber base, rates are rising and commercials are making their way back into programming. Historian Kathryn Cramer Brownell says that when cable companies tried similar tactics in the 1980s, the government stepped in to protect consumers. So why hasn't that happened with streaming? We'll take a look at the history of cable with Brownell to understand how the cable tv model set the foundation for our current media landscape and what consumers can do about it. Guest: Kathryn Cramer Brownell, associate professor, Purdue University - author of “24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News”

Wiretapping, White House tapes and the possibility of impeachment. On June 17, 1972, a break-in at the Watergate Hotel triggered a chain of events ending with the resignation of President Nixon in 1974.From the burglary to the surprising redactions from the Nixon tapes, Kathryn Brownell joins Don to explore the story. Kathryn is an Associate Professor at Purdue University and author of '24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News'.Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Don't miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORYHIT1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here.

SAA's Marcus Hellyer and Michael Shoebridge look at the implications of elections from Taiwan, to India, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Poland and across the EU for collective action on everything ranging from climate change to China policy and the war in Ukraine. They show why Australia's Future Fund has invested $600m into defence industry everywhere but the autocracies and here at home, and end with a dive into the practical impacts of Australia's proposed new export controls.

Guest: Hywel George | Director of Investments at Old Mutual Investment Group See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kathryn Cramer Brownell, a professor at Purdue University, talks with Word&Way President Brian Kaylor about her new book 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. She also discusses the impact of individuals like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson, and Donald Trump.  Note: Don't forget to subscribe to our award-winning e-newsletter A Public Witness that helps you make sense of faith, culture, and politics.

YouTube has been making moves to embrace the podcasting trend, with the introduction of a dedicated podcast tab on the platform. This indicates that YouTube sees the value in video podcasts and is positioning itself as a competitor to other podcasting platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. As YouTube continues to evolve, it's likely that video podcasts will become even more prominent on the platform.In this episode, Augie and Grant discuss the benefits and challenges of starting a video podcast. They explain why video podcasts are becoming more popular on YouTube and how they can help you grow your audience. They also share tips on networking, repurposing content, and the importance of audio quality. While video podcasts can be easier to create than traditional YouTube videos, they require a different approach and strategy for success.Highlights02:01 YouTube's inclusion of podcasts and potential growth 03:44 Ease of creating video podcasts compared to regular YouTube videos 04:38 Importance of developing a voice and improving speaking skills 05:45 Networking opportunities through guest appearances and collaborations 07:15 Benefits of being a guest on other podcasts for promotion and SEO 09:15 Educational value and learning from experts in various fields 10:45 Expanding reach by publishing audio podcasts on various platforms11:16 Importance of podcasts for building relationships and knowledge 12:00 Value of conversational podcasts for deepening connection with the audience 13:26 Importance of diehard fans for monetization and audience building 14:32 Repurposing podcast content for shorts and clips on different platforms 15:51 Joe Rogan's strategy of posting clips instead of full episodes 17:22 Utilizing full episodes, clips, and shorts to cater to different audience segments 19:39 The challenge of long-form videos in the YouTube algorithm 20:59 Fragmenting the audience by mixing different styles of content 24:34 The importance of patience and long-term value in podcasting 29:41 Recording software options for podcasting 31:41 Importance of investing more in microphones than cameras 35:45 Importance of less editing for conversational podcasts 36:14 Benefits of using a DSLR or mirrorless camera 36:53 Audio hosting and syndication 37:32 Editing the podcast for improved audio quality 38:11 Importance of simple editing for podcasts 39:00 Negative effects of excessive jump cutsResources MentionedSubscribe to the Video Creatr Youtube channelCheck out Grant and Augie's Channels below:Grant Ball TreesicleAugie Johnston Vidchops Baller Boot Camp✅ If you want to take the burden of editing off your hands, head over to https://VidChops.com to add an expert video editor to your team in just a few clicks and you'll never have to edit again: https://VidChops.com

Greg Olear talks to Kathryn Brownell, history professor at Purdue University, about her new book, “24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News” (Princeton University Press, 2023): how cable TV came to be, how politicians from Eisenhower to Trump have used television for messaging, why Roger Ailes was inspired to start Fox News, and where our media is headed. Plus: Roman Empire daydreams.Follow Kathryn:https://twitter.com/KathrynBrownellBuy her book:https://www.amazon.com/24-Politics-Television-Fragmenting-Watergate-ebook/dp/B0BW2SR79CHer website:https://www.cla.purdue.edu/directory/profiles/kathryn-cramer-brownell.htmlThanks HelloFresh! Go to HelloFresh.com/50prevail and use code 50prevail for 50% off plus 15% off the next 2 months!Subscribe to the PREVAIL newsletter:https://gregolear.substack.com/about

The multilateral economic order is in crisis. The WTO no longer has the final word on trade issues, the IMF and World bank have lost market share as lenders, and …

Join Mahesh and Connor for a thought-provoking conversation with Greg Osuri, the founder of Akash Network. They discuss the importance of Akash and its implications as the first-ever super cloud for computing. Akash operates in a decentralized manner, utilizing crypto incentives to source compute power and providing it to those who need it through an innovative leasing framework. The conversation also touches on recent events, such as Mexico's Congress unboxing aliens, prompting reactions and thoughts on the existence of non-human life in the universe. [01:02] Aliens and extraterrestrial life [04:33] The cloud's influence on innovation [07:23] Decentralized marketplace for cloud [10:07] Aggregating latent compute resources [12:59] Fragmenting the AI chip market [16:17] Akash vs. competitors [20:12] AI developers and user friction [22:07] Network effects in crypto [26:08] Crypto and AI convergence [28:19] Incentivizing equitable AI [31:43] Akash Network and community Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Decoding the Cable Revolution: How 24/7 Politics Shaped a Generation and Our Democracy with Kathryn Cramer Brownell The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Interview Series Welcome back to another episode of The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Interview Series on radio and podcast. I'm Paul Vogelzang, and we're broadcasting from just outside of Washington, D.C. Please check out our show notes today for more information about Smithsonian Associates and their wonderful programs.  The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Interview Series is dedicated to fostering thoughtful dialogues on subjects that matter. Today, we have a special guest, Smithsonian Associate Dr. Kathryn Cramer Brownell, an associate professor of history at Purdue University. She's here to discuss her new book, "24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News." Dr. Kathryn Cramer Brownell will be appearing at Smithsonian Associates coming up, so please check out our show notes today for specifics on Dr. Brownell's presentation titled: "24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News." As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. Drawing on her new book, 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News, Kathryn Cramer Brownell tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment—frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. Dr. Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues today that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics: It's the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution. She describes how cable innovations—from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s—took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell reveals to us how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. She also examines how cable created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground, but how people became tools to cable networks! That, of course, is our guest today, Smithsonian Associate Dr. Kathryn Cramer Brownell, reading from her new book, 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. Please join me in welcoming to The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Interview Series on radio and podcast Dr. Kathryn Cramer Brownell. My thanks to Dr. Kathryn Cramer Brownell for joining today's show. Dr. Kathryn Cramer Brown will be appearing at Smithsonian Associates coming up, and the title of her presentation is "24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News."  Dr. Kathryn Cramer Brownell has written the new book, available at Apple Books,  24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. My thanks, always, to the Smithsonian team for all they do to support the show, and my thanks to you, my wonderful, wonderful Not Old Better Show audience on radio and podcast.  Please be well, be safe, and let's talk about better…The Not Old Better Show.  Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you next week.  Check out Smithsonian Associates HERE: https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/cable-tv-upended-american-politics

Subscribe to The Realignment to access our exclusive Q&A episodes and support the show: https://realignment.supercast.com/REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/PURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail Us: realignmentpod@gmail.comFoundation for American Innovation: https://www.thefai.org/posts/lincoln-becomes-faiKathryn Cramer Brownell, author of 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News, joins The Realignment. Kathryn and Marshall discuss how the modern cable news ecosystem grew out of government policies in the 1970s, the consequences of the continued decentralization of news and information from the heyday of ABC, CBS, and NBC, the collapse of the cable business model, cable's role in fragmenting post-war America, and how previous debates over technological innovation and consumer choice can inform the next evolution of the media industry.

EPISODE 1646: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Kathryn Cramer Brownell, author of 24/7 POLITICS, about the role of cable news channels like MTV, Fox, CNN & C-SPAN in fragmenting American democracy Kathryn Cramer Brownell is an associate professor of history at Purdue University and the author of 24/7 Politics: Cable television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (2023) Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest: Kathryn Cramer Brownell is associate professor of history at Purdue University and the author of Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life and her latest, 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.     The post The History of Cable Television and Its Impact on Politics appeared first on KPFA.

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground.

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship. In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

In this podcast episode, Mariya Delano, founder of Kalyna Marketing, a marketing agency for B2B technical brands, discussed the evolving nature of the internet and how platforms like Twitter, Mastodon, and LinkedIn are changing and also explored the influence of AI on content and communities, specifically focusing on marketers and their approach to content distribution and personal brand building. The conversation touches on alternative platforms, data security concerns, and the potential fragmentation of the internet. We also discussed the stages of platform development and the importance of finding meaning and purpose in work.TopicsThe Changing Nature of the InternetThe Birth of a New InternetThe return of niche spaces The appeal of decentralized platforms The lack of new voices and opportunities on Threads Stage progression of platforms Content distribution strategies The "So What" Framework Writing for a Skeptical ReaderFinding joy and purpose in work during difficult timesShow LinksVisit Kalyna MarketingFollow Mariya DelanoConnect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or TwitterPast guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Ryan McReady (Reforge), and many more.Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from:Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard)Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social)Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath)Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency:Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEOShould You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?How Do Growth and Content Overlap?Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:Twitter: @beomniscientLinkedin: Be OmniscientListen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/

The United States of America is a polarized country marked by toxic partisan politics. The state of American politics comes from somewhere. And it might have been otherwise. It has been shaped by powerful interests, technologies, and contingent forces. One of those – one of the most important – is cable television.  A new book traces the history of cable television and the changing political and cultural landscape in the United States. In the background of the book looms an absolute bruiser of a question: Did cable television break America?On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Kathryn Cramer Brownell, an assistant professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University and the author of  24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.

The United States of America is a polarized country marked by toxic partisan politics. The state of American politics comes from somewhere. And it might have been otherwise. It has been shaped by powerful interests, technologies, and contingent forces. One of those – one of the most important – is cable television.  A new book traces the history of cable television and the changing political and cultural landscape in the United States. In the background of the book looms an absolute bruiser of a question: Did cable television break America?On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Kathryn Cramer Brownell, an assistant professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University and the author of  24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.

 In a rational world, the Democratic Alliance would be a shoo-in at South Africa's National election next year. The only province where it has a majority, the Western Cape, proves the benefits of clean and efficient governance: crime is lower, property prices much higher, 98% of SA's new jobs are created there - and public structures work in a country where big chunks are increasingly taking on the look of a failed state. But unseating SA's Party of Liberation is no easy task. In this interview, DA leader John Steenhuisen explains how the DA expects to prevail. He spoke to Alec Hogg of BizNews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meet Author and Conscious Innovator Julie Archambault. In today's episode of Holy Eros Julie Archembault, the author of “Sex Up Your Life” and founder of ‘CoCreative Sex shares with us: The backstory of why she decided to write a book on sexuality and her own journey of curiosity launching her on a trajectory of researching sexuality with a diversity of experts, professionals and people's personal journeys The Difference of Fragmenting vs. Integrating Sexual ExperiencesDeepening the relationship with one's boundaries, desires, and sensuality to have more healing experiences of awakening and expansionThe ‘Spectrum' of Sexual Experiences and moving up the scale into the transcendentJulie Archembault is the founder of CoCreative—a wellness business committed to conscious, creative lives, healing our relationship to sex, both collectively and individually. Her book "Sex Up Your Life: The Mind-Blowing Path to True Intimacy, Healing, and Hope" is a deep-dive into the unconscious and mostly unspoken realms of sex. It explores a continuum from disconnected to connected sex, while showcasing sexual biographies revealing what people are dealing with and the path to unlock their intimacy potential. The book is sex-worker friendly, kink-aware, trauma-informed, and contains some important information about decolonizing and reclaiming sexuality. Ultimately, this book helps to evolve our heart consciousness and move into becoming our full authentic selves, spiritually, emotionally, physically, and sexually.IG @cocreativesex | Facebook: Julie P. Archambault, CoCreativeSex on FB business.cocreativesex.comhttps://www.audible.com/pd/Sex-Up-Your-Life-Audiobook/B0BLJ4HM2Xhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/1777065305https://cocreativesex.com/incubator/________Book mentioned in the show: “Aphrodite's Daughters: Women's Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul” by Jalaja Bonheim

It's not just that Klaus Schwab and his creepy cronies have an uncanny ability to predict the future, they're actually providing a nudge to societies via the coercive power of the state. The excellencies, heads of state and corporate leaders are all working together to direct the future in a way that is counter to human liberty. Fragmenting societies and economic conditions are not just happening in the world, these conditions are being caused by this cabal of busybodies and control freaks. Join me today as we review Schwab's opening remarks at this years World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change. Welcoming Remarks and Special Address | Davos 2023 | World Economic Forum - YouTube --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/seth-martin0/message

Yes, there are things you can share with a friend but never with your spouse. There are indeed many different ways to be miserable and unhappy. But the road to success and happiness takes pretty much the same route for everyone. That route is revealed in this podcast show. Family is overvalued when we're young and undervalued as we grow older. Fragmenting your life seriously handicaps you. What should you do if you seriously want to improve every aspect of your life? Simple. Join our community of Happy Warriors to find strength and share strength https://www.wehappywarriors.com/   The surprising Fs that make aging much easier. Happy Warriors are not tennis balls floating down the gutter of life.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yes, there are things you can share with a friend but never with your spouse. There are indeed many different ways to be miserable and unhappy. But the road to success and happiness takes pretty much the same route for everyone. That route is revealed in this podcast show. Family is overvalued when we're young and undervalued as we grow older. Fragmenting your life seriously handicaps you. What should you do if you seriously want to improve every aspect of your life? Simple. Join our community of Happy Warriors to find strength and share strength https://www.wehappywarriors.com/. The surprising Fs that make aging much easier. Happy Warriors are not tennis balls floating down the gutter of life.

Tonight's rundown: Talking Points Memo: President Biden is now allowed to make matters worse following Tuesday's midterms. Bill breaks down more polling and lingering election issues. The U.S. inflation rate eases in October A hard look at crime in large American cities This Day in History: The Great Wall of China open to tourism Final Thought: The country is now changed In Case You Missed It: Read Bill's latest column, "If I'm Lying, I'm Dying" Get THREE "Killing" books for the price of TWO, including Bill's latest bestseller "Killing the Legends." Go to BillOReilly.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Professor Ryan Vacca discusses his co-authored article "Breaking the Vicious Cycle Fragmenting National Law" that discusses how fragmenting developed and a possible solution. Produced and Hosted by A J. Kierstead Get an email when the latest episode releases and never miss our weekly episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, and Spotify! UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law is now accepting applications for JD and Graduate Programs at https://law.unh.edu  Legal topics include federal law, circuit court, SCOTUS, federalism

For additional notes and resources check out Douglas' website.4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesusis not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world. 4 Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.The term “spirits” (v.1) is equivalent to “prophetic messages.”The same word “spirit” is rendered prophecy in 2 Thess 2:2.The idea is similar to that in 1 Thess 5:20-21.The point: don't be duped by false prophets. God's true Spirit always works in harmony with God's Word and will never teach, tolerate or lead us into error.Are there prophets today? Click here.The world—and this includes pagans and the worldly religious—accepts worldly thinking and excuses, approving of the messages of the false prophets (vv.4-6).Anyone on the side of truth will eventually join us—or we will join him.Our focus should not be “Who's right?”, but “What's right?” Begin with the truth in God's word, then apply it relentlessly and accept the conclusions.Can a Gnostic Christian be saved? Click here.7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Verses 7-10 are poetic, and based on an ancient Christian hymn.Love is revealed by action, particularly by going.11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.Love is the very nature of God (vv.7-11). It is impossible to understand real love without appreciating the cross of Christ.In regard to vv.12-15, no one has ever fully, completely seen God (John 1:18; Isa 55:8-9), though at times God has made one aspect or another of himself visible (Exod 34, for example).We see God in the person of Jesus as recorded in the Bible (Col 2:9). But today Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, and through his spirit he lives in his body, the church (Eph 1:22-23; 2:22).Although God is invisible, he is seen in Christian relationships. It's so difficult to lead someone to Christ without his or her seeing the community of faith. The abstract becomes concrete in the fellowship of the saints.God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. In regard to vv.16-18, believers in Christ possess spiritual confidence.Fear has to do with punishment. Christians know they're forgiven, and perfect (mature, complete) love drives out fear. We revere God (a good sort of fear), but we don't stand in terror of God (the bad sort), for three reasons:We're already acquainted with him (he's no stranger), and we're confident about his unchanging nature. A true Christian need not fear death. We don't fear him because we know him.God has assured us in Christ that he'll do anything to get us to heaven. The cross is a powerful disclosure of his heart. "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17).He sets our hearts at peace, providing us with forgiveness and the gift of a good conscience (Heb 9:14). When we're living right, our hearts are at rest. This should be the “default setting” of a disciple of Christ. At his return Christ will bring salvation to those waiting for him (Hebrews 9:28).What will the judgment day be like for Christians? Will our lives be reviewed in order to determine whether we go to heaven or hell, or merely to determine some level of reward in heaven?All believers will appear before the judgment seat (2 Cor 5:10).We are not saved by our works (Eph 2:8-9), but we are rewarded according to our works (Matt 25:21). Before death we know that we are saved (1 John 5:13) and thus be confident and unashamed before God at his coming (2:28).Jesus frequently mentions treasures in heaven (Matt 6:20).Punishment, like reward, is in direct proportion to knowledge and responsibility (Luke 12:47-48). It is just not true that all get the same reward or punishment.At the return of Christ we will:receive the gift of eternal life (1 Cor 15:50, 53),meet Jesus Christ, andbecome like him (3:2).19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.As John puts it in 4:20, if we claim to love the (invisible) Lord while we don't love our (visible) brother, we lie.It isn't logically possible to love God (who is invisible) if you don't love your brothers and sisters (who are visible).Contradictions to the claim that we love God -- all of which bring reproach on the Christian church -- include:Bitterness and resentment (Heb 12:15).Racism and prejudice, which are forms of hatred (Gal 5:20). It has been accurately observed, “11:00 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.”Refusal to connect relationally with other Christians. Isolation contributes to denominationalism (1 Cor 1:10-12; 3:16-17; John 17:20-23).Fragmenting or fractured marriages (Eph 5:22-33).Disrespectful treatment of others, violating the spirit of love (1 Cor 13:1-8).Lack of forgiveness -- which is damnable (Matt 6:14-15).Love is the bottom line.A true Christian must actively love God, his brothers and sisters in the faith, and the lost.These truths -- a personal walk with God, involvement in the church, and commitment to evangelism -- we hold to be (biblically) self-evident.Thought questions:Am I spiritually gullible, or am I cautiously skeptical, testing everything by the Word?Are we walking confidently before God and man? How do we feel about the judgment?Does the church you attend reflect local demographics, or is there a lack of love for those who are different from the norm?

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/wXGQLKHs8jo   The CPSC and Accompany USA are recalling Accompany Black Ceramic MugsWith Cork Bottoms.  These coffee cups may crack and break when hot liquids are poured into them creating burn hazards.  About 25,000 of these cups were sold online at accompanyusa.com, logomark.com, vision1usa.com, nccustom.com/brand/lanco, infinityiwc.square.site, and admartproducts.com.  Immediately stop using these ceramic mugs and contact Accompany USA  collect at 1-909-595-0178 and via email at rain@accompanyusa.com to receive a full refund.   https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2022/Accompany-USA-Recalls-Ceramic-Mugs-with-Cork-Bottoms-Due-to-Burn-Hazard   #accompanyusa #coffeecups #fragmenting #burns #recall  

I was going to share about Gav and Violet being away on holidays for 6 weeks and me staying at home. I'm getting lots of questions about this! But then I decided to share a more in depth answer that was posed to me by a coach. ‘Is catharsis fragmenting?' So I answered both sharing one of my key three pillars that drives my work - Doshas. My journey with catharsis and how I work with clients started with understanding myself first. Listen in to hear the pros and cons of catharsis as well as the dangers of it. If you're listening live and keen on the practitioner training there is still space! We start 5th May. You'll learn more about catharsis and who it may work for or if you're a practitioner who can hold space for this type of work. The link below will tell you if there are still openings. If not you can join the waitlist for next year. https://theartoflisteningtoyourbody.com/emotional-body-training

Films examined: Prospero's Books (1991), Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012), The Baby of Mâcon (1993) & Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015). NOTE: This is the 3rd Volume (audio-only) of the RANKING GREENAWAY YouTube series — check out the playlist here.

In this episode Ben Edwards talks with David Doran about the further fragmenting of Fundamentalism.

In this episode Dave Doran and Ben Edwards discuss the fragmenting of Fundamentalism.

The accelerating growth in the AI market requires different approaches from the hardware side. Cerebras's approach is that size matters and bigger is better: the company's massive wafer chip is the base of its AI intentions. CFO Tony Maslowski discusses the company's core insights and how that positions them to compete in the market. Maslowski, the former CFO at Avago Broadcom, also shares his view on the current supply chain challenges, on when these new-gen companies might go public, and on what the end game might be for the incumbent - Nvidia - and its challengers. Topics Covered 3:00 minute mark - Cerebras Origins 7:00 – Unpacking Cerebras's core insight 10:00 – How has the market evolved the past few years? 14:00 – Telling a new story and carving a new path in the chip space 21:00 – System vs. accelerator solutions 22:45 – Current end markets for AI 29:00 – Differentiating between AI and supercomputing 33:00 – Understanding training vs. inference 36:45 – The fragmentation of AI uses and suppliers 41:45 – When do these companies start coming public? 43:45 – The limits or challenges on competing for a new company 46:45 – What force drives AI use in the near term? 48:45 – The lost flexibility in the semiconductor supply chain 53:45 – The auto industry's chip needs 55:00 – Where the leading force in the chip industry will come from

There's a ton of content out there right now that alludes to the fact that Bourbon is broken or somehow on the verge of collapse. Lets take some time to talk about it.

On today's #TeachableTuesday I'm discussing "Fragmentation in relationships" Fragmenting is pieces of something. In a relationship, this can come in the forms of someone in the family using/doing: Strong views on politics, religion, and health issues Drugs abuse Alcohol abuse Domestic Abuse Divorce Single parenting Infidelity Criminal behavior Neglect and more! What does this have to do with abuse? Before I go further, there are plenty of people that experience one or more of these during their childhood and later have healthy and stable relationships. There are studies to show how these above can impact the possibility of an unhealthy union. Men and women may have experienced the list I mentioned and resolve never to separate or divorce from their partner as their parents did. This can take a toll on a relationship. Many stay in broken or toxic relationships for the kids and vow to get away once the children are 18 years old or after they get out of college. Fragmentation can also occur when a person is trying to protect themselves from a traumatic event or a situation witnessed. How can you heal? First, be honest with yourself. If your relationship isn't working, perhaps you have fallen out of love with a person, or they have been taking on the negative behaviors that I previously mentioned and so seeking out counseling or treatment is a priority. If illegal activity is happening or abuse please seek out help through law enforcement. There can be healing and even reconciliation if everyone involved admitting they have a problem and work towards mending the relationship. Utilize self-care and take small steps towards reclaiming your life. What do you think about this topic? Have you noticed any patterns that may be attributed to past or generational fragmentation? Someone out there needs to know they are not alone and that they can survive. Perhaps you are a parent or friend of someone trapped in an abusive relationship and need to know how to help. My goal is to share awareness, offer empowerment, and educate others about emotional traumas and domestic abuse. Here I will share my story and also stories of courage and healing from Survivors, Coaches, to Therapists/Counselors. Find me here- https://linktr.ee/melindakunst Find help and info here- https://www.thehotline.org/ https://www.domesticshelters.org/ https://internationalwomenshouse.org/get-help https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/national-global-organizations Sexual Assault Hotline- https://www.rainn.org/ National Suicide Prevention lifeline-800-273-8255 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/melinda-j-kunst/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/melinda-j-kunst/support

Kevin Calabro joins Seth Everett to discuss his leaving the Trailblazers broadcast last year and his plans to return to broadcasting soon, the sports media environment changing amid the pandemic, Nate McMillan in Atlanta and the job he's done taking the Hawks nearly to the Finals. Seth Everett discusses cord-cutting when it comes to sports and the likelihood of leagues moving their games to streaming platforms. And cross-talk with Joe Fann, who is in for Ian Furness.

This episode comes with a trigger warning. We are going to talk about social media, politics, culture, and what to do as a Christian author in a world that is growing more hostile to Christian authors. If you don't want to hear about that today, I can recommend a great podcast called Compelled, hosted by […] You can listen to this episode How to Navigate the Fragmenting of Social Media As a Christian Author with Scott Minor on Christian Publishing Show.

This episode comes with a trigger warning. We are going to talk about social media, politics, culture, and what to do as a Christian author in a world that is growing more hostile to Christian authors. If you don’t want to hear about that today, I can recommend a great podcast called Compelled, hosted by […] The post How to Navigate the Fragmenting of Social Media As a Christian Author with Scott Minor appeared first on Christian Publishing Show.

[Fragmenting database] [Reconnecting temporal link] Eftersläntande individer har upphört sitt rörelsemönster. Topografisk analys klar: huvudoperatören är nöjd med sin nuvarande lokation. Analys av sub-topografi indikerar urgammal grottformation. En gruppmedlem saknas. Räddningsaktion uppgraderas till prio [1]. Analyserar brottsplats, kod [gul]. Huvudoperatören vidtar stressreducerande samtal med gruppen. Seismologisk aktivitet i området. Ytterligare en gruppmedlem saknas. Subjekt 'E' undersöker aktiviteten på nära håll, trots avsaknaden av mätinstrument. Passage till grottsystemet funnen med oklara medel. Oscanningsbart objekt påträffat. Objektet tycks oförmöget att reflektera ljus. Korta impulser som påminner om elektricitet alstras från objektet. [0] levande varelser återfinns i området. Objektets hölje tycks stöta bort scanningsförsök. Kriminellt subjekt 'J' återfunnet. Aktiverar anhållningsprotokoll. Tidsanomali upptäckt: kungsödla, format mini. [Connection failure] [Data lost]

In this episode, I interview Frances Valintine, the Founder, and CEO of The Mind Lab and Tech Futures Lab. The Mind Lab is a platform that empowers students, schools, teachers, and principals to develop contemporary knowledge and practical skills for today's rapidly evolving world and the future of work. Frances was named one of the top 50 movers and shakers in technology education and awarded a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education and the technology sector. She started Mind Lab in September 2013 in her early 40s, The Mind Lab being the 5th organization she has started.  From being a small incubator with five full-time team members, they had a very steep growth and now have around 100 people who work with them on a constant basis with at least 80 working full time. The Mind Lab operates as a social enterprise and has been sustainably profitably all through. Before The Mind Lab, Frances had a consultancy business around marketing, got involved with an organization that was geared towards developing talent for the film and creative industries, and also started an Italian food store that she sold eleven months later. She says the hardest thing in growing a small business is knowing when to accelerate and when to put the foot on the brake, and that the one thing she would tell herself on day one of starting out in business is, “Go fast and don’t let any naysayers get in your ear” Stay tuned to learn some really valuable small business growth tips from Frances. This Cast Covers: Running the only private graduate school in New Zealand with students who are typically between 35 and 55. Their two brands under one organization and what each is all about. Generating revenue from tuition fees, scholarships (Government funding), short courses/one-day workshops, programs that are paid for by corporate clients, and government contracts. Being a technologist from a young age and discovering the appetite for education centered around technology for the older population. Starting out with 5 people and having a steep growth to achieve profitability and the current 80 full-time employees. Frances’ amazing serial entrepreneurship journey and how she loves being involved with impactful businesses and organizations.  Her legitimate desire to do good in the world through her work. Working towards the adoption of continual professional development as a culture in New Zealand. Fragmenting their marketing across multiple channels and why small businesses should ensure their marketing is mobile-first, web-based, and highly responsive. Being comfortable with self-funding her businesses using her own assets. Dealing with the different stress levels that come with being a small business owner. Doing well during the pandemic due to their being largely digital and remote-oriented. The challenges they have in finding great talent in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other tech-oriented disciplines. Starting her first business in her early 20s and never working for anybody. The beauty of being able to watch an idea come to life to become a successful business. Developing habits around more of what makes you happy as a small business owner. Hiring for attitude and aptitude instead of putting so much focus on paper qualifications. Why every small business owner should make sure they hire people personally. Building a culture where employees feel that they’re trusted. Continuously learning and getting to university after 40. The importance of having a rapport going with board members outside the office. Her experience with exiting a business. Getting out amongst interesting people and learning from others. The value of digitizing as many processes in your small business as possible. Additional Resources:   The Mind Lab Tech Futures Lab Wondery       Music from https://filmmusic.io "Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The rise of advanced information technologies has resulted in sophisticated efforts to fragment American society — from foreign actors like Russia, to conspiracy theorists and political campaigns — and these efforts are working. ASU’s Braden Allenby tells us what this looks like, how it works and what we can do to restore a robust, pluralistic democracy.

Big tech, among others, is rapidly changing the global sports viewer landscape with varying impacts, US sports gambling is HERE, golf makes a strong fall showing with the Masters and Calloway’s purchase of Top Golf, and Vlad and Mike are once again joined by guest host Anand in this week’s episode of the Pod On Point podcast.

In this week's openers, Mike begins with the scoop on Top Golf's sale to Callaway. Anand weighs in with a look at a first time Fall Master's and the tour's new phenom, Bryson DeChambeau.    In top stories, Vlad talks about the now omni-present availability of sports gambling across the US and compares notes with Anand on how the landscape may change over the coming years. Anand then details the rapidly changing sports viewership landscape that has both US and global impacts.   Closing with their standard C'mon man jab, Mike highlights the Warriors potential opponents if the NBA had relegation…

A conversation with Adam Marblestone about his new project - Focused Research Organizations. Focused Research Organizations (FROs) are a new initiative that Adam is working on to address gaps in current institutional structures. You can read more about them in this white paper that Adam released with Sam Rodriques. Links FRO Whitepaper Adam on Twitter Adam's Website Transcript [00:00:00]   In this conversation, I talked to Adam marble stone about focused research organizations. What are focused research organizations you may ask. It's a good question. Because as of this recording, they don't exist yet. There are new initiatives that Adam is working on to address gaps. In current institutional structures, you can read more about them in the white paper that Adam released recently with San Brad regens. I'll put them in the show notes. Uh, [00:01:00] just a housekeeping note. We talk about F borrows a lot, and that's just the abbreviation for focus, research organizations. just to start off, in case listeners have created a grave error and not yet read the white paper to explain what an fro is. Sure. so an fro is stands for focus research organization. the idea is, is really fundamentally, very simple and maybe we'll get into it. On this chat of why, why it sounds so trivial. And yet isn't completely trivial in our current, system of research structures, but an fro is simply a special purpose organization to pursue a problem defined problem over us over a finite period of time. Irrespective of, any financial gain, like in a startup and, and separate from any existing, academic structure or existing national lab or things [00:02:00] like that. It's just a special purpose organization to solve, a research and development problem. Got it. And so the, you go much more depth in the paper, so I encourage everybody to go read that. I'm actually also really interested in what's what's sort of the backstory that led to this initiative. Yeah. it's kind of, there's kind of a long story, I think for each of us. And I would be curious your, a backstory of how, how you got involved in, in thinking about this as well. And, but I can tell you in my personal experience, I had been spending a number of years, working on neuroscience and technologies related to neuroscience. And the brain is sort of a particularly hard a technology problem in a number of ways. where I think I ran up against our existing research structures. in addition to just my own abilities and [00:03:00] everything, but, but I think, I think I ran up against some structural issues too, in, in dealing with, the brain. So, so basically one thing we want to do, is to map is make a map of the brain. and to do that in a, in a scalable high-speed. Way w what does it mean to have a map of the brain? Like what, what would, what would I see if I was looking at this map? Yeah, well, we could, we could take this example of a mouse brain, for example. just, just, just for instance, so that there's a few things you want to know. You want to know how the individual neurons are connected to each other often through synopsis, but also through some other types of connections called gap junctions. And there are many different kinds of synopsis. and there are many different kinds of neurons and, There's also this incredibly multi-scale nature of this problem where a neuron, you know, it's, it's axon, it's wire that it sends out can shrink down to like a hundred nanometers in [00:04:00] thickness or less. but it can also go over maybe centimeter long, or, you know, if you're talking about, you know, the neurons that go down your spinal cord could be meter long, neurons. so this incredibly multi-scale it poses. Even if irrespective of other problems like brain, computer interfacing or real time communication or so on, it just poses really severe technological challenges, to be able to make the neurons visible and distinguishable. and to do it in a way where, you can use microscopy, two image at a high speed while still preserving all of that information that you need, like which molecules are aware in which neuron are we even looking at right now? So I think, there's a few different ways to approach that technologically one, one is with. The more mature technology is called the electron microscope, electromicroscopy approach, where basically you look at just the membranes of the neurons at any given pixel sort of black or white [00:05:00] or gray scale, you know, is there a membrane present here or not? and then you have to stitch together images. Across this very large volume. but you have to, because you're just able to see which, which, which pixels have membrane or not. you have to image it very fine resolution to be able to then stitch that together later into a three D reconstruction and you're potentially missing some information about where the molecules are. And then there's some other more, less mature technologies that use optical microscopes and they use other technologies like DNA based barcoding or protein based barcoding to label the neurons. Lots of fancy, but no matter how you do this, This is not about the problem that I think can be addressed by a small group of students and postdocs, let's say working in an academic lab, we can go a little bit into why. Yeah, why not? They can certainly make big contributions and have to, to being able to do this. But I think ultimately if we're talking about something like mapping a mouse brain, it's not [00:06:00] going to be, just a, a single investigator science, Well, so it depends on how you think about it. One, one, one way to think about it is if you're just talking about scaling up, quote, unquote, just talking about scaling up the existing, technologies, which in itself entails a lot of challenges. there's a lot of work that isn't academically novel necessarily. It's things like, you know, making sure that, Improving the reliability with which you can make slices of the brain, into, into tiny slices are making sure that they can be loaded, onto, onto the microscope in an automated fast way. those are sort of more engineering problems and technology or process optimization problems. That's one issue. And just like, so Y Y Can't like, why, why couldn't you just sort of have like, isn't that what grad students are for like, you know, it's like pipetting things and, doing, doing graduate work. So like why, why couldn't that be done in the lab? That's not why [00:07:00] they're ultimately there. Although I, you know, I was, I was a grad student, did a lot of pipetting also, but, But ultimately they're grad student. So are there in order to distinguish themselves as, as scientists and publish their own papers and, and really generate a unique academic sort of brand really for their work. Got it. So there's, there's both problems that are lower hanging fruit in order to. in order to generate that type of academic brand, but don't necessarily fit into a systems engineering problem of, of putting together a ConnectTo mapping, system. There's also the fact that grad students in, you know, in neuroscience, you know, may not be professional grade engineers, that, for example, know how to deal with the data handling or computation here, where you would need to be, be paying people much higher salaries, to actually do, you know, the kind of industrial grade, data, data piping, and, and, and many other [00:08:00] aspects. But I think the fundamental thing that I sort of realized that I think San Rodriquez, my coauthor on this white paper also realized it through particularly working on problems that are as hard as, as clinic Comix and as multifaceted as a system building problem. I th I think that's, that's the key is that there's, there's certain classes of problems that are hard to address in academia because they're system building problems in the sense that maybe you need five or six different. activities to be happening simultaneously. And if any, one of them. Doesn't follow through completely. you're sort of, you don't have something that's novel and exciting unless you have all the pieces putting, you know, put together. So I don't have something individually. That's that exciting on my own as a paper, Unless you, and also three other people, separately do very expert level, work, which is itself not academically that interesting. Now having the connectome is academically [00:09:00] interesting to say the least. but yes, not only my incentives. but also everybody else's incentives are to, to maybe spend say 60% of their time doing some academically novel things for their thesis and only spend 40% of their time on, on building the connectome system. Then it's sort of, the probability of the whole thing fitting together. And then. We see everyone can perceive that. And so, you know, they basically, the incentives don't align well, for, for what you would think of as sort of team science or team engineering or systems engineering. yeah. And so I'm like, I think, I think everybody knows that I'm actually like very much in favor of this thing. So, I'm going to play devil's advocate to sort of like tease out. what I think are. Important things to think about. so, so one sort of counter argument would be like, well, what about projects? Like cert, right? Like that [00:10:00] is a government yeah. Led, you should, if you do requires a lot of systems engineering, there's probably a lot of work that is not academic interesting. And yet, it, it, it happens. So like there's clearly like proof of concepts. So like what what's like. W why, why don't we just have more things like, like certain for, the brain. Yeah. And I think this gets very much into why we want to talk about a category of focused research organizations and also a certain scale, which we can get into. So, so I think certain is actually in many ways, a great example of, of this, obviously this kind of team science and team engineering is incredible. And there are many others, like LIGO or, or CBO observatory or the human genome project. These are great examples. I think the, the problem there is simply that these, these are multibillion dollar initiatives that really take decades of sustained. government involvement, to make it happen. And so once they get going, and [00:11:00] once that flywheel sort of start spinning, then you have you have it. And so, and so that, that is a nonacademic research project and also the physics and astronomy communities, I think have more of a track record and pipeline overall. perhaps because it's easier, I think in physical sciences, then in some of these sort of emerging areas of, of, you know, biology or sort of next gen fabrication or other areas where it's, it's, there's less of a, a grounded set of principles. So, so for CERN, everybody in the physics basically can agree. You need to get to a certain energy scale. Right. And so none of the theoretical physicists who work on higher energy systems are going to be able to really experimentally validate what they're doing without a particle accelerator of a certain level. None of the astronomers are gonna be able to really do deep space astronomy without a space telescope. and so you can agree, you know, community-wide that, This is something that's worth doing. And I think there's a lot of incredible innovation that happens in those with focus, research organizations. We're thinking about a scale that, [00:12:00] that sort of medium science, as opposed to small science, which is like a, you know, academic or one or a few labs working together, Or big science, which is like the human genome project was $3 billion. For example, a scope to be about $1 per base pair. I don't know what actually came out, but the human genome has 3 billion basis. So that was a good number. these are supposed to be medium scale. So maybe similar to the size of a DARPA project, which is like maybe between say 25 and. A hundred or $150 million for a project over a finite period of time. And they're there. The idea is also that they can be catalytic. So there's a goal that you could deliver over a, some time period. It doesn't have to be five years. It could be seven years, but there's some, some definable goal over definable time period, which is then also catalytic. so in some ways it will be more equivalent to. For the genome project example, what happened after the genome project where, the [00:13:00] cost of genome sequencing through, through new technologies was brought down, basically by a million fold or so is, is, is, how George Church likes to say it, inventing new technologies, bringing them to a level of, of readiness where they can then be, be used catalytically. whereas CERN, you know, It's just a big experiment that really has to keep going. Right. And it's also sort of a research facility. there's also permanent institutes. I think there's a, is a, is a, certainly a model that can do team science and, and many of the best in the brain mapping space, many of the sort of largest scale. connectomes in particular have come either from Janelia or from the Allen Institute for brain science, which are both sort of permanent institutes, that are, that are sort of, nonacademic or semi academic. but that's also a different thing in the sense that it's, it takes a lot of activation energy to create an Institute. And then that becomes now, a permanent career path rather than sort of focusing solely on what's the shortest path to. To some [00:14:00] innovation, the, the, the permanence. So, so the, the flip side of the permanence is that, I guess, how are you going to convince people to do this, this, like this temporary thing, where. I think, someone asked on Twitter about like, you know, if it's being run by the government, these people are probably going to get, government salaries. So you're, you're getting a government salary, without the like one upside of a government job, which is the security. so like what, what is the incentive for, for people to, to come do this? Yeah. And I think, I think it depends on whether it's government or philanthropic, philanthropic fro Faros are also definitely. An option and maybe in many ways more flexible, because the, you know, the government sort of has to, has to contract in a certain way and compete out, you know, contracts in a certain way. They can't just decide, the exact set of people to do something, for example. So, so the government side has. Both a huge [00:15:00] opportunity in the sense that I think this is a very good match for a number of things that the government really would care about. and the government has, has, has the money, and resources to do this, but philanthropic is also one we should consider. but in any case, there are questions about who and who will do Froy and, and why. and I think the basic answer though, it, it comes down to, it's not a matter of, of cushiness of the career certainty. it's, it's really, these are for problems that are not doable any other way. this is actually in many ways, the definition is that you're only going to do this. if this is the only way to do it, and if it's incredibly important. So it really is a, it's a medium scale moonshots. you would have to be extremely passionate about it. That being said, there are reasons I think in approximate sense why one might want to do it both in terms of initiating one and in terms of sort of B being part of them. [00:16:00] so one is simply that you can do science. that is for a fundamental purpose or, or, or, pure, purely driven toward your passion to solve a problem. and yet can have potentially a number of the affordances of, of industry such as, industry competitive salaries, potentially. I think the government, we have to ask about what the government can do, but, but in a certain philanthropic setting, you could do it another aspect that I think a lot of scientists find. Frustrating in the academic system is precisely that they have to. spend so much work to differentiate themselves and do something that's completely separate from what their friends are doing, in order to pay the bills basically. So, so if, if you don't eventually go and get your own appealing, you know, Tenure track job or, or so on and so forth. the career paths available in academia are much, much fewer, and often not, not super well compensated. And, and [00:17:00] so there are a number of groups of people that I've seen in sort of, if you want critical mass labs or environments where they're working together, actually, despite perhaps the. Incentive to, to, differentiate where they're working, does a group of three or four together. and they would like to stay that way, but they can't stay that way forever. And so it's also an opportunity if you, if you have a group of people that wants to solve a problem, to create something a little bit like, like a seal team. so like when, when I was, I'm not very generally militaristic person, but, when I was a kid, I was very obsessed with the Navy seals. But, but anyway, I think the seal team was sort of very tight knit. kind of a special forces operation that works together on one project is something that a lot of scientists and engineers I think want. and the problem is just that they don't have a structure in which they can do that. Yeah. So then finally, I think that, although in many cases maybe essentially built into the structure fro is make sense. We can [00:18:00] talk about this as, as nonprofit organizations. these are the kinds of projects where, you would be getting a relatively small team together to basically create a new industry. and if you're in the right place at the right time, then after an fro is over, you would be in the ideal place to start. The next startup in an area where it previously, it's not been possible to do startups because the horizons for a venture investment would have been too long to make it happen from the beginning. Well, that's actually a great transition to a place that  I'm still not certain about, which is  what happens. After it fro, cause you, you said that it, that it's a explicitly temporary organization. And then, how do you make sure that it sort of achieves its goal, right? Like, because you can see so many of these, these projects that actually sound really great and they like go in and possibly could do good work and then somehow it all just sort of diffuses. [00:19:00] so, so have you thought about how to sort of make sure that that lives on. Well, this is a tricky thing as we've discussed, in a number of settings. So, in a, like to maybe throw that question back to you after I answer it. Cause I think you have interesting thoughts about that too, but, but in short, it's, it's a tricky thing. So, so the fro. Is entirely legal focused there isn't, there's no expectation that it would continue, by default and simply because it's a great group of people, or because it's been doing interesting work, it's sort of, it is designed to fulfill a certain goal and it should be designed also from the beginning to have a, a plan of the transition. Like it could be a nonprofit organization where it is explicitly intended that at the end, assuming success, One or more startups could be created. One or more datasets could be released and then a, you know, a much less expensive and intensive, nonprofits, structure could be be there to [00:20:00] host the data and provide it to the world. it could be something where. the government would be using it as a sort of prototyping phase for something that could then become a larger project or be incorporated into a larger moonshot project. So I think you explicitly want a, a goal of a finite tune to it, and then also a explicit, upfront, deployment or transition plan, being central to it much more so than any publication or anything. Of course. At the same time. there is the pitfall that when you have a milestone driven or goal focused organization, that the funder would try to micromanage that and say, well, actually, not only do I care about you meeting this goal, but also I really care that by month six, you've actually got exactly this with this instrument and this throughput, and I'm not going to let you buy this other piece of equipment. Unless, you know, you show me that, you know, [00:21:00] and that's a problem that I think, we sometimes see with, externalized research models, like DARPA ARPA models, that try to. achieve more coordination and, and, and goal driven among otherwise, somewhat uncoordinated entities like contractors and, and universities that, that are working on programs, but then they, they, they, they achieve that coordination by then, managing the process and, with an fro, I think it will be closer to. You know, if you have a series, a investment in the startup, you know, you are reporting back to your investors and, and they, they, at some level care, you know, about the process and maybe they're on your board. but ultimately the CEO gets to decide, how am I going to spend the money? And it's extremely flexible to get to the goal. Yeah. Yeah. The, the micromanage, like [00:22:00] figuring out how to avoid, Micromanagement seems like it's going to be really tricky because it's sort of like once you get to that amount of money, I like, have you, have you thought about, like how, like, if you could do some kind of like actually, well, I'll, I'll give her the, the, the, the, the, the thing that the cruxy thing is like this, I think there's a huge amount of trust that needs to happen in it. And what I'm. like I constantly wonder about is like, is there this like fundamental tension between the fact that, especially with like government money, we really do want it to be transparent and well-spent, but at the same time, in order to sort of do these like knowledge frontier projects, sometimes you need to do things that. Are a little weird or like seem like a waste of money at the time, if you're not like intimately connected. and so there's, there's this sort of tension [00:23:00] between accountability and, Sort of like doing the things that need to get done. I agree with that and Efros, we're going to navigate that. Yeah. I agree with that. And I think it relates to a number of themes that you've touched on and that we've discussed with, which has sort of, has to do with the changing overall research landscape of, in what situations can that trust actually occur, you know, in bell labs, I think there was a lot of trust. throughout, throughout that system. And as you have more externalized research, conflicting incentives and so on it, it's, it's hard. It's hard to obtain that trust. startups of course, can align that financially, to a large degree. I think there are things that we want to avoid. so one of the reasons I think that these need to be scoped as. Deliverables driven and roadmaps, systematic projects over finite periods of time, is to avoid, individual [00:24:00] personalities, interests, and sort of conflicting politics, ending up. Fragmenting that resource into a million pieces. So, so I think this is a problem that you see a lot with billion dollar scale projects, major international and national initiatives. Everybody has a different, if you say, I want this to be, to solve neuroscience, you know, and here's $10 billion. Everybody has a different opinion about what solved neuroscience is. And there's also lots of different conflicting personalities and, and leadership there. So I think for an fro, there needs to be an initial phase, where there's a sort of objective process of technology roadmapping. And people figure people understand and transparently understand what are the competing technologies? What are the approaches? What, what are the risks? And you understand it. and you also closely understand the people involved. but importantly, the people doing that roadmapping and sort of catalyzing the initial formation of that [00:25:00] fro need to have a somewhat objective perspective. It's not just funding my lab. It's actually, you, you want to have vision, but you, you need to. Subjected to a relatively objective process, which, which is hard because you also don't want it to be a committee driven consensus process. You want it to be active, in, in a, in a systematic, analysis sense, but, but not in a, everyone agrees and likes it, you know, emotionally sense. and so that, that's a hard thing. but you need to establish it's that trust upfront, with, with the funder, And that's a hard process and it gets a hard process to do as a large government program. I think DARPA does it pretty well with their program managers where a program manager will come in and they will pitch DARPA on the idea of the program. there'll be a lot of analysis behind it and, but then once, once they're going, that program manager has tremendous discretion, and trust. To how they actually run that [00:26:00] project. And so I think you need something like a program manager driven process to initiate the fro and figure out is there appropriate leadership and goals and our livable as reasonable, Yeah, that seems the way, at least the way that it's presented in the paper, it, it feels a little bit chicken and egg in that. so with DARPA, DARPA is a sort of permanent organization that brings in program managers. And then those programmers program managers then go, start programs, whereas, The look at fro it seems like there's this chicken and egg between like, you sort of, you need someone spearheading it. It seems like, but then it, you sort of like, it, it seems like it will be very hard to get someone who's qualified to, to spearhead it, to do that before you have funding, but then you need someone spearheading it in order to get that [00:27:00] funding. yeah. Like, yeah. How, how are you thinking about. Cracking that that's, that's sort of the motivation for me behavior over the next year or two, is that I'm trying to go out and search for them. And, a little bit of it is from my own creativity, but a lot of it is going out and talking to people and try and understand what the best ideas. Here would be, and who are the networks of, of human beings behind those ideas, and trying to make kind of a prioritized set of borrows. Now, this kind of thing would have to be done again, I think to some degree, if there was a, larger umbrella program that someone else wanted to do, but, I'm both trying to get a set of, of exemplary. And representative ideas and people together, and try to help those people get funding. You know, I think there can be a stage process. I agree that, in the absence of a funder showing [00:28:00] really strong interest, people committing, to really be involved is difficult, because it is a big change to people's normal. Progression through life to do something like that. but just like with startups, to the extent that you can identify, someone who's. We spiritually just really wants to do this and we'll kind of do anything to do it, the sort of founder type, and also teams that want to behave like that. that's obviously powerful, and also ideas where there's a kind of inevitability, where based on scientific roadmapping, it, it just has to happen. There's no way, you know, for neuroscience to progress unless we get better. Connectomics and I think we can go through many other fields where, because of. The structures we've had available and just the difficulty of problems now, where arguably Faros are needed in order to make progress in fields that people really care about. So, so I think you can get engagement at the level of, of discussion, and, and, and starting to nucleate [00:29:00] people. But, but there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. In the sense that it's, it's not so much as here's an fro, would you please fund to me it's we need to go and figure out where there might be Faros to be had, and then who is interested in those problems as well to, to fund and support those things. So, yeah. So I guess to recap what I see your process that is, is that you're going out, you're sort of really trying to. Identify possible people possible ideas, then go to funders and say, here, like sort of get some, some tentative interest of like, okay, what, which of these things might you be interested in if I could get it to go further and then you'll circle back to. the, the people who might be interested in sort of say like, okay, I have someone, a funder who's potentially interested. Can we [00:30:00] sort of like refine the idea? and then sort of like, like you will drive that loop hopefully to, Getting a, an fro funded that's right. And there's, there's further chicken and egg to it. that has to be solved in the sense that, when you go to funders and you say, why, you know, I have an idea for an fro. We also need to explain what an fro is, right? in a way that both, engages people in creating these futuristic models, which many people want to do, While also having some specificity of, of what we're looking for and what, what, what we think is as possible. So, and then the same on, on the, on the side of, of scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs all over the world, who, you know, have the ideas certainly, but most of those ideas have been optimized to hit, the needs of existing structures. So, so we are, we are trying to, I think, broker between those, And [00:31:00] then start prototyping a few. but the, you know, the immediate thing I think is to make, w Tom Coolio has referred to a catalog, a Sears catalog of moonshots. and so we're trying to make a catalog of, of moonshots that fit the fro category. but that sounds like the perfect name for this podcast, by the way. the cataloging mood child, like, you're kind of kind of cataloging moonshots and ways to get moonshots and yeah, absolutely. Yeah. and so I guess another sort of, thing that I've seen, and I'm not sure, it's almost like for people like a lot of people who like really want. Who like sees something as inevitable and they really want to get it done. In sort of like the current environment we're recording in October, 2020. there's. There's sort of this perception that capital is really cheap. [00:32:00] you know, there's a lot of venture capitalists there. They're pretty aggressive about funding and one could make an argument that, if it's, if it, it really is going to be inevitable and it really is going to start a new industry. Then that is exactly where venture capital funding should come in. And I do see this a lot where people, you know, it's like they have this thing that they really want to see exist and they, you know, come out of the lab and it started a company that's sort of extremely common. so. I guess, like, what almost would you say to someone who you see doing this that you think maybe should do an fro instead? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think it's a complicated question and obviously, you know, we got to see VC also, you know, obviously VC backed, you know, innovation is, is, is one of, if not sort of the key, [00:33:00] Things that is driving technology right now. So, so I'm in no way saying that fro is, are somehow superior to two startups, in any generalized way. So I think that things that can be startups and are good as startups should be startups and people, if you have an idea that could be good for a startup, I think you should go do it. Generally speaking. But, there, there are a few considerations, so yeah. So I think you can divide it into categories where VCs, no, it's not a good idea for startups. And therefore won't talk to you, in cases where VCs don't always know whether or not it's good for a startup or whether there's a way that you could do it as a startup, but it would involve some compromise that is actually better not to make, even potentially for the longterm. economic prospects of, of an area. So things that can happen, would be, if you have something that's basically meant to be a kind of platform technology or which you [00:34:00] need to develop a tool or a platform in order to explore a whole very wide space of potential applications. maybe you have something like a new method of microscopy or something, or a new way to measure proteins in the cell or things like that, that, you know, you could target it to a very particular, if you want product market fit application, where you would be able to make the most money on that and get the most traction, the soonest. Yeah. Sometimes people call this, you know, the, the, the, the sort of Tesla Roadster, equivalent. You want to guys as quickly as you can to the Tesla Roadster. And I think generally, what people are doing with, with that kind of model, where you take people that have science, to offer, and you say what's the closest fastest you can get, to a Tesla Roadster that lets you it lets you build, get, get revenue and start, start being financially sustainable and start building a team, to go further. generally that's really good. and generally we need more scientists to learn how to do that. it'd be supported to do that, but, [00:35:00] sometimes you have things that really are meant to be. either generalized platforms or public goods, public data, or knowledge to underlie an entire field. And if you work to try to take the path, the shortest path to the Roadster, you would end up not producing that platform. You would end up, producing something that is specialized to compete in that lowest hanging fruit regime, but then in the, in, in doing so you would forego the more general larger. Larger thing. And, you know, Alan Kay has, has the set of quotes, that Brett Victor took is linked on his website. and I think Alan K meant something very different actually, when he said this, but he's, he refers to the dynamics of the trillions rather than the billions. Right. and this is something where in, and we can talk about this more. I'd be curious about your thoughts on that, but something like the transistor. You know, you, you could try to do the transistor as a startup. and maybe at the time, you know, the best application for transistors would have been [00:36:00] radios. I don't think like that. I think it was, it was guiding a rockets. Yeah. So you could have, you could have sort of had had a transistors for rockets company and then tried to branch out into, becoming Intel. You know, but really, given the structures we had, then the transistor was allowed to be more of a, a broadly, broadly explored platform. yeah, that, that progressed in a way where we got the trillions version. And I worry sometimes that even some startups that have been funded at least for a seed round kind of stage, and that are claiming that they want to develop a general platform are going to actually struggle a little bit later. when investors, you know, see that, see that they would need to spend way more money to build that thing. then the natural shortest path to a Roadster, or another words the Roadster is, is, somehow illusory. yeah. Yeah, this [00:37:00] is, this is a. Sort of like a regime that I'm really interested in and a, just on the transistor example, I've, I've looked at it. So just the, the history is that it was developed at bell labs, in order to prevent a T and T from being broken up, bell labs had to, under strictly licensed a bunch of their innovations, including the transistor William Shockley went off and, Started, chocolate semiconductor, the traders eight then left and started, Fairchild and then Intel. And, believe that that's roughly the right history. but the, the really interesting thing about that is to ask the question of like, one, what would have happened if, bell labs had exclusive license to the transistor and then to what would have happened if they had like exclusively licensed it to, Shockley semiconductor. And I think I would argue in both of those situations, you don't [00:38:00] end up. Having the world we have today because I fell labs. It probably goes down this path where it's not part of the core product. and so they just sort of like do some vaguely interesting things with it, but are never incentivized to like, you know, invent, like the, the planner processing method or anything. Interesting. yeah. Yeah. And so I guess where I'm. Go. And then like at the same time, the interesting thing is like, so Shockley is more, akin to like doing a startup. Right. And so it's like, what if they had exclusive license to it? And the, what I would argue is actually like that also would've killed it because, you have like, they had notoriously bad management. And so if you have this, this company with. And like the only reason that, the trader could go and start a Fairchild was because they, that was, that was [00:39:00] an open license. So this is actually a very long way of asking the question of, if F borrows are going to have a huge impact, it seems like they should default to. Really being open about what they create from like IP to data. but at the same time, that sort of raises this incentive problem where, people who think that they are working on something incredibly valuable, should want to do a startup. And then. And so there, and then similarly, even if they'd be like that sort of couldn't be a thing, they would want to privatize as much of the output of an fro. and so which. Maybe necessary in order to, to get the funding to make it happen. So I guess like, how are you thinking about that tension? That was a very long winded. Yeah. [00:40:00] Yeah. Well, there's, there's a lot, a lot there, I think, to loop back to you. So, so I think, right, so, so this idea that we've talked a bit about as sort of default openness, so, so things that can be open for maximum impact should be open. there are some exceptions to that. So, so if, And it's also has to do partly with how you're scoping the problem. Right? So, so rather than having an SRO that develops drugs, let's say, because drugs really need to be patentable, right. In order to get through clinical trials, we're talking about much more money than the fro funding, you know, to do the initial discovery of a target or something. Right. So to actually bring that to humans, you know, you need to have the ability to get exclusive IP. for downstream investors and pharma companies that that would get involved in that. so there are some things that need to be patented in order to have to have their impact. but in general, you, you want, I think fro problems to steer themselves to things where indeed. it can be maximally open and maybe, maybe you, you provide [00:41:00] a system that can be used to, to, or underlie the discovery of a whole new sets of classes of drugs and so on. But you're not so much focused on the drugs themselves. Now, that being said, right. if I invest in an SRO, and I've enabled this thing, right. It kind of would make sense for the effort, you know, maybe three of the people of, of, of, of 15 in the fro will then go and start a company afterwards that then capitalizes on this and actually develops those drugs or what have you, or it takes it to the next stage. And gosh, it would really make sense if I had funded in fro. that's, those people would like to take me as a sort of first, first, first refusal to get a good deal on, on investing in this startup, for example. Right. so I think there are indirect network-based, or potentially even legal based, structure, structure based ways to both incentivize the investors and, But it's, it's a weaker, admittedly weaker, incentive financially than, [00:42:00] than, than the full capture of, of, of something. But then, but then there's, I think this gets back to the previous discussion. So which is sort of the trillions rather than the billions. So if you have something where maybe there are 10 different applications of it, Right in 10 different fields. you know, maybe, maybe we have a better way to measure proteins and based on this better way to measure proteins, we can do things in oncology and we can do things in Alzheimer's and we can do things in a bunch of different directions. We can do things in diagnostics and pandemic surveillance, and so many fields that one startup, It would be hard even to design, to start, if that could capture all of that value just as it would have been hard to design sort of transistor incorporated. Right. Right. given that, I think there's, there's a lot of reason to. To do an fro and then explore the space of applications. Use it as a means to explore a full space in which you'll then get [00:43:00] 10 startups. so if I'm the investor, I might like to be involved in all 10 of the new industry, right. And the way to do that would be to create a platform with which I can explore, but then I have a longer time horizon. Cause I have to first build the thing. Then I have to explore the application space and only then. do I get to invest in a specific verticals, right? Yeah. I think the, the two sort of tricky questions that I, I wonder about what that is one. So you mentioned like, Oh, there's 15 people in an fro, three of them go off to start a startup. What about those other 12 people? Like, I, I assume that they might be a little bit frustrated if, if that happens, Yeah, because like, like they, they did, they did help generate that value in it. It sort of gets into two questions of like capturing, like sort of kicking back, value generated by research in general, but like, yeah, it could, it could, it could be all 15 people, you know, we saw something [00:44:00] similar with open AI, you know, in a way, for example, converting, you know, into, into a, for profit or at least a big arm of it being, being the for-profit, and keeping all the people. Right. So you, you, you, you can imagine, just blanket converting. but yeah, I think, I think it's sort of, In the nature of it, that these are supposed to be things that open up such wide spaces that there's, there's sort of enough for everyone, but no, no, no one person necessarily one startup would completely capture. And I think that's true for clinic Comix too, for example. Right. So if you had really high throughput clinical, connectomics just, just to keep going on this example, that's a great example of perfect. It's a good thing as a good example. It's not. Depending on the details, whether this is exactly the first fro or not. I think it's totally, totally other issue, but, but. Connectomics there's potentially applications for AI and you know, how, how the neurocircuits work, and sort of fundamental, funding. Mental is a brain architecture and intelligence. although there's a bunch of ranges of the sort of uncertainty of exactly what that's going to be. So it's hard to sort of [00:45:00] know it until you see the data. There's also potentially applications for something like drug screening, where you could put a bunch of different, Kind of some CRISPR molecules or drug perturbations on, on a, on a brain and then look at what each one does to their, the synopsis or, and look at that in a, in a brain region specific way and sort of have ultra high, but connect to them based drug screening. Neither of those are things you can start a start up until you have connected. Right. working. but so anyway, so maybe three people would start an AI company and maybe those would be the very risk tolerant ones. and then three would start at, you know, a crisper drug company and, and, and, three would just do, do fundamental neuroscience with it and, take those capabilities and, and, and go, go back into the university system or so on and yeah. And start using that. Yeah. And the, the sort of the other related to. like creating value with it. there's, there's a little like uncut discomfort that like even I have [00:46:00] with, say like philanthropic or government funding, then going to fund a thing that proceeds to make a couple of people very wealthy. Which like, and like, there's very much arguments on both sides, right. Where it's like, it'll generate a lot of good for the world. and, and all and, and such. so, so like, I guess what would you say? I guess like, as a, as a, like, if I were a very wealthy philanthropist and I'm like, do it, like, you know, it's like, I'm just giving away money so that these people can. Yeah, the company is a complicated thing. Right? How much, how many further rich people, you know, did the Rockefeller foundation, you know, investing in the basics of molecular biology or things like that ended up generating? I mean, I think that, I think you, I think in some way the government does want to end up is they want the widely distributed benefit. And I think everything that should be an SRO should have widely distributed benefits. It shouldn't just [00:47:00] be a kind of, A startup that just, just enhances one, one person. It should be something that really contributes very broadly to economic growth and understanding of the universe and all that. But it's almost inevitable. I think that, if you create a new industry, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna feel it going to be some more written about rich successful people in that industry. And they're probably going to be some of the people that were involved. Early and thinking about it for the longest and waiting for the right time to really enter it. And so, yeah, that's a really good point. I guess the, then the question would be like, how do you know, like, like what are, what are sort of a, the sniff test you use to think about whether something would have broadly distributed benefits? That's a great question. Cause it's like connect to them. It seems like fairly clear cut or, or generating sort of like a massive data set that you then open up. Feels very [00:48:00] clear. Cut. it's. We we've talked before about that, like fro is, could like scale up a process or build a proof of concept of, of a technology. and it, it seems like that it's less clear cut how you can be sure that those are going to, like if they succeed. Yeah. I mean, there are a few different frames on it, but I mean, I think one is, FRS could develop technologies that allow you to really reduce the cost of having some. Downstream set of capabilities. so, you know, if, just to give you an example, right? If, if we had, much lower costs, gene therapies available, right? So, so sometimes when drug prices are high, you know, this is basically it's recouping these very large R and D costs and then there's competition and, and, and profit and everything involved. you know, there was the marching squarely situation and, you know, there's a bunch of, sort of. What was that? there was, remember the details, but there [00:49:00] was some instance within which, a financially controlling entity to sort of arbitrarily bumped drug prices way high, right. A particular drug. and then w was, you know, was regarded as an evil person then, and maybe that's right. but anyway, there are some places I think, within the biomedical system where you can genuinely reduce costs for everyone. Right. and it's not simply that I, you know, I make this drug and I captured a bunch of value on this drug, but you know, it's really, it should be available to everyone and I'm just copying there. There's genuine possibility to reduce costs. So if I could reduce the cost of, of the actual manufacturing of. The viruses that you use for gene therapy, that's a, that's a process innovation. that would be, you could order as a magnitude drop the cost of gene therapy. If you could figure out what's going on, in the aging process and what are the real levers on a single, you know, biological interventions that would prevent multiple age related diseases that [00:50:00] would massively drop the cost. Right? So those, those are things where, Maybe even in some ways it would be threatening, to some of, some of the pharma companies, you know, that, that work on specific age related diseases, right? Because you're going to have something that, that replaced, but this is, this is what, you know, things that are broad productivity improvements. And I think economists and people very broadly agree that, that the science and technology innovations, For the most part. although sometimes they can be used to in a way that sort of, only benefits, a very small number of people that generally speaking there's a lot you can do, with technology that will be extremely broadly shared in terms of benefit, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I do actually, like I agree with that. I'm, I'm just, I'm trying to represent as much skepticism as, as possible. Definitely. I know you agree with that. And actually, another thing that I have no idea about which I'm really interested in is as you're going and sort of creating this, [00:51:00] this moonshot catalog. how do you tell the difference between people who have these really big ideas who are like hardcore legit? but like maybe a little bit crazy. And then people who are just crackpots. Yeah, well, I don't claim to be able to do it in every field. and, and I think there's a reason why I've, I'm not trying to do a quantum gravity, fro you know, both, both, because I don't know that that's, you know, I think that's maybe better matched for just individual. Totally. Open-ended Sunday, you know, fun, brilliant people for 30 or 40 year long period to just do whatever they want. Right. Yeah. For quantum gravity, rather than directed, you know, research, but, But also because there's a class of problem that I think requires a sort of Einsteinian type breakthrough in fr fro is, are not, not perfect for that in terms of finding people. I mean, I, I find that, there's a lot of pent up need for, this is that's my preliminary feeling. and you can see there's a [00:52:00] question of prioritizing, which are the most important, but there's a huge number of. Process innovations or system building innovations that are needed across many, many fields. And you don't need to necessarily have things that even sound that crazy. There are some that just kind of just make sense, you know, are, are very simple. You know, we here, here in our lab, we have this measurement technology, but we, you know, we can only have the throughput of one cell, you know, every, every few weeks. And if we could build the system, we could get a throughput of, you know, A hundred thousand cells, you know, every month or something. Right. there are some, there's some sort of ones that are pretty obvious, or where there's an obvious inefficiency. In kind of, how things are structured. Like every, every company and lab that's that's modeling fusion reactors, and then also within the fusion reactor, each individual component of it, like the neutrons in the wall versus the Plaza and the core, those are basically modeled with different. Codes many of which are many [00:53:00] decades old. So there's sort of an obvious opportunity to sort of make like a CAD software for fusion, for example, you know, that the, the, it doesn't, it's not actually crazy. It's actually just really basic stuff. In some cases, I think they're ones where we'll need more roadmapping and more bringing people together to really workshop the idea, to really have people that are more expert than me say, critique each other and see what's. Really going on in the fields. and I also rely on a lot of outside experts. if I have someone comes with an idea, you know, for, for energy, you know, and I'm talking to people that are like former RPE program managers or things like that, that, that know more of the questions. so I think we can, we can, we can do a certain amount of, of due diligence on ideas and. and then there are some that are, that are really far out. you know, we both have an interest in atomically precise manufacturing, and that that's when, where we don't know the path I think, forward. and so that's maybe a pre fro that's something where you [00:54:00] need a roadmapping approach, but it's maybe not quite ready to, to just immediately do an fro. Yeah, no, that's, you sort of hit on a really interesting point, which is that. when we think of moonshots, it's generally like this big, exciting thing, but perhaps some of the most valuable is will actually sound incredibly boring, but the things that they'll unlock will be. Extremely exciting. yeah, I think that's true. And, and you have to distinguish there's there's boring. Right? So, so I think there's, there's some decoupling of exactly how much innovation is required and exactly how important something is. And also just how much brute force is required. So I think in general, our system might under weight, the importance of brute force. And somewhat overweight the importance of sort of creative, individual breakthrough thinking. at the same time, there are problems where I think we are bottlenecked by thinking I'm like really how to do something, not just to [00:55:00] connect them of brain, but how do you actually do activity map of entire brain? You actually need to get a bunch of physicists together and stuff to really figure out what's, you know, there's a level of thinking that is not very non-obvious similarly for like truly next gen fabrication. You really, really, really need to do the technology roadmapping approach. And that's a little different than the fro. And in some cases there may be a, as we discussed, I think in the past, there was sort of a, a continuum potentially between DARPA type programs or programs that would start within the existing systems and try to catalyze the emergence of ideas and discoveries. And then fro is, which are a bit, a bit more cut and dry. And in some cases, even you could think of it as boring. but just very important.  how do we prevent Faros from becoming a political football? because you see this all the time where, you know, a Senator will say, well, like I'll sponsor this bill, as long as we mandate that. 50% of the work has to happen in my particular state or [00:56:00] district. and, and I imagine that that would be counterproductive towards the goals of . so do you, do you have any sense of like how to, how to get around that probably much easier in philanthropic setting than governments? Although I think I'm overall, I'm, I'm sort of optimistic that, if. If the goals are made very clear, the goal is disruptive, you know, multiplicative improvements in scientific fields. that's the primary goal. It needs to be managed well. so it's not either about the individual peoples, if you want academic politics and also that it doesn't, doesn't become about sort of, you know, districts, congressional districts, or all sorts of other things. I think there's a certain amount of complexity, but the other, the other thing is. I think there's really amazing things to be done in all sorts of places and by all sorts of people that are not necessarily identified as, as the biggest egos or the largest cities also, although certainly there are hubs that [00:57:00] matter. yeah. Cool. I think so. I think those are all like the actual questions I have. Is there anything you want to talk about that we have not touched on? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, how does this fit into two things that you're thinking about, in terms of your overall analysis of the research system, then, do you think this, what is this leave unsolved as well? if, even if we can get some big philanthropic and government, donors. Yeah. So, so there are sort of two things that I. see it not covering. And so the, the first that you you've sort of touched on is that there are, some problems that still like don't fit into academia, but are not quite at the point where they're ready to be at fro. And so, they need, the, the like mindset of the fro without. Having this sort of, cut and dryness [00:58:00] that you need to sort of plunk down, like have the confidence to plunk down $50 million. so, so we need sort of a, a, what I would see as a sustainable, way of. Getting to the point of fro type projects. And as you know, I'm spending a lot of time with that. and then sort of a, the other thing that I've realized is that when, when people, we sort of have these discussions that are like research is broken, I think what we're actually talking about is, is sort of two really separate phenomenon. So, what we've been talking about, like Efros, Are really sort of sitting in like the Valley of death where it's like helping bridge that. but I think that at the same time, there there's like what I would call like the, the Einstein wouldn't get in any funding problem, which is, as you alluded to there, there are some of these things, like some of the [00:59:00] problems with research that we talk about are just about, The sort of conformity and specialization of really idea based exploratory, like completely uncertain research. And that's also really important, but I, I think it's what we don't do is, is, is sort of like separate those two things out and say like, these are both fall under the category of research, but are in fact. Extremely different processes. They require very different solutions. Yeah. Actually let me, let me, since you mentioned that, and since we are here together on the podcast, I agree with that and I, I have some things to say about that as well. So, so I think that the fro is indeed only address, or are designed to address this issue of sort of system building. problems that have a sort of catalytic nature and are a particular kind of pre-commercial stage. Right? So in some ways, [01:00:00] even though I'm so excited about borrows and how much they can unlock, because I think that this is one of two or three categories that has been, you know, under emphasized by current systems or has systems currently have struggled with it. there are these others. So, so I think that. The, the supporting the next Einstein and people that may have also have just be cognitively socially in any other number of ways, just different and weird and not good at writing grants. You know, not good at competing. Maybe not even good at graduating undergrad. Yeah. You know, I'm running a lab who are, are brilliant and because the system now. Has proliferate in terms of the number of scientists. it's very competitive and, and there is a, there's a lot of need to sort of filter people based on credentials. So there's this sort of credential there's people that don't fit with perfectly with credentials or with a sort of monoculture of who is able to get NSF grants and go through the university system and [01:01:00] get the PhD and all those different Alexey goosey has this nice blog post is oriented toward biomedical, but saying basically that in order to get through the system, you need to do 10 or 15 things simultaneously. Well, and also be lucky. And maybe we want to be looking for some people that are only able to do three of those things about, but are orders of magnitude better than others, then there's people even who have done well with those things, but still don't have the funding or sort of sustained ability, to, to pursue their own individual ideas over decades. even if they do get tenure or something, because the grant system is based on peer review and is, is sort of filtering out really new ideas, for whatever reason, There's kind of the broader issue that Michael Nielsen has talked about, which is sort of the idea that too much funding is centralized in a single organizational model. So particularly the NIH, the NIH grant is kind of hegemonic as, as, as a structure and as a peer review mechanism. then I think we need more [01:02:00] DARPA stuff. We probably need more darker agencies for other problems. Even though I've, I've sort of said that I think Rose can solve some problems that DARPA DARPA will struggle with. Likewise, DARPA walls solve problems that fro may struggle with. particularly if there's a very widely distributed expertise across the world that you need to bring together in a, some transient, interesting way, for a little bit more discovery oriented, perhaps in Faros and less deliverable oriented or team oriented. And then there's even bigger things we need, you know, like we need to be able to create, you know, a bell labs for energy, you know, or sort of something even bigger than fro. so yeah, I think the thing that you're, you're getting at that I is, is sort of simple, but under done is actually analyzing like what the activity is and what. How to best support it. Yep. Which is instead of just saying [01:03:00] like, ah, there's some research let's give some money to the research and then magical things will happen actually saying like, okay, like, like how does this work? Like what, and then what can we do for these, these specific situation? Yes. I think as you've identified. Like there's both on the one hand, there's the tendency to micromanage research and say, research has to do this, this with this equipment and this timescale it's entirely, this is sort of subject to milestone. And on the other hand is research is this magical thing. We have no idea. but just. Let other scientists, peer review each other, and just sort of give as much money to it as we can. and then we see what happens. Right. And I think neither of those, is a, is a good design philosophy, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think it involves people like thinking it's it's uncomfortable, but like, like thinking and learning about. How, how did you think then understanding how it could, how it could be different? [01:04:00] How it's not a it's it's a system. Kevin has felt set, said it said it well. And so in some ways it's been designed, but really our scientific systems are something that has evolved into large degree. No one has designed it. It's not. Something that's designed to be optimal is it's a, it's a emergent property of many different people's incentives. And, if we actually try to apply more design thinking, I think, I think that can be good as long as we're not over overconfident in saying that there's one model for everyone. Yeah. I think that the trick to, sort of fixing. Emergent systems is to like, basically like do little experiments, poking at them. And that's, that's very much what I see getting fro is going okay. It's like, you're not saying, Oh, we should like dismantle the NSF and have it all be . Okay. Let's do a couple of these. See what happens. That's right. It's I think it's inherently a small perturbation and it it's. And I [01:05:00] think DARPA, by the way is a similar thing. It's sort of dark. You wouldn't need DARPA. If everything else was already sort of efficient, right. Given that things are not perfectly efficient, Darko has all these, all these sort of this niche that it fills. I think similarly Faros, they can only exist. if you also have a huge university system and you also have companies that that doesn't make sense, otherwise it's, it's a perturbation, but as we, I think it's a perturbation in which you unlock a pretty big pressure stream sort of behind it when you open it up. So. Excellent. Well, I think that's, that's actually a great place to close. I guess the last question would be, Like, if people are interested in, in Faros, especially like funding or running one, what is the best way for them to reach you? Well, they can, they can talk to me or they can talk to you. my email has, is prominently listed on my website. Twitter is great. and that, yeah, I really interested in, people that have a kind of specificity [01:06:00] of, of, of what they want of, you know, here here's, here's what I would do, very specifically, but I'm also interested in talking to people that, See problems with the current systems and want to do something and want to learn about, other highly specific fro ideas that others might have, and how to enable those.  

Main Points-4. Only godly sorrow produces repentance -vv. 30-40-.-5. Hatred leads to murder -v. 41-.-6. Sin always has consequences -vv. 42-46-.

Main Points-4. Only godly sorrow produces repentance -vv. 30-40-.-5. Hatred leads to murder -v. 41-.-6. Sin always has consequences -vv. 42-46-.

A new MP3 sermon from Living Word Bible Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The Fragmenting of a Family, Part 2 Subtitle: Genesis Speaker: Bob Grass Broadcaster: Living Word Bible Church Event: Sunday Service Date: 9/27/2020 Bible: Genesis 27:30-46; Hebrews 12:14-17 Length: 46 min.

Main Points-1. God's will must be done in God's way and in God's time.-2. Knowing God's will requires doing God's will -vv. 1-4-.-3. We cannot do God's will by doing wrong -vv. 5-29-.

Main Points-1. God's will must be done in God's way and in God's time.-2. Knowing God's will requires doing God's will -vv. 1-4-.-3. We cannot do God's will by doing wrong -vv. 5-29-.

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.08.27.270934v1?rss=1 Authors: Stern, C. D., Bayly, C. I., Smith, D. G. A., Fass, J., Wang, L.-P., Mobley, D. L., Chodera, J. D. Abstract: Accurate molecular mechanics force fields for small molecules are essential for predicting protein-ligand binding affinities in drug discovery and understanding the biophysics of biomolecular systems. Torsion potentials derived from quantum chemical (QC) calculations are critical for determining the conformational distributions of small molecules, but are computationally expensive and scale poorly with molecular size. To reduce computational cost and avoid the complications of distal through-space intramolecular interactions, molecules are generally fragmented into smaller entities to carry out QC torsion scans. However, torsion potentials, particularly for conjugated bonds, can be strongly affected by through-bond chemistry distal to the torsion itself. Poor fragmentation schemes have the potential to significantly disrupt electronic properties in the region around the torsion by removing important, distal chemistries, leading to poor representation of the parent molecule's chemical environment and the resulting torsion energy profile. Here we show that a rapidly computable quantity, the fractional Wiberg bond order (WBO), is a sensitive reporter on whether the chemical environment around a torsion has been disrupted. We show that the WBO can be used as a surrogate to assess the robustness of fragmentation schemes and identify conjugated bond sets. We use this concept to construct a validation set by exhaustively fragmenting a set of druglike organic molecules and examine their corresponding WBO distributions derived from accessible conformations that can be used to evaluate fragmentation schemes. To illustrate the utility of the WBO in assessing fragmentation schemes that preserve the chemical environment, we propose a new fragmentation scheme that uses rapidly-computable AM1 WBOs, which are available essentially for free as part of standard AM1-BCC partial charge assignment. This approach can simultaneously maximize the chemical equivalency of the fragment and the substructure in the larger molecule while minimizing fragment size to accelerate QC torsion potential computation for small molecules and reducing undesired through-space steric interactions. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info

In this episode, we’re speaking to Nicolas Colin, co-founder & director of The Family, a pan-European investment firm founded in 2013 and headquartered in London. Nicolas publishes an extremely valuable newsletter European Straits about entrepreneurship, finance, strategy and policy, with a European perspective. He’s also the author of three books, one of which is Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age and member of the board of directors at Radio France, and a former commissioner at CNIL (the French personal data protection authority). Nicolas also contributes to several other outlets, such as co-host at Nouveau Départ with his wife Laetitia Vitaud (in French), and as a columnist at Sifted.  In this conversation, we try to unpack why Nicolas thinks the current crisis is going to accelerate the transition to what he has recently called a more “mature entrepreneurial economy” and what he means with the Entrepreneurial Age is, a concept he uses to describe the networked computing-powered world where individuals - or users - are more important than having fixed assets on a balance sheet.  We also talk about the balance between building organizations based on attracting outsiders and the need to be resilient to sudden drops in users, which some tech companies seem to get wrong. Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our  Medium publication.  To find out more about Nicolas Colin’s work:> Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nicolas_Colin> Newsletter: https://europeanstraits.substack.com/> Nicolas Colin (2018). Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age: https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Greater-Safety-Net-Entrepreneurial/dp/1718917082 Other references and mentions:> Structural Shifts podcast by Aperture, “Previewing the post-pandemic World”, with Nicolas Colin, Laetitia Vitaud and Ian Charles Stewart: https://medium.com/aperture-hub/previewing-the-post-pandemic-world-17-7be38279c2c7> Babak Nivi coined the term “Entrepreneurial Age” (2013): https://venturehacks.com/the-entrepreneurial-age> Carlota Perez’ work on technological revolutions: http://www.carlotaperez.org/> Balaji Srinivasan On The Argument For Decentralization - Part 1, Pomp Podcast #295: https://youtu.be/SU6H-5kA0FA > Fernand Braudel, on Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, in 3 volumes: https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-Capitalism-15th-18th-Century-Vol/dp/0520081145:> Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast> Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/musicRecorded on May 29th 2020

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EP217 - OfferUp CEO Nick Huzar Episode 217 is an interview with Nick Huzar (@nickhuzar), the Founder and CEO of OfferUp (@OfferUp). OfferUp is the largest mobile marketplace in the U.S, facilitating consumer to consumer sales of second-hand goods. In this interview, we discuss OfferUp’s recent fund raise, the acquisition of LetGo, and the state of C2C Marketplaces during Covid-19. Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 217 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 217 being recorded on Thursday April 23rd 2020 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners we are still recording during this fun pandemic shelter at home period and because we normally when we’re not she’ll bring it home have day jobs record the podcast late late at night it really restricts people that are crazy enough to come on the podcast so we’re using this opportunity to go through what I would call our Marketplace bucket list. So today on the podcast we have another bucket list guess this is pretty exciting. One of the biggest Trends in US market places that’s kind of under the radar and if you go to like a lot of trade shows and stuff but it is if you look at traffic data you realize there’s a really big movement here, is what I would call a new family a new innovation around smartphone app based consumer to consumer or some people say person-to-person marketplaces. So today on the show we are really excited to have the CEO of what I believed to be the largest one of these these new kind of mobile market places we, the CEO of offer up Nick who’s are welcome to the show Nick. Nick: [1:43] Thanks for having me it’s great to be here. Scot: [1:45] Do you prefer person-to-person consumer-to-consumer or do you use some other lingo. Nick: [1:50] I think it’s I think it’s all the same that the the main idea is you know leveraging this technology that’s in all of our pockets to kind of reimagine local Commerce as we know it. Jason: [2:05] Awesome and Nick we may be the only ones in the planet that have a Marketplace bucket list but we’re we’re. Nick: [2:14] Everyone needs one. Jason: [2:15] Yeah everyone should have one but I feel like we’re the only ones that are cool enough to actually have one so thanks for helping us check one one off but before we jump into OfferUp in marketplaces we always like to give listeners a little bit of color about your background so can you tell us what you’re doing and how you came to OfferUp. Nick: [2:35] Yeah happy to so I’ve always been in the I’d say the Internet space pretty much since I graduated college. [2:42] Kind of dating myself now but I used to I remember coming out of school I had to explain to people on companies why they needed a database connected to their website so that’s kind of gives you an idea of when I graduated college. But I’ve always been fascinated by I think the the endless possibilities with the internet so in some way shape or form of. I’ve been in at various startups you know throughout most of my career I did some briefs tents at T-Mobile. Spend a little bit of time at Microsoft you know I’ve done a few different companies my previous company too, OfferUp was called connects most people have no idea who the heck we were I’m not surprised but we started. [3:26] Connects pre Friendster and so sometimes I’ll server after remind people what the heck was Friendster or Friendster came before my space and my space came before Facebook so we were very early I think I’d like to say I learned a lot of a. Mistakes kind of how to build a company and a startup. And you know ultimately I had no plans on doing another startup there a lot of work but I had a daughter on the way and I was so excited I went into this room full of stuff. That I had in my house and I was going to turn it into her nursery and that became the spark, and that ultimately turned into OfferUp and you know for me would you know I had I didn’t jump on it right away I mean clearly you know I think there’s a long as a graveyard of companies that have tried to. [4:15] Compete locally but. I think what what what drew me to this opportunity was this device that is now in all of our pockets but back when we started off her up you know very few people had smartphones in fact there was no Android phone. So you know what I what I could imagine at the time was like look I just wanted to make these. I just wanted to clear out this room like quickly and there was no easy way to do that so, again looking at this device that had was now in my pocket I just kept wondering to myself can we is it time to reimagine what local can be. You know through these devices so that’s what ultimately you know created this spark for me to want to you know pursue this this this opportunity. Jason: [5:07] That that’s awesome and it’s it’s probably a coincidence I feel like I probably shouldn’t even lump the two of you together but there’s a prolific track record of entrepreneurs coming from T-Mobile and being very successful at raising funds and I know this because, the the guy I’m thinking of has the same name as me Jason Goldberg fab.com so. That may not be good news for you but you’re following in his footsteps. Scot: [5:37] So what year did you found OfferUp is this like 2010. Nick: [5:43] I lose track of time and to be honest I thought like. Jason: [5:46] We’re all doing that now. Nick: [5:47] I’ve years ago I think 90 now yeah. Scot: [5:50] Okay so yeah right when the iPhone one came out so I was good timing talk us through the funding history I looked up on crunchbase and they were very specific they said you’ve raised 381 million that was funny they couldn’t round up anyway congrats on that that’s that’s always you know, fundraising isn’t the best measure of success but it is one so congrats on all the fundraising walk us through kind of the funding history there. Nick: [6:17] Yeah well I mean you know going back again to that that moment in my doorway in a room I wanted to clear out I think like like any entrepreneur you have this big aha moment and then reality hits that you have to actually go build it and that’s when it gets hard and so. You know again just you know why and I like to remind a lot of people that it people kind of tend to put us in this bucket of oh it’s mobile classifieds and I think. That’s a fine public perception today but that’s not to be clear not at all what I set out to build what we set out to build was you know to become the largest local Marketplace period and that’s you know we what I saw as an opportunity was just unlocking local value and what I mean by that is you know 25% of. Us households with the two-car garage it can’t park in the garage you know our homes are 30% larger than the 50s but we’re having less kids and so, just so much stuff stuck in in our homes if you look at storage you know 10% of our population our at storage units but even beyond that and especially now what about local retail what is what is in these stores like you can never you can’t visualize those things today and I think the opportunity that I saw was you know again how do you. Unlock all this value and my belief was it’s locked up because there’s a lot of friction in that experience and so. [7:43] Anyhow that’s my long way of saying it took us a while to raise funds like the first year we only had a hundred thousand dollars raised, and we just you know luckily I can code and design and my co-founder could you know set up AWS and set up the back end so between the two of us we pay ourselves literally nothing. And just coded for basically a year straight. Um and then year to we had to figure out how to get scale and I’ll spare all the details because I could go on for hours and all the failed experiments that we tried but that was very hard I was a very very hard time so ultimately. Scot: [8:23] Scale from a technology standpoint or scale from a user buyer-seller son. Nick: [8:27] Yeah buyers and sellers and so you know I used to show up to people who pretend you attend to your. You posted your couch and OfferUp I used to show up and I’d buy it from you, because we had very few post back then and I wouldn’t tell you that I worked at OfferUp I just wanted you to believe it worked and then I’d bring it back ultimately we had a small office I’d stick it in her office so you can imagine Five Guys coating it a few desks but just junk everywhere that’s what it looked like for a while, you know it’s one of those fake it till you make it moments but it took us almost two years before we raised our series A, and I think that was you know I think it was it was very hard I think a lot of people thought we were just trying to replicate, and what had been done on the desktop you know I think, you know we are all so early that was another lesson like you know we started really early and so there was no Android phones for a while and so I think that was another. [9:24] You know I think it was one of those things where we just had to see smartphone adoption take off and then clearly we had to prove to investors that we actually could get the flywheel to move in a Marketplace we could get buyers to potap by and sellers to post and just continue to get that final to work and so you know and when we raised our series a we were only in Seattle it was very very intentional there was a handful of competitors at the time and I think they were probably really smart folks but, on the technical side that I don’t think they were met you know really measuring and thinking about what is success and success is like its liquidity that’s everything and so, we stayed in one ZIP code until we got that flywheel to Mu conversely we had competitors that were then launching, they launched an app and so you can use it anywhere in the country and I you know I thought that was disastrous I thought that you know they were not going to. Have success on liquidity so I didn’t worry too much about them so. You know where as we raise more Capital over the years a lot of the focus has been early in the early days we just launching new markets you know we stayed in Seattle for a year you’re so and then register a and with that Capital we wanted to prove that, we could then roll into numerous other. Scot: [10:38] Yeah so you’re very knowledgeable out Marketplace is to just grind this out yourself or did you know how did you learn so much about marketplaces. Nick: [10:47] Yeah I have I have zero history in marketplaces that and so I actually think. Scot: [10:51] Scar tissue. Nick: [10:54] Benefit you know I remember hearing a podcast once with Reid Hoffman talking about. Why PayPal was such a success and he said like look I didn’t come from banking like I didn’t know any better I just and I think that was the same. The way I looked at this like I literally I can’t think of any time where we ever pulled up any desktop websites and marketplaces, as an example of how to design OfferUp, it was all just what what was the experience we wanted to create and let’s just design what that is a good example would be, you know if you open up OfferUp today it’s going to show you items nearby you with some personalization. And just like this infinite list of pictures when we launched nobody was doing that I mean this was pretty Instagram right so it was a it was kind of a novel idea at the time and you know we wanted to kind of simulate this treasure hunt right we wanted to have this I just want to visualize what’s in my neighbor’s garage or what’s in a business down the street so you know I think we’ve taken a lot of just approaches completely different and. And back to your question I think that’s it’s probably just because we didn’t know any different. Scot: [12:11] Um so I noticed on the crunchbase list there you had some of the some of the late-stage guys some of the mutual funds that have kind of gone early that’s interesting and then I saw Max election so he’s a co-founder of a firm and then also part of the PayPal Mafia has that has he been a good good addition to the team. Nick: [12:29] Oh yeah Max I’ve known Max just you know over the years and he’s always been very generous with his time and thoughts and. Clearly very knowledgeable about payments and you know. So I leaned on him periodically just to kind of pick his brain on what’s happening in the world and how he thinks about. Your transactions and payments overall. Jason: [12:56] That is terrific Nick for listeners then might not be totally familiar with OfferUp can you kind of walk us through the basic buying and selling flow and kind of what pieces you you help facilitate. Nick: [13:11] Yeah for sure so I think on the buyers you know as I mentioned just briefly a moment ago our our view has been, you know we want to you know we want to build the simplest largest and most, trusted local Marketplace and that’s that shows up a lot in the product so you know when you open up the product think of it like walking into a retail store. And we wanted to make it a very visual you know visual experience and luckily over the years one of our our. Our beliefs was the cameras would constantly get better and we could you know really show these beautiful pictures you know it within OfferUp and that that has been true and so you know that’s the first thing I think you notice is a buyer that it is a very different experience than going to a lot of traditional say desktop. Marketplaces and that’s very intentional we wanted it to be kind of the treasure hunt we wanted it to, be some elements of serendipity where you maybe are looking for a car and you end up buying a pair of shoes that that happens quite a bit you know on OfferUp, and so you know our our average buyer you know is on OfferUp like three times a day they engage in OfferUp more like they engage in social media than they do in the traditional. [14:32] Commerce and so yeah so if you’re a buyer and say for example you’re looking for, I don’t know what’s popular right now like a lot of things are like like fitness equipment is on fire right now and think a lot of people are stuck at home and they can’t go to the gym, let’s so let’s say you’re looking for some weights you scroll through you find something there by you then can then you can then read the profile about the cellar like how many radians do they have how far away do they live do you have trusted connection through friends to that Cellar and you can read through just some overall profile information to make sure that there’s somebody that you trust and her wanting to do business with and then the process of engaging on you know say those weights is actually very straightforward you can if it is a shipping item you can just hit a button and have it shipped to you if it’s a local item you can just send them a message and say hey can we meet up tomorrow and, you know the whole idea from the buyer standpoint was to make it you know a really simple experience but also back to this trust element having a profile and understanding who you’re interacting with, not giving out your phone number like you know I think in a lot of traditional local market places you have to get your phone number to close the transaction, um you know OfferUp is really Commerce wrapped around chat so you can communicate all the way to the point of cell without having to give it out personal information. [16:00] And then on the seller side it’s literally as easy as taking and sharing a photo so like this chair that I’m sitting on right now if I wanted to sell this on OfferUp I would just pop my phone I would take a picture I would give it. You know a price and maybe a short description and hit post and and less than 30 seconds my chair is now available for the local community to discover and we tend to find that, people get engagement extremely quickly you know we’ve heard people that you know taking pictures and within a minute you know they get a whole bunch of Engagement. And you know itself things very quickly so you know like I said that’s that’s a big focus of the product and will continue to be which will be removing, friction and in the experience and so I think we’re far better today than I think the desktop players just because we’re leveraging. The power and the smartphone but I still think there’s plenty of plenty of ways we can reduce friction for buyers and sellers. Jason: [17:03] Awesome so so your to set the marketplace buyers sellers can list items buyers can find items they negotiate amongst themselves on pricing, do you offer an option to facilitate the transaction or do you get into the payment element at all. Nick: [17:25] We do if you enable your item for shipping so when you post an item as a seller there’s a toggle on there to enable shipping or only do local that is a very fast growing part of our business we launched that in 2018 especially right now with, with the people stuck at home it’s growing very very fast so you know and that case we take a small percentage, of the transaction to be able to facilitate payments between buyers and sellers. Jason: [17:55] Gotcha and by the way you made me super nostalgic in the beginning when you said imagine walking into a store because that we haven’t been able to do that in a few months and it’s like you know it seems trite now I know it was like a much bigger bet in 2010 when you jumped on it but like the the Insight that, The Experience on the mobile phone would be dramatically different and lower friction than than the traditional desktop one is kind of big and I feel like. Your. Optimism around the camera I like it keeps paying dividends because I know the new Apple phones that have lidar enem I could imagine you’re gonna be able to get the dimensions of that that desk or chair that you’re selling. Now or in the in the near future up those kinds of devices. Nick: [18:46] Oh yeah I like I said I think there’s. We will continue its I always say that we’re kind of Reinventing herself every year so we’re going back and we’re going yep we can make this process better we have let’s save some time here so they’re just so much more we can continue to layer on the marketplace that we have but back to the point. You know it’s just these devices continue to get more and more powerful and we can leverage that to make it a better better experience for our customers. Scot: [19:17] Wrinkle so you guys recently announced with your last round that you’re acquiring one of your competitors called let go tell us about that and how that’s going and why you’re doing it and. It’s always imagine you’re in the midst of integration that’s always fun. Nick: [19:36] Yeah so I mean you know I think the there’s a huge opportunity in the US and I think any time you’re going after a large Market you’re going to have competitors so as I mentioned even when we started we had a handful of competitors, but I think we were the first to really start to get meaningful scale in a pretty big way. We tried to stay as quiet as we could for as long as you could we delay doing press for a number of years we just kind of. Hung out in our office which is in the swamp in Bellevue Washington and didn’t really tell a lot of people what we’re doing but ultimately, you know we saw that go enter the US and. You know I think what became interesting over the years was just kind of how we approached you know the market we’ve gone very deep into many of the top 30 dmas and the country, as you know as OfferUp we have markets like Phoenix and La where over 17 18 percent of the adult population in those markets is using OfferUp every single month. [20:41] Um and with let go they you know they are as I said have more of a presence and other parts of the country and then so I think that right there made it. Pretty intriguing to explore working with them more as we think about how do we how do we grow in other parts of the country even more how do we kind of drive a local adoption where we’re already strong. So we thought there were quite a few synergies and not a ton of overlap I think people tend to gravitate. To the market places where they have the most success I don’t think most users are going to use you know a whole bunch of these I think they’re just really going to focus on the ones that, is producing the best value for them so you know I think that right there was you know as we spent more time with them it became more intriguing that there was a good you know Synergy in our in our businesses. And then on top of that you know as we wanted to come together we just have a lot of you know I think, product development ahead of us and things we wanted to build so you know raising capital on top of that was was intriguing it as well and so we’re feel fortunate that their investors invested and, you know we have I think some of the best investors on the planet and OfferUp and they also participated it in this financing to. Scot: [22:06] Are you going to there’s one strategy and mobile apps to have kind of two apps out there because it’s almost like more virtual shelf space are you guys going to have kind of two apps a little bit of different flavor are you going to consolidate them into one. Nick: [22:19] Yeah well we think there’s a lot of opportunity ultimately in having one experience but we are definitely going to, tread lightly and into as we explore integration with them the best way to do it so we don’t want we really want to make sure that, you know we’re taking care of the let-go users and taking care of the OfferUp users as best we can but we’re, I guess the point is we’re not going to just flick a switch we’re going to spend quite a bit of time and making sure we’re being thoughtful about how we how we come together. Jason: [22:51] Yeah the mobile app stuff is always very tricky because obviously like it’s super hard to get customers to download an app and be and particularly its even way harder to get them to be a regular user of that app and so. Fragmenting your audience amongst multiple apps you know comes with some baggage but first God’s Point like it also potentially. Boost your visibility in that App Store. A random side no just because it’s so sad it’s funny but one of my big clients is Walmart and they’ve had this. This multi-year debate about if they should have two apps general merchandise and grocery or one and I’ve always strongly felt they should have won, a few months ago they finally agreed to do that and then a month before they merge the two apps covid-19 pandemic hits and the way it 10x is downloads of their grocery out. Nick: [23:46] Yeah you can’t you can’t predict that. Jason: [23:49] No no so I briefly thought I finally won that argument and then the the community the world spoke. But I do I noticed that you like to increase the level of difficulty you were just having a kid and you decided to throw in a start-up and like you decided to do a big round of funding and a merger in the middle of a pandemic so. Props to you for that. Um the you know to set of marketplaces are super interesting from a marketing standpoint like there’s a lot of debate one big debate is do you expand geographically or not and it sounds like you guys made a. Intentional decision to get a concentration in some Geo’s before you expanded but the other big question is. Can you know can you really lean into marketing to one side or the other right so are you no do you try to in hand. Entice Sellers and then that will like pull in the buyers or do you and try to you know do you try to get buyers and that’ll pull in the sellers like has there been a. A strategy that’s been particularly effective for you or how do you think about that. Nick: [24:58] Yeah so you know in the early days if I was to say what was one of the harder periods and. It’s going OfferUp it was definitely getting the flywheel to move and I’ve heard a lot you know a number of people say building marketplaces are really hard and then they’re also really hard. To kind of break down and you know I know that pain because not only did we figure that in Seattle but. Every time we entered a new market essentially we were creating a brand new Marketplace so you know what I used to know what we used to spend a bunch of time on was looking at kind of the overall metrics that really mattered and I used to always say hey we need to get neighborhood sick we need to create the zombie apocalypse like how do we get you know how do we get you know how do we get the flywheel to move where the seller post something then the buyers there and the buyer has an amazing experience and then they tell their friends and family and it just kind of keeps going and going and going and you know, what what are those attributes of those markets that are really material and what we found early on was. Population density definitely matters to a certain degree. [26:04] You know whether matters like do you really want to move a couch and in Chicago, in the dead of winter we actually you know we’re thinking about that and then we said no like nobody wants to do that and, and so luckily we found markets that that we thought you know just had the right attributes and we really over invested in those markets and Allah is a great example I mean I always had massive Market a lot of people have cars they can move Goods around the weather’s nice most of the year it’s very viral most of OfferUp s’ growth is we spend dollars on marketing but to be clear most of it is word of mouth and I think that’s it goes back to the obsession over the product and, created a really simple experience between buyers and sellers and and because of that you know most people I run into ask them how they heard about OfferUp and it’s usually friend friend or a family member. So [27:02] Yeah those were I think some of the harder learnings in the beginning you know today where I you know I really give kudos to my marketing team like a lot of the work they do I mean we do all of our marketing in-house a hundred percent, um you know and that team. All kind of works together external marketing internal Communications and we’re constantly call them day Traders they’re constantly um you know looking at markets differently and sometimes they’ll try to drive more Supply and Target sellers more sometimes they’ll pull back but they are constantly iterating all throughout the country sometimes at a national level but many times on a local level to kind of make sure that, supply and demand balances is where it needs to be. Jason: [27:50] Awesome and then we talked earlier about like when they check that that available for shipping option that you potentially can facilitate payments, I forgot to ask. Right is that exclusively through I could traditional credit card processor or do you guys offer like I imagine consumers could do this outside of you but do you guys facilitate any kind of digital wallet like a PayPal or something along those lines. Nick: [28:18] We don’t today but again this is a big growth area for us and I think there’s a lot of opportunity. To make a much better payment experience in the US. Especially now if anyone’s gone shopping recently who the heck wants to carry cash around anymore who wants to touch these POS systems at now like the one at the store down the street from me has like a piece of Saran Wrap over it, and then it and then it right next to it it has a bunch of hand sanitizer so an egg. Jason: [28:54] Was already unappetizing now it could kill you. Nick: [28:57] Yeah now I can kill you right and so. If you look to the rest of the world I feel like we are so far behind in the US and you know I’ve had people ask me well why is that and my response is usually you’re asking the wrong question to be asking who what company. You know is going to be the one that helps to drive this and and I think you know because of our local presence and how many millions of monthly meetups we have and. You know we have more kind of merchants Now using OfferUp you know I think there’s a big area there in the US but I get I get more and more frustrated. Week after week of trying to figure out you know another new POS system I could go in there well if I put the chip in all y’all do the chip and then you hit this button why did I gotta do this and I’m. I just want to pull your hair out every time it’s not a great experience and it needs to needs to evolve. Jason: [29:49] Yeah I actually have an Instagram feed that is exclusively pictures of handwritten notes on POS terminals explaining how to use them. Nick: [29:58] I gotta I gotta I gotta follow you then because I hear hear. Jason: [30:00] It’s Saturday it’s not hard to find. Nick: [30:03] Yeah. Jason: [30:04] Now how to find material and yeah it’s funny because it’s like people forget but PayPal and the US and Ali pay in China they you know their original purpose was not necessary to digitize cash it was, to you know create a more robust trust system for peer-to-peer transactions and so I could certainly see that playing out. Nick: [30:28] That’s and that’s a big part 2 I mean that is that is a big part is really, bringing trust into local transactions you know and and online you know it’s, it’s already there anyway if you’re shipping things it’s already you know that’s that path has been proven again and again so this is definitely an area where we’re pioneering and there’s still a lot to figure out but something I’m definitely passionate about. Jason: [30:53] Nice and then unfortunately is like it’s things start opening up from the pandemic we’re likely going to be in a. Some flavor of recession and you know a lot of consumers could be tighter on credit so you know I could even imagine things like like the installment model and things having a. Having a role but in addition to that the other thing that would. Maybe fit at some point is do you guys think about ever helping to facilitate that shipping when that’s an option. Nick: [31:25] Yeah so so today we as I mentioned we introduced this in 2018 we have payments and we’re presently enabling shipping for items under 20 pounds and under $500 so you know part of that was simply just to kind of get the foundation and get the Kinks figured out and there’s been a lot of work, as you can imagine when we first launched that but over overtime like I envisioned that anything on OfferUp should be, deliverable in some way shape or form so I think there’s a lot of work to figure out how to do that the right way, so that will continue to explore different ways to do that. Scot: [32:09] So if you’re if you’re not in the payment flow then unlike a traditional Marketplace like an Amazon or Ebay then presumably you’re not taking at a crate so explain to us what is the business model where are people paying the list or our walk us through kind of the different areas where you make money. Nick: [32:31] Yeah so there’s there’s two different I’d say kind of buckets for monetization today at OfferUp and the first one is promotions and the second one is paying so you know when it comes to Promotions our Focus there simply to help sellers to be more successful. So you know we have first party ads for example where you know you could come in as a seller and you know you can pay it increase your visibility on the platform just helps you sell things quicker there’s also a reoccurring subscription model there where you could say okay myself quite a bit you know I’m going to I’m going to pay a monthly fee and I’m just going to keep rotates a five items into that into the feed and we and we help to that seller to sell those items faster, we also have a Autos business where you know this this was I’d say a vertical that just blew up on us that we had we had wasn’t like we were Geniuses I swear there was probably just a convention one year and I think Vegas and I think somebody must have stood up and said hey I’m selling a lot of cars on OfferUp and all said and this vertical just beginning. [33:46] Huge for us across the country and so in the last few years you started to spend more time thinking about how we can help auto dealers to be more successful so that is another promotional tool where we integrate with their their dealer management system so they don’t always have to use the app you know if a car goes on the lot the magically goes on OfferUp. We also give them advertising analytics they get a special badge on their profile there’s a handful of things we do to make sure that this they stand out and so we have thousands and thousands of paying car dealers and that’s growing very rapidly, and then on the payment side it’s you know today mostly shipping as I mentioned. And that’s that’s why we’re taking a small percentage of transactions there. Scot: [34:36] I’ve also seen some ads like a big Star Wars fan I see game stock advertisers bunch of cool stuff in the Star Wars category is that is that if you guys built your own ad Network or is that pulled from like another ad network of some kind. Nick: [34:49] Yeah so we incorporated you know the third-party ads that you see in there are a number of years ago primarily because it was easy one and two it actually. Helped buyers and it was one of those where I was saying we’re never going to put ads in there it’s going to ruin the feed. But I found actually the opposite was true where buyers were finding that hey maybe if I couldn’t find that kids bike down the street that I wanted but maybe I could see one you know, from a you know some local retail store and have it shipped to me or go go buy it. The other thing that it did was also enabled people to do some pricing comparison right so they maybe they see that brand new bike and they see one very summer, in the feed and they realize they’re getting a really good deal on that so we do do some third party advertising which you can kind of see through out the feet as well. Scot: [35:47] Yeah I think you guys do a great job at it there’s a price and it’s very clearly an ad where it’s not like you know someone named other marketplaces where you’re kind of like you know Max why is this showing up and you’re targeting is really good to other ones you’re kind of like why am I seeing this random iPhone accessory when I’m over here looking for couches. So so that’s super helpful you mentioned earlier a bunch of kpis to get the liquidity going give a give lister’s any metrics you can share and you know I don’t want you to get it any uncomfortable space but anything you can give us about the scale of the business to help them understand I think that would be interesting. Nick: [36:26] Sure yeah so I think the you know what I would say you know going back to. Be buying things from people in the beginning liquidity and my mind is everything you know the switching cost to join to try any marketplaces, is not not that high so we wanted to make sure that we were we were the best Marketplace we could be for local buying and selling so, you know what I could say around that is you know on a monthly basis we have billions of dollars in GMB, from transactions happening on OfferUp and so it’s great to see that we’re providing that value and success for buyers and sellers. You could also probably glean this from the App Store but you know the OfferUp app is now but installed over 90 million times we’re only focused on the US. So we’ve been a top I’d say we’ve been a top-10 shopping app for many years now so I’m pretty proud of that considering. You know we’re up there with giants you know multi billion dollar publicly-traded companies so it’s pretty happy to see that. You know people have been telling others about OfferUp at such a high rate that it’s kind of. You catapulted us to the top and we’ve been there for for such a long time. [37:45] And I think I think the other thing again but I’d share is kind of what I said before is we have markets a lot of our special you know top markets where you know we’re close to 20% of the entire adult population using Opera every month and I think that’s only going to get better as we continue to improve on the product experience and drive more, you know adoption there. [38:09] Let’s try to think again maybe something worth sharing with listeners around just what’s happening you know with the marketplace today and so, you know if anything you know I really feel for. [38:22] You know a lot of people and what they’re going through out there right now I think a lot of businesses are hurting not just for additional but also tech companies and. Fortunately for us it’s the opposite like we are we have been growing so quick over the last number of, months and the categories are really changed like I think part of the challenge is people can’t you know they can’t go to the store down the street so how are they going to get certain Goods, and so our shipping business or seeing a lot more people shipping things electronic specially videogames I think video games are very you know trying to keep the kids busy. You know locally we’re seeing a lot of what I call kind of porch pickups where people said hey let’s stay stay stay safe as socially distance but hey I’ll just leave the you know just leave the dresser out on the. [39:17] On the on the on the patio or the door and just leave my knee or the matter. Ring the doorbell and show me that you’re leaving the money there so I think there’s, you know I think people are behaving differently but we’re definitely seeing a shift in categories where like I said like Fitness is way up household goods Electronics tools, things around the yard so not I don’t think surprising for most people but definitely seeing it’s been great to see how OfferUp during this time is able to really you know help help people and how those categories have changed. Scot: [39:57] Sprinkle the so we saw such an advisor when I say we is interesting we saw the the stimulus checks hit like starting on the 15th and it’s we saw this kind of overall lift this is all public from webinar we saw this overall lift and then like this really interesting kind of taking off into another gear around then, did you guys see anything around that stimulus check time. Nick: [40:23] Yeah so the you know this is an interesting time of year for OfferUp heart of it is usually spring cleaning, and that’s definitely happening quite a bit but we’ve also noticed around stimulus and and tax time it definitely a lift you know you can you can tell when people are getting their taxes or tax refunds and stimulus check so by the day as you can see like this huge, step up and overall engagement. Jason: [40:55] Yeah like on the flip side of that are you finding any extra challenge like you know a lot of your goods were we’re sort of handed off person a person and I imagine there’s extra trepidation about. Social distancing and stuff like that are you having to take extra steps to make people comfortable with with person-to-person transactions right now. Nick: [41:19] So we you know we spent a lot of time just kind of thinking about this and we have a Blog where we posted kind of our overall points of view and guidance on that I think the challenge clearly is it say, it’s a local city by City, decision and it’s still shocking to me that there’s still a number of cities that haven’t really quarantined so you know I don’t think it’s our call to be specific. On exactly what you should and shouldn’t do but we did have some overall high-level guidelines and encourage people to pay attention to what you know your city and officials are saying locally and try to adhere to those. But I think it’s a definitely a kind of a, get a thread the needle lightly because we want to be able to help people but we want people to be safe and especially when stores and resources are close like where can they get things right now and so, I think in one level we’re providing a service to help people but we want them to be safe and adapt. [42:26] You know we’ve seen auto dealers for example selling cars right now and you’re kind of like well how is that working and what you’ve seen them do. You know the post an item on OfferUp and they’ll communicate around it and then they’ll jump on the phone with the the buyer and they’ll do title and they do all the paperwork and financing. And they just bring the card I just bring the car to the buyers house and they just wave at him out the window here’s your car congrats and I’ll leave the key right here for you and. So this you know you’re seeing people you know adapt during a time like this to figure out how to how to make it work. Jason: [43:05] Yeah that’s fascinating and you mention Auto which is a an interesting category to me like you you don’t necessarily think of that as a. Peer-to-peer ton of play but it really is right like is that a category you guys entered intentionally or was that a pleasant surprise or how is that played out. Nick: [43:27] Yeah so as I mentioned a little bit earlier it was it was a pleasant surprise I would love to say we were Geniuses and really figured something out there but, um I think it’s again back to, trading this this very easy to use local experience I think a lot of dealers started jumping on our platform because it was so easy to list cars and attract a lot of buyers, and so we just move clearly benefit benefited from that so you know I think I definitely think today we’re probably one of the top places in the country, to buy a car I mean we sell. Millions of millions of millions of cars on offer up every year and so you know it’s definitely a big vertical for us that will continue to invest in. Jason: [44:15] That that’s awesome the like another one that I’m just somewhat curious about so I try to follow the Platforms in China pretty closely and obviously you don’t taobao is, is a huge consumer to Consumer platform there and one thing I’ve noticed over the last like four or five years is. They have dramatically pivoted from being super product-centric like being a catalog of product to being very content set direct so they’re like really leaning into the microblogs and the short video and all those sorts of things, like I haven’t seen that as much by anyone in the u.s. like do you think that could work in the US or do you think there’s just a different sensibility or. Nick: [44:58] And just to elaborate on what you’re saying are you are you talking about where people are showing off products and are these short videos. Jason: [45:07] Yeah yeah it gets it’s like a seller would you know now is likely to have their own page on you know I like think of it like a microsite on taobao and they’re they’re doing like HSN Style, you know what a little 60-second product demo videos to sell their goods. Nick: [45:26] Yeah I mean I think that’s definitely interesting you know I think that’s something that we could continue to explore and play with overtime, you know I think there is a time and place for that especially if you’re a power sellers selling you know a lot of items and you want to build some Affinity around what you’re doing you know today at least you know the majority of OfferUp is really kind of overall, you know peer-to-peer so. I wouldn’t say your I could see your average seller doing that and depth but I could definitely see I think more powerseller spending the time to do that and then again like I said before these, phones keep getting better right the quality is getting better all around and so I think it’s just a more engaging experience versus what, you know what it may have been in the past. Scot: [46:18] That’s a good let’s let’s explore that so you obviously spend everyday kind of marinating and the e-commerce juice of marketplaces and transactions or anything where do you think things are going to go in the next three to five years or we’re going to have like. AR VR or do you think it’s just going to be better kind of experiences along the lines of what we’re having here. Nick: [46:39] Well I mean I definitely think there’s a big there’s a big movement happening it’s already been happening but I think because of covid it’s probably going to move quite a bit faster and that is just the overall again unlocking of local value in my mind you know 85% of Commerce, it’s still not online today it’s local and I think for everyone that’s in Tech we’ve kind of scratch our heads and like Oh I thought we all used you know the big e-commerce players that are out there and, um I think they will continue to evolve and probably grow and chip away at that number, but I think there’s just a lot of Locked Up value all around us and you know part of our vision is how do we create the best experience and help. You know sellers to bring those those things online so I think that that moment is going to happen, at an accelerated Pace especially right now you know I think there’s a lot of struggling businesses that, you know soon as covid hit and their physical store closed then the answer was like well now what do I do and so, you know if they can bring product online we can help to facilitate those those transactions in the pretty meaningful way so. [47:59] My vision for OfferUp has always been I just I just want you to open up the app and for almost anything you need locally we have it and we’re able to help you facilitate that in the easiest possible way that we can do that, so you know again it’s great to see that we already have you know huge percentage of the population using the product and buying and selling things you you know billions of dollars worth of goods every month but I still think we’re in the first inning I think there’s just a lot more we can do, you know for our customers. Jason: [48:30] Cool nigga you know one thing that we haven’t talked about yet is, our friends at Facebook like they obviously have this Marketplace platform is that a direct competitor is that like how do you think about Facebook Marketplace and is that getting any traction. Nick: [48:46] Yeah I mean to be clear Facebook has had some type of Commerce even before we started OfferUp I mean you know I think, Facebook has definitely been, you know a large Network and there’s there’s a zillion different things you can do on there including Commerce so you definitely have to take them seriously you know as a competitor. You know I think the other thing that I think gives me you know some level of comfort is just how many different things they have to focus on as a company like it seems like. For every competitor that comes out they immediately have a solution or they’re trying to create their own there so I think they have many different things they’re trying to do and we have one and we’re going to go very deep and do that thing. The best that we possibly can and obsess over that but you know definitely a competitor and as I mentioned. Anytime you’re going after a large Market you’re going to attract competitors so. Yep they’re the out there and definitely definitely spending time on Commerce for sure. Jason: [49:55] Yeah it’s usually a bad sign if no one else on the planet ever wants to go after the same Market you see. Nick: [50:00] Yeah your idea is probably not a good one. Jason: [50:02] And Nick that’s actually going to be a great place to wrap it up because we’ve used up our allotted time but if listeners have any comments or questions we encourage you to continue the conversation with us on Twitter or on our Facebook page and I really want to thank you for taking time out from this crazy pandemic to talk with us about marketplaces. Nick: [50:26] Thanks for having me it was good to finally talk to someone else because I’ve been hunkered down in my Den now for seven weeks so thanks for getting me out of the office mentally. Scot: [50:39] So we really appreciate it and then if folks want to follow any of your thought leadership or anything do you are you a Twitter or you still on prinster you mentioned that was that earlier. Nick: [50:51] Yeah you can find me on Twitter at Nick huzar. Jason: [50:56] Awesome and we’ll put that in the show notes so everyone be safe and well out there and until next time happy commercing.

SHOW NOTES What type of bullets allow you to "eat right up to the hole?" Listeners questions and comments MEAT DAMAGE: TWO SOURCES Extreme impact velocity Hydraulic shock High-velocity cartridges Light-for-caliber bullets, pushed extremely fast Extreme-BC bullets, pushed fast Animal matter's effect on bullets Low-velocity impact dynamics Extreme-expansion bullets What stresses a bullet during impact Fragmenting on impact increases shock transfer "Soft" bullets rupture and fragment. Maximum meat damage results Tough, controlled-expansion bullets hold together and penetrate. Less meat damage results Bullet placement for minimal meat damage The behind-the-shoulder shot The on-the-shoulder shot Species-dependent preferences How to field-dress and process around bloodshot meat Is bullet-related meat damage ok?  When it results in a faster, more humane kill When the bullet that causes it makes you a more capable hunter ENJOY! (AND PLEASE SUBSCRIBE!)  

The early vision for a borderless, unregulated internet has not panned out as its pioneers hoped. How to handle the “splinternet”? Doug Jones is Alabama’s first Democratic senator in a quarter of a century; in his moderate ways our correspondent finds broader lessons for the Democratic Party. And air pollution is a threat the world over—most of all to the well-being of children.Additional audio courtesy of Department of RecordsFor full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/radiooffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The early vision for a borderless, unregulated internet has not panned out as its pioneers hoped. How to handle the “splinternet”? Doug Jones is Alabama’s first Democratic senator in a quarter of a century; in his moderate ways our correspondent finds broader lessons for the Democratic Party. And air pollution is a threat the world over—most of all to the well-being of children.Additional audio courtesy of Department of RecordsFor full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/radiooffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Investment banks undoubtedly serve an integral function in our financial markets. They help raise capital for companies through equity or debt offerings, provide corporate finance advice on mergers and acquisitions, aid in restructuring processes, and facilitate our economic activities among many other important tasks. But what is the future for investment banking services as more junior-level number-crunching work is projected to be automated away by tech innovations? Where does the future lie for bulge bracket investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, as more boutique advisory firms prove to be more nimble in complex transactions and more knowledgeable in niche verticals? Melville Mummert is the former Head of European Investment Banking at Raymond James. From a base in Munich, he led the strategic expansion of Raymond James into Frankfurt and London, and recruited and retained a team that grew from 22 to 75 professionals. His team provided advisory services on M&A, capital raising, and restructuring in all phases of transactions in five sectors: tech & services, industrials, healthcare, financial services, and consumer & retail. Previously, he founded and managed his own international corporate finance advisory practice, Mummert & Co., which focused on technology-based companies in German-speaking countries and was ultimately acquired by Raymond James in 2016.

This week's episode features audio from a lecture with Dick Keyes called, "Letting God be God in a Fragmenting World". Dick Keyes is the former director of Southborough L’Abri Fellowship, where he has worked with his wife and family since 1979. He holds a B.A. in History from Harvard University and an M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Dick has also worked for L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland and in England. He served as a pastor in the International Presbyterian Church in London for eight years. He has been an adjunct professor at Gordon Conwell Seminary and Westminster Theological Seminary. Dick is the author of Beyond Identity and many other titles and is currently writing a book on the significance of Jesus’ questions. He has lectured widely in the U.S. and also in Europe and Korea. Dick and his wife, Mardi, are minority members of an African American Church, which has enriched their lives and experience of worship enormously. Dick is a member of the Ministerial Team. To receive e-mail updates about the podcast including lecture handouts, articles, books referenced in the lectures and updates about future gatherings, please submit your e-mail address via this link or at nashvillelabriconference.com. 

In a much-needed episode we (finally) talk about everyone's favorite blood-sucking monster... vampires!Talking points: F**k dad's treehouse, relic memory, human cows, blood magic is best magic, gnomes and vampires: not so different(?), moisture farming for mana, Koko is sad (and dead), blood relatives: literally, dwarf-love-shame and ecclesiarchy.Referenced EpisodesThe Shrouded Empire, the first "nation": ep. 2Oberiska, Sudar's salvation: ep. 3Roarark, secret country of meritocracy: eps. 8 & 9The Avireal, the fate of dead elves: ep. 15———Want to learn more about Halûme? Explore the world here, or by visiting our homepage at thelorekeepers.com and clicking on "Visit World". We regularly add new articles! Questions or ideas? Email us at lorekeeperspodcast@gmail.comWebsite: thelorekeepers.comTwitter: @thelorekeepers

We are all seeking healing from traumas and pain ...but could it be that we are also lead down the wrong way by methods that may not give as the true healing but a shortcut and temporary blissfulness and in the process, we may even more fragment our SOUL...

After a short hiatus, we're back, this time with vbullinger, youvebeengreggd, Clamwizard, swampsparrow, and noseonarug17, discussing the preseason thus far and enjoying a visit from an unexpected guest.   Record date: 8/28

David Catanese -- Contributor, The ATLANTIC; Senior Political Writer, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT -- talks to WDEL's Allan Loudell

David Catanese -- Contributor, The ATLANTIC; Senior Political Writer, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT -- talks to WDEL's Allan Loudell

EP094 - News http://jasonandscot.com Amazon News Will regulators look at Amazon Whole Foods Acquisition? Scott Galloway says yes, Jason & Scot say no. Real reason Nike began selling on Amazon Amazon launches Spark visual discovery platform Jeff Wilke, Amazon CEO Worldwide Consumer gave rare public comments at Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference Amazon Meal Kits Rumor of Amazon "Anytime" messaging App Amazon launches home installation service Amazon launches New Brand Pages Alibaba Launches new physical Hema Supermarket concept in China Other Brandless raises $50M to launch new CPG "Brand" ApplePay & SamsungPay on PayPal Everlane to open permanent physical store in San Francisco Newstore raises $50m  for new E-Commerce Platform Walmart opens 2.2m ft sq Fullfillment center in Florida Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 94 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday July 19, 2017. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 94 is a recap of the weeks news. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 94 being recorded on Wednesday July 19th 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scott show listeners Jason I'm sitting here in 99 degree sunny North Carolina whereabouts in the world are you. Jason: [0:50] I am in a relatively cool 94° New York City. Scot: [0:55] Nice nothing like the odors of New York in Late July with 94 degree weather it's a nice city for them. Jason: [1:05] Jack me I find that it really brings out the New York bouquet in the in the air. Scot: [1:10] The city's usually pretty dead cuz her once in the Hamptons only have this cursed. Jason: [1:14] Exactly Scott I feel like this has been a super exciting week for you I have been living vicariously through you through some exciting news going on this week. Scot: [1:25] Yeah for the fellow nerd / Geeks or whatever you like to call yourselves out there this is it's a big kind of two week 10 day. So you had last weekend e23 which is Star Wars going to insiders conference and they had a lot of good start that's a Disney conference, in Star Wars is owned by Disney so they had a lot of interesting news there also around Marvel if you're into the superhero side of things and then coming up soon if not. Eminent is a Comic Con I've never been to it as a San Diego and and kind of quite a trip from you never try to go like. Four times it never works out so I kind of gave up but they'll be a lot of things now it's there and, so there was the sizzle reel for Last Jedi which is exciting that's the movie coming out this December, and then I think I'm most excited about is their doing Star Wars land which is going to be called the edge of the Galaxy and they're going to do a Resort in Orlando resort so. Destiny exciting you'll you'll kind of go check in and be assigned kind of a you know. Personna if you will and I'm sure people will cause play I'm not a big cosplayer but I think. You and I haven't discussed it but I think we should talk about having the Jason and Scott show there at lunch in. [2:38] 2019 lizards that excited we can do a Big Lick meet up there or and we'll have kind of a rebel versus if kind of thing on the podcast and it'll be great at least five of us will really enjoy that podcast. Jason: [2:50] I'm totally in I'm putting it in my calendar right now. Scot: [2:54] Yeah well we have been doing a lot of deep Dives interviews lately and we thought it would be a good time to get back to just news there's a lot going on in the world of e-commerce even though it's summer and you would expect, e-commerce to be slow there's a ton of news and of course it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show without Amazon so let's start with some Amazon news. Amazon news your margin is their opportunity. Jason: [3:28] Yes Scott we've obviously did a whole show on the announcement that Amazon was acquiring Whole Foods, but there's been some foul on conversation their number people that are speculating including Scott Galloway did a video this week or last week speculating that, did the potentially the the acquisition won't be allowed to go through and that the government will try to break it up. Scot: [3:59] Yeah you know I think that's an interesting perspective but you know I think. Amazon really smart and the the two Tech Titans of kind of tripped over this or IBM and Microsoft and, what ends up getting you with these Monopoly things first of all what ends up getting with the government is being Monopoly and. You know the definition of monopoly from the government's perspective is you just have this obscenely large market share and they argue that this is bad for consumers or businesses because they don't have toys prices go up in those kinds of things, and I think I think Amazon has kind of just because they're scale and what they do they've been oculate themselves from the Sprewell so freeze ample. You know a grocery let's say there there is no argument that says this will give Amazon a monopoly and grocery because you have yo. Walmart so far ahead and then Kroger and there's literally and I think we talked about this make some number six or seven in the Market at. Kind of like 8 or 9% when you add up Whole Foods plus Amazon so it's so it's hard to make a case there and then, it's also hard to make a case of this is going to hurt consumers because we all know prices are going to go down so I think Amazon by picking these huge addressable Market areas that they're in and getting a small piece of them then also relentlessly driving prices down. I think they're pretty inoculated from kind of a government. Kind of rule even even when you look at e-commerce you know you could say Well they're like 30% and 25% of e-commerce 30 to 33% if you count DMV. [5:40] That's Monopoly but then the pricing thing doesn't really come in there and I think what Amazon would argue is, well you know you can't really look at e-commerce because it's all Commerce and you know when you look at all Commerce then Amazon has 4% of all Commerce so certainly doesn't feel like a monopoly, from a market share perspective and also it doesn't have a pricing thing so I would actually disagree on based on what we know today that Amazon will get split up because I think they're they're pretty safe from those two, kind of pretty simple test that the government uses to look for monopolies. Jason: [6:15] Yeah I totally agree I think based on sort of the conventional wisdom it would be highly unlikely because the first thing that happens is they have to define the market and then the market. The relevant Market here is likely going to be grocery so it's not going to be, online or offline and it's not going to be all of retail is it's going to be Grocery and Whole Foods has less than 1% market share and Grocery and Amazon has no market share and groceries so you know from that standpoint. It's going to be real hard to make a monopoly argument and your point in the US, antitrust like there has to be tangible damage to Consumers would usually as lack of choice surprise and nobody's going to be able to make the argument that. Amazon buy Whole Foods is going to drive prices up if we were talking about your up or something it might be a different case cuz they're they can make all these arguments that that. The merger could impede Innovation which is bad for the consumers in the long run but but the US definition is much more narrow so I just I don't think it applies at all I think the only chance that, did you know we might see some saber-rattling cuz I do think there's some politicians that are going to you don't want to want to make some hay by talking about it but if the end of the day, it would require like a new antitrust theory in and dramatically new PAW enforcement policies to really see them take action against this this acquisition. Scot: [7:45] You're the one thing Scott did bring up that I I do think Center esting is. Yeah will Amazon be a trillion dollar company not to give you a more interesting is what is the first trillion-dollar company going to be and I think the three candidates are, Amazon Apple and Google and so just kind of like size that up for listeners to so the way you think about this is every stock has a market cap which essentially the number of outstanding shares times its current price. And right now apple is ahead with 787 billion dollar market cap, their stocks it about 151 so did get to a trillion they need to go up with CT. 50% so that would put their stock at like 2:25. And then number two right now you have Google also known as alphabet now and they are at 670 billion and their their stock is kind of somewhere to Amazon's right now it's at about $1,000 so they effectively have to get up towards $2,000 in their stock. Assuming there's no splits between now and that that mythical point when they hit a trillion. Amazon's actually the laggard so you know in amongst these three so fruit number one is Apple at 787 number to is Google at 678 and then number 3 and quite a distant number three is Amazon at about 5. 500 billion dollars so half of the way to a trillion dollar market cap so they're stuck what have to go to mm so you know. A lot of people would lead Apple we'll get there because we got this kind of iPhone supercycle happening with the often leaked not not verified iPhone 8. [9:22] I'm starting to see some negativity around that because a lot of the components as these Wall Street guys dig into the supply chain, looks like it's going to be hard to get the components so a lot of people are saying a is going to be very expensive phone and it be it's going to push to next year, the supply so you know maybe this iPhone 8 Super Cycle doesn't happen or it's delayed but anyway it it's going to be you know I think a lot of things have to go. Amazon's way to beat Apple there who knows Google you know what let's see how they do they got a lot of. Great things are doing you know some of these things in Google lab probably need to hit for them to kind of get to that trillion dollars cuz it feels like search is kind of running out of gas a little bit. Jason: [10:03] Yeah I mean that's. The one thing at Amazon has going for them versus the other two is they have much smaller market share in a lot of their businesses so there's a lot more Headroom than it feels like. There there is for apple and Google's mature businesses to your point is. If Google hits a homerun with a ton of his vehicles or something like that that that could certainly be the thing to do at 2. Scot: [10:27] Yeah that's like so we'll be watching it really close here at the Jason's gotcha. Jason: [10:33] Other Amazon news this actually happened a couple weeks ago when we were doing other shows, but I've heard some more recent conversation about it is well and that was Nikes decision to start selling on the Amazon platform. And, that was kind of a deal because Nike had been sort of a vocal opponent of selling through Amazon and so it was it was really seen in the marketplace as he some of the last brand holdouts Nike and honest company which had both kind of over it we said they wouldn't. They didn't think Amazon was right for the brand are now both. Selling in in in case of Nike that announcement had a head of favorable impact on Nike stock at had a negative impact on all the other Sporting Good stocks like Dick's Sporting Goods. And so you know people were kind of saying like hey this is another another Amazon Milestone is they're getting all these hold out Brands to sell in the plant form. But the more recent conversation has been like it doesn't appear that Nikes necessarily. Embracing the platform and putting their whole product line on it and sort of like using it as a primary point of distribution. You know when you work at like what Nike had on the platform for Prime day versus a lot of their competitors you know it was only a smattering of product and a lot of people have taken a theory that. That Nike is in her the business relationship with Amazon so that Nike will have more leverage and get more support from Amazon and protecting their brand and you know in for saying. [12:15] You know fake products on the platform and the, really it's it's more of that level of a relationship then then it is you know Nike selling all their goods direct through Amazon. Scot: [12:27] Yeah and um I wouldn't have certainly there's some counterfeit stuff in Amazon sexy pretty good it even before the way shapath pulled Leasing. Anything that seems counterfeit, but a lot of it is really more around third party and controlling the third party and so-so as sweet we had an inkling this was coming because a lot of third parties that sell Nike items, I were alerted that you have come July they would no longer be able to sell on the platform so so now I keep definitely leverage their power to control the third-party Marketplace as a question for Amazon is is the you know are they driving enough sales and selection to Nike to replace and even be. Automatically ahead of that was was that deal a good deal for Amazon so it'll be interesting to watch that because Amazon has no qualms of kind of, terminating deals if they're not making sense for consumers so this could be interesting to see how that plays out in there is nothing argument that Nike actually flexed its muscles and, will Amazon one of them badly enough on the site that they they did this kind of very rare brand gating where they now Gates this brand from third parties and I can probably count on one hand the number of brands of succeeded in doing that. Jason: [13:39] Yeah yeah it's going to be fascinating to see how that that all plays out and regardless it does get Nike on the platform and once they get a taste you know it remains to be seen what they'll do like you know they can easily expand the assortment overtime. [13:55] Another interesting piece of news that made me think of you is Amazon the launched a new platform this week which is called Amazon Spark. [14:06] And this is the latest in a series of new new tools and Amazon has offered that are really about helping consumers with Discover it. So you know you think of Amazon is being great destination when you know what you want and you use the search engine you go right to your PDP and you buy the products. But what spark is really about is browsing visual content and having shoppable photos so the photos can have hot spots in the hot spots are linked to. Amazon Asians and you you can sort of a reveal and add to cart button and put stuff in your car. [14:43] Straight from these these photos so this gives a tool to influencers and Affiliates to start. Publishing their own pinterest-style visual content on the Amazon platform and Shoppers can curate that content based on their personal interests and when they you know. See a picture of a toddler playing with some blocks that you think would be fun for your child you can. You can click on the blocks and Adam to your cart so in interesting new shopping model for. For Amazon and it made me think of you because a couple weeks ago you publish this very cool Amazon scape sort of listening all of the. The different tools in the Amazon Echo System and is willing to put together the outline for Tonight Show I couldn't help but thinking that you're your three-week-old Amazon scape is is wildly out of date already. Scot: [15:35] Yeah yeah that thing is a blessing and a curse like some of these kind of projects I seem to bite off at theirs. [15:44] Is it good like 6 things I need to add on to their already which is just pretty amazing considering it is 3 weeks and then we don't we don't really talk about a lot of the cloud-based stuff on the show but there's already been several Cloud things I need to add on there. And it's this kind of is a good kind of. [16:02] Switch off Segway into Jeff Wilkie I think that's how you say his name Wilke I've always heard people d'amazon climb lucky I guess you could argue that the es Island and its will, he's pre senior guy at Amazon and I have never seen him speak and he was actually Fortune had one of these kind of frou-frou Aspen the things called the brainstorm Tech Conference, you and I are too busy to accept our invitations to Keynote so maybe next year will be there but Jeff Wilkie was he was over the only had a lot of free time and popped on over there he runs the he's effectively he's got like a CEO title which is really unusual a lot of people behind the scenes say that he is the likely success successor, to Jeff Bezos holder that's all all this person, NADA it has not been designated that anyway I've never seen this guy talk and he was really excellent in so we'll put a show note up there's like a 30 minute video from a talk he gave, allies Amazon guys at comedy shows they don't like talk about Amazon in a meeting way and, but what I like to do is pick up Tim bits of culture in and you're the one question having build some businesses is. How do you do so much and obviously they have like 300,000 people and you can do a lot but you know I've been in. Visit large companies like that and it just get so wrapped up and caught up and PowerPoint gnosis and meetings and in that kind of thing. And this interview is really good cuz he spends a fair amount of time talking about that and it's funny he says you know his is the short answer is they create separable single-threaded teams so. [17:39] It's almost like a developed it approach they've taken with cloud computing is like their cultural approach so it's almost like every team and. Amazon is its own little service and gets to focus on that service and if it needs to work externally that's fine it'll it'll kind of create a little mechanism for doing that but then. That team spends 99% of time. Focusing on it an interview and had no idea what he meant by that and so so he went out and bought a couple examples and he kind of said you know what will do is will we in the early days of Alexa we hard one person and all they did was think about Alexis and we didn't. We didn't tie them up with anything it didn't have to. Time with the rest of the system or anything like that we talk to people that like Microsoft and Sony's other companies that's what starts to really hamstring them is the funny story like the early Xbox almost died because they wanted to have Internet Explorer, the main window on it like the IAT wanted it to have that so they actually. Creepy little teams in Amazon create leaders they go build teams and nothing gets in their way and, this is pretty amazing at the scale Amazon is that you know there's not a legal team at Brand team when you get in these larger companies I'm sure you interact with them daily. The it becomes a culture of know and somehow Amazon has created this kind of, primordial soup that still continues that allows many ideas to flourish and die and and and, yeah it seems like they're going to with that culture they'll be innovating and out innovating a lot of companies for a long time so if you're interested in that topic will put it in the show notes there's a 30 minute video that's very much worth your time. Jason: [19:16] Yeah I mean to me the interesting thing you know talking about, software development is sort of a metaphor for organizational design he even talked about the way the teams interacting with each other being sort of like an API where you. Add Define inputs and outputs and that's all you worried about and you you know other than that you know weeders in one business weren't getting involved or getting in the in the shorts of, leaders of the other businesses which which you know as you were saying it made a lot of sense. Scot: [19:47] Yeah I've been an Amazon meetings where an Amazon is a very buttoned-up company. [19:53] But because they're so singularly focused you'll go and so like the one Pea in the 3p teams don't really know each other how their systems work. And it's kind of funny like we'll have to explain to that will be like well. [20:07] Did you guys know you have the Seller Central thing over here and it's got this that in like really who runs that in your like. [20:15] Your trip is just kind of really interesting, yeah it does create a little misalignment in some ways but I think what they've done is they done the calculus and said it you know focus and moving quick is better than alignment in some. Some ways maybe lime it's not the right word but like a little bit of duplication of effort happens so I think it went having built again I'll route to a large organization, you start to really worry Nashua duplicating effort here and you make sure these teams are talking and sharing stuff and it doesn't it seems like Amazon to just turn all that out it's just like go as fast as you need to you know. [20:50] Go fast and break stuff and it's easier said than done in a company the size so that does really interesting that talk so highly recommended. Jason: [20:58] For sure and in that that model probably explains. How they're able to maintain this incredible pace of innovation and you know. [21:09] Part of that Innovation is all these new product offerings that are launching that we're having to talk about on the show and it's it has the unintended consequence of the podcast sometimes feeling like an Amazon podcast because I missed this week and. Yeah sure know if they want antenna products we already talked about Spark, you know another big one this week is meal kits right and so they they've launched their own meal kits which you know. Cuz very negative reaction on the part of a blue apron and some of the traditional competitors there but they they just seem like they're able to. Innovate and get these these products in new categories and new services. Out incredibly quickly in and obviously part of the reason they do that is because they're. You know they're out there all independent and running in parallel as opposed to having dependencies on each other. Scot: [22:02] Yeah meal kits was interesting because it was almost kind of like. Accidental news because so a company in the UK saw that one of the Amazon entities created a trademark for from yokuts and I think the trademark is some it's like a more of a slogan and it says something like. We prepare it you cook it and that's kind of what then they pulled that thread and they found that they're working on meal kits what's funny because I had a friend. What I heard is it was going to be for fresh only so I had a friend look into this and Bill kids have actually been sold on fresh for like 90 days and it started with a couple and their Amazon meal kits and now they actually have about 20 meal kits and, you know what's cool about these is there's a good better best so the Amazon brand is a lot like amazonbasics it's a basic meal, it's usually a beef or chicken and pork in a vegetarian option and it's $19. [23:01] Didn't have third parties selling on there so there's another one and it's called Tyson and something, and it's more like $25 and it's all chicken because it's Tyson and you tell Dave come up with the recipes and everything and the food quality goes up a little bit and then there's a fancier one that's called Martha and something, and that one is like 35 and it's got you know skirt steak and, fancy sauces and all this kind of stuff so it's really interesting that you know of very. I would argue there are Dion Generation 4 where is a lot of these delivery subscription kits you know they're not a. Great customer experience in many ways you and I have talked about how we will try to unmanned lot of people terminate and you know the problem is you don't control when the food comes used on this Relentless treadmill of food, and if there's a meal you don't like you kind of feel obligated to you don't get to pick the meal and so Amazon by just kind of having these meal kits that. Seeing you know there's good better best soda number one there's three price points and number two, I get to pick it and when I want it and it just seems like a more natural way of doing this this kind of prepared meal Thing versus having it kind of like come on this kind of Relentless schedule where you fall behind and start to feel guilty you're not cooking all your meals. Jason: [24:15] Yeah I know I agree I think the order on demand component is that is a big win like you know I've been doing a lot of consumer research for some clients and. [24:25] Meal planning and healthy eating and Fresh Foods are all very high on the decision tree for consumers but at the same time they're super, times of compressed in they have very limited bandwidth and so meal gets really fit that Niche that they, they let families feel like they're making fresh healthy food and they say the family time into your point you know when you can order them onto me and you can. Pick the taste that you want you know on the date you want and not have the sort of Relentless pressure of a mandatory subscription coming to your house. [25:01] Another interesting thing about the mule kicks is that it seems like they're showing some real food Innovation so one of the things I read was, that they would be offering ground beef hamburger patties made from single cows and so you know. One of the health challenges with ground beef is you need to get, meat from a bunch of different animals in them any one of those animals have any diseases that in your potentially at risk and so that that forces everyone to make sure that the ground beef is is, cook sufficiently to, to all those viruses and so you don't get the super juicy flavorful meat so by offering single cow ground beef they they offer product that's safer to cook at a lower temperature and I liked it just never considered that before and you think about the the challenging Logistics of. [25:54] You know. Making that product in a meat processing plant and you know it seems like Amazon signing up for some pretty significant Innovation their versus just sort of Outsourcing these foods from the traditional suppliers. Scot: [26:09] Yeah and done just servants clear this is available to Amazon Prime fresh subscribers which is that full-on grocery deliver delivery subscription. But I think we've seen this program where they test things there but random up they get them too. You know 30 40 50 skews then would be very easy for them to move this across platforms the next platform I would expect to see it in would be. Prime now and then obviously like the the pickup in the go in Seattle but that's that's kind of a small footprint and then it. [26:41] My Prime now I would put it in a 40-45 markets that would be interesting and then, that point they could figure out how to make it part of just kind of the normal Amazon kind of infrastructure so this can be really interesting to watch them with these meal kits and we'll keep reporting what we see there another kind of tidbit for you, my friend is in the beta for the Amazon Prime pick up and he's tried it two or three times and. Every time he tries it he picks a he like literally lives 20 miles away from the pickup Center he's seats at 15 minute window and it's ready in 5 minutes he said it's like the best thing that they have ever tried for grocery it's just like. Dothan availability window seems high now that could be a part of the pilot program maybe they're not just putting a lot of people to their but the it is so far really under-promise and over-deliver it as far as the timing and. [27:34] He said the quality of the food is very good date they actually kind of prefer it to Fresh in some ways cuz it's kind of gives a little bit more control over when they get things and. So I thought that was interesting. Jason: [27:47] Yeah absolutely everywhere we've seen at testing of of buy online pickup in-store for grocery like you you see huge adoption so, that doesn't surprise me a funny antidote I saw a professional chef in Seattle rotor review of Amazon go where she she orders and ingredients and, similar experience she had she had great service there but she gave the the. Actual food products that she got sort of a mediocre results like somewhere apparently like very high-quality ingredients and some of them were pretty disappointing including like this this Marquis piece of fish that she bought, my guess was pretty disappointing and what was funny about it is she wrote this is a review that got published in the New Yorker and so it's this like, you know well written 2000 word. Weird review and she published a link to the New Yorker article on Twitter and cc'd Amazon help their customer service spot in the automated response from the the bot to this link with this long article was, you know where we're sorry you experienced a problem can you please give us a little more detail about what went wrong. Scot: [28:55] Bots going to ride and that's actually a good segue into there's a new this one's kind of in the rumor category so this is on, I'm not known if it's going to happen or not unverified I guess I should say but a lot of people got in surveys asking about an Amazon messaging app that appears to be called according to the survey anytime, this is kind of like one of those things we scratch on your like why would Amazon do messaging you know clearly all these messaging apps are out there and way ahead. But I do think Amazon has couple things going for them so, the popularity of Alexis so it'd be interesting to have a voice component to messaging you know so so right now none of these messaging systems really connect well into voice so that's kind of interesting with the new Amazon. Ecko show I believe I had a chance to play with yours yet. Jason: [29:47] I have them. Scot: [29:49] Yeah it's a little bit of a social network kind of a thing going with it so so I think they're kind of getting you know they may be seeing some early data there that says hey this is common air sting, maybe there's a chance we can build a little bit of a social network here so so if you on your phone if you give it access it slips in your contacts and now, you can call other people that have those devices so so it's almost that and then I think the third thing and probably most important they could bring to bear as if some of this cognitive an AI so we talked to Andrea frigg's ample and you know she talked about how you can chat with an Amazon vendor bought and, it will negotiate on Amazon's behalf you seen it with the help but so I think there's they've got this really kind of interesting a platform that's probably second to none that. Could be interesting to leverage in. Jason: [30:44] Anschutz got we just had a little audio glitch can you hear me. Scot: [30:51] Area. Jason: [30:52] Okay so it was my fault I open another tab I just can't do that like cuz. [31:00] I was trying to look up another product but let me just quit. [31:07] 550 parts to so you were it was the sentence when you're talking about you just started the the Andrea AI. Scot: [31:20] Tell me to say the third like start there. Jason: [31:24] Yeah that would be best. Scot: [31:30] The third piece Amazon brings to Bear is this kind of AI engine now we don't know all of their building in there you can see some hints of it through AWS, and if you remember we had to Andrea on the show and she was talking about this hands off the wheel initiative where. You know dude you're as a vendor you're singing or negotiating with to chat system and its actual robot on the other side and most owners only realize it's a robot so apparently have some really amazing internal AI technology maybe you've seen it on that help. You mentioned so it'll be you know interesting that's kind of one of the ways they could commercialize this, yeah and then you think how can Amazon use the messaging well imagine you could ask Amazon about any product. You know you could send messages between Alexis and all the devices so I don't I don't know it interesting to see if this one becomes real and what they're using it for. Jason: [32:18] Yeah I am a mixed feelings at you know always interesting to see, Innovative new products and it's way better than the current state of messaging apps like that that could be a peeling I sort of have a little bit of messenger for two you get the moment I feel like I have you know a. [32:36] Community of people that communicate via SMS or via. Apple iMessage or video Google voice chat and you know so part of me is worried about. Fragmenting this messaging even further with another app not feeling super appealing, I have to say that I have found the the drop-in feature on the Alexa more useful than I expected to so in my house it's it's actually getting used as a pretty useful intercom right like so you know my wife will be putting our son to bed and it'll be 10 to read a story and she you know she can just with her voice while she's holding our son you know drop in and the room I man and tell me that we're we're ready for story time and that kind of stuff super interest has been, will useful in our house unless fired up to be able to drop into family members house and use that versus all the other. Other messaging tools we have so so we'll have to see how that all plays out. Scot: [33:36] Yeah another angle and I forgot to mention this is there's a lot of rumors that slack is out there for sale and and it's a business productivity chat out really for lack of a better word so maybe what we're hearing is really going to be less concerned more kind of business productivity, and that would actually slide in well with kind of these private e apps that they've been putting out like chime and whatnot so we'll be there some see if what direction they go here. Jason: [34:00] Absolutely and let me just say. Slack message fragmentation is the bane of my existence cuz I'm a member of about 50 slack teams and it's it's pretty hard to monitor them all at once so hopefully Amazon does acquire them and fixes that, another service that came out was there home installation service in so a lot of people have kind of taken the colonist Amazon's version of Geek Squad, and I'm not sure this is completely confirmed but there were number of job listings that were sort of the precursor to the service, the made it seem like these were going to be W-2 employees than Amazon was actually hiring that would do home installation of things like, consumer electronics in so you know we haven't had the test yet but on Prime day I had my mother buy a new printer for her house that she needed and as she purchased that with home installation from Amazon sawall, I hope we in a future podcast Bill to talk about how well that goes. Scot: [35:01] Yeah maybe we can have your mom in it on as a guest how awesome would that be. Jason: [35:04] It would be totally awesome the downside would be that you know that would we lose our number one listener that week. Scot: [35:11] Yeah you're right she would price to listen to I think we should do it. Jason: [35:15] Gotcha well I will mention it to her when I when I get the the printer install recap, but it is interesting to me that they're adding services and you know in the old days if that like. [35:28] They were really trying to build a business that didn't require human interaction and you know there's all this talk about like if we have if you ever need to talk to a human that we did our job wrong and you know more recently. [35:40] A ton of the services are depending on humans and you know you're seeing Amazon hire a lot more people and in Creed jobs and you know I felt like you know despite the fact that this home insulation was a brand new service, was heavily promoted on Prime day and, you know it was it was it both had prominent space on the on the pdp's and and it was being offered it's an aggressive promotional prices as well. Scot: [36:03] Yeah and they have this is on my Amazon skate but they also have a home Marketplace called Amazon home services and. It doesn't have such there's kind of to entry points to where it's popular is in checkout upsell so if you're buying a big screen TV or. Printer and you want to buy insulation to get a pretty good attached right there where we're not seeing a lot of volume is when people kind of go through the top of the funnel and kind of say, oh I need to go to Amazon to get my house cleaned and it's just think I think people don't think that way and they try to boil the ocean there's like literally everything you could do in one place and it's, it's a little bit of water down by experience but you know I'm obviously you kind of deep into this on-demand Services world and I think Amazon you know. I'm interested in it for all the reasons Amazon is I suspect it's it's a very big huge dress will Market if you look at GDP. It's 80% Pro Services 20% products so, you know it's four times as big and Theory as products and the terrible customer experience you know think about when was the last time you had a great service at your home, yeah you have no power in the thing you get these delivery Windows the guy never shows up if he does he knocks and runs is just like a really terrible experience so so I think there's there's a really big adjustable Market there that it's probably pretty interesting to Amazon and what kind of see how serious they get about it. Jason: [37:35] Yeah that's going to be another Super interesting one now watch in in the last, new service I noticed is from the back of a service for brands for for number of yours Amazon has offered branded landing pages but they were pretty rudimentary answer the last month they they did a major refresh to the brand pages. And these new pages are pretty cool they're they're based on a much more modern framework they're based on a react framework but what school is. You can now have multiple pages of URLs for your for your brand page so you know if you're a brand that has multiple categories of products you can have your own navigation with links to a, to a category page within your brand page which is a pretty common need and something that they didn't support before some multi page. Brand landing pages is really powerful they've added the ability to support rich media which is huge. For a long time we've actually advised clients to put a lot of brand content. Yeah in What's called the A-Plus section of their pdp's and that's because you know maybe someone's just shopping for your brand but typically an Amazon. Eat when they search for you the brand that the results going to take him to a PDP and so the PDP had this sort of be the. The main page for each individual skew or a sin but it also had the kind of act as an ambassador for that category of product and so so you saw a lot of folks commonly put. [39:08] Rich media in their pdp's that was really meant to be at the category of brand level and so now they've they've enabled you to put all that content where it really belongs on its own. On brand Pages Nat super powerful and then you know equally helpful, they've added a real CMS in Vendor Central that let you can manage these Pages pretty easily you know even for a business use or not necessarily, a technical are creative user so this is pretty new future, that is if you are brand selling on Amazon you know you should have on your roadmap to be implementing these Pages as quickly as possible because if the moment it's definitely a competitive Advantage for the folks of adopted at and, I always like to appoint people to like the the happy belly brand page you know which is Amazon's own product to see what you know some of the best practices are. Scot: [39:59] Yeah and you know what's interesting is a lot of these e-commerce platforms especially that's in bees have pivoted because there's not a lot of small retailers that are doing this that well out there in the world so most of them riveted towards France and I saw this is a little bit of a shot across the bow of some of those guys essentially saying. You know. We have a lot of Leverage with Brands and this could actually be a pretty nice e-commerce site for Brands overtime Amazon had been in the web. Web store business that got out of that and I'm not saying they're going back into it but when I looked at this I kind of thought you know a brand what else do I need you know it's almost. [40:40] It feels very modern and kind of next-generation so the nurse and see what else they do with us. Jason: [40:46] Yeah and it definitely like just the the trend of adding better tools for Sailors is very welcome so hopefully they they do a lot more. Scot: [40:56] Yeah and while I was just just now poking around I noticed they've moved up to the homepage the treasure truck so, so the treasure truck I don't know the Genesis of this to you but it's kind of legendary in Seattle so every day there's this truck to drive around and it has like it all seems like something we would do but I don't think it's associated with his guys, but everyday there's like a great deal so people in Seattle that you get a text and it will say the treasure truck is by the museum and it has you know a backpack for half off or something like that and you rush down there and get it it's like. Supposed to be really fun and I was meaning to mention earlier because they. They put the meal kits on the treasure truck which is they put a lot of beta stuff on there so that was interesting but now I've noticed today they pushed a video out with kind of funny pirate and now they have on home page where the truck is going to be traveling around the country, let's go interesting new thing and good news it's already on the Amazon scape so I was I was that was when I knew about. Jason: [41:54] Nice I've actually run into the treasure truck at some events so they they send it for example to Las Vegas for CES and I actually asked the driver if if he considered it sort of on Wheels and he was actually a little offended. Scot: [42:10] Another couple of tidbits of news so. After the the frothy, Prime day there's some interesting analyst out on the Wall Street with some reports so first of all credit Swiss came out and they have a new analyst there and he picked up his coverage of Amazon what I thought was a refreshing is most guys if you and I've talked about this on the show a lot but, a lot of folks still don't understand that Amazon has effectively to businesses there's the retail business which we call one p. In that line of business everything they sell counts as Revenue so if they sell $100 widget a hundred dollars of Revenue. Pretty simple same as retail the one that trips are one up is the third party part which is the marketplace so if they sell $100 widget Amazon can only recognize the revenue from that widget which is their commission or their take rate. Across Amazon at on average is about 10%. C'est Cela widget $400 in Amazon gets recognized $10 of Revenue because of gaap accounting rules I always have argued for a long time and I was kind of like. The only guy out there saying this now most people have kind of come over the can't really think of Amazon that way because one Walmart will say that that. That hundred-dollar which it was a pair of Nike shoes and. And dicks lost out on $100 not $10 so when you actually unpack all that and we used to have to do this through a pretty arcane mechanism now Amazon gives you a lot of Clues to get there. [43:42] Ineffectively the punchline is you think of Amazon is about 130 billion dollar retailer with actually about 250 billion so credit Swiss was out and they had you know it was pretty nursing date that she kind of has a 2017 estimate of. 230, 38 billion it kind of see him getting pretty close to five hundred billion over the next couple years which is which is pretty amazing that would be kind of Walmart territory so I thought that was a good report, and then some of these things are surveys so you know you and I are not huge fans of surveys, but RBC had when I only put some of the more Salient things here it was kind of interesting so some of the RBC is Mark mahaney he's kind of a very kind of legendary. Analyst on Walmart I mean sorry on Amazon. And some history questions are interesting so you know you hear from a lot of people will no one wants. Same day or next hour delivery in a new survey yes I would like 60% of people said well of course I would love this and I would use it on a on a regular basis. You're some more they talked about some category questions so. Only 7% of those surveyed in this is a survey of quantity about 2,000 people and only 7% said they had tried grocery but 13% said they wanted to buy more grocery so yeah I'm kind of. Signals of a large intent of an interest there on the top categories that were purchased on Amazon according to the survey were apparel Electronics. [45:16] Home furnishings and of those are surprises but the fourth one I thought you'd be interested in a cpg so 31% of the folks had bought a cpg item on Amazon I don't think Dave. Dundas multiple years but I bet if we if they had cpg would be down there with grocery last year so something and if something's going on and people are buying more CPT at Amazon which I think, Dutch well for the grocery business. [45:43] 12% said they use same-day delivery so that's up from 2015 with 6% so doubling. And then yep Prime is best. And then this is pretty fascinating so they asked Which online retail site has the Lost prices Amazon 64% the next closest was Walmart in eBay at 11%, which has the best selection Amazon at 82%. EBay at 6% Walmart at 4% which is the most convenient Amazon 76% Walmart 8, eBay five so these charts are funny their bar charts and they're so tall dad is kind of change the perspective to even pull some of the retailers, into the chart so so if you think about if those this kind of classic Bezos thing that he said and is is 97 letter, we think people won't get tired of low prices great selection and convenience / free shipping and turns out I think he was right. And that's kind of the recipe for for how well they've been doing so will put a link to that up in the show notes for those that are kind of like going to get super geeky on this stuff but might take away was cpg is on the rise and Amazon, Prime is huge, in Amazon hisses pulled away so far from comping competitors they don't even really show up on the radar anymore which which you know they could be disheartening if I was out there competing with Amazon. Jason: [47:13] For sure but speaking of competitors they're not necessarily pulling away from. I did see a couple interesting pieces of non Amazon news and one of them is from our friends at Alibaba which which is certainly is holding their own obviously in different markets against Amazon. But I find it kind of funny you know you'd only Bob I invented this this holiday singles day and you no one could argue that the. That Prime day was coming knock off on on Singles day well I stumbled across a cool video which I'll post a link to, of a physical grocery store that was designed and open by Alibaba called Hema supermarket and so this is a fairly digital High service, grocery store in China I'm going to both had some kind of e-commerce Innovations there's a quick and collect and they're you know a ton of Shoppers are picking orders and they have like a good infrastructure for helping those, does that Shoppers pick their orders from the Shelf have a barcode on every skew and you can scan them with Alibaba app you can you know. Quickly check out using Ally pay and things like that and then they had some of the the usual cultural differences of of Asian supermarkets versus Western supermarkets, for example most of the seafood is alive and you actually. Pick your own crawfish or your own Lobster like you know out of a bin with tongs and you can actually hand it to a chef who will then prepare your your freshly selected Seafood for you too. [48:54] To consume right in the store so some interesting things there and it you know just occurred to me you know what what a coincidence that they would. You know be getting in grocery and you know with some Amazon Girish feeling. Teachers you don't feel like these these two Giants are heavily sort of borrowing or competing with each other at the moment. Scot: [49:16] Yeah I think we should do a Jason Scott show roadkill have to work with our sponsors to see if we can get a week at that shirt at store. Jason: [49:23] How much are either of us are in adventure enough eater to be like we might have to bring someone with us. Scot: [49:32] Another kind of interesting startup that launched that got a fair amount of fanfare I think it's cuz they raised capital is called brand lesson I was so curious about this so now I had to go in and order some stuff so it actually came today and first of all it's kind of. [49:48] It's super ironic because you get this very vanilla brown box and all it has is on like 80 lb a 80 Point font is brandless trademark, alright your brand is brandless and they care about their brand but then everything to talk about his being unbranded yet they're branded with the. Brandless it's kind of hard to everyone at work was like really confused by the whole thing and it at. I gave up trying to explain explain it but he's got to do is it's kind of like taking that private label unbranded new. Peanut butter or something and privatizing it and so their whole brand promises you don't play quote unquote the brand tax. And then everything is $3 so we'll see I ordered some K-Cups and have not tried those yet but you know the dollar. The the cost per K-Cup is about half of a branded one or a little bit less so that's pretty good deal if it ends up being good, some of the things that that people in the office were like this ad good snacks so they had. Quinoa crisp which were essentially healthy Cheetos so those were popular and then they had a wide selection of candies that we're brand was so they had you know the equivalent had gummy worms and gummy bears and this kind of thing, everyone felt like the quality of those was really good so Buena. It's interesting I'll keep you posted some of the other stuff we try but it was kind of a fun kind of again making it was. Yeah good enough that I gave it a shot and it works really well came quickly products seem to be pretty good. Jason: [51:23] The interesting they're getting a little buzz cuz they they're sort of the mash-up of all the popular Trends right now right so that you know they have, hundreds of products that are essentially a cpg company with like food and cleaning products and and you know all the other things you would think of a of a, a craft in a PNG you know kind of Assortment but they're also heavy on the on the organic. Quality transparent sourcing and so you know you know there's a lot of ingredients that aren't allowed in the products and they have have this like high quality Organics story. And then they're your point a good value so you know $3 for a premium product that the based on the name you would assume doesn't. Invest a bunch of money in advertising right like they're brainless and so it seems super interesting. I have to say I think there's a huge flaw in their current business model and so not to say you know that they won't pivot and discover a successful model but the problem I have is. You see them and you instantly think private label and so your go private labels been successful these guys should be successful but the. The shoes difference between brandless and private label is you don't have to do marketing for private label products right because you, you put the bleach on the Shelf in the supermarket right next to the Clorox bleach and and people walk to that shelf with buying intent and they see the private label is is cheaper than. The national brand and so some people will you know make that trade off. [52:54] Brandless isn't in on a shelf next to a another product right like there's there's no one walking by the only place to buy brandless is on Brandon and Brandon has no organic traffic, so guess what brandless is going to have to do in order to get people to discover them and come to their site and buy their stuff. [53:16] They're going have to spend a fortune on Advertising right and and said that the closest model we have are the guys that jet that we're spending you know originally $100 a consumer for acquisition costs and, you know maybe got it down to 50 bucks of consumer and so the irony here is you know they're calling themselves Brandis and trying to position themselves as a product that doesn't have to sync a bunch of money in advertising, but they're probably going to have to spend a fortune on Advertising to get people to go to their site and I would argue that even have a worse problem. You know they can't advertise $3 peanut butter and get someone to come to the site that just wants peanut butter because the other thing you know whether three Dar products, you have to buy 26 of them to get free shipping and is Jeff Bezos already proved nobody wants to buy anything without free shipping and so you have to find a consumer that's all in and willing to order. 26 products to get the free shipping and so that the ads you have to run the Google pieles you know probably can't even be at the product level they have to be at this like. [54:14] You know cpg level and I I just think that's that's going to be a really challenging story for them to. Digitally acquire consumers that want to buy that many products from them so I'm I'm sure we'll see them pivot on their shipping model they have a club at the moment with you, pay money to just reduce the shipping cost which I'm not confident in and you know. [54:35] Eventually like they'll either have to decide to distribute through places that are Eddie had buying intent like Amazon or traditional retailers or they're going have to spend an awful lot of money to get people to their site. Scot: [54:47] Yeah it's cuz the the two boxes came within days of each other but it reminded me of boxed so very much kind of similar box size model and and do you know fill the box to get it shipped to you, then. Jason: [55:02] Yep other little pieces of news this one's kind of interesting to me but in separate announcements over the last two weeks. Both Apple pay and Samsung pay have announced that they will allow you to use PayPal as a method of payment on there. Their digital wallets and, to me that's a pretty big piece of news for two reasons number one there are kinds of tender you can have them PayPal that you couldn't have an Apple pay for example so you can have your checking account you know when do electronic fund transfers linked to PayPal you can't do that in Apple pay but now you can link your checking account to PayPal put PayPal in your Apple pay digital wallet and now you can use those super you know seamless, Apple pay experience to pull money straight out of your checking account no credit card required and so that. That seems pretty interesting it seems like a big win for PayPal that both of these these digital wallets you know which are. In some ways competitive with PayPal have both decided to support PayPal and you know my my very superficial read is. If Apple pay and Samsung pay we're getting a ton of traction onboarding their own customers, they probably wouldn't want to accept Paypal in the fact that they are accepting PayPal is probably a nod to the fact that that, an awful lot more consumers of stored their payment information with PayPal then then either Apple or Samsung are getting organically and so they're they're having to go to where the payment cards are. Scot: [56:33] Yeah very interesting so I guess it's signals weakness right. Jason: [56:37] Potentially yeah that's really the way I read it. Scot: [56:40] Yeah it's kind of frustrating time of this thing so I was early adopter on Apple pay and then between like. [56:47] Updating my phones in my watches I have to read it like delete all my credit cards every time and every atom I have given up and you think I would be like the perfect person for this but literally that cycle of going in and out with my credit card so many times this may be just be like easier to use the stupid. [57:03] Monkey tip line. Jason: [57:04] I I would totally argue with you except that like none of my cards are in my Apple watch right now for that very reason. Scot: [57:10] Retailgeek call Jeff. Jason: [57:13] I'll fix it right after the show. Scot: [57:17] Cool one thing I saw that was interesting is we talked a lot about digital native vertical Brands we've had ModCloth on the show but no Bose also known as Walmart and, everland is one of the popular DMV bees and the big Trend with these guys is opening up pop-up stores or physical stores so everlane announce their opening a store, and I believe it's going to be there going to open up a store in the San Francisco Mission and then I can have some pop ups at their headquarters and then also in New York City. Jason: [57:50] Very cool I'll be looking forward to seeing what they do in the permanent store you know they had a lot of innovation on their website and you know do a lot of interesting things so hopefully they'll they'll have a fresh take on retail as well. Scot: [58:04] I think you should get up at like 6 a.m. tomorrow and go check it out. Jason: [58:08] Unfortunately I think the first that that for stores only going to be in the Mission District and I don't think they've even announce the date yet so that maybe a later show. Scot: [58:17] I think there's a pop-up in New York you can. Jason: [58:19] There is a pop-up but I have been to that. [58:23] And for the record I will be up at 6 a.m. tomorrow anyway so for my client that's expecting to see me I'll be there. Another one that I saw. [58:35] Is a new e-commerce platform so this is very cleverly named platform is called new store. And it's it's from a well-known character in the e-commerce platform space a guy and I'm not sure I'm pronouncing his last name right but I I call him Steve Shambhala. [58:54] And Steve is well known for having found at a company called intershop which is a. [59:01] A well-established e-commerce platform originated from Germany the kind of Frank Leah grew up with hybris hybris got sold for a large amount of money to to sap. An inner shop really didn't get as much traction but what what internship was most well known for is. It was the platform that GSI commerce was based on and so you could you can buy the platform yourself from inner shop or you could rent in adoration of GSI from. Of inner shop from from GSI so so Steven is back with a new e-commerce platform and it has in it a bunch of the things you would expect to see in. A brand new made from scratch, Commerce platform from somebody that knows the market well and so it's it's heavily mobile-centric it leverages a lot of the latest technology in Mobile so it leverages mobile accelerated pages from Google most exciting for me it natively supports Progressive web apps which is really exciting capability for for enhancing the mobile experience and having fast loading Rich pages, and you know it does have, sort of the full stack which is you know one of the common Trends we're seeing a new e-commerce platforms it's not just a storefront it has the the order management system it has some omni-channel feature so I can support you know an inventory model in your store and. [1:00:32] On your website and buy online pickup in-store and all those sorts of things so I know he raised the money I think it was like 50 million dollars was a series B and it'll be interesting to see if they get some Traction in the e-commerce platform space. Scot: [1:00:48] Yeah yeah I know Steven well and he has plenty of capital to go retire so it's interesting to see him going to stay in the space and continue to innovate after after kind of. Starting in the early days and then. Founder of demandware and now it kind of working on I think he calls it like Commerce 3.0 so so kudos to him from the unreal stamp point for for having the gustow to stay in there for so long. Jason: [1:01:10] It's it's an addictive cat. Scot: [1:01:11] Last it really is it's a lot of fun last one I saw was, and this one is kind of funny because we stop talking about Amazon opening fulfillment centers on the show cuz they open like to a month right now but Walmart actually had has announced the opening of a pretty massive e-commerce for phone at Center it harder to keep track of them cuz Walmart doesn't announce them like. Amazon does now but I'm pretty sure this is the 7th one so they're they're kind of in the high single digits in, I'm ninety-nine percent sure I'm right on that if it not number 7 but this one is truly pretty large so it's Amazon's largest fulfillment centers gift 1.2 million square feet, does puppy is 2.2 million square feet that spans two buildings it's in Florida it's got 1,500 jobs one of the low blurbs always read these things I'm kind of a. Logistics nerd is they said this next generation. Pickup module system so not exactly sure what that is I mean I know it pickup is but I don't know what the module system is sounds like some proprietary way of doing things it if effectively has 33 miles of shelves so I was thinking wow that's that's a lot of if you had to, if you unfortunately ended up on one end of that and you had to walk to the other end to get the widget that would be bad so hopefully their systems more optimized than that. Jason: [1:02:30] Yeah I think it's actually automated I think part of that pickup module system is that the that you know what's the automated shelving systems where you know the sort of shells are stored in 3D in it, it pulled the Shelf to the Picker instead of the Picker having a go to the Shelf. Scot: [1:02:47] So the Shelf could have to travel 33 months. Jason: [1:02:49] Yeah well probably only in a in a really bad sort would it have to go that far but yeah. Scot: [1:02:55] I want to see these 33 miles that's maybe it's like if you stack them they would go to the moon or something I don't know it didn't it didn't make sense to me so I thought I would. [1:03:07] Maybe I'm sure of the listener out there we have Folks at Walmart they can explain it to us. Jason: [1:03:11] That's the one thing I know for sure is if I ever need to hide the Ark of the Covenant I know where I'm going. Scot: [1:03:17] Yep we're going to put it in Florida in the Walmart fulfillment center. Jason: [1:03:21] Awesome, and Scott that's probably going to be a great place to wrap it up because it's happened again we've wasted a perfectly good hour of our listeners time as always we would encourage you to continue the dialogue on Facebook interview particularly like today show we would greatly appreciate a review on iTunes. Scot: [1:03:40] Thanks everyone and also we are looking to do another listener question show so I use that Facebook page to shoot us your questions or you can send them to retailgeek or Scot Scot just want Wingo Wingo on Twitter and we hope to get your questions so we can have a show just of listener questions. Jason: [1:03:58] That's going to be awesome and if any of our listeners are listening to this on the day it's published and you happen to be going to Comic Con in San Diego or in RF Tech in San Diego I will be there so, feel free to drop me a line on Twitter and it'd be great to meet up so until next time happy commercing.

Married writers Julie Buntin and Gabe Habash have both just released their debut novels, Julie's Marlena and Gabe's Stephen Florida. We talk about how they created these works, what drew them to their protagonists, and what it's like to live with another writer.

grupo bongar | comadre fulozinha | mayra andrade | rabecado | dj tudo e gente de todo lugar | nino karvan | joésia ramos | pilão de pife | bago de jaca | marco vilane | patricia polaine | equipe mercado | eu, você e maria | andreias dias | rodrigo campos | romulo froes | thiago correa | babulina | marku ribas | marisa rossi | roberto carlos | supergroove | humberto barros | maquinado | secos e molhados | eduardo araujo | hugo feat. ive seixas | meia duzia de 3 ou 4 | laura guevara | moraes moreira | novos baianos         COLLAGE Fragmenting and juxtaposing several faces of Brazilian music. That's a pretty accurate definition of the efforts contained in this episode of the Caipirinha Appreciation Society podcast. Originally broadcast on 25/April/17 on Contrabanda FM    COLAGEM Fragmentação e justaposição das diversas faces da música brasileira. Eis aí uma boa definição dos esforços contidos nesta edição do podcast Caipirinha Appreciation Society. Transmitido originalmente em 25/abril/17 na Contrabanda FM.   

Consolidation cutbacks and competition from the web -- these are the headlines grabbing the attention of business journalists around the world. Concerns about the quality of reporting and information have risen steadily as the industry has undergone dramatic changes. How has global expansion affected the standards of news organizations? What impact have blogs and ”citizen journalism” had on the industry? And what role does investigative journalism play in an age of around-the-clock cable news updates and shrinking budgets? To answer these and other questions Knowledge at Wharton spoke with four news professionals from the U.S. and abroad who attended the 2007 Wharton Seminars for Business Journalists. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.